Turkish Land Forces

Atatürk, Founder of the Turkish Republic | Early History of Modern Turkey | Biography Documentary

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• published: 08 Jun 2013
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►My channel: http://youtube.com/TheBestFilmArchives ►SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/TheBestFilmArchives?sub_confirmation=1 ►Google+: http://plus.google.com/+TheBestFilmArchives ►Facebook: http://facebook.com/TheBestFilmArchives ►Twitter: http://twitter.com/BestFilmArch This documentary is a filmed biography of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), an Ottoman-Turkish army officer who later became the first President of Turkey. The film shows his efforts to establish and modernize the Turkish Republic. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 by the Turkish parliament. Historical background and Atatürk’s career: Atatürk was born around 1881 in the city of Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece), which at that time was part of the Ottoman Empire. His family was middle-class, and Turkish-speaking. Though he claimed to be descended from Turkish nomads, he had blue eyes and fair hair, therefore some historians believe he was at least partly of Balkan ancestry. During World War I (1914-1918), the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany and Austria-Hungary. By this time, the aging empire had lost almost all of its territory in Europe and Africa. Moreover, the so-called Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had stripped autocratic powers from the sultan and ushered in an era of parliamentary government. In 1915 Mustafa Kemal distinguished himself throughout the nearly yearlong Gallipoli Peninsula campaign, in which he helped stop a large force of British and French troops from taking Istanbul. He was soon promoted from colonel to brigadier-general. Under the punitive peace treaty of Sèvres signed in August 1920, the Allied powers stripped all Arab provinces from the Ottoman Empire, provided for an independent Armenia, put the Greeks in charge of a region surrounding Smyrna (now Izmir) and asserted economic control over what little country remained. However, Mustafa Kemal had already organized an independence - national movement based in Ankara, the goal of which was to end foreign occupation of the Turkish-speaking areas and to stop them from being partitioned. In 1921, with Mustafa Kemal at the head of the army, turkish troops forced the French and Italians to withdraw from the south. Then the Turks stopped the Greek advance near Sakarya, and sent them into a full-scale retreat all the way back to Smyrna on the Mediterranean Sea. After these victories, Mustafa Kemal was ready to march against Istanbul, which was being occupied by the British and other Allied powers. Therefore, the British agreed to negotiate a new peace treaty and sent invitations to both the sultan’s government in Istanbul and Mustafa Kemal’s government in Ankara. But before the peace conference could begin, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara passed a resolution declaring that the sultan’s rule had already ended. The last Ottoman sultan fled his palace. A new peace treaty, the Treaty of Lausanne, was then signed in July 1923 that recognized an independent Turkish state. That October, the Grand National Assembly proclaimed the Republic of Turkey and elected Mustafa Kemal as its first president. As a president, Atatürk launched a programme of revolutionary social and political reform to modernise Turkey (Turkish: Atatürk Devrimleri). These reforms included the emancipation of women, secularization and the introduction of Western legal codes, dress, calendar and alphabet, replacing the Arabic script with a Latin one. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory. The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism Atatürkism (Turkish: Kemalizm, Atatürkçülük, Atatürkçü düşünce). Abroad Atatürk pursued a policy of neutrality, establishing friendly relations with Turkey's neighbors. On November 10, 1938, Atatürk, who never had any children, died in his bedroom at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. He was replaced by İsmet İnönü, prime minister during most of Atatürk’s rule, who continued his policies of secularization and westernization. Atatürk, Founder of the Turkish Republic | Early History of Modern Turkey | Biography Documentary