In the long history of Amasya, the moment that most clearly ties the city's name to the fate of an entire country is the night of 21-22 June 1919. After the First World War the Ottoman state was under occupation, the government in Istanbul acted under the supervision of the victorious powers, and the scattered resistance organizations of Anatolia had no common programme. The text that filled this gap was prepared in the Saraydüzü Barracks on the bank of the Yeşilırmak and was sent by telegraph to commanders, civil administrators and associations in every corner of the country. Known as the Amasya Circular (Amasya Tamimi), this document, short as it is, was the first to commit the rationale, the aim and the method of the Turkish War of Independence to a written principle.

From Mudros to Amasya

To understand why the circular carried such weight, one has to go back to the autumn of 1918. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on the evening of 30 October 1918 aboard the battleship Agamemnon, anchored in Mudros Harbour on the island of Lemnos. Although the Ottoman soldier had put up fierce resistance at Çanakkale, the Allied fleet this time passed through the straits and anchored at Istanbul. In the roughly seven and a half months between the armistice and the Amasya Circular the capital saw five changes of government: the cabinets of Ahmed İzzet Pasha, of Tevfik Pasha (twice) and of Damad Ferid Pasha (twice) followed one another, and the frequency itself shows how far the central administration was losing its power to decide anything in occupied Istanbul. The occupation of Izmir on 15 May 1919 provoked a wave of reaction inside the country, but that reaction was not yet directed from a single centre. In each region a separate association for the defence of rights or against annexation had been formed, and each acted according to the threat facing its own locality.

During his roughly six months in Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal Pasha had looked for ways to cross over to Anatolia, and had even considered going as a civilian if he could not do so on an official assignment. In the end he was given the Inspectorate of the 9th Army and landed at Samsun on 19 May 1919. His official task was to calm the clashes between Greek and Turkish communities in and around Samsun, to restore order, and to collect the weapons and ammunition in the region and send them to Istanbul. It is known that he himself wrote some of the wording in the decree appointing him inspector, which gave him a broad field of authority. In Samsun he soon saw that the city was entirely under British control and that a national movement could not be directed from there; he decided to move his headquarters inland and went to Havza on 25 May (the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives 24 May). He stayed seventeen days in Havza, exchanged telegrams with the corps commanders in Ankara and Konya, and on 28 May, in a circular to the associations for the defence of rights, asked that the occupation of Izmir be protested. It is reported that a total of 96 rallies were held in various parts of Anatolia in response to this call.

The government in Istanbul was displeased by these developments, and pressure from the British authorities was steadily growing. On 6 June General Milne sent the War Ministry a note claiming that a well-known general travelling about Anatolia would cause unrest among the public, and demanded that Mustafa Kemal be recalled; the political representative, Admiral Calthorpe, repeated the demand a few days later. On the instructions of the War Minister Şevket Turgut and the Acting Grand Vizier Mustafa Sabri, Mustafa Kemal was told to return to Istanbul. He did not obey, because he feared arrest as had happened to pashas such as Ali İhsan Sabis and Yakup Şevki Subaşı; he sent the War Ministry a telegram meant to buy time. Through the palace chief secretariat he also appealed to the sultan, complained of the government's attitude, and declared that if pressed he would resign his post and remain among the people in Anatolia. Then, on 12 June 1919, he set out for Amasya.

