The identity discourse of the First Assembly 1920-1923

The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War and signed a very heavy armistice. Due to this armistice, many regions of the country were occupied. Turkish intellectuals sought solutions to get out of the situation they were in, and first of all, they put forward prescriptions that were not holistic and opposed complete independence, such as regional resistance movements, mandate and protectorate theses. However, later on, the National Struggle movement that started in Anatolia under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha gained strength. With the Erzurum and Sivas Congresses, the Last Ottoman Parliament and the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the national resistance movement spread throughout the country. Military victories and the political efforts of the Turkish intellectuals yielded positive results, and at the end of the process, an independent Turkish State based on national sovereignty emerged. It is clear that the source of motivation for the Turkish intellectuals to achieve these successes was undoubtedly nationalism. Many studies have been conducted on the emergence of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, its establishment in power and its transformative nature for the regime. However, these studies show that the subject remains incomplete in some respects. The most important of these is the identity context. Without a thorough investigation of this point, it cannot be fully clarified how a state that takes national identity as a reference emerged. While in 1919-1920, the Turkish intellectual would answer the question "Who are we?" as "We are Ottomans" or "We are Muslims", with the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and its rise to power, the answer to this question first became "Turkish-Muslim" and then, with the religious discourse losing its weight to a certain extent, it became clear as just "Turk". In the study, it was attempted to show under what conditions the identity discourse changed and how it was expressed, especially in the parliaments that were formed during the National Struggle. In the study, where all the Parliament Minutes were examined in detail, quite interesting findings that are the harbingers of a national/nation state emerged.