Leaders and the public took to the streets for commemoration ceremonies on Sunday on the 86th anniversary of republic founder and first President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s death.
The place of Atatürk, or “father of the Turks,” remains firmly in the hearts of millions in Türkiye who joined ceremonies and visited the final resting place of the leader, who died at the relatively young age of 57.
The Republic of Türkiye, the foundation of the modern country, remains Atatürk’s most important legacy. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, one of the longest-serving leaders of the country after Atatürk, highlighted this in a commemorative speech. He said the unity of the nation seen in Atatürk’s times should be maintained so that Türkiye can advance in the economy and other fields and crush the dreams of imperialists using terrorist groups as their puppets to harm the country.
Erdoğan addressed a ceremony for the late leader at the Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, a combination of associations originally founded by Atatürk, before a scheduled meeting of his Cabinet at Çankaya, the first presidential complex of the republic.
In his speech, the president complained about both those who excessively idolized Atatürk and those who completely ignored the first president. “Every action attempting to harm the unity of this nation is a betrayal to Atatürk’s legacy,” Erdoğan said. “This nation suffered a lot in the hands of 'wardrobe Atatürkists' and now we see how much damage social media Atatürkists are doing, equal to the level of damage by sworn enemies of Türkiye,” he said. He was referring to groups idolizing Atatürk only through his image. “Atatürkist” or “Kemalist” is a term most embraced by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the current main opposition party, which fell from public favor with its unpopular politics, unlike in its first years when it was founded as the Republic’s first political party by Atatürk.
Erdoğan did not name names but pointed out that those exploiting Atatürk’s name have reached a level where they even “aligned with terrorist groups and their extensions.” He was apparently referring to CHP’s support of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a party associated with the terrorist group PKK. “We won’t leave either Ghazi or the Republic to them,” he said, using a name meaning “Veteran” for the late leader who fought multiple wars.
“Regardless of its purpose, any word, any stance, any action aimed at the nation’s unity and togetherness is a betrayal of Ghazi Mustafa Kemal’s legacy. As those who put their own interests before the country’s interests are exposed, our youth will adhere more to the republic,” Erdoğan continued.
The president said that the nation struggled against sinister plots in every era and paid a price for the “lack of vision of one-party fascism that prevented the country’s development,” in reference to a period between Atatürk’s death and the first multiparty elections in 1950. “If Ghazi lived at least another decade and ruled the country, we’d see another Türkiye in the aftermath of World War II. We missed this opportunity and weak coalition governments and insufficient bureaucratic cadres pushed our country further behind (amid developing nations). The country faced numerous attacks and we faced everything from political engineering to sabotage. We overcame them with the support of our nation. We see global crises and instances of frailty in our own inner dynamics and economic crises make some people excited as they think we will fail. Let them know that we will overcome these challenges with the measures we have taken,” he said.
Terrorism is one of the major problems for Türkiye. Erdoğan said they are about to complete a new phase of security measures and will soon cut the corridor from abroad to Türkiye for terrorists. The PKK uses northern regions of neighboring Iraq and Syria as a launchpad for attacks on Türkiye. Turkish security forces constantly carry out operations there to drive away terrorists from border areas.
“We will spoil the plot of terrorism by puppets,” Erdoğan, who often refers to the PKK as a puppet of foreign circles seeking to divide Türkiye, said, adding, “We will reinforce the bonds between the state and nation. We will continue our operations but also employ opportunities at hand to resolve this issue.”
Erdoğan has termed a call for the PKK to lay down arms by his nationalist ally Devlet Bahçeli as a historic window of opportunity. “Segments of our society were tricked into enmity against each other at times. Imperialists used to win this game but we ended this,” Erdoğan said.
The PKK exploits the country’s once-underprivileged Kurdish community to advance its own agenda, drawing recruits from the community with the promise of establishing a so-called Kurdish state within the borders of Türkiye. “Some people miss the old days when Türkiye was guided by imperialists but they won’t succeed this time. They tried it several times through republic rallies, Gezi and traitors from the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) but failed. They will fail again,” he said.
Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the president himself were targets of so-called “republic rallies” in the early years of the AK Party in the early 2000s and in 2013, and Erdoğan found himself the target of Gezi Park protests in Istanbul that escalated into anti-government riots incited by terrorist groups. In 2016, FETÖ tried its hand to topple the government, through its infiltrators in the army, only to fail because of a strong public resistance to the putschists.
At the heart of commemorations was the mausoleum of Atatürk in the capital Ankara. Erdoğan, dignitaries and a large crowd headed to Anıtkabir as it is known in Turkish, early in the morning to pay their respects to the late leader who transformed a country left over by a collapsed empire. In Istanbul, people of all ages and from all walks of life filled Dolmabahçe Palace where Atatürk spent his last days and died.
At 9:05 a.m. local time, the time of his death, life came to a standstill across the country as people observed the tradition of a one-minute silence in memory of Atatürk, preceded by the playing of sirens. In big cities like Istanbul, early morning traffic stopped as drivers got out of their cars to join pedestrians observing moments of silence. At schools, students donning black shirts and clothes recited poems and sang songs in solemn remembrance ceremonies.
