Kayali, H. (2008) "The Struggle for
Independence," in Cambridge History of
Turkey Vol.
5
The struggle for independence
HASAN KAYALI
Ait investigation of modern Turkey's
roots* -of its political traditions,
socioeconomic transformations, and
cultural heritage, can reasonably
start in the early centuries of the
Ottoman Empire. The emergence ofTurkey
as sovereign nation-state, though,
occurred late, when its new boundaries
were determined with international
recognition in 193,3. and the
community inhabiting its current space
reimagined itself through the
Republican state's programmatic effort
to inculcate a novel understanding of
nationhood. While inflected by the t
ransformations of the past, both
nationhood and stateness as they
crystallised in the 1920s bore a
direct and overwhelming imprint of the
contmgendes of the previous decade's
wars. This decadc of warfare began
with the Ottoman-- Italian war over
Libya in mt and culminated in a
struggle for independence in those
territories of the Ottoman Empire:’,
that: remained unoccupied at the <>f
an armistice in October iyi8 but were
subsequently encroached upon by the
Entente (or Allied’) forces.1
The, profound transformations of
war in the empire’s truncated
territories set the stage for the
Turkish, or Kemalist, revolution. In
the pantheon of twentieth cmr.ury
Middle Eastern revolutions, ranging
from military coups d’etat and revolts
against colonial rule to regime change
with profound social repercussions,
the Kemalist revolution has a unique
place. It followed from an
t There are only a few wwb in Wesccvn
languages on che struggle for
independence.
The moat
and rfce.nr is Sianford j. thaw's Fmn Bmpirz fv
Rrfnthfoc.: TUr
Tt<rJeu?j War ofNatwmi l.ihcr&itan, »
wA Derumnttary 5fwdy lAnkat*’ Turk
Tanh Kui urnu Bsstmevi, acoo).
Brik.Jaw Zikchtx has studies! the
period eioscly, particularly $n his
The Unionist Facton 7V R<tl« oftfe
Cutnmiute of Union
m<lFln>grgs.ii»tke'l'i(fkishNaiioniii
MflWHtmi, twf-t ?>3<5 (Leiden: Bfill,
t<$4> Andrew Mangos biography of
Muawfo Ketnal dcvorcs a long section
(part HI) to the independence struggir
(Andrew Mango, Atatiirk:
Ita Biography of the FowuAcr af
Mtklcm Turkey C Woodstock, NY:
Overlook Press,
Also Elaine O. Smith, Turkey: Tht
Origins of the Kemalist Movement and
ike fitnwnwmi the Gratut Asimbly 0
9t9~*9*3) (Washington, DC; Judd &
Deweiler, ip**). Numerous chra«kics>
memoirs and local histories of the
period have been published in Turkish,
but there is a dearth of
interpretative monographs.
112
4, Resat Kasaba (ed.)- Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 112146.
The struggle for independence
independence movement that entailed
sustained armed struggle and stands
out as the prototype of anti
imperialist liberation movements in
the twentieth century.
The most devastating phase of the
Ottomans' 'long war' ended with
surrender after a string of setbacks
that they and die other Central Powers
suffered fa 1<»|8. The armistice of
Mudros, signed on 30 October, provided
a brief respire and exposed to view
the transformations that the Ottoman
polity and society- had undergone
since the beginning of the First World
War: in Anatolia alone three to four
million (more lhan one -fifth of the
population) had lost their lives;
about one quarter of the dead were
soldiers or other combatants, and the
rest victims of wartime deprivation,
disease and etfano-rdigious carnage.’
The wars had ravaged physical
infrastructure*, as well as the morale
and livelihood of the survivors. The
vast Arab-populated southern provinces
of the empire were under foreign
occupation. The Armenian population
had been dislodged and all but wiped
out. The resignation of the Talit Paja
cabinet earlier in the month had ended
the decade-long, and increasingly more
draconian, grip of the Committee of
Union and Progress (COP) on the
government.5
Mudros also marked the beginning of
a struggle for survival under the new
geo-political circumstances engendered
by defeat in the First World War.
Galvanised by renewed occupation and
the threat of mortal losses, the
struggle lasted five years and further
transformed state and society When the
Lausanne Peace Treaty ofjuly 1933
restored [he main lines of the. Mudros
ceasefire as new political boundaries,
ii consigned the Ottoman state to
history and spawned the new state of
Turkey, which was to be declared a
republic in October 1933.
As in the other two defeated
empires of Austria-Hungary and
Germany, in the Ottoman Bmptre, too,
defeat and surrender occasioned a
crisis of legitimacy; and the states
that eventually supplanted the empire
were envisioned as nation-states.
Empire's exit, however, was
considerably more drawn out in the
Middle East, particularly in the rump
of the Ottoman realm to the
a Already tentative Ottoman population
estimates becomc partictiUrly
problematic for the war years due
ro the inherent chaos of combat,
popidatiors movement* aod widely
differing population and death
counts for the non-Muslims of the
empire. Justin McCarthy has used
Ottoman and Turkish population data
to conclude that million Anatolians
died between and Muslims und
Minorities: Th< Popukttian of
Ottoman Amt* iU attd tht End af
ffe/ Empire (New York: New York
University Press, 1983), p. i&.
Erik Ztirchcr estimates military
casualties (including Arab
soldiers) of the Rm World War at
around oruh million (approximately
325,000 soldiers killed in saion,
60,000 who died from wounds,
400,000 from disease and 250,000
missing or prScnm of war): Between
Death and Desertion: The Experience
of the Ottoman Soldier in World War
Y, Tiiracrt »«(199*), pp- ~»&-7
1 Fr.roz Ahmad. Tfrf Tunfe*/ The
Comtnitrcc of Union and Prflgr<*« m
Turkish Pohtim, i<H# it)i4(Oxft>rd:
Clarendon Press, r
”3
HASAN XAVAXI
north of tile ai*misc,ice line,
consisting of Anatolia and Thrace. It
was marked by accommodations to
military defeat and demobilisation, by
protest and resistance, and by renewed
and prolonged warfare. The political
and social structures of the state
metamorphosed during the protracted
struggles to be recast at the Lausanne
TVe.aty and during its immediate after
math.
Turkish historiography has
generally solemnised the half-decade
from 191% to 1923, aside from the
first few months viewed as the death
throes of empire, as the era of the
vindication of the Turkish nation. Hie
underlying assumption is that the
Turkish nation had long ago come of
age, but had been repressed by the
imperial culture and structures, only
to be liberated with Ottoman military
collapse and, ail but miraculously,
delivered from foreign predation by an
emergent leader, Mustafa Kemal
(AtatUrk). Turks' retrospective designation of the period as the era of
their national liberation affirms a
teleology of national redemption with
little regard to the constitutive role
of unfolding political, sod id,
military and international
circumstances and contingendes. Hie
transformation was more tortuous and
pragmatic, and nationness more
ambiguous during this period, than
canonical accounts ofTurkish history
suggest ~ prominent among them Mustafa
KemaTs 'Speech', a seven-day oration
that he delivered in the Republican
People's Party Congress in 192.7,
which has since been accepted as the
master narrative of the founding of
the Turkish nation-state.*
Negotiating defeat and occupation
(October 1918 -August 1919)
Defeat had become certain by die
autumn of 1918 wiih the Brirush push
into northern Syria and the severing
of Ot toman communications with allies
Germany and Austria-Hungary following
Entente victories in the Balkans. The
retrenchment of Ottoman armies
discredited the CUP and afforded Sultan Vahdeddin, who had succeeded to
die Ottoman throne as Mehraed VI alter
his brother Re?ad‘s death (s July>.
the opportuniry to reassert the
authority of the palace. Defections
from the CUP and the formation of
splinter parties signalled the end of
the Committees monopoly on power.
From the Ottoman government's weak
position, there was little room for
negotiation when Ottoman and Allied
delegations met for the ceasefire
agreement at Mudros, a town on the
Aegean island of Lemnos. Representing
the
4 Ga&i Mustafa Kemal Atattirk, Mtfvir
(Istanbul: Devtet B*simcvi, Y>9$8
{loz?}), uims. as A Spctch Dchwitd bv
Musotfh* Kami, PnsitLnu afth# Turkish
Rtyrnbhf, L'kXtrb'f 19*? (i.^jj>z!g:
K F. Koehler, 19x9)ri 4
The struggle for independence
new and short-lived Ahmed izzct Pa$a
government, Minister of the Navy Rauf
(Orbay) accepted the British Admiral
Cakhorpe's dictates in order to secure
an end to the hostilities: Ottoman
units in occupied areas would
surrender; the rest of the Ottoman
army, with the exception of small
contingents needed to maintain
security, would be demobilised; the
British army would stop its advance
northward from Syria and Mesopotamia;
the Entente powers would control
communications, strategic sites and
installations including the
Dardanelles and Bosporus forts, and
preserve die right to occupy
territories beyond the armistice line
'in the event of a situation arising
which threatens the security of the
Allies', including the six Armenian
provinces 'in cause of disorder'.’
Within days t>f the signing, the
top leadership of the CUP, including
Tai&t, Enver and Gemal Pa$as, fled the
capital by sea, first to Russia and
then to Germany. They were
subsequently hunted down by Armenian
militants who sought revenge for their
role in the massacres of Ottoman
Armenians. Tail? was murdered in
Berlin in ijmh and Ccmal in the
Caucasus 111 1922, where he was
casting around far an opportunity to
re-enter Anatolia. Bnver was killed
the same year in a typically quixotic
adventure, leading the armies of the
Afghan king against Bolshevik troops
in Central Asia. The CUPs strongmen
were gone, but its organisational
infrastructure remained incact.
Unionists still dominated the chamber
ofdeputi.es, whose regular four-year
term, due to end in the autumn of
k>*8, had been extended on grounds of
the war emergency Til us, even as che
Ottoman Empire surrendered militarily,
its parliament con tinued to function.
The chamber of deputies was closed in
December, but after new elections rc
opened in 1920, albeit briefly.
The armistice suspended active
military operations at positions that
had been reached by British forces and
were no longer defended by nnreating
Ottoman armies. This armistice line
resembled modern Turkey's future frontiers, leading to the perception that
the Mudros accord was a foundational
document that outlined the l>oundaries
of a new state. However, the
tumultuous aftermath of Mudros
complicates such determinism. Neither
the Ottomans nor die Allies regarded
it as the blueprint for a permanent
setdemem. As the Ottomans grappled
with the harshest of the ceasefire
terms imposed on a Central Power,
fighting continued or resumed in
different parts of the Ottoman lands,
and the Entente sought to gain maximum
geo-political advantage in violation
of Mudros's already onerous terms.
5 J C Hurrwjcz, Diplomacy in. the
Mltltlk East: A Dceummtary Record,
iy*4-igf6(J>rintetrav
IX van Nostrand Company, 1956),
vol. 1}. pp. #-7.
115
HASAH KAIM.l
Before the. ink of the signatures
had dried, British farces in nord>em
Mesopotamia occupied oil-rich Mosul in
a. northward thrust. The Entente
countries had Jong-standing and
mutually recognised territorial
interests in the. Ottoman Empire,
mwmtslbtmal»cd in the Cormant«M>ple
Agreem«iit (1915) and the Sykes-Picot
Agreement U9itf). Advancing the
guarantees secured for the Armenian
provinces, fhe French landed in the
Eastern Mediterranean port of
Alexandre era and occupied all of
Cilicia (the prejvinees of Mersin,
Adana and environs) by the end of
December. England occupied Mara§ and
other districts to the east, including
Ayntab in the Aleppo province, which
had been divided by die Armistice
line. Russia had staked out Istanbul
and eastern Anatolia, but its
withdrawal from the war after the
i.tnj Resolution was followed by the
Brest-Lfcovsk Treaty ofMarch 1918, in
which, the Bolshevik regime
relinquished such claims, including
those over the districts of Kars,
Ardahan and Batum, which Russia had
acquired from the Ottoman Empire at
the Berlin Congress in 1878. Kars and
Ardahan came to be contested between
the Ottomans and a new Armenian state
that declared independence from Russia
in May 1918, while British forces
occupied oil-rich Saturn in Georgia in
order to check both the Ottomans and
the Bolsh<?viks. Mudros's clauses
authorising the Entente powers to
control strategic locations, railways
and ports led to their effective
occupation of port cities and inland
communication centres, and she
presence of an Allied fleet anchored
off Istanbul’s shores.
Vahdeddin counted on cooperation
with the Entente powers to preserve
his incumbency and retain monarchial
rule over a portion of the Ottoman
patrimony, even though the aftermath
of Mudros offered litrle hope to
anyone who relied on the Entente’s
goodwill. He closed the parliament in
December using powers that the CUP had
restored to his easily manipulated
predecessor. As the compromised
independence of the empire’s remnants
awaited a resolution in the peace
conference, Vahdeddin s title as
sultan became Ituie more than a
sinecure. He could compensate for the
circumscription of his temporal
authority by emphjisising his caliphal
prerogatives. A caliph dependent on
British goodwill was good colonial
policy for Britain. Vahdeddin also had
the support of segments of the
capitals cosmopolitan elite, who
valued British favour for the sake of
the state’s survival.
The victors continued their occupation
of strategic sites while tightening
their hold on the capital. On 8
l^bruary 5 >x« rhe French general
Fra.nc.hei d'Esperey made a
choreographed entry int hvmbul as the
commander of the Entente and other
allied tror^ps, which induacct a
t»reck contingent . Me docked at rhe
heart of old Istanbul and entered die
city on the bade, of a white horse, in
apparent emulation of Mehmed II, the
Ottoman conqueror of Constantinople
The struggle for independence
in *453. Spectacle aside, a
lingeringbut.half-hearted occupation
would be beset by disputes between
d’Esp^rey and the British Commander of
the Army of Black Sea, General Milne 6
The compliant sultan appointed as
grand vczir his brother-in-law
(TDamad*) Ferid Pa§a, who was to head
five different cabincts between March
1919 and October 1920. Ferid had led
the 'Liberal' opposition to the CUP
and advocated the promotion of privace
initiative and greater local and
communal prerogatives.7 The British
cooperated with the Damad Ferid
government to round up Unionist
leaders, officers and statesmen in the
capital and send them to war
tribunals, and many to detention and
exile in Malta.
The crackdowns failed to suppress a
public sphere ofunprecedented vitality
and breadth that crystallised in
Istanbul after the Armistice at the
confluence of different factors: the
removal of censorship with the
collapse of the CUP; the need to
address the ramifications of Mudros in
the respite from fighting; and the
elimination of the principal forum for
political deliberations with the
closure of the parliament in December
1918. The press and political and
cultural associations flourished, and
an attempt in February 1919 to impose
censorship was defeated under
protests.8 The terms of the Madras
agreement and the principles
proclaimed by President Wilson
constituted die backdrop for vibrant
debates on what was desirable and what
could be feasible. While the capital
was the hub of this public sphere,
particularly in terms of civic
associations, die provincial press
also proliferated.**
The ignominious dissolution of the
CUP gave new life to its opposition.
Hie Hurriyer ve itilaf (Libcrry and
Entente) Party, suppressed since 19x3,
was revived in igrS, .Several other
political parties with minor
differences in out took emerged.
Liberty and Entente's traditional proBritish proclivity and its closeness
to the palace compromised it under the
circumstances of foreign occupation
and the palace's acquiescence. A
diverse group of professional and
civic societies, educational
delegations and political parties came
together under the umbrella of a
National Congress (Mill! Kongre) that
called for broad
6 Nur Uiigc Criss, Istanbul uruicr
Allied Occupatiau, t$t$-1$2} U^den;
Hrill, pi>. 60-4.
7 Ahmad. Tht frttng 7WJm. pp. 99, IC4,
% Sinn Akfin, Istanbul hfikiimctltri
\x mxili mticadek (Isrsmbul: Gem
Yaymevi, vol. f. j>. x%% Z.eki Ankan,
«V!tfi<J>dfeve i^altUHicmi
izr.iirIwwtm fja tikitn 191S--4 F.ylul
1 $22) (Ankara Amtirk Ara?nm>»
M«rkezi, u}«9), p, n.
9 Tank Zafcr Tunaya drvatt’s an entire
volume to the civic and politic*!
associations of the era in his
Tiirkiyc'de 3iy<ual pnrtikr. vol. 11:
Mittarckt dbncnu (Istanbul: Hurrvyet
Vakli Yayxnhm. On tht pres*. «;r Cimer
Sami Cofsr, MHU mucadtie hastm
(Istanbul^: Gazeiedlex Cemiyeu
Yftymian. n.d ) and Btinyamm Kocaoglu,
MutarckrMr iuHuttQhk (Istanbul. Itrncl
Yaymlan. 2006).
117
HA.SAN KA5TAU
action above all factionalism to
defend unity and independence in a
manner consistent with Wilson's
declaration.20
Wilson's Twelfth Point coupled
political self-determination wirh
nationality in stipulating the Turkish
portion of the rump empire as the
repository of sovereignty.” This
formulation, imparted legitimacy to
ethnic identification among Muslim
groups as a basis for political selfdetermination, not least because the
Twelfth Point also called for
autonomous development, of the ‘other
nationalities'. After 19*8, several
Kurdish societies came into existence,
chief among them the Society for the
Advancement of Kurdistan (Kurdistan
TeaK Cemiyeti) as did a National
Turkish Parry (Milii Tiirk Firkasi), a
Society for the. National Improvement
of the Laz (Laz Tekamul-u MiJli
Cemiyeti) and the Society for the
Protection of the Near Eastern
Circassians' Rights ($ark-1 Karib
£erkes!cri Temin-i Hukuk Cemiyeti ).*“
The popular resistance that gradually
crystallised in Anatolia and Thrace,
drawing adherents and opponents from
each of these, and other ethnic
communities, was to appropriate
Turkishness, consistently conflated
with Muslimness, as its idiom 3nd the
basis of a supra- ethnic identity
mobilised against foreign occupiers.13
As the Paris peace talks progressed
in the spring of 1919 without Ottoman
representation, proposals'; for a
Western mandate in Anatolia energised
public discourse. A mandatory
arrangement held out die hope of
maintaining a degree of territorial
integrity and independence, both of
which had been jeopardised after
wartime losses and post-war
occupation. Because the sultan
favoured British cooperation for the
protection and perpetuation ofhis
caliphal role, the palace was not
averse to a British mandate. A newly
formed society called the Friends of
England (Ingiliz Muhibieri Cemiyeti)
advocated such a solution openly.
Others, including such activist
intellectuals as Ahmed Emin (Yalman)
and Halide Ed ip (Adnrar), were
reconciled to the need for external
to Tunaya, Miitavckc dtncmi, pp.
jjo••<*; Shaw, From Empire to
Republic, vol. 1. pp. 18$-$. ri The
Turkish portions of the present
Ottoman Empire should be assured a
secure sovereignty, but the other
natiooaiitifcs which are now under
Turkish rule should he assured an
undoubted recurityofUfe and
aaahsokitely unmolested
<ypportunityai’anaiirm>on’Kn}sd«vr.
bpmerH. and ths Dardanelles should
be permanently opened as a tree
passage to d>e ships and commerce
of ail mtkros under international
guarantees, u Tunaya, Miihmke
ilmtmi, pp. i$6~zas, 456, sjr,
13 Erik J, Zikcher. 'Young Turks,
Ottoman Muslims and Turkish
nationalists: identity politics,
T908--1938', in Kemal Karpatfed.)Ottmttaft-PastaKdT^tv s Txtrkty
(Leiden; Brill., 2000), pp.
169,173; Howard Eissensm,
'Metaphors of race and discourse of
nation: racial theory and the
beginnings or nationalism in the
Turkish Republic', in Paul
Spickard'ed.}, Racc and Natim:
HthnU Systems in the Mwfm 1 Wmd
(New York: Rmitledgc. 0005), pp.
Mr- 6. See also Karen Barkey,
'Thinking about consequences of
empire', in Karen ftarkey and Made
von Hagen feds.), After £»tpax
(Boulder; Wescview Press, >997)•
PP- nxs-$1x8
The straggle foi' independence
assistance but favoured the United
States as the prospective mandatory
power of the rump empire/4
The decapitated CUP’s extant
structures and secondary cadres, some
still active within the Istanbul
government and the provinces, rallied
against occupation and tutelage.15 The
fear that parrs of the. empire then or
previously populated by Christian
groups might have to be ceded was the
single most significant impetus behind
the beginnings of resistance in
Anatolia. A prospective large-scale
return of surviving Armenian deportees
could have tipped the balances in
favour of Armenian pluralities or
majorities, thus providing the
justification for independence or
annexation to the Armenian state
centred in the Caucasus. The Mudros
agreement allowed the Bntente rights
of inter vcntion in the Armenian,
provinces (rendered as the six
provinces' in the Ottoman text,
referring to Erzurum, Sivas,
Diyarbekir, Mamuret cl-Aziz, Van and
Bitlis). The inclusion of Armenian
units in the French occupation forces
in Cilicia** increased suspicion about
an Entente commitment to the creation
of an Armenian entity in Anatolia.
Eastern Anatolian Muslims feared a
return of exiles to reclaim their
properties as much as they did a
redrawing of international boundaries
that would place Muslim populations
within a sovereign Armenian state.
Even in the absence of Armenian
sovereignty, a sizeable Armenian
presence in these provinces could
invite foreign intervention on the
Armenians' behalf. It was, therefore,
no coincidence chat some of the first
organised political groups of the
resistance, called the defence of
rights (mtidafoA-yi hukuk)
organisations, were formed in areas
with historical Armenian and Greek
populations, specifically die two
largest eastern cities. Erzurum and
TVabzon, and Eastern ’Thrace and
Izmir. The people of Kars formed an
Islam Council (Kars Islam §urasi) as
early as 5 November 1918. The council
became the nucleus of a regional
organisation that convened as a
congress in different incarnations and
established the transitional
government of Southwest Caucasia in
January (Cenub-u Garbi Kafkas
Httarnefri Muvakkate-i Milliyesi). The
organisation was the prototype of
future congresses in Anatolia. It was
dismantled in April 2919 by British
troops in occupation of Batum and the
Azeri capital, Baku.’7
14 Salahi Raitmkn Sanyd Turkish
tHfilom*uy,x^S~t*}Z3 (London: Sage
Publications, 1975). p 1}
rs Zttrdvsr, The Unionist Factor, esp.
ch»{v
16 Roben F Zeidncr. The Tricolor over
the Taurus: The French in Cilicia and
Vicinity, ipfg i$zz, PhD rlrcas,
University of Utah (199*). PP- M*-5517 RulentTantfr.
TUrkiye',kknn.greikiUiarlnn(i yjSj^woj (Istanbul: *api Kre.d». 1998},
pp. 194 - «**.
:r 9
HAS AH JUUAU
The history of the early nodes of
resistance organised by local notables
and army officers, with m Increasing
reliance on local armed, bands, has
been obscured by two interrelated
dispositions of subsequent official
history. One is the tendency to
glorify the resistance as a seamless
movement, united and inexorably driven
by a Turkish national spirit. This
view undermines the crucial role that
early and isolated local forces and
defence organisations played in
mobilising resistance, Tlie second is
die tendency to accord Mustafa Kemal
the primary, if not. exclusive, role
in the achievements of the resistance.
While Mustafa Kemal played a pivotal
role in the consolidation of the
movement starting in the summer of
191,0, some local groups became
active, as soon as the hostilities of
the Great War ended, constituting the
basis for unified action againsr the
Entente’s scramble for Anatolian
territories in the years to come.
The victors1 competing claims and
the priority accorded to European
issues at the pcacc conference delayed
and complicated the determination of
Anatolia's status. Greece advanced
claim* on western Anatolia based on
ideological, historical and
demographic factors, which Britain
received with favour. Italy was
suspicious of Greek designs on southwestern territories, which the Triple
Entente had pledged to Italy in the
secret London Agreement of 1915 and
reaffirmed as falling within that
country 's sphere of influence in die
i$M7 Treaty of St jean de Maurienne.
At the end of March 1919, Italian
forces landed in Antalya and moved
north and north-west to Ku^adasi,
Ak^ehir and Afyon within weeks. In the
middle of May the Allies allowed the
landing of Greek forces in Izmir, the
second-largest city and port of the
rump empire.
Tine invasion of western Anatolia
and Thrace was a step in the implementation of the Greek kingdom's
expansionist agenda. An irredentist
Idea
(’Great Idea’) harking back to the
Byzantine period had motivated Greek
nationalists since the turn of the
nineteenth century The centrepiece of
the expansionist project,
Constantinople, was now under
international control; but western
Anatolia, which had many Greekplurality towns, and the southeastern
coast of the Black Sea, or ancient
Pontus, where conversion and expulsion
had much diluted the Greek presence,
seemed within reach to form a new
greater Greece. *• ’Hie British
allowed the Greek navy to invade
Izmir, not so much out of sympathy for
historical rights or demographic
arguments, or simply to reward Greece
and its staunchly pro-Bntente prime
minister, Eieft- herios Venizelos, for
an eleventh hour entry into the war on
the Entente side, as out of necessity.
In 1919, the British occupation forces
were spread diin in the Middle East,
from Baghdad and Syria in the south to
the Caucasus and the
i£ Michael L. Smith, fonutti Vision?
Great in Asia Miner, t p<o-?<M2
(J/mdon; AJtan Lane, r973).
110
The struggle for independence
Black Sea in the north. Depleted by
the long war, Britain lacked the
ability and will to commit further
troops to curb resistance in Anatolia.
Italian ambitions in south-western
Anatolia and French designs in Syria
and south-eastern Anatolia could have
potentially undermined the British
influence in Asia Minor, hence Britain
favoured the control of the western
region through the Greek proxy
Autonomous Kurdistan and independent
Armenia were to emerge as other such
proxies in the peace negotiations.
The Greek landings caused a
visceral response in Istanbul and
Anaroiia - first, popular
demonstrations, then, as die
occupation expanded, popular armed
resistance. As a result of the
physical and psychological
debilitation of years of war, some
residents of the empire were prepared
to give the benefit of the doubt to
tutelary political frameworks proposed
in peace talks, bur most Muslims saw
Greek annexations as a mortal threat.
The losses to Greece of Balkan
territories including western llirace
and parts of Macedonia, and the memory
of exile and expulsion from these
lands, were fresh in die minds of the
Muslims. Demonstrations started on the
day of the invasion, not only in towns
under imminent Greek threat (Aydin,
Dcnizli, Kiltahya) but also further
inland (Konya, Havza, Erzurum).19 In
Istanbul, protests that began with
university students boycotting classes
culminated in two meetings in the
Sultanahmet Mosque on 23 and }Q May.
Under banners proclaiming Wilson's
‘iSvelfth Point, an estimated 200,000
people listened to speeches delivered
by intellectuals, including Halide
Edip and other women." The Allied
commissioners in Istanbul were
sufficiently impressed to extend an
invitation to the Ottoman government
to make a representation at the Paris
Peace Conference. The banning of
public meetings in Istanbul did not
stop demonstrations in the provinces
or other forms of protest. A letter
campaign sent, according to one
estimate, 130,000 postcards to Allied
representatives and to President
Wilson urging him to stand by his
Principles.** The occupation oftemir
energised the disparate but
increasingly overlapping elements
mobilising against occupation or
threat of occupation: local bands,
defence of lights groups, a Unionist
organisational network (Karakol) and
army officers.
Armed bands had participated in the
First World War's endemic intercommunal fighting. They gained
strength in manpower and arms from the
:«> Dogu Hrgil. Atittt roiicaddcnin
sjsyal tanhi (Ankara: Turban Kitabevi,
m#t). P- $7
io
Halide. F.dip Adivar, 'Hw.
Turfeuh Ot4m1 (Westport: Hyperion,
tepc of cdrv). p. 30; M. Tayyib
G&khiJgm. AHiflt mucadck baftarbm,
vol. (: Momkiriw M«utrckesi’tvlrn
Sivas Kongrcsi ‘ne (Ankara. Turk Tarih
Kitrumu Baximevi, 1959), pp. 89 90,
Kemal Anburnu, Milli mitcadfledt
fitmhul mitiaglfri (Ankara: Yeui
Mathaa, 195*}; Shaw, Prow Empire ft*
Rrmibtit:. vol. ft, pp. Ak|»i.
Istanbul hiikutnr.rlert, vol. I, pp.
.*07-8.
at Aobumu, MMi yivBcatirteJr, pp *4-5.
1X1
HASAN KA.TAU
demobilisation of regular army units
in thr post-Mudb-os period. Their
activity had been abetted by the CUP
and its intelligence and propaganda
organisation, UsjkflsM Mahsusa
("Spcdai Organisation), during the war
In October 1918, the Tefkiiat-i
Mahsusa was reconstituted as the Umitm
Atem i bism ihtiiai Te^kiiaa (The
General Revolutionary Organisation of
the World of (slam).1* an attempt to
mobilise popular resistance in che
name of Islam, faced with ifripendmg
surrender ro the Entente. The hands
knew the terrain, had access to arms
and availed themselves of solidarity
through patronage and clientship. Some
were organised along ethnic networks
of such immigrant; groups a$ the
Albanians and Circassians. The
circumstances of the occupation tested
and realigned the allegiances of diese
bands, as the occupying Greek army,
too, hoped ro harness their manpower
and local knowledge.**
Local defence of rights
organisations took up the. task of
coordinating the resistance under the
leadership of provincial notables such
as landowners and communal religions
leaders, as well as merchants,
oifidals and professionals, {n the
absence of a regular army, these
groups led the militias against Greek
forces, but also had to contend with
their opportunistic impulses.34 The
armed resistance that crystallised is
known as the kuva-yt miliiytf, a term
that is translated as 'national
forces' according to later
connotations of the word millt, but
more accurately rendered as popular'
or 'indigenous’ forces. Whether to
conceive of the kuva-yn miUiyc as
national forces or indigenous/popular
forces is not merely a semantic
problem; it has ideological
implications about the meaning and
origin* of Turkish nationalism. Hie
problem is only exacerbated by the
fact that the word milli alsohad a
distinct connotation of religious
community. Thus, the modern Turkish
citizen reads a different meaning into
the word from what tr connoted at the
rime. The popular forces that came mto
being through local initiative became
more coordinated over time,
constituting a resistance over a wider
territory eventually submitting to
unified command and assuming a broader
commonality that is more accurately
described as 'national’.2*
Officers of the demobilised Ottoman
army took an important role m die
coordination of the resistance. Most
were of provincial background and had
?.?, Bcik Ziircfecr, Turkey: A M<xkrn
History (London: 1. 8. Tauris,
1994). p- %4<>- 2v'rchtr, Thr
fJntmitt Factor, p.
-GSngeras, 'fmpemi Killing S;i«Ufe:
Rwiiutkm, fitiinidty a»4 telam in
Weutrrn AmtoS&st
Ph.D. thesis,
Umversity of Toronto (ioori),
ZA Ergti, Milli mucdticlenin. p. 48,
*5 For an analysis of the diverse and
thawing meanings of the word millet
and nuta. sec Biacric* Merxirich,
Milk-MiJf't-Nim'i’tj; wn der Htut
h’athm? i'FfanMuft: Pever Lang.
*003)IZ'X
The struggle for independence
spent the greater part of their
careers in the provinces The officers
were committed to the Ottoman state,
hut not inclined to submit to Allied
dictates alter their mcall to
Istanbul. They had borne the brunt of
the military defeat and been forced to
disarm their troops. While the sultan
was anxious to quell the disturbances
of motley groups in Anatolia,
dispatching advisory commissions to
the provinces led by Ottoman princes,
he had not altogether given up on the
defence of the land. By March 19*9,
General Kazans Karabekir, the wartime
commander of the Caucasus army, was
reassigned to Erzurum to lead the most
significant chunk, of the truncated
Ottoman army. Karahekir landed in
TVabzonon 29 April 19*9 and arrived in
Erzurum two weeks later.1* Officers
and civilian officials cooperated with
the secret Karakol to gather
intelligence and smuggle arms, men and
matmdoiu of Istanbul*7 Some secured
assignments m Anatolia that allowed
them to take part in the organisat ion
of the resistance. Thus, for example,
army commander Ali Fuad (Cebesoy)
returned to his former post in Konya
in March after unsuccessfully ujghig
Mustafa Kemal ro join him in Ankara as
his second-in-command.x* Some weeks
later, just before the Greek invasion
of Izmir, Mustafa K.emal accepted an
assignment as inspector of the Ninth
Army in Erzurum to monitor
tntercommuaal conflict and
demobilisation in the Black .Sea
region and eastern Anatolia and sailed
to Samsun.
The earliest date that Turks
observe in their national lore is 19
May, 1919 - a day that hardly appeared
as memorable at the time. 'On May 19',
as every TUrkish schoolchild can
report in a well rehearsed formula,
'Mustafa Kcmal set foot on the soil of
Samsun.' Mustafa Kemai Ataturk later
invoked his landing in Samsun a few
days after the traumatic invasion of
Izmir as the beginning of the Turkish
struggle, thus welding the popular
resistance to his life story.** Even
though Mustafa Keraal had prestige as
a represent ative of the sultan, he
found that he could not be effective
faced with British opposition to the
augmentation of security forces in the
region and pressure on the government
to have him recalled.1® He threw in
his lot with the popular forces, which
he subsequently helped unify.
Dining Mustafa Kernel's first weeks
at his new post, resistance
Intensified in the west and the local
leaders prepared to convene a
congress. At the end ofjune, delegates
convened in Babke&ir to decide on the
organisation of
<16 Ksmm Karabekir. tsrikfoi
Jwririmtzm ft<ukn (Istanbul: Emrc
Yayinian. 1*49$). pp. 4<>-»
%7 ZUichcr. The tfcunsitf Factor,
p. Si.
28 Shaw; frmtt Bmpire tit Republic,
vol. I. p.
19 Thw L< also where his famoux
spccch in 1927 scam See AtatUrk,
tfuivk, p. 1.
jo Shaw, From Empire 10 Republic,
vol. H, pp. 665-,*.
1*3
HASAN KAYALI
militia forces, their coordination
with the defence of rights groups aid
practical matters pertaining to
armaments and logistics* It met for a
second time at the end of July, days
alter Damad .Perid returned from Pads
empty-handed,5* and called for a
general popular mohlltetcton invoking
Wilson's Twelfth Point for sdfdetennination. The second Sahkesir
Congress coincided with another that
had been coiled by defence of rights
groups in the east in the town of
Erzurum (23 July-7 August).
Mustafa Kemal issued a declaration
in the town of Amasya together with
other prominent Ottoman officers Rauf
Bey, who had now resigned from his
military duties, and AJi Fuad.
Dispatched widely to the provinces,
the Amasya circular’ made a case for
the Inability of the Ottoman
government to meet its obligations and
argued for the establishment of an
alternate political body. It called
for a congress to meet in the. town of
Sivas and asked all provincial subdistricts to send representatives. It
urged popular demonstrations against
Istanbul's attempts to cripple the
resistance movement by prohibiting the
telegraphic communication of defence
of rights organisations The circular
sought to broaden and coordinate the
resistance in Anatolia.**
The previ ously planned Erzurum
meeting consti tuted the dress
rehearsal for the broader congress
called by Keraat and his associates.
Some sixty delegates representing
local defence of rights organisations
of the eastern regions and Trabann met
in Erzurum on 23 July. Mustafa Kemal
and Rauf participated as Erzurum
delegates upon the voluntary
resignation of two of the province's
elected delegates in their favour.
Kemal formally submitted his
resignation from the army and was
eiectcd as chair of the congress,
heralding the important role he would
play in the resistance.
Like the Ralikesir meeting, the
Eastern Anatolia Defence of Rights
Association meeting in Erzurum was a
regional convention. Us lint
resolution proclaimed the eastern
Anatolian and Black Sea regions as
integral parts of the Ortoman
community specifically citing the ‘six
provinces' The resolutions also
emphasised that Christian minorities
could not be granted privileges that:
would undermine 'political sovereignty
(/tafeimrycf) and social equilibrium'.
'Jliese phrases unmistakably referred
to Armenian claims in the east and
Greek designs on the Black Sea coast.
All Muslims, the congress declared,
belonged to the defence of rights
organisation. The congress insisted on
the preservation of the integrity and
independence of the vdtan (country,
homeland) and millet (community
people, nation), while expressing a
willingness to accept
ji BrgsL Mitti itiU&sdttenuu pp.
?■»•••<?.
yt M*tngo, Ataturk, p. a42.
B Shaw. Fmn Empire t# BeptibHi:, vol.
U, pp.
1x4
The stmggie for independence
scientific, industrial and economic
help from a disinterested state.*4 The
congress called for the parliament to
reconvene and oversee the government’s
decision and adjourned aiier electing
a representative committee with
Mustafa Kemai as its president. The
Erzurum Congress was the precursor of
the movement that began in the autumn
of 1919 to liberate, as stated in its
resolutions, the 'inseparable
territories' within the Mudros
'borders* inhabited by those united in
religion and race’, two terms with the
same connotation in the minds of many
of those inhabitants*5
Political and military consolidation
of the independence movement
(September 1919 -December 1920)
The Sivas Congress was smaller (thirty
eight delegates) than the Erzurum
meeting and convened for a shorter
period (4-11 September 1919), but it
was more widely representative of the
Anatolian provinces, its delegates
adopted Erzurum’s resolutions with a
more forceful rejection of all
occupation.*5 To underscore the
unification of the resistance
movement, the Sivas Congress decided
that the local defence of rights
organisations be brought under the
umbrella of an Anatolia and Rumelia
Defence of Rights Committee (Anadolu
ve Rumeii Miidafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti).
