I have recently stumbled across a mini-documentary from an amateur historian called "The Turkish Century" going over a brief history of Turkey starting from the Bronze Age to the late 20th century.
The part that really interested me was he started going over the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of the modern nation of Turkey. Specifically his affiliation but also disagreements with the Young Turks, who tried to reform the late Ottoman Empire before and during WWI.
In the video, he discusses the complete ineptitude of the Young Turks and their "pro-German/Prussian" leanings of government and politics. The blunders of the Pasha brothers, and failed campaigns into Russia during WWI. He also discussed Ataturks incredibly progressive writings, political views, liberal legislation, and what most people would now today read as incredibly "pro-western" and "euro-centric" viewpoints. Including giving women the right to vote before the United States, separating religion from the state, working to have an industry mimicking western civilizations, and anti-imperialist viewpoints.
Here are my questions:
1- 'Visionary' is a tricky word, isn't it? Let me try to define it in an objective manner and try to see if that works for you. Let's call 'visionary' someone who has a definite vision for his society which was not initially shared by the majority of his people, but which, at least in part due to his own efforts, became the reality of his people later on. In this sense, surely, he was a visionary. Not a Hitler sort of 'visionary' either; his ultimate view of what modern Turkey should be like is much more acceptable to many people, then and now, myself (and, I believe, yourself) included. Education policies, voting rights to women, secularism, and so on, as you have mentioned yourself.
2- Depends. If you take 'Westernism' as a variant of modernisation, he surely was. He is one of the most uncompromising Westernisers in the history of the entire planet in this sense. Many things were changed and modelled after the Western example under his Turkey, from clothing to the alphabet. This was because Atatürk and people like him perceived the world to be the stage of a clash between different civilisations, out of which, increasingly, the Western civilisation emerged victoriously. If you needed proof for that, it would suffice to look at the history of China, of the Balkanian nations (especially Bulgaria, for a time an example of what rapid Westernisation can achieve for the Ottomans) or indeed at the history of the Ottoman Empire itself. That said, Atatürk was not 'pro-Western' in international relations. He was not anti-Westernist either. His vision of the foreign policy was tailored to complement his internal reforms, so the best way to achieve internal reform was peace, and the best way to achieve peace was enjoying good terms with anyone who had no openly inimical stance towards Turkey. Hence a number of local alliances and pacts under Atatürk and İnönü, his successor, even including Greece. Hence the excellent relations the Turks had with the USSR under Atatürk and İnönü (until the end of the WW2, at least), despite the suppression of communism within Turkey simultaneously. And hence the rapprochement with the British around the early 1930s following the rising threat of Italy in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. In the mid-20s, the Anglo-Turkish relations were basically a cold war, due to certain factors emerging from the Turkish War of Independence (1919-23) when the British supported the Greek against Turkey. Long story that one. What matters for the present purposes is that, to recap, he was a fervent Westerniser inside, but in terms of the foreign policy, he was more independent.
3- Why do you think they were incompetent? That's again a quite strong normative term. I may be of more help if you specify though. If you mean the War... I myself don't know what to think, really. On the one hand, after all said and done (there are arguments to the contrary in some academic circles), the Caucasus Front was an immense failure; how else to explain how Russians managed to nearly unite with the British in Eastern Anatolia in late 1916?! On the other hand, there's the Gallipoli campaign. The Ottoman Army was bitterly beaten just two years ago in the Balkan Wars. If you asked me to bet, I would bet all my life savings and then some that the British would eventually win in Gallipoli. Somehow, they were beaten, and the Committee of Union and Progress's military policies had an important part to play there. So, as is often the case in history, that is complicated. Also, there were no 'Pasha brothers'. If you are referring to the Three Pashas as I think you do, Cemal, Talat, and Enver Pashas, they were not brothers. Pasha is an Ottoman military title similar to the Western 'general'; that is why they are all Pashas. If you are interested in the Ottoman war effort and (mis)adventures, I may suggest Mustafa Aksakal's excellent book on the subject, The Ottoman Road to War. You would have a quite comprehensive knowledge of the internal dynamics of the Ottoman state at the time, and see the competence and incompetence in that rule, as it were.
4- Pan-Turkism was never a real ideal for the majority of the Ottoman statesmen. There were ideas about leading the Turks there to revolt against the Russians and to unite with them following the WW1. Some intellectuals close to the CUP, such as Ziya Gökalp, cherished the idea of an eventual 'Turan' too; but even Gökalp was realistic enough to know that a Turan Empire including Anatolia and Central Asia alike would not emerge anytime soon. More importantly, pan-Turkism was not the reason the Ottoman Empire entered the war though. If they won the war, and if possible, that would be a lovely perk, and/or it would harm the Allied interests greatly and hence would be strategically desirable. Especially, as the War progressed and as Turkish nationalism gained strength together with it, pan-Turkism too became stronger. But, by way of comparison, it was not the Lebensraum concept that motivated the Young Turks to fight.
Hope this helps!