Ali Rıza Efendi
Ali Rıza Efendi was an official, and the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the husband of Zübeyde Hanım.
He was born in Selanik, back then the most important city in the Ottoman Empire in Europe after Constantinople/Istanbul. According to information obtained from Atatürk, Makbule Atadan, other family members, and childhood friends who knew Atatürk's family, Ali Rıza Efendi was originally from Thessaloniki, and his wife, Zübeyde Hanım, was born to a farming family in Langaza, west of Thessaloniki, in 1857. Zübeyde Hanım's origins are Yörüks who migrated to Rumelia. Ali Rıza's family allegedly comes from Kodžadžik, in Centar Župa Municipality near the border to Albania, today in North Macedonia, where there is a memorial house. He is thought to be of local descent: Albanian or Slavic by some scholars such as Andrew Mango, Lou Giaffo, Ernst Jaeckh, etc. Journalist and close friend of Atatürk, Falih Rıfkı Atay, claimed that Atatürk's ancestors came to Thessaloniki from Söke in the Aydın province of Anatolia. According to other historians such as Norman Itzkowitz, Hasan İzzettin Dinamo, etc: Ali Rıza's ancestors were Turks, ultimately descending from the Turkic nomads called Yörüks of Söke in Aydın Province.
He worked as a customs official and died in 1888 at age 49, when his son was 7 years old. At Mustafa's birth, Ali Rıza hung his sword over his son’s cradle, dedicating him to military service. Most important, Ali Rıza saw to it that his son’s earliest education was carried out in a modern secular school. He left the poorly paying clerk's job to start a lumber business, but bandits set fire to his stock after extorting money from him. He attempted to rejoin the civil service without success. He started drinking heavily afterwards which may have contributed to his early death.