BY MEHMET Y. YILMAZ
HURRIYET- I remember Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with profound respect on the 70th anniversary of his death.
When I see recent discussions about him, I feel embarrassed that our nation keeps wasting time on such useless arguments.
Historical figures and events should be evaluated in the context of their own times, in light of the conditions and experienced back then.
Alexander the Great, who could be seen today as a bloody imperialist, was an important and progressive king in his own time.
There are countless examples along those lines.
But more than that is true of Ataturk.
People who blame the republic founded by Ataturk and his colleagues for today's democratic shortcomings can see how much he accomplished not only by looking at conditions in his time, but indeed conditions today.
One needn't look far. To see this, three or four weeks in a majority-Muslim North African or Arab country would suffice.
If Turkey hadn't gone through such a great revolutionary transformation, odds are today it would be very much like modern Morocco, Egypt or Syria. Possibly we could even have had a Saudi-type regime.
For this reason alone, Ataturk deserves to be remembered with great respect.