Mustapha Kemal - Ataturk: The Birth of a Republic (2005) (review)

Mustapha Kemal, who was to later take on the title Ataturk or "Father of the Turks", was a complex, contradictory and completely remarkable individual. Starting as a professional soldier, Kemal became captain in 1905 just as the Ottoman Empire entered its final period of decay. He could well have led an eventful but historically unremarkable life as a rising officer in a dying military organization. Instead, during the First World War fate made him part of the defense of the Dardanelles Straits. Under brutal British assault, Turkish troops initially broke formation in terrified flight. Kemal was able to halt the panic and then successfully defended this vital Ottoman position. From this time onward, a legend was born or, at times, invented. Since Mustapha Kemal served at a distance from the area where the massacres of Armenians occurred, he had "clean hands," something a number of potential rivals did not.

In the pandemonium following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustapha Kemal engineered a successful military coup d'état. From the ruins of the ancient empire, he was able to forge together modern Turkey. Heavily influenced by both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Kemal set out to transform the remnants of the ancient Islamic state into a modernBand secularB society. As this documentary shows in detail, he tolerated little dissent, let alone opposition. The authoritarian state Kemal formed is often easily, and incorrectly, compared to Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, After all, Kemal established a cult of personality much as did his fascist and Soviet neighbors. Mustapha Kemal could also act the egomaniac as evidenced by a thirty-six hour speech given over the course of several days in 1927.

All the same, the new Turkey that he created neither was bent on the sort of ethnic extermination and external aggression that occurred under Hitler, nor on massive political repression on the scale of Stalin. Above all, the new Turkey was transformed into a modern European society. Kemal's support for women's rights, for example, is striking, not just in contrast to the rest of the Islamic world but even to nations of Western Europe. It is noteworthy that under Kemal, Turkey granted women the right to vote before this basic acknowledgment of citizenship was extended in either France or Italy.

The questions raised by this film are difficult ones. How does one balance Kemal's authoritarianism with his effort to provide Turks with a life that was both more modern and free? By raising these concerns, the documentary performs a valuable service. One criticism is that the extensive use of interviews with historians often means that talking heads break up the flow of the narrative. The film would be much more powerful if this had been avoided. Despite this flaw, this is a solid, if too brief, glimpse into a fascinating and vitally important figure in twentieth-century history.