Arrival in Amasya

In Mustafa Kemal's turn toward Amasya, the search for a safer centre than Havza played a part. Before coming to the city he sent a telegram to the Mufti of Amasya, Hacı Tevfik Efendi, to say that he wished to come. The mufti's reply was that the people of Amasya would be proud to take to their breast those who struggled for homeland, religion and state. The Pasha was met at the entrance of the city by the mufti and a large crowd; in accounts of this welcome, Hacı Tevfik Efendi's words "Welcome to our town, Pasha. All of Amasya is at your command. May your campaign be blessed" hold a particular place. Today, in the Saraydüzü National Struggle Museum, the reception of Mustafa Kemal and his companions by the delegation from Amasya at 17:00 on 12 June 1919 at the Cülüstepe locality is recreated with wax figures. In some sources the date of arrival is also given as 13 June. According to the accounts, Mustafa Kemal addressed the people of Amasya at the Government House, saying that the sultan and the government were captives in the hands of the Entente powers and that the country was about to be lost; he declared that they would defend the homeland to its last rock against every enemy attack, wearing their rawhide sandals, and that if God showed the nation defeat they would set fire to their houses and property and leave the land to the enemy as an empty desert, and he asked the crowd to swear an oath. According to the account, all the people of Amasya raised their hands and answered, "We swear, Pasha".

The party settled in the barracks at the Saraydüzü locality on the north side of the city. These barracks had been the headquarters of the 5th Caucasus Division, attached to the 3rd Army, and were built in 1898-1900 as a complex of five buildings on the site of the palace in which Ottoman princes had been born and raised for about three and a half centuries, and which had fallen into ruin and disappeared around 1883 through neglect and earthquakes. The building in which the circular was prepared thus stood on the ground of the palace from the age when Amasya was the "city of princes". Mustafa Kemal had a room of the barracks fitted out as a telegraph office; the talks were conducted in this building and were carried on at the telegraph with commanders in various parts of Anatolia.

The first days in Amasya were not spent merely waiting. Among those who received Mustafa Kemal on his arrival was also Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi, one of the best-known scholars of Amasya. According to his entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi he was reappointed to the office of mufti only in July 1922, while Hacı Mehmed Tevfik Efendi, appointed in 1918, held the post until his death in November 1921. In 1919, then, the muftiship was held by Hacı Tevfik Efendi; the occasional description of Kâmil Efendi as mufti in the accounts may derive from his later office. It is reported that on the following day Mustafa Kemal listened to his sermon at the Beyazıt Mosque on Friday, 13 June. In it Kâmil Efendi explained to the people the importance of the National Struggle and introduced Mustafa Kemal to the congregation; Mustafa Kemal is also said to have remarked after the sermon, "If this country had ten scholars like Abdurrahman Kâmil Efendi, it would not have come to this state." In the words reported as the text of the sermon, Kâmil Efendi says that nothing more could be expected of the Ottoman government, that since the nation's honour and independence were in danger the only way of deliverance was for the people to take sovereignty directly into their own hands, and he calls the congregation to gather around Mustafa Kemal. The sermon made a great impression in the city. Kâmil Efendi was among the seventeen members of the Amasya Association for the Defence of Rights, and it is recorded that he gave the gold he had saved to Mustafa Kemal to support the association. The association was opened on 14 June, the second day after the arrival, at a meeting that Mustafa Kemal attended and at which he explained why such an association was needed and how it would work.

In these days Amasya became, if only briefly, a kind of centre of the National Struggle. From the city Mustafa Kemal telegraphed Diyarbakır and Aleppo on 15 June and Cafer Tayyar Bey, commander of the 1st Corps at Edirne, on 18 June; the army and corps commanders were kept informed and their views were asked. In between, on 16 June, he also sent a telegram to the sultan, stating that if necessary he would resign his post and return to the bosom of the nation (sîne-i millet). The sources cite no clear document showing that the city was chosen deliberately for this purpose. It is plain, however, that Amasya was an inland city far from the direct control of Istanbul and the occupying forces, and that it was linked to the surrounding provinces by telegraph lines. On 19 June Hüseyin Rauf Bey and Ali Fuat Pasha reached the city. Rauf Bey had gone from Istanbul to Bandırma, and from there by way of Balıkesir, Manisa, Alaşehir and Afyonkarahisar to Ankara, and from Ankara had come on to Amasya together with Ali Fuat Pasha, who was then commander of the 20th Corps in Ankara. Refet Bey, commander of the 3rd Corps at Sivas, was also in Amasya in these days. At a rally held on 20 June by the Amasya Association for the Defence of Rights, Mustafa Kemal said that a national awakening would end the calamities.