As he left wreaths at his grave, President Erdoğan wrote in the memorial book of Anıtkabir that they remembered “His Excellency” and spared no effort to glorify and strengthen the Republic of Türkiye as well as the founder's “legacy and the legacy of martyrs, in every area.” “We will advance Türkiye despite the crises in our region. We will neither stop nor rest until we build a Türkiye, where peace, calm, justice, development and brotherhood prevail everywhere,” Erdoğan wrote.
In Istanbul, amid chilly and rainy weather, people lined up to visit the room where Atatürk died in Dolmabahçe Palace. Crowds left flowers on the late leader’s deathbed covered with a Turkish flag, while honor guards observed the duty of respect at the bedside. “It is an emotional day. I brought my child here so he can feel the love of Atatürk,” Yusuf Pınar, one of the visitors, told the Anadolu Agency (AA).
“I am sad because it is his day of death but I am happy because I am visiting his room,” 6-year-old Elif Şen, who accompanied her mother to the room, said.
“Our love for him never ceases. I can’t spend this day resting. So, I came here,” Suat Oba, who brought his wife and son to the visit, said.
Atatürk was born as Mustafa in 1881, in Thessaloniki of modern-day Greece. The son of a clerk and a housewife, he decided to pursue a military career, voluntarily leaving a high school training public administrators for a military school. It was there he was given his second name, Kemal, by a teacher, as a praise of his maturity among peers. After stints in two military schools in the Balkans, Mustafa Kemal graduated from a prestigious military school as a lieutenant in 1902 in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In 1905, he rose to the rank of staff captain after completing another military school.
Then began a military career for Atatürk, less than a decade before the outbreak of World War I. He served in Syria first as a member of the Fifth Army. In 1907, he was appointed to a military headquarters in Macedonia, in Monastir (present-day Bitola), the same city where he attended a military school in his formative years. After stints in Macedonia and his hometown, he traveled extensively, to Istanbul and the Balkans where he played roles in suppressing a rebellion in Albania and in 1909, an uprising in Istanbul. He spent his next years on various fronts from Tobruk to the Balkan Wars where he joined troops fighting Italian and Bulgarian forces.
Always unsatisfied with a desk job, Mustafa Kemal sought a military post at the front when World War I began, at a time he was serving as a military attache in Sofia, Bulgaria. Finally, his appeal to his superiors was answered and he was appointed to the command of a new military unit stationed in the northwestern province of Tekirdağ. Soon, he saw the action in Çanakkale, the heart of the famous Gallipoli campaign of the Allies during World War I. His success as a commander in staving off occupying forces endeared him to the public as the “Hero of Anafartalar,” the front he defended. It was during his time that Atatürk had his first brush with death. A pocket watch on his chest pocket saved his life when shrapnel hit him.
He rose to the rank of general for his heroics on the eastern front where he reclaimed two Turkish provinces back from Russian attacks in 1916. Tenures in other fronts including Palestine followed while his name became well-known in the army as well as in the Ottoman court. After a meeting with Sultan Vahdettin in British-occupied Istanbul, he left for Anatolia as an “army inspector.” This was only a disguise for his real mission, to save the remnants of the empire from enemy occupation. Thus, he began charting the country’s way to independence when he arrived at his first stopover, Samsun in northern Türkiye, on May 19, 1919, a turning point in Turkish history. A beloved figure, he quickly found support among fellow commanders in Anatolia and growing public support. In the same year, he announced his resignation from the army, effectively beginning his quest to save Türkiye from an assorted mix of invaders from Europe. Through several conventions in Anatolian cities, Atatürk rallied the public against the invaders and helped shape the first Parliament of this new Türkiye he intended to create. In 1920, the Turkish Grand National Assembly was officiated and he was elected president of the Ankara-based government, which was not recognized by the world yet.
This government and its actions paved the way for a nationwide War of Independence and the eventual foundation of the Republic of Türkiye in 1923. After the war and the declaration of the republic, he was elected as its first president. He was elected four times in succession to this office until his death.
Mustafa Kemal came close to death again in 1926 when an assassination attempt in the western city of Izmir was foiled. However, his past spent on battlefields, and his smoking and drinking habits started taking a toll on his life. Mustafa Kemal, who was given the last name Atatürk in 1934 under a surname law, was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver in his latter years and was confined to Dolmabahçe Palace shortly before his death there. “Peace be unto you” was reportedly his last words.
Today, he is forever etched in public memory as his name adorns everywhere from schools to streets while his portraits are ubiquitous. His legacy is most visible in the foundation of a new Türkiye from the fragments of a collapsed empire, not an easy feat for a nation tired of wars in the last decades of the empire. Türkiye, indeed, became “new” with his efforts to modernize the country with little resources after World War I almost exhausted them. Atatürk is also viewed as a revolutionary for forever changing the country’s face by abolishing the Caliphate, introducing a new alphabet and groundbreaking education reforms that trained future generations for further modernization of the country. Kind and hawkish at times in diplomacy, Atatürk also raised the country’s profile as a power to reckon with even after two major wars it fought.
After his death, Atatürk’s corpse was dispatched to Ankara in line with his will where he wished to be buried in the capital. It was transferred to a temporary resting place on Nov. 21, 1938, and remained there until 1953 until the completion of Anıtkabir.
