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Person1881 – 1938

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Also called: Mustafa Kemal, Kemal Pasha, Atatürk

Leader of the Turkish War of Independence and founding president of the Republic of Turkey (1923), who pushed through secularism, the alphabet reform and other modernizing reforms

Born in Ottoman Thessaloniki, he graduated from military schools and joined the Young Turk movement. In the First World War he made his name by halting the Allied landings at Gallipoli. In 1919 he crossed to Anatolia to lead the war of independence, and in 1923 he founded the republic, serving as president until his death. He drove through radical Westernizing reforms such as abolishing the caliphate, the alphabet reform and votes for women. He died in Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace in 1938 and lies in the Anıtkabir mausoleum in Ankara.

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3 related events

  1. 1919 – 1923Turkish War of Independencecommander

    When the Ottoman Empire, defeated in the First World War, faced partition by the Allies, Mustafa Kemal organized resistance from Ankara, drove out the Greek army and overturned the Treaty of Sèvres.

  2. 1
    1923Treaty of Lausannerelated figure

    Peace treaty between Turkey and the Allies signed at Lausanne, Switzerland. Replacing the Treaty of Sèvres, it fixed the borders of modern Turkey and abolished the unequal privileges known as the capitulations.

  3. 2
    1923 – 1938Founding of the Republic of Turkey and Kemal’s Reformsleader

    Mustafa Kemal proclaimed the Republic of Turkey and became its first president, pushing through Western-style modernizing reforms: the abolition of the caliphate, secularism, a Latin-based alphabet and votes for women.

Themes this person appears in

  • National Movements in Asia and Africa1915 – 1948

    From the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to the founding of Israel — three decades in which India, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, swept up in the tide of self-determination after the First World War, pressed toward independence and modernization