“Furthermore, Kemal was involved with the the Armenian genocide.”
Actually, no, Ataturk wasn’t involved with that. He was a soldier busy fighting the British in Gallipoli and elsewhere during those years. There are a few Armenian sites, like the ones you linked to, that’ll accuse Ataturk of involvement, mostly because of their dislike for anyone the Turks revere.
But in reality, most third party historians do not find Ataturk to be culpable for the Armenian massacres. His troops faught Armenian troops, in an actual war. It was the Ottoman pashas that preceeded him before 1923 who caused the large scale deaths of civilians. Even the Pope, on his trip to Turkey to mend fences with the Orthodox church, visited Ataturk’s tomb; I doubt he would’ve done so had Ataturk really killed thousands of innocent Armenian Orthodox.
I do agree with the idea of needing force at times to keep Islamic fundamentalism at bay.
Thanks for the counter-views.