77 The Problem of Turkish Captives in Russia Abstract When the World War I was over, not only the majority of the issues resulting in war had been resolved, but also new ones had been established. Furthermore, this war had caused new concerns such as prisoners of war. Turks were one of the parties of this highly complex and insoluble matter. The Ottoman Empire had given the highest number of war captives who had to struggle under severe conditions to Great Britain and Russia. Considered from the Turkish perspective, one of the signiicant dimensions of this concern was, without doubt, the war captives in Russia. A doctoral thesis has been written by Cemil Kutlu on the efforts of transporting these captives to their homeland. In this article, the period from the Moskow Treaty to the irst era of the Republic is considered which the aforementioned thesis did not deal with, for the purpose of contributing to the new studies in this ield. The Problem of Turkish Captives in Russia from Moskow Treaty to the First Years of the Turkish Renovation Serkan TUNA * - Eminalp MALKOÇ ** * Istanbul University ** Istanbul Technical University Introduction T he World War I was the most dense, widespread and challenging struggle that the humanity had ever experienced. It caused a great number of deaths together with an economic recession. As a result of military maneuvers, more than 10 million people died, in addition to one million deaths only in the Balkans because of epidemics like typhus. It is impossible to determine both the deaths and defects during the war and the economic, physical, and psychological dimensions of the spiritual devastation which was a result of the loss of conidence and ideals relating to the future. In fact, the cost of the World War I has never been accurately calculated 1 . In addition to the fact that the matters causing this vast destruction had not been resolved at the end of the war, the newly established international political system had such turbulent and precarious features that it would cause a second war 2 . The problem of the captives had a signiicant place among the surpassed and