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This study covers the socio-political, intellectual and institutional dynamics of underground resistance to the Allied occupation in Istanbul. The city was clearly not the seat of treason against the Nationalist struggle for independence, nor was collaboration with the occupiers what it was made out to be in Republican historiography. Above and beyond the international conjuncture in post-WWI Europe, factors that helped the Turkish Nationalists to succeed were: inter-Allied rivalries in the Near East that carried over to Istanbul; the British, French and Italians as major occupation forces, failing to establish a balance of strenght among themselves in their haste to promote respective national interests; the victors underestimating the defeated as they were engrossed with bureaucracy and were assailed by the influx of Russian refugees, Bolshevik propaganda, and the Turkish left.
About the author
Nur Bilge Criss, Ph.D. (1990) in History, George Washington University, is Assistant Professor in International Relations, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Among her publications are
Mercenaries of Ideology: Turkey's Terrorism War in Terrorism and Politics, ed. Barry Rubin (N.Y., St. Martin's Press, 1991) and
Strategic Nuclear Missiles in Turkey: The Jupiter Affair, 1959-1963 in The Journal of Strategic Studies, 20/3 (September 1997).
