Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - His Life

"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." Atatürk
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.Atatürk married Latife Usakligil in early 1923. The marriage
ended in divorce in 1925.The account of Atatürk'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
"Atatürk" (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.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - National Liberator

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 Atatürk
in gratitude and reverence.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Founder of the Republic

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. Atatürk'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.The
New Turkey's ideology was, and remains, "Kemalism", later known as
"Atatürkism". 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. Atatürkism introduced to Turkey the
process of parliamentary and participatory democracy.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.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Legal Transformation

"We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and legal
institutions from the bonds which hold a tight grip on us although they
are incompatible with the needs of our century."Between 1926 and 1930,
the Turkish Republic achieved a legal transformation which might have
required decades in most other countries. Religious laws were abolished,
and a secular system of jurisprudence introduced. The concepts, the
texts and contexts of the laws were made harmonious with the progressive
thrust of Atatürk's Turkey. " The nation", Atatürk said, " has placed
its faith in the precept that all laws should be inspired by actual
needs here on earth as a basic fact of national life."Among the
far-reaching changes were the new Civil Code, Penal Code, and Business
Law, based on the Swiss, Italian and German models respectively.The new
legal system made all citizens - men and women, rich and poor - equal
before the law. It gave Turkey a firm foundation for a society of
justice and equal rights.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Social Reforms

"The major challenge facing us is to elevate our national life to the
highest level of civilization and prosperity."Atatürk's aim was to
modernize Turkish life in order to give his nation a new sense of
dignity, equality, and happiness. After more than three centuries of
high achievement, the Ottoman Empire had declined from the 17th to the
early 20th Century: With Sultans presiding over a social and economic
system mired in backwardness, the Ottoman state had become hopelessly
outmoded for the modern times. Atatürk resolved to lead his country out
of the crumbling past into a brave new future.In his program of
modernization, secular government and education played a major role.
Making religious faith a matter of individual conscience, he created a
truly secular system in Turkey, where the vast Moslem majority and the
small Christian and Jewish minorities are free to practice their faith.
As a result of Atatürk's reforms, Turkey -unlike scores of other
countries- has fully secular institutions.The leader of modern Turkey
aspired to freedom and equality for all. When he proclaimed the
Republic, he announced that " the new Turkish State is a state of the
people and a state by the people." Having established a populist and
egalitarian system, he later observed: "We are a nation without classes
or special privileges." He also stressed the paramount importance of the
peasants, who had long been neglected in the Ottoman times: " The true
owner and master of Turkey is the peasant who is the real producer."To
give his nation a modern outlook, Atatürk introduced many reforms:
European hats replaced the fez; women stopped wearing the veil; all
citizens took surnames; and the Islamic calendar gave way to the Western
calendar. A vast transformation took place in the urban and rural life.
It can be said that few nations have ever experienced anything
comparable to the social change in Atatürk's Turkey.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Economic Growth

"In order to raise our new Turkey to the level that she is worthy of, we
must, under all circumstances, attach the highest importance to the
national economy."When the Turkish Republic came into being in 1923, it
lacked capital, industry, and know-how. Successive wars had decimated
manpower, agricultural production stood at a low level, and the huge
foreign debts of the defunct Ottoman state confronted the new
Republic.President Atatürk swiftly moved to initiate a dynamic program
of economic development. " Our nation," he stated, " has crushed the
enemy forces. But to achieve independence we must observe the following
rule: National sovereignty should be supported by financial
independence. The only power that will propel us to this goal is the
economy. No matter how mighty they are, political and military victories
cannot endure unless they are crowned by economic triumphs."

