There are three main types of people: followers, who are easily influenced and swept away by life's currents; leaders, who set the course and direction for many; and then, there's a rare type of person who can change the course of history, even influencing the very rules that govern it. One of the seldom-seen examples of such people is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. From the ashes of empire, he forged a republic built on principles that were radical for their time: secularism as the bedrock of governance, equality between men and women as law rather than aspiration, and sovereignty vested in the people themselves. The Turkish democracy that functions today springs from the constitutional framework he established, the separation of religion and state he defended, and the belief that a nation's strength flows from educated citizens rather than divine mandate.
Global leaders from Eisenhower to Obama have invoked his name when speaking of successful nation-building, recognizing in him something rare: a military victor who chose to build institutions instead of lining his pockets. His statues stand throughout Turkey not because he demanded them, but because he planted ideas that outlived stone. In our current moment, when absurd ideas surge across continents, when demagogues from all backgrounds wrap themselves in empty promises and fake-news propaganda, Atatürk's principles offer a tested alternative. He proved that a society could root itself in reason without losing its soul, could modernize without aping the West, could be fiercely nationalist while rejecting the poison of faux-supremacy. The fight against the rise of what he worked so hard to get rid of requires what he understood then: that democracy dies without separation of powers, that progress stalls without education, that nations fracture when identity becomes more important than citizenship.