Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Abstract

Turkey’s interwar leader completely transformed his country, with enduring results. Maps, real and imagined, were essential to his thinking. An army commander with a purely military education, he studied topography and applied his knowledge in the field. At the same time, his extensive reading gave him a broader mentality that encompassed lessons from the West and led to drastic reforms at home. In his last years, he produced a fantastic map of the world that gave the Turks primacy in everything. The pages that follow will focus on the development of his mental maps, show how he applied them and illustrate their final product.