Ataturk: A God or a Man?

During both of my history classes on Monday's: Modern Middle East/ North Africa, and Ottoman Empire, discussion of various leaders have been prominent since day one. As we find ourselves towards the end of the semester, the more powerful, more intense, more dominant leaders, those who have made everlasting impressions on our history and our ways of life, have become increasingly more obtrusive as well as more interesting. Particularly, and most recent in our discussions, the case of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk comes to mind. In present day Turkey, Ataturk is viewed by the traditional "Turks" as godlike, where as those in other regions, historians, scholars, et cetera many times contain their focus on Ataturk to his humane behavior and his psychology, basing much of their evidence from diaries and journals that have been stored in military archives in Turkey. As we witnessed within the documentary Father of the Turks, much of this leaders' life revolved around family issues (few, but they did exist,)heavy drinking, heavy smoking, promiscuity, and homosexuality with younger boys. Each of these realities in regards to their leader Ataturk, makes him easier to connect to, easier to understand, more human-like, and ultimately less significant in the eyes of the Turks. As a result, a major controversy arose over this documentary, uproar among the Turkish people took place, the film was banned from schools, and on the whole most Turks felt it undermined their greatest leader: a man who transformed the Sick Man of Europe into the country of Turkey.