The following piece is written by Turkey correspondent Ibon Villelabeitia:

A new and intimate documentary on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
venerated soldier-statesman who founded modern Turkey after
World War One, has sparked controversy in this European Union
candidate country at a time of national self-absorption.

“Mustafa”, which opened on Oct. 29 on the 85th anniversary
of the foundation of the republic, has spawned a lively debate
in newspapers and television shows on the merits of the film.

Is it appropriate to depict Turkey’s national hero as a
flawed man who drank heavily and suffered from bouts of
loneliness? Could he be called a dictator? Did he talk about an
autonomous land for the Kurds?

An anti-smoking group has complained that the movie sets a
bad example for the youth because Ataturk is seen smoking one
cigarette after another — 3 1/2 packs a day we are told.

Calls for a boycott from hard-line “Kemalists” have been
mixed with praise for bringing “Ataturk down from a pedestal”.

Westerners visiting or living in Turkey are always mystified
by the almost religious reverence Turks feel for Ataturk, who
laid down the strict secular principles of today’s Turkey.

His peering blue eyes and sage-like composure tower over
everyday life here. Banners and portraits of Ataturk, adorn the
walls of government offices, barbers and kebab stores across
this deeply nationalistic nation.

Our 4-year-old son, born to an American mother and a Basque
father, came home from school the other day with the white-and-
red colours of the Turkish flag painted on his cheeks, a banner
of Ataturk in one of his hands.

- “Who is that gentleman?” I asked.

- “Well, Ataturk the Father of the Turks”, he replied,
dutifully repeating what children here are taught by teachers,
before rushing to the living room to play with his Scooby-Doo
castle.

Personality cult is no exclusive preserve of Turks,
but the omnipresence of Ataturk has no parallels today in any other
European country.

Is Turkey — where profound social changes, EU-inspired
reforms and globalisation are shaking the pillars of Ataturk’s
autocratic state — reassessing the legacy of its founder?

Ataturk is still deeply respected by most Turks, as a visit
to his mausoleum in Ankara shows. Young and old, urban and
rural, covered and uncovered women line up to visit the
Anitkabir in awe — a pilgrimage to a secular Lourdes of sorts,
as a Turkish friend defined it to me.

Ataturk is universally credited for giving women the right
to vote, modernising the education system and removing religion
from public life in order to bring up levels of social and
cultural development on par with Europe.

But the strict tenets of Kemalism — secularism, statism
and nationalism — are under strain 70 years after his death.

A rising and religious-minded middle class from the Anatolian
heartland is moving to positions of power, and with it,
redefining notions of Islam, secularism and individual rights.

Critics say Ataturk has been taken hostage by an entrenched
military, judiciary and state bureaucracy, which have turned his
legacy into dogma to defend the status quo. Those who claim to
defend Ataturk’s legacy more fervently are, ironically, the same
who are blocking his fulfilment of a modern Turkey, they say.

Can Dundar, a 44-year-old film-maker with impeccable republican credentials and who calls himself an Ataturk follower, said his goal was to present a more human Ataturk to better understand his legacy.

“Ataturk said once his greatest achievement was to bring
sovereignty to earth instead of a sovereignty stemming from a
book which is believed to come from the sky, refering to the
Quran,” Dundar said. “I hope this film helps to bring him down
to the earth again.”

   “(It) is a very sensitive topic, so sensitive it can break many people’s hearts, and so delicate it can destroy many Mujahideens’ dreams.”

    A senior Jihadi offers us an unusually frank insight into problems of recruiting dedicated and disciplined foreign fighters to battle U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan.

    The stone in the heart of Ebu Yasir el-Turki is the Turkish Jihadi who leaves his home in Adana, Konya or Gaziantep to fight alongside the Taliban and militant Muslim brothers hailing from Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Egypt, or Europe. The portrait he paints, — with evident embarassment, for he appears to be a Turk himself — is of ‘fairweather Jihadis’  seeking swift, easy glory and a quick return home, there to live comfortably off richly embroidered stories of derring-do.

