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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938.
- Office established
- Fevzi Çakmak
- İsmet İnönü
- Overview
- Early life and education
- Military career
Kemal Atatürk was founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey, having galvanized the Turkish people after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. He implemented an ambitious program of modernization and broadly transformed the legal and social systems of Turkish life.
How was Kemal Atatürk educated?
Kemal Atatürk’s father, a local lieutenant in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, dedicated him to military service and sent him to a modern secular school (rather than a religious school). Atatürk attended a military school for his secondary education and afterward entered the War College in Constantinople, followed by the General Staff College.
How did Kemal Atatürk come to power?
Kemal Atatürk became a national hero after turning back the Allies at Gallipoli during World War I. Still, the Ottomans were defeated. To prevent partition of Anatolia, he led a rebellion against the sultanate. In 1923 the sovereignty of the Turkish Republic was internationally recognized with the Treaty of Lausanne. Atatürk became its first president.
What was Kemal Atatürk’s legacy?
Atatürk was born in 1881 in Salonika, then a thriving port of the Ottoman Empire, and was given the name Mustafa. His father, Ali Riza, had been a lieutenant in a local militia unit during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, indicating that his origins were within the Ottoman ruling class, if only marginally. Mustafa’s mother, Zübeyde Hanım, came from a farming community west of Salonika.
Ali Riza died when Mustafa was seven years old, but he nevertheless had a significant influence on the development of his son’s personality. At Mustafa’s birth, Ali Riza hung his sword over his son’s cradle, dedicating him to military service. Most important, Ali Riza saw to it that his son’s earliest education was carried out in a modern secular school, rather than in the religious school Zübeyde Hanım would have preferred. In this way Ali Riza set his son on the path of modernization. This was something for which Mustafa always felt indebted to his father.
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After Ali Riza’s death, Zübeyde Hanım moved to her step-brother’s farm outside Salonika. Concerned that Mustafa might grow up uneducated, she sent him back to Salonika, where he enrolled in a secular school that would have prepared him for a bureaucratic career. Mustafa became enamoured of the uniforms worn by the military cadets in his neighbourhood. He determined to enter upon a military career. Against his mother’s wishes, Mustafa took the examination for entrance to the military secondary school.
At the secondary school, Mustafa received the nickname of Kemal, meaning “The Perfect One,” from his mathematics teacher; he was thereafter known as Mustafa Kemal. In 1895 he progressed to the military school in Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia). He made several new friends, including Ali Fethi (Okyar), who would later join him in the creation and development of the Turkish republic.
Mustafa Kemal’s career almost ended soon after his graduation when it was discovered that he and several friends were meeting to read about and discuss political abuses within the empire. A government spy infiltrated their group and informed on them. A cloud of suspicion hung over their heads that was not to be lifted for years. The group was broken up and its members assigned to remote areas of the empire. Mustafa Kemal and Ali Faut were sent to the Fifth Army in Damascus, where Mustafa Kemal was angered by the way corrupt officials were treating the local people. Becoming involved again in antigovernment activities, he helped found a short-lived secret group called the Society for Fatherland and Freedom.
Nevertheless, in September 1907 Mustafa Kemal was declared loyal and reassigned to Salonika, which was awash with subversive activity. He joined the dominant antigovernment group, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which had ties to the nationalist and reformist Young Turk movement.
In July 1908 an insurrection broke out in Macedonia. The sultan was forced to reinstate the constitution of 1876, which limited his powers and reestablished a representative government. The hero of this “Young Turk Revolution” was Enver (Enver Paşa), who later became Mustafa Kemal’s greatest rival; the two men came to dislike each other thoroughly.
In 1909 two elements within the revolutionary movement came to the fore. One group favoured decentralization, with harmony and cooperation between the Muslims and the non-Muslims. The other, headed by the CUP, advocated centralization and Turkish control. An insurrection spearheaded by reactionary troops broke out on the night of April 12–13, 1909. The revolution that had restored the constitution in 1908 was in danger. Military officers and troops from Salonika, among whom Enver played a leading role, marched on Istanbul. They arrived at the capital on April 23, and by the next day they had the situation well in hand. The CUP took control and forced Abdülhamid II to abdicate.
Enver was thus in the ascendancy. Mustafa Kemal felt that the military, having gained its political ends, should refrain from interfering in politics. He urged those officers who wanted political careers to resign their commissions. This served only to increase the hostility of Enver and other CUP leaders toward him. Mustafa Kemal turned his attention from politics to military matters. He translated German infantry training manuals into Turkish. From his staff position he criticized the state of the army’s training. His reputation among serious military officers was growing. This activity also brought him into contact with many of the rising young officers. A feeling of mutual respect developed between Mustafa Kemal and some of these officers, who were later to flock to his support in the creation of the Turkish nation.
The CUP, however, was fed up with him, and he was transferred to field command and then sent to observe French army maneuvers in Picardy. Although consistently denied promotion, Mustafa Kemal did not lose faith in himself. In late 1911 the Italians attacked Libya, then an Ottoman province, and Mustafa Kemal went there immediately to fight. Malaria and trouble with his eyes required him to leave the front for treatment in Vienna.
- Norman Itzkowitz
Dec 16, 2009 · Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) was an army officer who founded an independent Republic of Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. He then served as Turkey’s first president from...
- Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal sought to extend the National Pact to the entire Ottoman-Muslim population of the empire. To that end, he called a national congress that met in Sivas and ratified the pact. He exposed attempts by the sultan’s government to arrest him and to disrupt the Sivas Congress.
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Kemal Atatürk . Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, orig. Mustafa Kemal, (born 1881, Salonika, Greece, Ottoman Empire—died Nov. 10, 1938, Istanbul, Tur.), Founder of modern Turkey. Dedicated by his father to military service, he graduated near the top of his ...
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, c. 1916 © Atatürk was a Turkish nationalist leader and founder and first president of the republic of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881 in Salonika...
Jun 5, 2019 · Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (May 19, 1881–November 10, 1938) was a Turkish nationalist and military leader who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Atatürk served as the country's first president from 1923 to 1938. He oversaw the passage of numerous reforms that were responsible for transforming Turkey into a modern nation-state.
