Atatürk's Diary with Bibliography From His Birth To His Death   - Prof. Dr. Utkan KOCATURK

Click to download 

"Atatürk's Diary From His Birth To His Death"

Utkan Kocatürk wrote chronologically the 57 years of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's life between the years 1881-1938 in his work titled “Atatürk's Diary with References from His Birth to His Death”. All the information in the book is explained on the basis of documents; The sources used at the end of each item are given in abbreviated form. The full citations of these sources are arranged according to the surname of the author at the end of the work and presented under the title of "Used Sources". A general index has been prepared to make the book more functional, so that those who want to do research can access information even faster.

Primarily, primary sources such as Atatürk's memoirs, speeches, statements, circulars, statements, messages, letters and telegrams were used in the work. In addition, the memories of people who served him and/or who were known for their closeness, newspaper collections, watch books belonging to Atatürk, the minutes of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, scientific publications about our recent history and various archival documents were used by reviewing.

Despite such a rich bibliography, there were large gaps covering days, months and even years in the time intervals of the periods when sufficient information and documents could not be reached in the preparation of the work, and the dates of some events were based on assumptions. Kocatürk explains the reason for this obligatory choice with these words: “In this work, however, it will be seen that some event dates -due to uncertainty- are based on assumptions. This behavior has been inevitable in terms of connecting events and bringing unity to a life. If this is not done, many events whose dates cannot be determined will not be included in the chronological chain, so there will be deficiencies in Atatürk's biography. We consider this inconvenience, for events with dark dates, we tried to determine a date -as close to the truth as possible- by linking the previous and subsequent event dates; We also showed the events whose dates were determined by this method -to leave open to new researches- at the end of their own items.”

On some important dates (when different information is given among the sources) about Atatürk's life, the author tried to reach the right information, and he did not hesitate to indicate the date inconsistencies in order to correct some of the mistakes that continue in Atatürk's biography. Again, in the work, many unknown events related to Atatürk's life and period are mentioned. When evaluated in this respect, Kocatürk filled an important gap in the field of chronology studies with his work named Atatürk Diary with References from Birth to Death.

As a result, it can be said that the work named Atatürk Diary with References from Birth to Death is not only a resource to be used by academic scientists and researchers, but also is a basic work that will be used by every intellectual who is interested in history and especially in Atatürk's life and period.

Assist. Assoc. Dr. Serap Tasdemir

Source: ATATÜRK ARAŞTIRMA MERKEZİ DERGİSİ, Sayı 67-68-69, Cilt: XXIII, Mart - Temmuz - Kasım 2007