 |
|---|
 Turkeyportal |
The first parliament of Turkey existed from 23 April 1920 to 11 August 1923. This parliament existed before the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.
| |
|---|
| Turkeyportal |
The first parliament of Turkey existed from 23 April 1920 to 11 August 1923. This parliament existed before the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.
The parliament of the Ottoman Empire was in Constantinople (now Istanbul). But after the First World War, İstanbul was occupied by the Allies of World War I (United Kingdom, France and Italy). The Ottoman sultan was still living in his palace; but on 16 March 1920, the parliament was abolished by the Allies. Some MPs were arrested and later expelled to Malta. [1] [2]
The nationalists in Anatolia called for another parliament in Angora (now Ankara), which was not under Allied occupation. All former Ottoman MPs were invited to this parliament. Most MPs who were had not been arrested accepted the invitation and came to Angora. There were also new MPs which were elected in the 66 provinces. But due to time limitations and the fact that most of the country was under Allied control, they were elected by the Turkish National Movement members instead of the general vote. (see Sivas Congress) Ankara then was a small city without the amenities of a comfortable life. The MPs began living in Ankara citizen's houses or even in dormitories. Even the parliament building was an inconvenient building, built shortly before 1920 as a branch office building of the Committee of Union and Progress. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the leader of the nationalists was serving in the train station building. (But he transferred to a house in Çankaya district, which later on became the mansion of the Turkish presidents)
The parliament was opened on 23 April 1920. The total number of representatives were 422 . [3] (Later in 1922, with the addition of the former Ottoman MPs released in Malta the number of representatives increased to 436.) 88 of these were former Ottoman MPs.
The parliament was an all-powerful parliament. The government members were elected by the parliament one by one and the government was named İcra vekilleri heyeti ("Committee of Executive ministers"). Thus parliament had both the legislative and the executive powers. Professor Tarık Zafer Tunaya compares this parliament with the National Convention parliament of France. [4] Mustafa Kemal Pasha was the chairman of the Parliament. [3]
On 21 January 1921 the parliament ratified the constitution which would be valid during the Turkish War of Independence.
During the Greek offensive in the war, parliament asked Mustafa Kemal to be the commander of the army. Mustafa Kemal was planning a large scale mobilization and accepted the offer on the condition that he would be authorized to exercise the power of the parliament for three months. On 5 August 1921, Mustafa Kemal Pasha became the commander of the army.
After the victory, this authorization caused an opposition in the parliament (see Second Group).
The first parliamentary term of Turkey was ended by the general elections held on 28 June 1923 which immediately followed the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne.
The governments (Prime ministers of executive council) following several-days temporary government were the following, [5]
| Government | Prime minister | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| 1. government | Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Later Kemal Atatürk) | 3 May 1920 – 24 January 1921 |
| 2. government | Fevzi Pasha (later Fevzi Çakmak) | 24 January 1921 – 19 May 1921 |
| 3. government | Fevzi Pasha (later Fevzi Çakmak) | 19 May 1921 - 9 July 1922 |
| 4. government | Rauf Bey (later Rauf Orbay) | 12 July 1922 – 4 August 1923 |
| 5. government | Fethi Bey (later Fethi Okyar) | 4 August 1923 – 27 October 1923 |
(After the proclamation of the Republic the governments were renumbered beginning from 1st government of Turkey)
First three governments of Turkey were during this term.
The Turkish Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish Armed Forces consist of the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The Chief of the General Staff is the Commander of the Armed Forces. In wartime, the Chief of the General Staff acts as the Commander-in-Chief on behalf of the President, who represents the Supreme Military Command of the TAF on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Coordinating the military relations of the TAF with other NATO member states and friendly states is the responsibility of the General Staff.
Mehmed VI Vahideddin, also known as Şahbaba among the Osmanoğlu family, was the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire and the penultimate Ottoman caliph, reigning from 4 July 1918 until 1 November 1922, when the Ottoman sultanate was abolished and replaced by the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923.
The Turkish War of Independence was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after the Ottoman Empire was occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; ended of the Ottoman sultanate and Ottoman caliphate, and established the Republic of Turkey. This resulted in the transfer of sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for nationalist revolutionary reform in Republican Turkey.
The Armistice of Mudros ended hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I. It was signed on 30 October 1918 by the Ottoman Minister of Marine Affairs Rauf Bey and British Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, on board HMS Agamemnon in Moudros harbor on the Greek island of Lemnos, and it took effect at noon the next day.
Musa Kâzım Karabekir was a Turkish general and politician. He was the commander of the Eastern Army of the Ottoman Empire during the Turkish War of Independence, and fought a successful military campaign against the Armenian Democratic Republic. He was the a founder and leader of the Progressive Republican Party, the Turkish Republic's first opposition party to Atatürk, though he and his party would be purged following the Sheikh Said revolt. He was rehabilitated with İsmet İnönü's ascension to the presidency in 1938 and served as Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey before his death.
