On 23rd April 1920, the Grand Assembly of Turkey was created in Ankara and Mustafa Kemal who was a senior army officer and a hero of the battle of Gallipoli in World War 1 proclaimed there won’t be any power above the assembly.
Kemal who later founded the Republic of Turkey and was given the title ‘Ataturk’ which meant Father of the Turks. As at now he made the decision to forget about all the things he made with all the archaic customs because he thinks they caused the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War and intended to make Turkey modern country.
Mehmed VI, who would go on to be the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire lambasted Mustafa Kemal and his cohorts as ‘Bolsheviks’ and ‘rebels’ and even went to the point of getting a loyal imam to issue a fatwa condemning them.
However, Ataturk, who would go on to become the nation’s first president on April 24, 1920, declared in a speech that Sultan Mehmed’s assertion that he and his allies were rebels was false in the name of Allah and the Prophet.
The inception and decline of the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire was founded in 1453 when it subjugated Constantinople and conquered a vast swathe of land in South Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa over the next 200 years but then failed in the quest to conquer Vienna in 1683 and began a long and slow decline by the start of the 19th century.
By the 1860s, the Ottoman Empire had been labeled the “Sick man of Europe” by the British press and by the time the First World War broke out, it had lost much of its territory in Europe but still held control of vast stretches of land in the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire joined the Germans in the First world war and the Sultan at the time died in July 1918, his son Sultan Mehmed VI, inherited the throne only to discover that he was on the losing side when the empire signed an armistice in November.
Mehmed VI came under increasing pressure to sign the treaty of Sevres. This treaty was even harsher than what the Germans signed in Versailles. Not only would they lose all its territory in the Middle East but also lose parts of the Anatolian heartland.
Mehmed accepted the treaty but Ataturk refused
The treaty angered Ataturk and many Turks. The Ottoman Empire lost more than 700,000 soldiers during World War 1 and Ataturk felt it an insult on their memory for them to carve Anatolia like a roasted chicken.
When the Sultan went ahead with the treaty, his fate was essentially sealed. He tried to remain in power in Constantinople which is modern day Istanbul and sought the protection of French and British soldiers who were throwing their weight around after winning the First World War.
King Constantine of Greece along with his Prime Minister Dimtriuos Gounaris thought Turkey was weak and vulnerable and encouraged by David Lloyd the British Prime Minister, they sent their army to Central Anatolia to carve out a greater Greece.
Ataturk showed his military genius during the Greco-Turkish war by decisively annihilating the Greek troops by the summer of 1922. The remaining troops fled Anatolia.
By November 1922, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey abolished the Sultanate and Mehmed VI had to flee into exile, his reputation in ruins.
An emboldened and Triumphant Ataturk declared the Republic of Turkey in the year 1923 and also forced the Italians, British and French to tear the treaty of Sevres and negotiate a new deal.
In October 1923, the Turkish capital was moved from Constantinople to Ankara, which strategically positioned and less vulnerable to attacks.
With the country’s borders secure, Ataturk started his job of transforming the country between 1923 and his demise in 1938.
