Turkey mourns Ataturk

The first ceremony honoring Ataturk will be held at his mausoleum in Ankara. The higher echelons of the state will be led by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to honor Ataturk.

An open panel, with Sezer and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as guests, will begin at the Turkish Language Institute Conference Hall at 10:00 a.m.

The Office of the Chief of Staff will hold a remembrance ceremony at its courtyard at 9:00 a.m.

The Turkish-Japanese Foundation will hold a concert tonight at its culture center.

Similar ceremonies will take place all over the country.

"Ataturk’s message is that East and West can meet on the grounds of universal and secular values and mutual respect," wrote Andrew Mango in a recent biography of Turkey’s first president.

Ataturk, who died aged 58 from cirrhosis of the liver in an Istanbul palace that once belonged to the Ottoman sultans he deposed, has certainly stood the test of time better than many of the other great revolutionary leaders of the last century.

President Sezer, in a statement released on Tuesday, said that in order to protect and preserve Ataturk’s legacy, one needed to constantly guard the independence of the country and the secular republic.

Sezer said that despite his passing away 66 years ago, Ataturk remained in the hearts and minds of all citizens, and continued to enlighten the path forward.

He said: "Great nations produce great leaders. The Turkish nation is right to be proud of the fact that it produced Ataturk." He noted that Ataturk’s love and belief in the nation resulted in his achievements and set an example to all nations that wanted to become independent.

In Turkey, an aspiring member of the European Union which professes the values of Western democracy, Ataturk remains secure in the affections of his countrymen, a mentor for pro-Western liberals and conservative nationalists alike.

"We believe Ataturk is still relevant today because his thoughts are not a dogma. That is why he could survive for so long," said Onur Oymen, a member of Parliament for the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party Ataturk founded.

Despite Turks’ continuing attachment to Ataturk, many are critical of the way in which his self-styled followers, known as Kemalists, have ruled the country since his death.

"Ataturk has been taken hostage by the militarists and by the bureaucracy to defend the status quo. But that is contrary to what Ataturk stood for. He was a manager of radical change," said Dogu Ergil of Ankara University.

"They won’t let Ataturk rest in peace, they need him to legitimize their hold on power," said Ergil.

During his rule, Ataturk borrowed enthusiastically from Western countries in modernising Turkey, for example copying the German commercial code and Swiss laws on bankruptcy.

In foreign policy, he courted the Western democracies, notably Britain and France, and had little time for the communist, fascist and Nazi ideologies then gaining ground.

Though authoritarian by nature, Ataturk was no totalitarian dictator like Stalin or Adolf Hitler, wrote Mango.

He was also a nationalist, but eschewed ideas of territorial expansion.

"For that reason, our modern ultra-nationalists prefer to honor successful Ottoman sultans. Ataturk was not interested in pan-Turkic or pan-Islamic solutions," said Ergil.

But for all his merits as a leader, some Turks think the time has come to stop looking back to Ataturk for inspiration.

"It is a sad comment on a country that it has to refer back constantly to a man who died 65 years ago," said Mehmet Altan, a professor of economics at Istanbul University.

"Of course we must distinguish between Ataturk and the Kemalists who invoke him. But more importantly we have to start to focus on European democracy, taking only this as our reference point," he told Reuters.

"We have to pass from the Kemalist republic to a democratic republic."