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99 of 108 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ataturk, April 20, 2000
I am a Turkish American who has read almost every Turkish and non-Turkish book about Ataturk's life. While I found this book to be a very well searched and written, it is a hard read. I found it does not pull you like Lord Kinross's Ataturk does. Mango did draw a very honest picture of Ataturk and at the end of the book, despite his weaknesses, you find yourself admiring the subject and what he accomplished. Still, the author talks more about the events surrounding Ataturk's decisions rather than his emotional and mental condition while making those decisions. One think that annoyed me through out the book was his trying to clear some myths and stories told over the years. That would be OK if there was any way of checking the facts but in most cases there are not. He questions stories told by friends, foes and Ataturk himself, without telling the reader why he is questioning them. In other words, he speculates that the particular story must have happened some other way but he does not have any prove to back it up. Still it is an honest book and I am glad he is very even handed dealing with history. Turks usually complain of biases in foreign authors' writings. It is clear Mango has no biases and he reports only the facts. I am also glad he is even handed about Ataturk's private life. Many ugly allegations have been made against Ataturk by his enemies that continues to this day. While he was not perfect, he was not what his enemies have made him out to be and Mango gives a very clear picture of his private life with warts and all. He also explains why and how some of these ugly stories were spread and continue to spread to this day. It is a good book for educational purposes. My favorite, however, is still Lord Kinross's Ataturk.
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92 of 101 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Father Turk's Story, June 3, 2000
When the Turkish Republic made it mandatory for all citizens to adopt surnames, its president Mustapha Kemal selected "Ataturk" - "Father Turk" - as uniquely his own. (His sister and other relatives were not allowed to use it.) The sobriquet embodied Kemal's image of himself, which was shared by many other Turks then and thereafter. This hefty biography, written by a veteran and sympathetic observer of the Turkish scene, is more detailed and less fawning than Lord Kinross's 1964 tome, previously the best-known English life of Kemal. It is based on an extensive array of printed Turkish sources, synthesizing what a diligent modern Turk would know about Kemal if he read everything that is readily available. On the other hand, the absence of archival research leaves many evidentiary conflicts unresolved and gives the accounts of controversial episodes a "he said, she said" flavor. The focus is very closely, perhaps too closely, on Kemal himself. We are presented not only with the dramatic incidents of his exciting career (conspiracies, coups, wars, assassinations) and disorderly private life (womanizing, alcoholism, corrupt cronies, broken friendships, suspicions of foul play) but also with itineraries of his travels and summaries of numerous unmemorable speeches. The decrees of "Kemalism" - abolishing the Caliphate and the shariat, secularizing education, reforming the Turkish language, adopting the Christian calendar, granting equality to women, compelling men to wear European-style hats - issue forth from Ankara, but we barely glimpse how they were received in the country at large or how much fundamental change they truly wrought. Recent history makes it obvious that Kemal's project of detaching Turkey from the Islamic world and annexing it to his vision of Western civilization did not win unanimous support. Mango offers little help in understanding the reasons for acceptance or rejection. He also says virtually nothing about economic developments. The absence of statistics on production, incomes and trade is refreshing but leaves out important data that would place political developments in clearer context. The author's decision to limit his perspective is forgivable. "Father Turk" is a large enough subject without devoting a lot of pages to his "children". Within its confines, the book is clearly written and comprehensive, though there is a certain trailing off near the end of Kemal's life, as he took less part in day-to-day governing and acted more like a king than a dictator. That, too, was the period when he became engrossed in eccentric historical and linguistic theories (not without parallel elsewhere in the 1930's) aimed at proving that every nation that lived or ever had lived in Anatolia was "Turkish" (especially the Kurds, though not, naturally, the Armenians or Greeks). Mango mentions these follies but clearly wishes that he didn't have to. The book's overall evaluation of its protagonist is positive but not uncritical. Readers with strong partisan predispositions, whether pro or con, will find passages that will annoy or anger them. Kemal's admirers will question the generally favorable view of the Ottoman regime (termed "an inefficient and accommodating despotism" that was moving steadily toward modernity) and the emphasis on the early Republic's brutal and dictatorial ways. Critics will complain that the picture of modern Turkey is sugar-coated, that the sufferings of Greeks, Armenians and Kurds are downplayed and that the destructive side of Kemal's "cultural revolution" is ignored. So this is not the "ideal" biography of Turkey's founder. It is, nonetheless, an excellent one and is worth the time of anyone who has more than a passing interest in the largest and most powerful nation in the Middle East.
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46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Nationalist/Secularist shrouded in controversy, August 12, 2000
Anyone concerned with religious fundamentalism should become familiar with Kemal Attaturk, one of the few statesmen in history to confront it headon. Andrew Mango's book is not easy to read, partially because he tries to be comprehensive. Most American readers will not be interested in many parts of the book. However, Mango is much clearer than Lord Kinross, author of the only other Attaturk biography in English, on certain aspects of Attaturk's life. Mango is much clearer on the role played by Attaturk at Gallipoli. He points out that although he is now described as the "victor of Gallipoli", that in 1919 the British did not recognize his name (Mustapha Kemal, at that time). Nevetheless, it is clear that Attaturk deserves much credit for the outcome of the battle, even if the credit must be shared with others--including the Germans. When reading the Kinross biography, I assumed the author was hiding something regarding Attaturk's involvement in the massacre of the Armenians. Mango clearly indicates that Attaturk had no role and was still at Gallipoli when it occurred. I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I do wonder where one of the other reviewers, who compares Attaturk to Hitler and Stalin, gets his information. It is clear that the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s is similar in some respects to ethnic cleansing. However, I suspect that Mango is correct in portraying the atrocities as occurring on both sides. It is also clear that the Greeks were the aggressors in the Turkish War of Independence and the Kemal Attaturk's role in defeating them entitles him to a place in Turkish history equivalent to Washington and Grant. Mango sheds more light than Kinross on Attaturk's unusual personal life. He also indicates that in 1926 he allowed a number of innocent people to be executed and persecuted to remove all potential competitors from the Turkish political scene. Whether Attaturk's efforts to wean the Turks from Islamic fundamentalism are successful in the long run remains to be seen. Personally, I regard him very highly for trying, and wish there were more leaders with the courage to confront the religious fundamentalists in other countries, not only the Islamic countries, but also the United States and Israel.
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