At the end of the 19th century, the once great and brilliant state of the Turkish sultans - the Ottoman Empire - was going through difficult times. Finding itself under the threat of dismemberment, the country retained its independence thanks to the efforts of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), a talented military strategist and politician. When it became clear that the Ottoman Empire had collapsed in World War I, Mustafa Kemal was not afraid to speak out against the foreign invaders invading Turkey. Despite the fact that the Turkish army was in many ways inferior to the Allied army, Kemal's decisive actions helped him ultimately achieve the liberation of his homeland. Many Turkish patriots dreamed of liberating their country, imagining it as a constitutional monarchy or an Islamic state, but Atatürk stubbornly fought to transform Turkey into a republic, believing that only with such a state system is it possible to achieve freedom and equality for everyone. Having become the first president of free Turkey, Ataturk carried out a number of decisive and bold reforms for those times: he created a powerful Turkish army, equalized rights for women and men, and introduced a new Latin alphabet. The skillfully carried out radical reforms of Mustafa Kemal led to the creation of a state oriented towards European values. Turkey to this day remains the only Muslim country in its region that has managed to establish a secular system of governance and at the same time maintain stability. However, despite the fact that during Ataturk’s presidency significant political transformations took place in Turkey due to the fact that Islam ceased to be the state religion, the contradictions between the modern model of a European secular state and Islamism, which is firmly entrenched in the consciousness, are still relevant for the modern Turkish Republic people. A striking illustration of this can be seen in the recent events of 2007, when attempts by the secular part of society to prevent the election of a supporter of Islamization as president of the country ended in a parliamentary crisis and early elections, in which the pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party again won, and Gul was nevertheless elected head of state. However, there was no radical turn towards Islam. Turkey is protected from such developments by its constitution, which allows it to ban any party, even the ruling one, if its policy encroaches on the principle of secularism of the state. The foundations of the secular institutions created by Ataturk have proven their strength.