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Article: Ataturk still towers over the Turkey of today.
- Article from:
- The Birmingham Post (England)
- Article date:
- November 5, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The blue eyes peer from a million banners and portraits. Giant sepia photographs capture the man, rugged and warlike in an Astrakhan hat or clean-shaven in a suave Western suit, his face turned half away.
Sixty years after Mu stafa Kemal Ataturk's death, his images tower over the Turkish secularist state he forged from the dying Ottoman Empire. Schoolgirls and soldiers alike swear oaths to him at his mausoleum; songs are still written in his honour.
"Happy is he who can call himself a Turk."
Words coined by Ataturk to raise selsteem in distant times ...