 It is his chief example of a "torn country" that is attempting to join Western civilization.The country's elite started the Westernization efforts, beginning with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who took power as the first president of the modern Turkish nation-state in 1923, imposed western institutions and dress, removed the Arabic alphabet and embraced the Latin alphabet.It joined NATO and since the 1960s has been seeking to join the European Union with very slow progress.