Let me more or less reprint an older answer of mine:

In Early Republican Turkey, Ataturk tried to "modernize" the country: he got rid of the caliph, introduce Western civil and criminal law, changed from Arabic-Persian letters to adapted Latin ones, started universal public education, organized the first modern census, and, relevant for this discussion, modernized dress. One of the big ways he modernized dress was outlawing the fez and introducing European style hats (from the top hat to the fedora to the Irish immigrant cap); this was covered in the Hat Law of 1925. Despite the fact that the fez was only introduced to most of the Ottoman empire in 1826-9 following the surpression of the Janissaries (to replace the turban) as one of the earlier concentrated modernization attempts, conservatives clung to it desperately and *in 1925, dozens of people were executed because they wore fezes (yes, fez the hat). The symbol of 19th century modernism and bureaucracy had become a symbol of early 20th century anti-modernism and reactionaries. See "Kemalism on the Catwalk: The Turkish Hat Law of 1925" by Camilla T. Nereid.

Considered an important tool by Mustafa Kemal in his attempts to modernize Turkish society, a new dress code was enacted in 1925 that required traditional headgear be replaced by the western hat. In subsequent days, 808 people were arrested for violating the law, 57 of whom were executed.

Tl;dr Ataturk and co. were deadly serious about modernizing, by which they often meant "becoming European".

As an interesting side note, in much of the Arab parts of the former Ottoman Empire, the fez hung on as a symbol of modernism for a few more decades. I've read articles on a western suit plus fez as the dress code of the Iraqi middle class into the 1950's at least.

After the excesses of cruelty in the Caribbean the Spanish Crown repeatedly tried to curtail massacres and violence enacted by it's agents abroad. To this end legal entradas required official Crown license before entering/conquering new lands, excessive violence toward and enslavement of Native Americans was outlawed, and would-be conquistadores were required to first read the Requerimiento where peace was promised to those who willingly submitted to Spanish dominion (we'll ignore the ridiculousness of the Requerimiento for now). However, as conquest unfolded a loophole developed where conquerors could perform horrible acts of display violence, enslave whole villages, and execute women if those individuals were determined to be rebels. This loophole is also responsible for one of the more pervasive myths surrounding conquest, that of a completed conquest.

I talked about the myth of a completed conquest here, and will adapt sections of that post here. For those interested check out chapter four of Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall for the best, brief analysis of this myth.

Briefly, the process of claiming title over lands required local authorities to present a completed invasion with a pacified indigenous population. Personal claims complemented the larger Spanish imperial justification of conquest as guided by divine providence, and required by papal decree. Together, these attempts to validate personal, as well as imperial expansion, established conquest as complete, interpreted resistance as rebellion, and imbued an unfinished conquest with an air of inevitable success.

As background, during the exploration and conquest of the New World the Spanish crown sold licenses to explore/conquer/rule a specific region. Adelantados bore the cost of mounting the hazardous expeditions into the unknown, and successful invaders would gain from the production of their land, after the crown took it’s quinto (a fifth of spoils and taxes). The crown benefited substantially from selling these grants. Instead of devoting prohibitively expensive military resources to control land in the New World, these contracts placed the financial burden for territorial expansion on would-be conquistadores. The crown gained potential income from new lands, and contractually held the ability to regulate extremes of conquistador behavior if they failed to comply with the terms of the contract. Punishments for abuses or failure to act in a timely manner ranged from imprisonment, to substantial fines, or revoking the original license.

Adelantados were therefore placed under extreme pressure to maintain the resources required for a successful entrada, establish a permanent base of operations, find something that made the new colony immediately economically viable to recoup their losses and continue to hold crown support (hence the preoccupation with precious metals), and convince the crown the local population posed no threat to their endeavors. Lobbying between adelantados and the crown often took years. For example, Juan de Oñate originally submitted a license to conquer New Mexico in 1595, petitioned repeatedly to lobby for contractual fulfillment when the license was revoked in 1597, and then engaged in a prolonged legal battle from 1606-1624 for use of excessive force during the entrada.

Presenting their lands both worthy of conquest and easily conquered emerged as common theme for adelantados attempting to validate their position and maintain continued royal support. The formulaic writing style stressed not only a completely conquered native population, but one willing to submit both to Spanish rule and the Catholic faith, regardless of the actual facts on the ground. Hedged in religious terminology, and with papal support that acted as a divine grant of land for Castile and Portugal, “claims of possession became synonymous with possession itself” (Restall, p.68).

Queen Isabel stated, in 1501, that the vast number of inhabitants populating the New World were “subjects and vassals” and should “pay to us our tributes and rights”. Yep. Nine years after Columbus landed, and before anyone had any idea the vastness of the Americas, all inhabitants in lands claimed by Spain were subjects of the crown, they just didn’t know it yet. Couched in these terms, Native American resistance to conquest became an unholy rebellion, and violent resistance an illegal infringement on colonial peace. Since conquistadores were fighting rebels against the crown and the Catholic faith, military campaigns were undertaken for pacification (not conquest). Since resistance leaders were rebels they could be tried and executed for treason, their followers legally enslaved for rebellion (despite the official ban on native slavery within the empire). I’ll quote Restall here because I can’t put it better…

This pattern can be seen in the Yucatan as well as in virtually every region of Spanish America. Having founded a new colonial capital in 1542, named Mérida, the Spaniards in Yucatan declared the Conquest achieved and set about “pacifying” the peninsula. But as they controlled only a small corner of it, they were obliged to engage in major military hostilities with one Maya group after another, encountering particularly strong resistance in the northeast in the late 1540s. This was clearly an episode in a conquest war now in its third decade, but just as the Spaniards had already declared the Conquest complete so did they now classify this resistance as a rebellion… This was used to justify the execution of captives, the use of display violence (notably the hanging of women), and the enslaving of 2,000 Mayas of the region. Four centuries later, historians were still calling this “The Great Maya Revolt.” (p. 69)

An uncritical examination of the primary documents of conquest obscures the complexity of ongoing non-violent resistance, as well as open warfare and revolt, throughout the Empire. Adelantados, local officials, and the greater empire hoped and prayed their endeavors would succeed. Until they established complete control over lands granted to them by the Crown the rules of the empire rewarded those who maintained the fiction of an uncomplicated, completed conquest. If we inherit an inevitable narrative of conquest it is only because, in hindsight, we read the hopes of adelantados as truth despite constant acts of "rebellion" percolating throughout an Empire attempting to complete a very unfinished conquest. The myth of a completed conquest protected adelantados from a revoked license, while simultaneously allowing them the legal use of increased force to subdue rebellion, and the freedom within the law to enslave troublesome subjects.