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1881-1938
Ataturk's Life:
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and its first President, stands as a towering figure of the 20th Century. Among the great leaders of history, few have achieved so much in so short period, transformed the life of a nation as decisively, and given such profound inspiration to the world at large.
Emerging as a military hero at the Dardanelles in 1915, he became the charismatic leader of the Turkish national liberation struggle in 1919. He blazed across the world scene in the early 1920s as a triumphant commander who crushed the invaders of his country. Following a series of impressive victories against all odds, he led his nation to full independence. He put an end to the antiquated Ottoman dynasty whose tale had lasted more than six centuries - and created the Republic of Turkey in 1923, establishing a new government truly representative of the nation's will.
As President for 15 years, until his death in 1938, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk introduced a broad range of swift and sweeping reforms - in the political, social, legal, economic, and cultural spheres - virtually unparalleled in any other country.
His achievements in Turkey are an enduring monument to Ataturk. Emerging nations admire him as a pioneer of national liberation. The world honors his memory as a foremost peacemaker who upheld the principles of humanism and the vision of a united humanity. Tributes have been offered to him through the decades by such world statesmen as Lloyd George, Churchill, Roosevelt, Nehru, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Bourguiba, Nasser, Kennedy, and countless others. A White House statement, issued on the occasion of "The Ataturk Centennial" in 1981, pays homage to him as "a great leader in times of war and peace". It is fitting that there should be high praise for Ataturk, an extraordinary leader of modern times, who said in 1933: "I look to the world with an open heart full of pure feelings and friendship".
"There are two Mustafa Kemals. One the flesh-and-blood Mustafa Kemal who now stands before you and who will pass away. the other is you, all of you here who will go to the far corners of our land to spread the ideals which must be defended with your lives if necessary. I stand for the nation's dreams, and my life's work is to make them come true."
Ataturk stands as one of the world's few historic figures who dedicated their lives totally to their nations.
He was born in 1881 (probably in the spring) in Salonica, then an Ottoman city, now in 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 sister. First enrolled in a traditional 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 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, 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, including Albania and Tripoli. He also briefly served as a staff officer in Salonica and Istanbul and as a military attache in Sofia.
In 1915, when Dardanelles campaign was launched, Colonel Mustafa Kemal became a national hero by winning successive victories and finally repelling the invaders. Promoted to general in 1916, at age 35, he liberated two major provinces in eastern Turkey that year. In the next two years, he served as commander of several Ottoman armies in Palestine, Aleppo, and elsewhere, achieving another major victory by stopping the enemy advance at Aleppo.
On May 19, 1919, Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed in the Black Sea port of Samsun to start 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 to its Presidency.
Fighting on many fronts, he led his forces to victory against rebels and invading armies. Following the Turkish triumph at the two major battles at Inonu 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, the armistice signed, and the rule of the Ottoman dynasty abolished.
In July 1923, the national government signed the Lausanne Treaty with Great Britain, France, Greece, Italy, and others. 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.
Atatuk married Latife Usakligil in early 1923. The marriage ended in divorce in 1925.
The account of Ataturk's fifteen year Presidency is a saga of dramatic modernization. With indefatigable determination, he created a new political and legal system, abolished the Caliphate and made both government and education secular, gave equal rights to women, changed the alphabet and the attire, 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 "Ataturk" (Father of the Turks).
On November 10, 1938, following an illness of a few months, the national liberator and the Father of modern Turkey died. But his legacy to his people and to the world endures.
Ataturk's body was re-interred in this splendid mausoleum in 1953.
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Peace at Home, Peace in the World:
"Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say 'What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?' If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness."
