Mustafa Kemal marries Latife Hanım
On January 29, 1923, Mustafa Kemal Pasha married Uşakizade Latife Hanım, to whom he would remain married for nearly two and a half years.
Born on June 17, 1898 as the daughter of the Uşakizade family, one of the most well-known and respectable families of the Aegean region, Latife Hanım graduated from Sorbonne University’s School of Law, studied English in London, and returned to Turkey in 1922. Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Latife Hanım met after the liberation of İzmir on September 9, 1922, when Mustafa Kemal was residing as a guest at the Uşakizade Pavilion. The couple was married in İzmir on January 29, 1923, at the same family mansion.
However, the marriage did not last very long; Mustafa Kemal and Latife Hanım were divorced on August 5, 1925.
Due to Latife Hanım’s resoluteness on sharing absolutely nothing about her personal life, there is limited information about their short-lived union. However, it is also known that the occasional portrait of Latife Hanım as “a jealous and feisty woman who dug her heels in” is far from the truth. Educated in the West, fluent in several languages, and highly sensitive on women’s issues and feminism, Latife Hanım was the prototype of the kind of women the Republic aspired to create.
Granted the last name “Uşsaki” personally by Atatürk when the Surname Law was enacted in 1934, Latife Hanım led a secluded life and died on July 13, 1975. She was buried following a simple funeral held at the Teşvikiye Mosque.
