After graduating from the Military Academy, Lieutenant Mustafa Kemal, who returned to Thessaloniki for vacation, was greeted by his mother at the door. He returned to Istanbul after spending a couple of days of very talkative and joyful days. Those who excelled at the Military Academy were elected to the Military Academy as a staff officer. Mustafa Kemal was admitted to the Military Academy as a staff officer. After completing the first year of the "Erkânıharbiye School", Mustafa Kemal was duly promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was in the second year of the Military Academy, he started to experience a depressed period. He had been feeling the bad management of the period of tyranny deeply. He could not accept the state of the Ottoman Empire, and the state of the country that made him very upset. He wanted to do something. He decided to publish a newspaper, gathering a large number of officers around him. The lines that thousands of cadets read were written by Mustafa Kemal himself and he himself directed this secret enterprise. He gathered his first and small assembly here. With a small number of friends that he believed in and knew that he was believed in, they would meet whenever they had a chance and hold long discussions on country affairs. This small assembly, which looks like an aimless meeting of three or five officers; In fact, it was a school that enabled them to become patriots who swore to live and succeed, without fear of death.
In the last year of the War Academy, while preparing the newspaper's articles in an empty classroom, they were caught by the school commander Rıza Pasha. A teacher, who was uncomfortable with Mustafa Kemal and his friends, reported them. Rıza Pasha, who came upon this notice, approached the young officers in a fatherly manner and said that their actions would be punished, but he did not do so. This behaviour of Rıza Pasha may seem like a minor event, but perhaps history would have been written differently if he had acted in accordance with the procedure and removed them from the academy.
They were not expelled from school, but this was added to their school record. Waiting for his assignment after graduating from the military academy, Mustafa Kemal was exiled to Syria. Since he was appointed as an intern, he did not have any authority in any matter. Shortly after arriving in Damascus, he realized that he was here on an ignoble mission. He was assigned to a harassment unit that would be used for looting and plundering. As if what he saw in this bleeding frontier city of the empire was not enough, he could not bear to take office together like this. After all the shame and sorrow he saw, lived and witnessed in Syria, he made the decision to determine the fate of his own life and, with it, a whole country:
"You have to be the man of tomorrow, not of the day!"
According to Mustafa Kemal, only free-minded people could be beneficial to their homeland. Therefore, he decided to escape from Damascus and go to Thessaloniki.
He lived illegally for nearly two years in Thessaloniki, where he could hardly travel. After two years in hiding and using other identities, he was finally able to set things up and in 1907 he was appointed as a third army officer and took his first assignment in Thessaloniki. In those years, Rumelia and the Balkans were boiling. The wind of the coming great war was first felt in the Balkans, which was the gateway to Anatolia. At that time, the revolution took place and the "Union and Progress" government, which put an end to the administration of despotism, took over the administration. Although this situation was pleasing for Mustafa Kemal, who has been in opposition and struggle with administration since his high school years, it would increase the pressure in the administration in the Committee of Union and Progress after a while. Therefore, he would also oppose them in the future.
While he was successfully continuing his duty in Thessaloniki, he came to Istanbul in 1909 with the third army assigned to suppress the 31 March uprising that started in Istanbul. After this duty, he was promoted to the rank of Major. With this rank, he performed his first mission in the Yemen Front.
He did not consider the general situation well and was worried about the future of the country. He thought that measures should be taken immediately and without wasting time. He was holding talks within this framework, in fact he was conducting a secret activity in which he determined who he could trust in the future network of struggle.