A military hero who had won victory after victory against many foreign invaders, Ataturk knew the value of peace and, during his Presidency, did his utmost to secure and strengthen it throughout the world. Few of the giants of the modern times have spoken with Ataturk's eloquence on the vital need to create a world order based on peace, on the dignity of all human beings, and on the constructive interdependence of all nations. He stated, immediately after the Turkish War of Independence, that "peace is the most effective way for nations to attain prosperity and happiness." Later as he concluded treaties of friendship and created regional ententes, he affirmed: " Turks are the friends of all civilized nations." The new Turkey established cordial relations with all countries, including those powers which had tried a few years earlier to wipe the Turks off the map. She did not pursue a policy of expansionism, and never engaged in any act contrary to peaceful co-existence. Ataturk signed pacts with Greece, Rumania and Yugoslavia in the Balkans, and with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan in the East. He maintained friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the United States, England, Germany, Italy, France, and all other states. In the early 1930s, he and the Greek Premier Venizelos initiated and signed a treaty of peace and cooperation.
In 1932, the League of Nations invited Turkey to become a member. Many of Ataturk's ideas and ideals presaged the principles enshrined in the League of Nations and the United Nations." As clearly as I see daybreak, I have the vision of the rise of the oppressed nations to their independence... If lasting peace is sought, it is essential to adopt international measures to improve the lot of the masses. Mankind's well-being should take the place of hunger and oppression... Citizens of the world should be educated in such a way that they shall no longer feel envy, avarice and vengefulness." In recognition of Ataturk's untiring efforts to build peace, the League of Nations paid tribute to him at his death in November 1938 as " a genius international peacemaker". In 1981, on the occasion of the Centennial of his birth, the United Nations and UNESCO honored the memory of the great Turkish Statesman who abhorred war - " Unless the life of the nation faces peril, war is a crime," - and expressed his faith in organized peace:" If war were to break out, nations would rush to join their armed forces and national resources. The swiftest and most effective measure is to establish an international organization which would prove to the aggressor that its aggression cannot pay."
His creation of modern Turkey and his contribution to the world have made Ataturk an historic figure of enduring influence.
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National Liberator:
"This nation has never lived without independence. We cannot and shall not live without it. Either independence or death."
Mustafa Kemal Pasha emerged as the national liberator of the Turks when the Ottoman Empire, carved up by the Western Powers, was in its death throes. Already a legendary hero of the Dardanelles and other fronts, he became in 1919 the leader of the Turkish emancipation. With a small and ill-equipped army, he repelled the invading enemy forces on the East, on the South, and on the West. He even had to contend with the Sultan's troops and local bands of rebels before he could gain complete control of the Turkish homeland. By September 1922, he had received one of history's most difficult triumphs against internal opposition and powerful external enemies.
The liberator ranks among the world's greatest strategists and holds the rare distinction of having maintained a perfect military record consisting of only victories and no defeats.
As the national struggle ended, the heroic leader proclaimed:" Following the military triumph we accomplished by bayonets, weapons and blood, we shall strive to win victories in such fields as culture, scholarship, science, and economics," adding that " the enduring benefits of victories depend only on the existence of an army of education." It is for his military victories and his cultural and socio-political reforms, which gave Turkey its new life, that the Turkish nation holds Ataturk in gratitude and reverence.
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Founder of the Republic:
"Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people."
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October 29, 1923 is a fateful date in Turkish history. On that date. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the liberator of his country, proclaimed the Republic of Turkey. The new homogeneous nation-state stood in sharp contrast to the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire out of whose ashes it arose. The dynasty and theocratic Ottoman system, with its Sultanate and Caliphate, thus came to and end. Ataturk's Turkey dedicated itself to the sovereignty of the national will - to the creation of, in President's words, "the state of the people ".
The Republic swiftly moved to put an end to the so-called "Capitulations ", the special rights and privileges that the Ottomans had granted to some European powers.
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The New Turkey's ideology was, and remains, "Kemalism", later known as "Ataturkism". Its basic principles stress the republican form of government representing the power of electorate, secular administration, nationalism, mixed economy with state participation in many of the vital sectors, and modernization. Ataturkism introduced to Turkey the process of parliamentary and participatory democracy.
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The first Moslem nation to become a Republic, Turkey has served since the early 1920s as a model for Moslem and non-Moslem nations in the emerging world.
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