A. L. Macfie

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk belongs to that rarefied category of men who have been called “the father of their country.” Yet such lofty achievements could hardly have been reasonably predicted when he was born in 1881 to a minor customs official and his wife. Growing up in the Ottoman Empire, he joined the army where, in spite of his involvement in the secret societies of the period, he rose rapidly through the ranks. Distinguishing himself during the First World War, he quickly emerged at the forefront of a national resistance movement after the war, one that challenged both the Allied occupation forces and the Ottoman regime and culminated in the proclamation of a Turkish Republic. Assuming its presidency, Ataturk pushed through a series of reforms that transformed Turkey into the secularized Western-oriented state that it is today.

Summarizing the momentous events of Ataturk’s life can be a challenge for any short work, the more so given the relative unfamiliarity of an English-language audience with the background of events. In this, A. L. Macfie does a commendable job in this concise biography of Ataturk of providing an efficient explanation of the developments of the period within the framework of his subject’s life. The combination gives the reader a useful, analysis of the public career of the Turkish leader, one that summarizes nicely his life and achievements.

Yet Macfie’s achievement hampers the book in other ways. While he is able to balance the examinations of Ataturk and his times nicely in his chapters on the period when Ataturk is in power, Macfie is less successful in weaving together the disparate strands of his subject’s early years and the contemporary history of the late Ottoman empire. As a result, Ataturk disappears from the early chapters as he is shunted aside for an abridged history of Ottoman reform movements, or the early wars, demonstrating the limitations of its scope. In the end, while this book is a useful study of Ataturk’s career, it lacks the space to do justice to the broad task the author sets himself. Readers desiring a more comprehensive account of his life would be better advised to seek out Andrew Mango’s lengthier biography, [b:Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey|190401|Atatürk The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey|Andrew Mango|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386924187s/190401.jpg|184078], which is recommended for anyone wanting more than a brief introduction to “the father of modern Turkey”.… (more)