Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

On better paper and color🐱

Loch Long is a body of water in the council area of Argyll and Bute, Scotland. The Sea Loch extends from the Firth of Clyde at its southwestern end. It measures approximately 20 miles (30 kilometres) in length, with a width of between one and two miles (two and three kilometres). The loch also has an arm, Loch Goil, on its western side.

 

Its name is not a reference to is length; it actually comes from the Gaelic for "ship lake". Prior to their defeat at the Battle of Largs in 1263, Viking raiders sailed up Loch Long to Arrochar, and then dragged their longships 2 miles overland to Tarbet and into Loch Lomond. Being inland, the settlements around Loch Lomond were more vulnerable to attack.

 

Loch Long forms part of the coast of the Cowal peninsula, and forms the entire western coastline of the Rosneath Peninsula.

 

Loch Long was historically the boundary between Argyll and Dunbartonshire; however, boundary redrawing in 1996 meant that it moved wholly within the council area of Argyll and Bute.

 

The steamboat Chancellor used to traverse the loch, departing Dunoon at 11:00 and returning about five hours later. PS Waverley was also built to serve Loch Long and Loch Goil from 1947, a route that she still sailed as of 2021, albeit as more of an attraction than a primary means of transport.

 

Villages on the loch include Arrochar at its head and Cove on the east shore near its foot.

 

Several Scottish sea fishing records are attributed to the loch:

Species Weight Angler / Date

Argentine 00-05-03 I. Miller, 1978 (Boat)

Herring 01-02-00 R. C. Scott, 1974 (Boat)

Rockling, Shore 00-14-08 A. Glen, 1982 (Shore)

 

The Ardentinny Outdoor Education Centre on the western shore uses the loch for watersports.

 

It is now a popular area for diving on the numerous wrecks that scatter the loch.

Finnart Oil Terminal

 

The Finnart Oil Terminal is located on the eastern shore of the loch, linked to the Grangemouth Refinery via a 58-mile-long (93-kilometre) pipeline.

 

The eastern shore is also the location of the Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport, part of His Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde, and the Glen Mallan jetty, linked to Defence Munitions Glen Douglas.

 

A testing range for torpedoes was established on the loch in 1912, in connection with the Clyde Torpedo Factory in Greenock. It operated through both World Wars, closing in 1986. The loch contains numerous wrecks.

 

Argyll and Bute is one of 32 unitary council areas in Scotland and a lieutenancy area. The current lord-lieutenant for Argyll and Bute is Jane Margaret MacLeod (14 July 2020). The administrative centre for the council area is in Lochgilphead at Kilmory Castle, a 19th-century Gothic Revival building and estate. The current council leader is Robin Currie, a councillor for Kintyre and the Islands.

 

Argyll and Bute covers the second-largest administrative area of any Scottish council. The council area adjoins those of Highland, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

History

 

Buteshire and Argyll were two of the historic counties of Scotland, having originated as shires (the area controlled by a sheriff) in the Middle Ages. From 1890 until 1975 both counties had an elected county council.

 

In 1975, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, Scotland's counties, burghs and landward districts were abolished and replaced with upper-tier regions and lower-tier districts. The Strathclyde region was created covering a large part of western Scotland. Strathclyde was divided into nineteen districts, one of which the 1973 Act called "Argyll", covering most of the former county of Argyll, but also including the Isle of Bute from Buteshire. The shadow authority elected in 1974 requested a change of name to "Argyll and Bute", which was agreed by the government before the new district came into being on 16 May 1975.

 

As created in 1975 the Argyll and Bute district covered the whole area of fourteen of Argyll's sixteen districts and part of a fifteenth, plus two of Buteshire's five districts, which were all abolished at the same time:

 

From Argyll:

Campbeltown Burgh

Cowal District

Dunoon Burgh

Inveraray Burgh

Islay District

Jura and Colonsay District

Kintyre District

Lochgilphead Burgh

Mid Argyll District

Mull District

 

North Lorn District: the Lismore and Appin, and Ardchattan electoral divisions only, rest (Ballachulish and Kinlochleven electoral divisions) went to Lochaber district of Highland

Oban Burgh

South Lorn District

Tiree and Coll District

Tobermory Burgh

 

From Buteshire:

Bute District

Rothesay Burgh

 

The two Buteshire districts together corresponded to the whole Isle of Bute. The rest of Buteshire, being the Isle of Arran and The Cumbraes went to Cunninghame district. The Ardnamurchan district from Argyll went to the Lochaber district of Highland. The new district was made a single Argyll and Bute lieutenancy area.

 

Local government was reformed again in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, which abolished the regions and districts which had been created in 1975, replacing them with unitary council areas. Argyll and Bute became one of the new council areas, but had its territory enlarged to include the town of Helensburgh and surrounding rural areas which had been in the Dumbarton district prior to 1996, and had formed part of the county of Dunbartonshire prior to 1975. The Helensburgh area had voted in a referendum in 1994 to join Argyll and Bute rather than stay with Dumbarton.

 

Transport

Railways

The main railway line in Argyll and Bute is the West Highland Line, which links Oban to Glasgow, passing through much of the eastern and northern parts of the area. From the south the line enters Argyll and Bute just to the west of Dumbarton, continuing north via Helensburgh Upper to the eastern shores of the Gare Loch and Loch Long. The line comes inland at Arrochar and Tarbet to meet the western shore of Loch Lomond. At the northern end of the loch the lines leaves Argyll and Bute to enter Stirling council area. The Oban branch of the West Highland Line re-enters the area just west of Tyndrum, and heads west to Oban: stations on this section of the line include Dalmally and Taynuilt railway station. The majority of services on the line are operated by ScotRail: as of 2019 the summer service has six trains a day to Oban, with four on Sundays. In addition to the ScotRail service is the nightly Caledonian Sleeper, although this does not run on the Oban branch.

 

Helensburgh also has a much more frequent service into Glasgow and beyond via the North Clyde Line, which has its western terminus at the town's central railway station.

 

Roads

The main trunk roads in Argyll and Bute are:

The A82, which runs along the western shore of Loch Lomond, providing the main route between Glasgow and Fort William.

The A83, which leaves the A82 at Tarbet, heading west and then south to eventually reach Campbeltown by way of Inveraray and Lochgilphead.

The A85, which leaves the A82 at Tyndrum (just outside Argyll and Bute) and heads west to Oban via Dalmally.

The A828, which leaves the A85 at Connel and north through Appin to join the A82 at Ballachulish.

The A815, which leaves the A83 in Glen Kinglas near Cairndow, heading south through Strachur and Dunoon and ends at Toward 40 miles later, on the southern tip of the Cowal peninsula. The A815 is the main road through Cowal.

The A886, which leaves the A815 at Strachur, passing through Glendaruel, the route includes a ferry link to the Isle of Bute, Colintraive - Rhubodach terminating at Port Bannatyne to the north of Rothesay.

 

Ferry services

Due to its heavily indented coastline and many islands, ferries form an important part of the council area's transport system. The main ferry operator in Argyll and Bute is Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac), which operates services from the mainland to most of the inhabited islands. Several other routes are operated by commercial operators, usually on contract to the council, although the Western Ferries service across the Firth of Clyde is run on a commercial basis.

Bute is served by a route across the Kyles of Bute between Rhubodach and Colintraive in Cowal, as well as a route between Rothesay to Wemyss Bay in Inverclyde. Both routes are operated by CalMac.

Coll and Tiree are each served from Oban, via a CalMac service that also provides links between the two islands, and a once-weekly link to Barra.

Gigha is served by a CalMac route from Tayinloan in Kintyre.

Islay is served by a CalMac route from Kennacraig in Kintyre. The service is timetabled to utilise either one of two ports on the island, with both Port Askaig and Port Ellen having a service to the mainland.

Feolin on Jura is linked to Port Askaig on Islay via a vehicle ferry run by ASP Ship Management on behalf of Argyll and Bute Council. There is also a passenger-only service between the island's main centre, Craighouse, and Tayvallich on the mainland that is operated by Islay Sea Safaris.

Kerrera is linked to Gallanach (about 3 km (1.9 mi) southwest of Oban) by a passenger-only service operated by CalMac.

