What was Ataturk’s ethnicity?

He was born as an Ottoman Empire citizen.

Ottoman Empire did not recognize ethnicities as we use today. Instead, they used, what they called, the “Millet System”. There were four millets (Millet-i Erbia) in the Ottoman Empire. They were Muslim Millet, Rum Millet (Rum means Roman, an ex East Roman Empire individual or a Christian except for Armenians), Armenian Millet and the Jewish Millet. In the public records, each Ottoman citizen was recorded under one of these 4 millets.

Ottoman Empire did not use family names. The civil records were using father’s first name and mother’s first name.

According to the Ottoman public records, he was Mustafa, the son of Ali Riza Bey and the son of Zubeyde Hanim, a member of the Ottoman Muslim Millet, born in the city of Selanik (Thessaloniki in Greece today), on May 19th, 1881.

In today’s terminology, his ethnicity would be categorized as Turkish, as Turkish was his primary language, amongst the 6 other languages he spoke of.

He died as a citizen of Republic of Turkey (of which, he was the founder). His name on his death certificate was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, two given names and the family name.

Ahmet Caliskan