Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) was a military officer, revolutionary, and statesman who founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and served as its first president until his death. The surname Atatürk ("Father of the Turks") was conferred on him by the Grand National Assembly in 1934 under the Surname Law.
He first rose to prominence as an Ottoman commander at the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, where his defense of the Anafartalar sector helped repel Allied landings. After the Ottoman defeat in World War I and the occupation of Anatolia, he organized a nationalist resistance from Samsun beginning in May 1919, leading the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922) against Greek, French, Armenian, and Allied forces. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which superseded the punitive Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and recognized Turkey's sovereignty within its modern borders.
As president, Atatürk launched a sweeping program of secular modernization commonly grouped under the Six Arrows (Altı Ok): republicanism, populism, nationalism, secularism, statism, and revolutionism. Key reforms included:
- Abolition of the sultanate (1922) and the caliphate (1924)
- Adoption of a new constitution (1924)
- Replacement of Islamic law with civil, criminal, and commercial codes adapted from Swiss, Italian, and German models (1926)
- Introduction of the Latin-based Turkish alphabet (1928)
- Extension of full suffrage to women in national elections (1934)
- Disestablishment of Islam as the state religion (1928) and constitutional entrenchment of secularism (laiklik) in 1937
In foreign policy he pursued the slogan "Peace at home, peace in the world," concluding the Balkan Pact (1934) and the Saadabad Pact (1937), and negotiating the Montreux Convention (1936), which restored Turkish control over the Turkish Straits.
Atatürk died on 10 November 1938 in Istanbul. His ideological legacy, Kemalism, remains the formal doctrine of the Turkish state and a recurring reference point in debates over secularism, civil-military relations, and Turkish identity.
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In 1934, the Turkish Grand National Assembly granted Mustafa Kemal the surname Atatürk and, the same year, extended full voting rights to Turkish women under his reform program.