Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and the Modernization of Turkey

Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) is known for being the first President of Turkey. He modernized Turkey in a very short period of time. He made Turkey more secular. Secular are things that are not pertained or connected to religion. He let people believe in the religion they wanted to believe in. He believed in united humanity and equal rights for everyone. He believed that that the country was drastically not modern. He wanted to modernize Turkey to give it a new sense of dignity, equality, and happiness. Ataturk gave women their equal rights in 1926, with the new Civil Code. He wanted the people of Turkey to start wearing European hats and never to wear the fez. He made women stop wearing veils. He wanted all citizens to have surnames. He changed the Islamic calender to the Western kind. Ataturk also decided to change the nation's language, from Arabic to Latin.

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