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away probably came up with with similar policies because they facedsimilar problemss and had the same sources to draw on. For Turkey, thesignifıcance of this policy innovation should be rated highly. Hovvevermuch a drag this policy package may have become on development afterthe 1960s, for the 1930s, it helped Turkey deal with a global economiccrisis, and it may have played a key role in enabling the new republic toescape the kind of upsetting regime change that the Depression precipitatedin many other developing countries.ATATÜRK IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVEThe worldwide demographic catastrophe of the years just before theTurkish Republic was founded -including not only World War I but thecomparably deadly influenza pandemic of 1918— are very diffıcult forhistorians to assess. Certainly, no country was hit harder than Turkey. Althoughnot often remarked on as such, one consequence is probably theweak or ill-inspired leadership that appeared in many countries in the1920s or 1930s. Who today can name in sequence ali the U.S. or Frenchpresidents, or ali the British prime ministers of this period? What a paradox,then, that the Turkish people, whom many statesmen of the WorldWar I era thought were as dead as the Ottoman Empire, should have producedperhaps the most charismatic leader of their entire history in themidst of such catastrophe.The scope of a brief presentation, and my declared purpose of lookingat the early Turkish Republic from a world-historical perspective,limits, but also guides, what I can say about this subject. The fastest wayto make the point I wish to make is to say that of ali the strongman leadersof the 1930s, Atatürk is the only one who is stili revered by a substantialproportion of his countrymen.I will leave it to specialists to examine why this is so. I cannot pretendto have done profound research on Atatürk myself. However, I canname a few qualities that the specialists will have more to say about. Forexample, he was not only a skilled military commander, but also a manwith a vision for the future of his country. He possessed the verbal skilsto articulate this vision in a clear and inspiring way. while a deciseve anddominant leader, he listened to a lot of other people. His creativity, andthat of the people with whom he surrounded himself, was well illustratedin the initiatives to end the cultural dividedness of the late Ottoman eraby reorienting Turkey as a secular, Western-style republic, and to launchthe statist economic policy of the 1930s. While aspects of his private lifeare controversial, his behavior suggests that he took seriously the idea ofbeing a father to his country, that he did not seek to create a dynasty andensure it riches, as some other leaders have done. Ali of these things havebeen said before, and others can say them better than I. Hovvever, I do notthink the global comparison with other leaders of the period, which I have97