[Ugur]

Well said bro ShahRukh.

And some misconceptions to correct:

1. Ataturk did not secularize Turkey on his own nor was he the real starter of the process. Toward the end of the Ottoman times, the Ottoman government let Euroepeans educate some of the top brains of Turkey. The government and the sultans felt obliged to let in European education because of the huge material success of that continent. Therefore, It was these Europan teachers who brainwashed many in the Turkish intelligentsia and started the process of secularization in the 19th century. 19th century European positivism poisoned the Turkish intelligentsia.

2. Ataturk did not save Turkey on his own. He did a good job during the war of independence like many others, but he was no saviour god. He was only one of the several most important generals who successfully fought the Greeks who were just the spawns of their British and French overlords.

Also remember that the real savers of Turkey were the millions of young Turkish Muslims who were killed in the war of independence (1919-1922) rather than a few generals!

Ataturk was then made the major general. Then the Turkish war of independence ended in success. Ataturk became the president of the new state. Then he and a few friends of his purged all the other generals and important men of the war of independence, got rid of all opposition from within Turkey and officially pretended to be the only saviours of our country. Militarily, they really did a good job in the war of independence but they were only a small part of the struggle, not all of it as they pretended to be.

3. As far as I know, Ataturk's "revolution" was much less bloody and much more peaceful than its European analogues. His regime did execute some pious Muslims (and communists etc) for their opposition to the radical and revolutionary policies of the time but apparently not as many as you seem to think. And it was a revolution that brought full secularism to Turkey thereby terribly weakening the influence of Islam here, and secularism is a thing that is evil enough to make him too bad a man in the eyes of Muslims. But he was much more benevolent than most European dictators. He was no Lenin, no Hitler, no Mussolini and of course no Stalin. Who knows, maybe Turks are incapable of producing men as terrible as the men that Europeans are able to produce.