a group of Muslim traditionalists tried to sustain by scholarly discourse the proposition that the caliphate and the sultanate were inseparable. In a rousing speech before the Assembly, Atatnrk proclaimed:
Gentlemen, neither the sovereignty nor the right to govern can be transferred by one person to anybody else by an academic debate. Sovereignty is acquired by force, by power, and by violence. It was by violence that the sons of Osman acquired the power to rule over the Turkish nation and to maintain their rule for more than six centuries. It is now the nation that revolts against these usurpers, puts them in their place and actually carries on their sovereignty. This is an actual fact.
Lord Kinross tells us that Kemal knew his people too well to have any illusions as to their political maturity:
They were still an Oriental people, culturally backward and temperamentally unfitted for the literal application of Western democracy. They could not yet rule; they required to be ruled. The strong religious authority of the Sultan-Caliph needed to be replaced
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