Lismore is served by two ferries, a vehicle and passenger service operated by CalMac that runs from Oban, and a passenger-only service from Port Appin that is operated by ASP Ship Management on behalf of Argyll and Bute Council.

Mull is served by a route between Oban and Craignure on the island's east coast, as well as routes across the Sound of Mull (between Lochaline and Fishnish, and Tobermory and Kilchoan). All three routes are operated by CalMac.

Iona is linked to Mull via a CalMac service from Fionnphort at Mull's southwest tip.

The island of Seil, which itself is linked to the mainland via the Clachan Bridge, has links to two further islands: Easdale and Luing. Both services are operated by ASP Ship Management on behalf of Argyll and Bute Council.

 

There are also routes connecting some mainland locations in Argyll and Bute to other parts of the mainland:

There is a CalMac service across Loch Fyne which provides a link between Portavadie in Cowal and Tarbert in Kintyre.

The Cowal peninsula route is a passenger-only service from the Dunoon Breakwater to Gourock pier, giving easy access to ScotRail services at Gourock railway station with onward transport to Glasgow Central station. This route was for a period run by a CalMac subsidiary company, Argyll Ferries, but has since January 2019 been operated directly by CalMac.

CalMac provide a limited (3 ferry each way per week) service between Cambeltown in Kintyre and Ardrosssan in North Aryshire during the summer months.

Western Ferries, a commercial operator, runs a vehicle and passenger service between Hunters Quay to McInroy's Point that also provides a link between Cowal and Inverclyde in (partial) competition with the subsidised CalMac service.

A service operated by Clyde Marine Services on behalf of Strathclyde Partnership for Transport runs between Kilcreggan and Gourock pier, providing a link from the Rosneath peninsula to the rail network at Gourock.

 

Argyll and Bute also has ferry services linking it to islands in neighbouring council areas:

Oban is the mainland terminal for services to Barra in Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Outer Hebrides).

Lochranza on Arran, in North Ayrshire, has a year-round service to Kintyre: during the summer the mainland port used is Claonaig, however in winter the service is reduced to a single daily return crossing from Tarbert.

 

There is also a passenger-only ferry service linking Campbeltown and Port Ellen on Islay with Ballycastle in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, running seasonally from April to September, operated by West Coast Tours as the Kintyre Express.

 

Cultural references

The later scenes of the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love were filmed around the lochs and hills of Argyll and Bute.

 

The area has also been indirectly immortalised in popular culture by the 1977 hit song "Mull of Kintyre" by Kintyre resident Paul McCartney's band of the time, Wings.

The famous historical Fresco Paintings (similar to the Ajanta paintings }by the Jain saints are found inside the caves situated here. There are also the Jain beds of rock ( Samanar Padukkai)at Chithannavasal.

  

Some of the best cave paintings of medieval India are located in Sittanavasal Cave in Tamil Nadu. This rock-cut Jain monastery contains artwork comparable to famous murals in Ajanta Caves and Bagh Caves. Paintings were made in frescoe technique.

Sittanavasal rock-cut cave is located on prominent rock which rises up to 70 m high over the surrounding plain. This site is very rich with exciting archaeological monuments.

The name "Sittanavasal" has several explanations. One states that this is a distorted version of "chir-ran-nal-vaa-yil" meaning in Tamil language "the abode of great saints". Another states that this was a suburb of Annalvayil (chiru-annal-vaayil - "smaller Annalvayil".

 

Eladipattam

The painted rock-cut temple is newcomer in the the ancient Jain centre of Sittanavasal. To the south, on the top of the hill there is another, natural shelter known as Eladipattam (also Ezhadippattam). It served as a Jain shelter since 1st century BC.

Eladipattam got its name from seven holes cut in the rock - they serve as steps to ascend the shelter. Inside this cave there are seventeen polished stone berths aligned into rows, each with a raised part - most likely these were beds for Jains with "stone pillows".

The largest of these ascetic beds contains inscription in Brahmi script, Tamil language from 1st century BC. Some more inscriptions in Tami language are from much later time - 8th century AD. These inscriptions name mendicants - monks, for example - Tolakunrattu Kadavulan, Tirunillan, Tiruppuranan, Tittaicbaranan, Sri Purrnacandlan, Nityakaran Pattakali. Most likely these people spent their lives in isolation in this hill.

Eladipattam served as a site of very severe penance - kayotsarga (meditation in standing posture until salvation) and sallekhana (fasting until death).

Unfortunately most ancient inscriptions are covered with recent writings of vandals.

This stone shelter continued to be the "Holy Sramana Abode" until 7th - 8th century AD.

 

Arivar-Koil

The famous paintings are located in later rock-cut temple named Arivar-Koil (temple of the Arhats) in north-western side of rock. This temple has been cut in rock in 7th - 9th c. AD.

Facade of temple is simple, with four rock-cut columns and one pilaster to the right. This construction is new, from 20th century, built using the details from other monuments of architecture.

Temple consists of forepart - and hall - ardha mandapam (Ardhamandapam) and a smaller cell - sanctum sanctorum (garbha griham) - at the rear wall. It seems that in Pandya times there was added also another forepart - mukha mandapam, which later collapsed.

Forepart contains inscription on the right side - Tamil inscription with 17 lines. It tells about Jain Ilan-Gautaman who repaired or renovated the ardha-mandapam during the reign of king Srimaran-Srivallabhan (815 - 862 AD).

After several steps one passes by two columns and enters the ardha mandapam. It is 7 m wide and 2.3 m deep. Ceiling is approximately 2.6 m high. Left wall of this hall contains image of Parsvanatha (23rd Thirtankara), right wall - image of acharya - Jain teacher.

At the rear wall, after several steps one reaches another chamber - garbha griham.

Hall contains the main treasure of this monument - ancient paintings on ceilings and top part of columns. Paintings are also on the ceiling of garbha griham.

Originally whole interior of the temple including the sculptures, was plastered and painted. Unfortunately the paintings on the walls have been lost.

Temple and paintings in it were noticed in early 20th century by S.Radhakrishna Iyer, local historian and he described this wonderful discovery in a book devoted to interesting sites of his region. Wider scientific community though learned about frescoes later, after 1920.

 

Frescoes

Most paintings are made in Pandyan period - 9th century AD.

Central and most important drawing is a pond with lotuses, flowers in the pond are collected by monks, ducks, swans, fishes and animals in the pond. This scene shows Samava-sarana - important scene in Jain religion. Samava-sarvana is special, beautiful audience hall where Tirthankaras (great liberated souls in Jain religion) delivered sermons after they reached realisation (kevala-gnana). Bulls, elephants, apsaras and gods gathered in this audience hall to witness this grand scene.

Other paintings are floral patterns.

Tops of columns contain drawings of drawings of dancing women (apsaras) with lotuses. One of pillars contains also a drawing of couple. These drawings have been carried out with outstanding talent. Southern pillar contains drawings of king and queen with umbrella over them.

Most likely the colors initially were vivid, now they are more grey. The technique of the drawing shows well developed style in art. India has long tradition of painting on rock with many Neolithic and later paintings in natural caves.

Walls of Sittanavasal Cave are not very even and thus the plaster has different thickness - from 1 to 8 mm. First layer of plaster contains coarse sand, second is more fine - this is similar to the technique of European frescoes. Pigment was mixed with the lime and possibly some gum (in the black pigment) as well. Color was put on dry plaster. It adhered to the plaster extremely well - persisting more than 1000 years. Medieval artists had deep knowledge (which is lost now) about the natural pigments - colors did not bleach when mixed with lime and very well withstood the test of time. Artists in Sittanavasal have used black, green, yellow, orange, blue and white pigments.

Damp air in the cave facilitated growth of slime consisting of algae and lichen - throughout the centuries it covered the paintings. This slime had to be removed mechanically - with strong brushing in 1942 (Shri S.Paramasivan, K.R.Srinivasan) - happily paintings withstood this well.

Unfortunately the extremely valuable cave paintings have been vandalised. Some of the damage was done by... contemporary artists secretly copying the paintings by laying tracing paper over the ancient paintings and redrawing them. As a result nowadays the paintings are barely visible and even somewhat insignificant.

Garbha griham

Garbha griham is small square chamber, 3 m wide and deep, with 2.3 m high ceiling.

