Formed in 1923, Turkey marked its centenary on Sunday with nationwide celebrations. The republic was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a general turned politician, who rescued his country from the clutches of European rule after the first world war and restructured the remainder of what was once a transcontinental and multicultural Islamic empire into a lean new Anatolian republic, intending it to resemble Europe more closely.
“The Turkish nation has fallen far behind the west,” Atatürk told a German officer during the first world war. “The main aim should be to lead it to modern civilisation.” To that end, he began implementing political, social and cultural reforms that would change his country for ever, creating new social and political cleavages as Turkish citizens began contesting the meanings of their country’s history, symbols and identity.
