Ataturk passed away on this day in 1938. At 9:05am everything stops – even traffic in Turkey. People get out of their cars and have a moment of silence. I’m working on getting a video of this (there is one somewhere online I saw a few months ago).

As I am retarded at expressing myself through a keyboard, you’ll have to educate yourselves on what this man, the founder of modern Turkey was able to accomplish.

Least of which was a stable, democratic, secular republic that exists today. He gave women the right to vote (before France and Switzerland), raised the literacy rate from 20% to 90% in the course of a few years, and forged peace treaties with many nations around the world.

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.

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