Rear wall contains sculpted images of three figures - possibly two Thirtankaras and acharya.

On the ceiling there is carved a wheel - Dharma chakra - wheel of law. Ceiling also contains frescoes - intricate carpet design and also a scene of Samava-sarvana with lotus pond.

The small shrine has exceptional, unique echo effect: if one is humming "ohmmm" inaudibly, the room starts echoing in audible frequences. This effect is not happening if one is humming audibly.

Surroundings

Sittanavasal is one of important ancient Jain centre in this region of India and there are many more interesting monuments of Jains and also Hindu. Some are listed below:

To the south from Arivar-Koil there are Tamil inscriptions from 7th - 13th century AD. Written sources mention 7 inscriptions, nowadays 2 could be fouond.

Walls of cliff at the temple are adorned with few sculpted Jain Thirtankaras.

In the front of Arivar-Koil in the rock floor there are several holes - some 15 cm wide and 20 cm deep. Possibly these were used to grind the pigments.

Between Eladipattam and Arivar-Koil, on the eastern slope of rock there is exciting monument - Navach-chunai (Jambunatha's Cave), small rock-cut temple submerged in a small lake. Some skills in climbing are required to reach it. Near the tarn there grows old jambu tree. This is late Shiva temple with a lingam in centre. Occasionally, for the worship of temple, the water is removed from the lake.

At the western base of hill there is shrine of village deities including fine terracotta horses.

There are many more ancient monuments around the hill from more ancient past - megalithic burial urns, stone circles, cairns, dolmens, cists from the iron age, called mudu-makkal-thaazhi. These monuments are located mainly to the south-west from the hill.

   

Sittanavasal Cave is included in the following list:

  

Ancient and medieval Indian cave paintings - Internet encyclopedia

References

S. Theodore Baskaran Mural techniques. Mural Painting Traditions in India: Content, Conservation & Challenges. 2008.

 

I found a blueprint of typhoon lagoon with contours so I'm redrawing the plan with more detail

I found a blueprint of typhoon lagoon with contours so I'm redrawing the plan with more detail

From 1791 to 1857 the Arrowsmiths published at least 15 editions or revisions of their maps of North America and British North America. The changes from one edition to another normally did not require redrawing the master map, although this was done as required. The maps generally were kept updated simply by inserting into the existing map new information supplied by Hudson’s Bay Company traders and surveyors, and other explorers. By studying the various Arrowsmith maps in their proper succession one can learn something of how the geographical knowledge of the interior of North America grew. The occasional jumps in knowledge are perhaps best illustrated by the 1802 and 1814 maps. In 1802 very little exact data of present day Manitoba was available in London: Lakes Winnipegosis, Manitoba, and Winnipeg are very distorted 1802 map. But by 1814 Lake Winnipeg is more accurately drawn, and so is Lake Winnipegosis, though Lake Manitoba is still misshapen. There are few differences between the two maps along the Hayes river, but more information has become available on the Nelson and Churchill rivers. It is especially noteworthy that the Lewis and Clarke expedition of 1804-1806 contributed a great deal of information on the Missouri river area. The heights of land are often prominently depicted on maps of this period, as they are on these. Unfortunately, they are frequently so exaggerated that they look like ranges of hills.

(Warkentin and Ruggles. Historical Atlas of Manitoba. map 53, p. 140)

-------------------

A map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior parts of North America / inscribed by permission to the honorable governor and company of adventurers of England trading into Hudsons Bay in testimony of their liberal communications to their most obedient and very humble servant A. Arrowsmith, January 1st 1795. Additions to 1802. Drawn by Aaron Arrowsmith, No. 24 Rathbone Place. Coloured. Puke, sc.

Image Source: Library of Congress American Memory Project

Full map can be viewed at: hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3300.ct000584

 

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

2005-2007

80" x 96"

Colored pencil, graphite, acrylic on wood panels

 

Collection:

Crocker Art Museum

 

(Robert Cremean: Metaphor and Process, the video, may be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgrxW8xSvrA)

 

Hereafter is a transcription of the handwritten text on the diptych above:

 

ECCE HOMO

 

