

He was thereafter known as Mustafa Kemal. In 1893, he entered a military high school where his mathematics teacher gave him the second name Kemal (meaning perfection) in recognition of young Mustafa's superior achievement. First enrolled in a traditional religious school, he soon switched to a modern school. His mother Zubeyde, a devout and strong-willed woman, raised him and his sister. His father Ali Riza, a customs official turned lumber merchant, died when Mustafa was still a boy. In 1915, when Dardanelles campai Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was born in 1881 (probably in the spring) in Salonica, then an Ottoman city, now in Greece.

In 1905, Mustafa Kemal graduated from the War Academy in Istanbul with the rank of Staff Captain.

Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was born in 1881 (probably in the spring) in Salonica, then an Ottoman city, now in Greece.
