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Article: Ironic fulfillment of Ataturk goal for TurkeyIslamic party now a modernizing force
- Article from:
- International Herald Tribune
- Article date:
- May 21, 2007
- Author:
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Sabrina Tavernise
International Herald Tribune
05-21-2007
Surveying the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk saw an impoverished peasant society that was 90 percent illiterate, whose primary exports were tobacco and dried fruit.An autocrat, a drinker and a nation builder, Ataturk set about assembling a state meant to wrench his countrymen out of their backwardness.Today, Turkey is poised to join Europe - if the Continent will have it - in what would be the fulfillment of Ataturk's vision. But in an irony of history, a group of politicians who value Islam are hoisting Turkey toward the club, which Ataturk's secular contemporaries never were able to do.So a look ...