Mustafa is very happy. He is feeling happy because he has got into military school. He is very good mathematics. He often helps the other boys to solve the other boys to solve their problems.
After three months, Mustafa passes his first uniform.
The uniform is dark blue. The jacket has shiny gold buttons. There are three green ribbons on its sleeve. Each ribbon shows a class year. He is wearing a fez with a black tassel on it. Mustafa looks handsome in his uniform. He is slim and athletic.
He has gone to visit his mother. He wants to show his uniform to his mother and his sister. They think he is very handsome.
Zübeyde hanım is crying because she is so happy. “I am proud of you, my son. I am sure Allah is going to help you serve your country.” He tells them about school.
Mustafa is very successful at the military school. He is good in class. He wanted to know about everything and always asks important questions, so of course his teachers are very pleased with him.
Mustafa works hard because he wants to be top of the class. One day he is having a maths lesson. His maths teacher, Captain Mustafa calls him to his desk. “Look, my son, we are booting called Mustafa,” he says. “You must have another name. Plain ‘Mustafa’ is not enough. So, “the Captain goes on, “I am going to give you a second name. From now on you will be called Mustafa Kemal. Remember ‘Kemal ‘means perfect! Bo a good boy, like your name.”
It is afternoon and Mustafa has arrived home. “Mother, what do you think has happened?” he says. “I have got a new name!”
“What is wrong with Mustafa?” she asks. “Your father chose that name for you. Why do you have change it?”
“But I am not change it, mother,” he answers. “I am not putting another one after it because I do a problems well class. Our math teacher, captain Mustafa, says one name is not enough for me. So has given me another one. Form now on I am going to be called’ Mustafa Kemal’.”
“Well, “Zübeyde hanım says, “I am going to be a paşa. I am going to be Mustafa Kemal Paşa. I am going to serve my country and you are going to be proud of me.”
Mustafa has finished at the Salonika military school and now he is going to military high school in Monastır (now Bitola). It is 1895 and Mustafa is fourteen. He has a friend called Ömer. Ömer likes to read books. Mustafa usually reads maths books. Ömer, however, prefers novels and poetry books.
Ömer often comes to Mustafa2s room. “I don’t like your books,” he says. “They don’t look very interesting.”
“Oh really!” Mustafa Kemal says. “What’ wrong with them, then?”
“They are boring! Why don’t you read story books and poetry books?”
Mustafa Kemal takes Ömer’s advice. Literature is a new world for him. He likes the poetry of Namık Kemal best. He sees that Namık Kemal loves his country and wants it to have political freedom. Mustafa Kemal is going to think about these ideas for a long time.
Later, in 1919, Mustafa Kemal is going to say this:
“Namık Kemal said, ‘the enemy has put his knife into the heart our land. There is nobody to save our unlucky mother.’ But I say, ‘the enemy has put his knife into the heart of our land. Yes! Somebody is going to save our unlucky mother!”
Mustafa Kemal to write poetry, too. His maths teacher has found out about this new interest. “Look here, my boy,” the teacher says. “You are spending too much time on your poetry. You mustn’t spend so much time on it, or you won’t be a good soldier.”
“Yes sir,” Mustafa Kemal answers, “but I like to write poetry. It helps me.”
“Perhaps,” the teacher says, “but you must study other subject now.
Don’t worry, there will be enough time for poetry, too”
Mustafa Kemal thinks, “My may be right. I won’t write any more poetry for a while.”
He still reads a lot, however. He talks about books with another close friend, Ali Fethi.
Mustafa is ill. He has got malaria. Zübeyde hanım has got heard about her son’s illness. She has just arrived at the school. Now she wants to see the school doctor, Dr. Muhsin Bey. “Doctor,” she says,” my boy very healthy. Just look at him now! Please let me take him home.”
His mother takes him home and looks after him. He has to stay at home for two months. He is very thin and weak, but his mother takes a good care of him and he gets better. Soon he will be able to go back to school.
