Turkish War of Independence facts for kids

Quick facts for kids

Turkish War of Independence

Part of the Revolutions of 1917–1923
in the aftermath of World War I

Clockwise from top left: Delegation gathered in Sivas Congress to determine the objectives of the Turkish National Movement; Turkish civilians carrying ammunition to the front; Kuva-yi Milliye infantry; Turkish horse cavalry in chase; Turkish Army's capture of Smyrna; troops in Ankara's Ulus Square preparing to leave for the front.

Date	19 May 1919 – 11 October 1922 (Armistice) 24 July 1923 (Peace) (4 years, 2 months and 5 days)
Location	Anatolia, Southwestern Caucasus, Upper Mesopotamia, and East Thrace
Result	Turkish victory
Territorial changes	Establishment of the Republic of Turkey

Belligerents

Turkish Nationalists:
Ankara Government
(1919–1920; 1920–1923)

Supported by:

Green Army
(1919–1920)

Russian SFSR

Ukrainian SSR

Azerbaijan SSR

Bukharan PSR

Italy

France
(from 1921)

Khilafat Movement

Alawite rebels

Kurdistan

Entente:

Greece

France
(until 1921)

French West Africa

Armenian Legion

Algeria

Morocco

Tunisia

United Kingdom

India

Armenia
(in 1920)

Georgia
(in 1921)

Istanbul Government

Seperatists:

Green Army
(1920–1921)

Pontic Greeks rebels

Kurdish rebels

Commanders and leaders

Mustafa Kemal Pasha

Mustafa Fevzi Pasha

Mustafa İsmet Pasha

Kazım Karabekir Pasha

Fahrettin Pasha

Ali Fuat Pasha

Refet Pasha

Nureddin Pasha

Ethem the Circassian

Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi

Mahmud Barzanji

Ibrahim Hananu

Saleh al-Ali

Ujaymi al-Sudan

Constantine I

Alexander I

Eleftherios Venizelos

Anastasios Papoulas

Georgios Hatzianestis

Leonidas Paraskevopoulos

Kimon Digenis (POW)

Nikolaos Trikoupis (POW)

Henri Gouraud

Drastamat Kanayan

Movses Silikyan

Sir George Milne

Mehmed VI

Damat Ferid Pasha

Süleyman Şefik Pasha

Anzavur Ahmed Pasha

Strength

May 1919: 35,000
November 1920: 86,000
(creation of regular army)
August 1922: 271,000

Dec. 1919: 80,000
1922: 200,000–250,000

60,000

30,000

20,000

7,000 (at peak)

Casualties and losses

13,000 killed
22,690 died of disease
5,362 died of wounds or other non-combat causes
35,000 wounded
7,000 prisoners

24,240 killed
18,095 missing
48,880 wounded
4,878 died outside of combat
13,740 prisoners

1,100+ killed
3,000+ prisoners

~7,000

264,000 Greek civilians killed
60,000–250,000 Armenian civilians killed
15,000+ Turkish civilians killed in the Western Front
30,000+ buildings and 250+ villages burnt to the ground by the Hellenic Army and Greek/Armenian rebels.

Notes

a. Kuva-yi Milliye came under command of the Grand National Assembly after 4 September 1920.
b. Italy occupied Constantinople and a part of southwestern Anatolia but never fought the Turkish army directly. During its occupation Italian troops protected Turkish civilians, who were living in the areas occupied by the Italian army, from Greek troops and accepted Turkish refugees who had to flee from the regions invaded by the Greek army. In July 1921 Italy began to withdraw its troops from southwestern Anatolia.
c. The Treaty of Ankara was signed in 1921 and the Franco-Turkish War thus ended. The French troops remained in Constantinople with the other Allied troops.
d. The United Kingdom occupied Constantinople, then fought against directly Turkish irregular forces in the Greek Summer Offensive with the Greek troops, however after this the United Kingdom would not take part in any more major fighting. Moreover the British troops occupied several towns in Turkey such as Mudanya. Naval landing forces had tried to capture Mudanya as early as 25 June 1920, but stubborn Turkish resistance inflicted casualties on British forces and forced them to withdraw. There were many instances of successful delaying operations of small Turkish irregular forces against numerical superior enemy troops. The United Kingdom, which also fought diplomatically against the Turkish National Movement, came to the brink of a great war in September 1922 (Chanak Crisis).
e. The Ottoman controlled Kuva-yi Inzibatiye ("Caliphate Army") fought the Turkish revolutionaries during the Greek Summer Offensive and the Ottoman government in Constantinople supported other revolts (e.g. Anzavur).
f. Greece took 22,071 military and civilian prisoners. Of these were 520 officers and 6,002 soldiers. During the prisoner exchange in 1923, 329 officers, 6,002 soldiers and 9,410 civilian prisoners arrived in Turkey. The remaining 6,330, mostly civilian prisoners, presumably died in Greek captivity.

The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns waged by the Turkish National Movement after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. These campaigns were directed against Greece in the west, Armenia in the east, France in the south, loyalists and separatists in various provinces, and British and Ottoman troops around Constantinople (Istanbul). They happened concurrently with other resistance movements against the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.

While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and seizing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to prosecute 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. This crisis reached a head when 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 Christian minorities.

In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies persuaded Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos to launch an 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, irregular militia cooperated with Syrian rebels to defeat the French forces in the south, and undemobilized units went on to partition Armenia with Bolshevik forces, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war was 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%.

Images for kids

Front page of İkdam on 4 November 1918, "The Three Pashas Escaped"
Grand Vizier Ferid Pasha, leader of the Freedom and Accord Party, and damat of the royal family
Muhacirs from the Balkan Wars waiting to cross the Bosphorus to Anatolia, Sirkeci, Istanbul, 1912
Sultan Mehmed VI after his sword girding
Ahmed Tevfik Pasha (Okday) and Rıza Tevfik (Bölükbaşı) at the Paris Peace Conference
Greek troops marching on İzmir's coastal street, May 1919.
Sultanahmet demonstration, 25 May, 1919
A photograph of Hellenic Army troops advancing on nationalist positions during the 1920 Greek Summer Offensive
Allied forces during their occupation of Istanbul
A part from a newspaper published on 18 March 1920 (The Gray River Argus, New Zealand)
Opening of the Grand National Assembly
A British officer inspecting Greek troops and trenches in Anatolia
Borders and spheres of influence of the Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) which was annulled and replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923
Zones of control held by the Ankara government and the Allies. Istanbul contemptuously referred to anyone who supported the nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal as "Kemalîler" or "Kemalciler". Kemalîler was used pejoratively as a reference to the Celalî rebels. The foreign press used the term "Kemalists" interchangeably with the word "nationalists" to denote the Ankara-based movement and its armed strength.
Depicteé in a 1922 oil painting, the Turkish recapture of İzmir (Smyrna in Greek), on 9 September 1922
A political cartoon: Greek king Constantine runs away from the bomb which reads "KEMAL"
Hatıra-i Zafer (Memory of Victory) by Hasan Sabri in 1925.

Turkish War of Independence facts for kids

Images for kids

See also