Tbh I have no idea why. I should look into it one of these days but I’m a lazy fuck.
If what you're wondering is why Hitler admired Turkey and Atatürk, I know why. I guess this explanation would fit the theme of the thread too so I might aswell go ahead and do it. Prepare for a very long but interesting post.
One major reason for Hitler taking inspiration from Atatürk is because Atatürk was a man who saved his nation from the brink of being colonized and destroyed by wicked western nations like England, France, Italy etc. The Ottomans were dealt a heavy blow with WW1 in the exact same way the Germans were. The treaty of Sevres was the Ottoman equivalent of the Treaty of Versailles for Germany.
This is what the Ottoman Empire would look like if the Treaty of Sevres was put into effect. And on top of this huge amount of land loss, there were harsh terms on the treaty. For example;
"
Military Issues (articles 152-207): The military force of the Ottoman Empire would be limited to 50,700 people, 35,000 of whom were gendarmerie, 15,000 of whom were special units, and 700 of whom were the security forces of the sultan, and they would not have heavy weapons. The Turkish navy would be liquidated, There will be no military facilities in the Marmara Region, military service will be voluntary and paid, minorities will be able to join the army, the army and gendarmerie will be inspected by the Allied Control Commission."
So basically, this was a humiliation ritual for the Ottomans just as the Treaty of Versailles was a humiliation ritual for Germany. But then the Turks rebelled with the Turkish National Movement and defeated the invaders at all fronts, both east and west during the Turkish War of Independence. They were all lead by one man, that is Atatürk who would then go on to be the first president of Turkey. The Treaty of Sevres was ditched in favor of the Treaty of Lausanne which defined the modern borders of Turkey. Atatürk then abolished the caliphate and established the modern republic of Turkey, enacting hundreds of reforms from the west with the purpose of challenging the west. In essence using their own strategies and strengths against them.
So.. where does Hitler come into this? He comes into all of this because Hitler was a well-read man, he knew history pretty well. Far better than his modern larping faggot followers do. And he admired Turkey precisely because the establishment of Turkey was the story of how a nation so oppressed and subjugated rebelled against their soon to be colonial masters and repelled them all. This story was the kind of story Hitler wanted to re-create in Germany. And this wasn't something only Hitler felt at all. The common German of the time might also read about this story in his local newspaper and admire the Turks for what they have achieved.
"German newspapers covered the Versailles Peace Treaty signed in Paris on June 29, 1919, which resulted in the loss of territory and the obligation to pay a huge compensation.
Just two days later, in the words of the Daily Beast, 'a love story with Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) began. News about Türkiye, Atatürk and the War of Independence rose to the newspaper headlines."
German discourses on Turkey from 1919 to 1945 were in many respects the logical continuation of each other; The language of the nationalist press, which started during the Turkish War of Independence, began to bear full fruit during the Nazi rule. This situation made Turkey non-eastern and caused old clichés to be re-evaluated. Although Kemalism and Kemalist Turkey were perceived as new and revolutionary all over Europe, nowhere were they embraced and 'twinned' as much as in Germany. In this respect, the vision of New Türkiye served as a vision of Nazism's own modernity.
For example, when Hitler received a delegation of Turkish politicians and journalists who came to celebrate his birthday in 1939, he said, “
Atatürk was the first to show that it was possible to mobilize and revitalize the resources a country had lost. In this respect, Atatürk was a teacher; Mussolini was his first student and I was his second student."
Another example goes that while Hitler was tearing up the Versailles Treaty, he said, "
We can now do what Atatürk did 10 years ago." referring to Sevres. This saying is famous.
Atatürk on the other hand did have a few brief words to say about Hitler and what he was doing in Germany at the time. In fact, according to Kemal Arıburnu's 1969 book "Memories from Atatürk", Atatürk was said to have these thoughts about Hitler.
"Atatürk did not believe that Hitler could achieve real success and said that his constant raising of new problems would lead him to destruction one day. However, he found it natural that he wanted to eliminate the restrictive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and to unite Austria with Germany. The same nation spoke the same language in both countries and they had a common life when Vienna was the capital of the Germanic Empire. When the issue of the future of the Germans living on the borders of Czechoslovakia, called Sudeten, arose, Atatürk was very ill and the old table was not set, so I did not have the opportunity to learn his thoughts on this subject.
Atatürk saw that Hitler's attitude brought the General War (a new world war) closer. However, the main steps on that path, namely Germany's seizure of Czechoslovakia and Italy's seizure of Albania, took place after his death."
Now you know why the Nazis admired Turkey as much as they did. Turkey accomplished what they wanted to do but couldn't accomplish. That being said there were major differences in how Germany sought to do this vs how Turkey did this. I believe these differences are key to understanding why the Germans failed while the Turks succeeded. Atatürk himself thought that Hitler was reckless and stupid as I already mentioned. I guess I can talk about this throughly in a follow up post if you're curious.