| Friday, November 10, we departed Istanbul for home. We had been in Turkey just shy of four weeks but during that short period we had come to respect Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. His reforms, strictly enacted, and carried out in such a short amount of time, set Turkey on the path of becoming a modern westernized secular nation. He replaced the Arabic and Persian alphabets with a Latin-based one, and personally went into the countryside to help teach the people. He died at Dolmabahce Palace on November 10, 1938, at 9:05 a.m. Even now he is highly revered, and every year on November 10th at 9:05 a.m., for one minute, all Turks stand for a moment of silence in respect of this man. Looking out our plane�s window just before take-off at 9:08, we witnessed this special moment. |
