If you ever happen to find yourself in Turkey on a May 19th — Ataturk Commemoration Day, in which he launched the Turkish War of Independence – a sea of crescent-and-star flagswill greet you. Accompanied with them are pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the legendary founder of the Turkish Republic. Although he only died in 1938, Ataturk's picture is more widespread in Turkey that icons within an Eastern Orthodox Church (and probably shown with just as much reverence). Every November 10th the country commemorates his death by coming to a complete standstill at 9:05 am (his TOD).  How did he gain saint-like status so quickly?

It's easy to understand if you know the impact he had on this modern and thoroughly unique Muslim nation. His influence on the country cannot be overstated. Ataturk was the  military, legal, and cultural founder of the Turkish Republic, and he has no corollary in American history. It would be as if Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were one man who had accomplished as much as all three combined.

Ataturk was an officer in the Ottoman army during the early 20th century, a time in which the empire appeared to many European analysts as being on an irreversible path of decline. The crumbling empire was hopelessly outgunned against the superior British military forces during World War I and saw its entire holdings in the Levant and the Arab Peninsula lost. The Empire's land size was reduced to modern-day Turkey's borders. It appeared that the rest of the empire would be divided between France, England, Greece, and Russia at international diplomatic councils with the Ottoman Empire having no choice but to concede. However, Ataturk's tactical brilliance emerged at the 1915 battle of Gallipoli in which he prevented the Allied forces from obtaining control of the waterways that would have given them access to the Black Sea. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides, but he quickly emerged as a national hero at a time when victories were few and far between. His strategic acumen during the War of Independence pushed the British-backed Greek forces into retreat, forcing international parties to sign a peace treaty with him and establishing the boundaries of present-day Turkey.

Legally he threw out the Ottoman legal system, a hybrid of Islamic law and French-based secular civil law that oscillated between these poles based on the Ottoman leadership at the time, and replaced it with a fiercely secular alternative based completely on European civil and criminal law. Religious universities were outlawed, mosques became state property and imams state employees (which they still are today, and imams must all read the same sermon each Friday), and religious dress heavily discouraged. Ataturk led by example in the last regard, adopting European dress and styles that would make Captain Von Trapp jealous.

Culturally, he took an Empire that had mediated between Europe and the Middle East for centuries and pushed it aggressively Westward. The Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic characters (which had never harmonized well with the language and made learning difficult for the non-elite) into Latin characters in the space of three months, turning the entire population illiterate. He also required the population to take on last names, which until then they did not possess (The Turkish Grand National Assembly bestowed upon him the surname "Ataturk," which means "Father of the Turks"). Furthermore he made certain types of religious dress illegal, such as the fez, which was tantamount to a New York major outlawing yarmulkes.

Like any major reformer his legacy is not unblemished. He quashed rebellions against him with an iron fist, killing thousands  early in his presidency, particularly during the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion, in which a Kurdish religious leader opposed his reforms and sought a homeland for the Kurdish peoples of Southeast Turkey. He also controlled a single-party parliament and installed his colleagues in high ministerial positions that would rubber stamp his legislation; essentially he ruled as a benevolent dictator and the country would not outgrow single party democracy until 1945.

But Turkey would  not be what it is today without him. So the next May 19 you find yourself in Turkey, make sure to tip your hat to the svelte man watching over you in countless pictures scattered throughout the country. Without him it probably wouldn't be there.