Part 14
Owing to the unconciliatory attitude of the English, who made it impossible for it to govern the country, the Ministry resigned. The English required that the new Cabinet should be constituted by Damad Ferid Pasha, on whom they knew they could rely.
Indeed, a secret agreement had already been concluded, on September 12, 1919, between Mr. Fraster, Mr. Nolan, and Mr. Churchill, on behalf of Great Britain, and Damad Ferid Pasha on behalf of the Imperial Ottoman Government. The existence of this agreement was questioned at the time, and was even officially denied in the _Stambul Journal_, April 8, 1920, but most likely there was an exchange of signatures between them. According to this agreement,[28] the Sultan practically acquiesced in the control of Great Britain over Turkey within the limits fixed by Great Britain herself. Constantinople remained the seat of the Caliphate, but the Straits were to be under British control. The Sultan was to use his spiritual and moral power as Caliph on behalf of Great Britain, to support British rule in Syria, Mesopotamia, and the other zones of British influence, not to object to the creation of an independent Kurdistan, and to renounce his rights over Egypt and Cyprus.
Damad Ferid agreed to do so, with the co-operation of the party of the Liberal Entente. If the information given by the Press is reliable, it seems that the composition of the new Cabinet was endangered at the last moment through the opposition of one of the Allied Powers; yet it was constituted at last.
The members of the new Cabinet, headed by Damad Ferid Pasha, who was both Grand Vizier and Foreign Minister, were: Abdullah Effendi, Sheik-ul-Islam; Reshid Bey, an energetic man, an opponent of the Union and Progress Committee, who was Minister of the Interior; and Mehmed Said Pasha, who became Minister of Marine and provisionally Minister of War. The last-named Ministry had been offered to Mahmoud Mukhtar Pasha, son of the famous Ghazi Mukhtar, who broke off with the Committee of Union and Progress in 1912, was dismissed from the army in 1914 by Enver, and was ambassador at Berlin during the first three years of the war; but he refused this post, and also handed in his resignation as a member of the Paris delegation; so the Grand Vizier became War Minister too. The Minister for Public Education was Fakhr ed Din Bey, one of the plenipotentiaries sent to Ouchy to negotiate the peace with Italy. Dr. Jemil Pasha, who had once been prefect of Constantinople, became Minister of Public Works, and Remze Pasha Minister of Commerce.
The investiture of the new Cabinet took place on Monday, April 5, in the afternoon, with the usual ceremonies. The Imperial rescript ran as follows:
“After the resignation of your predecessor, Salih Pasha, considering your great abilities and worth, we hereby entrust to you the Grand Vizierate, and appoint Duri Zade Abdullah Bey Sheik-ul-Islam.
“The disturbances that have been lately fomented, under the name of nationalism, are endangering our political situation, which ever since the armistice had been gradually improving.
“The peaceful measures hitherto taken against this movement have proved useless. Considering the recent events and the persistence of this state of rebellion, which may give rise to the worst evils, it is now our deliberate wish that all those who have organised and still support these disturbances shall be dealt with according to the rigour of the law; but, on the other hand, we want a free pardon to be granted to all those who, having been led astray, have joined and shared in the rebellion. Let quick and energetic measures be taken in order to restore order and security throughout our Empire, and strengthen the feelings of loyalty undoubtedly prevailing among all our faithful subjects to the Khilafat and the throne.
“It is also our earnest desire that you should endeavour to establish trustful and sincere relations with the Great Allied Powers, and to defend the interests of the State and the nation, founding them on the principles of righteousness and justice. Do your utmost to obtain more lenient conditions of peace, to bring about a speedy conclusion of peace, and to alleviate the public distress by resorting to all adequate financial and economic measures.”
The Sheik-ul-Islam in a proclamation to the Turkish people denounced the promoters and instigators of the Nationalist movement, and called upon all Moslems to gather round the Sultan against the “rebels.”
