During World War I and the Turkish War of Liberation that followed American missionary educators of the American Board of Foreign Commissioners (ABCFM) tended to be pro-Greek, anti-Turkish nationalist, and, at times, anti-Muslim. By the end of the Ataturk regime in 1938 many of these same missionaries were admirers of Ataturk and the Kemalist reform program, yet missionary opinion was not monolithic regarding Ataturk. With the establishment of the Republic, the missionaries negotiated with the Kemalist government over issues such as Bible teaching, religious holidays, and centralized control over the curriculum. Examination of missionary experiences during the 1920s and 1930s, predominately at the American Collegiate Institute in Izmir and the American Girls School in Bursa Girls’ School with implementing state-sanctioned curricular changes, school policies and regulations, state-mandated student participation in local and national commemorations (e.g. Republic Day) as well as their reactions to the republic’s national mourning of Ataturk’s death yields a variety of perspectives ranging from Ataturk as an “upstart” to Turkey’s “savior.” These varied attitudes, as expressed in school reports, letters home, and correspondence with mission headquarters such as those written by Edith Parsons, Olive Greene, Paul Nilson, Edith Sanderson and others, both shaped and reflected their efforts to adapt to the changing role of missionaries in a secular Turkey as illustrated in part by responses in Turkey and the U.S. to the trial of teachers at the Girls’ School in Bursa who were charged with proselytizing, an act outlawed in Turkey and in in opposition to mission rules.