The Talks and the Signatures

Among those who took part in person in the talks that began on 21 June were Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy), commander of the 20th Corps; Hüseyin Rauf Bey (Orbay), the former Navy Minister known as the "Hero of the Hamidiye"; and Refet Bey (Bele), commander of the 3rd Corps. Staff Lieutenant Colonel Arif Bey, İbrahim Süreyya Bey, former sanjak governor of Izmit, Captain Osman Nuri, Tufan Bey, Reserve Lieutenant Recep Zühtü, Efganlı, Lieutenant Abdurrahman and the Finance Inspector Arif Bey are also named among those present. Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the 15th Corps at Erzurum, Mersinli Cemal Pasha, Inspector of the Yıldırım Troops (some sources call him Inspector of the 2nd Army), and Cafer Tayyar Bey, commander of the 1st Corps at Edirne, joined the talks by telegraph. The talks lasted until the morning of 22 June.

What is known of how the text was written rests both on Mustafa Kemal's Nutuk (the Speech) and on the memoirs of his aide Cevat Abbas Bey (Gürer). The principles were dictated by Mustafa Kemal to Cevat Abbas during the night of 21-22 June. According to the Nutuk, the first draft was a text of four articles, and the circular as later issued developed along the lines of this draft. Beneath the draft stood first the signatures of Mustafa Kemal, of Chief of Staff Colonel Kâzım Bey, of Hüsrev Bey, who handled dispatch matters on the staff, of the aide Muzaffer Bey, who enciphered messages to military authorities, and of an official who enciphered those to civil authorities. Mustafa Kemal says in the Nutuk that there were other signatures as well but does not give their names; these are taken to belong to Rauf Orbay, Refet Bele and Ali Fuat Pasha.

According to Cevat Abbas, once he had had the text written down, Mustafa Kemal first held it out for signature to Rauf Orbay, the best known of those present. When Rauf Bey said that he was still Mustafa Kemal's guest and therefore saw no authority in himself to sign, Mustafa Kemal replied that he was a well-known son of the country and that his signature ought to appear on the document of a new history being written; Rauf Bey signed at once. Next Ali Fuat Pasha, who was in another room corresponding with his 20th Corps in Ankara, was called in and signed. Then came the signature of Refet Bele, whom Cevat Abbas describes as "standing back shyly", and last the staff officers signed. That the Nutuk gives this passage the heading "The hesitation of Rauf and Refet Beys" also suggests how wary the two commanders were of the text at first. The declaration was also submitted to Kâzım Karabekir and Mersinli Cemal Pasha at Erzurum; once their approval had been obtained, it was transmitted by telegraph on 22 June 1919, through Abdurrahman Rahmi Efendi, to all civil administrators and military commanders from the west of the country to the east. Mustafa Kemal had signed the text in his capacity as Inspector of the 9th Army.

The list of signatories is not the same in all sources. Beneath the cipher copy of the circular published in the volume of Assembly archive documents, the names "Hüsrev, Kâzım, Ali Fuad, Hüseyin Rauf, Mustafa Kemal" are listed, and Refet Bele's name does not appear on that line. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, by contrast, says that the text was signed by Ali Fuat, Rauf and Refet Beys in addition to Mustafa Kemal, and English-language sources likewise attribute the circular to the same four names. There is no definite explanation for the difference; it is possible that the order of signatures on the draft and on the cipher copy was not the same.

