This biography of Ataturk aims to strip away the myth to show the complexities of the man beneath.;Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founding father of the Turkish Republic, was born plain Mustafa in Ottoman Salonica in 1881. Trained as an army officer, he was virtually unknown until 1919, when he took the lead in thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish core of the Ottoman Empire. He divided the Allies, worsted the last Sultan and secured the territory of the Turkish national state, becoming the first president of the new republic in 1923, transforming it from a battle-scarred ruin into a regional power, and fast creating his own legend and his own cult.