1881-1938
Turkish military leader and statesman
1. Introduction
Atatürk was a military leader and the first president of the modern state of Türkiye (formerly Turkey). He was successful in defending the Gallipoli peninsula against invasion during World War I, at great political cost to Churchill, and led the Turkish War of Independence, creating a new nation out of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. He instituted wide-ranging reforms, known as ‘Kemalism’ or ‘Atatürkism’, including abolishing the monarchy, secularising the state, changing the alphabet, giving women voting rights and making primary education free and compulsory. He forged a strong national identity, enforcing Turkish-only surnames. He died of liver disease aged 57 and is buried in a large mausoleum in Ankara.
2. Stories
- Atatürk means ‘Father of Turks’, the surname that he was granted by parliament in 1934.
- Atatürk’s reputation as a successful military leader was established primarily in World War I’s Battle of Gallipoli and in the Turkish War of Independence.
- Churchill’s advocacy for the Dardanelles campaign resulted in his political demise until he was partly rehabilitated by David Lloyd George.
- Anzac Day is on 25 April each year, the date of the first engagement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (‘ANZAC’) in Gallipoli in 1915.
- Atatürk and Churchill were nearly at war in the Dardanelles again in 1922 in the Chanak crisis.
- Atatürk had no children from his short marriage but adopted or took on protection of nine girls and two boys.
- Traffic stops throughout Turkey at 9.05 a.m. on 10 November each year for two minutes of silence to mark the time of Atatürk’s death.
Atatürk means ‘Father of Turks’, the surname that he was granted by parliament in 1934.
Atatürk was born Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa, meaning Mustafa son of Ali Rıza (not vice versa, despite the sequence in English). He adopted the name Kemal at secondary school, believed to have been the name used for him by his mathematics teacher. He was known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha after becoming a major general in 1916, ‘Pasha’ being a title for senior army officers and civil officials. Following his military successes and promotion to field marshal in 1921, he gained the additional title of ‘Gazi’, meaning ‘warrior’ and ‘veteran’.
Until 1934, it was not an Ottoman or Turkish legal requirement to have a surname. The Surname Law was part of Mustafa Kemal’s modernising process which also served the purpose of ‘Turkification’, the formation of a homogeneous Turkish identity. The law allowed heads of families to choose their own surname but forbade the use of non-Turkish names or particles, such as the Slavic ending ‘-vich’ or Armenian ‘-ian’. The Turkish suffix ‘-oğlu’ (son of, pronounced ‘aw-loo’) was permitted.
His own surname was a special case. Consultations were held by language and history experts and the surname Atatürk was proposed and accepted (the ‘ü’ being pronounced like ‘ew’ in ‘new’). An alternative formation, Türkata, was considered but dropped.
The introduction of surnames reduced reliance on titles to help distinguish individuals. In addition to the titles above, ‘Efendi’ indicated someone with good education, ‘Hoca’ was used for people acknowledged as being wise, and ‘Bey’ indicated a chieftain but is commonly used today as a polite suffix meaning simply ‘Mister’.
Other reforms included a 1925 ban on the quasi-religious fez and turban but did not address the wearing of female headscarves or veils. Atatürk’s wife Latife wore a headscarf but not a veil. Arabic script was replaced by a modified Latin script in 1928, symbolising western secularism adapted to a Turkish context. The new script has 29 letters: eight vowels and 21 consonants, reflecting vowel-rich Turkish speech, which consonant-rich Arabic sometimes struggled to represent.
Atatürk’s reputation as a successful military leader was established primarily in World War I’s Battle of Gallipoli and in the Turkish War of Independence.
After graduating as a captain from the Ottoman Military College in Constantinople in 1905, Atatürk was arrested for participating in an anti-Sultan group and detained for a few months (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was the absolute ruler of the Ottoman empire). Atatürk was assigned to various backwater posts but then gained vital experience defending the Gallipoli Peninsula during the First Balkan War of 1912 to 1913.
