Ismet Inonu
İsmet İnönü was Atatürk's chief of staff, negotiated Turkey's independence at Lausanne, and kept the country out of the Second World War. Born in 1884 in İzmir, he trained as an artillery officer, served in the Ottoman army in Yemen and on the Caucasus and Palestine fronts, and joined the nationalist movement in Ankara in 1920. He commanded in western Anatolia against the Greek invasion and won two defensive battles at İnönü in 1921, from which he later took his surname when the law required Turks to adopt one. His decisive service was diplomatic. At Lausanne in 1922 and 1923 he faced Lord Curzon across the table and simply outlasted him, reportedly using his own deafness as a negotiating instrument. The treaty replaced the dictated peace of Sèvres, abolished the capitulations that had given foreign powers legal privileges, secured full sovereignty over Anatolia and eastern Thrace, and imposed no reparations — the only peace settlement of the First World War revised entirely in favour of a defeated power. It also provided for the compulsory exchange of populations with Greece, which uprooted about 1.6 million people. He served as prime minister for most of the republic's first fifteen years and became president on Atatürk's death in 1938. He held Turkey neutral through the Second World War under pressure from both sides, declaring war only in February 1945 to qualify for the United Nations. He then did the thing least expected of him: permitted opposition parties, held a free election in 1950, lost it, and handed over power.
- Lived: 1884 CE – 1973 CE
- Nationality: Turkish
- Roles: statesman, general, head_of_state, diplomat
