Mustafa was born in 1881 in Salonica, then an Ottoman Turkish city, in
modern day Greece. His father, Ali Riza, a customs
official-turned-lumber merchant, died when Mustafa was still a boy. His
mother, Zubeyde, a devout and strong-willed woman, raised him and his
younger sister by herself. First enrolled in a traditional Islamic
religious school, he soon switched to a modern school. In 1893, he
entered a military high school where his mathematics teacher gave him
the second name Kemal (meaning perfection in Turkish) in recognition of
young Mustafa's superior achievement. He was thereafter known as
Mustafa Kemal.
In 1905, Mustafa Kemal graduated from the War Academy in Istanbul with
the rank of Staff Captain. Posted in Damascus, Syria, then a part of
the Ottoman Empire, he started with several colleagues a clandestine
society called "Homeland and Freedom" to fight against the Sultan's
despotism. In 1908, he helped the group of officers who toppled the
Sultan. Mustafa Kemal's career flourished as he won his heroism in the
far corners of the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of
1911-12 as well as the Balakan Wars of 1913 in which he saw action in
Albania and Tripoli, Libya. He also briefly served as a staff officer
in Salonica and Istanbul and as a military attache in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In October, 1914, the Ottoman Empire offically entered World War I
alongside Germany and Austria as part of the Central Powers fighting
the Allies of Great Britian, France, Italy and Russia. In 1915, when
the Dardanelles/Galipoli campaign was launched, Mustafa Kemal, recently
premoted to Colonel, became a national hero by winning successive
victories against the landing British French and ANZAC armies, pinning
them down at their beacheads, which finally forced the invaders to
evacuate Galipoli in January 1916. Promoted to General later that year,
at age 35, he liberated two major provinces in eastern Turkey against
the Russian armies. In the next two years, from 1917 to 1918, he served
as commander of several Ottoman armies in Palestine, Aleppo, and
elsewhere, achieving another major victory by stopping the British
advance at Aleppo just before the war-weary Turkish armies agreed to an
armistice with the British on October 31, 1918 which ended World War I
in the Middle East. As a result of the Ottoman Empire's defeat, the
Turks lost all of their Middle East territories with the exception of
the traditional Turkish area around the region of Asia Minor.
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed in the Black Sea port of
Samsun to start the Greco-Turkish War, (known to the Turks as the War
of Independence.) In defiance of the Sultan's government, he rallied a
liberation army in Anatolia and convened the Congress of Erzurum and
Sivas which established the basis for the new national effort under his
leadership. On April 23, 1920, the Grand National Assembly was
inaugurated. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was elected as its President. Fighting
on many fronts, he led his forces to victory against rebels and the
invading Greek armies. Following the Turkish triumph at the two major
battles at Izunu in Western Turkey, the Grand National Assembly
conferred on Mustafa Kemal Pasha the title of Commander-in-Chief with
the rank of Marshal. At the end of August 1922, the Turkish armies won
their ultimate victory. Within a few weeks, the Turkish mainland was
completely liberated, an armistice with Greece was signed, and the rule
of the Ottoman dynasty was abolished.
In July 1923, the national government signed the Lausanne Treaty with
Great Britain, France, Greece, Italy, and others countries which
regonized the new country of Turkey. In mid-October, Ankara became the
capital of the new Turkish State. On October 29, the Republic was
proclaimed and Mustafa Kemal Pasha was unanimously elected President of
the Republic. Kemal married Latife Usakligil in early 1923. The
marriage ended in divorce in 1925.
The account of Kemal Atatürk's fifteen year Presidency (1923-1938) is a
saga of dramatic modernization. With indefatigable determination, he
created a new political and legal system based on a Swiss Civil Code,
abolished the Islamic Caliphate and made both government and education
secular, gave equal rights to women, changed the Turkish language by
transfering the written language from the Arabic script to the Roman
alphabet, and the attire from Islamic to Western, and advanced the arts
and the sciences, agriculture and industry.
In 1934, when the surname law was adopted, the national parliament gave
him the name "Atatürk" (Turkish for Father of the Turks). A heavy
drinker most of his life, Atatürk developed liver and kidney problems
durng the last year of his life. He died on November 10, 1938, at age
57. The "national liberator" and the "Father of modern Turkey" was
dead. But his legacy to his people and to the world endures to this
very day.
