Turkey: Phoenix from the Ashes ••• 227tility toward the Young Turks had kept him from getting the positions or
the power that he deserved. His ambitions thwarted by the CUP and the
sultan's clique, Kemal had personal as well as patriotic reasons to oppose
Istanbul's subservience to the Allies.
A myth has grown up that Kemal alone gave life to Turkish nationalism
in May 1919. In reality, many groups in Thrace and Anatolia resisted the
Greeks, the Armenians, their foreign backers, and the hapless Ottoman
government. The driving spirit was Muslim as much as Turkish; ulama and
Sufi leaders commanded great respect in the countryside. What Kemal did
was to energize these "defense of rights associations" by publicly resigning
from the Ottoman army and convoking a national congress in the central
Anatolian town of Sivas. But leaders of the Eastern Provinces Society for
the Defense of National Rights had already called a congress at Erzurum.
Invited to the Erzurum conference, Kemal was elected its chairman. It was
here that the Turks first drew up their National Pact, calling for the preser¬
vation of Turkey's existing borders (the Ottoman Empire minus the Arab
lands lost in the war), opposition to any future changes in those borders,
formation of an elected government, and denial of special privileges to
non-Turkish minorities. This set the stage for the September 1919 Sivas
Congress, which rejected any foreign mandate over Turkey and demanded
that the weak Ottoman government be replaced by an elected one willing
to uphold Turkish interests.
Such was the general mood that the grand vizier did resign—pushed by a
nationwide telegraph operators' strike (Turkey's westernizing reforms had
given the country an extensive communications network). A coalition cab¬
inet including several of Kemal's men took over. New parliamentary elec¬
tions gave the Turkish nationalists a whopping majority, but the popular
government did not last. In ratifying the National Pact, the Turkish
deputies antagonized the Allies, who formally occupied Istanbul and forced
the coalition ministry to resign. Damad Ferid resumed power, and the
shaykh al-Islam (as appointed head of the Muslim community) branded
the nationalists as rebels against the sultan. Parliament was dissolved,
and many of its deputies escaped to Ankara, safely beyond the range of Al¬
lied gunboats and occupation forces. There, in central Anatolia, Kemal
convoked what he called the Grand National Assembly in April 1920.
The Kemalist movement now found itself at war with the Ottoman gov¬
ernment in Istanbul, the (British-backed) Greek invaders around Smyrna,
the Republic of Armenia in the east, the French in the south, and the
British on the Straits. Poorly armed and half-starved Turkish irregulars had
to fight against the well-supplied forces of the Allies and their Christian