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Turkish War of Independence
Turkish War of Independence
During the summer and fall of 1919, with authorization from the Supreme
Allied War Council, the Greeks occupied Adrianople
(Edirne), Bursa, and Smyrna
(Izmir), where a landing was effected under cover of an Allied flotilla
that included United States warships. No Turkish opposition was offered,
and the Greeks had soon moved as far as Usak, 175
kilometers inland from Izmir.
Military action between Turks and Greeks in
Anatolia in 1920 was inconclusive, but the nationalist
cause was strengthened the next year by a series of brilliant victories.
Twice (in January and again in April) Ismet Pasha
defeated the Greek army at Inönü, blocking its advance into the
interior of Anatolia. In July, in the face of
a third offensive, the Turkish forces fell back in good order to the Sakarya
Nehri, eighty kilometers from Ankara, where Atatürk
took personal command and decisively defeated the Greeks in a twenty day
battle.
An improvement in Turkey's diplomatic situation
accompanied military success. Impressed by the viability of the nationalist
forces, both France and Italy had withdrawn from Anatolia
by October 1921. Treaties were signed that year
with the Soviet Union, the first European power to recognize the nationalists,
establishing the boundary between the two countries. In 1919 a war broke
out between the Turkish nationalists and the newly proclaimed Armenian
republic. Armenian resistance was broken by the summer of 1921, and the
Kars region was occupied by the Turks.
In 1922 the nationalists recognized the Soviet absorption of what remained
of the Armenian state, and Armenian minority in Turkey moved back to Armenia.
The final drive against the Greeks began in August 1922 with a battle
called as the Battle of the Commander in Chief. In September the Turks
moved into Izmir, where thousands were killed during
the fighting and capture of the city. Greek soldiers who had crowded in
Izmir,
were taken away by Allied ships, but unfortunately they burned the city
before they pulled out in order to leave nothing to the Turks;
this was the most tragic event of the war.
The nationalist army then concentrated on driving remaining Greek forces
out of eastern Thrace, but the new campaign threatened
to put the Turks in direct confrontation with
Allied contingents defending access to the straits (Bosphorus
and Dardanelles) and in Constantinople (modern Istanbul),
where they protected the Ottoman government.
French forces pulled out from their positions on the straits, but the British
seemed prepared to hold their ground against the advancing Turkish nationalists.
A crisis was averted when Atatürk accepted
a British - proposed truce that brought an end to fighting in the region
between the Turks and the Greeks and also signaled
that the Allies were unwilling to intervene on the side of Greece. In compliance
with the Armistice of Mudanya (near Bursa), concluded in October, Greek troops withdrew
beyond the Maritsa River, allowing the Turkish nationalists to occupy territory
up to that line. The armistice accepted a continued Allied presence on
the straits and in Istanbul until a comprehensive
settlement could be reached.
At the end of October 1922, the Allies invited both the Ankara
and the Istanbul governments to a conference
at Lausanne, but Atatürk
was determined that the nationalist government should be the only spokesman
for Turkey. The action of the Allies prompted a
resolution by the Grand National Assembly in November
1922 that separated the offices of sultan and caliph
and abolished the former. The assembly further stated that the Istanbul
government had ceased to be the
government of Turkey
when the Allies seized the capital. In essence, the assembly had abolished
the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed VI went into exile
on Malta, and his cousin, Abdülmecid, was named caliph.
Turkey was the only power defeated in World
War I to negotiate with the Allies as an equal and to influence the provisions
of the peace treaty. Ismet Pasha was the chief
Turkish negotiator at the Lausanne Conference
that opened in November 1922. The National Pact of 1919 was the basis of
the Turkish negotiating position, and its provisions were recognized in
the treaty concluded by Turkey
in July 1923 with the Allied powers. The United States participated in
the conference but, because it had never been at war with Turkey,
did not sign the treaty.
The Treaty of Lausanne recognized the
present-day territory of Turkey with two exceptions:
the Mossul area and Hatay Province, which included
the port of Alexandretta (present-day Iskenderun).
The boundary with Iraq was settled by a League of Nations initiative in
1926, and Iskenderun was ceded to Turkey
in 1939 by France in its capacity as League of Nations mandatory power
for Syria. Detailed provisions of the treaty regulated use of the straits.
General supervisory powers were given to the Straits Commission under the
League of Nations, and the straits area was to be demilitarized after completion
of the Allied withdrawal. Turkey was to hold the
presidency of the commission, which included the Soviet Union among its
members.
The capitulations and foreign
administration of the Ottoman public debt, which
infringed on the sovereignty of Turkey, were abolished.
Turkey, however, assumed 40 percent of the Ottoman
debt, the remainder being apportioned among other former Ottoman
territories. Turkey was also required to maintain
low tariffs on imports from signatory powers until 1929. The Treaty
of Lausanne reaffirmed the equality of Muslim
and non-Muslim Turkish nationals. Turkey and Greece
agreed to a mandatory exchange of their respective Greek and Turkish minorities
with the exception of some Greeks in Istanbul
and Turks in western Thrace.
On October 29, 1923, the Grand National Assembly
proclaimed the Republic of Turkey. Atatürk
was named as its President, Ankara as its capital,
and the modern state of Turkey was born.