Çanakkale Anma Platformu (Commemorating Çanakkale Platform) shall be holding a ceremony and conference under the week to remember and commemorate Ataturk, the founder of Turkish Republic.
Expected speakers are confirmed as Turkish ambassador Abdurrahman Bilgiç to open the ceremony up and Dr. Orhan Çekiç to give a conference speech named “1938 as the last year”
“ATATURK AND THE REPUBLIC: 1938 IS THE LAST YEAR”
Mostly known through his books and research, Dr Çekiç will be tackling Ataturk’s impact on the Turkish Republic by questioning many aspects like Ataturk’s differences and his dynamics with his crew back in the days. Many questions like Ataturk’s death, his image will be referred to along with a signing session for Dr. Çekiç’s latest book.
The conference will take place on 19 November at 5pm at Double Ytree by Hilton Hotel. Those who wish to attend can e-mail CanakkalePlatformu@yahoo.co.uk or call 07788908803. The tickets are priced as 40 pounds per person.
Dr Orhan Cekic
More on Ataturk:
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 in the former Ottoman Empire. As a young man, he was involved with the Young Turks, a revolutionary group that deposed the sultan in 1909. Ataturk led the Turkish War of Independence and signed the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which made Turkey a republic. He was elected its first president and ushered in reforms that modernized Turkey. He died in 1938.
Mustafa Kemal’s first order of business was to modernize and secularize the country, which he did by studying Western governments and adapting their structure for the people of Turkey. He believed that modernization necessarily entailed Westernization, and he established a policy of state secularism, with a constitution that separated the government from religion.
Social and economic reforms were a crucial part of his strategy as well. He replaced the Arabic alphabet with a Latin one, introduced the Gregorian calendar and urged people to dress in Western clothes. Mustafa industrialized the nation, establishing state-owned factories around the country as well as a railway network. And a multitude of new laws established legal equality between the sexes. Mustafa removed women’s veiling laws and gave women the right to vote.
