Politicians

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Founding president of the Republic of Turkey (1881-1938, president 1923-1938). As an Ottoman officer he repelled the Allies at Gallipoli in 1915, then led the Turkish War of Independence after the empire's collapse. In 1923 he proclaimed the republic and over the next decade abolished the sultanate and caliphate, replaced Arabic script with Latin letters, introduced a civil code modelled on Switzerland, granted women's suffrage in 1934, and was awarded the surname Atatürk ("Father of the Turks") by parliament. His record also includes the banning of the Progressive Republican Party in 1925 and the violent suppression of the 1937-38 Dersim Kurdish rebellion, recently acknowledged by the Turkish state as a massacre.

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