The Grand National Assembly in Ankara formally declared Turkey a republic, abolishing the last vestiges of the Ottoman sultanate and electing revolutionary general Mustafa Kemal, later given the surname Atatürk, as its first president. The declaration followed the Turkish War of Independence and launched sweeping secular reforms—new alphabet, legal codes, and dress—that transformed a fallen empire into a modern nation-state.
Only a year earlier, Ottoman sultans had ruled for over 600 years from Istanbul, presiding over an empire that once stretched from Vienna's gates to the Persian Gulf. Mustafa Kemal, a decorated general who had defended Gallipoli against Allied forces in 1915, led nationalist forces to victory in a brutal war of independence against occupying Greek, British, French, and Italian troops after World War One.
With the sultanate already abolished a year prior and the last sultan, Mehmed VI, fleeing into exile aboard a British warship, Kemal maneuvered the National Assembly toward a full republican declaration. The vote passed unanimously in a single dramatic evening session, and cannons fired 101 times across Ankara to mark the moment.
Atatürk moved with startling speed afterward, abolishing the caliphate months later, replacing Arabic script with a Latin alphabet, granting women the vote, and banning the fez. He ruled until his death in 1938, and his image, principles, and secular vision remain fiercely debated and revered in Turkish politics to this day.