Кемал Ататурк је наводно имао делом албанско порекло:
On the part of his father, Ali Riza Efendi, Ataturk was an Albanian. He came from Canka family and Ataturk's grandfather from his father, Pirush Canka, lived in Stebleva village of Grande Dibra (12 km from Librazhd and 23 km from Struga) before migrating to Thessaloniki (the most thriving city after Istanbul In the Ottoman Empire), Greece in 1861.
They owned their land in Debar until 1945 when the communists came to power. Even today there is the field of CAnka, the property of Mustafa's grandfather. Regarding the mother's side, Zybejde Hanim, she was from Thessaloniki but was assumed, as the locals in Thessaloniki recalled that her family came from somewhere in South Albania. Ataturk's father died when he was only 7 years old.
He was named Kemal by a mathematician teacher in Bitola. Because Mustafa was exelent in school, his teacher, Kemal, called him "Kemal", which in Arabic means "perfect". During the 30s with the creation of the new Turkish state, he was registered on an identity card named Kemal Ataturk.
Father and Mother of Ataturk, Ali Riza Efendi and Zybejde Hanim