This is as it is. Behold me. I am you, a reflection in the artist’s eye; and as I see you, myself, I reflect on our condition. Ecce homo. I do not wash my hands of responsibility. I embrace it. It is not for me to judge. I am a simple craftsman of recordation and as an artist I am pledged to record what I see. This is neither excuse nor evasion; rather, a simple statement of isness. I accept full responsibility for my reflection. This is what I see. If what I see is viewed as judgement, this is a reflection of the beholder. As I accept responsibility as artist, I expect the beholder to accept his. We meet only on this plane of shared reflection. Only here does intimacy occur free of interpretation, cultural catechism and correctness. If you insist on encumbering yourself in the armor of cultural correctness, your performance here will be clumsy and predictable. In a sense, sensuality on this plane is similar to sexual intimidation. Your ability to perform and to penetrate lies within your bourn of possibility. If you predetermine my limitations by your reflection, our mirror will remain opaque, your image obscured, and your subservience to cultural and historical prudery reified. I have the disinterest of a whore. It is not my business to guarantee gratification. I can only service the possibility. Consider the compass of our sexuality; setting the due male North, the due female South, the due homosexual male West, and the due female homosexual East creates a 360° horizon of infinite possibility. Although the magnetic North has always determined the direction of human entelechy, that entelechy has a 360º choice of direction. Due North is no longer viable. That way lies oblivion. This is as it is. The diameter stretches from due East to due West, a horizontal demarcation between life and death. The arrow points South, a 180º shift of our vision of expectation. We must establish now an entirely new triangle of possibility, a state of being shorn of masculine hegemony, an oppositeness of all that was and all that was always expected to be. All of masculine entelechy has become toxic. The entire hemisphere must be abandoned. As we continue to explore the sphere of human possibility, the Northern Hemisphere with its redundancies and repetitious predictability is barren of resource, hackneyed and clichéd. It has been exploited ad nauseum and further indulgence threatens continuance. If we, the explorers of human entelechy, were to turn 180º to confront possibility rather than repeat, what new discoveries and alternatives might be presented. What new metaphors might flower in the nourishing soil of oppositeness...through technology, masculine necessity is redundant; only his metaphors continue to control the human condition. War, religion, commerce, history, tradition—this gestalt of metaphors which make masculine human reality is no longer viable. We must turn our back on death and face a new world for survival and fecundity. What the Masculine has made finite, the feminine must make possible. The alternative is repetition unto oblivion. A 90º shift to the West on the horizon of possibility is now credible; the homosexual male can replace the heterosexual masculine in all ways including, through technology, reproduction of the species. It is the unexplored West that pulls tight the severing horizon line on the vertical axis of Masculine redundancy. The remaining poles of diversity which describe the human compass present an infinity of possibilities for the survival of all species and the nourishing planet. As the technology of death advances beyond the stasis of masculine gestalt, humankind can no longer tolerate the immutability of mankind’s Isness. If we continue to define ourselves in the mirror of masculine redundancy, our extinction is assured. The severing horizontal diameter of the East/West homosexual horizon offers the human condition the rationale for redrawing the maps of possibility. Through decapitation of the necrophagous North, an entire frontier of new metaphors based on other gendered realities would be explored. Ecce Homo. As I view the simplistic vertical axis of staff and distaff, the linear reality of repetition is entropy, a metastasis of boredom and predictability of repeat. Inevitability is the saddest of life’s consequences. 8/6/45. I am an artist at the end of history. In this final concentric ripple of linear time, the confusion is noisome, an explosion of masculine frustration and hypocrisy. Man’s surrogate, god, is everywhere, an excuse for slaughter, pillage and destruction. Art is a frantic recordation of nihility to support a culture our culture-makers can no longer create. Information and intimidation have unnerved personal response and we eat what we are fed and live in fantasy and fabrication pretending to a culture that does not exist. We claim that what Is is not and what is not Is. Our drift into entropy and stasis has created an illusion of movement as the groove of repetition digs deeper and deeper our blind addiction to a necrophagous gestalt. Situated on the East/West homosexual horizon, I view the possibility for human extension by the light of a setting sun. I cast my glance at what has been, not as historical accumulation but as evidence of what might be because it always was. The compass of human Isness is dominated by the magnetic arrow of a due masculine imperative. The arrow now points toward death. The pointer must be demagnetized so that the compass can be turned without the constant insistence of a dogmatic actuality. The monocularity of this actuality has erased the horizon line and replaced it with a single and simplistic vanishing point. Infinity. This ignorance of the sensual curvature of the sphere of human possibility makes phobic the human condition and toxic our repetitive diminution into entropy. As an artist, I find perspective to be the most complex and challenging of the many disciplines of Making. What one sees, how one sees, and how one relates that which is seen, is an artist’s statement. Further, perspective is for the artist a monocular though ever-shifting viewpoint of a multidimensional universe, an examination of interior and exterior landscapes as seen through the dual silvered mirror of self. The way he sees, his so-called “style,” is an admission of limitation rather than an academic virtue of cultural and historical value. For me, the most fascinating discovery was the difference between Greek and Roman perspective wherein Roman or scientific perspective establishes the vanishing points on the horizon whereas Greek perspective implants the vanishing point within the mind of the viewer. The philosophical difference is explosive, separating the masculine hemisphere from the feminine along the homosexual diameter of the sphere of comprehension. By placing the vanishing point within the bourn of the viewer, humankind’s exploration of Isness is internalized and enlarged through a demystification of the masculine horizon. Objects and concepts are adjusted to the expanding interior universe as they pass through the lens of human understanding. It is the inner world of human possibility that incubates reality rather than obdurate dogmas and rote that inculcate fear of self-discovery through the imposition of unquestionable answers. Metaphors and concepts are diminished as they pass through the lens; their viability, objectified. They assume human proportion in terms of the reflecting curvature of the sphere. It is the viewer who commands the 360º horizon of human possibility from the infinity of centered entelechy. Because objects and concepts enlarge as they recede from the eyes of the viewer, Greek perspective, by placing the vanishing point within the bourn of human perception, affirms humanity’s absoluteness in terms of unique Isness. Ecce Humanitas. By spanning the horizon across dual lobes of perception, the focus of human need is internalized according to interpretation. By this process is reality created and communicated through metaphor. I embrace chaos. My desire to shear the magnetic needle of cultural/historical imperium from the compass of possibility fuels my enterprise. Every viewer has choice. Response cannot be forced regardless of critical intervention or cultural intimidation. Your being here with me on this plane at this time commits us to nothing. If, by chance, esthetic orgasm occurs, your release confirms your existence on this plane. I will never know you as I have never known you. I am an object if conveyance, nothing more. This plane confirms your existence—not mine. Only in the act of making do I exist. Only on this plane do I convey. The orgasm is yours. You have created me in your desire for creation. And on this plane, you are the creator. You are creating yourself. And this is Art. And the creating of Art is the essence of human Isness. It is the pinnacle of our reality. No artist aspires to the creation of Art; he is enveloped in the process of Making. This process is circumstantial to the viewer and his creation. Through making, the artist creates himself. Through response, the viewer may experience epiphany. Whether the responder can or will demagnetize the needle of hegemonic gestalt and embrace the chaos of self-creation is not the maker’s concern; it lies within the bourn of the creator.... I, the maker, have attended this plane time after innumerable time. This is a place I have known always and yet is always unknown. There is no place more mysterious and exotic than this foreign place. Here, I am always a stranger. I come here to create shadows out of pure light. I come here to destroy my face. I come here to create a stranger. If my enterprise here is successful, my failure is worthy of return. Here, on this plane of paradox where viewer becomes creator, anarchy is born. The chimera of hierarchy is dissolved into noisome pixels of deposed authority. Silence erases dimension and actuality reforms to a palimpsest of alternate realities. always the way it was becomes always the way it is and always the way it might have been and always the way it might be. Always there is choice. Always there is choice until a final choice is made. Ecce humanitas.... I speak now for myself as maker, as skater across a seamless and boundless plane of light, a single glide of ever increasing weightlessness and space. There is no sound, there are no shadows. I remember only the future. The unforgiving coldness of this place inflames me. I embrace it as it enfolds me. As it has always enfolded me. I am in and of its vacuity and provoke its indifference. I would be recognized but shun all that would recognize me. I skate this plane like one pursued by shame, erasing, and honing my blades against distraction and obstruction, clearing and cutting a path through the shadowless light. I am dissolved by light and hidden in its brilliance. The light has eaten my edges and destroyed definition. Do not seek me here. I am finished with it. Only you, the viewer, responder, perhaps creator can define this space. For me, it has become a weighted opacity, an artifact of indifference. As this triangle impends to infinity, the ghosts of new work present themselves. As I prepare to leave this plane, they will consort me. It is they who have prepared my next place of encounter which is this same place...which I will not recognize. I sense their presence. I know they are here, pressing altering, shifting their weights and contours in spasms of peripheral excitation, creases and undulations in the light. These glimpses are the essence of Greek perspective. I grasp their enormity as they distance themselves in ambiguity. As my desire enlarges, my hand is hastened in anticipation. I must quit this plane before they materialize, before objectification. They yearn for closure. They seek unbroken light as this plane layers, a triplicity of past, present and future, a scumbled erasure of recordation. Stains of the past cavort with ghosts of the future on the labored plane of the present in a noise of absence, a clamor of silence. Completion becomes an auto-da-fé, an execution enforcing conversion. An admission, of sorts, that the plane of the Future could not be homogenized beyond recognition. My failure can only be rectified by the creator. Purity exists only in his response and ever and always I, the maker, remain senseless of creation. I search not so that others can find. There is no selflessness in my production. I make only to free myself of repetition, to free myself of linearity and history and compilation. I long to create absence...to be free of evidence...to be pure light...to exist in orgasm and epiphany. To destroy my face. Recognition repels me. I court no audience and leave this plane to its creator. Only through his creations will I be erased. By his self-creation are we become light. As the triplicity tilts more and more this plane toward the future, the present bends into a shadowing and weighted past. It can no longer sustain purchase. I, the maker, must enforce the present on this plane of possibility through the reification of light. I cannot erase the stains of the past from this bent and bended plane; they are beyond redemption. In order to retain balance and achieve departure, I must restrict peripheral vision and banish ghosts of the future to their predestination. Narrow is the way to withdrawal from this emptied space. No curiosity attends my departure as to its future occupancy. If I, the maker, have furnished this space and enhanced its capacity for occupation, then my stripping of self has served further purpose. This plane, for me, has entered into palimpsest and erasure. My success will once again be measured in the unforgiving light of failure on a new plane in a foreign place in the paradox of self-creation...Ecce Humanitas. The triangle descends from the horizon of east/west diversity to its apex of direction pointing toward survival on the compass of human possibility. The imperium of masculine gestalt must be castrated, the directive needle de-magnetized, the reality of repeat annihilated. In redundancy, mankind must learn to destroy its face, its mask which was never a face whose empty sockets stare blindly toward a future which is no future which is neither past nor present but the end of time and dimension and all things measurable, which is the completion of direction and directive, which is the end of the human experiment and the fulfillment of prophecy which was no prophecy but, rather, the obfuscation of process. An excuse for inevitability, the obviousness of conclusion. Ecce homo.

   

I want to live in a world where the words male and female are flexible and subjective, even redundant. A world of perpetual transformation, where sexuality and gender become obsolete as people begin to question why they should be the same person, day in, day out. A world where the overriding ethos is to question and explore your sexuality and gender without the restrictions prevalent in 'normal' society. Questioning what is masculine and what is feminine is about redrawing the boundaries (or removing them altogether) surrounding activities that are seen as inherently male or female. I long for a world where the old oppositions of male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual have dissolved. I want to live in a world where I am free to be whoever I want to be, whenever I want to be, male, female, other or neither

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

OP-ED

 

The Life and Times of Hassan Nasir

 

by

 

Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi

 

MAY 6, 2022

 

The International Labour Day brought to mind the extraordinary life story of Hassan Nisar.

 

Independence and the creation of Pakistan during August 1947 seems to have brought about a substantial change in the mindsets of the scions of the aristocracy that had shared in the governance of British India together with the British themselves. The latter seem to have given them greater leeway and decision space in shaping their lives than the leaders in Pakistan who replaced them. Let me proceed to elucidate my argument a little.

