Atatürk [Ataturk]

Pb, in-8, xxii + 666 pp., illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Although Atatürk himself never quite comes alive in it, Mango’s work will surely become the standard biography because it gives a detailed and convincing account of Turkish life both under Atatürk and before him. Moreover, despite Mango’s admiration for Atatürk, he has written the most irreverent scholarly biography of him yet to appear. Mango describes in detail qualities that previous biographers avoided: his colossal arrogance, his exaggerated claims to have changed history, and the callousness and contempt with which he treated women. Atatürk, says Mango, was not above the “judicial murder” of former colleagues. At times, his regime came close to being fascist. The last major English-language biography of Atatürk, by Patrick Kinross,3 relied largely on Atatürk’s recollection of events. Mango does not, and his book is bound to have an effect on the Atatürk legend.