Mustafa Kemal is still doing very well at school. He is particularly good at maths – but now he is having lesson in new subject, French.
French is a more difficult subject for him than the other ones. He studies French day and night, but still does not do very well at it.
One day the French teacher asks him to come to his desk. “Look, my son,” he says, “I know you very hard, but I am afraid you are going to fail in French.” “I will do my best, sir. I promise,” Mustafa Kemal replies
That summer he has taken a three-month holiday in Salonika. He goes to the Dominican Brother’s school. No one knows he is going there. After three months his French is much better. He has no more problems in this subject. Later in his life he is going to read many books in French. The ideas in them are western ideas.
Now ill the Turks are very exited! In Macedonia the Greeks and Turks are enemies. Greek has sent soldiers to Crete. The Turks are Fighting Them. Turkish men and boys want to go to war. They walk in the streets with Turkish Flags in their hands.
At the school boys are very exited, too. They are soldiers now. They all want to go to war and fight for their country.
Mustafa Kemal and one of his friends have made a plan. They are going to run away from school and join the army.
So they ran away. Mustafa Kemal says to his friend, “Let’s try to find a group of soldiers. We’ll join them. No one will know we are school boys.” Now it’s evening. They still have not found a group of soldiers, so they decide to go a house. It belongs to Bulgarian woman. She is a friend of Zübeyde Hanım.
They knock at the door. “Who is it? What do you want?” she asks. “It’s me, Mustafa Kemal, Zübeyde Hanım’s son. May we stay the night at your house?”
“Oh, it is you, Mustafa Kemal. Come in, come in. How nice to see you! Yes, of course you may stay the night.”
“We are going to join the army. We are going to fight the Greeks.”
“My boys,” she says, “ you are not old enough to fight. You have not finished our training yet.”
Mustafa Kemal and his friend think. She is right. “you quite right,” he says. “We shall go back to school and finish our training first.”
The date is 13th March, 1899. Mustafa Kemal is eighteen and he has been at the school in Monastır for three years, but now he is going to leave. In the autumn he starts at the Military Academy in Istanbul is divided into two parts. To the north of Golden Horn there is Pera. This part of the city belongs to the Muslims. The Galata bridge join the two halves of the city.
The Muslim Part of the city is silent. Pera, on the other hand, is full of life. In the hotels people dance and listen to music.
Mustafa Kemal is in Istanbul for the first time. He wanted to see the whole of the city, both the old part and the new.
He has a friend calls Ali Fuad is the son of İsmail Fazıl, a general.
This general can see Mustafa Kemal is going to be a great man. He often invites him to his house in Kuzguncuk.
Kuzguncuk is on the Asian side if the Bosphorus. Mustafa Kemal likes Ali Fuad’s family.
He and Ali Fuad explore the city. On weekend they go to Büyükada, the largest of the Princess Island in the sea of the Marmara.
The hotels are expensive, so they camp in the pine woods. They have a really good time. They take their food with them and have their meals in the open air.
Sometimes they go out in a rowing boat on the Bosphorus.
Sometimes they go for a row on the Sea of Marmara. During these trips they sit and read poems and talk about life.
Time passes quickly. Now Mustafa Kemal is in his second year at the Harbiye. He has a new interest, politics. He has thought a lot about the government.
The government is not a good one. It has made a lot of mistakes. This is very dangerous for the country. The country has a lot of problems. The Sultan, Abdulhamid, does not want democracy to come to Turkey. He lives in Yıldız Palace. He does not feel safe he is afraid of everybody. He has spies everywhere.
Mustafa Kemal passes out of the Military Academy in 1902. He is a lieutenant now and hears about guerilla warfare for the first time. Hr tries to make tactical plan for a guerilla war in Turkey. He draws a map. This map is going to help him in the future. With the help of this map he is going to save the country. He is going to say:
“Armies your first goal is the Mediterranean. Forward!"
