Latife Uşaklıgil
From Freepedia
Latife Usakligil (Latife Uşaklıgil in Turkish) was the wife of Kemal Atatürk. She was born in 1898 in Izmir where she received her high school education. In 1921 she was in Europe attending law schools in Paris and London. When she arrived back at Turkey, the Independence War was still not over. On September 11, 1922, when she heard that Atatürk was in Izmir leading the Turkish Army, she went to the headquarters and offered him the opportunity to stay in her family mansion in Goztepe for security reasons. Ataturk was pleased to accept, and so their relationship started. They got married on January 29, 1923, when Ataturk arrived in Izmir just after his mother's death. However, the relationship did not last. After an incident during their East Anatolia trip in the summer of 1925 they divorced on August 5, 1925. Latife Usakligil lived in Izmir and in Istanbul until her death in 1976. She never remarried, and remained silent about their relationship throughout her life. Her family recently rejected proposals to publicize her diary which includes Latife's and Ataturk's letters to each other.
External links
- The debate over Latife Usakligil's documents is over
- "...At a time when people only had religious marriage ceremonies, Atatürk and Latife Hanim were declared husband and wife in a civil court..." "...By the civil ceremony in contrast to a religious one it can be seen as a major step in Turkish politics, because leading Turkish legislators accepted the Swiss civil code that defined the rights of women in a marriage as equal to men..."
