Although constitutionally the national sovereignty was in the hands of the national assembly, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, through his personal prestige won in the field, and through his hold over the army, showed decided tendencies towards a personal dictator ship. This created an opposition under Rauf Bey and Kiazim Kara-Bekir Pasha, which attempted to keep the republic on a democratic and liberal basis, and was called the Republican Progressive Party (Nov. 1924). Ismet Pasha's cabinet fell and Fethi Bey, a liberal and moderate statesman, formed a new cabi net. The Kurdish provinces revolted, because they resented the extreme centralization and the harsh measures of the Government in carrying out new reforms, and because of the separatist tend encies of some of the leading chiefs. Mustafa Kemal Pasha seized this as a pretext to strike at the opposition. Pretending that the liberal clause in the Progressive programme which advanced liberty of conscience had encouraged this rising, he, after a long discussion in the party meeting, during which he spoke for six hours, forced the Fethi Bey cabinet to resign, on the ground that it had refused to carry out drastic measures in the peaceful parts of Turkey. Ismet Pasha formed a cabinet for the second time. The "law of maintenance of order" was passed.
The Dictatorship.—With the passing of this law, the tribunals of independence, which had functioned during the nationalist struggle against the anti-nationalists, were revived. A reign of terror both against the Kurdish insurgents and the members of the opposition began. The opposition Party was suppressed. The free dom of speech which the new constitution had accorded to the Turkish nation was evaded through the very vague terms of the Law. Mustafa Kemal Pasha was able to establish his dictator ship, despite a most democratic assembly, by the absence of any clause in the constitution which would place the president of the republic above parties. Therefore Mustafa Kemal Pasha, as the active president of his own Party, could wield unbounded power. The Kemalist Party (People's Party), like Abdul-Hamid and the Committee of Union and Progress, believed that the Turkish na tion was not yet ready for a liberal regime. Although the Kurdish insurrection was put down by tribunals and military operations, the disturbances continued in Van, Bitlis and Diarbekir, and led the republic to begin a partial deportation of the Kurds. The reforms of the republic were carried out by the terrorist methods of Mahmoud II. The religious orders were abolished and the tekkes (monasteries) were closed as having influenced the Kurd ish rising. A decree ordered the army to adopt a kepi and the civil servants to wear hats. A law passed in Nov. 1925 abolished the fez and obliged everybody to wear hats. (Women were not in cluded.) This law provoked several counter-revolutionary risings in the eastern provinces, which the tribunals suppressed by death sentences and imprisonments. On Feb. 17, 1926, the assembly adopted a new civil code which was almost a translation of the Swiss code; and this is the most fundamental of the recent changes. By the adoption of this code Turkish legislation was wholly freed from Islamic influence. The laws concerning mar riage, divorce and inheritance, which had been totally different from those of the West, were altered, and polygamy was legally prohibited. This radical secularization led the non-Muslim minor ities to renounce of their own accord the minority rights which they had procured at the Lausanne conference. The secular repub lic had now only two points of contact left with religion ; the clause in the constitution which states that the religion of the State is Islam, and the law which attached the Presidency of Religious Affairs to the prime minister's office. The former of these was
broken on April 9, 1928, by a decree of the assembly annulling the clause in question and also that by which the assembly has to execute the sheri (holy law). The decree also substituted the oath "by Allah" by the oath "by my honour." On May 19, 1924, a conference assembled in Constantinople to trace the Turko-'Iraqi frontier, which had been left over by the Lausanne Conference. No result was achieved and in accordance with the decision of the Lausanne Conference, England and Tur key submitted the question to the League of Nations. On Dec. 16, 1925, the League of Nations decided to give the vilayet of Mosul to 'Iraq. To this the Turks would not consent and in pro-. test, the Turks, on Dec. 17, 2925, concluded in Paris a treaty of mutual neutrality for three years with Chicherin, the Russian commissary of Foreign affairs. Turko-Russian relations, which had become distant since the Lausanne Conference, once more became very close. To reassure Russia, who watched Pan-Turani anism in Turkey with some anxiety, the Turk Ojaks (national clubs) issued a declaration, stating that Turkish nationalism was cultural and local and had no Pan-Turanian aims. Finally in the summer of 1926, the British, Turkish and 'Iraqi representatives met in Angora and signed a treaty on June 5, which ceded the vilayet of Mosul to 'Iraq with a slight rectification of the frontier in favour of Turkey: for a period of 25 years from the coming into force of the Treaty, the 'Iraq Government was to pay Turkey io% on all royalties it received from the exploitation of the Mosul oil. On April 22, 1926, a treaty of neutrality was concluded with Persia. A treaty of perpetual peace and friendship was signed with Afghanistan in Angora on May 27, 1928, and a treaty of non aggression and arbitration with Italy on May 3o, 1928.
On the pretext of a conspiracy against Mustafa Kemal Pasha's life, "discovered" in the summer of 1926, all the members of the suppressed Opposition Party, both in and out of the assembly, as well as the leading members of the Union and Progress Party, were arrested by the tribunal of independence. At the trial politi cal opponents were assumed to be conspirators by the mere fact of their being in the Opposition. Kiazim Kara Bekir Pasha, Ali Fuad Pasha and Refet Pasha were acquitted by the pressure of the army. Several members of the assembly, whose parliamentary immunity was violated and who had been in the forefront of the nationalist movement, were executed. Djavid Bey, the foremost Turkish financier, Shukri Bey, Dr. Nazim Bey and Janpoulant Bey, all ex-ministers of the Unionist regime and some of them deputies, were also executed. The ex-prime minister Rauf Bey who was in Europe at the time, was condemned to ten years' imprisonment. All these terrorist and illegal measures aimed at extinguishing every form of opposition.
The economic policy of the republic, a reaction to that of capitulations under which the Turks had suffered so much, was ultra-nationalist. State construction of railways was begun, and lines between Angora and Caesarea, and between Samsoun and Amasia were completed in 1927.