The Turkish National Movement, also known as the Anatolian Movement, the Nationalist Movement, and the Kemalists, included political and military activities of the Turkish revolutionaries that resulted in the creation and shaping of the modern Republic of Turkey, as a consequence of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the subsequent occupation of Constantinople and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by the Allies under the terms of the Armistice of Mudros. The Turkish revolutionaries rebelled against this partitioning and against the Treaty of Sèvres, signed in 1920 by the Ottoman government. Most revolutionaries were former members of the Committee of Union and Progress.
The occupation of Istanbul or occupation of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, by British, French, Italian, and Greek forces, took place in accordance with the Armistice of Mudros, which ended Ottoman participation in the First World War. The first French troops entered the city on 12 November 1918, followed by British troops the next day. The Italian troops landed in Galata on 7 February 1919.
The Malta exiles were the purges of Ottoman intellectuals by the Allied forces. The exile to Malta occurred between March 1919 and October 1920 of politicians, high ranking soldiers (mainly), administrators and intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire after the armistice of Mudros during the Occupation of Istanbul by the Allied forces. The Malta exiles became inmates in a British prison where various Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) officials were held in the hopes that trials will be held at the Malta Tribunals at a future date.
Bekir Sami Bey was a Turkish politician of Ossetian origin. He served as the first Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey during 1920–1921.
After World War I, the effort to prosecute Ottoman war criminals was taken up by the Paris Peace Conference (1919) and ultimately included in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government organized a series of courts martial in 1919–1920 to prosecute war criminals, but these failed on account of political pressure. The main effort by the Allied administration that occupied Constantinople fell short of establishing an international tribunal in Malta to try the so-called Malta exiles, Ottoman war criminals held as POWs by the British forces in Malta. In the end, no tribunals were held in Malta.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a field marshal, revolutionary statesman, and founder of the Republic of Turkey as well as its first president. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's military career explains his life between graduation from Ottoman War College in Istanbul as a lieutenant in 1905 to his resignation from the Ottoman Army on 8 July 1919, as well as his military leadership throughout the subsequent Turkish War of Independence.
The abolition of the Ottoman sultanate by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 1 November 1922 ended the Ottoman Empire, which had lasted from c. 1299. On 11 November 1922, at the Conference of Lausanne, the sovereignty of the Grand National Assembly exercised by the Government in Angora over Turkey was recognized. The last sultan, Mehmed VI, departed the Ottoman capital, Constantinople, on 17 November 1922. The legal position was solidified with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne on 24 July 1923. In March 1924, the Caliphate was abolished, marking the end of Ottoman influence.
The Government of the Grand National Assembly, self-identified as the State of Turkey or Turkey, commonly known as the Ankara Government, or archaically the Angora Government, was the provisional and revolutionary Turkish government based in Ankara during the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) and during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. It was led by the Turkish National Movement, as opposed to the crumbling Constantinople Government/Istanbul Government, which was led by the Ottoman Sultan.
General elections were held in the Ottoman Empire in 1920 in order to select delegates to the new Grand National Assembly. The elections were dominated by the Association for the Defense of the Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia, which consisted of nationalist local groups protesting against the Allied occupation of Turkey.
Jamil Ibrahim Pasha was a Syrian politician during French Mandatory rule. He among the leading dignitaries of Aleppo and during the Hananu Revolt against the French occupation of northern Syria, he was one of principal intermediaries between the Syrian rebels and the Turkish forces of Mustafa Kemal.
Committee of Representation was the executive branch of Turkish nationalists before the opening of Turkish Grand Assembly in the 1919–1920 period.
Yusuf Kemal Bey (1878–1969) was a Turkish civil servant, politician and academic. His birth name was Yusuf Kemal. After the Turkish Surname Law in 1934, he assumed the surname Tengirşenk.
Celalettin Arif (1875–1928) was a Turkish lawyer, politician, academic, government minister and diplomat.
The proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, formally declared during the session of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey on 29 October 1923, signifies the definitive establishment of Turkey's governance structure as a republic. This historic milestone was realized through the acceptance of a constitutional amendment proposal crafted by Mustafa Kemal Pasha.
During the Turkish War of Independence the United Kingdom sought to undermine and contain the Turkish National Movement. London hoped the defeated Ottoman Empire would play a subservient role in its new Middle Eastern order drawn up over several diplomatic agreements during World War I, culminating with the Treaty of Sèvres. Another goal of the British was to prosecute Ottoman war criminals, which they thought Constantinople/Istanbul was not taking seriously.
________________________________________________________
|