Mustafa Kemal and his friends have started to write a newspaper. He asks all his friends to read this paper. It says the Ottoman Empire is a bad thing. It says everything has to change.
Somebody is listening to Mustafa Kemal. This man does not agree with Mustafa Kemal’s ideas, but he says nothing. This man has not forgotten his master, the Sultan.
Of course, all this is very dangerous! The Sultan, Abdulhamid, has already heard about this secret societies. His spies have been very busy. Now, he knows everything! So he is going to stop them. Yes, İsmail Paşa is very busy! He has given a repot to the Sultan. It says, “some students are writing a newspaper.”
One evening Mustafa Kemal and his friends are in the Veterinary School. They are trying to write the newspaper. Suddenly the door opens. It is the school’s principal, Rıza Paşa.
He has come because the Sultan ordered him to. He has seen the students. He knows they are writing the newspaper. But he cannot tell the Sultan the truth. He may lost his job.
“Gentlemen” he says angrily, “get back to your beds at once! Don’t you know it is dangerous? I forgive you this time. But don’t do this again!”
Mustafa Kemal and his friends have to be much more careful now, but still they go on. They will not give up because their country is much more important to them than their lives. Mustafa reads forbidden books in his room. At night he reads for hours under the bed clothes. He does not get any sleep.
There is an officer on duty. He comes and wakes him up.
“Good morning, Mustafa Kemal. It is time to get up. Hurry up or you will be late for class.”
“Good morning. What time is it?”
“It is seven o’clock.”
“Seven o’clock already? Oh dear, shall have to hurry! Thank you.”
Mustafa Kemal is tired in the mornings because he has not had enough sleep. But he is always the first to ask a difficult question.
“Look! Mustafa has asked another of his question,” one officer says.
“Yes, I can’t understand him at all,” his classmate replies. “He never sleeps’”
In 1905 Mustafa Kemal finishes at the Staff College. He is twenty four years old. He has rented a house . Beyazıt with his friends, Ali Fuad, Ali Fethi, Hüseyin Rauf and Refet. In this house they have secret meetings. They talk about freedom.
They have large library of forbidden books.
“let’s not talk any more. That’s enough for today. It is very late. Let’s go to bed now, shall we?” Hüseyin Rauf says.
The others agree. They are tired and soon they have all gone to sleep.
One evening they have sent me away form military school,” he says. “will you let me stay here with you?”
“Yes, all right,” Ali Fethi says. Mustafa Kemal agrees, too.
The cadet is a spy. He works for the Sultan. He listens to their conversation and reports to the Sultan. The police come and arrest Mustafa Kemal and his friends. They take them to the palace.
First they ask them questions. Then they take them to prison. Now they are in Yıldız Palace prison. What is going to happen to them? The Sultan has not decided yet. They wait for the Sultan’s decision. After a few months one of Mustafa Kemal’s friends is allowed to go. Mustafa Kemal is still in prison. He makes plans for the future.
His mother and his sister Makbule has arrived in Istanbul.
“Please let me see my son,” Zübeyde Hanım asks the guard. “No” the guard answers, “I cannot allow you to see him. The sultan has not given permission for that. Nobody can see him. Now, go and wait for the Sultan’s decision.”
One day a man comes to see Mustafa Kemal. The sultan has sent him. He tries to change Mustafa Kemal’s ideas.
“Mustafa Kemal,” he says, ”you have a very good future as an officer. The Sultan is our master, and we all have to obey him. Your ideas are wrong, but the Sultan has forgiven you. He has ordered you and Ali Fuad to go to Damascus, in Syria. The Fifth Army is there. Goodbye. Have a good journey.”
“Goodbye. Istanbul,” Mustafa Kemal says. “I shall be back one day. Turkey is going to have freedom and democracy. I promise.”
The Father of the Turks is going to create a new Turkey.
