From the Sultan to Atatürk

Modern Turkey is a country that stands between two worlds, a state with an a avowedly secular constitution which is a member of NATO but an overwhelmingly Islamic population which causes alarm in European countries when it seeks European Union membership. This country was the creation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 1938), a Turkish general whose military victories over the Greeks in 1922 gave him the power to shape the Turkish state to his own design.

ANDREW MANGO is the author of the definitive biography of Atatürk (2002), as well as an account of modern Turkey, The Turks Today (2004). He was in charge of broadcasting in Turkish for the BBC for 14 years and later headed the BBC s South European Service and its French Language Service.