Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk?

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish military officer who became the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. Born in Salonika (then Ottoman, now Thessaloniki, Greece), he rose to prominence as a commander during the First World War, notably at the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915. After the Ottoman defeat, he led the Turkish National Movement in the War of Independence (1919-1922), resisting foreign occupation and abolishing the sultanate. In 1923 he proclaimed the Republic of Turkey and served as its president until his death. He launched sweeping reforms known as Kemalism, including replacing the Arabic script with a Latin-based Turkish alphabet, adopting secular law codes, granting women the right to vote, and modernizing education and the economy. The Turkish parliament granted him the surname Atatürk, meaning Father of the Turks, in 1934.

Sources: Andrew Mango, Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (1999) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, entry Kemal Ataturk