Fevzi Çakmak

Ataturk’s Speech Beyond the Words Armenian Genocide, Greek Genocide, and Assyrian Genocide, all of these horrific acts lead to one geographical route “Asia Minor” or what is currently known as the Republic of Turkey. After abolishing the office of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet VI in 1922, the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey is announced with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as its first president. Mustafa Kamal Ataturk is an army officer and the organizer of a militant independent nationalist movement in Ankara. After the allied power forces a peace treaty which provided independence to the Armenian and puts the south Anatolia under French influence, Ataturk at the head of his army crushes the Armenians and forces the French troops to withdraw from south of the Ottoman Empire. This lead to the formation of a new regime in turkey lead by nationalists, and Ataturk is on top of them. In 1920, however, Mustafa Kamal have already started to put grassroots for his future nationalist movement, and he gives a speech addressing the Grand National Assembly. In this paper, part of Ataturk’s speech will be analyzed using the eyesight of couple famous histories, sociologists, and anthropologies, like Benedict Anderson, Michael Mann and Patrick Wolfe. Their concepts will be used as tools to approach the implied meaning of Ataturk’s words. The first concept to put in use to interpret Ataturk’s speech is settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a distinct imperial formation that seeks to replace…