The importance of Maghreb in Turkish Independence War (1919-1922)

The North African geography including the countries of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania is called Maghreb. In this study; the countries living in this region- how they fall under the rule of the Ottomans, quit from its governance and their reaction to the War of Independence growing in Anatolia have been discussed. Libya and Morocco, out of these countries, besides struggling against imperialist forces in the same period when the War of Independence started towards the end of 1918, they had been maintaining their national resistance in places and at intervals. During that period Algeria, Mauritania and Tunisia had been under the dominion of France. Despite the continuous desire to resist against the influence especially of Italy and France in this so-called geography, the possibility and the reasons how the communities in these colonial countries could partially serve in the Italian and considerably in the French army, and its effect to the Turkish War of Independence have been analyzed in this study.