Part 15
“God grant they may choose the best way, the only way, that will lead them to respect, as they solemnly pledged themselves to do, the ethnic, historical, and religious rights of the Ottoman nation and its Sultan, who is, at the same time, the supreme head of the 350 million Mussulmans throughout the world.”
On the same date (April 20, 1920) the Indian Caliphate delegation addressed a note to the president of the Allied Supreme Council at San Remo, to the English, French, Italian Prime Ministers, and to the Japanese ambassador. In this note they summed up their mandate with the Allied and Associated Powers, and insisted again on the claims they had previously laid before Mr. Lloyd George in the course of the interview mentioned previously.
“Firstly, the Mussulmans of India, in common with the vast majority of their co-religionists throughout the world, ask that, inasmuch as independent temporal sovereignty, with its concomitants of adequate military and economic resources, is of the essence of the institution of the Khilafat, the Empire of the Khalifa shall not be dismembered under any pretext. As the Sultan of Turkey is recognised by the vast majority of Mussulmans as Khalifa, what is desired is that the fabric of the Ottoman Empire shall be maintained intact territorially on the basis of the _status quo ante bellum_, but without prejudice to such political changes as give all necessary guarantees consistent with the dignity and independence of the sovereign State for the security of life and property, and opportunities of full autonomous development for all the non-Turkish communities, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, comprised within the Turkish Empire. But on no account is a Muslim majority to be placed under the rule of a non-Muslim minority contrary to the principle of self-determination. In behalf of this claim, the delegation draw the attention of the Supreme Council to the declaration of the British Prime Minister, equally binding on all the Allied and Associated Powers, when on January 5, 1918, he said: ‘Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race,’ and to President Wilson’s twelfth point in his message to Congress, dated January 8, 1918, on the basis of which the armistice with Turkey was concluded, and which required ‘that the Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured of secure sovereignty; that the other nationalities now under Turkish rule should be assured security of life and autonomous development.’ The delegation submit that any departure from the pledges and principles set forth above would be regarded by the people of India, and the Muslim world generally, as a breach of faith. It was on the strength of these and similar assurances that tens of thousands of India Mussulmans were induced to lay down their lives in the late war in defence of the Allied cause.
“Secondly, we have to submit that the most solemn religious obligations of the Muslim Faith require that the area known as the Jazirat-ul-Arab, or the ‘Island of Arabia,’ which includes, besides the Peninsula of Arabia, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, shall continue to be, as heretofore for the last 1,300 years, under exclusively Muslim control, and that the Khalifa shall similarly continue to be the Warden and Custodian of the Holy Places and Holy Shrines of Islam—namely, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Nejef, Kerbela, Samarra, Kazimain, and Baghdad, all situated within the Jazirat-ul-Arab.
Any encroachment upon these sanctuaries of Islam by the inauguration of non-Muslim control in whatever guise or form, whether a protectorate or mandate, would be a direct violation of the most binding religious injunctions of Islam and the deepest sentiment of Muslims all the world over, and would, therefore, be utterly unacceptable to the Mussulmans of India and the rest of the Indian community. In this connection, apart from the religious obligations to which we refer, the delegation would draw the attention of the Supreme Council to the proclamation issued by the Government of India, on behalf of His Britannic Majesty’s Government, as also the Governments of France and Russia, on November 2, 1914, in which it was specifically declared that ‘no question of a religious character was involved’ in this war, and it was further categorically promised that ‘the Holy Places of Arabia, including the Holy Shrines of Mesopotamia and the port of Jedda, will be immune from attack or molestation.’”
After pointing out that these were the lowest possible claims the Mussulmans could set forth, the note went on as follows:
“But the Mussulmans of India have already submitted to the British Government that a Turkish settlement made in disregard of their religious obligations, on respect for which their loyalty has always been strictly conditional, would be regarded by Indian Mussulmans as incompatible with their allegiance to the British Crown. This is a contingency which the Mussulmans of India, in common with all their compatriots, constituting a population of over three hundred millions, naturally view with the keenest apprehension and anxiety, and are most earnestly desirous of preventing by every means in their power. We believe that the British Government, at any rate, is fully apprised of the range and intensity of public feeling that has been aroused in India on this question, and we content ourselves, therefore, by simply stating here that the Khilafat movement represents an unprecedented demonstration of national feeling and concern. Only on March 19 last, the day when the delegation was received by the British Prime Minister, all business was suspended throughout the continent of India by Mussulmans and Hindus alike, as a reminder and reaffirmation of the Muslim case in respect of the future of the Khilafat. This unprecedented yet peaceful demonstration involved a loss of millions to the public at large, and was undertaken solely with the object of impressing the authorities and others concerned with the universality of Indian and Muslim sentiment on the question. If, notwithstanding all constitutional and loyal representations which the Mussulmans of India have put forward on behalf of the obligation imposed upon them by their Faith, a settlement is imposed upon Turkey which would be destructive of the very essentials of the Khilafat, a situation would arise in which it would be futile to expect peace and harmony to prevail in India and the Muslim world.
