Author Bio: Mustafa Atatürk was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1881. He was the first President of Turkey when they gained their independence in 1919, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire he led the Turkish National Movement and the Turkish War of Independence. He helped defeat the Allies through establishing a provisional government in Ankara, Turkey. He wanted to transform Turkey into a modernized nation-state and have Turkey to be secular. He carried out what is called "Turkification".
Date/Context: Mustafa Atatürk gave his speech in 1927. He gave this speech to the National Assembly in response to the rebellion against the government. The speech took place over 36 hours from October 15, 1927, to October 20, 1927. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the end of WWI occurred around 8 years before this speech.
Summary: In 1919 the Ottoman Empire fell, and now there was a struggle for individual countries to gain their own independence. Turkey was never colonized by a European country, but the struggle for independence was greatly threatened by Europe. In the early twentieth-century, a new legacy of "young Turks" was created. The leader of this movement was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. From 1920 to 1923, Mustafa Kemal had fought off the British intentions of carving up the Ottoman Empire by waging wars in Greece, Armenia, England, and France. Kemal was successful in his work and had become the first president of Turkey in 1923, and established the Turkish Republic. After the birth of this new Turkish Republic set in, Kemal started to convert they traditions ways of Muslim life into more Modernized and Secular nation-state. Kemal hired John Dewey to design a system of education for boys and girls a general civic education. Clothing was modernized as well and the men wore Western suits and the women wore Western dresses. In 1924, a rebellion took place against the government because they were criticized of ending "anti-Islamic". In response to the rebellions the government passed a law which was called the "Law for the Maintenance of Public Order". This banned a wide variety of "subversive" groups. In response to the rebellions as well, Kemal delivered a speech to the National Assembly from October 15 to October 20,1927, spanning over 36 hours in total. In his speech he explained many events that occurred from 1919 to the date of the speech very detailedly. He also stated his goals of the development of the Turkish Republic. Kemal was a Turkish Nationalist, but he also admired the Western European countries. Throughout the rest of the text, there are excerpts from Kemal's speech which talk about events that occurred and his policies that he could've and chose to use. He viewed another country ruling his homeland as the Turks "lacking human qualities" because he felt that he should be able to rule his country with no foreign power over Turkey. Overall, Kemal was an advocate of "Turkish youth".
Key Quotation: "The result we have attained to day is the fruit of teachings which arose from centuries of suffering, and the price of streams of blood which have drenched every foot of the ground of our beloved Fatherland."
After reading the words from Mustafa I concluded that your summary included the perfect amount of detail to really capture the main points from the reading. First of all, I thought you did a good job in detailing his speech by pointing out that he was a Turkish nationalist but also looked up to Western European countries. Also, I thought you did a good job giving the reader background information on the date and context. Anyone who had a lack of background knowledge on this topic would be able to have a basic and clear understanding on the events prior to his speech. Furthermore, as I was reading the document I came across the same key quotation that you chose and thought that it accurately reflected his other words.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this was an excellent PDC I believe that you explained some facts that were more insignificant than others unto which were key details. For example you talked about the clothing during this time period but failed to explain some of his goals during the development of the Turkish Republic. To continue, I think you could have described some of your key terms for readers such as "turkification" and what being an advocate of "Turkish Youth" means. Furthermore, I think that you could've flowed from one idea to another in a smoother way to really highlight how all of these key details tie together.