Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, c. 1916 © Atatürk was a Turkish nationalist leader and founder and first president of the republic of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born in 1881 in Salonika (now Thessaloniki) in what was then the Ottoman Empire. His father was a minor official and later a timber merchant.