Famous faces of Macedonia
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Mustafa Kemal AtatГјrk (1881-10 November 1938), until 1934 Mustafa Kemal, Turkish army officer and revolutionist statesman, was the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey. Kemal promptly established himself as a succesful military commander as he led Turkish troops to victory during the the Battle of Gallipoli. Following the Ottoman Empires defeat at the hands of the Allies, and subsequent plans for its partition, Kemal led a nationalist movement in what would become the Turkish War of Independence. His successful campaigns led to the liberation of the country and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. As the Republic's first president, Kemal introduced a range of far reaching reforms which sought to create a modern and democratic state. According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish Grand Assembly presented Kemal with the name "AtatГјrk" (meaning Father of the Turks) on 24 November 1934.
Early Life
ATATURK was born in the city of Thessalonica (Turkish: Selanik) in Macedonia (Northern Greece; part of Ottoman Empire of that day), where his birthplace is commemorated by a museum at the present day Turkish Consulate. In accordance with the then prevalent Turkish custom, he was given the single name Mustafa. His father, Ali Riza Bey, was a customs officer who died when Mustafa was seven. As such, it was left to his mother Zubeyde Hanim to bring the young Mustafa up.
Mustafa studied at the military secondary school in Selanik, where the additional name Kemal ("perfection") was bestowed on him by his mathematics teacher in recognition of his academic brilliance. Mustafa Kemal entered the military academy at Manastir (now Bitola) in 1895. He graduated as a lieutenant in 1905 and was posted to Damascus. In Damascus, he soon joined a small secret revolutionary society of reform-minded officers called Vatan ve Hurriyet (Motherland and Liberty), and became an active opponent of the Ottoman regime. In 1907 he was posted to Selanik and joined the Committee of Union and Progress commonly known as the Young Turks.
The Young Turks seized power from the Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908, and Mustafa Kemal became a senior military figure. In 1911, he went to the province of Libya to take part in the defence against the Italian invasion. During the first part of the Balkan Wars Mustafa Kemal was stranded in Libya and unable to take part, but in July 1913 he returned to Istanbul and was appointed commander of the Ottoman defences of the Gallipoli area on the coast of Thrace. In 1914 he was appointed military attache in Sofia, partly to remove him from the capital and its political intrigues.
Women's rights
With abiding faith in the vital importance of women in society, AtatР“СВВrk launched many reforms to give Turkish women equal rights and opportunities. The new Civil Code, adopted in 1927, abolished polygamy and recognized the equal rights of women in divorce, custody, and inheritance. The entire educational system from the grade school to the university became coeducational. AtatР“СВВrk greatly admired the support that the national liberation struggle received from women and praised their many contributions: "In Turkish society, women have not lagged behind men in science, scholarship, and culture. Perhaps they have even gone further ahead." He gave women the same opportunities as men, including full political rights. In the mid-1930s, 18 women, among them a villager, were elected to the national parliament. Later, Turkey had the world's first female Supreme Court justice.
Culture and the Arts
AtatР“СВВrk once stated: "Culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic." His view of culture included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the more admirable values of world civilization, and he put an emphasis on humanism above all. He once described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal."
So as to assist in the creation of such a synthesis, AtatР“СВВrk stressed the need to utilize the elements of the national heritage of the Turks and of AnatoliaРІЂ”including its ancient indigenous culturesРІЂ”as well as the arts and techniques of other world civilizations, both past and present. He emphasized the study of earlier Anatolian civilizations, such as the Hittites, Phrygians, and Lydians. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon the fact thatРІЂ”long before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizationsРІЂ”the Turks had had a rich culture. AtatР“СВВrk also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
The visual and the plastic artsРІЂ”whose development had on occasion been arrested by some Ottoman officials claiming that the depiction of the human form was idolatryРІЂ”flourished during the presidency of AtatР“СВВrk. Many museums were opened; architecture began to follow more modern trends; and classical Western music, opera, and ballet, as well as the theatre, also took greater hold. Several hundred "People's Houses" and "People's Rooms" across the country allowed greater access to a wide variety of artistic activities, sports, and other cultural events. Book and magazine publications increased as well, and the film industry began to grow.
The Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, also called the War in Asia Minor, and (in Turkey) a part of the Turkish War of Independence, was a war between Greece and Turkey fought in the wake of World War I.
The war arose because the western Allies, particularly British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had promised Greece territorial gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire if Greece entered the war on the Allied side. These included eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros and Tenedos, and parts of western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (current day Р ”Р’В°zmir), all of which having by clear majority Greek populations.
The 1920 Treaty of SР “Р Рѓvres, which ended the First World War in Asia Minor and divided the Ottoman Empire, assigned all these territories to Greece. Greek troops had already occupied Smyrna and the surroundings in May 1919 under cover of French, British and American ships. Meanwhile the former Ottoman general Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal AtatР “РЎВrk) had formed a new Turkish nationalist government at Ankara on April 23, 1920, which repudiated the Treaty of SР “Р Рѓvres and prepared for war against the Greeks.
In October 1920, with the encouragement of Lloyd George who intended to increase the pressure on the Turkish and Ottoman governments to sign the Treaty of SevrР “Р Рѓs, the Greek army advanced east into Anatolia with the intention of defeating the Kemalist forces before they were ready to attack the Greek perimeter at Smyrna. This advancement was begun under the Liberal government of Eleftherios Venizelos, but soon after the offensive began Venizelos fell from power and was replaced by Dimitrios Gounaris, who appointed inexperienced monarchist officers to senior commands. King Constantine took personal command of the army at Smyrna.
After a Greek defeat on January 11, 1921, allied states proposed to amend the Treaty of SevrР “Р Рѓs at a conference in London where both Turkish and Ottoman governments were represented. Although some agreements were reached with Italy, France and Britain, the decisions were defied by the Greeks who initiated another attack on March 27 (Battle of Inonu II), to be resisted and finally defeated by the Kemalist troops on March 30. The unpredictable death of King Alexander due to a monkey bite, and his subsequent replacement by the former King Constantine, who was generally reviled by the British for his pro-German stance in WWI, caused Secretary of War Winston Churchill to withdraw British support to the Greeks.
In June 1921 the strengthened Greek army advanced to the River Sakarya, less than 100 km (62 miles) west of Ankara. Meanwhile, the Turkish government at Ankara appointed Mustafa Kemal as the commander in chief. In August, Kemal counter-attacked, routing the Greeks and cutting off their supply lines at the Battle of the Sakarya (August 23 – September 13, 1921). The Greeks retreated in good order and still hoped to defend their base at Smyrna. They appealed to the Allies for help, but early in 1922 Britain, France and Italy decided that the Treaty of SР “Р Рѓvres could not be enforced and should be revised. Parallel to their decision, with successive treaties, Italian and French troops evacuated their positions.
In March 1922 the Allies proposed a ceasefire, but Kemal answered there could be no settlement while the Greeks remained in Anatolia. In August, after preparations on both sides, the Turks launched a new offensive on August 26, defeating the Greeks at the Battle of Dumlupinar near Afyon (August 30, 1922, celebrated as the Victory Day and a national holiday in Turkey). Shortly after their victory, the Turks captured Smyrna (now Izmir) (September 9).
With the borders secured with treaties and agreements at east and south, Kemal was now in a commanding position. The Turks were then able to insist that unconditionally, the Greeks evacuate East Thrace, Imbros and Tenedos as well as Asia Minor, and the Evros (Maritza) River to be set as the border at Thrace at its pre-1914 position. The majority of the ethnic Greek population of Asia Minor had already fled or been expelled to Greece. Greeks call this the "Great Catastrophe".
