[1] The exile to Malta occurred between March 1919 and October 1920 of politicians, high ranking soldiers (mainly), administrators and intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire after the armistice of Mudros during the Occupation of Istanbul by the Allied forces.
In late January 1919, the Allied forces began to arrest CUP leaders and military commanders accusing them of war crimes.
[2] These included several high ranking CUP notables such as Tevfik Rüştü Aras, Mithat Şükrü Bleda, Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın or Mustafa Rahmi Arslan and military commanders such as the Generals of the Islamic Army of the Caucasus Nuri Killigil and Mürsel Pasha and Halil Kut a military officer of the Ottoman Army in the Eastern front.
[2] Following the occupation of Smyrna by the Greek forces in May 1919, large manifestations in protest occurred on the Anatolian mainland raising pressure upon the courts martial.
[6] Those exiled included people unrelated to war crimes such as historian Adnan Adıvar, pharmacist Mehmet Eczacıbaşı, journalists Velid Ebüziyya, Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu, Minister of Education Ahmet Sükrü Bey and Ziya Gökalp, showing the Malta Exiles were focused on purging Turkish intellectuals who would support the Kemalist forces in spite of the Ottoman cooperation with the Allied Government.
Nominally headed by the Sultan, the Turkish government based in Constantinople was politically the same state that had surrendered to the Allies at the end of WWI, accepting humiliating terms that included ceding or accepting the occupation of most of what had been the Ottoman Empire, including western Anatolia and complying with the exile of Turkish intellectuals to Malta.