Lâtife Uşaklıgil
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Lâtife Uşaklıgil (İzmir, 1898 – İstanbul, 1975) was the wife of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk between 1923 and 1925.
She was born in 1898 in İzmir, 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 İzmir leading the Turkish Army, she went to the headquarters and offered him the opportunity to stay in her family mansion in Göztepe for security reasons. Atatürk was pleased to accept, and so their relationship started.
They got married on January 29, 1923, when Atatürk arrived in İzmir just after his mother's death. However, the relationship did not last long. After an incident during their East Anatolia trip in the summer of 1925, they divorced on August 5, 1925. Lâtife Uşaklıgil lived in İzmir and in İstanbul until her death in 1975. She never remarried, and remained silent about their relationship throughout her life. Her family recently rejected proposals to publicize her diary which includes Lâtife's and Atatürk's letters to each other.
Note: After the founding of the Turkish Republic, Atatürk decreed that everyone was required to have a surname (before this, people did not have a "family" name; they were known by their town or occupation, for example "Ali the Baker"). The surname Uşaklıgil is taken from the surname of Lâtife's uncle, Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil. After divorcing from Atatürk, her name was given as Lâtife Uşaki (the Arabic meaning for it is "deeply in love", it also means "from Uşak"). In Turkey today, she is normally referred to simply as Lâtife Hanım (Lady Lâtife).
[edit] 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..."
- An article on Latife Hanım's controversial biography in Turkish Daily News
