Ninth Army

The sultan's government, eager to appease its occupiers and perhaps equally eager to remove a restless general from the capital, settles on Mustafa Kemal for the task.

He is appointed inspector of the Ninth Army troops with sweeping, on paper at least, authority to restore order across the northern and eastern Anatolian provinces.

It is, in the most literal reading, an assignment to help the Allies pacify Turkish resistance.

It is, in Mustafa Kemal's reading, and here lies the hinge upon which the next chapter of Turkish history will turn, something else entirely.

They do not.

The ship's papers are in order.

Mustafa Kemal's appointment as inspector of the Ninth Army is, after all, entirely legitimate, sanctioned by the sultan's own government, and the British officers conducting the inspection have no reason yet to treat a routine administrative posting as a threat.

The Bandırma is released.