Republic of Turkey Founded

The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923, ending more than six centuries of Ottoman rule and creating a new nation-state under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk. Its founding mattered far beyond Anatolia: it was one of the most ambitious attempts of the twentieth century to remake a former imperial society along secular, national lines, and it became a model, and a point of debate, for reformers across the Middle East and beyond.

The background was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Defeat in the First World War left the empire occupied, and the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920 envisioned its dismemberment, with zones given to Allied powers and room for Armenian and Kurdish states. Mustafa Kemal, a decorated officer who had made his name at Gallipoli, rejected this settlement. From 1919 he organized a nationalist resistance based in Anatolia, and in 1920 a Grand National Assembly convened in Ankara as a rival authority to the sultan's government in Istanbul.

The nationalists fought the Turkish War of Independence against Greek, Armenian, and French forces, with Allied occupation hanging over the whole struggle. Victory over the Greek army in 1922 shifted the balance decisively. In November 1922 the Assembly abolished the sultanate, separating the sultan's political power from the caliphate, which for the moment remained. The Treaty of Lausanne, signed in July 1923, replaced Sèvres, recognized the borders of the new Turkey, and was accompanied by a compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey that uprooted well over a million people. On 29 October 1923 the Assembly formally declared a republic, with Mustafa Kemal as its first president.

Further changes followed quickly. The caliphate was abolished in 1924, ending the last formal Ottoman-era religious institution of that kind. Over the following years the government closed religious courts, adopted a civil code modeled on Swiss law, replaced the Arabic script with a Latin-based alphabet, and gave women the vote in the 1930s. In 1934 Mustafa Kemal was given the surname Atatürk, meaning "father of the Turks." These reforms were imposed by a one-party state that allowed little opposition, and critics note the costs borne by religious communities and minorities, including Kurds, whose cultural and political claims were suppressed.

The republic's legacy remains contested but profound. Kemalism's emphasis on secularism, nationalism, and modernization shaped Turkish institutions, education, and the military for generations. Debates over the role of religion, minority rights, and democracy in Turkey still draw on questions first settled, or left open, in 1923.