Ататюрк тоже был меритократом

Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq

An interesting part about Mango's treatment of Atatürk's life is his shedding a fair light on the Ottoman sultans like the Sultans Mahmud II and Abdulmecid. Many of the future leaders of Turkey, including Atatürk and many of his comrades, were educated by the schools established under the progressive reforms of these sultans. However, the attempts to constitutionalize the Ottoman Empire repeatedly because the dynastic infrastructure was too precarious to be also a strong foundation for comprehensive reformations. Mango makes very interesting comparisons of the similarities between Abdulhamit II's thoughts and those of Atatürk's. The latter, however, had the will, the intellect, and the mental capacity to carry through the ideas brewing many decades before the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, most important being the creation of a republic in structure and democracy in its behavior. To succeed, nepotistic culture had to be replaced by meritocracy. Monarchy and the Caliphate had to be abolished.

http://www.amazon.com/Ataturk-Biography-founder-Modern-Turkey/product-reviews/158567334X

It is true that Atatürk, like his great Ottoman predecessors, was ruthlessly meritocratic.