Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Turkish field marshal, statesman, and the founder and first President of the Republic of Turkey from October 1923 until his November 1938 death. He was born Mustafa on May 19, 1881, in Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece), then part of the Ottoman Empire. He attended Salonica Military Academy and the Ottoman Military College in Constantinople (now Istanbul) — graduating in 1905. The stage name addition "Kemal" was given to him by his Salonica mathematics teacher and meant "perfection" or "maturity."

His Ottoman military career through the 1900s and 1910s included service in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, the 1911–1912 Italo-Turkish War, the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars, and most-iconically the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli — during which he commanded the 19th Division and shaped the Ottoman defensive victory against the Allied amphibious invasion. His Gallipoli leadership made him one of the Ottoman military heroes of World War I.

His 1919–1923 Turkish War of Independence — fought against the Allied occupation of Anatolia and the Greek occupation of western Anatolia following World War I — produced the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne and the October 29, 1923 declaration of the Republic of Turkey. He was elected as the first President of Turkey on October 29, 1923, at age 42, and held the position continuously until his 1938 death.

His 15-year presidency produced the substantial transformation of Turkey from a religiously-observant Ottoman successor state to a secular modern nation-state. His reforms included the 1928 abolition of the Arabic-script-based Ottoman Turkish alphabet (replaced by the Latin-script-based modern Turkish alphabet), the 1934 abolition of religious-honorific titles (and the adoption of the surname "Atatürk" meaning "Father of the Turks"), the 1934 women's right to vote, and the substantial separation of religion and state. He died on November 10, 1938, at age 57, in Istanbul, of liver cirrhosis.

His name Mustafa is from the Arabic Muṣṭafā meaning "the chosen one" — referring to one of the names of the Prophet Muhammad. Mustafa has been continuously climbing in American naming since the 2000s.