Latife Uşşaki

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Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Latife Hanım (far right) with her family in early 1923

Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife

Latife or, with the honorifics, Latife Hanım or Latife Hanımefendi, or, after the 1934 Reform on Family Names in Turkey, Latife Uşşaki ^[1] (İzmir, 1898 - İstanbul, 1975) was Mustafa Kemal Pasha's (later Atatürk) wife between 1923 and 1925.

She was born in 1898 in İzmir to one of the most prominent trading families of the city with roots in the city of Uşak, whence their unofficial family name of Uşşakizade. She did her high school studies in İzmir and in 1919 she attended law schools in Paris and London. When she came back to Turkey, the Turkish War of Independence was nearing its end without being over yet.

On September 11, 1922, upon hearing that Mustafa Kemal Pasha was in İzmir after its re-capture by the Turkish army, she went to his headquarters and offered him the opportunity to stay in her family mansion in Göztepe for security reasons. Atatürk was pleased to accept and their relationship started.

They got married on January 29, 1923, when Mustafa Kemal Pasha had returned to İzmir just after his mother Zübeyde Hanım's death. For two and a half years, she symbolized the new face of Turkish women as a first lady who was very present in public life which, in Turkey, was a novelty by the standards of her day. She was a very important theme in the reform steps which started to be taken in Turkey as of the 1920s for emancipation of women.

However, their relationship was cut short after the summer of 1925. They divorced on August 5, 1925. Lâtife Hanım lived the rest of her days in İzmir and İstanbul, in virtual seclusion, avoiding contacts outside her private circle 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 ^[2]. A comprehensive but also controversial biography of Latife Hanım by the veteran Cumhuriyet journalist İpek Çalışlar was published in 2006 ^[3].