The Grand Vizier issued an Imperial decree condemning the Nationalist movement, pointing out to Mustafa Kemal the great dangers the country ran on account of his conduct, wishing for the restoration of friendly relations between Turkey and the Allies, and warning the leaders of the movement that harsh measures would be taken against them. The Ottoman Government, in a proclamation to the population—which had no effect, for most of the Turks thought it was dictated by foreign Powers—denounced all the leaders and supporters of the Nationalist movement as guilty of high treason against the nation. The proclamation stated:
“The Government, though eager to avoid bloodshed, is still more eager to save the nation, which is running into great danger. So it will not hesitate to resort to strict measures against those who might refuse to go back to their duty according to the high prescriptions of the Sherif, as is ordered by the Imperial rescript.
“With this view, the Government proclaims:
“First, anyone who, without realising the gravity of his act, has allowed himself to be driven by the threats or misleading instigations of the ringleaders, and has joined the insurrectionist movement, gives tokens of repentance within a week and declares his loyalty to the Sovereign, shall enjoy the benefit of the Imperial pardon.
“Secondly, all the leaders and instigators of the movements, together with whosoever shall continue to support them, shall be punished according to the law and the Sherif’s orders.
“Lastly, the Government cannot in any way allow any act of cruelty or misdemeanour to be committed in any part of the Empire either by the Moslem population against other elements, or by non-Moslem subjects against the Moslem population. So it proclaims that whosoever shall commit such acts, or countenance them, or be party to them, shall be severely punished individually.”
A Parliamentary commission set off to Anatolia in order to call upon Mustafa Kemal to give up his hostility to the Entente and lay down arms with the least delay.
Moreover, the Government decided to send some delegates in order to make inquiries and point out to the leaders of the Nationalist movement the dangerous consequences of their stubbornness and open rebellion.
The first delegation was to include an aide-de-camp of the War Minister, and an Allied superior officer. Another delegation was to consist of members of Parliament, among whom were Youssouf Kemal Bey, member for Sivas; Vehbi Bey, member for Karassi; Abdulla Azmi Bey, member for Kutahia; and Riza Nuri, member for Sinope, the very man who had brought in a motion against the occupation of Constantinople and the arrest of some members of the Ottoman Parliament, and who was credited with having said: “Anatolia has a false conception of the occupation of Constantinople. We are going to give clear explanations of the seriousness of the situation in order to avoid disastrous consequences. We are going to tell Anatolia the ideas of the Government about the interests of the nation.”
An Imperial decree prescribed the dissolution of the Chamber, and the members before whom it was read left the Chamber quietly.
But it was obvious that the Damad Ferid Pasha Cabinet no longer represented the country, and that in the mind of most Turks it could no longer express or uphold the free will of the Turkish people, whose hidden or open sympathies, in view of the foreigner’s threat, were given to the Nationalist movement.
* * * * *
It must be owned that the Turkish Nationalist movement had at the outset co-operated with some questionable elements and had been mixed up with the intrigues of the former members of the Committee of Union and Progress. But it now became impossible, in order to belittle it, to look down upon it as a mere plot or insurrectionary movement. In consequence of the successive events that had taken place since the armistice and of the attitude of the Allies, especially England, after the occupation of Constantinople, carried out under British pressure with the approbation of the French Government notwithstanding the protest of the French Press, and in view of the provisions that were likely to be included in the Peace Treaty, Turkish patriotism, which could not allow Turkey to be destroyed and meant to maintain her traditional rights, had tacitly joined that movement. Besides, Mustafa Kemal, who, at the very outset, had been a member of the Committee of Union and Progress, had soon disagreed with Enver, and it should be borne in mind that he was his enemy during the greater part of the war, as he was an opponent of the German Marshal Falkenhayn. Some people have tried to make out there was only personal enmity between them, and have denied the possibility of political opposition; but the very fact that their enmity would have ruined any common political designs they might have had proves there were no such designs.
