Kel Mehmet was born in 1780 to a Turkish peasant family in Atça. According to the legend, while he was an ordinary young man, he witnessed the fight between a tiny, sick dog and three healthy, powerful dogs. After being beaten for a long time, the tiny dog ends up in an alley with no exit. At that point, it fights back with his final energy and achieves to get rid of the monsters. Inspired by the tiny dog, Mehmet established an analogy between the situation and the relation between the Ottoman reign and Anatolian peasants and decided to go out to the mountains as an outlaw.