“The delegation, therefore, feel it their duty most solemnly to urge upon the Supreme Council the desirability of endeavouring to achieve a peace settlement with the Ottoman Empire which would be in consonance with the most binding religious obligations and overwhelming sentiments of so large and important a section of the world community.”
As a consequence of what has just been said:
“The delegation would beg, even at this late hour, that the Supreme Council will defer taking any final decisions on this question in order to afford to them an opportunity, such as they have repeatedly applied for, of laying their case before the Council. In answer to our request to be allowed to appear before the Supreme Council, the British Secretary to the Council intimated to us that only the accredited Governments of the territories with whose future the Peace Conference is dealing are allowed to appear before it, and that at the request of the British Government the official delegation of India had already been heard. But we have already represented that the Turkish settlement, involving as it does the question on the Khilafat, in the preservation of which the Mussulmans of the world are so vitally interested, does not obviously seem to be a question on which the Peace Conference should hear only the Governments of territories with whose future they are dealing. In fact, the concern of the Muslim world for the future of the Khilafat, which is the most essential institution of Islam, transcends in importance the interests of the various Governments that are being set up in different parts of the Khilafat territories; and the delegation trusts that no technical objection will be allowed to stand in the way of doing justice and securing peace.”
And, finally, the note concluded:
“With reference to the official delegation of India, which the Supreme Council has already heard, the Indian Khilafat delegation would invite the attention of the Council to the fact that, so far at least, the State and the nation are not one in India, and the delegation submit that a nation numbering more than 315 millions of people is entitled to a hearing before a final decision is taken on a question that has incontestably acquired a national status. The delegation hope that they may, without may disrespect to the members comprising the official delegation of India, also refer to the fact that no Indian Mussulman was represented on the delegation in spite of Muslim protest.”
In a second telegram, dated April 24, 1920, the Indian Caliphate delegation, after the reply made to them by the British secretary of the Supreme Council at San Remo on April 20, expressed their deep regret that—
“the Council, while giving a hearing to a number of delegations representing at best microscopic populations inhabiting meagre areas and permitting the Premier of Greece, which was not at war with Turkey, to take part in the discussions relating to the Turkish settlement, should have ignored the claims of a nation numbering more than 315 millions of people inhabiting the vast sub-continent of India even to a hearing, and should have denied the right of several hundred millions more in the rest of the world professing the Muslim Faith to express their views on the question involving the disintegration of the Khilafat. In the name of our compatriots and co-religionists, we deem it to be our duty once more to point out to the Government of Great Britain and to her Allies, that it would be perfectly futile to expect peace and tranquillity if, to the humiliating disregard of the overwhelming national sentiment of India, which would in any case lessen the value of citizenship of the British Empire to the Indian people, is added, as a result of the secret diplomacy of a few persons, however exalted and eminent, who are now settling the fate of Islam behind closed doors, a contemptuous disregard of the most binding and solemn religious obligations imposed on the Muslims by their Faith.”
The delegation did not conceal their disappointment at the way they had been received by the Allied representatives and the little attention paid to the objections they had set forth. Yet they had viewed the Ottoman question from a lofty standpoint, and had brought forward powerful arguments in favour of Turkey. While the Indian delegation were setting forth the Turkish claims before the Peace Conference, the Press, public opinion, and political circles which had been influenced in some degree by the coming of the delegates evinced more sympathy for Turkey, and the deliberations of the Conference seemed likely to assume a more favourable attitude towards Turkey. Yet the Conference, in this case as in many others, and in spite of the warnings it had received, kept to its first resolutions, though everything seemed to invite it to modify them.
On May 6 the Ottoman delegation arrived in Paris. It comprised the former Grand Vizier Tewfik Pasha; Reshid Bey, Minister of the Interior; Fakhr ed Din Bey, Minister of Public Education; and Dr. Jemil Pasha, Minister of Public Works, accompanied by seventeen advisers and five secretaries.
On the previous Thursday, before they left Constantinople, the Sultan had received the delegates, and had a long conversation with each of them.
The draft of the treaty was handed to the delegates on the expected date, May 11.
We refer the reader to this document, which contains thirteen chapters; some of the most important provisions are so laboriously worded that they may give rise to various interpretations, and it is impossible to sum them up accurately.
Several clauses of that draft called forth many objections, and we shall only deal with the most important ones.
