Ankara University Journal of the Faculty of Languages and History-Geography

Abstract

The relations between the Ottoman Empire and France date back to the early 1500s. In this relationship based on centuries, in the XIXth century, a change is observed: the French now evaluate the Ottoman Empire with an “orientalist” eye. And also this point of “orientalist” view changes as the consequence of the French follow the new movement that started in Anatolia: especially French journalists had been close followers of a New Parliament which was established on April 23, 1920 in Ankara, the National Struggle and the Ankara Government. Many French journalists had witnessed the period from the Armistice of Mudros to the Turkish War of Independence, from the fall and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire to the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. Such that the battle of the Ankara Government and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which was advancing in a very different and independent line from the Istanbul Government, had been the subject of various studies. Jean Schlicklin, a journalist of the French newspaper Le Petit Parisien, narrates the reader about the path of New Turkey from the Armistice of Mondros to the Turkish War of Independence and his personal acquaintance with Mustafa Kemal in his work Angora, L'Aube de la Turquie nouvelle (1919-1922). Moreover, in his Turquie Ressuscitée, Claude Farrère, who identifies himself as a friend of Turkey and Turkish people writes many articles about Turkey, narrates both the changing period of the Ottoman Empire between 1902-1922 and the meetings he had with Mustafa Kemal in Adapazarı and Izmit. In our study, initiating from the two works above-mentioned, will be examined through the eyes of two French writers the difficult path characterized by the fall of Ottoman Empire due to the signing of the Armistice of Mondros and the Treaty of Sèvres, and on the way to found a new independent country against these treaties the ideas and works of Mustafa Kemal, who led the victory of Turkish War of Independence, especially in the four-year period between 1918-1922.