In 1914, he became a military attaché in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he dated Dimitrina Kovacheva, the daughter of a Bulgarian general. Atatürk and the general had been on opposite sides during the Balkan Wars. Atatürk asked permission to marry Dimitrina, twice, which was refused on both occasions.
After World War I broke out, Atatürk was given command of the 19th Division in the Battle of Gallipoli. From previous experience, he correctly predicted the Allies’ landing areas and caused them considerable difficulties with his troops’ strong resistance. A potentially lethal piece of shrapnel hit him in the chest but it was stopped by a watch in his pocket. His successful defence of the peninsula led to him later being known as the ‘Saviour of İstanbul’. He was promoted to colonel, then general after further success on the Russian Front.
The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 divided up Ottoman territory and almost extinguished Turkish sovereignty in its remaining areas. The newly formed Turkish National Movement, led by Atatürk, mobilised forces against the Allies and their proxies, defeating them on multiple fronts from 1919 to 1923, including Greek troops in the west, Armenian in the east, French in the south and various occupying forces in the capital Constantinople.
The sultanate was abolished in 1922, ending the Ottoman empire which had been founded in around 1299. The Treaty of Sèvres was overturned, replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923, which established the independence and borders of modern Turkey. The Republic of Turkey came into being on 29 October 1923, with Atatürk as its first president and Ankara as its capital. The former capital, Constantinople, was renamed İstanbul, based on a longstanding alternative name.
Churchill’s advocacy for the Dardanelles campaign resulted in his political demise until he was partly rehabilitated by David Lloyd George.
Churchill was and is still widely blamed for the failed Gallipoli campaign, in which around 46,000 Allied troops and over 65,000 Ottoman troops died. The situation was more complicated than is often portrayed.
In 1915, Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener, secretary of state for war, proposed an invasion of Alexandretta (now İskenderun in southern Turkey) but was opposed by France. Casualties were rising rapidly on the Western Front. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill proposed a plan to open a new front in northern Europe, then adapted Kitchener’s idea of a Mediterranean front, with a naval attack on the Dardanelles strait, which was approved by Prime Minister H.H. Asquith’s war cabinet.
The naval attack was ineffective due to sea mines and Turkish fortifications, as well as prevarication by Kitchener and First Sea Lord John ‘Jackie’ Fisher during planning. This would have seen the end of Churchill’s original plan of attack ‘by ships alone’,1 but the war cabinet, including Churchill, decided to proceed with a land battle.
After months of stalemate followed by withdrawal, Churchill took the brunt of the blame for the whole operation, rather than Asquith or Kitchener. He lost his Admiralty position and soon headed for the Western Front. He was partly rehabilitated in 1917 by David Lloyd George, who made him minister of munitions. In the summary of its 1917 report, a royal commission of inquiry named various individuals as having fallen short in planning and execution.2 Churchill was not mentioned but the damage to his reputation had already been done.
Lloyd George, prime minister from 1916 to 1922, wrote in 1942 that ‘The Dardanelles failure was due not so much to Mr. Churchill’s precipitancy as to Lord Kitchener’s and Mr. Asquith’s procrastination’.3 Less likely to be biased in Churchill’s favour was his political opponent, Clement Attlee, Labour prime minister from 1945 to 1951, who fought at Gallipoli and in 1954 said of the campaign: ‘I have always held that the strategic conception was sound. The trouble was that it was never adequately supported. […] Unfortunately the military authorities were Western-Front-minded. Reinforcements were always sent too late. For an enterprise such as this the right leaders were not chosen. Elderly and hidebound generals were not the men to push through an adventure of this kind.’4
Anzac Day is on 25 April each year, the date of the first engagement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (‘ANZAC’) in Gallipoli in 1915.
