Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [musˈtäfä ceˈmäl ätäˈtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (Conventional) – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish army officer in the Ottoman military, revolutionary statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led the Turkish national movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular, and democratic nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in the early months of 1881, either in the Ahmed Subaşı neighbourhood or in Islahhane Street (present-day Apostolou Pavlou Street) in the Koca Kasım Pasha neighbourhood (this house is preserved as a museum) in Salonica (present-day Thessaloniki),[4] Ottoman Empire, to his mother Zübeyde Hanım (a housewife) and father Ali Rıza Efendi (a militia officer, title-deed clerk and lumber trader). Only one of Mustafa's siblings, a sister named Makbule (Atadan) survived childhood; she died in 1956.[5] According to Andrew Mango, he was born into a family which was Muslim, Turkish-speaking and precariously middle-class.[6] According to Encyclopaedia Judaica, one assertion that was commonly made by many Jews of Salonika...