ATATÜRK' Ün HAYATI ( İNGİLİZCE )

Atatürk was born in 1881, in the Ottoman city of Selânik (modern-day Thessaloniki, Greece), the son of a minor official who became a timber merchant. In accordance with the then prevalent Turkish custom, he was given a single name, Mustafa. His father, Ali Rıza Efendi, was a customs officer who died when Mustafa Kemal was seven and it was left to his mother Zübeyde Hanım, to raise the young Mustafa.
When Atatürk was 12 years old, he went to military schools in Selânik and Manastır (present-day Bitola), centres of discontent towards the Ottoman administration. Mustafa studied at the military secondary school in Selânik, where the additional name Kemal ("perfection" or "maturity", not an uncommon name) was given to him by his mathematics teacher in recognition of his academic excellence. Mustafa Kemal entered the military academy at Manastır in 1895. He graduated as a lieutenant in 1905 and was posted to Damascus under the command of the 5th Army. In Damascus, he soon joined a small secret revolutionary society of reform-minded officers called Vatan ve Hürriyet (Motherland and Liberty) and became an active opponent of the Ottoman regime. In 1907, he attained the rank of captain and was posted to the 3rd Army in Manastır. During this period he joined the Committee of Union and Progress, commonly known as the Young Turks. The Young Turks seized power from the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in 1908, and Mustafa Kemal became a senior military figure.
In 1910, he took part in the Picardie army maneuvers in France, and in 1911, he served at the Ministry of War in Istanbul. Later in 1911, he was posted to the province of Trablusgarp to participate in the defense against the Italian invasion. Following the successful defense of Tobruk on December 22, 1911, he was appointed the commander of Derne on March 6, 1912.
He returned to Istanbul following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in October 1912. During the First Balkan War, he fought against the Bulgarian army at Gallipoli and Bolayır on the coast of Thrace, and played a crucial role in the recapture of Edirne and Didymoteicho during the Second Balkan War. In 1913 he was appointed military attaché to Sofia, partly to remove him from the capital and its political intrigues, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1914