Congress of Erzurum

Erzurum Congress (Turkish: Erzurum Kongresi) was an assembly of Turkish Revolutionaries held from 23 July to 4 August 1919 in the city of Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, in accordance with the previously issued Amasya Circular. The congress united delegates from six eastern provinces (vilayets) of the Ottoman Empire, many parts of which were under Allied occupation at the time. The congress played a fundamental role in shaping the national identity of modern Turkey.

In the months leading up to the end of World War I, the Ottoman regime had undergone major restructuring. In July of that year, Sultan Mehmed V died and was succeeded by his half-brother Mehmed VI. The government ministers of the Committee of Union and Progress, which ran the Ottoman government between 1913 and 1918, had resigned from office and fled the country soon afterwards. Successful Allied offensives in Salonika posed a direct threat to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Mehmed VI appointed Ahmed Izzet Pasha to the position of Grand Vizier and tasked him with the assignment of seeking an armistice with the Allied Powers and ending Ottoman involvement in the war. On 30 October 1918, an armistice was signed between the Ottomans, represented by the Minister of the Navy Rauf Bey, and the Allies, represented by British Admiral Somerset Gough-Calthorpe. The armistice essentially ended Ottoman participation in the war and required the Empire's forces to stand down although there still remained approximately one million soldiers in the field and small scale fighting continued in the frontier provinces into the November.

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