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Among the numerous commentaries published following Turgut Özal's death, it was the following remark that struck me the hardest: "Turgut Bey was not a good politician. For he was a good man." This was the most striking assessment to me because it was his qualities as a good man that marked me in our frequent encounters over the final two years of his life. Turgut Özal was an extremely courageous man, who did not seem to posess the supposedly indispensable qualities of any good politician : ruthlessness and the killing instinct.

He admired the Ottoman sultans of the Empire's classical period for their political skills. In particular, he held in high regard Sultan Abdulhamid II, an Ottoman sultan of the last period of the Empire of equally high caliber. I remember his expressed admiration for Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim I, Suleiman the Magnificient, Murad II and Bayezid II, whom he would refer to with a facial expression overshadowed by a sense of inadequacy and modesty: "What kind of men were they? How did they rule over such vast lands and such a diverse population? Look at us, and look at them!"

The people he talked about were rulers with absolute power, great might and enough fortitude to send their siblings and even sons to their deaths for "the well-being of the state," while Turgut Özal felt he was the product of a country restricted by the ation-state ideology of the past century and a multi-party democracy. He had a different set of qualities. He could not resemble them. He was the kind of man who was compassionate toward people, devoid of wrath, quick to forget his rage, and good-hearted. Turgut Özal was a good man.

I was glad to see that my impression of him was accurate when Hüsnü Doğan, Özal's beloved cousin, who also served as a cabinet member in multiple governments, told me about the following instance: At some point, Turgut Özal and Hüsnü Doğan had a falling out. When the two supported opposite candidates for the Motherland Party's provincial offices in Istanbul during the split that eventually led Mesut Yılmaz to become Chairman and Prime Minister, Özal had criticized Hüsnü Doğan in a rather harsh manner. Later developments proved Doğan right.

Following Özal's death, Taha Akyol and I had hosted Hüsnü Doğan at a television show where he spoke very highly of the late President. When Taha Akyol referred to the aforementioned dispute and asked him specifically what he thought about the matter, Doğan looked down for a few seconds, and offered a brief response following a brief moment of silence: "Turgut Özal was a good man!"