Muslim Communism? The Turkish War of Independence

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Turkish War of Independence. Fighting between 1919 and 1922 on two principal fronts—against the British-backed Greeks in the West and the unsupported Armenians in the East—the nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, exploited the protracted conflict to solidify their hold on power. Mustafa Kemal emerged as one of the principal leaders of the popular struggle against partition. Nevertheless, when he returned to Istanbul later that month, he joined public opinion in expressing the hope that “the British would respect the freedom of our nation and the independence of our state” and that “there would not be a more benevolent friend of the Ottomans than the British.” Such hopes notwithstanding, Mustafa Kemal grasped more quickly than most of his colleagues that Allied diplomacy was pursuing objectives wholly at odds with those of the burgeoning Turkish nationalist movement.