On November 10th, Turkey commemorated the 81st death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended a ceremony at Anitkabir, the mausoleum of Ataturk.
Millions of Turkish people across the country on Sunday started commemorations at 9.05 a.m. local time – sirens wailed to mark the exact moment of Ataturk’s demise at the age of 57 and millions of people across the country observed two minutes of silence.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who led the Turkish National War of Liberation, founded the modern Republic of Turkey and launched an extraordinary series of reforms that continue to inspire the Turkish nation. World-over, Ataturk is honored as one of the greatest national leaders of the 20th Century. In the words of Scottish historian, Patrick Balfour (the 3rd Baron Kinross): “the soldier in Ataturk had saved his country, the statesman in him had won for it the honorable peace, the reformer in him was now to make of it a new country.”
