er, Mustafa was sent to various schools, lasting long at none of them. It was not until his mother acquiesced to his own wishes and sent him to a military secondary school that Mustafa finally found contentment in his education. After he graduated from the military secondary school, he immediately went to the War College in Constantinople, where he began his formal officer training.
Beginning at an early age, Mustafa felt himself to be special and unique, and he accordingly held himself apart from others his age. He has been described as having formulating an inflated self-concept of himself as a defense against the deprivations and trauma he suffered as a child. Thus he was somewhat of a "loner," making few friends and participating little in the games of other youths. This self-image was bolstered by his superior intellect in most school subjects and by the bestowal of the second name, Kemal ("perfection"), by his mathematics teacher in the military secondary school.
While at the War College, Kemal, along with many other young officers and trainees, became involved in the politics of Turkey at that time. At the turn of the century, the Ottoman Empire was in a precipitous decline, ruled by a corrupt Sultan and virtually subjugated by the European powers who had been forced to bow before Ottoman might several centuries earlier. Many, including Kemal, felt that the Turks should adopt the Western ways of Europe in order to prevent the final destruction of Turkey. This progression towards a westernized Turkey had begun in the 1870s with the adoption of a constitution, but the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, had suspended the constitution in reaction to the liberal progression. Reformers were driven underground and discussions concerning liberal politics had to take place in secrecy. At least once during his time at the War College, Kemal was reprimanded for publishing an underground newspaper sympathetic to liberal reform. His pun...