After the end of WWI, the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) established a political party, Renewal Party, and an underground organization, Karakol, in order to organize a resistance against the Allies and their presence in Ottoman territories. These institutions played an important role in the formation of national resistance in Anatolia before Mustafa Kemal's arrival in the region. The establishment of local resistance forces by former CUP members in Anatolia under the name of Renewal Party and the formation of a network in Istanbul to facilitate the smuggling of weapons, ammunition, former military officers, and Unionists to Anatolia were crucial for the formation of a national resistance movement to be organized under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal after May 1919. This article focuses on these two institutions and their role in Turkish National Struggle.

The aim of this essay is to read Attilâ İlhan's novel Gâzi Paşa, a historical novel about the Turkish Independence War, with a focus on the distinction between history writing and historical novel. I begin my analysis of this novel from the narratological perspective developed by Dorrit Cohn, who emphasizes two aspects of this distinction: different reference fields of history and fiction, and fiction's distinctive ability in reaching into the minds of characters. These aspects will help me to unravel the production of meaning in Gâzi Paşa through its ambivalent and intentional border crossings between the two fields. Then, I will explain this intentional textual swing through an analysis of its roman à thèse features, which I ground on Susan Rubin Suleiman's description of the genre. Finally, the essay will discuss Gâzi Paşa's authorial intention that aims at instructing an audience through a narrative of charisma, founded on a specific representation of Mustafa Kemal for the purpose of propagating a black-and-white perception of history and politics.