People came to a halt for two minutes' contemplation to pay their respects to the deeply revered first president of the Republic.

At 9.05 a.m. local time sirens wailed to mark the exact moment of his death at the age of 57 across the country.

Around the country, people stopped in the streets or stood silently at their workplaces to remember Atatürk.

At the Anitkabir mausoleum overlooking the capital Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was among those to lay a wreath at Atatürk's resting place.

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, Vice President Fuat Oktay, and Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop also took part in the annual ceremony alongside other senior politicians and military officers.

Atatürk was born in 1881 in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

On April 23, 1920, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was established and Atatürk was elected the head of the government and speaker of parliament.

The Turkish War of Independence started with Ataturk's landing on the city of Samsun on the Black Sea coast in 1919.