Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Great PeopleA Nation Written Off
In 1919, much of the world had already declared the Turks finished. A six-hundred-year empire lay defeated after the First World War, and enemy warships filled the waters of its own capital. On 16 March 1920, Istanbul itself came under formal occupation. To outside observers, the story looked over before it began.
The Treaty of Sèvres
On 10 August 1920, the victorious powers imposed the Treaty of Sèvres, a plan that carved the homeland into zones for foreign powers and left only a small scrap in the middle. It was less a defeat than an attempted erasure of the country from the map. This treaty became the impossible starting point that everything afterward would have to overturn.
The Man Who Refused to Stay Down
One man refused to accept that verdict: Mustafa Kemal. Four years earlier, at Gallipoli in 1915, he had been a decisive commander who helped stop the advance of the British Empire and its allies. On 19 May 1919 he landed at Samsun on the Anatolian coast and called a broken people to rise. For this, his own government branded him a traitor and sentenced him to death in absentia in 1920, but he never turned back.
An Army From Nothing
There was no ready army, so one had to be built from farmers, from ruins, and from sheer will. Against this new force stood the Allied-backed Greek army, pushed deep inside Anatolia. The War of Independence ground on from 1919 to 1922 through three years of hardship, hunger, and endurance, with no surrender.
The Great Offensive and Victory
In August 1922, Mustafa Kemal launched the counterattack known as the Great Offensive. In roughly two weeks his forces drove the opposing army some four hundred kilometers back to the coast, and İzmir was retaken on 9 September 1922. When he then stood firm against the British at the Chanak crisis, Britain backed down without a single shot being fired, and the fallout helped bring down British Prime Minister Lloyd George in October 1922.
Rewriting the Peace and Founding a Republic
On 24 July 1923, after eight months of hard bargaining at Lausanne led by İsmet İnönü, Mustafa Kemal's government replaced the imposed Treaty of Sèvres with a negotiated one — making Türkiye the only nation defeated in the First World War to overturn its dictated peace, and to do it with its army victorious. On 29 October 1923 he founded the Republic of Türkiye. He kept going: in 1934 Turkish women won the vote, a decade before France (1944) and Italy (1945). President John F. Kennedy in 1963 called him one of the great men of the century, and his own guiding principle was 'Peace at home, peace in the world.'
Key Dates to Remember
- 1915 — At Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal helped stop the British and Allied advance as a decisive commander.
- 19 May 1919 — He landed at Samsun, beginning the national struggle.
- 10 August 1920 — The Treaty of Sèvres was signed, partitioning the homeland among foreign powers.
- August 1922 — The Great Offensive began, turning the war.
- 9 September 1922 — İzmir was retaken after the enemy army was driven back to the coast.
- 24 July 1923 — The Treaty of Lausanne replaced Sèvres, winning back sovereignty.
- 29 October 1923 — The Republic of Türkiye was proclaimed.
- 1934 — Turkish women won the right to vote, before France and Italy.