The Articles of the Circular

In the common listing the circular consists of six articles. The first article states that the integrity of the homeland and the independence of the nation are in danger. The government in Istanbul, being under the influence and control of the Allied powers, cannot fulfil the responsibility it has assumed, and this situation reduces the nation to a condition in which it has "a name but no existence". The most quoted sentence of the circular follows at once: "The independence of the nation will be saved by the determination and resolve of the nation itself." The same article holds that, in order to make the nation's condition and rights heard in the world, a national body free of every kind of influence and control is indispensable. For this purpose it has been decided to convene a national congress at Sivas, the most secure place in Anatolia. From every sanjak of every province, three capable and trusted persons, without regard to party differences, are to be sent to Sivas as soon as possible. That the matter be kept a national secret, and that delegates travel concealing their identities if necessary, is stated in the same article; this detail shows that the preparation was meant to be carried out in secrecy from Istanbul and from the occupation authorities.

The second article deals with the congress to be held at Erzurum on 10 July for the eastern provinces. The members chosen by the associations for the defence of rights and against annexation in those provinces had already set out for Erzurum; if the representatives of the other provinces could reach Sivas by that date, the members of the Erzurum Congress would leave for the general meeting at Sivas. In fact the Erzurum Congress was postponed because some of the delegates could not arrive in time, and it met between 23 July and 7 August 1919. The third article states that representatives will be chosen in various ways through the associations for the defence of national rights and through mayors.

The fourth article names the persons who will take part in carrying out these principles: Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Inspector of the 9th Army; the former Navy Minister Rauf Bey; Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the 15th Corps; Colonel Cevat Bey, acting commander of the 13th Corps; Colonel Refet Bey, commander of the 3rd Corps; Hâmit Bey, the mutasarrıf of Samsun; Cemal Pasha; Colonel Selahattin Bey, commander of the 12th Corps; Ali Fuat Pasha; Colonel Bekir Sami Bey, acting commander of the 17th Corps at Bursa; Cafer Tayyar Bey at Edirne; and some other important civilians and soldiers. In addition, opinions are to be sought from figures such as the former grand vizier Field Marshal Ahmed İzzet Pasha, the Minister of Public Works Ferit Bey and the senator Ahmed Rıza Bey. The list shows that the movement did not wish to remain the initiative of a narrow circle, and sought to include commanders and civilian leaders from different regions of the country.

The fifth article touches on the problem of communication. The General Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs had announced that the telegrams of the associations against annexation and for the defence of rights would not be accepted by telegraph offices. The circular states that this will be firmly rejected, that demonstrations will be held to secure free correspondence by whatever means, and that the demonstrations will continue until it is secured. The sixth article declares that military and civil institutions will on no account be abandoned or handed over to others, that any new enemy occupation anywhere in the homeland concerns the whole army, and that, according to the situation, the defence of the country will be undertaken jointly. Commanders will inform one another immediately, and arms and war matériel will on no account be surrendered.

The number and arrangement of the articles vary from source to source. The cipher telegram copy of the circular bears the word "Cipher", then the date "Amasya 22 June" and the heading "Circular" (Tâmim), and is divided into four paragraphs. The first deals with the danger to the homeland and to independence and with the decision to hold a national congress at Sivas; the second with the Erzurum Congress; the third with the election of representatives and with having their names and times of departure reported by telegraph; the fourth asks that receipt of the telegram be reported at once. The listing taken from the Nutuk has eight articles. In the article by Prof. Dr. Abdulkadir Yuvalı the circular is set out in nine articles, and this listing also includes, as separate provisions, that military and administrative organization would continue and that arms and ammunition would not be given up. That the difference arises from the same text being divided differently in different publications is plausible, but no document settles the matter.

The weight of the circular comes as much from the position of its author as from what it says. Mustafa Kemal had exceeded the limits of the powers of Inspector of the 9th Army granted him by the sultan and had issued a circular to western regions that were not his responsibility. The government in Istanbul was disregarded for the first time in so open a manner, and a text calling the nation to struggle against both Istanbul and the occupying powers was now in writing. In place of the outlook in which the sultan and the caliphate were regarded as saviours and which left room for mandate and protectorate, the text put the idea of nation and nationhood. For this reason Ahmet Mumcu sees the day of its issue as the true beginning date of the Anatolian revolution, and notes that many scholars regard the circular plainly as a declaration of revolution.

