"We all are the children of Ataturk"

In Trabzon I was captured by these girls who escaped from the school to hunt the tourists. Their purpose is simple - they want to practice English. I have never saw such brave, curious, nice and smart kids. We enjoyed their company very much and spent about 2 hours talking.

 Meanwhile, I clarified two questions which are very important for me. Firstly, religion. Here in Turkey some girls wear a veil, some doesn't. Medina (the girl in the right) explained me that it's her oun choise to wear the veil and her parents don't insist. Even more, other female members of the family don't wear veils. (Maybe somebody thinks that 15 years old kid can't chose for him or herself but I wouldn't agree. Don't think so bad about young people.). She said, it's rather common and it happens seldom that the family insists on hijab.

The second question was the cult of Ataturk. For me, it reminds Lenin's cult in USSR (and I was told since the childhood that Lenin and Stalin are not very good guys, so I'm against any kind of personal cult, including some religious ideas). So, firstly I was very frustrated when they said "We love Ataturk!", "We all are the children of Ataturk", "We know a lot about him but can't say it in English" ect. But later I thought that I'm trying to apply my country's experience to another totally different country. It's not right to feel bad about Ataturk's cult just because Lenin's cult didn't work for Russia. I have to use the international scale. Those kids are happy, healthy, funny, open, protected by their families and the government, they have dreams and plans for future. That is good, the system works and that's the main thing. And if they need Ataturk to make it working, I support this for 100%