March 30th, 1919. The previous day, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had decisively defeated the combined rebel armies which attempted to attack Ankara in the Battle of the Salty Lakes, part of the overall Ottoman Civil War. His orders were to march forwards and liberate Turkey, rounding up and executing traitors and enemy soldiers alike. However, he was smarter than that. The Ottoman genocides had permanently scarred the legitimacy of the Empire in the eyes of all its minorities; there was no way in which it could stay together, even if Suleiman the Great himself descended from the sky and conquered it whole again. Furthermore, the strategic situation lent itself to an eventual rebel occupation of continental Turkey. They would inevitably take revenge, conducting a genocide of the Turkish people. Hussein bin Ali, the most influential rebel commander, soon received a letter from Ataturk detailing his plan;
- Ottoman forces in Ankara would soon revolt against the Istambul government, and requested a ceasefire with the rebels to concentrate on the west.
- The Ottoman Empire, and the office of Caliph, would be abolished. In its place would come the Republic of Turkey, which only claimed sovereignty over the Turkish people.
- Ottoman leaders responsible for the genocides would be put to trial on the Hague Tribunal, where they were likely to face the death penalty, as Turkey would recognise said genocides.
- The new Republic of Turkey would recognise the sovereignty of its neighbouring nations, and renounce all claims to their territories.
After some back-and-forth correspondence, on May 8th a truce was secured. Immediately after receiving confirmation from Hussein, Ataturk contacted the Istambul government by telegram, declaring the Ottoman Sultanate void of political authority. Being a charismatic, talented and well-recognised leader, many commanders in the Ottoman Army and Navy switched sides to ally Ataturk without bloodshed. Once continental Turkey had been seized, a problem presented itself; the Bosphorus strait. Bulgarian forces, as well as a few German divisions, held back the Grand National Assembly's troops.
During the West Asian War, the Republic of Turkey recovered much of its former eastern territory, strengthening the Ankara government even further. Beginning with the Romanian Revolution of 1924, a series of Trotskyist revolutions sprang up across the Balkans. In April of 1926, when the Bulgarian Army was decisively defeated by communist forces in the East Balkan War, the Sultan's government surrendered to Ankara's GNA, fearful of a communist takeover. The reunification of Turkey marks the end of the Turkish Revolution, officially on the 30th of April of 1926, with the Treaty of Ankara.