And now, he declared a campaign against ignorance (illiteracy). He armed the nation with the new Turkish alphabet.'' The historian Bernard Lewis has described the introduction of the new alphabet as ``not so much practical as pedagogical, as social and cultural -- and Mustafa Kemal, in forcing his people to accept it, was slamming a door on the past as well as opening a door to the future''.
Bernard Lewis
Mustafa Kemal