During the Turkish War of Independence, Turkish doctors faced two different but interconnected challenges: first, finding medical solutions to health problems in such a way that Turkish sovereignty could be sustained, that is to say with minimal interference from European countries, and second, working to eliminate the same sort of traditions and superstitions they believed characterized rural Anatolian attitudes towards science and medicine. The nascent Grand National Assembly, a body in which several doctors served as deputies, was one site where debates over medicine and modernity played out. In this paper, I explore the intense debates in the Assembly in 1920 over a draft for the Law for the Prevention and Containment of Syphilis (Frenginin Men-i Sirayet ve Inti?ar?n?n Tahdidi Kanunu), which mandated strictly regimented treatment for syphilis. The draft law ignited fierce debates over the powers and limits of doctors, the role that gender played in modern medicine, and what kind of role medical professionals were to play in a modern state during a historical moment of uncertainty. I argue that the debates reveal the wide role that doctors envisaged for themselves in the future – a role which received significant pushback from some conservative deputies. For the former group, modern medicine was a crucial site upon which the sovereign future of Turkey could be assured. I also argue that contours of modern medicine cannot be understood apart from gender. While the male members of the Assembly generally agreed that women’s bodies should be placed squarely under male expertise, but the questions of whose expertise and under what conditions men could assert their supposed knowledge illustrate the sharp divides over the potential and limits of modern medicine.