The text also has a distinct place for speaking of national sovereignty for the first time. The principles of resistance were for the first time made a written principle at Amasya, and the formation of the Representative Committee (Heyet-i Temsiliye) was mentioned in veiled terms. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Evsile, head of the History Department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Amasya University, reads the phrase "the determination and resolve of the nation" in the circular in line with the concept of "national will" at the Sivas Congress and of "national sovereignty" at the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and says that this line points to the first steps of the transition to democratic life. In his view, the circular announced in its very first text that a new state would be founded and that this state would rest on the will of the nation; Evsile describes the circular as the document that determined the course of the War of Independence and the direction in which the movement would proceed.

Abdulkadir Yuvalı, for his part, argues that the text also matters as a legal foundation. In his view Mustafa Kemal took care to keep the struggle on a legitimate footing even under the most adverse conditions, and the associations for the defence of rights were the basis of that legitimacy. The same article reads the circular as the putting into writing of the consensus reached in secret talks with his comrades in Istanbul, and counts Mustafa Kemal's six months in Istanbul and his first month in Anatolia as the period that prepared the ground for it. Sina Akşin assesses the circular as the first written document to set the National Struggle in motion. The text itself contains no programme for forming a government or changing the regime; what it asks for is the election of representatives and the convening of a congress. Its place in history comes from its principles having prepared the ground for the developments that followed: the Erzurum and Sivas congresses, the formation of the Representative Committee and the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

Immediately After the Circular

Istanbul's reaction was not long in coming. The government had banned the telegrams of the associations against annexation and for the defence of rights and had replaced the governors of Erzurum and Van, who opposed the Greater Armenia project; these were among Mustafa Kemal's grievances. According to the accounts, Ali Kemal Bey had told the British authorities a day earlier that officials and officers obeying Mustafa Kemal's orders would be punished by court martial. On 23 June the Minister of the Interior Ali Kemal Bey announced the government's view of Mustafa Kemal's activities to the country in a circular, and the cabinet, meeting under Şeyhülislâm Mustafa Sabri, decided to dismiss him. Mustafa Kemal, who wished to go to Erzurum at the invitation of Kâzım Karabekir, set out from Amasya without regard to the orders for his arrest issued by the Minister of the Interior Ali Kemal, and reached Erzurum by way of Sivas on 3 July. On 8 July, when the Istanbul government issued a decree announcing that he had been dismissed, he announced, in a petition submitted to the palace that same night, that he was leaving the military profession. In his own phrase he had now become "a fighter in the bosom of the nation".

The two congresses foreseen at Amasya met in turn. The Erzurum Congress was held on 23 July-7 August 1919; a nine-member Representative Committee chaired by Mustafa Kemal was elected, and for the first time national borders were spoken of and mandate and protectorate were rejected. The Sivas Congress met on 4-11 September 1919, elected Mustafa Kemal as its chairman, and ensured that the decisions of Erzurum spread to the whole of Anatolia and Rumelia. Thus the two-stage plan mentioned in the circular was in effect realized within a few months.

The Amasya Talks and Protocols

Four months after the circular, Amasya became the scene of a second historic negotiation. When correspondence began between the government of Grand Vizier Ali Rıza Pasha and the Representative Committee, Mustafa Kemal, Rauf Bey and Bekir Sami Bey on behalf of the Committee and the Navy Minister Salih Pasha on behalf of the government met at Amasya. Mustafa Kemal and his companions arrived in the city on 18 October 1919; the talks lasted three days, 20-22 October, and agreement was reached in general on the subjects contained in the declaration of the Sivas Congress. Five separate texts were signed. In two of them the mutual demands were listed, some names were designated for the delegates to be sent to the peace conference, and it was decided that those known as Unionists, those implicated in the Armenian deportations and those working against the country would not be nominated in the parliamentary elections.

