In the meantime, however, while the Sèvres Treaty was still in the making, there was a small handful of Turkish patriots who were determined at all costs to win that complete independence for which Turkey had entered the war. These Nationalists were outraged by the Greek occupation of Smyrna, in May, 1919, which they considered a forecast of the kind of peace to be dictated to Turkey. During the summer of 1919 they held two conferences at Erzerum and Sivas and agreed to reject any treaty which handed over Turkish populations to foreign domination, which would reduce Turkey to economic servitude to the victorious Powers, or which would impair the sovereignty of their country. Upon this program they won a sweeping victory in the parliamentary elections of 1919–1920. For leadership they depended largely upon that brilliant soldier and staunch Turk, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, who had distinguished himself by his quarrel with Liman von Sanders at the Dardanelles and his defiance of von Falkenhayn in Syria. Mustapha Kemal Pasha, who had bitterly contested the growth of German influence in Turkey during the war, was not likely to accept without a struggle the extension of Allied control over Turkish affairs.[40] In Constantinople, January 28, 1920, the Nationalist members of the Turkish Parliament signed the celebrated “National Pact”—frequently referred to as a Declaration of Independence of the New Turkey. “The Pact was something more than a statement of war-aims or a party programme. It was the first adequate expression of a sentiment which had been growing up in the minds of Western-educated Turks for three or four generations, which in a half-conscious way had inspired the reforms of the Revolution of 1908, and which may dominate Turkey and influence the rest of the Middle East for many generations to come. It was an emphatic adoption of the Western national idea.”[41] It was based upon principles which had received wide acceptance among peoples of the Allied nations during the war: self-determination of peoples, to be expressed by plebiscite; protection of the rights of minorities, but no further limitations of national sovereignty. As regards the Capitulations and the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, the Pact is explicit: “With a view to assuring our national and economic development,” it reads, “and with the end of securing to the country a more regular and more modern administration, the signatories of the present pact consider the possession of complete independence and liberty as the _sine qua non_ of our national existence. In consequence, we oppose all juridical or financial restrictions of any nature which would arrest our national development.” Rather that Turkey should die free than live in slavery! Foreswearing any intention of recovering the Sultan’s former Arab possessions, the Pact proceeded to serve notice, however, that Cilicia, Mosul, and the Turkish portions of Thrace must be reunited with the fatherland. “The Ottoman Empire is