In Australia and New Zealand, Anzac Day is the primary day of acknowledgement for those who have served during conflict, including veterans who are still alive. Commemorations were first held a few days after news was received of ANZAC deaths in Gallipoli. Anzac Day commenced in 1916 and soon became a feature of national identity. It continues to be more important in Australia and New Zealand than Remembrance Day.
In many Commonwealth countries, Remembrance Day evolved from Armistice Day, first commemorated in 1919, a year after the World War I cessation of hostilities with Germany at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Armistices with other Central Powers had been agreed during the previous six weeks, including the Ottoman armistice signed on 30 October 1918 on board HMS Agamemnon in the harbour of Moudros, a town on the Greek island of Lemnos.
In some countries, Remembrance Day is commemorated on the Sunday nearest to 11 November, observed with parades and one or two minutes of silence. In the USA, Armistice Day became Veterans’ Day in 1954, acknowledging living servicemen and women, while Memorial Day on the last Monday of May remembers those who have lost their lives.
Anzac Day includes parades, silences and dawn services, which commemorate the first dawn landing at Gallipoli. An additional feature is the legal playing of a gambling game called ‘two-up’, using two coins, otherwise mostly illegal on other days of the year. ANZAC soldiers used to play the game to pass away the long hours of sea travel.
Various ANZAC memorials and celebrations have incorporated a long quote attributed to Atatürk, including the sentence: ‘There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.’5 However, it seems that this phrase and probably other parts of the quote did not originate from Atatürk and some memorials and celebrations have consequently been altered.
Atatürk and Churchill were nearly at war in the Dardanelles again in 1922 in the Chanak crisis.
On this occasion, Churchill was a member of David Lloyd George’s cabinet as secretary of state for the colonies. Field Marshal Atatürk was commander-in-chief of Turkish forces, engaged in a series of battles with Greece, which had been assured of territorial gains by the Allies after World War I.
By September 1922, Atatürk had recaptured the area taken by Greece since 1919, culminating with Turkish reoccupation of Smyrna (now İzmir).6 Atatürk then advanced on the neutral ‘Zone of the Straits’ area which included the Dardanelles and Constantinople, held by the British and French, stating that he would prefer a negotiated handover of the area but otherwise would take possession with his army.
Lloyd George and Churchill were in favour of military action against Atatürk for breach of the Treaty of Sèvres. Most other cabinet members were against renewed war but agreed to resistance at Chanak (Turkish Çanakkale) on the Dardanelles strait. Britain requested the assistance of its dominions as well as that of France and Italy, all of which declined or did not confirm promptly, except New Zealand. In the end, war was averted, partly through the refusal of the double-surnamed General Charles Harington Harington (more efficiently known as ‘Tim’) to open fire on the Turks. The Greeks agreed to withdraw to pre-war borders and negotiations began, culminating in the Treaty of Lausanne.
Although much less known than the Battle of Gallipoli, the Chanak crisis contributed to the end of Lloyd George’s career and the loss of Churchill’s ministerial position and parliamentary seat. It also resulted in a higher level of independence for Britain’s dominions. Having lost trust in Lloyd George, the Conservatives withdrew from the war coalition with the Liberals formed in 1915 and won the 1922 election. Lloyd George won his Caernarfon seat unopposed but was never in government again. Churchill came fourth in Dundee, losing to Edwin Scrymgeour of the Scottish Prohibition party, partly due to Churchill’s limited campaigning after a hospital operation. At the end of 1922, Churchill found himself ‘without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix’.7
Atatürk had no children from his short marriage but adopted or took on protection of nine girls and two boys.
After the disappointment of being refused marriage to Dimitrina in Bulgaria, Atatürk had a close relationship with his personal assistant Fikriye Hanım, possibly his step-father’s niece, in the early 1920s. In 1922, during the reoccupation of Smyrna, Atatürk stayed with a shipping magnate there and met his host’s well-educated daughter Latife, whom he married in 1923. The following year, Fikriye died from a gunshot wound after nine days in hospital. An investigation into whether it was suicide or homicide was closed in 2014 without resolution, after 90 years.
Latife influenced and supported Atatürk’s inclinations for equality for women, but their marriage did not last long, ending after less than three years. She died in 1975 after decades of isolation, having said nothing publicly about her marriage. Her letters and diaries have not been published, and a controversial biography about her in 2006 nearly brought about a jail sentence for the Turkish author under a law that prevents insulting the memory of Atatürk.
They had no children, and Atatürk did not marry again. He adopted eight daughters and one son, as well as assuming protection for another girl and boy. One of his adopted daughters was Sabiha, to whom he gave the surname Gökçen (following the 1934 Surname Law), meaning ‘connected with the sky’, perhaps because of his interest in aviation. Soon afterwards Sabiha began flying training and in 1936 she became the world’s first female combat pilot. One of İstanbul’s two international airports is called Sabiha Gökçen, whereas Atatürk airport has been closed, replaced by the new İstanbul airport.
In later life, Sabiha told the story that her father was frustrated about French resistance to ceding the area of Hatay in Syria to Turkey. In 1937, he asked her to put on her military uniform and fire shots in the air near the French ambassador to Turkey to intimidate him. She was sentenced to one night in prison as a token punishment for breach of the peace, where her sister joined her for company. Hatay became Turkey’s southernmost province by referendum in 1939.
Traffic stops throughout Turkey at 9.05 a.m. on 10 November each year for two minutes of silence to mark the time of Atatürk’s death.
Atatürk was troubled by various ailments throughout his life, including long-term damage to an eye during 1912 warfare, broken ribs from a horse accident, recurrent malaria, kidney disease, carbon monoxide poisoning, two heart attacks and liver disease. Although no autopsy was performed, it is generally understood that the latter was cirrhosis, which can be caused by hepatitis and/or alcohol. He was a heavy cigarette smoker.
At age 57, he fell into a coma while staying at Dolmabahçe Palace, his official residence in İstanbul. He died at 9.05 a.m. on 10 November 1938, which is still remembered to the minute on anniversaries. His body was embalmed and transported to Ankara for a state funeral, then kept at the Ethnography Museum of Ankara while a large mausoleum was built. Fifteen years later, in 1953, his remains were transferred to the mausoleum, known as Anıtkabir (the ‘memorial tomb’).
Upon Atatürk’s death, Churchill wrote of his former adversary: ‘The death of Mustapha Kemal, the saviour of Turkey in the war, and the guide and rebuilder of the Turkish nation since the war, was a loss most grievous and untimely both to the Ottoman people and to Europe. The tears which men and women of all classes shed upon his bier were a fitting tribute to the life work of a man at once the hero, the champion, and the father of modern Turkey.’8
Atatürk was succeeded as president by İsmet İnönü, whom Churchill met in Turkey in 1943 during World War II. Churchill gave him a letter that said, ‘There is a long story of the friendly relations between Great Britain and Turkey. Across it is a terrible slash of the last war, when German intrigues and British and Turkish mistakes led to our being on opposite sides. We fought as brave and honourable opponents. But those days are done’.9
İnönü maintained Turkey’s neutrality during World War II until February 1945, when it sided with the Allies. It joined NATO in 1952, aligning itself with western powers. Some tensions remain between traditional Islamism and Atatürk’s legacy of western-oriented secularism.
3. Biographical summary
| Occupation | Army leader, statesman |
| Territory | Turkey |
| Career | Staff Major, Balkan War (1912). Staff Colonel, Gallipoli Wars (1915). Major-General (1917-23), including during Turkish War of Independence (1919-23). Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (1920-23). Prime Minister of the Government of the Grand National Assembly (May 1920-21). Leader of the Republican People’s Party (1923-38). President (1923-38). |
| Born | 1888 in Selanik, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki, Greece) (14 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | Mohammed Tahir al-Husseini (1842-1908), Qadi (Chief Justice) of Ali Rıza (1839-1888), border guard and customs official; died aged 49 when Atatürk was six or seven |
| Mother | Zübeyde Hanım (1856-1923), peasant’s daughter; married again after Ali Rıza died |
| Siblings | Younger of two sons: Fourth of six children (only Mustafa and sister Makbule survived to adulthood): – Fatma – Ömer – Ahmet – Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa (1888-1938) – Makbule (1885-1956); surname Atadan from 1934; married Mecdi Boysan, member of parliament; four adopted children – Naciye |
| Education | Military High School, Monastir; Ottoman Military Academy, İstanbul; Ottoman Military College, İstanbul |
| Spouse | Latife Uşşakî (1898-1975), m. 1923, div. 1925; law graduate from wealthy shipping family |
| Relationships | Was refused marriage to Dimitrina Kovacheva (Bulgarian) by her parents in 1914-15; Fikriye Hanım (1887-1924) in 1921-22, his personal assistant who died aged 36 from a gunshot wound |
| Children | Eight adopted daughters; one adopted son; one boy and one girl under his protection. Adopted daughter Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001), world’s first female fighter pilot. |
| Died | 1938 at the Dolmabahçe Palace in İstanbul, aged 57, from liver disease (27 years before Churchill) |
| Resting place | Sarcophagus at the Ethnography Museum of Ankara (1938-53) then moved to Anıtkabir mausoleum, Ankara |
| Nickname | ‘Kemal’ while at school (kept for life); ‘Father of the Turks’ (translation of Atatürk), his formal surname from 1934 |
| Height | ‘5’8½” (1.74 m) |
| Time magazine | Twice on front cover: 1923, 1927 |
4. See also
Arab nationalism (against Ottomans)
- Al-Gaylani, Rashid Ali
- Al-Husseini, Amin
- Lawrence, T.E.
Turkish role in World War I
- Aga Khan III
Turkish re-occupation of Smyrna
- Onassis, Aristotle
Churchill controversies
- Arab and Kurdish self-determination
- Dardanelles/Gallipoli
- Imperialism
- Middle East borders
- Warmongering
5. Further reading
Atatürk
- Kinross, Patrick, Atatürk (Orion, 2012)
- Macfie, Alexander Lyon, Atatürk (Taylor & Francis, 2014)
- Mango, Andrew, Atatürk (John Murray Press, 2011)
Gallipoli/Dardanelles
- Bell, Christopher M., Churchill and the Dardanelles (Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Gilbert, Martin, ‘What About the Dardanelles?’, The International Churchill Society, 2005 <https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-126/the-dardanelles-and-gallipoli/>
- Gough, Barry, Churchill and Fisher: The Titans at the Admiralty Who Fought the First World War (James Lorimer Limited, Publishers, 2017)
Turkey
- Salutas, Mehmet Ali, and William Charles Brice, ‘Churchill in Turkey, 1943’, International Churchill Society, 2005 <https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-126/churchill-in-turkey-1943/>
- Stone, Norman, Turkey: A Short History (Thames and Hudson Limited, 2013)
6. References
1 Christopher M. Bell, Churchill and the Dardanelles (Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 95.
2 Dardanelles Commission, ‘Dardenelles Commission Report: Conclusions’, National Archives, 1917.
3 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (Odhams Press limited, 1942), p. 139.
4 Clement Attlee, As It Happened (W. Heinemann, 1954), p. 60.
5 Paul Daley, ‘Ataturk’s “Johnnies and Mehmets” Words about the Anzacs Are Shrouded in Doubt’, Guardian, 2015.
6 The Turkish reoccupation of Smyrna resulted in the flight of the Onassis family as refugees: see Aristotle Onassis.
7 Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (Macmillan, 1942), p. 181.
8 Winston S. Churchill, Step by Step: Political Writings: 1936-1939 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), p. 238.
9 Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate, The Second World War (Houghton Mifflin, 1948), p. 709.