The treaty assigned to Greece all the Turkish vilayet of Adrianople or Eastern Thrace—that is to say, the territory which includes Adrianople, the second town and former capital of the Ottoman Empire, and the burial-place of Selim the Conqueror. It only left to European Turkey a mere strip of land near Constantinople up to the Chatalja lines. Besides, this region is entirely included in the “Zone of the Straits” to be controlled by a Commission of the Powers which includes Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria, but excludes Turkey herself.
Now, according to the official census of March, 1914, the Adrianople vilayet which includes Kirk Kilisse, Rodosto, and Gallipoli, had a population of 360,400 Turks—_i.e._, 57 per cent. of the inhabitants—as against 224,680 Greeks, or 35·5 per cent., and 19,888 Armenians. In addition, though in Eastern Thrace the Moslem populations are mingled with numerous Greek elements, the majority of the people are Mussulmans. Out of the 673,000 inhabitants of Thrace, 455,000 are Mussulmans.
It is noteworthy that after 1914 a good number of the Greeks in that vilayet emigrated into Macedonia, where they were replaced by the Mussulmans expelled by the Greek administration, and that out of the 162,000 Orthodox Greeks amenable to the Greek Patriarch, 88,000 are Gagavous—that is to say, are of Turkish descent and speak Turkish.
Out of about 4,700,000 acres of land which make up the total area of the Adrianople vilayet, 4,000,000 acres, or 84 per cent., are in Moslem hands, and the Orthodox Greeks hardly possess 600,000 acres.
The Moslem population of Western Thrace, which is no longer under Turkish sovereignty, rises to 362,000 souls, or 69 per cent., against 86,000 Greeks, or 16·5 per cent., and if the figures representing the Moslem population in both parts of Thrace are counted, we get a total number of 700,000 Mussulmans—_i.e._, 62·6 per cent.—against 310,000 Greeks, or 26 per cent.
Mr. Lloyd George had already guaranteed to Turkey the possession of that region on January 5, 1918, when he had solemnly declared: “Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race,” and he had repeated this pledge in his speech of February 25, 1920.
Yet a month after he declared to the Indian Caliphate delegation, as has been seen above, that the Turkish population in Thrace was in a considerable minority, and so Thrace should be taken away from Turkish rule. If such was the case, it would have been logical to take from Turkey the whole of Thrace.
As the Indian delegation inquired at once on what figures the Prime Minister based his Statements he answered:
“It is, of course, impossible to obtain absolutely accurate figures at the present moment, partly because all censuses taken since about the beginning of the century are open to suspicion from racial prejudice, and partly because of the policy of expulsion and deportation pursued by the Turkish Government both during and before the war. For instance, apart from the Greeks who were evicted during the Balkan wars, over 100,000 Greeks were deported into Anatolia from Turkish Thrace in the course of these wars, while about 100,000 were driven across the frontiers of Turkish Thrace. These refugees are now returning in large numbers. But after the study of all the evidence judged impartially, the best estimate which the Foreign Office could make is that the population of Turkish Thrace, in 1919, was 313,000 Greeks and 225,000 Turks.... This is confirmed by the study of the Turkish official statistics in 1894, the last census taken before the Greco-Turkish war, after which ... all censuses as to races in these parts became open to suspicion. According to these statistics, the population of Turkish Thrace and of the part of Bulgarian Thrace ceded to the Allies by the treaty of Neuilly was: Greeks, 304,500: Mussulmans, 265,300; Bulgarians, 72,500.”
On receipt of this communication, the delegation naturally asked to what region the Greeks “who were evicted during the Balkan wars” had migrated, and to what extent, according to the Foreign Office estimates, “counter-migration of Turks had taken place into what is the present Turkish Thrace,” when Macedonia was made, on the authority of Englishmen themselves, “an empty egg-shell” and when the Greeks and Bulgarians had decided to leave no Turks in the occupied territories, to make a “Turkish question” within the newly extended boundaries of Greece and Bulgaria. It was natural that part of the Turkish population driven away from Macedonia should settle down in the Turkish territory conterminous to Eastern Thrace, as it actually did.
With regard to the “100,000” Greeks “deported into Anatolia from Turkish Thrace during the course of these wars,” and the “100,000 driven across the frontiers of Turkish Thrace,” the delegation asked to what part of Anatolia the deportees had been taken, and to what extent this deportation had affected the proportion of Turkish and Greek populations in that part of Anatolia. It would certainly be unfair to make Turkish Thrace preponderatingly Greek by including in its Greek population figures of Greek deportees who had already served to swell the figures of the Greek population in Anatolia. Under such circumstances, as the figures which the Prime Minister considered as reliable on January 5, 1918, had been discarded since and as the figures of a quarter of a century ago were evidently open to discussion, the delegation proposed that the Supreme Council should be given a complete set of figures for every vilayet, and if possible for every sanjak or kaza, of the Turkish Empire as it was in 1914. But the Prime Minister’s secretary merely answered that it was impossible to enter into a discussion “on the vexed question of the population statistics in these areas.”
