Bölüm anahatları

  • source= A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century History 1914-1990 (by Peter TEED, 1992)

    A SELECTION OF BIOGRAPHIES-1

    Mustafa Kemal ATATÜRK (1881-1938): President of the Republic of Turkey 1923-38. An Ottoman army officer, he distinguished himself in war against Italy (1911) and Bulgaria (1912), and at Gallipoli (1915). In May 1919 he was appointed Inspector-General of the 9th Army in Samsun, Anatolia, from where he organized resistance to the proposals of the Sevres Treaty. The defeat of the Greek army in 1922 was followed by the Chanak Crisis; this paved the way for the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Turkey was declared a republic and the sultanate abolished, together with the caliphate in 1924. As first President of the Republic, Atatürk defined the principles of the state in the so-called six arrows of kemalism: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism, and revolution.

    Muhammed Reza Shah PAHLAVI (1918-1980): Shah of Iran 1941-79. He succeeded his father Reza Shah Pahlavi when he was deposed (his father Reza Shah Pahlavi was obliged to abdicate and died in exile in South Africa in 1944). After the fall of Musaddıq in 1953, Muhammed Reza Shah Pahlavi used the new oil revenues to finance social and economic development, while sustaining an increasingly repressive regime. He steadily alienated all sections of Iranian society. After severe rioting in 1978 he left Iran in January 1979 ‘to go on holiday’. He never returned. A sick man, he sought refuge in the USA, Mexico, and elsewhere before being granted asylum in Egypt, where he died.

    Kwame Francis Nwia Kofi NKRUMAH (1909-72): Prime Minister and President of Ghana 1957-66. Educated at Achimota College, in the USA, and at the London School of Economics, he lived and worked in London before and during World War II. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 as general-secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention, an African nationalist party founded by J.B.Danquah. He was a key organizer of the Manchaster Pan-African Congress of 1945. In 1949 he founded the Convention People’s Party. After a short imprisonment by the British for sedition, he was appointed Prime Minister and led his country to independence as Ghana (1957), the first British African colony to achieve this. His style of government was autocratic, but in his first years he was immensely popular with his policy of Africanization. In 1964 he was declared President for life. In 1966, while he was on a visit to Hanoi, a military coup deposed him. He died in exile in Romania.

    A SELECTION OF BIOGRAPHIES (glossary)

    custom:tax, levy, tariff, duty           official:chief, director, authority.

    to fight:battle, assail, assault, compete, struggle.  to concentrate upon:to focus

    resistance:hindering, hindrance, fighting back, impeding.

    to stir:to mix, to conglomerate         to depose: unseat, dethrone, expel, dismiss, overthrow, discard.   to practise:perform, afflict, exercise.