MUSTAFA KEMAL PASHA’S NATIONAL STRUGGLE ROUTE FROM SAMSUN TO IZMIR (1919-1922)

Abstract

When Mustafa Kemal Pasha stepped foot in Samsun on May 19, 1919, he initiated the military and political phase of the National Struggle. Pasha fought for an organized resistance from Samsun to Ankara and visited or stayed in 16 different destinations in total. Taking the destinations into account, Mustafa Kemal Pasha traveled 2,819 kilometers, as best as can be determined based on today’s distance scale. After Kemal Pasha’s arrival in Ankara on December 27, 1919, his destination was now the Western Front. On April 23, 1920, with the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, Pasha commenced commanding the Turkish War of Independence on behalf of the Assembly. Especially during the battles against the Greeks, his main destinations were the locations of the Western Front headquarters. Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s frontline journey in the Turkish War of Independence from Eskişehir on June 20, 1920, to Izmir on September 10, 1922, is 11,898 kilometers when the destinations he visited are considered. And as far as can be determined, he visited 53 different destinations during this period. Consequently, Pasha traveled 14,717 km in total and visited 69 different destinations during the War of Independence. This range is greater than the distance between Türkiye and the continent of Australia, which is far away from Türkiye. This calculation based on the main destinations essentially reflects an approximate number. Mustafa Kemal Pasha finished his journey in Anatolia with a much higher number of kilometers than this. In this study, Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s route in the National Struggle from Samsun in 1919 to Izmir in 1922 was tried to be calculated based on today’s distance scale. In this respect, it is considered that the study may be useful for researchers studying the Turkish War of Independence. The primary sources of the study are military history studies and other studies in the literature. These studies were analyzed with qualitative and quantitative methods and the study was prepared and presented to the world of science.