The battle went on for 21 days from August 23 to September 13, 1921, close to the banks of the Sakarya River in the immediate vicinity of Polatlı, which is today a district of the Ankara Province.

[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] The Turkish observer, writer, and literary critic İsmail Habip Sevük later described the importance of the battle with these words: The retreat that started in Vienna on 13 September 1683 stopped 238 years later.

The Greeks then wheeled their axis to the north, swept towards Eskişehir and rolled up the Turkish defence in a series of frontal assaults that was combined with flanking movements.

[19] For the Greeks, the question was one of whether to dig in and rest on their previous gains, or to advance towards Ankara in great effort and destroy the Army of the Grand National Assembly.

The dangers of extending their lines of communications still further in an inhospitable terrain that killed horses, caused vehicles to break down and prevented the movement of heavy artillery, were obvious.

The present front gave the Greeks control of the essential strategic railway and was tactically most favourable, but the Army of the Grand National Assembly had escaped encirclement at Kütahya, so nothing had been settled.

The Turkish General Staff had made its headquarters at Polatlı, on the railway a few miles east of the coast of the Sakarya River, and its troops were prepared to resist.

Crossing the shallow Gök, the infantry fought its way step up onto the heights, where every ridge and hill top had to be stormed against strong entrenchments and withering fire.

By September 2, the commanding heights of the key Mount Chal were in Greek hands, but once the enveloping movement against the Turkish left flank had failed, the battle descended to a typical head-on confrontation of infantry, machine guns and artillery.

[25] Astute as ever at the decisive moment, Ataturk assumed personal command of the Turkish forces and led a small counterattack against the Greek left, around Mount Chal, on September 8.

The Greek troops evacuated Mount Chal, which had been taken at such a cost, and they retired unmolested across the Sakarya River to the positions that they had left a month earlier and took their guns and equipment with them.

[29] According to the speech that was delivered years later before the same National Assembly at the Second General Conference of the Republican People's Party, which took part from October 15 to 20, 1927, Ataturk was said to have ordered that "not an inch of the country should be abandoned until it was drenched with the blood of the citizens" once he realised that the Turkish Army was losing ground rapidly and that virtually no natural defences were left between the battle line and Ankara.