The congress closed after it elected
its own representative committee, also
to be chaired by Musrafa Kemai.
The language of the congress
resolutions echoed the Wilsonian
points. As the peace conference
deliberated mandatory arrangements,
Wilson sent a commission under General
James Harhord to appraise the
compatibility of a mandate scheme in
Anatolia with his Fourteen Points.
Harbord recommended in October r9J9>
that a single mandate should be
assigned to Anatolia by rhe League of
Nations. According to the intelligence
officer of the American high
commissioner in Istanbul, ‘British
claims to Mesopotamia and Palestine
were reluctantly recognized, but
anything beyond this was an
unnecessary partition ofTurkey’.17
Before Washington could consider
whether it could implement a mandate,
the United States senate abandoned the
League of Nations.5® The
i4
Selahanin Tamel, Alonifcmw'iuw
MtuUxya ’ya kadar (Ankara: Bafhakanlik
Rasimevi, 1973).
vol. II, pp. s?-8; Shaw, fnw« l-myirt
to Republic, vol. II, pp. 6&6~?.
•{♦; Hcudrtch, Mifii-Mcllrt-N'rftKw,
p. 86.
3<i Tanscf. Mcndoros’titn hixitanya'pa
Kitdar, vol. U, pp. i05~<>.
37 EhcIosim* no. 3 in Vice Admiral
Sivj. d* Jtobeck ro Harl Curzrm, s8
Octolwir t«j*> (foreign Oflfoe 406/41,
pp. 29^-3, No. i'eprr*d«ce<l »« Btjai
N. rajir, fagrfis fceJiifcriiufe
AtatUrk (iOt? 193*) (Ankara;
TfirkTarth Kuruimi Bsjumcvi, x*??.*),
v*>i. I, p. 168.
,jS Mango. AMiurk, p. *4#.
125
HASAX KAVAU
notion of an American mandate became
moot, though the Wilsonian imprimatur
for an eventual 'Turkish' sovereignty
in a unitary state was etched in the
fertile imagination of the Anatolian
leadership, The Hatbord report further
recommended economic independence for
Turkey and an abrogation of com
mercial privileges t o foreigners, two
principal aims of the emerging
nationalist leadership. The goal of an
economically independent and selfcontained collectivity in the rtunp
Ottoman territories was articulated
simultaneously in die resolutions of
the Sivas Congress and the aborted
Harbord proposal.
The Damad Ferid Pa^a government
tried to quell the organisational
activity in Anatolia with threats, and
even contemplated the dispatch of
Kurdish tribal unit* to overrun the
Sivas meeting.® After the Sivas
resolutions were drafted and
circulated, however, the sultan
attempted to appease the rest stance.
He appointed a new grand weir, Ali
Riza Paja, who opened a dialogue with
the leaders of die Anatolian movement,
imparting implicit recognition to the
decisions of the congresses. The new
government agreed to hold elections
and reconvene the chamber of
deputies.*1
The fact that parliamentary
elections were held as late as the end
of 1919 highlights the diSercnces
between the post-war experience of the
Ottoman state and other defeated
powers. One year after die armistice,
there had been no decision from die
peace conference on the future of the
Ottoman state. As the course and
outcome of the elections were to
reveal, much had changed on the ground
as a result of the war, but neither
die war nor the peace settlement
process had relegated die Ottoman
state to history; The renewal of
elections served as a testament to the
persistence of the Ottoman political
institutions and processes.
The sultan saw the elections as a
way of co-opting the resistance,
Elected deputies would convene in
Istanbul under the watchful eyes of
the security forces. Defence of rights
groups and sympathisers sought to
influence the outcome, at times
resorting to intimidation and force.
Their sway in the countryside was not
uncontested. Local uprisings, led by
pro-Istanbul officials and
conservative communal leaders,
contravened such efforts. The Liberty
and Entente Party declared a boycott
of the elections in protest over the
preponderance of Unionists in the
defence of rights organisation.
Nevertheless, the last two months of
tj»i<> witnessed a heated election
campaign in which the press played a
prominent role. Some 140 seats were
contested, bur by the time the
parliament opened on ra January 1920,
only 72 representatives were present,
,3# Shaw, Fmm Rtnpm to RtfvMu:. vol..
li, pp. 705-4. Xut'ditr, Turkey, p.
157.
-to Tahsln N. Karaca, Sm Oxmxmh
AlcdisJ Mdtft&m Si^imkri (Ankara;
Ttfrk T»r*h Karumu
Basnnevi. UQ04).
126
The struggle for independence
though deputies who trickled to
Istanbul gradually filled some too
seats,41 Under the turbulent
circumstances of occupation, incipient
armed resistance and revolt, ejections
could not be completed in all
districts.
The parliament was greeted with a
huge popular rally m Sultanahmet the
day after its opening" The deputies
endorsed the Anatolian movement and
confirmed the set of political goals
first articulated at the conclusion of
the Sivas Congress as the National
Pact (Misak-:* Miili), a document that
has come to be viewed as the blueprint
of the resistance's territorial
objectives and a nationalist
manifesto.43 The pact sought to
reclaim and preserve the state against
the contingencies that war had
engendered. Embroiled in diplomatic
wrangling, the fate of the occupied
Arab provinces was quite uncertain at
the beginning of 192,0. Defence of
rights organisations had been created
in some Arab provinces, but had not
been represented ip the congi'esses,
The pact left the settlement of die
status of the Arab provinces to the
free vote of their population. A
plebiscitary settlement was
recommended also for the three northeastern .fancdfo that had been
returned to the Ottoman government at
Srest-Litovsk - Kars, Ardahan, and
Batum - as well as for western Thrace.
The scope of the remiory claimed in
rhe pact was defined as areas
‘inhabited by an Ottoman-Muslim
majority', the precise limits of which
remained vague and contingent on the
plebiscitary outcomes.
The Arab provinces would be
formally partitioned between Britain
and France at San Remo in Italy in
April 1920, amidst Arab bitterness and
tensions between the two allies. Kars
and Ardahan, but not Batum, would stay
in the Ottoman rump after a military
campaign against Armenia the following
year and as a restdr of a diplomatic
understanding with Russia. The
National Pact, motivated by the need
to stem the tide of encroachments into
Ottoman territory in the aftermath of
the Mudros agreement, adapred itself
to unfolding military exigencies and
diplomatic bargaining before it took
its place in Turkish history as a
manifesto affirming a nation-state for
Turks within specific borders. Even
today, perceived and imagined threats
to the territorial integrity of the
country are depicted as violations of
the sacred 'National Pact boundaries'.
The subsequent appropriation of the
National Pact as the founding document
of modern Turkey has obscured its
pragmatic intent.
In the new chamber of deputies, the
deputies sympathetic to the defence of
rights movement consrimted themselves
as the 'Salvation of the Homeland'
(Felah-i Varan) group and brought the
majority of the deputies into their
41 Shaw, Pw/nBmpin io Repuhlu.. w>i.
IT, p. 799; Cnss, ImnbvL p. n; .Mango,
Ataturk, p. 2**;.
U Mango, Aiatiirk, p. Orax, isumbul, p
9.
43 See Shaw, from Umpire to Republic,
vol. U, p. 803 fot' the translation
of die texi. r*7
HASAN KAtAU
ranks.44 Such unanimity alarmed the
Allies, particularly because by the
spring of r§mi the motley resistance
forces, some iiirected by officers in
conjunction with defence of rights
groups, had scored successes in the
south east and the west, though they
still lacked unity of command. Locally
organised resistance ?n the south was
forcing the French forces {who had
replaced the British in Mara$, Urfa
and Ayntab45) to withdraw from Mara$.
In the west, hands in the countryside
formed a patchy resistance against the
Greek, army, which had fanned out from
Izmir into die surrounding areas by
transgressing die limits of advance
that the British authorities had set
in the autumn of 1919 (the Milne
Line), Under these conditions, the
Allies perceived a representative body
that defended the integrity of the
state and sought its deliverance from
foreign occupation as a formidable
threat.
On i6 March, the British
authorities tightened their grip on
the capital by assuming police
functions and declaring martial law.
The Allies had thus far justified
their presence in the capital and
areas to the north ofthe armistice
lines (e.g. Mosul, Cilicia) with the
provisions of the Mudros agreement
pertaining to security interests or
protection of Christian minorities.
With Russia's claims on Istanbul moot,
the British and French imposed a tight
grip on the capital, where antiimperialist opposition was becoming
more assertive. They depotted many
Unionists suspected of sympathy with
the resistance, including
inrellectuaU, governors, ministers and
deputies. The deportees included those
imprisoned in Istanbul since 1918, as
well as others who opposed the
punitive settlement taking shape at
the peace conference. Some 150
individuals were exiled to the island
of Malta starting in March i$z0. Grand
VezirAli Rizawas forced to resign and,
soon after, an Allied raid and arrest
of some deputies forced the parliament
to prorogue itself.48 The deputies had
asserted their political will only to
confront harsher measures and the
reimposition of a collaborationist
regime, led once again by Damad Ferid.
The parliament’s closure and
accompanying measures strengthened rhe
Anatolian resistance movement and the
claims of the representative committee
to be the exclusive legitimate
political authority.
Mustafa Kcmal had been elected as a
deputy to the new parliament, but
chose to stay in Anatolia for fear of
the heavy hand of the sultan and the
Allies, a fear justified by the
subsequent crackdown in March.
Instead, he took up residence in the
central Anatolian town of Ankara,
buffered from coastal
44
tbid,, p. 8oj.
45
in September ws, jw revision of
the wartime lerdcoml claims by rhe TWO
powers:
46 Bernard Lewis,
4 Menkm Turkey London; Oxford Untwmry Press, ioM}, p
-m.
13ti
The struggle for independence
occupation forces yet provided with
good communications, and maintained
contact with the deputies in Istanbul
as well as the provincial resistance.
lie published the propaganda organ of
the defence of rights organisation,
the newspaper Hakimiyet4 MQUye
(Popular Sovereignty), Upon the
closurc of the chamber of deputies, he
led an effort to resuscitate an
assembly of representatives in Ankara
outside the reach of the sultan’s
police and Allied forces.
On 23 April 1920, dose to one
hundred members of the Ottoman chamber
of deputies escaped to Ankara to join
twice as many delegates sent by
provincial defence of rights groups,
and formed the Grand National Assembly
(GNA). Eschewing the dynastic
designation, the founders referred to
the new body as the Grand National
Assembly of Turkey (Turkiye Biiyiik
Millet Meciisi), formally
appropriating the geo-political term
'Turkey' chat had long been used in
Europe, but also increasingly among
the Ottomans, to refer io the Ottoman
state in general and Anatolia in
particular. Mustafa Kemai was elected
president of the new body, which also
internally elected ministers to
constitute an executive organ. He
immediately castigated the Istanbul
government, carefully disassociating
it from the sultan. Both governments
vied to establish moral, political and
military authority to undermine the
other. Armed with a decree from
§eyhlilislam Diimzade Abdullah, Damad
Fend had denounced the deputies
supporting the resistance as rebels.47
Mustafa Kemai countered this decree
with one issued by the mtiftii of
Ankara, Rifat Efbndi (Bdrck^iojjpu),
which repudiated the charges of
rebellion and discredited Durrizade as
a hostage of foreign occupiers. Rifai
Efendi’s decree called on Muslims to
save the caliph from bondage.4*
Indeed, religious arguments for the
resistance carried much weight among
rhe leadership. Rifac was not merely a
holder of provincial religious office,
but the leader of the Ankara Defence
of Rights Society; His role in the
resistance movement is indicative of
the deep involvement of religious
figures and ulema in the struggle, for
independence.4* Achievements in
military organisation came more slowly
than Mustafa Kernel's successes in the
political arena. Undisciplined forces
coalesced around kinship Mid patronage
relations, and bands marauding in the
countryside defied authority. Even
when these forces fought occupation or
loyalist forces, their leaders
remained independent, and some
rebelled when their autonomy was
threatened by Mustafa Kemai's attempts
to coordinate the disparate forces in
rhe west under Ankara's authority. In
order to legitimise the authority that
47
Mim&o. AUttmk, p. 275
48 Kitztm Oaalp, Mtlfi mura.Wf, 1 <n
y~i {Aniom*: Turk Tanh Kitmmo fUxunon,
vol. I, pp. w~a.
49
Baynsm Sakalli, AMJtmacar/cfe’uin
tayal utrihi flsianbui; b Yayincilik,
X997), PP fca- 40.
129
the GNA had arrogated to itself, the
assembly government would first: and
foremost have to -fight occupation
armies and stem, the Greek tide
The organisation of the military
struggle proceeded against the
background of diplomatic developments.
With the disappearance of the
restraining influence of the United
States, Britain and France had
acquired a free hand to realise, the
terms of the wartime secret treaties.
The Allies met. at San Remo the day
after the GNA opened in Ankara.
Britain md France negotiated their
territorial claims, first articulated
in the. Sykes Pkot Agreements, and
divided the Syrian and Mesopotamian
territories of the Ottoman Empire into
mandates. Ottoman delegates were
invited to Sevres (near Paris) in
August to sign a partition plan that
included the dismemberments stipulated
in San Remo, but also carved up the
remainder of the empire.
The S&vres document proposed
dividing eastern Anatolia between an
independent Armenia and an autonomous
Kurdistan, while it gave to Greece the
Aegean islands and Eastern Thrace up
to the outskirts of Istanbul. Izmir
and its hinterland were also placed
under Greek administration as a
prelude to formal annexation, ro be
based on a plebiscite, within five
years. Simultaneously, Britain, France
and Italy signed a tripartite
agreement confirming the Italian
sphere of influence in south-western
Anatolia and a French zone conforming
to wartime agreements in the Eastern
Mediterranean and to the north of the
new' Syria mandate. The terms of the
S6vre* Treaty were not limited to
these onerous territorial clauses. The
Ottoman government would also agree to
the international control and
demilitarisation of the Straits; to
limiting the size of its army and navy
and putting both under Allied control;
to submitting all financial matters,
including the budget, customs, loans
and the public debt, to another Allied
commission; and to reinstating the
capitulations.50
The treaties signed by the Ottoman
government in previous decades,
including Berlin (1878) and those that
concluded the Balkan Wars (1$®), had
deprived the empire of large chunks of
territory, but left behind a political
space in which the processes and
institutions of the state could remain
viable despite vast demographic and
economic changes. The armistice in
i<?t8 had been no exception, even
though the severity of the defeat and
post-war concessions had shaken die
state co its foundations. Sevres,
however, jeopardised not just the
reality of empire but also the states
territorial and economic viability.
The sultan's government accepted
Sevres (10 August 192.0) in an attempt
to salvage its sinecures of authority
and power. Ankara rejected it, as it
50 George Lenctowski, The Middle Hast
m World Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, pp 98-1031;
Horovitx, tXpkmoey in the hiiddk East,
vol. II, pp. 81-9.
130
The struggle for independence
contravened the fundamental political
and economic objectives of the
independence movement. Thus the treaty
both galvanised the resistance to
occupation anti brought the duality of
political leadership into sharper
relief. SJvrns ultimately proved a
dead letter, not only because its
backbreaking terms gave a new lease of
life 10 the Anatolian movement, but
also because the signatories lacked
the will to implement its
stipulations.
For an international agreement that
was neverimpletnented, Sevres has had
a remarkable legacy in Turkey and
retains a daunting place in the
collective national memory as the
paramount symbol of subjugation and
capitulation. Turks warn of the
'Sdvres mentality’ to denounce every
perceived capitulation to a threat
from the outside - military, economic
or political. The? invoke it when a
main actor in the political field is
viewed as too subservient to foreign
demands and pressures. By formalising
European occupation and stipulating an
Armenian state, Sevres not only
energised the Anatolian military
struggle as an anti-imperialist
movement but also instilled further
suspicion of Christians in Anatolia,
augmenting the anti-Christian an of
the Anatolian movement.
The rejection of the Sevres,
followed by successful military
exploits on the eastern front,
enhanced Ankara's moral authority and
political legitimacy and further
distanced it from Istanbul. The
resignation of Daraad Fetid Pa§as who
had accepted rhe Sevres Treaty,
imparted additional political strength
to die GNA government. The first
systematic milita ry challenge of the
Sevres scheme occurred in the east
against the Armenian Republic Under
the command of Kasim Karabekir, and
with Soviet acquiescence, remnants of
the Ottoman regular army moved into
Sartkami? and Kars, territories that
Russia had relinquished to the Ottoman
Empire at Brest-Lttovsk but which were
now claimed by die new Armenian
Republic, By the end of 1920, Ankara
had recovered Kars and solidified its
gains with the first international
treaty it signed with a foreign
country: Armenia, which was soon
annexed by the Bolsheviks.
Reorganising the regular army in
the west proved to be a greater
challenge, and the effort became
closely intertwined with the political
process. Mustafa Kemai’* ability to
prevail over the popular forces and
reorganise them into regular units
depended on his ability to assert his
authority in Ankara. A new Law on
Fugitives was conceived to help corral
the popular forces into the army. The
law also stipulated the setting up
of‘independence tribunals' in Ankara
and several provinces under the direct
jurisdiction of the assembly and
conducted by its members. The
authority of these courts was
broadened to include treason cases,
and they were summoned periodically
r.o neutralise the opponents of the
Ankara regime and, increasingly, the
critics and potential rivals of
Mustafa Kemai. Some deputies, such as
Re$id Bey, a Circassian deputy
T3t
KAiA# KAYA Li
representing Saruhan (Manisa), had
family and ethnic ties to local
resistance forces and were jealous of
their independence, not least as a
safeguard against the aggrandisement
of Mustafa Kemal’s authority,**
Resid*s brother, £erkes Bthem, had
the widest following among the popular
forces and posed the greatest
challenge to the project of bringing
the military resistance under central
command. He had organised his retinues
as the 'Mobile Forces’ (KuvayiSeyyare), a militia that had not
only carried out die most effective
resistance against the Greek,
occupying forces, but also fought
rebel formations such as those of
Ahmed Anutvur, a provincial governor
of femit and Babkesir and early
militia leader against Greek
occupation, whom subsequently the
sultan and the Allies incited to
action against die papular fbn:es.p
Ethem also was invoked in the Green
Army Ordu) movement, a political group
sympathetic to an Islamist-socialist
agenda, which Mustafa Kemal viewed
with increasing suspidoo.53 The
closure of the Green Army in September
i9» was followed by die appointment of
the chief of the general staff femet
(iwSuu) as the commander of the
western front with the charge of
organising the regular army. Ethem
withdrew his support from Ankara by
first withholding assistance m a
skirmish with the Greek army, and then
rejecting the incorporation of his
forces into the regular army54
Laws ratified in the GNA and
deployed against the dissidents, such
as those pertaining to fugitives and
the independence tribunals, had to be
grounded in a clearer definition of
the assembly’s powers. Mustafa Kemal
supported a bill to lay down a
fundamental law validating the GNA as
a representative body and affirming
its prerogatives and objectives, while
bringing greater clarity to the nature
of the assembly regime. The bill
called for the strengthening of the
army in order to defend the people
against the foreign enemy and to
discipline traitorous internal
collaborators (Article 3) 53 Kemal
believed that the socialist groupings
within the assembly, some with
paramilitary extensions outside, had
to be neutralised. Therefore, Article
3 appropriated anti-capitalist and
antiimperialist objectives for the
assembly government, particularly
imperative at a time when the quest to
recover eastern Anatolian lands
required friendly relations with the
Soviet government ('The government of
the GNA believes that it can tender
the people, the salvation of whose
life and independence it views as its
only objective, the true owner of its
government and sovereignty,
5} Brgiia Aybars, /jftfei! Mrth&rmdm
f femir; Ikri
Kitabevi, 1993).
