This paper analyzes the short-lived but eventful involvement of Ku?çuba?? E?ref in the Turkish War of Independence. In particular, it focuses on E?ref’s re-establishing connections with his fellow Special Organization (Te?kilat-? Mahsusa) colleagues after his return in early 1920 from the British prison camp on Malta where he had been transferred after his capture in Arabia by the forces of Sharif Husayn in 1917; his invitation from Mustafa Kemal to assume the position of regional commander for the strategically important Northwestern Anatolian districts of Kartal, Adapazar?, and Bolu in the “National Forces” (Kuva-yi Milliye) movement headquartered at Ankara; E?ref’s failed attempt to suppress a loyalist, anti-Ankara uprising led by the Circassian population of Adapazar?; his subsequent demotion and increasingly sporadic activities; his defection away from the Kuva-yi Milliye alongside his fellow Circassian paramilitary officer “Çerkes” Edhem, and, finally, his involvement with an anti-Ankara guerilla movement called the Anatolian Revolutionary Committee (Anadolu ?htilal Komitesi) that eventually faded into irrelevance, but not before E?ref was branded a “traitor to the nation” (vatan haini) in Turkish national historiography. Drawing on a combination of Ku?çuba?? E?ref’s private papers, archival sources (including those from the Ottoman archives, the Turkish Military archives (ATASE) and the British National Archives, as well as published primary and secondary source materials), this contribution assesses the extent to which a figure such as E?ref, who was well known for his loyalty to the Ottoman wartime leader ?smail Enver, could be fully assimilated into the Ankara movement. Distrust towards E?ref can be detected in the internal correspondence of the Kuva-yi Milliye during 1920 and was not assuaged by the appearance of E?ref’s brother Selim “Hac?” Sami on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia in as part of a mission seemingly aimed at reinserting Enver into the “national” picture the following year. The paper also explores the possibility that what might be described as an “ethnic policy” lay behind Ankara’s strategy to deal with “rebellions” against the Ankara movement. All in all, the paper aims to address a few of the unexpected dimensions of the tumultuous period of the Turkish War of Independence, a conflict that was far closer to a civil war than the usual historiography admits.