In the talks the parties agreed on principles such as that Turkish provinces would not be abandoned to the enemy in one way or another, that no protectorate or mandate would be accepted, that non-Muslim communities would not be granted privileges that would upset political sovereignty and the social balance, and that the Anatolian and Rumelian Association for the Defence of Rights would be recognized as a legal body. One article that Mustafa Kemal pressed hard was that parliament could not work safely in occupied Istanbul and therefore ought to meet at a secure place in Anatolia. Salih Pasha agreed with this view personally but said the final decision would be the government's; the government did not accept this article, which it found unconstitutional, and Mustafa Kemal did not insist. All the same, by the Amasya protocols the Istanbul government had in effect recognized the Representative Committee and was giving up charging the movement led by Mustafa Kemal with rebellion. The British High Commissioner Admiral Robeck, who did not want this rapprochement, hinted in a report to his government on 4 November 1919 that Istanbul might be occupied; and Ali Rıza Pasha's being forced to resign soon afterwards weakened the conciliatory wing in Istanbul. These talks are treated separately from the Amasya Circular and are mostly discussed under the title Amasya Protocol.

The Later Years of the Signatories

The paths of those who had stood at the same table in Amasya diverged in the first years of the Republic and often crossed again. Hüseyin Rauf Orbay (1881-1964) went with Mustafa Kemal to Erzurum, became deputy chairman of the Representative Committee at the Erzurum Congress and was made deputy chairman of the Sivas Congress. He went to Istanbul to attend the last Ottoman Chamber of Deputies on behalf of the Representative Committee, was arrested after British forces raided the chamber on 16 March 1920 and was exiled to Malta, where he remained for about twenty months. Returning to Ankara in November 1921, he served from 12 July 1922 to 4 August 1923 as head of the Executive Ministers of the Grand National Assembly, in effect the prime minister of the period. In 1924 he was among the founders of the Progressive Republican Party; the party was closed in 1925 and its leaders were tried in the İzmir assassination case of 1926. Rauf Bey was in Vienna for treatment at the time; the court sentenced him to ten years of fortress imprisonment, but he rejected the verdict and did not return to the country. He re-entered politics in 1939 as deputy for Kastamonu, served as ambassador in London in 1942-1944 and died in Istanbul on 16 July 1964.

Ali Fuat Cebesoy (1882-1968) was commander of the 20th Corps at Ankara in the days of the circular. He held a variety of posts throughout the National Struggle, was among the founders of the Progressive Republican Party in 1924 and was arrested in the investigation of the 1926 İzmir assassination together with Rauf Orbay, Kâzım Karabekir and Refet Bele; he was tried and acquitted. After reconciling with Mustafa Kemal he was elected deputy for Konya in 1931, served as Minister of Public Works in 1939-1943 and Minister of Transport in 1943-1946, and was made Speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1948. It is reported that during the coup of 27 May 1960 he was arrested and tried at Yassıada and later released. Refet Bele (1881-1963) had been in Amasya as commander of the 3rd Corps. During the years of the National Struggle he served as Minister of the Interior, was among the founders of the Progressive Republican Party and was tried and acquitted in the same case. He was one of the two men who were able to become deputies again in Mustafa Kemal's lifetime, the other being Ali Fuat Cebesoy; Refet Bele sat as deputy for Istanbul from 1935 to 1950 and died in Istanbul on 2 October 1963.

The Saraydüzü Barracks and the Museum

The Saraydüzü Barracks, in which the circular was prepared, was a rectangular building of a ground floor and one upper storey. Its north and south ends were single-storeyed and its central section two-storeyed; the part containing the entrance door rose as a three-storey tower covered with an onion dome. The ground floor of the façade had round arches and the upper floor rectangular windows. In 1922 the barracks became the headquarters of the Central Army and after 1930 lost its importance; it was partly demolished in 1935 and completely in 1944, and military housing and an officers' club were built in its place. The only known photograph of the building is the one taken by Abdülkadir Ziyagül in 1944, before the demolition. Because of the danger of landslide, the officers' club too was evacuated and demolished in 1986.