 

Let me start with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of the finest poets produced by the Indo-Pak subcontinent. He joined the British Indian Army and was attending to public relations dimensions.

 

Quite impressed with his work, the British gave him a temporary rank of Lieutenant Colonel and awarded him an MBE a couple of years before Independence. Around that time, on the conclusion of the Second World War, the leaders of USSR, USA and Great Britain were redrawing the map of the world and delineating their spheres of influence globally.

 

After departing from that summit conference, all the three leaders parted as friends inwardly knowing that this was the beginning of a major arms race and war, albeit a cold one and devoid of the traditional hostilities but manifested with more subtle nuances.

 

Earlier the Russian revolution had shaken the Western world so much that in India alone hundreds of thousands of copies of the Holy Quran translated by Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall were sent for the Muslims to infuse greater religiosity into them while the Hindus were provided their holy books almost free of cost. It was unquestionable that communism could exist in India.

 

After Independence and the creation of Pakistan, knowing that Gandhi, Nehru and most of their political colleagues were socialist-minded, the attention soon turned to the newly created Muslim nation.

 

In the aftermath of a long visit to the USA by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, significant restrictions were placed on the Communist Party of Pakistan, founded by the British decorated poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz clandestinely with support from Sajjad Zaheer and J. A Rahim. While Zaheer was the son of Sir Wazir Hasan, the first Indian Chief Justice of the Oudh High Court, Rahim was a senior Indian Civil Service officer who had opted for the foreign service in Pakistan. The latter was the son of Sir Abdul Rahim who was President of the Legislative Assembly of India for nearly a decade.

 

J. A. Rahim had secretly joined Faiz and Zaheer while serving as ambassador in several countries and remaining the Foreign Secretary. He would later substantially draft the framework of Z A Bhutto’s Pakistan People Party.

 

Meanwhile, within the Army, Gen. Douglas Gracey while handing over the charge of Commander in Chief to Gen. Ayub Khan warned him to be careful of some “Young Turks” like Major General Akbar Khan. Yet Ayub seems to have been caught napping when in less than two months of his taking over in January 1951, he was apprised by the Intelligence agencies of a plot to assassinate the prime minister and take over the government. This was later known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case.

 

Curiously the coup leaders were assisted by the communists. As it turned out, Akbar Khan had at some point served as head of the unit to which Faiz was assigned. The conspirators would discuss things as though they were already in power, and their hostess Begum Naseem Shahnawaz Akbar Khan was the grand-daughter of Sir Muhammad Shafi. Things came to a head when Akbar Khan’s cook went on leave and the IB planted its own man there who revealed everything to his bosses.

 

Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan, Air Commodore M. K. Janjua, Maj. Gen. Nazir Ahmed, Brigadier Sadiq Khan, Brigadier M. A. Latif Khan, Lt. Col. Zia-ud-Din, Lt. Col. Niaz Muhammad Arbab, Captain Khizar Hayat, Maj. Hassan Khan, Major Ishaq Muhammad, Captain Zafarullah Poshni, Mrs. Naseem Shahnawaz Khan, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Syed Sajjad Zaheer and Muhammad Hussain Ata were put on trial. Despite a formidable Defense Attorney like (later Prime Minister) Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, most of the accused got hefty imprisonment terms while a few like Brig. Latif – the senior most officer from East Pakistan – were acquitted. He, however, resigned from service after his honourable release. In succeeding years some others were released, while during Suhrawardy’s tenure as prime minister, the case was pretty much wrapped up.

 

It turned out that the conspirators were essentially irked by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan’s inaction in Kashmir and his delaying constitution-making and the elections, and this was creating disappointment within the ranks of the Army.

 

This was also told to my father by Col Ziauddin. He was to be Governor of Punjab after the takeover and happened to be Resident Representative of PIDC in Rawalpindi when my father was Chairman PIDC during the 1970s.

 

Interestingly and ominously, the Prime Minister was himself assassinated around 7 months after the conspiracy was unearthed. Some of the elitists in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case may have had something to do with his elimination. However, it is said that when his widow Ra’ana was confronted with evidence of the high and mighty engaged in the act, she decided to cooperate with the powers that be in the larger interest of the nation.

 

Let’s turn to the students’ community now. Tariq Ali (now a famous author) was grandson of Punjab governor and premier Sir Sikander Hayat Khan. He was a student activist and once the Director Intelligence Bureau told his parents Mazhar Ali Khan and wife Tahira that he could not save him any longer if he remained in Pakistan. He was packed off to England for education.

 

Tragically, another student more senior than Tariq Ali was Hassan Nasir, who having received admission in Cambridge University, was dissuaded by his father to proceed abroad and instead was sent to Aligarh. He was grandson of Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, one of the founding fathers of Pakistan.

 

On Independence, he migrated to Pakistan and was brutally killed at the age of 32 inside the Lahore Fort following incessant torture for two months. His dead body has yet to be found.

 

When his body was supposedly exhumed, his mother who had come from the Deccan, castigated the authorities for not only killing her son but even depriving her of the right to bury him properly. The unidentified body was buried again.

 

Going back a little, Governor General Ghulam Muhammad had dismissed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan headed by Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan in 1953 and consequently the cabinet headed by Khwaja Nazimuddin as well. The actions were construed in East Pakistan as vindictive considering that two senior Bengali politicians of impeccable integrity had been dislodged.

 

It was a semi-coup carried out in connivance with the Defense Secretary Iskander Mirza, Army Commander Gen. Ayub Khan and Chief Justice Munir of the Federal Court.

 

Our Ambassador in Washington DC, Mohamed Ali Bogra was summoned to replace Nazimuddin as Prime Minister and one of the first decisions of his cabinet was to ban the Communist Party of Pakistan fully and finally in 1954.

 

In a few years more, Gen Ayub would be telling US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles who headed the CIA that Pakistan feared a danger from the North (meaning China) more than the East (meaning India).

 

When Ayub stopped over in a European capital, the ambassador Begum Liaquat Ali Khan hammered into him the notion that Pakistan required a stable government for at least ten years to usher in some sustainable progress.

 

Hassan Nasir was born on New Year’s Day in Hyderabad Deccan in 1928. There were reports that he was a communist activist even in his hometown in Telangana. After release from jail in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, Sajjad Zaheer had returned to India and the officially defunct Communist Party fell into the hands of its Secretary General Hassan Nasir who was also associated with Suhrawardy’s National Awami Party. He fought for the rights of the students, peasants, and laborers.

 

In 1958, Ayub assumed power in Pakistan through a coup spearheaded by President Mirza, who was sent into a life of exile in England, three weeks later.

 

From his death cell in 1978, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had written: “Coup-gemony is the bridge over which foreign hegemony walks to stalk our lands.” Hassan Nasir understood his precarious position even 20 years earlier in 1958 and carried out his activities from beneath the surface now.

 

However, in 1960, he was arrested in Karachi and then shifted to a cell in the Lahore Fort and brutally tortured incessantly for 2-3 months till he passed away on 13th November 1960.

 

The provincial government headed by Governor West Pakistan, Nawab Amir Muhammad Khan of Kalabagh tried to depict the death as an act of suicide but was unable to even produce his body which must have so much evidence of their crime that they ostensibly destroyed it.

 

Earlier in 1954, when a young lawyer Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim visited the central prison of Karachi to meet his client Z. A. Suleri, a rightist journalist held on sedition charges, the policemen told him that a group of students were not prepared to apologize even verbally and secure their release and he may try to convince them. The police mentioned that the Chief Commissioner A. T. Naqvi would send his men daily to their leader Hassan Nisar, but he always refused.

 

Ebrahim, who was later Supreme Court judge and Governor of Sindh, mentioned decades later how he marveled on hearing that people preferred to remain in jail for the sake of their principles, when not even asked to apologize in writing but to do so verbally.

 

However, by the time of the 1958 martial law, things had changed for the worse and the authorities were so seriously antagonized by the communist activities in the country that the entire police force of the country was looking for him.

 

At the time of his assassination, he was only 32, although ten years ago he had acted as private secretary to three prime ministers of Hyderabad including Sir Mirza Ismail Hyderi, Nawab Chhatari and Mir Laiq Ali. In Pakistan, his convictions seem to have made him literally walk to his death.

