The article analyzes how the personality of the first president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is reflected in contemporary Turkish art. This year marks exactly 140 years since his birth. To his achievements in the military and political arenas, cultural figures have dedicated many works in the visual arts, architecture, literature and cinema. 

The trace of the first president of the Republic of Turkey remained in the works of both his contemporaries and in the works of authors today. Creativity is multifaceted, inspiration has no boundaries, along with them, culture was freed from prohibitions with the beginning of a new page in the history of the country. Her achievements became available to more people, the opportunity to touch the spiritual life and create it opened up along with the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Pasha to wide layers of the population. Immortal works have preserved for posterity the image of the father of the Turkish nation, and a characteristic feature of these works is the author's personal admiration for the deeds of Gazi. This undoubtedly leaves its mark on the work and the way in which a person is shown in the context of history, who took fate and the entire people into his own hands, mired in political, economic, cultural crises.

But before giving an answer to the question "Who are you, Father of the Turks?", it is important, in our opinion, briefly to draw attention to the historical retrospective of the development of Turkish culture under the influence of the policy of two states that appeared, flourished and fell into decay on the peninsula of Asia Minor. The article briefly examines some of the features of the cultural policy of the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the first years of the republic.