Mehmet Akif Ersoy was born Mehmed Ragîf in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire in 1873 to İpekli Tahir Efendi (1826–1888), an Albanian from the village Shushica near Istog, nahiyah of Ipek and Emine Şerife Hanım with Turkish and Uzbek origins from Bukhara (modern-day Uzbekistan).

[2] In the same year, Mehmet Akif Ersoy joined the civil service and conducted research on contagious diseases in various locations in Anatolia.

[2] Along with fellow men-of-letters Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem, Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan and Cenap Şahabettin, which he had met in 1913, he worked for the publication branch of the Müdafaa-i Milliye Heyeti.

On 19 November 1920, during a famous speech he gave in Kastamonu's Nasrullah Mosque, he condemned the Treaty of Sèvres, and invited the people to use their faith and guns to fight and wage jihad (holy war) against the Western colonialists.

However, Mehmet Akif Ersoy earned himself his significant place in the history of the Republic of Turkey as the composer of the lyrics of the Turkish National Anthem.

He was interred in the Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery in Istanbul and was the first person in the history of the Republic of Turkey to have the national anthem performed at his funeral ceremony.

Ersoy agreed to translate the Quran into the Turkish language for the Directorate of Religious Affairs, but eventually didn't deliver his version.