 

President Ayub Khan would soon make Pakistan the most allied ally of the United States and wanted to demonstrate how he had eliminated the last vestiges of communism from Pakistan.

 

The Lahore Fort has witnessed the torture of political prisoners ever since Mughal Rule followed by British rule after the Mutiny and subsequently by several governments in Pakistan. The list of senior, patriotic and leading politicians and citizens tortured there is virtually endless there and no one emerged from there without permanent mental and physical scars.

 

Despite the pronouncements of Prime Ministers Muhammad Khan Junejo and Benazir Bhutto that prisoners would no longer be tortured in the Lahore fort, it is believed that similar activities are carried out across the country in different settings.

 

A word on the Rawalpindi conspirators would be in order here. Foreign Minister Bhutto interceded with President Ayub Khan to let Faiz Ahmed Faiz leave for the USSR, which bestowed on him the Lenin Peace Prize just as Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto awarded him the Nishan-i-Imtiaz posthumously. Gen Akbar Khan was made National Security Adviser by President Bhutto. Gen. Ziaul Haq, who was the most tyrannical ruler in the history of Pakistan, appointed Col. Niaz Ahmed Arbab as a cabinet minister. Col. Ziauddin got a good position in PIDC for a sustained period of time. Indian Prime Minister Nehru personally supervised Sajjad Zaheer’s nationality process in India on his return.

 

Everything said and done, Hassan Nisar’s sacrifice will always remain a scar on Pakistan’s psyche with feelings of collective guilt. Regardless of anyone’s political views, downright tyranny, torture and extra-judicial murder does not behove a civilized nation, specially in this time and age, and evokes feelings of outrage from all and sundry.

 

The United Nations’ General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the protection of all persons from being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, on 9 December 1975, and has since spearheaded an effective struggle against such practices globally. The Government of Pakistan needs to take affirmative action in this regard and move to end tyranny in all its forms across the country.

  

The writer is a public health and public policy specialist of Pakistan.

  

Speck and I went to an old abandoned house today in a very isolated spot. The house is for sale but would cost a fortune to restore. The trees have grown up around it so that it is completely hidden from the road, with only the real estate agent sign signifying that it is there. I overworked this terribly, but it seemed so spooky and scary to me that I kept making it darker and darker to fit how I felt about it. It looked much better before I started the reworking and redrawing. Another lesson learned. Wish I could have made this look like Winna makes her old houses look...

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

How To Draw Anime Girl Draw Natsuki DDLC Redrawing My Old Art. My Video Drawing (www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItnnNnJjY0)

Here is the original, ..., or a picture of a reproduction.

 

I really enjoyed redrawing, redo, reworking etc this is a sketch I made for the 30 day drawing mission I love it how came out I had trouble with the ends of the hair but I ended up finding and implementing a hairstyle that matched my character's attitude I know I could' ve done better with the hair and the proportions are a little off (maybe a lot😂) and I hate that there are erasing lines but all is well it ends well this is my final project!😅

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

Rendering of interior composition with black, out-of-scale drawing stick.

Life drawing model Nicholas Tesluk poses as Robin Hood in the second Sunday of a three-Sunday long pose at the New Mexico Art League. 120 working minutes. I am redrawing with a different medium in each session.

 

Winsor & Newton Artists' Charcoal, dark grey vine (soft)

Strathmore Drawing paper, medium surface, 35.6 x 43.2 cm (14 x 17 inches)

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

Chris got me thinking about the length of my top tube and stem so I spent some time redrawing the front end. I have changed the fork to 51mm rake which looks achievable from the dry fit and I've kept the head tube angle and the front centre the same. The increased rake brings the lower head lug down a smidge and shortens the top tube by 5mm, trail is also down to a more usual 57mm. I've also added a 20mm extension to the upper head lug to give me a bit more height.

 

I've still drawn the 80mm maggot stem but now the headset, lug extension, spacers and stem are drawn accurately.

 

The 80mm -6 degree stem puts my bars 10mm nearer and 20mm higher than my current freak set up. At the moment I have an 80mm +25 degree stem on my Dolan, which is not cool, but it does get me in a comfortable position. I've ridden many long rides on it this year, all the way up to 600k and I'm commuting 300k a week on it too with no niggles, so I know I'll be good if I can hit that position. Saying that I would still like to try higher and this will let me do that.

 

Now to get back to the filing...

From 1791 to 1857 the Arrowsmiths published at least 15 editions or revisions of their maps of North America and British North America. The changes from one edition to another normally did not require redrawing the master map, although this was done as required. The maps generally were kept updated simply by inserting into the existing map new information supplied by Hudson’s Bay Company traders and surveyors, and other explorers. By studying the various Arrowsmith maps in their proper succession one can learn something of how the geographical knowledge of the interior of North America grew. The occasional jumps in knowledge are perhaps best illustrated by the 1802 and 1814 maps. In 1802 very little exact data of present day Manitoba was available in London: Lakes Winnipegosis, Manitoba, and Winnipeg are very distorted 1802 map. But by 1814 Lake Winnipeg is more accurately drawn, and so is Lake Winnipegosis, though Lake Manitoba is still misshapen. There are few differences between the two maps along the Hayes river, but more information has become available on the Nelson and Churchill rivers. It is especially noteworthy that the Lewis and Clarke expedition of 1804-1806 contributed a great deal of information on the Missouri river area. The heights of land are often prominently depicted on maps of this period, as they are on these. Unfortunately, they are frequently so exaggerated that they look like ranges of hills.

(Warkentin and Ruggles. Historical Atlas of Manitoba. map 54, p. 140)

-------------------

A map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the interior parts of North America / inscribed by permission to the honorable governor and company of the adventurers of England trading into Hudsons Bay, in testimony of their liberal communications to their most obedient and very humble servant A. Arrowsmith, hydrographer to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, January 1st 1795 ; Puke, sc. Additions to 1814. Drawn by Aaron Arrowsmith, No. 24 Rathbone Place. Coloured. Puke, sc.

Image Source: Library of Congress American Memory Project

Full map can be viewed at: hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3300.ct001203

 

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

  

Conor Lamb’s victory is a humbling blow to Republicans.

 

ELIZABETH TOWNSHIP, Pa. ― Democrat Conor Lamb defeated Republican Rick Saccone in a special election for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, a GOP-held seat where Donald Trump won by nearly 20 percentage points.

 

Lamb’s projected win comes the day after polls closed, as initial counts were too close to call on Tuesday night. As of Wednesday evening, Lamb held a narrow 627-vote lead, according to both The New York Times and NBC. There are still 500 outstanding provisional, military and absentee ballots to be counted between the four counties in the district, but it appeared unlikely that the election results could change absent further unexpected developments.

 

Pennsylvania does not have an automatic recount in elections on the congressional-district level, but Saccone can still petition for one within five days of the counties completing their vote tabulations.

 

The win is a massive upset for Democrats reflecting the heightened enthusiasm of the party’s liberal base and the general dissatisfaction of many voters with the Trump presidency.

 

The party now has the wind at its back ahead of the midterm elections in November when Democrats hope to wrest control of Congress from the GOP.

 

“The congressional map for potentially competitive races has just gotten a whole hell of a lot bigger,” said Mike Mikus, a western Pennsylvania-based Democratic consultant. “If I’m the Republicans, I’m terrified. If I’m the Democrats, I’m very energized looking toward November.”

 

Republicans have downplayed the broader significance of the race, arguing that it could be explained almost entirely by Saccone’s flaws as a candidate, or more recently, Lamb’s alleged willingness to run a Republican-lite campaign.

 

But the election results show that the GOP needs to do more to appeal to moderate suburban voters, regardless of who the candidate is, said Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based Republican strategist.

 

“It’s not a good sign,” he said. “We have to run better campaigns that have messages that are going to resonate with voters regardless of their opinion of the president.”

 

BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES Democrat Conor Lamb arrives to vote in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. His victory is a monumental pickup for Democrats.

 

Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District opened up in October when eight-term incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Murphy resigned under pressure. Murphy, who publicly opposed abortion rights, was caught encouraging a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair to get an abortion during a pregnancy scare.

