Interview: Austin Bay on Ataturk, Lessons in Leadership
Col. Austin Bay, longtime contributor to PJM and the co-author of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, has a new book out titled Ataturk, Lessons in Leadership from the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire. As Austin says during our interview, “You can make the case that Ataturk was really the 20th century’s most successful revolutionary. It certainly wasn’t Vladimir Lenin, it wasn’t Mao Tse-tung, it wasn’t Ho Chí Minh. It wasn’t Gandhi. I think it was Ataturk. It’s not that his legacy is all settled inside contemporary Turkey, because there are moderate Islamists that are testing that secular legacy of Ataturk. But he certainly established what has grown into a modern state.”
Don’t miss Austin discussing Ataturk on the C-Span2 channel this weekend. C-Span2 is covering the Texas Book Festival, and is scheduled to run the following panel at 4:00 PM eastern on Sunday:
4-5pm ET: Panel on the Arab Spring with Austin Bay, “Ataturk,” Robin Wright, “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World,” and James Zogby, “Arab Voices.”
In the meantime, click below to listen to our interview:
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Ed
-Excellent interview and a very incisive analysis of Turkeys potential role in promoting an adaptive outcome for the Arab Spring revolutions.
Well done!
PS
re my post yesterday
I realize that it was not you who made the absurd analogy between Mussolini and Qaddafy that shows a pathetic ignorance of history.
Best-
Ataturk kept Islam at bay in Turkey for awhile, but Islam being what it is, the Erdogan era of re-Islamization was inevitable.
Ataturk was no hero, to say the least. Just ask the Armenians about that.
How timely is this book and this interview.
Ataturk, with all his feet of clay, remains the single last man standing preventing EVERY Muslim dominated nation from reverting to 15th century style culture and violence. To speak of an Arab spring is to ignore every modern story of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and now Egypt and Lybia.
Unfortunately, Turkey’s story is returning to form, despite all denials to the fact.