After the Ottoman Empire disintegrated in the wake of the First World War, a new state emerged from the National Struggle waged in Anatolia. On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly amended the constitution to define the state's form of government as a republic, and Mustafa Kemal was elected its first president.

The proclamation was not the work of a single day but the turning point of a transformation spread over several years: the abolition of the sultanate (1922), the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate (1924) were all part of this process. Sweeping reforms in law, education, language, and social life followed.

The scope and consequences of these reforms remain open to differing interpretations among historians; nonetheless, the shift from empire to a nation-state republic is regarded as the founding threshold of modern Turkey.