This research paper deals with an important facet of Mustafa Kemal's career, namely, the facts and circumstances,including his personal leadership qualities, decisions and actions which accompanied and were instrumental in his rise to a position of supreme power in Turkey. The principal focus of this essay is on the middle period of that career (1915 1927) when Kemal was between the ages of 34 and 46. Its thesis is that a primary factor in Kemal's rise to power was his extraordinary talent during that period in: assessing accurately the nature and the strength of the forces with which Turkey and he had to contend; establishing clear and attainable goals; and employing and implementing realistic means to achieve those goals.
Mustafa Kemal (1881 1938), the son of an unimportant Ottoman military officer and customs clerk, was named by his parents, as was then the custom, Mustafa (Mister). One of his teachers, impressed with his apt pupil, reportedly added Kemal (Perfection) (Kinross, 1965, p. 14). Kemal was in many respects a remarkable individual and an extremely effective military and political leader. He was far from being a perfect human being. Prior to the Dardanelles campaign, his future as a military officer was questionable. On occasion, he used up his troops in a profligate manner. His underlings committed (but he did not direct or initiate) some of the worst atrocities in modern Turkish history. He could be unnecessarily vindictive toward his political and other enemies. He did not generally respond well to personal criticism, even when it was well founded. Exceptionally strong willed and iconoclastic in his views, he was inclined to be a quarrelsome and obstreperous subordinate. In his otherwise laudatory account of Kemal's conduct during the Gallipoli campaign, Alan Moorehead observed that "his approach to all but a few of his superior officers is at once obsequious and contemptuous" (Moorehead, 1956, p. 238). In his pe...