Father of the Turks

The cult of Kemal Attaturk is very Stalinesque/Arabesque. Except Kemal is more dapper. Kemal wasn't a bad guy. He certainly meant well. And his enforced Western-focussed secularism is interesting, to say the least. But how can you set up a multi-ethnic country that's rooted in Turkish nationalism? How did nationalism ever catch on, anyway?