Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) and the Modernization of Turkey

Secular means of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) was like the George Washington of Turkey. He wanted to transform the country of Turkey into a secular country. He has six principles in which he wanted base the country of Turkey on. They were republicanism, populism, secularism, reformism, nationalism and statism. The six prinicples were called the "Six Arrows" and they were the ways that helped Kemal in his journey on modernizing the country of Turkey.

Kenalism were the principles that Mustafa Kemal followed in order m to achieve his goal of making Turkey modern. His first principle was republicanism. Ataturk believed that republicanism was the best form of government to represent it's people's wishes. He only recgonized a republican ways. Another principle was populism. Populism was a term used to referred to "equal" people. In 1934, women earned the right to vote. In the country of Turkey there were no class privilages or distinctions, meaning that if you were "high" class or of a lower class, you would all have the same rights. It gave the people of the country a sense of unity. Another way Ataturk modernize the country of Turkey was by secularism. He wanted to make the country a less religious place and didn't wanted the government and its laws to be seperate from religion. Reformism was the way of elminating traditional ideas with modern ones. Nationalism in Turkey to preserve its independences and had nothing to do with race. This Kemalism prinicple stated that nationalism was about comprising its territory and people. Finally, statism was Turkey's moderniztion's dependency of its development in technology and economy.