France, Italy and Britain called Mustafa Kemal to Venice for cease-fire negotiations. In return, Mustafa Kemal demanded negotiations be started at Moudania (Mudanya) on condition that east Thrace be ceded to Turks immediately. Negotiations at Mudanya began on October 3, with the Turkish delegation lead by Ismet Inonu, and the Greeks represented by the Allies. When the British resisted, at Р “‡anakkale on the Dardanelles (the Chanak Affair), Kemal dared Britain to enforce the terms of the Treaty of SР “Р Рѓvres, but Lloyd George backed down. The Mudanya Armistice was concluded on October 11, 1922, with the Allies keeping east Thrace and the Bosporus under occupation, but the Greeks evacuating these areas. The agreement came into force starting October 15, one day after the Greek side agreed to sign it.
At the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923) which concluded the Greco-Turkish War, Greece's withdrawal from Anatolia and East Thrace was formalised. For reparations of the damage caused by the Greek occupation in western Anatolia, Karaagac (a bridgehead in Edirne) was left to Turkey as well (Article 59). To ensure lasting peace, Greece was restricted at some Aegean islands from keeping military forces, similar to Turkey at the straits. In addition, the Italians kept the Dodecanese Islands, which they had acquired from the Ottomans in 1912. There was little to stop Ataturk from claiming western Thrace, which had a large Turkish population, as well. He did not do so because this area was lost by the Ottomans before the First World War, and this was defined by international agreements. All non-Muslim Turkish subjects were ensured by the treaty to enjoy equal legal, civil and political rights as Muslims. It was also agreed that all disputes regarding the property and possessions of Turkey and Greece would be in the future settled by an arbitral tribunal at The Hague.
One of the most important social consequences of the Treaty of Lausanne was the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. More than 1,500,000 Greeks from Anatolia were transfered to Greece, and about 500,000 Turks moved in the opposite direction. The Greeks of Istanbul and the Turks of western Thrace were exempted from this transfer.
According to Greek historians, the exchange saw the abandonment of areas where Greeks have lived since ancient times, such as Ionia and Pontus. Ionia was colonized by Greeks 3,000 years ago during pre-Classical times, and Pontus soon after. Ionia was the center of major Greek scientific advances during the Classical period, such as the discovery of smelting. Trebizond in Pontus was an imporant Byzantine center, and at the time of the population exchange the Pontian Greeks spoke a dialect closer to Classical Greek than Modern Greek.
Greeks sometimes refer to these events as a holocaust or a genocide, and although hundreds of thousands of Greeks were killed in the course of the transfers, it has been claimed that the great majority of Anatolian Greeks escaped with their lives, if little else.
Others maintain that there is no 'invisible wall' on the borders of Greece and Turkey. Greeks wishing to return to the areas where they have lived since ancient times, are free to do so. Many insist that hundreds of thousands of Greeks were not killed either, in addition to killings of Turks during the course of the transfers not being mentioned.
Another result was a violent political reaction in Greece. Military officers seized power in Athens and forced King Constantine to abdicate (see History of Modern Greece). General Hadjianesti, Prime Minister Gounaris, Minister for Foreign Affairs Baltadjes, Minister of War Theotokis, Minister of the Interior Stratos and Minister of Finance Protopapadakis were tried for treason and executed on November 15th, 1922 at Goudi. The bitterness engendered by these events lingered in Greek politics for many years.
The war made both Greece and Turkey more ethnically homogenous and reduced (but did not eliminate) the areas of conflict between the two countries. It also ended the Greek dream of recreating an enlarged state with Istanbul (Greeks still use the name Constantinople) as its capital (the Great Idea or Megali Idea) and encouraged Greek politicians to concentrate on domestic issues.
Gelibolu (Gallipoli)
He was later promoted to the rank of colonel and assigned the command of a division in the Gallipoli (Turkish: "Gelibolu") area. He played a critical role in the battle against the allied British, French and ANZAC forces during the Battle of Gallipoli in April 1915, where he held off allied forces at ConkbayД±rД± and on the Anafarta hills. For this success, he was later promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, thus acquiring the title of pasha and gained increasingly greater degrees of influence on the war effort.
Kemal gained much respect from his former enemies for his chivalry in victory, the Kemal AtatГјrk Memorial has an honoured place on ANZAC Parade in Canberra. It includes his words:
- "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now living in our lands and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
