The Turkish War of Independence (Turkish: İstiklâl Harbi, literally meaning "Independence War" or Kurtuluş Savaşı, literally meaning "Liberation War;" May 19, 1919 – July 24, 1923) was a war waged by Turkish nationalists against the Allies, after the country was partitioned following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I.
The Turkish National Movement (Kuva-yi Milliye) in Anatolia culminated in the formation of a new Grand National Assembly (GNA) by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues. After the end of the Turkish-Armenian, Franco-Turkish, Greco-Turkish wars, the Treaty of Sèvres was abandoned and the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in July 1923. The Allies left Anatolia and Eastern Thrace and then the formation of the Republic of Turkey was declared in October 1923.
The establishment of the Turkish National Movement led to the end of the Ottoman millet system and with Atatürk's reforms created a modern, secular nation-state on the political front.
Read more about Turkish War Of Independence: October 30, 1918 – May 1919, Initial Organization, Jurisdictional Conflict, Stage For Peace
Famous quotes containing the words turkish, war and/or independence:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)