Istanbul at the Threshold of Nation State: Allied Occupation, National Resistance, and Political Conflict, 1918-1923

During the formation of the Turkish national movement, while Istanbul was under British, French, and Italian occupation, a distinct factional split emerged. One side supported the Ottoman sultanate’s sovereignty, while the other championed a populist, republican path. An Istanbul at the Threshold of Nation State contextualizes this history of coalition, political disintegration, and power struggles in Turkey between 1918 and 1923 to highlight the rise of anti-communist movements and the emergence of national labor and merchant confederations that formed xenophobic, Christian exclusionary policies in the 1920s and 30s.

Erol Ülker is a faculty member at Işık University, Department of International Relations. He received his PhD in History from the University of Chicago in 2013. His research interests include nationalism, migration, socialist and communist movements, and labor politics in Ottoman and Turkish history.