As to Smyrna, the statistics plainly show that, though there is an important Greek colony at Smyrna, all the region nevertheless is essentially Turkish. The figures provided by the Turkish Government, those of the French Yellow Book, and those given by Vital Cuinet agree on this point.
According to the French Yellow Book, the total population of the vilayet included 78·05 per cent. Turks against 14·9 per cent. Greeks.
M. Vital Cuinet gives a total population of 1,254,417 inhabitants (971,850 Turks and 197,257 Greeks), and for the town of Smyrna 96,250 Turks against 57,000 Greeks.
According to the last Ottoman statistics in 1914 the town of Smyrna, where the Greek population had increased, had 111,486 Turks against 87,497 Greeks; but in the whole vilayet there were 299,097 Greeks—_i.e._, 18 per cent.—against 1,249,067 Turks, or 77 per cent., and 20,766 Armenians.
From the 299,097 Greeks mentioned in the statistics we should deduct the 60,000 or 80,000 Greeks who were expelled from the vilayet, by way of reprisal after the events of Macedonia in January to June, 1914. The latter, according to the agreement between Ghalib Kemaly Bey, Turkish minister at Athens, and M. Venizelos (July, 1914), come under the same head as the Greeks of Thrace and Smyrna who were to be exchanged for the Mussulmans of Macedonia.
Mr. Lloyd George’s secretary, whom the Indian delegation also asked, in reference to Smyrna, on what figures he based his statements, answered on behalf of the Prime Minister:
“The pre-war figures for the sanjak of Smyrna, according to the American estimates, which are the most up-to-date and impartial, give the following result: Greeks, 375,000; Mussulmans, 325,000; Jews, 40,000; and Armenians, 18,000. These figures only relate to the sanjak of Smyrna, and there are other kazas in the neighbourhood which also show a majority of Greeks.”
Now, according to the official Turkish figures, the sanjak of Smyrna had, before the war, 377,000 Mussulmans as against 218,000 Greeks, while during the war the Muslim figure rose to 407,000 and the Greek figure was considerably reduced. Only in the kazas of Urla, Shesmeh, Phocœa, and Kara-Burun in the sanjak of Smyrna, are there Greek majorities; but in no other kaza, whether of Magnesia, Aidin, or Denizli, is the Greek element in a majority. Moreover, the Greek minority is important only in the kaza of Seuki in the sanjak of Aidin; everywhere else it is, as a rule, less than 10 per cent., and only in two kazas is it 15 or 16 per cent.
The treaty recognises Armenia as a free and independent State, and the President of the United States is to arbitrate on the question of the frontier to be fixed between Turkey and Armenia in the vilayets of Erzerum, Trebizond, Van, and Bitlis. Now, though everybody—including the Turks—acknowledges that as a principle it is legitimate to form an Armenian State, yet when we consider the nature of the population of these vilayets, we cannot help feeling anxious at the condition of things brought about by this decision.
As a matter of fact, in Erzerum there are 673,000 Mussulmans, constituting 82·5 per cent. of the population, as against 136,000 Armenians, or 16·5 per cent. In Trebizond the Mussulmans number 921,000, or 82 per cent. of the population, as against 40,000 Armenians, or 23·5 per cent. In the vilayet of Van the Muslim population is 179,000, or 69 per cent., and the Armenian population 67,000, or 26 per cent. In Bitlis the Mussulmans number 310,000, or 70·5 per cent., as against 119,000 Armenians, constituting 27 per cent. Thus, in these four vilayets the Mussulmans number 2,083,000, and the Armenians 362,000, the average being 80 per cent. against 13 per cent.
On the other hand, it is difficult to prove that Turkey has persistently colonised these territories. The only fact that might countenance such an assertion is that at various times, especially after the Crimean war, many Tatars sought shelter in that part of the Empire, and that in 1864, and again in 1878, Circassians, escaping from the Russian yoke, took refuge there after defending their country. The number of the families that immigrated is estimated about 70,000. Turkey encouraged them to settle down there all the more willingly as they were a safeguard to her against the constant threat of Russia. But as early as 1514, at the time of the Turkish conquest, the Armenians were inferior in number, owing to the Arabian and Persian pressure that repeatedly brought about an exodus of the native population northwards and westwards, and because some Persian, Arabian, Seljukian, Turkish, and Byzantine elements slowly crept into the country. In 1643 Abas Schah, after his victorious campaign against Turkey, drove away nearly 100,000 Armenians, and later on a huge number of Armenians emigrated into Russia of their own free will after the treaty of Turkmen-Tchai in 1828.