III.

National Leader

Having dealt with the external threat, Atatürk could turn to the internal one posed by the conservative forces around the sultan. The sultanate was abolished on November 1, 1922, and the republic proclaimed on October 29, 1923, with Atatürk as president. He founded the People's party (renamed Republican People's party in 1924) in August 1923 and established a single-party regime that, except for two brief experiments (1924-1925 and 1930) with opposition parties, lasted until 1945.

Atatürk created a modern and secular state, using his great prestige and charisma to introduce a vast programme of reforms. These included abolishing the caliphate, which embodied the religious authority of the sultans, and all other Islamic institutions; introducing Western law codes, dress, and calendar; using the Latin alphabet; and removing (1928) the constitutional provision naming Islam as the state religion. By 1931 the ideology of the regime, known as Kemalism or Atatürkism, was articulated and defined by six principles: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism, and revolutionism. In 1919 Atatürk had been first among equals, but by 1926 he had eliminated all political rivals, using an alleged assassination conspiracy as the excuse. Thereafter, although he ruled as an autocrat, his regime was in fact based on an alliance of the civil and military bureaucracy, the newly developed bourgeoisie, and the landowners.

Atatürk's principal aim had been to save his people from humiliation and to transform Turkey into a modern, 20th-century nation. He pursued this aim with total determination and political finesse. Perhaps his most essential trait was his political realism; it enabled him to carry out his reforms without disastrous adventures and allowed Turkey to live at peace with its neighbours. Atatürk died in İstanbul on November 10, 1938.