After the German invasion of France, however, Turkey remained neutral, relying on a clause excusing them if military action might bring conflict with the USSR, which, after the division of Poland, Turkey feared. Prior to the outbreak of war, Turkey signed a Mutual Aid Pact with France and the United Kingdom in 1939.

Turkey was neutral until several months before the end of the war, at which point it joined the Allies. The republic was officially proclaimed on 29 October 1923 in Ankara, the country's new capital. The occupation of Istanbul and Izmir by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish National Movement, and the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.īy 18 September 1922, the occupying armies were expelled, and the Ankara based Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA), which had declared itself the legitimate government of the country on 23 April 1920, started to formalize the legal transition from the old Ottoman into the new Republican political system. Following the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918, the victorious Allied Powers sought to partition the Ottoman state through the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. The Ottoman Empire entered The Great War on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated.

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