 

Murphy enjoyed a virtually unshakable hold on the southwestern Pennsylvania district, running unopposed in the two previous elections.

 

The district, which was heavily gerrymandered in 2011 to favor Republicans, covers a vast swath of southwestern Pennsylvania. It reaches across four counties and includes the affluent, center-left suburbs of Pittsburgh in the north, the solidly Republican bedroom communities to the east, and the increasingly conservative coal towns by the West Virginia border.

 

But Democrats hoped that in a year marked by liberal fury with Trump, the right candidate could at least be competitive in a special election where turnout was bound to be lower than normal.

 

Lamb, 33, a square-jawed Marine veteran who resigned his assistant U.S. attorney post to run for office, fit the bill like a charm. In addition to his military service, Lamb’s devout Catholic faith and more conservative stances on guns, coal and fracking made him the kind of Democrat that blue-collar voters in the district’s union strongholds would at least be open to supporting.

 

Saccone, a 60-year-old state representative, political science professor and former Air Force counterintelligence officer, is a staunch Tea Party conservative famous for sponsoring a bill that would permit public schools to display the motto “In God We Trust.” After beating three Republican competitors for the party nomination at a closed convention in November ― including state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, a younger and more moderate up-and-comer ― Saccone made clear that his strategy would be to focus almost exclusively on turning out the right-wing GOP base. “I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” he declared.

 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s redrawing of the congressional district boundaries in February lowered the immediate stakes of the special election. The 18th District will only exist in its current form until the end of year. Lamb’s hometown of Mt. Lebanon has been moved into the new 17th District, enabling him to subsequently run again in November a place where Trump would have won by just 3 percentage points.

 

But given the symbolic power that a loss in such red territory would have, the official national GOP organs and aligned super PACs poured over $10.7 million into the district to help Saccone win.

 

Initially, those groups blasted Lamb for his opposition to the Republican tax cuts.

 

Republicans have said the tax issue is gonna be what propels them to victory in November and Lamb showed Democrats how to combat that./ Mike Mikus, Democratic strategist

 

But Lamb argued in a February debate that he had “always been for middle-class tax cuts,” he simply opposed the GOP legislation because the vast majority of the savings would accrue to the rich and corporations, all while adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt.

 

In apparent recognition that the tax cut line of attack was not working, Republicans began cycling ads about the issue off of the airwaves by the end of February.

 

“Republicans have said the tax issue is gonna be what propels them to victory in November and Lamb showed Democrats how to combat that,” Mikus said.

 

Republicans also struggled to pin Lamb as a liberal stooge for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ― who is unpopular in the district ― despite featuring her in virtually every attack ad against Lamb.

 

Lamb neutralized the claim by promising in January that he would not vote for Pelosi as leader.

 

“My opponent wants you to believe that the biggest issue in this race is Nancy Pelosi,” Lamb said in a 30-second television ad. “It’s all a big lie.”

 

Distancing himself from Pelosi was one of several ways that Lamb ran as a moderate unafraid to be independent from the national party. When the federal government briefly shut down in January over a dispute about the status of undocumented immigrants, Lamb broke with Senate Democrats to oppose the impasse, insisting that his experience as a Marine would help him build bridges with his Republican colleagues.

 

Lamb occasionally faltered in his attempts to balance the priorities of his liberal base and the swing voters he needed to win. Following the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, Lamb sparked progressive ire with what sounded like Republican talking points. He warned that the “emotions that a lot of us are feeling right now” were not a good reason to adopt new gun restrictions. He favors expanded background checks, but not an assault weapons ban and other more stringent measures.

 

At the same time, Lamb ran as a pro-union economic progressive, promising to protect Social Security and Medicare, shore up coal miners’ distressed pensions and defend collective bargaining rights. Lamb told the progressive Social Security Works PAC that he supported expanding Social Security and Medicare. And while he stopped short of endorsing single-payer health care, Lamb supports empowering Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.

 

Lamb likewise stuck to his support for abortion rights, despite his personal view that life begins at conception and the district’s large Catholic community.

 

BRENDAN MCDERMID / REUTERS Republican Rick Saccone speaks during a campaign event in Elizabeth Township, Pennsylvania, on Monday, March 12, 2018.

 

With a population that is 93 percent white, Pennsylvania’s 18th is not representative of the country, let alone the districts in which Democrats must generally compete.

 

But in the larger national debate over Democrats’ best routes to victory, Lamb’s win has a little something to offer multiple sides. Like most of the victorious Democratic candidates in recent elections in Virginia and Alabama, Lamb’s base of support is in the educated and affluent suburbs, a locus of Democratic activists and moderate Republicans disgusted with Trump. Yet he also won back some of the working-class voters in outlying counties who historically voted for Democrats, but turned out in droves for Trump in the 2016 election.

 

In the latter task, Lamb relied heavily on the region’s mighty labor unions, which claim nearly a quarter of the district’s voters as their members.

 

Although former Rep. Murphy had a strong working relationship with unions, backing enough of their priorities to elicit their periodic support, Saccone established himself as a major foe of organized labor while serving in the state capitol. He is a supporter of anti-union right-to-work laws and had not made clear whether he would join bipartisan legislation to shore up the troubled union mine workers’ pension fund.

 

Unions mobilized their voter education and turnout machine to inform members and retirees that Saccone was not the kind of Republican they should back. In conversations across the district, union members who voted for Trump and Murphy cited appeals from their unions as a reason why they planned to vote for Lamb.

 

“I can’t cut my own throat,” said Dwight Harris, a 40-year-old Republican coal miner who was voting for Lamb out of concern for his pension.

 

Recognizing that a loss for Saccone would reflect poorly on his political coattails, Trump held a packed rally for the Republican candidate at the Pittsburgh airport on Saturday night. In a speech that focused mostly on his own policy priorities, Trump made the case that he needed Saccone to enact his agenda.

 

“I need people who can help me and this guy can really help me,” he said.

 

But not enough Trump voters saw a vote for Lamb as a betrayal of Trump. Lamb’s lead grew in the final days after enthusiasm for Saccone dropped, according to a Republican official familiar with the polling data.

 

And while Saccone fashioned himself as a copy of Trump, he both lacked the president’s bombastic oratory and ideological flexibility on contentious right-wing social causes.

 

At a Monday rally at a VFW Hall with Donald Trump Jr., Saccone launched into an inflammatory rant against the political left, which he said has a “hatred for our country” and a “hatred for God.”

 

But during a Lamb rally at the Greene County fairgrounds on Sunday deep in coal country, Lars Lange, a 64-year-old miner-turned-attorney, thought Lamb was the candidate in the race who most approximated Trump’s political nack for showering attention on economically neglected areas.

 

“He’s coming down to these areas where nobody thinks a Democrat is gonna get supporters and he’s getting all these big crowds,” Lange said. “That he might have taken from Trump’s playbook.”

 

via The Little Moment ift.tt/2FRkqIy

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

8 drawings combined.

La Tour EIFFEL a scintillé de mille feux pour ses 120 ans, retraçant l'épopée de sa propre histoire de 1889 à 2009. Super spectacle en avant première Christophe Mahé et Johnny Halliday avaient déjà allumé le feu au bonheur des spectateurs venus très nombreux (800 000 à 1 000 000).

 

The Eiffel Tower sparkled of one thousand fires(lights) for his(her,its) 120 years, redrawing the epic of its own history(story) from 1889 till 2009. Great show(entertainment) forward first Christophe Mahé and Johnny Halliday had already lit(already switched on) the fire(light) in the happiness of the very numerous come spectators (800 000 - 1 000 000).

 

La Torre Eiffel centelleó de mil fuegos(luces) para sus 120 años, volviendo a trazar la epopeya de su propia historia del 1889 al 2009. Espectáculo super adelante primer Christophe Mahé y Johnny Halliday ya habían encendido el fuego(luz) a la felicidad del spectateus venido muy numeroso (800 000 - 1 000 000).

