The struggle for independence
1925, the S¸eyh Said revolt. In 1921, however, the revolt was not led by reli-
gious authorities, who had the ability to appeal across tribal groupings, which
possibly accounts for the lesser success of the Koc¸giri revolt compared with
S¸eyh Said’s. Ankara diverted forces from the western campaign, suppressed
the rebellion in the east and instituted martial law in three provinces.
The Fundamental Law, whose Article 2 posited the GNA as the true and
only representative of the millet, a claim that had received a modicum of
international recognition at the London conference, brought forth again the
question of the sultan–caliph’s status and prerogatives. The deputies in the
first assembly had been united around the goal of territorial defence within
a representative parliamentary structure. The GNA was the embodiment of
the local and regional defence of rights organisations, where differences were
muted under the exigencies of warfare. To be sure, the representatives had dis-
parate ideological leanings. There were conservative and modernist Islamists,
Bolshevik sympathisers and ethnic nationalists in the ranks. Yet the early ten-
sions were not primarily focused on ideological commitments, past political
allegiances, socio-economic agendas or the courses of action to be taken in
the defence of a territory that was still only vaguely defined. The sensitive
and controversial issue of how much to concede to Mustafa Kemal’s demands
without compromising the principles of assembly government embodied in
the Fundamental Law was at the heart of the controversy. In the spring of 1921,
even as the military and diplomatic fortunes of the GNA government were ris-
ing, the leadership met with vigorous questioning from the assembly on two
interrelated concerns, one about the implications of popular sovereignty on
the status of the sultan–caliph and the other about Mustafa Kemal’s apparent
quest for greater power and authority.
Frayed by dissident voices, political divisions and the potential for fragmen-
tation, Mustafa Kemal decided to confront these differencesand impose stricter
control over the assembly. The conclusion of the agreement with the Soviet
Union allowed a crackdown on the extraparliamentary left and its proponents
in the GNA.
65
The leaders of the banned Green Army were convicted. Mustafa
Kemal reconstituted the cabinet and identified a majority of stable supporters
as the defence of rights group within the assembly. This self-righteous desig-
nation was intended to stigmatise the rest, who cast themselves as the ‘other’
defence of rights group, or the Second Group.
66
65 Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. III/1,p.1098.
66 For a detailed analysis of the Second Group, see Ahmet Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te muhalefet
(Istanbul:
˙
Iletis¸im, 1994); also Frederick W. Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1965), pp. 306–23.
137