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Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and its first President, stands as a towering figure of the 20th Century. Among the great leaders of history, few have achieved so much in so short period, transformed the life of a nation as decisively, and given such profound inspiration to the world at large.
What did he do? He took a defeated, demoralized, poverty-stricken medieval theocratic monarchy and reshaped it into a vibrant, progressive, democratic secular republic. In other words, he turned black into white almost single-handedly.