So Mustafa Kemal did not seem greatly moved by the measures mentioned in the manifesto issued by the Government under pressure of the foreign occupation and amidst the perturbation caused by recent events.
At the end of March Mustafa Kemal warned the Sultan that, in consequence of the occupation of Constantinople, he broke off all connection with the central Government, which henceforth was quite under foreign control. In a proclamation issued to the Mussulmans, he declared it was necessary to form a new independent Ottoman State in Anatolia and to appoint an assistant Sheik-ul-Islam. The reason he gave was that the Sultan could no longer be looked upon as Caliph, for it is a fundamental principle of Islam that the Caliph must be an independent Sovereign, and, since the Allied occupation of Constantinople, he no longer enjoyed his freedom of action. In that appeal, which was not intended for the Mussulmans of Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli, for it seemed to be aimed at Great Britain alone, he regarded the occupation of Constantinople as a new crusade against Islam.
According to news from Nationalist sources, Mustafa Kemal formed a Cabinet, in which he was War Minister of the new Anatolian Government.
It was said at the time he had proclaimed Viceroy of Anatolia and nahib—_i.e._, the Sultan’s representative in Anatolia—Prince Jemal ed Din, a member of the Imperial Family, son of the late Prince Shevket Effendi, and general inspector of the recruiting service; but the official circles of Constantinople never believed that the prince had allowed him to use his name.
At the same time he had a Constituent Assembly elected, which he intended to convene at Angora. This assembly consisted of the members of Parliament who had been able to escape from Constantinople and of deputies chosen by delegated electors and met on April 23 at Angora, where all sorts of people had come from quite different regions: Constantinople, Marash, Beyrut, Baghdad, etc. The National Assembly of Angora meant to be looked upon as a Constituent Assembly, and strove to introduce wide reforms into the administrative and financial organisation of the Empire. It elected a rather large committee, which styled itself the Government Council, and it included General Mustafa Kemal, Jemal ed Din Chelebi, from Konia, as first Vice-President, and Jelal ed Din Arif Bey as second Vice-President, etc.
The members of the Government which was instituted at Angora when the Great National Assembly met in this town were: General Mustafa Kemal Pasha, President; Bekir Samy Bey, Foreign Affairs; Jamy Bey, Interior; General Feizi Pasha, National Defence; General Ismail Fazil Pasha, Public Works; Youssouf Kemal Bey, National Economy; Hakki Behij Bey, Finance; Dr. Adnan Bey, Public Education; Colonel Ismet Bey, Chief of Staff.
The Sheik of the Senussi, who had joined the National movement, and owing to his prestige had influenced public opinion in favour of this movement, was not appointed, as has been wrongly said, Sheik-ul-Islam; religious affairs were entrusted to a member of a Muslim brotherhood belonging to the National Assembly.
According to the information it was possible to obtain, the political line of conduct adopted by the Nationalists was not only to organise armed resistance, but also to carry on a strong political and religious propaganda, both in Turkey and in foreign countries.
No official letter from Constantinople was to be opened by the functionaries, who, if they obeyed the Constantinople Government, were liable to capital punishment. The religious authorities in the provinces and the heads of the great Muslim brotherhoods were called upon to protest against the _fetva_ by which the Sheik-ul-Islam of Constantinople had anathematised the Nationalists.
But the chief difficulty for the Nationalists was how to raise money.
On behalf of that National Assembly, Mustafa Kemal addressed to M. Millerand the following letter, in which he vehemently protested against the occupation of Constantinople and laid down the claims of the Ottoman people:
“I beg to bring to the knowledge of Your Excellency that, owing to the unjustifiable occupation of Constantinople by the Allied troops, the Ottoman people looks upon its Khalifa, together with his Government, as prisoners. So general elections have been held, and on April 23, 1920, the Grand National Assembly held its first sitting, and solemnly declared it would preside over the present and future destiny of Turkey, so long as her Khalifa Sultan and her Eternal City should remain under the dominion and occupation of foreigners.
