When did Ankara become capital of Turkey?
Following the Ottoman defeat at World War I, the Ottoman capital Istanbul and much of Anatolia were occupied by the Allies, who planned to share these lands between the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Greece, leaving the Turks only a small piece of land in central Asia Minor. In response, the leader of the Turkish nationalist movement, Kemal Atatürk, established the headquarters of his resistance movement in Ankara in 1920. After the War of Independence was won, the Turkish nationalists replaced the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 1923. A few days earlier, Ankara had replaced İstanbul (formerly Constantinople) as the new Turkish capital city, on October 13, 1923.