52 Shaw, Fmm Empire to Republic, vol.
11, pp. 73? 41. 850 f.
5$ ibid., vol. HI, pp.
54
Osalp, MiUitndctidek, vol. !.pp.
166-Shaw, Pnm Emprew Republic, vot
Hl/s.pp. sopa-o.
55
Btgun Ozbudun, 1 w Anayttsnst
(Ankara. Aunirk Arajiirma M«rkc*i,
*$*»}, pp. t*>, 75.
tyj.
The struggle for independence
only by delivering it from the tyranny
of imperialism and capitalism’). This
affirmation of popular sovereignty
followed the assertion in Article i
that the GNA was constituted to
liberate the offices of the caliphate
and rhe sukanate, a nod to the more
conservative members.
The text of the bill was published
and read in the assembly on iH September.5* Deliberations did not start
until after Ankara had ceased
hostilities with Armenia, recovered
the eastern territories, including
Kars, formed a Turkish Communist Party
sanctioned by Mustafa Kemai to
supplant the maverick. Green Army, and
reorganised the western front. A
special committee revamped the bill to
exclude the easiernist/socialist
rhetoric and the references to the
liberation of the sultan-caHph and
submitted it for discussion in November. ’I'he deliberations on the dr ait
Fundamental Law became die <x:casion
for heated arguments. The Fundamental
Law, even though it posited rhe GNA as
the ultimate expression of die
people’s will, ensued from an extended
debate in that very body. Many
deputies viewed the GNA as neither a
constitutive nor a permanent body,
only a placeholder acting m the name
of the people until the sultan could
be liberated. They viewed with
increasing suspicion measures that
would enhance Mustafa Kemai s powers
as the president of an all-powerful
assembly and make him the head of an
executive organ. Dissent grew in the
assembly even as the Ankara government
was gaming a modicum of intern a don
ill legitimacy
Vying for sovereignry in war,
diplomacy and politics (January
r92i~Septemher 1922}
The Anatolian movement had
consolidated progressively starting
with its coordination in the
congresses of 19x9, which culminated
in the reconstitution of the
parliament in Ankara and a clear
breach from the imperial government.
The new government proceeded to revive
die regular army by assimilating
irregular resistance forces.
Itsucceeded in securing militarily and
diplomatically disputed territories in
the east. Political and diplomatic,
coniingencies that gave the Anatolian
movement the contours of a national
movement coalesced star ring in i9ir.
The collective efforts to forestall
and reverse occupation were moulding a
political comin unity that was poised
to imagine itself as a nation with the
end of warfare, the determination of
boundaries and the erosion of the
empire's legitimacy structures. The
determinative breakthroughs came early
in 1921 and reinforced each other: the
suppression of a wave of domestic
revolts; an effective
56 Ibid., pp. at, ?8.
13 i
H A S A N' it At A I I
irdHi^ny response to a Greek
offisnsive targeting Ankara itself;
the GNA'sfotmaJ appropriation of
sovereignty; and de facto diplomatic
recognition granted to Ankara by the
Allies. Accomplishments in each of
these areas were contested, and the
national movement remained precarious
until mote definitive victories
occurred on the battlefield.
The gravest endogenous and
exogenous threats Ankara had
confronted converged at the beginning
of 1921. After Ethem defied Ankara's
attempts to co-opt him, he urged the
popular forces to reject the new
tegular army In a showdown between
forces dispatched by the Western Army
and Ethem s Mobile Forces, some of his
officers and forces defected, while
others followed him in retreat.
Ankara's preoccupation with Ethem in
the western front triggered a new
Greek attack against the defence lines
near Eskijehir. kmet's forces rebuffed
the Greek advance in the district
aflnflnii. Ethem took refuge in the
Greek area of occupation and
defected.17 Ankara was able to halt
the Greek tide only temporarily, but
the dismantling of Ethem's Mobile
Forces halted the domestic revolts in
central arid western Anatolia that had
broken out sporadically since the
autumn of 1929
During the very days of the
defensive battles at indnii and the
military effort to break Bthem's
revolt in January 1921, die Ankara
government came to grips with
significant decisions on the political
and diplomatic front; rhe ratification
of the Fundamental Law in the assembly
and the response to an Allied opening
for negotiations with Ankara. What
allowed the Fundamental Law to take
its final form and be ratified on 2.0
January 1921 was not the exigency of
civil and international war. but the
new willingness of the Allies to
include the Ankara government in the
envisaged revision of the Sevres
Treaty, a factor that contributed to
renewed Greek belligerence, lest die
Allies' initiative compromise Greek
war aims.* The mtlitaiy successes of
the GNA government in the eastern
front, resulting in the signing of an
international treaty, had duly
impressed the Allies. The tacit
agreement between Ankara and Moscow on
the fate of eastern Anatolia and the
border provinces effectively
partitioned Armenia and ignored
Kurdish autonomy. Meanwhile, the
Fundamental Law was ratified to
bolster rhe legitimacy of the assembly
as its leadership postured for
recognition and concessions from the
Allies.
The Law of Fundamental Organisation
{Te^kilat-i Esastyt Kammu), generally
known -as the first constitution of
Turkey, did not supplant the 1876
Ottoman constitution m amended during
the Young Turk penod. It affirmed
<1? Mtiti MihiHich', vol. I, p 170.
‘0 Mango, Ataturk, p. #06.
1*4
The struggle for independence
the principle of the sovereignty of
the people (Article i: 'Sovereignty
belongs unconditionally to the.
mtikt'), a notion chat had been
enunciated since the congresses and
the early days of che GNA. It also
affirmed the concentration of all
powers in rhe assembly. Article 2
stared: “llie executive and
legislative functions are combined in
the Grand National Assembly as the
true and sole representative of the
m/ifcr.’ Mustafa Kemal, accordingly;
proceeded to demand dsat only
delegates from the GNA should
participate in the negotiations with
foreign governments.
Both the Istanbul and Ankara
delegations took part in the
negotiations in London, but with the
consent of Tevfik Pa$a, the GNA
government's foreign minister, Bekir
Sami (Kunduh), led the talks. Almost
three weeks of discussions failed to
result in any concrete modification of
the Sevres Treaty. Bekir Sami refused
to entertain any concessions to the
Greeks, while the Greek delegation
rejected Allied proposals for scaling
back Greek gains in the occupied
territories. Despite die stalemate it
became apparent during the
negotiations that borh France and
Italy were anxious to reach a
settlement,, even if it meant
renouncing their territorial claims in
southern Anarolia in return for
economic influence.** Italy was
particularly forthcoming in. striking
such an agreement because of its
mistrust of Greek expansionism in the
Italian sphere. The continuing delays
in the determination of the status of
the rump empire had helped expose che
cracks among the Allies. Bekir Sami
returned having negotiated separate
agreements with the French, Italian
and British delegates-, both France
and Italy agreed to cease hostilities
and end the occupation of southern
provinces in return for concessions in
mining and trade. Italy also extended
support to Ankara against Greek
territorial claims in Anatolia and
'fhrace. An understanding was reached
with Britain for the exchange of
prisoners, including more than half of
the political prisoners held by
Britain in Malta.** The same week that
rhe agreements widt che Allied powers
were signed, another Ottoman
delegation in Moscow finalised and
signed a friendship treaty with Soviet
Russia, which established the eastern
borders to the north of Iran.*1
Ankara's first diplomatic treaty had
been signed with a small country,
Armenia, which had been defeated in
war. 'rhe Moscow Treaty, on the other
hand, signified the imprimatur of a
major power for the Ankara government.
The Bolshevik regime had assisted the
anti-imperialist movement in Anatolia
from the outset, but having installed
Soviet governments in the Caucasus, ir
sought to maximise their territorial
gains. Ankara was forced to relinquish
Batum to
59 Ibid., p. yw; Tansd, Montltm*'(tin
Mvdaw&'yn kmiar, vol. JV, p. 56'.
Mahraui Goiojgiu, Cumktinyrtetiflgn,
(Ankara: GdogJu
Yayuilan, i'*n),p. »6$,
6) Hurcwitz., DipUm&y itt ihc Mi.ttk
East, w>3. II. pp. 95-?
*35
•I
the Georgian Socialist Republic, but
retained Artvin, Kars tend Aalahan and
received pledges for monetary and
military aid from Moscow,
These bilateral agreements and
treaties should be viewed as
diplomatic coups, concluded at a time
when military success against the
occupation was uncertain and the
existing international accords imposed
by the Allies were especially onerous.
Yet the deputies in the GNA were not
impressed with the results of
diplomatic negotiations and
agreements. The concession of Barum to
Russia and agreements with the French
and the Italians, which provided these
two powers with economic and strategic
concessions, were criticised as
violations of the Misak-t Milli. Bekir
Sami’s agreements were never ratified
(though similar terms were to be
accepted in future accords), and it
was only in July isri that the GNA
ratified die Russian-Turkish
Friendship Treaty.
Greece had renewed its offensive in
March in an attempt to push through
the front lines into Ankara. The Greek
drive was checked within a matter of a
few days, once again in tndnii, under
the command of Isme.r Pa$s. The size
of the ‘national army'* had reached
55.000, but casualties and desertion,
led to constant losses,63- Nor could
all forces be amassed 011 the western
from. On the occasion of the second
battle at Inftnu ia March, disgruntled
Kurdish tithes of the eastern town
ofDe.mm (near Sivas) rose in
rebellion.
The revolts had first broken out in
November 1920. but were mitigated by
the onset of the winter and successful
Kcraalist co-optation of some of the
rebel leadership ** 'llie ostensible
purpose of the rebellion, known as the
Ko^gxri rebellion after the name of a
main tribal group, was to force the
concessions towards Kurdish autonomy
stipulated in Sevres. The rebels had
established contacts with Kurdish
nationalist associations and leaders
in Istanbul, hitherto largely cut off
from the Kurdish provinces. Yet
Kurdish nationalist demands were
tempered by tribal rivalries, potent
loyalty to the K&malists’ anti-foreign
struggle among many Kurds. Kurdish
participation in the regular army,
differences of opinion about political
objectives (Autonomy for Anatolian
Kurd*;, as put forth in the Sevres
Treaty, as opposed ro independence for
all Kurdish regions) and ambivalent
British support. In the later
deliberations of a parliamentary
commission charged with addressing
Kurdish discontent, the Ko^giri revolt
was described as a reaction to the
implications of the Keroalist. stance
vis a vis the sulran-caKph.^ Indeed,
secular reforms played a paramount
role in the outbreak of the most
significant Kurdish uprising four
years later in
6» Mango, Atat&rk, p. jio.
6$ Robert Olson, The Emergcnc? of
Knr4isk Nattmulhtn anU the Sheikh
Saul RcbalHen (i $$<■■■ (Austin:
University of Texas press, 5989),
pp- ift-40
Ibid,, p. 3®.
The struggle, for independence
192$, the $eyh Said revolt. In 1921,
however, the revolt was not led by
religious authorities, who had the
ability to appeal across tribal
groupings, which possibly accounts for
the lesser success of the Kov*giri
revolt compared with £eyh Said’s.
Ankara diverted forces from che
western campaign, suppressed the
rebellion in the east and instituted
martial law in three provinces.
The Fundamental Law, whose Article
& posited the GNA as che true and only
representative of the millet, a dann
that had received a modicum of
international recognition at the
London conference, brought forth again
the question of the sultan-caliph’s
status and prerogatives. The deputies
in the first assembly had been united
around the goal of territorial defence
within a representative parliamentary
structure. The GNA was the embodiment
of che local and regional defence of
rights organisations, where
differences were muted under the
exigencies of warfare. To be sure, the
representatives had disparate
ideological leanings. There were
conservative and modernist Islamists,
Bolshevik sympathisers and ethnic
nationalists in the ranks. Yet the
early tensions were not primarily
focused on ideological commitments,
past politic al allegiances, sodoeconomic agendas or the courses of
action to be taken in the defence of a
territory that was still only vaguely
defined. The sensitive and
controversial issue of how much to
concede to Mustafa KemaFs demands
without compromising the principles of
assembly government embodied in the
Fundamental Law was at the heart of
die controversy in the spring of 1921,
even as the military and diplomatic
fortunes of the GNA government were
rising, the leadership met with
vigorous questioning from the assembly
on two interrelated concerns, one
about the implications of popular
sovereignty on the status of the
sultan-caliph and the other about
Mustafa Kemai's apparent quest for
greater power and authority.
Frayed by dissident voices,
political divisions and the potential
for fragmentation, Mustafa Kemal
decided to confront these differences
and impose stricter control over rhe
assembly. 'Hie conclusion of the
agreement with the Soviet Union
allowed a crackdown on the
extraparliamentary left and ks
proponents in the GNA.**5 The leaders
of the banned Green Army were
convicted. Mustafa Kemal reconstituted
the cabinet and identified a majority
of stable supporters as che defence of
rights group within die assembly. This
self-righteous designation was
intended to stigmatise the rest, who
cast themselves as the ‘other* defence
of rights group, or the Second
Group.**
<*5 Shaw, ta Emjriv to RtgttUtfk, vol.
ftt/j. p. 1098.
66 Pur a derailed analysis of the
Second Group, see Ahror.t Demirel,
Binwi MccHs'ie mufatlcfit (Istanbul:
jjrti$un, <994); also Frederick W
Frey. The Turkish PuHtMl Elite
(Cambridge,
MA; MJT Press, JSKSS), pp. iotf-33.
1*7
HASAN RATAL!
In Ankara, there was a feeling that
politics had sapped the energy of the
assembly and its president. The Greeks
undertook further attacks into the
summer, forcing retreats i» Ankara's
lines of defence, and bombed Black Sea
ports. The government felt besieged
and set in motion contingency plans to
evacuate the capita) in the event of a
Greek attack. Mustafa Kemat was
charged by the assembly with leading
the army as commander-in-chief which
placed the responsibility of defending
the landsquarely on his shoulders, The
assembly thus granted him prerogatives
that traditionally belonged to the
sultan and rested now difRiseiy'
widhin the assembly. This allowed
Mustafa Kemai to seek and obtain for
his person the powers of the GNA, at
first for a three-month period. He
immediately implemented extraordinary
war emergency measures mandating war
taxes and requisitions.
The armies of the ikikara govermncn
r battled advancing Greek forces along
a wide stretch of the. Sakarya River
for two consecutive weeks in September
192,1. Both sides suffered, heavy
losses, and the Greek army was forced
to pull back to the west of Sskarya. A
lYirldsh observer later commented that
at Sakarya 'the retreat that started
in Vienna on 13 September 1683 stopped
238 years later’.®7 It would take
another year for the nationalist
forces to expel the Greek army -from
Anatolia. The GNA bestowed upon
Mustafa Kemai the military rank of
field marshal and the title ‘gazi\ an
Ottoman honorific accorded to warriors
for the faith.
The victory in Sakarya proved
advantageous to Mustafa KeroaPs quest
to expand his powers. His political
fortunes hinged on success in his
capacity as commander-in-chief. He
sought an extension of his
extraordinary powers, which be secured
three consecutive times in three-month
intervals, until they were granted to
him without a specific time limit in
July 1922. As former Unionists were
liberated from Malta and joined the
GNA government, they criticised
Mustafa Kemai, exacerbating his
mistrust of Unionists. He declared
.full mobilisation and reactivated the
independence tribunals, appa.ren.cly
to try deserters and traitors, but
also to cow and. prosecute opponents/*
The army took a respite over the
course of the next year, while Mustafa
Kemai focused on political and
diplomatic mailers. Indeed, following
the losses in men and matfrid at
Sakarya, the army's ability to
undertake an offensive against the
Greek occupation forces was suspect,
as Mustafa Kemai was reminded on the
floor of the assembly
6? ^erafcrtia Turan, Turk {kmw mih>
(Ankara; Bugs Vaymevf, iWJ-'h vol. ii>
p. m- 68 A reincarnation of the
mtiefend«n<:« tribunals in 192$ served
the exclusive purpose of ncufraissi.ng
Unionist- rivals and opponent?.
'The struggle tor independence
Use Second Group sought to curb
Mustafa Kemal's quest to arrogate die
assembly's powers. In May 1922., this
group coalesced to deny him a fourth
term of emergency powers. When Mustafa
Kemal declared he would not abide by
this decision for the sake of the
army, a. re-vote in the intimidated
assembly obtained him approval. The
reversal, in the vote also convinced
the opponents to establish the Second
Group as 9 formal association with a
political programme. The first article
of the programme called fbr the
abolition, of all privileges,
prerogatives, organizations, and
implementations contrary to the
fundamental provisions of public,
law’,49
Even though opposition grew
progressively, Mustaia Kemal gained a
reprieve via the Allies' growing
willingness to come to a settlement.
The Italians evacuated their forces in
che Antalya region as early as July
1921, and. the French were, forced to
leave Urfa. and Ayntab in the southeast, restricting their occupation to
Cilicia. The powers that Mustafa Kemal
arrogated to himself allowed him the
latitude to respond favourably to
peace initiatives. His biographer,
Andrew Mango, notes Kemai's deliberate
emphasis on a commonality with Western
civilisation in his 'victory speech'
upon his return from Sakarya, a cause
for which he was prepared to make
concessions. According to Mango;
If the Allies accepted Turkey's
independent existence, there would no
longer be any cause for conflict with
them, as there was no longer any cause
for conflict between Turkey and.
Russia. This claim to a common
dviliasaOon was at the heart of
Mustafa Kemai's thinking. It rebutted
Western prejudice which t ook him for
a champion of a hostile Asian, Islamic
world or for an ally of destructive.
Bolshevik onslaught on civilized
values.7*5
in October jpax, the Ankara (or
Ftankiin-BouiUon, alter the name of
the diplomat with whom it was
negotiated) accord with France
established the frontier with the
French mandate of Syria, leaving the
stretch of the Baghdad railway up to
Wusseibin to Turkey (to be operated by
a French concessionary) and following
the paved road beyond Nusseibin up to
die Syrian-Iraqi border. The French
evacuated Cilicia, releasing muchneeded troops for the western front.
The accord left Alexandrerta to Syria,
stipulating cultural rights for its
Turkish inhabitants/* Aiexandretta's
exclusion met with strong protest in
the
t>9 Dv.mm'j, Umnd Mcdif, pp. aRs-^fn,
1‘^5-ri.
?o Mango, Atettiirk, p. jx2. Maagw
atfis Ataiiirk'iin sdykv ve dern^kn
($pftecbfc* aud Slate- men» by
Amtirk) {Ankara: Atatuxk KSJrflr,
[>il vc Yarih Yisksek Kuromu, i&Hh
vol. I, p.. sm.
71 Hurew&t, Diplomacy in ike Middle
East, vol. II, pp. 97-9,
*59
HASAN KAVStU
assembly. It was the price to be paid
for French friendship, just as Batum
had been she price for Russian
fncxKbhip.
By the end of 293.1, all eastern
boundaries of the st ate were
established, with the thorny exception
of the short frontier with Iraq,
because of the conflict overMosuJ that
would nor be resolved until 1926,
Ankara was eager for a peace treaty
that would sanction the status quo tn
the eastern half of Anatolia and also
revise the Sevres Treaty to secure die
independence of western territories.
In February 1'$%*> Foreign Minister
Yusuf Kemai (Tengir$enk) went to
Europe for contacts with Allied
representatives. Seeking increased,
bargaining power, he stopped in
Istanbul for an audience with the
sultan, where he asked for an
endorsement of Ankara's political
objectives, but failed to secure a
unified front. The Allied proposals
for an armistice that followed his
contacts in Rurope were vague and
open-ended, though, significant,
because Britan* - die underwriter of
the Greek occupation - was now an
interested party. The pro posals left
the occupation intact, but stipulated
that Greeks relinquish Izmir in the
future* while making concessions to
Greece In eastern Thrace. Minority
issues, including concessions to the
Armenians, would be left to the.
League of Nations. Hie Allied note
also asked for strategic concessions
in the Straits after rhe evacuation of
Istanbul and affirmed Turkey's
continued obligation to the Public
Debt: Administration. But the Ankara
government’s insistence that its
agreement on a ceasefire would be
contingent upon Greek, evacuation
aborted the initiatives. The.
government resolved to create these
conditions on the bartlefUdd instead.
On 26 July W2&. Mustafa Kemai led
the armies in an attack on Greek positions near the town ofAfy on. Three
days of fighting between the two
armies culminated in a fierce battle
on 30 August, in which the Turkish
forces prevailed and pursued the Greek
army in ita retreat, recovering one
town after the other in the midst of
violent destruction, and reached Izmir
on 5? September. As the city burned,
for which each side blames the other
to this day the Greeks evacuated m p
«ur, tod che Turkish forces m.rned
north to attack Greek positions in
th<° Marroa- a region. The effort 10
end Greek occupation in Eastern Thrace
nn ev*ria?cd the transport of troops
through demilitarised zones under
Allied o» rupatmn at IOSS the
Dardanelles in Canakkale, This nearly
pitted the x^narohan army against die
British forces in an episode referred
to as rhe Chanak crisis, better known
for the domestic and colonial policy
ramifications in Britain, arising from
the non-compliance of some
Commonwealth countries with London's
request to send .military support. The
sides agreed to discuss the impasse in
an international conference., which
mti m the town of Mudanya in South
Marmara.
1:40
The straggle for independence
The Great Victory, m the August
offensive is known and celebrated in
llu-key, put Ankara in a position of
strength to renegotiate the terms of
an armistice with the Allies in
Mutianya (u September ISM). The
agreement ceased the hostilities
between Turkish and Greek forces and
stipulated Greek withdrawal to die
east of the Maritsa River in Thrace,
abandoning Edirne in return lor
Ankara's agreement not to send force*
to demilitarised areas and to consent
to the continued Allied presence in
Istanbul until a comprehensive peace
treaty could be concluded. In Mudanya,
the contours of die new state of
Turkey took shape. It was to receive
international recognition *t Lausanne
eight months later.
Foundations of a nation-state
(September 1922-April 1924)
The ceasefire had been signed by the
delegates of the Ankara government,
whose forces had won the wars against
the Greek occupation. When the Allies
invited both the Istanbul and the
Ankara governments to the peace talks
iii Lausanne in cite fall of the
Kemalists resolved to eliminate dual
authority once and for all Alter
listening to a discourse by Mustafa
Kemal on the theory and practice of
the caliphate in Islamic history, the
GNA voted on a motion providing tor
the sepaiaiion of the office of the
sultanate from the caliphate, and rhe
abohuon of the former. The stratagem
of separating the two offices ensured
the abolition of the monarchy with
remarkably little dissent. There was
little doubt about the momentous
nature of the decision, however. The
GNA formally consigned rhe empire to
lustory, retroactiveiy declaring the
Ottoman state as defunct from 20
January 192.1, che day of the issuance
of the Fundamental Law asserting the
sovereignty of the people. The last
Ottoman, cabinet resigned on 4
November. .Sukao Vahdeddin left
Istanbul for Malta on a British
warship (16 November); his cousin,
Abdnimeeid, was appointed caliph the
next dm
Ankara sent its delegation to
Lausanne under the leadership of
isinet (indml). The conference started
its meetings on 20 November.
Negotiations took place around issues
pertaining to the status of nonMushms, economic privileges of foreign
merchants and. governments, the
reassignment of the Ottoman debt and,
most significantly, the determination
of the boundaries of the new staie.
When an impasse on capitulations broke
off negotiations in February, ismcr
returned home for eonsukations. He
found that proposed territorial
clauses leaving northern Iraq, the
Aegean islands and western Thrace
HASAN KAVALJ
outside the boundaries of the new
state met with sharp criticism ta the
assembly.
The Second Group's insistence on
preserving the assembly's collective
prerogative to determine boundaries
and preserving territories interpreted
to be within the Misak-i Milli were
consistent with the very fundamentals
of the lib* e ration struggle. Mustafa
Kemai was only able to circumvent the
objections by reconstituting the
aSvSembly. in the. spring of 19,23, he
engineered closely controlled new
elections. When the new assembly
reconvened, none of the Second Group
deputies had attained scats. The
shake-up was sufficient to obtain the
GNA’s sanction to bring the
negotiations at Lausanne to a conclusion. Yet a high degree of group
discipline would be necessary to
develop new agendas and forge,
loyalty. Kemai achieved this aim with
the formation of a political party,
the People's Party (Hslk Firkasi), in
the spring of 1933.
At Lausanne, Turkey recognised
those borders in Europe that the
Ottoman government had accepted at the
end of the Balkan Wars in 19T.3. with
slight modifications already agreed
upon in Mudanya. It ceded the
Dodacenese islands in the. southern
Aegean to Italy and the islands
girdling die western Anatolian coast,
with the exception of Irabros
(Gftk?eada) and Tenedos (Bozcaada) in
the north, to Greece. The eastern
border with Iran remained stable, as
it had throughout rhe entire Lite
Ottoman period, 'freattes signed with
neighbours and foreign powers during
the independence struggle constituted
the basis of the north-eastern and
southern borders. In the north-east,
Batum remained in Russian hands while
Turkey retained Kars and Ardahan. In
the south, the border demarcation
agreed upon in the i£2i treat)'’ with
France prevailed. Mosul remained a
contested area; the determination of
its fate was left in abeyance at
Lausanne.7*
As the international treaty that
ultimately resolved the boundaries of
the Ottoman successor state based in
Anatolia and Thrace, Lausanne
established Turkey as a sovereign geopolitical entity The new Turkey was
more than twice the size of the
territory that -he European
signatories had been prepared to
concede at Sevres three years earlier.
It aihrmed the achievements of the
armed resistance. Against the
immediate.* background of the wartime
military defeats, post-war occupation
and the crippling terms of Sevres,
Lausanne has been inscribed in the
annals of the Turkish nation as a
masterstroke. Against the broader
canvas of history, a less charitable
reading would see the treaty as the
affirmation ofthe demise of a world
power and the seal of its
disintegration and truncation.
72. Dsncsowski, IJieMiddk fail, p.
106.
M2
The struggle for independence
The Lausanne Treaty denied complete
sovereignty to the new state. Turkey
assumed the bulk of the Ottoman debt
to European states. Payments were
deferred until 1929 in return for
Turkeys consent to fixed customs
tariffs, just as full sovereignty had
been compromised. in economic
relations, Turkey also agreed to
demilitarise the Bosporus and
Dardanelles Straits and allow
international supervision. The treaty
abolished the capitulations but placed
the status of non*Musluns under the.
protection of the League of Nations.73
Lausanne accommodated the premise
of the independence movement as an
armed struggle of the Muslims for the
Muslims. Specific clauses protected
the rights of foreign and non-Muslim
minorities. An agreement between
Greece and Turkey, negotiated at the
early stages of the talks and affirmed
in the treaty, completed this
transformation by stipulating the
relocation of the Orthodox Greeks of
Anatolia to Greece and the Muslims of
Greece to Anatolia. The Turkish-Greek
population exchange, as it is
euphemistically called, started in
J92.3/* It was the final enactment of
the massive demographic
transformations of the empire-tonation transition. The exchange,
deemed necessary because of the ethnoreligious animus that warfare had
exacerbated, was a pre-emptive measure
that inflicted immense human suffering
on hundreds of thousands of people,
who experienced severe hardship and
casualties during the relocation and
often a subsequent deterioration in
quality oflife in the 'host' country.
By the end ofthe decade, the outmigration of about one million
Orthodox Greeks and the transfer of
some 400,000 Muslims from Greece had
all but completed die Islamisation of
Anatolia.7* Two historic populations
of Anatolia and Thrace. Armenians and
Greeks, thus perished or left: as a
result of the momentous demographic
transformations and bitter conflicts
of the long war.
The strucmres of empire
(administrative organisation,
electoral mecha ttisms, a constitution
and leadership cadres) had upheld the
popular resistance movement in
Anaroiia and Thrace, modulated by the
exigencies and contingencies of
warfare, which ultimately nourished
new visions. The assembly government
formalised in 1920 had followed from
the logic of the organisations for
defence that bad developed in the
localities. After Lausanne provided
the geo-political and international
legal framework tor the new state,
Mustafa Kemal and his associates
proceeded to name it a republic. 7*he
assembly’s declaration of a republic
on 29 October 192$ can be viewed as
the officialisa- tion of a process
that had started long ago. The GNA had
arrogated to itself
7J Ibid.; Hurewirz, Ditfamaey in tta
MmWJc Hast, vol. H, p. ii}.
74 Reue* Hittchon (ei.), Cnuiifttf the
Aegean; An Appraiiai af the 1
CampaUory Population tixdutnge
between Greece Turfet-y (Oxford:
Hcrghahn, 100*).
75 ZQnrhcr, Turkey, p. 171.
*43
HASAN KAlAi.1
sovereign lights the moment it
convened in i&ta, and formally
declared them with the Fundamental Law
as early as 19a. The abolition of the
sultanate m November 1922 obviated the
rationalisation of a temporary
transfer of sovereignty from the
monarch to the people's
representatives. However, Mustafa
Kemai perceived the greater legitimacy
that the GNA acquired as a threat, and
reconstituted it in his own image. But
even a screened parlia merit became
the scene of intensive debate when
Mustafa Kemai and close associates
manoeuvred to declare die Republic.
Ironically. Turkey was named a
republic only after the more genuine
republican impulses of the struggle
for independence were tamed.
The preservation of the caliphate
had dulled the opposition to Mustafa
Rentals political reforms. But the
vigorous criticism of the Republic
brought home the risk involved in
preserving the caliphate with an
incumbent from the Ottoman house as
its figurehead, a potential rallying
point lor the disaffected. Within
several weeks of the declaration of
the Republic. Kemai mewed to eliminate
this potent vestige of the empire from
the political structure. At the end of
November 1923, two prominent Indian
Muslims, the Ismaili leader Aga Khan
and ait associate, wrote a letter to
Prime Minister fsmet urging the
retention of die office. Istanbul
papers loyal to the constitutional
monarchy and sceptical of Mustafa
KemaTs pursuit of power obtained and
published these letters. The concern
oflndian Muslims about the destiny of
the caliphate was a product of the
hopes that Muslims living under
colonial rule had pinned on the
caliph. The government acted quickly
to discredit the Ictter-writers as
Shiites who could not possibly haw
genuine interest in the fate of die
Sunni caliphate. Kemai adroitly
manipulated representations from
Muslims abroad as encroachments on dte
sovereignty of Turkey. On 1 March
1924, the assembly abolished the
caliphate once and for all/* Minister
of Justice Seyit Bey, with proven
credentials in religious scholarship,
argued the inherent illegitimacy of
the presumptions of a modern caliphate
(an argumenr vindicated by subsequent
futile attempts in the Muslim world to
revive the office).77 The caliphate,
had been revived and appropriated by
the Ottoman house at the end of the
nineteenth century as a locus of
solidarity and resistance against New
Imperialism, It evanesced in die wake
of the most definitive victory against
imperialism in the territories of the
tortenng empire.
76
Arnold J. Toynbee, 'The Abolition
of' the Ottoman Caliphate by the
Turkish Grand
National Assembly and the Progress of
rhe $tu:ttf8ri£»cu.m Movement in the
Islamic
World’, m .S&rwry ofHternatimal
Affairs, 1 <3if (London: Oxford
University Press,
vol. 1, pp. 57-fa.
77
Mango, Ataturk, p. 405.
M 4
The struggle for independence
Coupled with the hill that
abrogated the caliphate were
legislative provision* complementing
the disestablishment of religion from
the political structure of the state
and thus launching the new regime’s
secularist agenda. In one fell swoop,
the caliphate, the highest executive
posts responsible for the
administration of religious law and
administration (the Ministry of
Religious Foundations and the office
of rhe ^cyhuiisJnw) and all religious
schools were abolished (3 March 1924).
ITie identity that the Kemalists
sought to impart to the new Turkey
found expression in the formulation of
an educational programme. The Law for
the Unification of Education (Tevhid-i
Tedrisat) was emblematic of the spirit
of Kemaiist reforms. Since the
beginnings of the Tanzimat, new
institutions had continued to exist
side by side with traditional ones,
even as the former circumscribed the
reach and scope of* the older
institutions. Western legal systems,
secular schools and dress had not
entirely replaced existing ones.
Mustafa Kemal's brief experiment with
separating the office of the caliphate
from the sultanate was consistent with
such 'bifurcation4/* When the
caliphate was abolished and the
Ottoman house once and for ail
dislodged, Mustafa Kemal turned to the
task of unification. The Law for the
Unification of Education became die
linchpin of the cultural programme of
the new 'i\irkey.
These fundamental reforms prepared
the ground for die creation of a constitution for the new state.^ The
drafting commission looked at the
charters of diverse contemporary
European and non-European states. The
new constitution, however, built
primarily upon the document that it
was supplanting, the 1876 Ottoman
constitution, even as it posited die
form of government of the new Turkey
as a republic and invested the
assembly with sovereignty. There was
heated discussion about the draft
constitution's clauses specifying the
president’s prerogatives. The assembly
struck down the stipulation about the
presidential power to disband the
assembly, shortened the length of his
mandate from the proposed seven year
to che four-year parliamentary term,
all but eliminated his veto powers,
and insisted on che submission of the
government programme to a
parliamentary vote. It provided for a
modicum of separation of powers
between the legislative and executive
branches.10
78 Ntyazi Berkcs, TheC>cvclaf.mi:nt
afSccuUuism in Turkey {M<jmrtal:
McCiH University i^re.ts,
$»$>. 106-to.
7<) For che 19x4 constitution hi
English translation, see. R-dwani
Mrade Bari, The New Consritumm of
Turkey'. Paiuica.1 Scicncc
Quarterly 40 {1935).
So 'tlie ratification proceedings of
(he constitution in the assembly
are. reproduced jr. $eref
Cfetibuyukand 2>kai Se^gin (eds.),
1 <w.< Mnayas-m fuikhtulakt
mecfog&TUjfoel&'i (Ankara Ankara
Oitivcrsircsi Siyasai Bilgikr
Kakttltesi kiari ilttnler
EnstitUiii, 1357},
145
H AS AN KAfMA
The new constitution grappled with
the issue of citizenship and posited
that ‘the name Turk . . . shall be
understood to include all citizens of
the Turkish Republic, without
distinction of, or reference to, race
or religion’ (Article 88). Some
deputies proposed making Turkish
culture and the 'I’urfetsh language
criteria for citizenship. The motion
was defeated, bur rhe ambiguities
about the definition of Turkish
citizenship came to the fore in the
debates.*1 The constitution, ratified
on 24 April 1924. made [slam the
religion of state, thus preserving one
of the fundamental though ambiguous,
clauses oftts precursor.
By the end of 1924, the political
structures of the new state were in
place, Turkey had internationally
recognised boundaries. Mosul and
Alexandretta remained contested areas
in the south, dong the longest and
most arbitrary of rhe boundaries of
the new state. The inclusion or
exclusion of these areas was debated
with arguments about their ethnic
composition, but rhe.ir economic
importance was at rhe crux of the
dispute. Alexandretta, with its
favourable port, was left to French
Syria in 7925 with some autonomy. The
fate of oil-rich Mosul was resolved
with the mediation of rhe League
ofNations in 19116. which granted it
to the British mandate oflra^.
The new Turkey revamped rhe
political institutions of its Ottoman
precursor, but continued its
centralising policies. The Republic
had a constitutional parliamentary
government that became increasingly
interlocked with the organisation of
the People's Party; Unification
through fclara within ne w boundaries
and opp<writion to imperialist West
had been at the core of formation of
the Turkish nation-state. Both of
these fundamentals were to be turned
on their head after independence, m
favour of a self-consciously secular
nationalism and modernisation on the
pattern of the West The secularising
legal reforms that accompanied the
abrogation of the office of the
cahphate were furthered with the
creation of a committee to eliminate
the vestiges of rhe $criat from civil
taw. the last bastion of Islamic legal
tradition, 7b e reform thrust was to
receive renewed urgency and vigour in
the coming years with the systematic
suppression of nodes of opposition
that, unsurprisingly, appealed to
religious tradition and sentiment.
