History in the Making Volume 11 Article 5 January 2018 Unconditional Surrender: The Rise of President Erdogan and the end of Kemalist Turkey Amelia Sullivan CSUSB Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making Part of the Islamic World and Near East History Commons, and the Political History Commons Recommended Citation Sullivan, Amelia (2018) "Unconditional Surrender: The Rise of President Erdogan and the end of Kemalist Turkey," History in the Making: Vol. 11 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/history-in-the-making/vol11/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History at CSUSB ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in History in the Making by an authorized editor of CSUSB ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Articles Unconditional Surrender: The Rise of President Erdogan and the end of Kemalist Turkey By Amelia Sullivan Abstract: In October 1923, Mustafa Kemal, or Ataturk, became leader of Turkey. Over the next decade and a half, Kemal used his considerable political power to reform the nation. He modernized infrastructure, reorganized government, and led an aggressive campaign to westernize and secularize Turkish society. By the time Kemal passed in 1938, Turkey rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and reestablished itself as a democracy. Almost eighty years later, Ataturk’s legacy is in jeopardy. In 2017, the Turkey held a constitutional referendum to radically restructure the nation’s government and place an unprecedented degree of power in the office of the presidency.