41. The Rise of Ataturk

Did the CIA actually fund Osama bin Laden during the Soviet-Afghan war? Who was Abdullah Azzam, the radical scholar who turned jihad into a global franchise? How did a bureaucratic office meeting create Al-Qaeda? In Episode 2 of this new series, William Dalrymple is joined by Jas ...  Show more

What were the building blocks of the rise of Radical Islamism that paved the road to the 9/11 terror attacks? How did the torture of radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood fan the flames of Islamist thought in the 1960s? Who were Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and how did ...  Show more

On the 19th of May, 1919, an Ottoman general stepped ashore at the Black Sea port city of Samsun. This marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence, and ultimately the end of the Ottoman Empire. The man's name was Mustafa Kemal, the soldier, statesman and reformer w ...

Turkey emerged from the First World War as a new republic, with a secular and modern identity, attempting to break from its Ottoman past. How has this influenced Turkey today? With historians Aksin Somel and Ahmet Kuyas, and novelist Elif Shafak. 

"Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation." A military commander named Mustafa Kemal uttered these words in 1923, on the eve of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. He would later rename himself Ataturk, "Father of the Turks." And he was outlinin ...  Show more

100 years ago, Turkish defeat in World War One signalled the end of the once great Ottoman Empire. What emerged was a European orientated secular republic led by a man who used social engineering to shape Turkey in his own image – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Bridget Kendall examines t ...  Show more