»< Ibid., pp.
6
Atatiirk
ANDREW MANGO
The history of modern Turkey falls
naturally into two periods: those of
Ottoman l\irkey and Kemaiisl Turkey.
The foundations of Ottoman Turkey were
laid, at least symbolically, by Osman,
the eponymous founder of the dynasty
in the dosing years of the thirteenth
century. Likewise, Mustafa Kemal
Atatiirk personifies the republic that
he founded and shaped in the second
decade of the twentieth century,* He
is the Republic’s symbol, pictured on
stamps, coins and banknotes, poru-ayed
on the wails of offices and homes,
quoted in and out of season to
buttress arguments, presented as a
guiding star, an ideal to inspire and
follow. But while we can only guess at
Osman's political choices and their
influence cm die state he is deemed to
have founded, the influence of Mustafa
KcmaJ's policies on the development of
modern Turkey Is patent and his
imprint on his people’s history is
clear.
Many Turks, and some outsiders,
would go fiirthcr and argue that
Atatiirk changed the course not only
of Turkish, but also of world history
One may dispute the wider claim, while
conceding that he was both the
founding father of a modern state and
a harbinger of things to come - that
Atatiirk, the child of an empire, who
thwarted the policies of other
empires, was one of the first leaders
u> establish the limits of imperial
powder in the modem age, and that his
demonstration of these limits at the
end of che First World War acquired
universal validity at the end of the
Second. .Seen in this light, Ataturk
joins the pantheon of world historical
figures ~ Peter the Great of Russia,
George Washington, Winston Churchill,
Charles de Gaulle. That dieir national
hero is also a world figure is a
source of pride to most Turks.
The historian writing seventy years
after Ataturk’s death cannot be deaf
to these claims or blind to the
importance of symbols. But the task at
hand is one ofdjscrimiiution: to
relate the life and work of Atatiirk
with as much accuracy
i ! am indebted to Caroline Fiakcl,
Qxmum'.* dream (London; John Murray,
aeos), pp. 5*4.
for this parallel between Osman and
Mustafa Kemal.
147
10 • The Emergence of the One- Party
State, 1923-27
The republic and the caliphate
As we have sees, Mustafa Kemal Pasha
had started to consolidate his
political position even before the
independence war had formally come
to.an end with the signing and
ratification of the Treaty of
Lausanne. The means he had employed
were: a change in the High Treason
Law; the dissolution of the assembly
and tightly controlled elections; the
creation of a new party, the People’s
Party, and the takeover by this party
of the whole Defence of Rights
organization. This process of
consolidation, of gathering power in
the hands of Mustafa Kemal and an
assembly and party that were both
under his complete control, canriuned
after the coming of peace.
Hie exact nature .of the emerging
new Turkish state was still some-'
qtmt tiwfrawmmaiiip- at rtwg time. The
Ottoman sultanate had been
ttfcnlfafaBri Beady a year before. The
country was ruled by the national
‘assembly, which elected not only the
president but also every minister or
rafter ‘commissar’ (vddt) directly.
The. constitutional relationship
between the assembly and the caliph,
AbdiUmecit Efendi, was unclear. He
caliphate as conceived in 1922 was a
purely religious function, but it was
inevitable that many people continued
to see the caliph as the head of
state, even if only in a ceremonial
sense. Furthermore, as caliph, his
jurisdiction transcended die
boundaries of the Turkish state and at least in theory - encompassed' the
whole Muslim world.
' In his interviews with the Turkish
press in January, Mustafa Kemal had
already hinted that he intended to
change this confused situation and
declare a republic, and he reaffirmed
this in an interview with a Viennese
daily in September. An opportunity
arose when, in October, the assembly
elected Hiiseyin Rauf (Qrbay) and
Sabit (Sagirogta) to the posts of
vice-president of the assembly and
home secretary respectively, in
preference to the government
candidates. Mustafa Kemal persuaded
the government of Prime Minister Ali
Fethi (Okyar) that this constituted a
motion of no confidence, upon which
the government
resigned. The assembly was
automatically charged with replacing
it with a new council of vekih, but
once Mustafa Kemai had instructed his
more prominent followers not to accept
posts, this proved impossible. When
the assembly then decided to consult
the president, he submitted a proposal
to proclaim a republic, with an
elected president, a prime minister
appointed by the president and a
conventional cabinet system. The
majority in the assembly accepted the
proposals and, on 29 October 1923, the
Turkish Republic was proclaimed, with
Mustafa Kemai as its first president
and Ismet (inOnii) as its first prime
minister.
The decision was taken while a
number of celebrities from the independence war, Hflseyin Rauf, Ali Fuat
(Cebesoy), Adnan (Adivar), Refet
(Bele) and Kazun (Karabckir) were not
in the capital. They reacted angrily
to the proclamation in interviews in
the Istanbul press, calling the
decision premature, and stressing that
calling the state a republic did not
in itself bring freedom and that the
real difference was between despotism
and democracy, whether under a
republican or a monarchic system. The
Istanbul papers took up their
criticism .with relish. The government
was highly unpopular in Istanbul at
the time, not so much because of the
proclamation of the republic as
because it had officially made Ankara
the new capital of Turkey a fortnight
- earlier. This was something that not
only hurt the pride of the inhabitants
of the old capital, but it also meant
continuing unemployment for the tens
of thousands of civil servants among
them. Raufs critical remarks (with
their implied accusation that the
government was despotic despite its
new name) led to a row within the PP
parliamentary faction, which came
close to splitting the party in
December.
The anti-republican feeling was
partly fuelled by concern over the
future of the caliph. Many people,
certainly in Istanbul, were emotionally attached to the dynasty, but it was also felt that the caliph was the
orily possible counterweight to
Mustafa Kemai’s dominance of the
political scene. It was - rigjitly -
feared that the proclamation of die
republic sounded the death knell of
the caliphate. In November the
president of the Istanbul bar
association, Lfltfi Fikri, sent an
open letter to the press in which he
pleaded for a more influential
position for the caliph; and in
December two eminent Indian Muslims,
Ameer Ali and the Aga Khan, sent a
similar letter both to the prime
minister and to the : press. Because
of the difficulty of communications
with Ankara, the [ letter was
published in Istanbul before it had
been delivered to Prime j Minister
ismet, which was something that
angered him and his I followers in the
assembly. It was decided to send an
Independence ; Tribunal to Istanbul to
investigate whether Lfltfi Fikri or
the news- j papers had committed
treason. The newspaper editors were
acquitted I
168
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
but Fikri was sent to jail for. five
years. AH this indicated growing
tensions within the People’s Party and
between Ankara and Istanbul. In
February talks between the president
and the leading editors of the
Istanbul newspapers foiled to heal the
rift
Immediately after the opening of
the new parliamentary year on 1 March
the expected blow fell: the caliphate
was abolished and all members of the
Ottoman dynasty were ordered out of
the country. After extensive
discussions, a new republican
constitution was adopted in April.
This replaced the old Ottoman
constitution of 1876, which had been
modified in 1909 and again in January
1921 when the first assembly adopted
the Law on Fundamental Organization
{Te$kiiat-i Esasye Kammu), the de
facto constitution of the resistance
movement, which had allowed it to
function to all practical purposes as
a republic within the legal framework
of the Ottoman Empire.
The nationalist movement is split: Hie
establishment of the Progressive
Republican Party
All through the winter and spring of
1924, the radical wing of die People’s
Party led by Mustafa Kemai and ismet
continued to increase - the pressure
on the smaller moderate group led by
Hilseyin Rauf, which had objected to
the way in which the republic had been
.proclaimed. Continued opposition to
this group from within the party
became stronger and stranger and by
late summer it was clear that the
minority ' had no option but to found
a separate opposition party. The
actual split took place in the context
of a debate over how the government
had handled the resettlement of
Muslims from Greece, especially with
respect to tbe possessions of the
Greeks who had had to leave, which was
something that had given rise to
widespread corruption. When, after a
heated debate in the assembly, Ismet
asked for a vote of confidence and
easily won it, 32 deputies around
Htiseyin. Rauf left the party and
founded the Progressive Republican
Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet
Ftrkast) on 17 November! The rumour
that the new party would use the
adjective ‘Republican’ led the
People’s Party to change its name to
“Republican People’s Party’ (RPP).
When the new party published its
manifesto and its programme, it became
evident that it was a party in the
Western European liberal mould. It
stood for secular and nationalist
policies, like tbe majority party, but
it clearly opposed its radical,
centralist and authoritarian
tendencies. Instead it advocateddecentralization, separation of powers
and evolutionary rather than
revolutionary change. It also had a
mote liberal economic policy,
accepting foreign loans as necessary.
It was clear that the mood in many
parts of the country, certainly in
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ONE-PARTY STATE,
1923-27 169
the conservative east, in Istanbul and
in the areas where resettlement
problems were particularly bad (such
as the area around Izmir), favoured aa
opposition party. The leadership of
the RPP recognized the danger and took
countermeasures. Discipline within the
parliamentary party was tightened
(deputies being bound to vote in the
assembly according to the majority
decision, in the closed session of the
faction), and'an accord was reached
with a group of conservative
representatives from the east Most
importantly, fsmet, who bad had a
personal feud with Rauf since Lausanne
and wbo was considered an outspoken
radical, was replaced by the much more
conciliatory AJi Fethi (Okyai) on 21
November. These measures prevented
mass desertions from the RPP.
The conciliatory line was only a
temporary expedient, however. A number
of hardliners, led by Recep (Peter),
the interior minister, were put into
the cabinet as watchdogs and by the
beginning of 1925 it was clear that
the radical wing was putting more and
more pressure on Fethi to deal with
the opposition, which was gradually
building up a grassroots organization
in Istanbul and the east. For a time
Fethi resisted the pressure, but
outside events gave the radical wing
its chance.
The Sheikh Salt rebellion and Kurdish
nationalism The event that the
hardliners and the president used to
put an end to political opposition was
the eruption of Kurdish discontent
into an armed rebellion to the north
of Diyarbalor in February 1925.
Kurdish nationalism was a relative
newcomer among the ideologies of the
region. The Kurds had always been
divided along tribal lines and since
the suppression of the Kurdish
emirates under Sultan Mahmut H their
society had been increasingly
fragmented. Sultan Abdiilhamit had
exploited the divisions among the
Kurds, and at the same time used their
martial qualities when he created his
Cossack-like Hamidiye regiments out of
some (but by no means all) of the
tribes after 1891. The Young Turks had
abolished the Hamidiye but law and
order problems had soon forced them
to. reinstate diem in the form of a
militia. Regiments of this militia
fought in the Balkan War and in the
First World War.
„ After the constitutional revolution
in 190S, members of the Kurdish elite
in the capital bad founded the Kurt
Teavun ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Society
for Support and Progress of the
Kurds), of which Sait Nursi, ■ the
religious reformer, had also been a
member. This, however, had social and
not political aims and it kept aloof
from the mass of the population in the
southeast- In 1912 a number of Kurdish
students in ; Istanbul formed Hevi
(Hope), a society with a more
pronounced 1 nationalist tendency.
170
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
During the war, the removal of the
Armenian population from the eastern
Anatolian provinces left the Kurds
masters of the terrain, but this and
the collapse of the Rassian front also
meant that the Kurds’ and Turks’
common enemies disappeared and that
the two communities were left in
competition with each other. In 1918,
the Kurdistan TeaU Cemiyeti (Society
for the Elevation of Kurdistan) was
founded in Istanbul, with branches in
Kurdistan itself, both among the
Konnanci- speaking majority and among
the Zaza-speaMng groups to the northwest of Diyarbaku and both among
Sunnis and Alevis.
During the independence war there
was one major Kurdish insurrection
against die nationalists in the Dersim
(now Tunceli) area, led by tribal
chiefs who demanded autonomy, but it
was easily suppressed- By and large,
the Kurds supported the resistance
movement, despite the efforts of
British agents to influence them and
despite the fact that they were
granted autonomy under the Treaty of
Sfevres. There were Kurdish
representatives at Erzurum And at
Sivas and even on the nationalists’
representative committee.
Within the new borders of the
republic (which, incidentally, in the
southeast ran right across traditional
pasture areas of the tribes) about 20
per cent of the population was
Kurdish, but they were not mentioned
in the peace treaty of Lausanne and
promises of autonomy made by the
nationalist leaders, including Mustafa
Kemal himself, during the independence
struggle,1 were forgotten. This was a
great disappointment to the Kurdish
nationalists. In 1923 forma: militia
officers founded the Azadi (Freedom
Society),, which held its first
congress in 1924. One person at that
congress whose performance drew
attention was Sheikh Sait of Palu, who
was very influential among the
Zaza'tribes.
That a sheikh, a religious leader,
exerted great political influence was
not at all extraordinary in Kurdistan,
where the two great dervish orders of
the Kadiriyya and - especially - the
Nakjibendi were the only organizations
that transcended tribal differences.
The leaders of these dervish orders
were often called in to decide
quarrels between different tribes and
this brought them prestige,
connections and, often, considerable
wealth. Sheikh Sait was himself an
influential-member of the Nak^ibecdi
order.
Relations between the Kurds and the
predominantly Turkish republican
government deteriorated in 1924. The
abolition of the caliphate removed an
important religious symbol that bound
the two communities together. At the
same time, the nationalist republic,
in its efforts to construct a new
national consciousness, developed a
repressive policy towards Kurdish
identity; the public use of Kurdish
and- the teaching of Kurdish were
prohibited. Influential Kurdish
landowners
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ONE-PART Y STATE,
1923-27 171
and tribal chiefs were forcibly
resettled in the west of the country.
The first sign of resistance against
these policies was an abortive
rebellion by the garrison in
Beytii§?ebap ia the extreme southeast
in August 1924,
The great rebellion, which the
Azadi and Sheikh Sait planned for May
1925,
broke out prematurely when a
shooting incident with the gendarmes
in the little town of Piran got out of
hand on 8 February. Nearly all the
Zaza tribes and two large Konnanci
tribes took part in the insurrection,
but the divisions between the Kurds
showed themselves again: the Alevi
Kurds fiercely attacked the Sunni
insurgents. That they did so is
understandable given the dual
character of the rebellion. While the
leadership was undoubtedly motivated
by the desire for an autonomous or
even independent Kurdistan, the rank
and file acted from religious motives,
demanding the restoration of the holy
law and the caliphate. The Alevis, as
a heterodox community, generally
supported the republic’s secularist
tendencies against the partisans of
the caliphate and orthodox
establishment — for good reason
because prejudice against the Alevis
was and is deeply rooted among the
Sunnis.
Although at one time they
threatened Diyarbaiar, the only town
the rebels managed to seize was Elazig
and that only for a short time. The
government in Ankara took strong
countermeasures as soon, as the extent
of the insurrection became clear. The
assembly was informed about the
situation on 25 February. The same
day, martial law was declared in the
eastern provinces for one month and
the High Treason Law was amended to
include the political use of religion
among Che treasonable offences. Around
this time the prime minister, Fethi,
asked the PRP leaders to disband
voluntarily. This they refused to do,
but the party chairman, KSnm
Karabekir, did support the government
policy in the east very emphatically,
both in the assembly and in the press.
Meanwhile, the pressure of the
hawks within the RPP on Fethi was
rising, Ismet had already returned to
Ankara and attended the cabinet
meetings. On 2 March Fethi lost a vote
of confidence by the RPP faction, when
Mustafa Kemai himself sided with the
hardliners who demanded stronger
measures.2 He resigned and the next
day Ismet became primp, minister. His
first act was to have the assembly
pass the Takrir-i SUkOn Kanunu (Law on
the Maintenance of Order). This
empowered the government for two years
to ban by administrative measure- any
organization or publication it
considered might catise disturbance to
law and order. The law, which the PRP
opposed as being loo elastic, woold be
in force in the whole country, not
only in the southeast At die same time
two independence tribunals were
reinstated, ams for eastern provinces
and one for the rest of the country.
'■
The SSeffleh rebels were now
rapidly pushed back into the mout172
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
tains. The capture on 27 April of
Sheikh Sait really marked the aid of
the rebellion, although small groups
continued a guerrilla war all through
the summer. In 1926, a new Kurdish
insurrection broke out on the slopes
of Mount Ararat, which lasted for four
years and ran be considered a direct
sequel to the Sheikh Sait rebellion,
bat it did not spread. After the
rebellion was over, the government
through the military authorities and
the independence tribunals dealt very
harshly with the Kurds. Many of their
leaders were executed and large
numbers of Kurds, more than 20,000 in
all, were deported from the southeast
and forcibly settled in the west of
the country.3 From now on, the
existence of a separate Kurdish
identity was officially denied.
The Law on the Maintenance of Order
was not, however, only used to
suppress the Kurds. Eight of the most
important newspapers and periodicals
(conservative, liberal and even
Marxist) in Istanbul were closed down,
as were several provincial papers,
leaving the government organs
HaJdmiyet-i MiUiye~ (National
Sovereignty) in Ankara and Cumhuriyet
(Republic) in Istanbul as the only
national papers. AH the leading
journalists from Istanbul were
arrested and brought before die
Independence Tribunal in the east
Eventually they were released, but
they were not allowed to resume their
work. With the press out of the way,
on the advice of the Independence
Tribunal the government closed down
the Progressive Republican Party on 3
June. According to the tribunal,
members of the party had supported the
rebellion and tried to exploit
religion for political purposes.
Reforms and executions
With complete domination of the
political scene assured, Mustafa Kemal
and his government embarked on an
extensive programme of reforms. There
is an interesting parallel here with
the second constitutional period, when
a movement that had started out as a
campaign for the restoration of the
constitution! bad gained power (in
1908), shared that power far a certain
period (until 1913) with others in a
pluralistic and relatively free
environment, and finally had
established its own power monopoly,
which it used to push through a
radical programme of secularization
and modernization (1913-18).
The same pattern now repeated
itself with a movement for national
sovereignty being victorious (1922),
going through a pluralistic phase
(until 1925) and then establishing an
authoritarian regime, which embarked
on a programme of reforms. The
authoritarian nationalist phases of
both the Unionist and the Kemalist
eras also witnessed the brutal suppression of minority communities: the
Armenians in the first case, the Kurds
in the second. This seems to suggest
that in both these phases .of
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ONE-PARTY STATE,
1923-27 173
the Young Turk movement, when the
choice was between a democratic system
with a slower pace of reform and an
authoritarian one with more
opportunities for radical measures,
the second alternative won out because
what counted for the Young Turks in
the end was die strengthening and
survival of the state, democracy (or
‘constitutionalism’ or ‘national
sovereignty’) being a means to that
end, not an end in itself.
Like those of 1913-18, the Kemalist
reforms aimed to secularize and
modernize society. In September 1925
the religious shrines (tiirbes) and
dervish convents (tekkes) were closed
down and in November the turban and
fez, the red felt cap that had been
the Ottoman gentleman’s traditional
headgear since the days of Sultan
Mahmut II, were prohibited and
replaced by the Westem-style hat or
cap. These measures met with stubborn
resistance from the population. Tekkes
and tiirbes played an important role
in everyday Muslim life and the hat
was considered a symbol of Christian
Europe. The independence Tribunals
played their part in suppressing this
resistance. Under the Law on the
Maintenance of Order nearly 7500
people were arrested and 660 were
executed.4
In the first half of 1926, the
European calendar was adopted, as were
the Swiss civil code and the penal
code from Mussolini’s Italy. A number
of laws restructuring the banking
sector were passed and, except in the
army, all courtesy titles (like Bey,
Efendi or Po$a) were abolished.
Together with the abolition of the
sultanate and caliphate and the
proclamation of the republic, these
measures form the first wave of the
Kemalist reforms. It is clear that
they constituted an extension of the
7’anzimai and Unionist reforms, which
had secularized most of the legal and
educational systems. With the
relegation of the sultan-caliph to'the
role of ornament and the removal of
lie §eyhulislam from the cabinet, the
state itself had been secularized to a
large extent already. Islam had been
the state religion of the empire, but
so it was under the early republic.
.The major new step of the
Kemalists was the complete
secularization of family law, which,
through the abolition of religious
marriages and polygamy, touched the
daily life of the population. They
also went much further in the
secularization of society (see below).
That the sartorial aspects of the
reforms (for example the Tiat reform’)
played such an important role (under
die supporters of reform as well as
under its enemies) fits into a
tradition that went back to the new
Westem-style uniforms, the fezzes and
the stamboulines of Mahmut H’s
servants; That this tradition lives on
to the present day is shown by the
recent debates about the wearing of
scarves by female Muslim students. ]
like the Unionist reformers before
them, die Kemalists stopped shori of
unleashing a real socio-economic
revolution or reform programme; There
was no attempt to change the ownership
relations in the country. I
174
TURKEY: A MODERN HISTORY
The day of reckoning: the Izmir
conspiracy
The political opposition and its press
had been silenced in 1925, but Mustafa
Kemal, being well aware of the
capabilities of his opponents and of
their expertise in underground
organization (going back to the days
before the revolution of 1908), still
felt insecure. As long as the former
leaders of (he CUP and file PRP were
still around, with their prestige as
heroes from the independence war
intact, they could exploit the
prevailing discontent arising from the
continuing bad economic situation and
the unpopularity of the reforms.
Mustafa Kemal spent May and June
1926 on an extended inspection tour of
the south and west of the country.
When he was about to arrive in Izmir
on 15 June (he was unexpectedly
delayed), a plot to assassinate him
was uncovered. The plotters were
arrested and turned out to be a small
band of professional gunmen, led by a
former representative in the national
assembly (and secretary of the Defence
of Rights Group), Ziya Hurjit. The
Ankara Independence Tribunal was sent
to Tmnir and immediately after its
arrival on 18 June waves of arrests
began.
Almost all the surviving prominent
Unionists were arrested, as well as
the former PRP members of the
assembly, except for HUseyin Rauf
(Orbay) and Adrian (Adivar), who were
abroad, at the time. During the trial,
held from 26 June to 12 July, the
arrested politicians were accused of
having supported the assassination
plot and of having planned a coup
d’etat Of the accused, 16 were
condemned to death, despite the fact
that most of them had not been proved
to be involved- The military heroes
associated with the PRP, OMTH
Karabddr, Ali Fuat (Cebesoy), Refer
(Bele), and Cafer Tayyar (EgUmez),
were released under (he pressure of
public opinion and of signs of
discontent from the army. It was
clear, however, that their position in
politics had been irretrievably lost.
A second trial opened in Ankara in
August against more than 50 important
former Unionists. Even more than the
first, this was a show trial during
which the policies of the CUP leaders
when in power and their opposition to
Mustafa Kemal wete the real themes and
the conspiracy of June 1926 was a side
issue. Four of the accused were
hanged, while a number of others
received prison sentences. HUseyin
Rauf, who was officially regarded as
the main culprit, was sentenced in
absentia to ten years imprisonment
Kara Kemal, whom the prosecution
regarded as the brains behind the
actual assassination attempt, had been
sentenced to death in absentia during
the first part of the trial When bis
hiding place in Istanbul was
discovered, he shot himself.
End of an era: ‘The Speech’
The troubled postwar period was
symbolically dosed with Mustafa
THE EMERGENCE OF THE ONE-PARTY STATE,
1923-27 175
Kemai’s 36-hour speech before the
congress of the Republican People’s
Party from 15 to 20 October 1927, This
is a remarkable and hugely influential
text, which deserves consideration.
He presented it as a report on the
history of the Turkish national
movement from 1919 to 1927 and
generally the historical character he
claimed for his text has been
accepted, allhough later generations
in Turkey have debated whether it
should be considered a historical
source or as a piece of
historiography. The author’s prestige
and the political climate of the
period have seen to it that the text
has become the basis for nearly all
Turkish historiography on the period
to the preseat day. It was translated
into. German, French and English in
1928-29 and has been deeply
influential in foreign historiography
as well.
In reality, the Nutuk (Speech), as
it is simply known, is not a history
of the period from 1919 to 1927, but
it ends with the emergence of the
Progressive'Republican Party in
November 1924. Only 1.5 per cent of
die text is concerned with later
events. The reason is that the speech
is not really a survey of modem
Turkish history at all. It is a
vindication of the purges of 1925-26,
and criticizing the former leaders of
the PEP is its main theme, just as
criticism of the old CUP leaders had
been the theme of Mustafa Kemai’s
‘memoirs’ published in March 1926. In
his attempt to disgrace his former
colleagues, he presents them
throughout as doubters, incompetents
and traitors, and depicts himself as
the one who led the movement from the
outset It is significant that the
speech begins with his arrival in
Anatolia in May 1919, disregarding the
earlier phase of the national
resistance movement In what is
obviously a distortion of lie
historical truth, it presents the
independence struggle not as one to
preserve parts of the Ottoman Empire,
but as a movement for the
establishment of a new Turkish state.
The context in which the speech
was. given also served to distort the
historical picture. The RPP called its
1927 congress - and it is generally
described as such - the ‘second
congress of the RPP’ though in fact it
was the first The RPP called it the
second because it retrospectively
adopted the congress at Sivas in 1919
as its first, thus emphasizing the
(false) identification of the RPP with
the national liberation movement and
monopolizing its heritage. While the
period from 1923 to 1926 decisively
influenced political life in Turkey in
an authoritarian sen^e for the next 20
years, the congress of 1927 and
Mustafa Kemai’s speedh determined the
historical vision of the genesis of
the new Turkish state for generations.
i
i
CHAPTER IV
Institution Building in the Kemalist
Republic: The Role of the People’s
Party
Erik-Jan Ztircher
In spite of the striking ideological
and programmatic similarities between
the regimes of Atatiirk and Reza Shah
in the 1920s and 1930s, their shortterm successes and long-term legacies
have been very different. This is
undoubtedly caused in part by the very
different degrees to which the two
leaders were able to institutionalize
their personal authoritarian lule and
to transfer authority to collective
bodies that were able to survive the
death, or in the Iranian case,
deposition, of the founding father. In
discussing this issue of
institutionalization in Iran and
Turkey, one has to distinguish
carefully between .state building on
the one hand and the underpinning of a
particular kind of regime and policies
on the other. *
In terms of state building, the
degree to which the characteristics of
the modern centralized state had been
established, there was a world of
difference between the late Ottoman
Empire and Qajar Iran. While it is
undoubtedly true that there was an old
tradition of a state in Iran and a
widely shared consciousness of
belonging to the realm of the Shah,
the indispensable attributes of a
modem state, such as efficient
taxation, a bureaucratic
administration by salaried officials
with clear divisions of power and a
distinct hierarchy, military
conscription and a census enabling
both conscription and taxation were
all practically non-existent. In the
Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, all
of these had gradually been developing
during a century of reforms, which
preceded the coming to power of
Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
When looked at from an Ottoman
perspective, therefore, the task that
faced Reza Khan, and his
accomplishments, resemble those of
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEM-ALiST
REPUBLIC 99
the reforming Sultan Mahmud II (180839) as much as they do AtatUrk’s.
Certainly in his early years his main
accomplishments were the building of a
unified army and of a degree of
centralized control, which contrasted
sharply with conditions in the late
Qajar Empire, where the ruler had very
little effective power outside his own
capital. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, on the
other hand, could build on a century
of achievement in this field. To take
just one example: where Reza Khan’s
main effort in the 1920s was to build
a national army out of such disparate
elements as the Cossack corps, tribal
forces and the Gendarmerie, and then
to introduce modern conscription (as
opposed to the traditional btmicfiafi
system),1 the Ottoman Empire had had
military conscription and a unified
army since 1844.
If the Ottoman imperial heritage is
relevant to the greater success of
Mustafa Kemal, one has of course to
assume that a large degree of
continuity can be established between
the late Ottoman Empire and the
Kemalist republic. To what extent this
continuity can indeed be assumed has
been a matter for debate in the
historiography of the republic. The
Kemalist republic itself had powerful
incentives for emphasizing the
differences between itself and the
empire. Firstly, Mustafa Kemal emerged
gradually as the undisputed leader of
the national resistance movement
(which fathered the republic) in the
years 1919—22, and in doing so he took
over a movement that had been started
by the leadership of the Committee of
Union and Progress, to which he
himself had also belonged, but in
whose circles he had played only a
minor role. Depicting himself as a
dens ex mtiefiirm who created the new
Turkey out of nothing, without any
reference to the Young Turk heritage,
was an important weapon in his
elimination of political competitors.1
Secondly, as Mustafa Kemal himself
remarked at the time, the essential
novelty of Kemalist Turkey, and its
rejection of the Ottoman past, were
very important for Turkey’s prestige
in Europe. European public opinion had
had very little confidence in Ottoman
readiness to reform, but Mustafa
Kemal's radically new departure had a
lot of credit.
The essential novelty of the
Kemalist republic and its making a
clean break with the Ottoman past was
the theme, not only of Kemalist
historiography itself, but of
literally dozens of books published in
the West from the 1920s onwards. It
was often (and as recently as Feroz
Ahmad’s Making of Modern Turkey)
expressed as a contrast between the
decay of the ‘old Turkey’ and the
dynamism and youthful vigour of the
‘new’.1 From the 1950s onwards (a
period
100
MEN OF ORDER
coinciding with the establishment of
multiparty politics in Turkey and the
partial dismantling of the Kemalist
state), a different approach has
become influential, one associated
with the names of political scientist
Tarik Zafer Tunaya and sociologists
Niyazi Berkes and Serif Mardin in
Turkey, and with Bernard Lewis and
Stanford Shaw in the West. This
school, if we can call it that,
acknowledges the debt of the republic
to its immediate predecessors, the
Tanzimcit reformers of the nineteenth
century, and particularly the Young
Turks of the second constitutional
period (1908-18), characterized by
Tunaya as the ‘laboratory of the
republic’.
Both schools, the traditional
Kemalist and the ‘revisionist* one,
have tended to concentrate on
questions of policy and ideology primarily the issues of modernization
and national identity. Interest' ing
and complicated though these are, I
would like instead to concent trate on
the question of institutional links
between empire and republic. Here a
picture of almost total continuity
emerges. This is true first of all of
the army. The success of the
nationalist movement in Anatolia was
ultimately based on the strength of
the remains of the Ottoman army.
Although by the end of World War I in
October 1918, the army had an
effective strength of only some
100,0004 (down from a peak of around
800,000 in 1916) and was plagued by
war weariness and enormous numbers of
deserters, it is nevertheless true
that it remained intact as an
organized, indeed a disciplined, body.
It did not disintegrate, nor was there
a tendency for leading officers of the
regular army to establish themselves
as warlords. As Rustow has shown, the
main body of officers, those who were
now in their thirties and forties, who
had been educated in the Westem-style
military schools and academy and had
gained experience and rapid promotion
during the years of the Balkan War
(1912-13) and World War (1914-18),
supported the national struggle.5 Once
the top officers like Kazim Karabekir
and Ali Fuat accepted Mustafa Kemal’s
leadership (even after he had been
sacked) they were in a position to
carry out his strategy, because the
chain of command remained intact. The
forces raised by the Sultan's
government in Istanbul, called Knva-yi
Inzibatiye, even when (rather
halfheartedly) supported by the
British, never were able to mount a
serious challenge to the nationalists.
The army of the national movement
continued practically without change
under the republic. Until Turkey’s
entry into NATO in 1952 its doctrines
and organization were very little
changed, and as late as the 1960s it
was still commanded by officers
INSTITUTION’ BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 101
who were the product of the Ottoman
military academy and had gained their
first command experience in World War
I (officers like republican presidents
Cemal Gtlrsel and Cevdet Sunay and the
founder of the Justice Party, Ragip
Giimujpala).
When we turn to the civilian
bureaucracy we see almost the same
picture. In the early years of the
national struggle, the nationalists
weeded out members of the provincial
bureaucracy who were considered
unreliable because of their links to
the Istanbul government. The persons
concerned were mostly provincial and
district governors (vfllii and
Jccijma&ams), who had been political
appointees. On the lower levels the
provincial administration remained
intact, and this enabled the
nationalists to conscript soldiers and
raise taxes in the areas under their
control. As is well known, the main
communications network, that of the
Ottoman telegraph service, proved
highly dependable and rendered
sterling service to the nationalists.
In the field of finance, the
republic inherited two separate
bureaucratic structures from the
empire. The one was the regular
ministry of finance, which had been
thoroughly modernized under the Young
Turk finance minister Cavid Bey, and
the administration of the Ottoman
public debt, which since 1881 had
taken control of the collection of
taxes, duties and excises in areas
such as the sale of tobacco and
tobacco products, salt and fisheries
on behalf of the European creditors of
the Empire. Although the new Turkey
shouldered part of the Ottoman debt at
the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the
autonomous operation of the Public
Debt Administration ’tvas terminated
and the tobacco monopoly was taken
over by the Turkish state in 1925.
This provided vital income for the new
state in the 1920s and 1930s.
There were no wholesale purges of
the bureaucracy after the
nationalists' victory. At the peace
conference of Lausanne in 1923, the
Turks first resisted Allied demands
for a general amnesty after the
conclusion of peace, then they gave in
but reserved the right to ban 150
undesirable Ottoman Muslims from the
country. The number of 150 was
completely arbitrary and the names
were only filled in (with some
difficulty) more than a year after the
conclusion of peace. There were a
number of army officers and
bureaucrats among those banned, but
obviously it concerned only a very
small number of people. The early
years of the public witnessed
political purges within the leadership
(notably in the show trials of 1926),
but the attempts to purge the state
apparatus were rather limited: Law
102
MEN OF ORDER
347 of 25 September 1923 prescribed
the expulsion from the armed forces of
those officers who had stayed abroad
or declined to serve in the ‘national
forces’, while Law 854 of 26 May 1925
did the same for civil servants. The
number of people affected seems to
have been small, however, and two
years later, on 24 May 1928, the
passing of Law 1289 gave those
officers and civil servants who felt
they had been wrongfully sacked the
opportunity to appeal.6 The one major
occasion when many civil servants left
government service had nothing to do
with political purges: when the (then
still very small and extremely
uncomfortable) town of Ankara was
declared the permanent seat of
government in October 1923 an
important part of the staff of the
ministries in Istanbul declined to
move with their departments to Ankara.
Of all the branches of the state
bureaucracy, the one to undergo the
greatest change under the republic was
undoubtedly the religious institution.
The passing of the law on the
unification of education in
1924 and the introduction of a
European-style family law in 1926
meant that the secular state now took
direct control of these important
fields and that the role of the
religious establishment contracted
accordingly. The abolishing of the
Caliphate and the simultaneous
replacement of the office of the
Shej/ch ul-Islam, the highest
religious authority, by a directorate
under the prime minister, certainly
meant that the top of the religious
establishment lost much of its room
for manoeuvre. On the other hand, the
fact that Mustafa Kemai Pasha could
push through these reforms almost
without opposition from within the
clergy is testimony to the degree to
which the Ottoman religious
establishment had already been
bureaucratized and brought under state
control in the Ottoman Empire. This is
the reason why, in the Turkish case,
unlike that of Pahlevi Iran,
opposition to the new sccular regime
was lead by the dervish brotherhoods
(tarikat) and not by the clergy.
Not only the important branches of
the state were inherited by the
republic, the means of reproducing
these branches also remained virtually
unchanged. The great schools of the
empire, modelled on the French grandes
ccotes, which had bred the officers
and civil servants of the Tanzimat,
Hamidian and Young Turk eras,
continued to do so under the republic.
The Military Academy and General Staff
College were relocated to Ankara in
1923, but remained essentially
unchanged. The same is true for the
Civil Service Academy (Miil/ciye),
which was reconstituted as the School
of Political Science in 1935
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 103
and relocated to the new capital soon
after. It continued to provide the
state with its governors, diplomats
and administrators. In time, both
institutions also became centres of
Kemalist indoctrination, where
nationalism, republicanism and
secularism were articles of faith for
staff and students alike - a situation
that continues to this day. The
reproduction of religious learning was
severely affected by the closure of
themedrcies in 1924. The decline in
the level of religious learning only
became apparent when the older
Ottoman-educated generation started to
fade, however, something that can be
roughly dated from the mid-1940s.
If the Kemalist republic was the
receiver of such a rich institutional
inheritance from the Empire, what were
the Kemalists’ own particular
contributions to the institutions of
the republic? In other words: if the
building of a Kemalist state was no
longer a priority, what instruments
did the Kemalists create for the
institutionalization of their regime?
Here, I think, the answer can be quite
unequivocal: that instrument was the
party created by Mustafa Kemal in
1923: the People’s Party (HaJfe
Firkaji).
Mustafa Kemal announced his
intention to transform the Defence of
Rights Group, the majority faction in
the first National Assembly (1920-23),
into a political party on 6 December
1922. At the same time he announced
the new party’s name, which was
remarkable in two respects. Firkd was
the most comfnonlyused term for
political party at the time, but the
term had distinctly negative
connotations. It recalled the
bickering of factions in the
parliaments of the secbnd
constitutional period and sounded very
different from cemijet (society), the
word used in the title of the Society
for the Defence of the National
Rights, in whose name the independence
war had been fought and whose
president Mustafa Kemal still was.
