People came to a halt for two minutes of 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 Anıtkabir mausoleum, the resting place of Atatürk, overlooking the capital Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wrote in the diary, “We will march without stopping or resting until we build a Turkey where peace and justice prevail.”

Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli, İYİ (Good) Party leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu 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.