Latife Usaki

Latife and her husband Mustafa Kemal

Latife Usaki (1923)

Latife Uşşaki or Uşakizâde Latife (born June 17, 1899 in İzmir , † July 13, 1975 in Istanbul ) was the wife of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the period from 1923 to 1925.

Life

Latife Uşşaki, in the early 1930s.

Uşşaki grew up in İzmir (Smyrna) and went to school there. In 1919 she went to Europe and attended school in England and the law school in Paris . When she got back to Turkey, the Turkish Liberation War was still raging there . On September 11, 1922, Latife heard that Ataturk was in İzmir and offered him, for security reasons, to set up his headquarters in her villa in the İzmir district of Göztepe. This slowly developed a relationship between the two.

Latife married Ataturk on January 29, 1923 when he came to İzmir to bury his late mother. Contrary to the customs of the time, the wedding ceremony took place with her personally. During the marriage, they were both relaxed and relaxed in public. The unveiled Latife also accompanied him on his official trips through Turkey. She worked out his speeches with him.

However, their marriage did not last long. After a dispute during her trip to Eastern Anatolia in the summer of 1925, Ataturk unilaterally dissolved the marriage on August 5, 1925, according to old Islamic law. Why the marriage failed was never publicly discussed by either Ataturk or Uşşaki (The busy Ataturk is said to have said, "Above all, my country needs me as a father"). After her divorce , she completely withdrew from public life and lived alone in İzmir and İstanbul until her death in 1975.

From the beginning she had a great influence on Ataturk's political projects. She campaigned for women's suffrage and a modern divorce law and took an open position on political issues.

literature

İpek Çalışlar: Latife Hanım. Doğan Kitap, Istanbul 2006, ISBN 978-975-991-517-9 .

İpek Çalışlar: Mrs. Ataturk. Latife Hanım. A portrait. Translated from the Turkish by Constanze Letsch. Orlanda Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-936937-64-0 (heavily abbreviated translation).

Web links

Literature by and about Latife Uşaklıgil in the catalog of the German National Library
Documents on Latife
TheTurkishTimes.com
Ataturk, his wife and her biographer ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) by Emrah Güler, Ankara, Friday, August 25, 2006 in the Turkish Daily News , from the Internet Archive at archive.org, as of September 27 2007 (english)

Individual evidence

↑ İpek Çalışlar: Mrs. Ataturk. Latife Hanım. A portrait. Translated from the Turkish by Constanze Letsch. btb Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-442-74062-8 , p. 23.
↑ Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, p. 260.

personal data
SURNAME	Usaki, Latife
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Uşaklıgil, Lâtife; Usakizade Latife
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Wife of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1923–1925)
DATE OF BIRTH	June 17, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH	İzmir
DATE OF DEATH	July 13, 1975
Place of death	Istanbul

[1] İpek Çalışlar: Mrs. Ataturk. Latife Hanım. A portrait. Translated from the Turkish by Constanze Letsch. btb Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-442-74062-8 , p. 23.

[2] Ali Vicdani Doyum: Alfred Kantorowicz with special reference to his work in İstanbul (A contribution to the history of modern dentistry). Medical dissertation, Würzburg 1985, p. 260.