Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Farhad Daftary, The Ismailis: Their 

History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1990); Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A 

Radical Sect in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1967).

Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal

 

(1881–1938)  

founder and first president of the modern  

Republic of Turkey

Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonica, then part 

of the Ottoman Empire. He attended military 

schools in the Balkans, where Greek and Slavic 

nationalist movements were active, and went 

on to graduate from the military academy in 

i

stanbUl

, the Ottoman capital. During his early 

military appointments, he worked to organize 

opposition to the despotism of the Ottoman 

sUltan

 Abdulhamid, though he was not directly 

involved in the Young Turk revolution of 1908. 

He gained military fame as commander of the 

Turkish troops that repelled the invasion of Allied 

forces at Gallipoli in 1915.

Dissatisfied with the Ottoman regime’s compli-

ance with the British, who occupied Istanbul after 

K  68