Oh I completely agree. Atatürk never wanted the cult of personality to grow to this point. He even fucking said that ''Beni görmek demek mutlaka yüzümü görmek değildir. Benim fikirlerimi, benim duygularımı anlıyorsanız ve hissediyorsanız bu kafidir.'' I didnt translate it as I dont want to make errors while doing so. Anyhow here he directly mentions that being his follower doesnt mean to fucking erecting his statues all over the country. There is a reason some religious people call him Ataput and they are actually somewhat right. It is not going to be a logical comparison but muslims who never read kuran but still act like they know everything about islam or communists who never even read the communist manifesto is the same as so called kemalists whose only understanding of the ideology is : islam is bad lets post Atatürk to instagram daily and erect statues of him all over. I know kemalism is not a religion but I kinda had to do this comparison. His ideology was a nationalistic one at first. Thats why he tried to remove all influences of arabic culture by removing arabic words, translating kuran and ezan to turkish and bolstered nationalism with populist sayings like Turk is one who is smart, hard working and with morality. Second of all his ideology was (I dont know how to properly write that in english) always striving to be a modern state which focuses on technology and culture. And later being a fully independent nation on all aspects. No one really understands this in turkey sadly. PS: sorry for lashing out like that and calling you an islamist. You seem like a decent person