Gürsel was born in the town of Hınıs in the Erzurum Vilayet as the son of an Ottoman Army officer, Abidin Bey,[1] and the grandson of Ibrahim (1821–1895) and the great-grandson of Hadji Ahmed (1788–1860).

After his release, Cemal Gürsel returned to Anatolia to re-join Mustafa Kemal subsequent to Erzurum Congress and took part in all the western front campaigns in the Turkish War of Independence between 1920 and 1923.

He was promoted for gallantry in the First Division excelling in the battles of Second Inönü, Eskişehir and Sakarya, and was later awarded the Medal of Independence by the first Parliament for his combat service in the Final Offensive.

A coup d'état organised and conducted by army officers at the rank of colonels and below took place without the participation or leadership of Cemal Gürsel on 27 May 1960 after continuing civilian and academia unrests throughout the country.

He fetched ten law professors, namely Sıddık Sami Onar, Hıfzı Veldet Velidedeoğlu, Ragıp Sarıca, Naci Şensoy, Hüseyin Nail Kubalı, Tarık Zafer Tunaya, İsmet Giritli, İlhan Arsel, Bahri Savcı and Muammer Aksoy, accompanied by Erdoğan Teziç, a law postgraduate student as their assistant (later Chairman of the Turkish Council of Higher Education), from Istanbul and Ankara Universities to help draft a new constitution on 27 May, right after he arrived in Ankara.

A simple and conservative sort, Gürsel became Turkey's most popular figure, forbade display of his picture alongside Atatürk's in government offices, rode about in an open Jeep touring rural communities, talking to the peasants almost as if they were his children (Time, 6 January 1961).

of the National Unity Committee writes in his memoirs that, upon Cemal Gürsel's intervention on the prevention of Menderes' execution, the chief prosecutor of the tribunal, Altay Ömer Egesel, said: ‘Let us hurry!

He took an active role in extensive modernization of Turkish Armed Forces and the staunch defense of the free world and Europe during the Cold War, in particular during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

With the establishment of the first Constitutional Court that created a new paradigm shift by scrutinizing the parliamentary rulings as the "checks" organ in 1961 and the addition of a Senate to the parliament, the Turkish Grand National Assembly was re-opened after the general elections, nominated and voted him as the fourth president of Turkey.

Journalist Parliamentarian Cihat Baban claims in his book, The Gallery of Politics (Politika Galerisi) that Cemal Gürsel told him "We may solve all troubles if Süleyman Demirel becomes the head of the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi).

The President of the Republic of Turkey Cemal Gürsel assigned the mandate to form and serve as the Prime Minister of the new government to İsmet İnönü in November 1961, June 1962 and December 1963, to Senator Suat Hayri Ürgüplü in February 1965 and, following the general elections, to Suleyman Demirel of Justice Party in October 1965.

He initiated the new era of planned economy in Turkey, formed a State Institute of Statistics, launched the State Planning Organization (DPT) that implemented "The First 5-Years Development Plan", arranged re-entry of the Turkish Republic in the United Nations Security Council in 1961 and moved Turkey, through his close and personal diplomatic dialogues with Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, into the direction of European Union membership with the Ankara Agreement, signed with France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg in 1963, resulting in associate membership the following year and a large Turkish workforce migration to Germany and Western Europe to assist their postwar industrial development.

When a Cypriot leader who was exiled out of the UK previously in 1956 on the basis of his struggle for Cypriot independence from the British rule, wanted in November 1963 to amend the basic articles of the 1960 constitution, communal violence ensued and Turkey, Great Britain and Greece, the guarantors of the agreements which had led to Cyprus' independence, wanted to send a NATO force to the island under the command of General Young.

He paved the way to Middle Eastern countries and Pakistan to concentrate on economic and cultural matters of mutual interest and Ankara recognized Syria following the breakup of the short-lived United Arab Republic in 1961, further reestablishing diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1965.

He brought the Microwave Telecommunications Network into operation increasing telephone and teletype capacity along with a High-Frequency Radio Link connecting London and Ankara with Rawalpindi, Karachi, Tehran and Istanbul.

With his directive, The Sacred Relics from the Prophets Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David and Muhammad, including the oldest Qur'an in existence from the 7th Century were put on display from their storage rooms within the Topkapi Palace for public viewing for the first time on 31 August 1962.

In a parallel effort of promoting the country's touristic popularity in the West, Topkapi, the movie version of the book by Eric Ambler that had been commissioned for the same purpose, was shot in Paris and Istanbul and was introduced with success.

Similarly, one of the favorite books of John F. Kennedy, Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love was shot in Istanbul as the second James Bond movie, to promote the touristic popularity of Turkey, with his keen interest.

The production of the first domestic Turkish automobile, the Devrim (Revolution), took place with Cemal Gürsel's directive which sparked the initiation of an automotive industry in the republic in the following few years.

Because of a paralysis that started in early 1961 and progressed quickly in 1966, on 2 February Cemal Gürsel was flown to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on the private airplane "BlueBird" sent by US President Lyndon B. Johnson.

With a report of a medical committee by Gülhane Military Hospital in Ankara, the parliament ruled on 28 March 1966 that his presidency be terminated due to ill health in accordance with the constitution.

[3] He tried to place emphasis on the need for a well-educated youth and a hard-working population with high standards of ethics in Atatürk's tradition (commentary by Imran Oktem, Chief Supreme Court Justice – Yargitay, 1966).