 

エッフェル塔は彼ののために千の火事（ライト）についてきらめいた（彼女そ）１２０年、１８８９の現金用引き出しからそれ自身の歴史（物語）の叙事詩を引き直しています２００９．クリストフィー・マヘとジョニー・ハリデイがすでに持っていた最初に前進的な素晴らしいショー（娯楽）が火がつきました（すでにスイッチを入れました）幸福の火事（光）が spectateurs になった非常に多数の（人たち・もの）の（８００ ０００ － １ ０００000).

Designed by KAMIYA Satoshi（神谷哲史）

Fold by me(PAN.Hang)

 

Test-fold from CP redrawed by Magic9, Thanks a lot!!!

 

I use nearly 50cm x50cm triple tissue paper. The final Shaping is hard, it seems impossiable for me to fold it out just from base, luckly here is my attempt, not exactly correct, but it looks good to me, hahha.

 

Wet finish, MC on the surface due to the wet weather here, it is necessary , white glue added on the claw , so it can stand on the cube, I may did it so hurry which made this part not clean enough:P

Mastercard acquires Vocalink, bringing card and account based payments under one roof.

 

For more information, please click here: news.mstr.cd/2oPLnot

Pond, Peter. [A Copy of a Map Presented to the Congress by Peter Pond] [facsimile]. Scale not given. In: Douglas Brymner. Report on Canadian Archives. Ottawa: Canadian Archives, 1890. As reproduced by, Ottawa: Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives, ACMLA Facsimile Map Series #15, 1980.

 

Published in co-operation with Keyano Collage Fort McMurray, Alberta.

 

This map, a redrawing of a manuscript map in the Public Record Office, London, was published in the 1890 Report on Canadian Archives by Douglas Brymner (Ottawa, 1891). The manuscript map in London is a copy of a map presented by Peter Pond to Lord Hamilton, April 1785.

 

Peter Pond (Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online)

www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=36737

    

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

"In the grand tradition of generals and surrealists, we have been playing games. People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. Lately, we have been using games to critically examine the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens.Our new game SET was inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, we have tried here to do just the opposite."

 

People learn things better through the open-ended, empathetic participation in knowledge-making that games allow. Just dispensing information to people-- though at times enlightening-- can also encourage apathy or forgetfulness. A project developed by Erik Carver and Marisa Jahn, SET is a game that critically examines the dynamics and assumptions of larger social givens. It's a game inspired by toy collectors, tourists, and museum curators. Throughout the game, players "play" by intervening and reorganizing existing groups of objects, thus questioning categories by constructing and redrawing them. In foregrounding the player's relation to the categories, SET explores the value of one's authorship in the production of knowledge. While games often risk normalizing power relationships by setting social roles and rules in stone, SET tries to do just the opposite.

 

--

 

Erik Carver

 

Erik Carver is an architect and artist. He is a founder of the Institute for Advanced Architecture (advancedarchitecture.org)-- an organization dedicated to advancing architecture through research, exchange, and exhibition-- as well as the Common Room exhibition space (common-room.net) and the interdisciplinary art group Seru. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Erik has worked for the firms of Diller+Scofidio, Laura Kurgan, and Lyn Rice before starting his own practice. These designs have included a student center renovation, an art museum, apartment renovations, a vacation home, exhibitions, a performance space/bar, an expo pavilion, schools, offices and an interpretation center.

 

His work has appeared in Volume magazine, Art in America, and Nature, and he has shown work and lectured at venues including Exit Art, the Ise Foundation, and Columbia's Neiman Gallery, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), CAVS (MIT), Basekamp (Philadelphia), the Contemporary Art Center (North Adams, MA), and Pond (San Francisco).

  

Marisa Jahn

 

Of Ecuadorian and Chinese descent, Marisa Jahn is an artist whose work explores, constructs, and intervenes natural and social systems. In 2000, Jahn has co-founded Pond: art, activism, and ideas (www.mucketymuck.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art. Jahn has presented and exhibited work in museums, galleries, and spaces at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISEA/Zero One 06/08 (San Jose, CA), MoKS (Estonia), the Moore Space (Miami), the Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), in galleries and public places in Tokyo, Honduras, Estonia, Turkey, North America, and Taiwan. Jahn's work has been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, Punk Planet, Clamor, San Francisco Chronicle, the Fader, Artweek, Metropolis, the Discovery Channel, and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). She has received awards and grants such as the Robert & Colleen Haas Scholarship, MIT Department of Architecture Fellowship (2005-8), CEC Artslink, and is an artist in residence at the MIT Media Lab (2007-9) and at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2008). She received her BA from UC Berkeley and an MS from MIT's Visual Arts Program. She lives between Boston and New York, where she functions as the Immediator of art-activist campaigns for The Church of Stop Shopping/Reverend Billy. www.marisajahn.com, www.mucketymuck.org

Designed by KAMIYA Satoshi（神谷哲史）

Fold by me(PAN.Hang)

 

Test fold from CP redrawed by Magic9, Thanks a lot!!! The M/V lines help a lot:P

 

This one I used gift packing paper maybe 50cm-50cm, I always forget the paper size after finished the model, anybody has the same feelings:P

 

The paper may not be the best choice for the model, but I like the Chinese character "Fu福", blessing or happiness, the final shaping came out very good result.

by ponkhey ift.tt/1OEWhl7

Pen on paper (moleskine notebook).

Photoshop on my Mac to erase the part that needed erasing and put the graph lines back in.

Brushes App on my iPod Touch to redraw the part that needed redrawing.

30-60 minutes.

Freehand from a photo.

 

Today's portrait is of American Artist Elizabeth Lynch, known on flickr as EAGHL. I love her quirky magic marker portraits - they have wonderful character and spirit.

 

You can see Elizabeth's artwork on her flickr imagestream: www.flickr.com/photos/23733987@N06/with/4960578028/

 

Photos of Elizabeth and other artists' portraits of her can be seen here: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/discuss/7215762473069...

 

I'm about 3 months behind on portraits, and I apologize to everyone I "owe" but I loved this photo of Elizabeth and so got inspired to draw her right away.

 

We're having a Portrait Party on flickr - more than 300 artists drawing each other! Below is Elizabeth's portrait of me from the party. If you're an artist who'd like to draw/paint other flickr artists, please join the Portrait Party at: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/

 

Blogged at: studiojuliakay.com/dailyArt/?p=599

This leaf once belonged to a small Missal, and was created in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. The distinct style of its miniature suggests it was made in Southern Germany, or possibly in the Tyrol region of Austria, where line drawing in colored inks had developed into a regional style. The recto depicts the Crucifixion, and the later redrawing of Christ, especially apparent in his face and feet, suggests it had been worn down through pious touch. On the verso is found the opening text for the Canon of the Mass, introduced by a historiated initial "T" containing a standing man wearing a short skirt. That the manuscript was well-used is attested to both by the heavy wear to the parchment, and by the two original manuscript tabs that were created as page markers for this important text and image.

 

To explore fully digitized manuscripts with a virtual page-turning application, please visit Walters Ex Libris.

At a scale of 2cm per foot, a pocket car works out to 16 feet long, although clearly wider than scale.

 

It works though. I've plotted two actual shops this way, as well as a few others that I didn't end up moving into.

 

The "alignment rack" under the red car is a separate cutout so I could move it around without redrawing it. For a twin post lift I used a paperclip bent into a staple looking shape to measure and mark where those lifts would go.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.

 

Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.

 

As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.

 

In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.

 

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.

 

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.

 

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.

 

In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.

 

The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.

 

The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.

 

Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.

 

The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.

 

World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.

 

In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.

 

The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.

 

Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.

 

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.

 

On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.

 

A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.

 

The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.

 

Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.

 

Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.

 

A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.

 

With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.

 

The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.

 

Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.

 

With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.

 

Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.

 

Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.

 

The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.

 

On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.

 

Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.

 

At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.

 

Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.

 

Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.

 

The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.

 

Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.

 

Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.

 

On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.

 

By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.

 

Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.

 

Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.

 

By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.

 

In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.

 

Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.

 

Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.

 

On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.

 

From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.

 

Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.

 

As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.

 

An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.

 

Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".

 

On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.

 

The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.

 

Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.

 

Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.

 

On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.

 

Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.

 

The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.

 

The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.

 

Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.

 

However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.

 

Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.

 

In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.

 

The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.

 

Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.

 

Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.

 

Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).

 

Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.

 

On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.

 

The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.

 

Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.

 

Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.

 

In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.