As a Turk, I definitely agree with that. I have always thought our relationship with him looks “childish” from the outside, like how North Koreans treat their leaders or Soviets treated Stalin (even in USSR there was a destalinization movement when Khrushchev came to power in 1953). We have invented a cult of personality around him. From primary school onward, we are taught that he was kind of a god with no mistakes, that criticizing him is sort of “prohibited”, that he “almost” found the country alone. Even today anchors wear black on the anniversary of his death and act like they are “really” sad.

As a liberal, I see him as a human. Some of his decisions were good and some bad. I am aware that he inherited a poor country with almost zero literacy rates from the Ottoman Empire and he wanted to modernize it as quickly as possible. He built factories, railroads and necessary institutions. And before that what I find important is that he was the leading figure during the War of Independence. Even though he wasn’t alone, he succeeded in organizing the army and people. On the other hand, he was a dictator. He had his statues erected, banned classical Turkish music from being played on radio and had his fellows tried or executed etc. To me, he tried to mimic French Revolution (as a mixture of both Robespierre and Napoleon) in most aspects. I believe he was also influenced by Russian Revolution and Martin Luther.