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - The New Language

"The cornerstone of education is an easy system of reading and writing.
The key to this is the new Turkish alphabet based on the Latin
script."The most difficult change in any society is probably a language
reform. Most nations never attempt it; those who do, usually prefer a
gradual approach. Under Atatürk's Leadership, Turkey undertook the
modern world's swiftest and most extensive language reform. In 1928,
when he decided that the Arabic script, which had been used by the Turks
for a thousand years, should be replaced with the Latin alphabet. He
asked the experts: " How long would it take ?" Most of them replied: "
At least five years." " We shall do it," Atatürk said," within five
months"As the 1920s came to an end, Turkey had fully and functionally
adopted, with its 29 letters (8 vowels and 21 consonants), has none of
the complexities of the Arabic script, which was ill-suited to the
Turkish language. The language reform enabled children and adults to
read and write within a few months, and to study Western languages with
greater effectiveness.Thousands of words, and some grammatical devices,
from the Arabic and Persian, held a tight grip over Ottoman Turkish. In
the early 1930s, Atatürk spearheaded the movement to eliminate these
borrowings. To replace the loan words from foreign languages, large
number of original words, which had been in use in the earlier
centuries, where revived, and provincial expressions and new coinages
were introduced. The transformation met with unparalleled success: In
the 1920s, the written language consisted of more than 80 percent
Arabic, Persian, and French words; by the early 1980s the ratio had
declined to a mere 10 percent.Atatürk's language reform -encompassing
the script, grammar and vocabulary- stands as one of the most
far-reaching in history. It has overhauled Turkish culture and
education.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Women's Rights

"Everything we see in the world is the creative work of women."With
abiding faith in the vital importance of women in society, Atatürk
launched many reforms to give Turkish women equal rights and
opportunities. The new Civil Code, adopted in 1926, abolished polygamy
and recognized the equal rights of women in divorce, custody, and
inheritance. The entire educational system from the grade school to the
university became coeducational.Atatürk greatly admired the support that
the national liberation struggle received from women and praised their
many contributions: " In Turkish society, women have not lagged behind
men in science, scholarship, and culture. Perhaps they have even gone
further ahead." He gave women the same opportunities as men, including
full political rights. In the mid-1930s, 18 women, among them a
villager, were elected to the national parliament. Later, Turkey had the
world's first women supreme court justice.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Strides in Education

"The governments most creative and significant duty is
education."Atatürk regarded education as the force that would galvanize
the nation into social and economic development. For this reason, he
once said that, after the War of Independence, he would have liked to
serve as Minister of Education. As President of the Republic, he spared
no effort to stimulate and expand education at all levels and for all
segments of the society.Turkey initiated a most ambitious program of
schooling children and adults. From grade school to graduate school,
education was made free, secular, and co-educational. Primary education
was declared compulsory. The armed forces implemented an extensive
program of literacy. Atatürk heralded "The Army of Enlightenment". With
pencil or chalk in hand, he personally instructed children and adults in
schoolrooms, parks, and other places. Literacy which had been less than
9 percent in 1923 rose to more than 33 percent by 1938.Women's
education was very close to Atatürk's hearth. In 1922, even before
proclaiming the Republic, he vowed: " We shall emphasize putting our
women's secondary and higher education on an equal footing with men."

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - Culture and the Arts

"We shall make the expansion and rise of Turkish culture in every era
the mainstay of the Republic."Among the prominent statesmen of the 20th
Century few articulated the supreme importance of culture as did Atatürk
who stated: " Culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic." His
view of culture encompassed the nation's creative legacy as well as the
best values of world civilization. It stressed personal and universal
humanism. " Culture," he said, " is a basic element in being a person
worthy of humanity," and described Turkey's ideological thrust as " a
creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal."To create
the best synthesis, Atatürk underlined the need for the utilization of
all the viable elements in the national heritage, including the ancient
indigenous cultures, and the arts and techniques of the entire world
civilization, past and present. He gave impetus to the study of the
earlier civilizations of Anatolia - including Hittite, Phrygian, Lydian,
and others. Pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of
extensive research which proved that, long before their Seljuk and
Ottoman Empires, the Turks had already created a civilization of their
own. Atatürk also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as the
wellspring of Turkish creativity.The visual and plastic arts (whose
development had been arrested by some bigoted Ottoman officials who
claimed that the depiction of the human form was idolatry) flourished
during Atatürk's Presidency. Many museums were opened. Architecture
gained new vigor. Classical Western music, opera and ballet as well as
the theater took impressive strides. Several hundred "People's Houses"
and the " People's Rooms" all over Turkey gave local people and
youngsters a wide variety of artistic activities, sports, and other
cultural affairs. Book and magazine publication enjoyed a boom. Film
industry started to grow. In all walks of cultural life, Atatürk's
inspiration created an upsurge.Atatürk's Turkey is living proof of this
ideal - a country rich in its own national culture, open to the heritage
of world civilization, and at home in the endowments of the modern
technological age.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - 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, Atatürk 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 Atatürk'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. Atatürk 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 Atatürk'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 Atatürk'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 Atatürk an historic figure of enduring influence.