“The Grand National Assembly has done me the honour to charge me to bring to the knowledge of Your Excellency the earnest protest of its members against that arbitrary deed, which violates the terms of the armistice, and has once more confirmed the Ottoman people in its pessimism as to the results of the Peace Conference. Not long ago our Parliament—though a Parliament has always been looked upon as a holy sanctuary by all civilised nations—was violated in the course of a sitting; the representatives of the nation were wrested from the bosom of the assembly by the English police like evildoers, notwithstanding the energetic protest of the Parliament; many a senator, deputy, general, or man of letters, was arrested at his home, taken away handcuffed, and deported; lastly, our public and private buildings were occupied by force of arms, for might had become right.
“Now the Ottoman people, considering all its rights have been violated and its sovereignty encroached upon, has, by order of its representatives, assembled at Angora, and appointed an Executive Council chosen among the members of the National Assembly, which Council has taken in hand the government of the country.
“I have also the honour to let Your Excellency know the desiderata of the nation, as expressed and adopted at the sitting of April 29, 1920.
“First, Constantinople, the seat of the Khilafat and Sultanry, together with the Constantinople Government, are henceforth looked upon by the Ottoman people as prisoners of the Allies; thus all orders and _fetvas_ issued from Constantinople, so long as it is occupied, cannot have any legal or religious value, and all engagements entered upon by the would-be Constantinople Government are looked upon by the nation as null and void.
“Secondly, the Ottoman people, though maintaining its calm and composure, is bent upon defending its sacred, centuries-old rights as a free, independent State. It expresses its wish to conclude a fair, honourable peace, but declares only its own mandatories have the right to take engagements in its name and on its account.
“Thirdly, the Christian Ottoman element, together with the foreign elements settled in Turkey, remain under the safeguard of the nation; yet they are forbidden to undertake anything against the general security of the country.
“Hoping the righteous claims of the Ottoman nation will meet with a favourable reception, I beg Your Excellency to accept the assurance of the deep respect with which I have the honour to be Your Excellency’s most humble, most obedient servant.”
On the eve of the San Remo Conference, which met on April 18, 1920, Ahmed Riza Bey, ex-President of the Chamber and Senator of the Ottoman Empire, who kept a keen lookout on the events that were about to seal the fate of his country, though he had been exiled by the Damad Ferid Ministry, addressed another letter to the President of the Conference, in which he said;
“The Turks cannot in any way, in this age of liberty and democracy, acknowledge a peace that would lower them to the level of an inferior race and would treat them worse than the Hungarians or Bulgarians, who have lost comparatively small territories, whereas Turkey is to be utterly crippled. We want to be treated as a vanquished people, not as an inferior people or a people in tutelage. The victors may have a right to take from us the territories they conquered by force of arms; they have no right to intrude into our home affairs. The Turkish people will willingly grant concessions of mines and public works to the foreigners who offer it the most profitable conditions; but it will never allow the arbitrary partition of the wealth of the nation. To get riches at the expense of an unfortunate nation is immoral; it is all the more unfair as the responsibility of Turkey in the world war is comparatively slight as compared with that of Austria-Germany and Bulgaria. In respect of the crimes and atrocities against Armenia and Greece which the Turks are charged with, we deny them earnestly and indignantly. Let a mixed international commission be formed, and sent to hold an impartial inquiry on the spot, and we pledge ourselves to submit to its decisions. Till such an inquiry has proved anything to the contrary, we have a right to look upon all charges brought against us as slanders or mere lies.
“The Sublime Porte had already, on February 12, 1919, addressed to the High Commissioners an official note requesting that neutral States should appoint delegates charged to inquire into facts and establish responsibilities; but the request of the Ottoman Cabinet has hitherto been in vain, as well as that of the League for National Ottoman Unity made on March 17 of the same year.
