Did Kamal Ata Turk build Turkey from the ashes? Why are Islamists against him?

 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey

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. He initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a modern, progressive, and secular nation-state

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. Atatürk undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation

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. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet

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. Atatürk created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule

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. Each change was aimed at modernizing Turkey and making it a secular state. The ideology behind Atatürk's reform program became known as Kemalism

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. Its main points were enumerated in the Six Arrows of Kemalism as republicanism, nationalism, populism, reformism, statism, and secularism

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. These were regarded as "fundamental and unchanging principles" guiding the republic, and, as such, they were written into its constitution

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.Atatürk's reforms were aimed at modernizing Turkey and making it a secular state. However, his reforms were opposed by religious conservatives

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. There have been three phases of Islamist counter-revolution in response to the Kemalist revolution

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. These phases are demonstrated by the rule of the Democrat Party (1950-1960), the Welfare Party (mid-1990s), and the current Justice and Development Party

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. The Islamist opposition is against Kemalism and the aggressive secularism which attacked Islam and banished it from public life, not Ataturk per se

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