Historical statespeople
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Founder and first president of the Republic of Türkiye.
The Turkish encyclopedia
Historical statespeople
The figures who shaped the Turkish republic, from its founding through the late twentieth century, told plainly and with sources on every page.
4 pages in this category.
Historical statespeople
İsmet İnönü
Türkiye’s second president and a former prime minister.
Historical statespeople
Adnan Menderes
Prime minister for the whole of the 1950s, the first elected from opposition.
Historical statespeople
Turgut Özal
The prime minister and president who opened the economy in the 1980s.
Questions
Who was Atatürk?
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk led the national movement during the war of independence, became the republic's first president in 1923, and drove the reforms that followed, including the change to the Latin alphabet in 1928.
Why is Turkish written in Latin letters?
Because of the alphabet reform of 1928, which replaced the Ottoman Turkish script with a Latin alphabet fitted to Turkish sounds. It is why the language is so close to phonetic today, and why learners can read a word correctly on sight.
Are these pages taking a political side?
No. They stay with dates, offices and events, each one attributed to a published source, and they stop well short of present-day politics. This is a reference for language learners, not a commentary.