“Yet the report of the international Commission of Inquiry assembled at Smyrna, which proved the charges of cruelty brought against the Turks were unfounded, should induce the Allies, in the name of justice, to hold an inquiry into the massacres supposed to have taken place in Cilicia and elsewhere.
“I hope Your Excellency will excuse me if this letter is not couched in the usual diplomatic style, and will consider that when the life and rights of his nation are so grievously endangered it is most difficult for a patriot to keep his thoughts and feelings under control.”
As early as April 19, the San Remo Conference, which seemed to have come to an agreement about the main lines of the treaty to be submitted to Turkey, but had not yet settled the terms of this treaty, decided to summon the Ottoman plenipotentiaries to Paris on May 10.
In a note sent on April 20, 1920, to M. Nitti, as president of the San Remo Conference, Ghalib Kemaly Bey, formerly Ottoman minister plenipotentiary to Russia, now living in Rome, wrote:
“In order to justify the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire it has been asserted that the Turks are not able to administer a large country inhabited by various races, and they have been especially charged with hating and oppressing the Christian element. But a history extending over ten centuries at least plainly shows, by innumerable facts and truths, the absurdity of such assertions.
“If the Ottoman Empire, in spite of its wonderful efforts for the last 130 years, has not been able to reform and renovate itself as the other States have done, that is because, in addition to a thousand other difficulties, it has never had, for the last two centuries, either the power or the peacefulness that would have been necessary to bring such a protracted task to a successful end; for every ten, fifteen, or twenty years, it has been attacked by its neighbours, and the events of the last twelve years testify still more forcibly than any others to the fact that any step taken by the Turks on the way to progress—in the European sense of the word—was not only resented, but even violently opposed by their merciless enemies.
“As to the would-be oppression which the Christians are supposed to have endured in the Empire, let us merely consider that, whereas in Europe the Christians mutually slaughtered each other mercilessly and unceasingly in the name of their sacred Faith, and the unfortunate Jews were cruelly driven away and tortured in the name of the same Faith, the Turks, on the contrary, after ruling for a thousand years over Turkish Asia with many vicissitudes, not only tolerated the presence of millions of Christians in their large, powerful Empire, but even granted them without any restriction, under the benefit of Turkish laws and customs, all possibilities to subsist, develop, and become rich, often at the expense of the ruling race; and they offered a wide paternal hospitality to many wretched people banished from Christian Europe.
“To-day Greece, trampling upon justice and right, lays an iniquitous claim to the noble, sacred land of Turkish Thrace and Asia. Yet can she show the same example of tolerance, and give a strict account of her home policy towards the non-Greek elements, especially concerning the condition and fate of the 300,000 Turks who, before 1883, peopled the wide, fertile plains of Thessaly, of the hundreds of thousands of Moslem Albanians, subjects of the Empire, of the 150,000 Moslems in Crete, and of the 800,000 Moslems in Macedonia, whose unfortunate fate it was to pass under her dominion?
“I need not dwell at length on this painful subject, which will be an eternal shame to modern civilisation, for the victorious Powers know a great deal more—after the inter-Allied inquiry held four months ago in Smyrna—about the ‘gentle and fatherly’ manner in which thousands of Mussulmans were slaughtered and exterminated by the descendants of the civilisation of ancient Greece, who invaded that essentially Turkish province during the armistice under pretence of restoring order.”
And after recalling the figures of the various elements of the population of the Turkish Empire after the 1914 statistics, he concluded:
“Such figures speak but too eloquently, and the painful events that drenched with blood the unfortunate Ottoman land since the armistice raise only too much horror. So the Turkish people most proudly and serenely awaits the righteous, humane, and equitable sanction of the victorious Powers that have assumed before history the heavy responsibility of placing the whole world on a lasting basis of justice, concord, and peace.