On 3 November, 1918, the Ottoman Imperial Navy Fleet Commander ordered all flags to be struck on all warships lying in the Golden Horn, and the Ottoman Imperial Navy ceased to exist. The warships were disarmed during the last week of 1918.
On 10 July 1920, the Directorate of Naval Affairs (Umur-u Bahriye Mudurlugu) was founded in Ankara under the Ministry of National Defense and was given the duty of organizing and maintaining strategic logistical shipping through the Black Sea in order to provide the Turkish Nationalist Army forces in Anatolia with weapons and other supplies. All existing naval institutions in the parts of Anatolia that were administered by the Ankara government were assigned to this Directorate.
On 1 March 1921, the Directorate of Naval Affairs was transformed into the Presidency of the Naval Department (Bahriye Dairesi Reisligi) and had control over the following Naval Commands:
Uniforms and insignia of the Nationalist Turkish Navy (1920-1922), remained largely unchanged from the WW1 -period Ottoman imperial navy. The only exception, was the appearence of a new versions of the navy shako; in particular, a version in black oil-skin, also used by the army, being issued to officers (who continued to wear their officer's cap badge from the former imperial navy. Sailors wore these as well, without their former ship's tallies. Even, the civilian merchant crews appear to have worn the shako (as a form of recognition), along with their work suits.
Right - A Turkish navy officer's shoulder board (1916-1933).
Film taken in the www.britishpathe.com arcival films of the "Turkish Army makes triumphal entry into Constantinople" (dated 1920), shows Turkish civil officials wearing striped coloured armbands (a typically British Army practice); these are likely to be British appointed officials employed to maintain the Constantinople Government Authorities, during the Allied occupation of the city.
In the same period, a number of Turkish civilian seamen formed a group under the name of the Naval Aid Organization (Muavenet-i Bahriye), to secretly obtained cannons, light weapons, ammunition, landmines and ordnance from the former Ottoman military warehouses in Istanbul that were under the control of the occupying Allies and sent them in to Anatolia with civil water transportation crafts.