Looking Gingerly At Turkey’s Secular Saint

Bitter controversy has broken out over a documentary about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who created modern Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The filmmaker says: “I wanted to present Mustafa Kemal in a more intimate, affectionate light. All those statues, busts and flags have created a chief devoid of human qualities.” One critic thunders: “Atatürk raised up a people about to be excised from world history, and here he is presented as a drunken debaucher. Would you accept such a portrait of Churchill?”