Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

"A man born out of due season, an anachronism, a throwback to the Tartars of the steppes, a fierce elemental force of a man. With his military genius and his ruthless determination, in a different age he might well have been a Genghis Khan, conquering empires."

Every time I post a story about a Turkish hero kicking ass for the crescent moon, I can generally come into the office Monday expecting a series of emails from my legions of faithful Turkish readers reminding me, "Yes, this guy is very cool, but you're still missing the biggest badass in our country's history so WTF is up with that shit."

"The biggest badass in Turkish history" no small claim for a land that produced a few centuries of uber-powerful, harem-packing sultans who commanded vast amounts of wealth and flexed nuts over even more massive swaths of land, yet it still appears that despite the excellent pedigree of ass-whomping awesomeness going down in Anatolia, one man stands alone as the unequivocal national hero – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. An, asskicking whirlwind of leadership who is almost universally beloved by his people and respected by his enemies. A guy who made a name for himself by crushing his battle opponents' balls with over-the-top displays of hardcore bayonet-to-face destruction on the battlefield, yet still somehow found a way to end up being honored by the United Nations for promoting "world peace, international understanding, and respect for human rights." A man so unapproachably hardcore that it's actually illegal to publicly insult him in his home country, assuming the locals don't kick your ass into a paste and you somehow survive to see your trial.

more