ABSTRACT
The Turkey which emerged from the long bruising wars of 1912 to 1922 was an accident. The territories which it comprised were those which the nationalist leaders of 1919 to 1922 were able to claw back from their opponents. Subsequently, nationalist doctrines rationalized the result of pragmatic military and political decisions and endowed the shape of Turkey with some element of design but this intellectualization was only an attempt to make sense of history. One writes ‘only’ but in truth much of the early history of the Turkish Republic was a grand and largely successful attempt to render reality acceptable by making it myth.