    “At the moment, in the Jihadist communities in Afghanistan,  Turks are not very valued. They are considered guests who have come on a vacation, with exceptions,” Yasir, of the guerrilla Islamic Jihad Union, says in an interview posted on the Turkish Jihadist website Sehadet Vakti (Time for Martyrdom) and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

    “The Turks here are so famous that they are given as examples in many conversations. They say ‘do not do as the Turks do’ or ‘do not be as Turks are’… Believe me, no community wants to accept these Turkish Mujahideen.” 

   Why, then, this washing of dirty linen in the very public realm of cyberspace? Yasir clearly  sees a broader problem for the Mujahideen.

    Too many Turkish volunteers, he says, are moved by emotion rather than genuine religious zeal. They can be weak people, who choose jihad as an escape from social and private problems. Watching a video about Jihad and martyrdom in the comfort of an air-conditioned flat in Turkey is one thing.

    “But it is different here. Sometimes they have to stay in a room … for months, when it is hot and cold.”                                           

   They come saying they will stay for a year, seeking death and revenge against Western occupiers, but passions subside and many leave after only a few months.  Security experts and diplomats in Kabul talk of an increased level of foreign fighters this year; most of all Pakistanis, but after that Chechens, Uzbeks, Arabs and Turks. The Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said this week they had caught a Turk, a Saudi and a Kuwaiti in Paktia province, close to the Pakistani border.                                                                                       

Yasir makes some revealing observations about his Turkish brethren and by implication, about Turkey.

    “Praise be unto Allah, we started to improve them, but it is very difficult. Every Turkish brother comes as a commander and they do not like being under (anyone’s) command because they were brought up in a democratic environment. They feel the need to express their ideas on every subject,” he said.

    Talk of Jihad and sacrifice turn to a longing for the comforts of home. The Turk would have grown up in a secular order and, Yasir seems to say, the mantle of the Jihadist hangs ill about his shoulders. He lacks also the fear of persecution when he returns that helps motivate the Egyptian, the Uzbek or the Chechen.

     “The excuses are standard.”

    If he is married, he has to return to sort out his wife’s problems, if single, he must go back to marry, or he is depressed or he argues with camp instructors. “We are fighting here, not playing games,” the Turks are told. “This is not a tourist facility for you to be able to say ‘I decided I am leaving.’ Is Allah’s religion so simple for you?”

    The faint of heart parry his rebukes, referring back to early jihads that, they say, lasted only four months. “May Allah reclaim these brothers,” says Yasir.

    So, they go.

    This, for the Jihadis back in Afghanistan, is where the problems begin. Back in Turkey, the failed Mujahideen assumes the role of returning hero, collecting money, rallying admirers and then sending them off to Afghanistan. There they pitch up, unbidden and unwanted. What, Yasir asks, do we do with them then?

    “Here our purpose is not to disparage anyone,” says Yasir. “It is to show people their mistakes.”

    The Turks, says Yasir, have had their distinguished fighters and martyrs, especially in the early years after the U.S.-led invasion when he says they numbered about 2,000. Now he estimates there are about 150 Turkish Jihadi though there is no way of verifying this. He talks with some reverence of Cuneyt Cifti, known by the codename Saad Ebu Furkan, who in March drove a truck packed with explosives into an Afghan and allied army compound, killing two allied soldiers and two Afghan civilians.

      Though a Turk by family background, Cifti grew up largely in Germany.

    Yasir acknowledges the hardship in the mountains and on the plains of Afghanistan. The number of Mujahideen who hold out for five years is small, “not more than the fingers on one hand”; but those who come should agree to stay for at least one year and should come out of religious conviction and not emotion.

    “If we do it, we should do it right, or it might be better to stay where we are and not go to the battlefields … (and)  create problems for the Mujahideen.”