Atatürk's cult of personality in the context of "Atatürk"

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and statesperson who was the founder of the Republic of Turkey —after the fall of its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire— and served as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He led sweeping reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist, republican and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism. Atatürk's personality cult and the Kemalist historiography developed around it have had significant and ongoing influences on Turkey's political culture and historical narrative.

Born in Salonica in the Ottoman Empire, his early military career saw him involved in the Italo-Turkish and Balkan Wars. As a member of the Committee of Union and Progress and the Young Turks, he played an important part in political events of the late Ottoman Empire, such as the Young Turk Revolution and the 31 March Incident. He rose to prominence with his role in the Defence of Gallipoli during World War I. Following the defeat of the empire after the war, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted the empire's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing the provisional "Ankara government", he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from the Turkish War of Independence. During and after the war, the ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks from Anatolia outside of Istanbul, including the Kars region invaded by the Kemalist armies, was largely completed via large-scale massacres, flight, expulsions, and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. His government subsequently proceeded to abolish the Ottoman sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the Republic of Turkey in its place in 1923.

Kemalist historiography (Turkish: Kemalist tarihyazımı) is a narrative of history mainly based on a six-day speech delivered by Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk] in 1927, promoted by the political ideology of Kemalism, and influenced by Atatürk's cult of personality. It asserts that the Republic of Turkey represented a clean break with the Ottoman Empire, and that the Republican People's Party did not succeed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

Kemalist historiography views Ottoman traditions as an obstacle to the introduction of Westernising political reforms, and instead adopts the heritage of pre-Islamic Turks, which it considers to be naturally progressive, culturally pure and uncorrupted. The historiography magnifies Mustafa Kemal's role in the World War I and Turkish War of Independence, and omits or attempts to justify the suffering of religious and ethnic minorities during the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, often viewing them as a security threat to the state, or rebels instigated by external powers.