Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Quotes
There is no such thing as a line of defense. Only an area to defend. That area consists of the entire Motherland. Not one inch of our country can be abandoned unless drenched with the blood of its people.
The Turks held and then counterattacked defeating the Greek invaders soundly. The Greeks then retreated and evacuated Anatolia but in vengeance for their defeat, followed a scorched earth policy and committed many atrocities on the Turkish villages they passed through.
Kemal Ataturk, 1881-1938, 1st President and founder of the Turkish Republic, Orders to his troops at the height of the Greek invasion of Anatolia, Inscribed on Ataturk’s Mausoleum
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This quotation is very important because it is the essence if the seemingly eternal conflict between Greece and Turkey. Constantinople is the old name for Istanbul which the Muslims took from the Christians in the 15th century. Most Greeks are taught to want to get the city back as well as Anatolia and most of what is modern Turkey. Ioannis Kolettis was one of the first Greek leaders who made the quest for retaking Constantinople a national holy mission. Of course, this could not happen without the demise of Turkey as a nation. As a result, the Turks have made sure the Greeks would never get any territory—See {639517}.
Ataturk was a young major at the time commanding troops of a weak and corrupt Ottoman regime. However a combined English and French (the strongest military powers in Europe) invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula threatened to capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople. Ataturk alone rallied the Turkish defenders and fought the invaders to a standoff in long drawn out battle with huge casualties on both sides. Ataturk became a national hero. Although Ataturk thereafter was very reluctant to use military force or endanger troops, the thing he always thought worth the supreme sacrifice (including his own) was the independence and sovereignty of the nation. See {584502} for his continuing belief in this type of sacrifice.
Ataturk had been a military hero, but was very much opposed to war and military adventurism not unlike the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell type leaders. However, the one thing that he thought worth the sacrifice of his own and other Turkish lives was Turkish independence and sovereignty. Historically, the Ottoman Empire which Ataturk finally ended, had dominated half of Europe and all of the Mid East at the cost of sovereignty of other nations and Ataturk saw no more important virtue with dying for than national sovereignty. See {125322} and {584501}.
His definition of Russian territory included any area that the Czars claimed which included Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, the Caucuses, but at the time of the speech, Russia was fighting to keep its existing territory.
Drumbo was morally opposed to war. He also refused to name Hollywood communists to Congressional Committees during the Red Scare. He was then blacklisted from his occupation, screen writing.
He was one of the first democratic politicians of Germany who argued for rapprochement between France and Germany and may have been the first to suggest a European Union. Most of the world was very distrustful of German nationalism, and Stresemann presented one of the positive aspects of it. He died of a stroke in 1929 and the political vacuum was eventually filled by Hitler and the Nazis as the Weimar Republic was short lived. As democratic as Stresemann was, he still was preoccupied with German territorial control. Germany’s aggression in WWI led to a peace treaty that fixed borders that were always contested by Germany. The German position was that if there was an area or France, Poland, or other country where there was a community of German speaking people, then that area should be a part of Germany. This was one of the main reasons for Germany’s aggression on WWII.
No male candidate had before or since been asked such a question.
The Poles were fighting the Russians. Pulaski was a Field Marshall. This was before he had come to America and fought in the American Revolution.
If we replace the word “socialist” with “capitalist” this statement would be approved by almost every American Senior Military officer and Defense Official as well as most members of Congress. The reality was that the basic defense posture of the Soviet Union and the United States was essentially the same during the Cold War.
The Chinese were massacred when the Japanese invaded with atrocities against civilians that were inconceivable until Hitler began his in Europe. However, there were many Chinese we worked against the Japanese including the Communists who made a truce with Chiang (see {636322}) so that they could oust the Japanese invaders.
- Born: May 19, 1881
- Died: November 10, 1938
- Nationality: Turkish
- Profession: Leader
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.