Both in this context and in the
earlier one of the Committee of Union
and Progress (which was often called
acemiyet-i mvikaddes or ‘holy society’
by its members, a term also used by
Mustafa Kemal for the People’s Party
in his speech in Trabzon on 16
September I9247), ‘society’ seemed a
more prestigious as well as a more
inclusive term than ‘party’. Had not
the delegates to the congress in Sivas
(September 1919) sworn, each one of
them, to work ‘free from party strife’
(fnkacriik amalinden milnezzeh)?
The fact that ftrka was associated
with party strife and the defence of
group interests made the choice of the
other word in its name, halU, even
more remarkable. As Tuncay has pointed
out,9 this term
104
MEN OF ORDER
had gained currency in leftist
circles, where it meant the mass of
the population (peasants and workers).
In nationalist circles at the time the
word millet was the more common one to
denote the (Muslim) population as a
whole. The name of the new patty
therefore aroused the suspicion that
it had leftist leanings and might
embrace the idea of class struggle.
Mustafa Kemai was quick to dispel any
such thoughts, however, during his
tour of the country in early 1923 and
especially during the extensive
interviews and speeches he gave in
Eski§ehir and hmit on 15-17 January
1923. He emphatically stated that
large landowners and capitalists were
so rare in Turkey that there was no
reason why improving the living
standard of the peasants should be at
their expense. Industrial workers, he
said, did not number more than 20,000
in all of Turkey, so they could not
form the basis of a political party
either. The new party would be a party
for all sections of society, preaching
harmony and not class struggle.10
What Mustafa Kemai had in mind in
founding the party was, on the one
hand, to create a disciplined and
reliable majority in the second
National Assembly after the 1923
elections (discipline which had been
notably lacking in the first
assembly), and on the other, to unite
all ‘enlightened* elements in the
country as a vanguard for the social
and cultural revolution he wanted to
accomplish. Although Mustafa Kemai
himself and the party always claimed
to represent the national will and to
act in harmony with the wishes of the
population at large, his campaign in
the spring of 1923 seems to have been
aimed rather at uniting the
enlightened elite behind him.
The elections in the summer of 1923
took place befote the official
founding of the new party, but a kind
of rudimentary party programme, the
Nine Principles (Dokuz Umde) was
published by Mustafa Kemai and only
candidates who subscribed to them were
given the support of the Defence of
Rights Groups in the elections. The
Nine Principles were a concoction of
very broad statements on issues like
national sovereignty on the one hand,
and very specific proposals, designed
to win the support of different social
groups on the other.
After the elections, the newly
elected members of the Defence of
Rights Group in the national assembly
(which comprised all but one of the
deputies), reconstituted themselves as
the People’s Party (PP) on 9 August
1923. Shortly afterwards, they
formally declared that the PP was the
only heir to the Society for the
Defence of the National
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 105
Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia and
that it took over all its assets. The
local branches of the Defence of
Rights organization were not consulted
on this move, but neither they nor
those politicians who had been equally
active in the national resistance
movement, but who had not been
included in Mustafa Kemal’s slate for
the elections, were in a position to
protest. The spurious pedigree thus
created for the new party was
emphasized at the 1927 party congress,
which called itself the second
congress of the PP, stating that the
first national conference of the
resistance movement, that of Sivas
back in September 1919, had been its
first.
It is no exaggeration to say that
the creation of the PP was one in a
chain of events, through which Mustafa
Kemal gradually established a power
monopoly in 1923-25. Other links in
this chain are change in the High
Treason Law in April 1923," the
promulgation of the republic with
Mustafa Kemal as first president in
October, the abolition of the
Caliphate in March 1924 and the
suppression of the liberal and
socialist opposition from March 1925.
From June
1925 onwards the PP was the only legal
party in Turkey. Within this single
party, Mustafa Kemal Pasha's position
was unassailable. The internal
structure of the party, as described
by the statutes of 1927, gave him
almost unlimited power: he was
permanent chairman of the party and he
appointed the two other functionaries,
the vicechairman and the secretarygeneral, who together with him made up
the party leadership. The party leader
alone was entitled to name candidates
for the National Assembly.12 Since the
split in the party in November 1924
new disciplinary measures were in
force, which prevented individual
deputies from venting dissident
opinions in the National Assembly. All
debate was now limited to the closed
sessions of the parliamentary party.
One could be excused for thinking
that, with complete control over the
only legitimate political party, Kemal
would turn it into the main vehicle
for enforcing Kemalist policies. But
in March 1925 the parliamentary party
agreed to give the government (whose
prime minister, Ismet inonii was
appointed by Mustafa Kemal in his
other capacity as president of the
republic) dictatorial powers under the
Law on the Maintenance of Order
(Takrir-i Siikun Kanunu), which
remained in force for four years.
During these years, which saw the
enactment of all the most famous
Westernizing and secularizing
measures, which together constitute
the Kemalist ‘revolution’, the party,
therefore, played hardly any political
role at all. One can therefore say
that, having helped to create a secure
platform
106
MEN OF ORDER
for the president Co execute his
policies, the party had more or less
served its purpose.
The party certainly did not
function as an instrument for mass
mobilization on the pattern of
socialist or fascist parties in Europe
in this era. In the first six years of
its existence (1923-29) the party
publicly defended the policies of the
government, but it made very little
effort to actually drum up support for
the Kemalist policies or to encourage
grassroots activism. This picture
changes from 1930 onwards, when the PP
began to play a much more active role
in these fields. It became much mote
active in education and propaganda,
and it is certainly no coincidence
that the party school for orators was
founded in 1931.
The changing role of the PP in the
1930s is directly linked to a change
in the nature of the Kemalist regime,
which—I would contend - underwent a
transition from authoritarian to
totalitarian rule, or at least an
attempt at it. From the early 1930s
onwards, the PP government organized a
drive to eliminate all forms of civil
society organizations that were not
linked to the party. The best-known
examples of organizations that were
closed down were the Turkish Women’s
Union, the Freemasons lodges,
professional organizations such as the
Teachers Union, the Reserve Officers
Society and the Society of Newspaper
Journalists and the cultural and
educational clubs of the Turkish
Hearths (TtlrJc Oca/cl an), which had
survived from the Young Turk era and
had been the main meeting place of
supporters of cultural Turkish (and
Turkic) nationalism since 1912.
Istanbul University was reformed and
purged.
These independent organizations
were replaced with new ones, which,
however, were completely under party
control: the women’s branch of the PP
replaced the women’s union and the
People’s Houses (Hdlfcevleri) were
founded in February 1932 as successor
to the Turkish Hearths and took over
the latter’s assets, primarily its
buildings. The People's Houses soon
became by far the most significant
vehicle for mobilization of the party.
The aims of the People's Houses
were summarized by the party
leadership as follows: to build
national unity through the spread of
culture and ideals; to bring villagers
and town dwellers closer together; and
to explain the principles of the
People’s Party to the masses. The
organization was to fulfil these aims
by activities in nine different
fields: language and literature; fine
arts, theatre, sports, welfare,
educational courses, libraries and
publications, village devel
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 107
opment and history. Membership was
open to all. It was fully subsidized
by the People's Party and the board of
each People’s House was appointed by
the local party leadership, except for
that of Ankara which was appointed by
the national leadership. The number of
houses increased dramatically. In
total, 478 People’s Houses were
founded and from 1940 onwards a total
of 4,322 of a rudimentary version of
the same thing, called People’s Rooms
(Halkodalcm) was created in villages.
The People’s Houses and the People’s
Rooms employed various means of
communication to spread the message of
Kemalist modernization: films, theatre
productions, puppet shows, concerts,
expositions and, most of all, lectures
and speeches. In the villages, oral
instruction and wall posters were
used. The choice of these media shows
that the party was well aware it was
trying to spread a message in a
country with an illiteracy rate of
over 80 per cent. For those who were
literate, the People’s Houses also
ptoduced a large number of journals,
of which Dikii (Ideal), the journal of
the Ankara People’s House was the most
important.13
It may be doubted, however, whether
the People’s Houses really succeeded
in their mission of propagating the
Kemalist ideals among the broader
strata of the Turkish population.
Contemporary accounts seem to indicate
that, in spite of all the high-minded
ideals, the Houses to a large extent
remained a meeting place for intellec'
tuals, teachers, professionals and
bureaucrats, and very few peasants or
workers ever set foot in them. The
People’s Houses’ greatest success was
probably in helping to build a
dedicated middle class cadre for the
Kemalists in the towns, rather than in
gaining mass support for the reforms.
Their efforts to encourage a European
lifestyle and culture and the lack of
interest in, and respect for,
expressions of traditional cultures
may actually have created resentment
among the mass of the population.
One contemporary traveller who
actually made a point of visiting the
People’s Houses was Lilo Linke, whose
AElak Dethroned: A Journey through
Modern Turkey appeared first in 1937.
She describes the Samsun Halk Evi in
some detail. According to her
information one in 40 of Samsun’s
inhabitants was a member. At the time
this would amount to about 800 people.
‘Those higher up the social scale’
were 'as good as obliged’ to take up
membership. She copied the week’s
timetable of activities of the
People’s House, which looked like
this:
108
MEN OF ORDER
Monday: "Women’s needlework class
Football club meeting Drama group
Reading and writing class for
adults Free legal advice Tuesday:
Turkish history group Choir practice
Party meeting
Bookbinding and handicrafts
Wednesday: Committee meetings
Women’s dressmaking class Chamber
music class Turkish language and art
group Thursday: Military band practice
Reading and writing class Girl’s
gymnasium group Museum and exhibition
committee Friday: Orchestra practice
Free medical advice Village group
meeting Saturday; Sports clubs
Foreign language classes Sunday:
Lectures, concerts, cdnferences.
Clearly a provincial centre like
Samsun had a sizeable core of
activists, who devoted quite a bit of
spare time to the spreading of the
Kemalist values. Linke’s description
of the activities of the ‘village
group’ that returned from what was
clearly a routine visit to a number of
villages, also makes clear why these
activities may have created resentment
in the countryside. The group
(consisting of a student, a dentist, a
teacher and the owner of the car in
which they travelled) had given
literacy classes and medical
briefings, but they had also carried
out the registration of villagers for
the census and enforced the new law on
family names. In the eyes of the
villagers, the People’s House
delegation must have looked like just
another bunch of state officials
making incomprehensible demands.14
More than anything else, the
development of the People’s Houses
mark the change of the People's Party
from a fairly closed cadre party into
an instrument for control and
mobilization. Three reasons can be
discerned for the changing role of the
PP in the early 1930s.
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 109
Firstly, the world economic crisis
with its attendant dramatic fall in
the price of agricultural products
severely affected Turkey from 1930
onwards. This in itself created a
demand foe a more active and
interventionist government policy.
Secondly, Mustafa Kemal’s shortlived experiment with a legitimate
(but tame) political opposition in
1930 (the Free Republican Party ot
Serbest Cum/vurryet Fnkasi) had shown
up the discontent in the country and
the unpopularity of the PP. When the
experiment threatened to run out of
control because of the enormous
support shown to the opposition patty,
it was quickly terminated, but for
many in the PP it had come as a rude
awakening. Together with a
particularly horrifying ritual murder
of a junior officer (in Menemen near
Izmir on 23 December 1930), which
raised the spectre of religious
reaction or irtica, this led to a
realization within the PP that the
party's message of social and cultural
modernization had not yet got across
to the mass of the population. This
meant that more efforts had to be
devoted to education and propaganda
and that democratization had to be
postponed indefinitely.
Thirdly, the seeming inability of
the Western democracies to deal with
the world economic crisis undermined
their credibility as role models. The
Soviet Union and Fascist Italy seemed
to deal with the crisis much more
effectively. The Soviet Union
continued its expansionist programme
of industrialization, and the Italian
economic programme, which aimed at
‘autarchy’, or self-sufficiency,
gained added impetus from the
imposition of sanctions by the League
of Nations in 1935.15 The latter
subsequently proved to be economically
disastrous, but this was not so clear
at the time and it is undeniable that
the authoritarian regimes, like that
of the Soviet Union, Italy and, after
1933, Hitler’s Germany gained many
admirers among the leading cadres of
the PP. Already in 1932 a group of
prominent intellectuals with PP
connections had formed the ‘Kadro’
(Cadre) group, which advocated a much
more active role for the patty in all
sorts of social and cultural spheres.
Slightly later, in 1935, the very
powerful secretary-general of the
party, Recep Peker, proposed to put
the party in charge of the country's
administration. Peker's inspiration
was Nazi Germany rather than the
Soviet Union, as had been the case
with the Kadro group,16 His
recommendations were rejected, as
Atatttrk preferred to put his trust in
the state apparatus of army and
bureaucracy, but the fact that Turkey
was officially declared a one-party
state a year later, with state and
party
no
MEN OF ORDER
functions being merged on all levels,
certainly owed a great deal to the
authoritarian examples in Europe.
The transition of the PP from a
fairly closed, elitist, political
organization whose activities were
confined almost completely to the
National Assembly, to one which
attempted to monopolize cultural and
.
social life in order to make the mass
of the people aware of the Kemalist
modernization programme is symbolized
by the celebrations of the tenth
anniversary of the republic in 1933.
Whereas before that date, Mustafa
Kemal Pasha usually addressed party
caucuses at indoor venues (even for
such a momentous occasion as his
famous six-day speech of 1927), his
speech of 1933 was held in an open-air
stadium in Ankara, before a mass
audience. The programme of the
celebrations, with its parades and
mass gymnastics, clearly tesembled
similar occasions in Fascist Italy in
its imagery and choreography.
When we compare this development to
that in Iran, we see that the examples
of Kemalist Turkey and of Fascist
Italy and Nazi Germany became
increasingly important in Iran in the
1930s. There was a great deal of
similarity between the manner in which
Reza Shah employed history and
linguistics in the service of nation
building during the ‘Vahdat-e Milli’
campaign and the efforts of the
Turkish History Society and the
Turkish Language Society. The
suppression of the Azeri Turks and the
discrimination against Assyrians and
Armenians recall the anti-minority
polemics of PP stalwarts such as
Mahmut Esat Bozkurt and Recep Peker.
The denial of a Kurdish identity after
1928 in Iran echoes that in Turkey
after 1926. The influence of the
Kemalist example seems to have grown
after the shah's 1934 state visit to
Turkey. Nevertheless, there were
important differences between the
regimes. Where the PP became more
important in the early 1930s as an
instrument for mobilization and
control, the parties that had been
created by Reza Shah and his Minister
of Court Taimurtash to replace the
ones banned in 1927, first the Imn-e
Now (New Iran) party, and then its
successor, the Hezh-c Teraqqi
(Progressive Party), although probably
modelled on the Kemalist example,
never gained a life of their own.
As the chapter by Matthew Elliot in
this volume shows, the original aim of
the Iran-e No to party was much the
same as that of the PP in Turkey: to
'form a disciplined majority in
parliament and ensure that radical,
reforming proposals could be passed
into law’ (Elliot). But these parties
never gained anything like the organiz
INSTITUTION BUILDING IN THE KEMALIST
REPUBLIC 111
ational strength, support or
discipline of the PP. Reza Shah
dissolved the Hetb-e Teraqqi in 1932.
He seems to have relied on individuals
who were totally dependent on his whim
and deeply mistrusted institutions and
collective bodies, even those created
by himself. Mustafa Kemai, on the
other hand, created a party, which,
although it was undoubtedly an
instrument for authoritarian and later
even totalitarian policies,
nevertheless formed the training
ground where the politicians of the
post-war multiparty democracy could
learn their trade. It started out as
an instrument for control of the
National Assembly, but from about 1930
onwards it also began to give a
corporate identity to an important
section of the urban middle class that
saw itself as the ‘enlightened’
vanguard of a social and cultural
revolution. Ervand Abrahamian sums it
up nicely when he says:
Whereas Mustafa Kemai conscientiously
channeled the enthusiastic backing of
the intelligentsia into the Republican
Party [obviously, the (Republican)
People’s Party is meant here, EJZj,
Reza Shah gradually lost his initial
civilian support, and, failing to
secure social foundations for his
institutions, ruled without the
assistance of an organized political
party.17
Notes
- '
1 Stephanie Cronin, ‘Conscription
and Popular Resistance in Iran (1925—
1941)', in Erik-Jan Zilrcher, Arming
the State. Military Conscription in
tHe Middle East and Asia 1775-L925,
London: I. B, Tauris, 1999, pp. 14568.
1 This issue is debated in Erik-Jan
ZOrcher, The Unionist Factor. The Role
of the Committee of Union and Progress
in the Turkish National Movement 19051926, Leiden: E. J. BriU, 1984.
1
On p. 77 of his The Making of
Modem Turkey (London: Routledge,
1993), Feroz Ahmad says: ‘The
destruction of the Ottoman Empire
proved to be a blessing, for the Turks
were now free to rediscover themselves
and to make a fresh start by
abandoning a decadent past* (my
italics).
4
Maurice Larcher, La guerre tur^ue
dflius fa guerre mondiflie, Paris;
Chiron,
1926,
appendices 44 and 50.
5
Dankwart A. Rustow, 'The Army and
the Founding of the Turkish Republic',
World Politics, 11 (1959), pp. 513-52.
6
Gotthard Jaeschke, Turk tnkilabi
Tarihi Kronolojisi, Istanbul: Mill!
Mec- mua, 1939, vol. 1, p. 156; vol.
2, pp. 50, 73.
7 Hakimijet-i Milliye, 18 September
1924.
8 Ulug Igdemir, Sivas Kongresi
Tutanklan, Ankara: TTK, 1969, p. 3,
112
MEN OF ORDER
9
Mete Tun^ay, T.C. 'ride Tek Parti
YSnetimi’nin Kunetmaii (1923-1931),
Istanbul: Cetn, 1989 (198 L), p. 48,
10
An Inan, Qati Mustafa Kemal
Atatiirk’tin 1923 Eskifehir- femit
Konuf- malart, Ankara: TTK, 1982, pp.
118ff.
11
Michael M. Finefrock, 'Prom
Sultanate to Republic. Mustafa Kemal
and the Structure of Turkish Politics
1922—24’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
Princeton University, 1976.
12 Tun^ay, T.C. 'nde Tek Parti, p.
384.
n Tevfik Qavdar, Halkevleri, in Murat
Beige, ed., CumHuriyet Donemi Tiirkije
AnsiMopediji, Istanbul: tletijim, n.d.
[1984], Vol. 4, p. 878 gives all the
essential information on the People's
Houses aims and organization.
14
Lilo Linke, Allah Dethroned: A
Journey through Modem Turkey, London:
Constable, 1937, pp. 169-75.
ls Alan Cassels, Fascist Italy. Second
Edition, Arlington Heights: Harlan
Davidson, 1985, pp. 60-62.
15 Andrew Mango, Ataturk, London: John
Murray, 1999, p. 501.
17 Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two
Revolutions, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1982, p. 149.