Grand National Assembly of Turkey
Grand National Assembly convenes for its first sitting in Ankara
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Mustafa Kemal did not chair the historic first sitting. Its provisional presiding officer was the oldest member in the room, the Sinop deputy Şerif Bey.
Friday prayers, then a legislature
On 23 April 1920 the new assembly opened in Ankara after Friday prayers at the Hacı Bayram Veli Mosque, followed by prayers and the sacrifice of animals outside the assembly building.
The chamber combined newly elected provincial representatives with members of the dissolved Ottoman Chamber of Deputies who had reached Ankara. Only 115 of the assembly's eventual 324 members attended the inaugural sitting.
Şerif Bey, the Sinop deputy and oldest member present, presided provisionally and used the name "Grand National Assembly" in his opening speech.
Kemal convened it; he did not preside over it
Mustafa Kemal Pasha had set the process in motion with his 19 March call for elections to an assembly with extraordinary powers, after the Allied occupation of Istanbul and the dissolution of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.
He was elected speaker only the following day, 24 April. The assembly formed a provisional executive committee on 25 April and established an assembly government on 2 May.
"Atatürk" is anachronistic for this date: he received that surname in 1934.
What the first day did not do
The opening rhetoric did not repudiate Sultan Mehmed VI, whose government remained in Istanbul. It presented the assembly as acting to rescue the country, the caliphate and the monarch from foreign control.
No provisional constitution was declared. The 1921 Constitution was adopted on 20 January 1921.
Nor was this the formal beginning of the Republic of Turkey: the sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922, and the republic was proclaimed on 29 October 1923.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 4 sources not yet audited
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →