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Ataturk sent several Turkish staff officers to Afghanistan, helped them build their own army.

I left Iran back in 1985. I lived in Turkey for a while, then I went to Germany. I joined a theater company there, and we toured the country.

There is much to justify Turkey's reverence for Ataturk. He is the force that allowed Turkey to rise from the ashes of defeat and emerge as a vibrant new nation.

My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it's a very mixed background.

It's probably worth noting that although I'm ethnically Greek, my grandfather was actually born in Turkey and came through Greece on his way to the United States.

And the separatist terrorist organization, PKK, had easy access to Turkey to, inside Turkey.

I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.

My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.

Turkey has worked alongside its allies from the beginning.

My father was somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan.