Atatürk He was born on May 19, 1881 in Thessaloniki (now Thessaloniki) in what was then the Ottoman Empire. His father was a minor civil servant and later a lumber merchant. When Atatürk He was 12 years old, he was sent to the military school and then to the military academy in Istanbul, graduating in 1905.
In 1911, he fought the Italians in Libya and then in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). A military reputation was formed by repelling the Allied invasion of the Dardanelles in 1915.
In May 1919, Atatürk began a nationalist revolution in Anatolia, organizing resistance to the peace settlement imposed in Turkey by the victorious allies. This was especially focused on resisting Greek attempts to seize Smyrna and its interior. The victory over the Greeks allowed him to secure the revision of the peace agreement in the Treaty of Lausanne.
In 1921, he established a provisional government in Ankara. The following year, the Ottoman Sultanate was formally abolished and, in 1923, Turkey became a secular republic, with Atatürk as its president. He established a one-party regime that lasted almost without interruption until 1945.
He launched a revolutionary program of social and political reform to modernize Turkey. These reforms included the emancipation of women, the abolition of all Islamic institutions, and the introduction of Western legal codes, dress, calendar, and the alphabet, replacing the Arabic script with the Latin script. Abroad, he pursued a policy of neutrality, establishing friendly relations with neighboring Turkey.
In 1935, when surnames were introduced in Turkey, it was given the name of Atatürk, what does it mean “Father of the Turks“He died on November 10, 1938.