ABSTRACT
By the end of 1918 the occupation of Anatolia and Thrace had begun. In the east, Ottoman troops had been evacuated from the area they had regained at the end of the war. Ottoman generals all over Anatolia were ordered to cooperate fully with the Allies, even when the Allies acted in violation of the armistice principles. The forces that had opposed the Ottomans during the past century, with the exception of temporarily suspended Russian imperialism, gathered at the Paris Peace Conference. On the agenda was the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The Grand National Assembly organized the Turks for war. The war between the Turks and Armenians was continuing in the Armenian Republic and Azerbaijan, also a new republic. The Turks were forced to retreat to the River Sakarya, near Ankara. It was the genius of Mustafa Kemal that he was able to draw on new national identity, strengthen it, and use it in the Independence War.
