Smart Turkey Tours

MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK, FATHER OF THE TURKS

MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK, FATHER OF THE TURKS

If you travel to Turkey and walk through its streets, you will easily see an image that is repeated on flags, statues or photographs inside many businesses and establishments. And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is loved by many and considered the father of Turkey for the social and cultural changes that he brought with his mandate and that ended Ottoman traditions, completely renewing the country.

He was born in 1881, in the city of Thessaloniki (Greece), which at that time was part of the Ottoman Empire.

He received a military education from his childhood and continued his training at the Istanbul Military Academy, where he graduated in 1905 as a staff captain. During these years of training he received the nickname Kemal, from one of his teachers, which in Turkish translates as “perfect.”

He was assigned to Damascus, where the ideals of the French Revolution made him grow in his desire to create a different Turkish state and thus separate it from the Ottoman regime. Over the years and the different conflicts, Mustafa Kemal gained importance in the army.

During the Battle of Gallipoli, during World War I, he managed to stop the French and English troops. Thanks to these victories he was awarded the rank of “Pasa”, “commander” in Turkish. In the following years he continued to achieve victories on open fronts.

In May 1919 the Turkish War of Independence began and in March 1920 the foundations of the new government were established, when Mustafa Kemal convened the Grand National Assembly, granting it maximum power.

On October 29, 1923, after the expulsions of the Greeks, the Republic of Turkey was founded and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became its first president, a position he held until his death in 1938.

Among the social and cultural reforms that he implemented to modernize the country, the following stand out:

• Secularization (separation of religion and state)
• The abolition of the caliphate
• The closure of Koranic schools
• Islamic Law (Sharia) was replaced by a civil, criminal and commercial code.
• Granting more rights to women (right to vote, right to be elected to parliament)
• Replacement of Arabic spelling by Latin
• Alcohol is no longer prohibited
• Imposition of the obligation to use a surname

At this time, and thanks to one of the changes, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasa, was renamed Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which in Turkish means "father of the Turks."

Atatürk died on November 10, 1938, leaving a patriotic feeling unsaturated in a large part of the Turkish population. Every year, on that date, the country pays tribute to the founding father of the Turkish Republic.