Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Quotes
Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy.
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal. Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, Vol. II. Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü, 1959, p. 194.
He was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for figuring out that the earth revolved around the sun which was contrary to church teaching at the time.
This was a radical speech for the time, suggesting reforms that had been unthinkable to most Turks. Although it is not prohibited by the Koran and early Islamic artists made some of the greatest paintings and depictions of people, fundamentalists gained control of Islam and interpreted any statue as an idol that could be worshipped and this generalized to Islamic art in general where people ceased to be depicted and even animal depictions were rare. Muslim art developed incredible geometric intricacy but tended not to depict anything that is real. This extended to photography and illustrations in books including textbooks. At the same time, not unlike some Christian and Jewish Fundamentalists, the Muslim fundamentalists opposed science and the teaching thereof on the grounds that all authentic knowledge was in the Koran and anything else was not only false but also heretical. So this speech was a type of “declaration of war” against the established religious order and culture.
Kemal Atatürk was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrial nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and theories became known as Kemalism. Due to his military and political accomplishments, Atatürk is regarded as one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century.