In 1997 it was decided to rebuild the barracks. Because the old site carried a landslide risk, the building was erected at another point, at the entrance of the Şamlar neighbourhood, faithful to its former outward appearance, and was opened on 9 June 2007. It houses the National Struggle Museum attached to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The third floor is given over to the museum; there Mustafa Kemal's arrival and his reception at Cülüstepe are recreated with 12 wax figures, and old and new copies of the Amasya Circular together with weapons and documents surviving from the years of the National Struggle are displayed. The other floors house the Provincial Public Library, which had earlier served in the Sultan Bayezid II Complex and was moved here in 2022, so that the building now functions as a museum and library together. In the records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism the building is called the "Saraydüzü Barracks Building, National Struggle Museum and Congress Centre".

Chronology

30 October 1918: The Armistice of Mudros was signed.

15 May 1919: Izmir was occupied.

19 May 1919: Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed at Samsun as Inspector of the 9th Army.

25 May 1919: He moved to Havza (24 May in the TDV).

28 May 1919: He sent a circular to the associations for the defence of rights to protest the occupation of Izmir.

6 June 1919: General Milne demanded that Mustafa Kemal be recalled.

12 June 1919: He set out for Amasya and was received in the city (13 June in some sources).

14 June 1919: The Amasya Association for the Defence of Rights was opened.

19 June 1919: Rauf Bey and Ali Fuat Pasha reached Amasya.

20 June 1919: A rally of the Association for the Defence of Rights was held in Amasya.

21-22 June 1919: Talks were held at the Saraydüzü Barracks; the circular was prepared and signed.

22 June 1919: The circular was transmitted by telegraph to all commanders and civil administrators.

23 June 1919: The cabinet in Istanbul decided to dismiss Mustafa Kemal.

3 July 1919: Mustafa Kemal reached Erzurum.

8 July 1919: Mustafa Kemal announced that he had left the army.

23 July-7 August 1919: The Erzurum Congress met.

4-11 September 1919: The Sivas Congress met.

20-22 October 1919: The Amasya talks and protocols.

9 June 2007: The rebuilt Saraydüzü Barracks opened as the National Struggle Museum.

Sources

Academic studies

Official sources

  • T.C. Amasya Valiliği, "Amasya Tamimi (22 Haziran 1919)" (articles of the circular and participants). amasya.gov.tr

Books

  • Amasya Genelgesi (text of the cipher telegram), Kuruluş Safhasında Belgelerle Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 2021, pp. 18-21; Vikikaynak, https://tr.wikisource.org/wiki/Amasya_Genelgesi
  • Turgut Gürer, Atatürk'ün Yaveri Cevat Abbas Gürer: Cepheden Meclise Büyük Önder ile 24 Yıl, Cumhuriyet Kitapları, 2006, p. 237.

Other sources

  • Ahmet Mumcu, Tarih Açısından Türk Devriminin Temelleri ve Gelişimi, İstanbul: İnkılâp, 2000.
  • Sina Akşin, Ana Çizgileriyle Türkiye'nin Yakın Tarihi, İmaj Yayıncılık, 1996, p. 110.
  • Anadolu Ajansı, Cihan Okur, "Milli Mücadele'nin temel taşı: Amasya Genelgesi", 21 Haziran 2021 (assessment by Prof. Dr. Mehmet Evsile, exchange with the mufti).
  • İzzettin Çopur, "Amasya Genelgesinin (Tamimi) 100. Yılı", https://izzettincopur.com/makaleler/amasya_tamimi.php
  • Vikipedi, entries "Hüseyin Rauf Orbay", "Ali Fuat Cebesoy" and "Refet Bele". tr.wikipedia.org
  • Vikipedi, entries "Amasya Genelgesi", "Amasya Protokolü", "Amasya Saraydüzü Kışlası", "Erzurum Kongresi" and "Mustafa Kemal'in Samsun'a çıkışı"; Amasya Circular, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amasya_Circular

Online sources