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 ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - When political science professor Atilla Yayla questioned the legacy of the revered founder of modern Turkey, nationalists called him a traitor and his university suspended him.
Yayla said he was punished for shattering a taboo: daring to criticize Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a leader so idolized that his portrait hangs in all government offices, life stops for a minute every year on the anniversary of his death 68 years ago, and his ideas are still the republic's most sacred principles.
"There was a lynching campaign against me," Yayla recalled recently in his office surrounded by books on liberal thought.
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