2,325 words

If some all-knowing, extraterrestrial school teacher sent out report cards on all the dictators who have flourished since World War I, we might be surprised to find the only one with straight A’s was a man most of the Western world has already half forgotten. I am referring to Kemal Atatürk, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Macedonian who transformed the Ottoman Empire (for centuries the “sick man” of Europe) into the streamlined modern state of Turkey, the strongest nation in the Middle East. — Wilmot Robertson, “Homage to Kemal Atatürk”