Efforts to impose an alleged partiality toward a particular team in regard to Atatürk, the founder of our Republic, have remained fruitless in the face of historical facts. Very few persons in the history of nations have earned leadership stature and taken their place in the annals of national experience. To remove such leaders from the historical context to which they belong on the basis of oral history rather than documented facts, deliberately transporting them into the realm of a desired group or community is a distortion. Leaders, with the characteristics that have placed them in history, are above individuals, groups or communities. A defense of the opposite view, besides providing no benefit to individuals or communities, has the potential of opening irreparable wounds in the social conscience. Acting in the awareness of this, genuine leaders exhibit great sensitivity in this respect and refrain from participating in organizations that do not embrace the whole of society and of which they are not a founder or a part of. We must acknowledge with the same sensitivity that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is among the foremost historical personalities for which this holds true.
