This is the house where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was born in 1881 and where he spent his youth. Called the father of Turks, Ataturk was the one who founded the Independent Republic of Turkey, becoming the first President and remaining so until his death in 1938. His father, Ali Riza Efendi, was a civil servant and later a timber merchant who died when Kemal Ataturk was 7 years old, and his mother was called Zübeyde. In Thessaloniki, Ataturk attended military school and continued his education in the Military Academy in Istanbul. After making his mark in the military, he launched a revolutionary campaign against Turkey’s minorities in 1919. In 1923, he established the Turkish Republic, transforming the country into a secular state, launching a program of modernization, and moving the capital to Ankara.