Part 4

After the French victory in the East and the capitulation of Bulgaria, the political changes, which had already begun in Turkey, soon became quite pronounced. Talaat Pasha, whose ideas differed utterly from those of Enver Pasha, and who had more and more confined his activity to the war department, had gradually lost his influence over the policy of the Empire since the death of Mehmed V. After having taken his share, together with Enver and Jemal, in bringing Turkey into the war by the side of the Central Powers in 1914, he now realised that the game was up. Besides, the Ottoman Press now openly attacked the Cabinets of the two Empires, and reproached them with neglecting the interests of the Porte when the additional treaty of Brest-Litovsk was drafted, during the negotiations of Bukharest, and later on in the course of the negotiations with the Cabinet of Sofia.

Talaat, Javid, and Enver sought shelter in Berlin. Their flight greatly affected the new Constantinople Government on account of some financial malversations which had occurred while the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress were in office. So the Sublime Porte in December, 1918, demanded their extradition, which Germany refused to grant. In April, 1919, Talaat, who lived in Berlin under the name of Sali Ali Bey, and who later on opened a public-house in that city, was sentenced to death by default in Constantinople, and a year later, in March, 1920, England, according to a clause of the Versailles treaty, put him down on the list of the war-criminals[14] whose extradition might be demanded.

Footnotes:

10: _L’Éclair:_ “Comment le Goeben et le Breslau échappèrent aux flottes alliées,” by Henry Miles, June 16, 1921.

11: M. Bompard’s letter to the editor of the _Éclair_, June 23, 1921.

12: Blue Book, No. 64.

13: _Ibid._, No. 70.

14: Since the publication of the French edition of this book Talaat was murdered on March 15, 1921, at Charlottenburg, by an Armenian student named Solomon Teilirian, aged twenty-four, a native of Salmas in Persia.

IV

TURKEY AND THE CONFERENCE

As early as 1916 the Allies seem to have come to an agreement over the principle of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. In their answer to President Wilson they mentioned among their war aims “to enfranchise the populations enslaved to the sanguinary Turks,” and “to drive out of Europe the Ottoman Empire, which is decidedly alien to Western civilisation.”

According to the conventions about the impending partition of Turkey concluded between the Allies in April and May, 1916, and August, 1917, Russia was to take possession of the whole of Armenia and Eastern Anatolia, Constantinople, and the Straits. In virtue of the treaty signed in London on May 16, 1916, fixing the boundaries of two zones of British influence and two zones of French influence, France and England were to share Mesopotamia and Syria, France getting the northern part with Alexandretta and Mosul, and England the southern part with Haïfa and Baghdad. According to the treaty of August 21, 1917, Italy was to have Western Asia Minor with Smyrna and Adalia. Palestine was to be internationalised and Arabia raised to the rank of an independent kingdom.

But, following the breakdown of Russia and the entrance of America into the war, the conventions of 1916 and 1917 were no longer held valid. President Wilson declared in the fourteenth of his world-famous points that: “The Turkish parts of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured of secure sovereignty, but the other nations now under Turkish rule should be assured security of life and autonomous development.”

It follows that the partition of Turkish territories such as Mesopotamia or Syria between Powers that had no right to them, as was foreshadowed in the conventions of 1916, was no longer admitted; and the Conference in February, 1919, decided, at Mr. Wilson’s suggestion, that all territories that belonged to the Ottoman Empire before should be put under the control of the League of Nations, which was to assign mandates to certain Great Powers.

According to the decisions taken at that time, and at the special request of M. Venizelos, the Greeks obtained all the western coast of Asia Minor between Aivali and the Gulf of Kos, with Pergamus, Smyrna, Phocœa, Magnesia, Ephesus, and Halicarnassus, and a hinterland including all the vilayet of Aidin, except the sanjak of Denizli and part of that of Mentesha (Mughla).

The Italian delegation thought fit to make reservations about the assignment of Smyrna to Greece.

It seems that in the course of the conversations at St-Jean-de-Maurienne—Greece being still neutral at the time—M. Ribot asked Baron Sonnino whether Italy, to facilitate the conclusion of a separate peace with Austria-Hungary, would eventually consent to give up Trieste in exchange for Smyrna. The Italian delegation had merely noted down the offer, without giving an answer. The Italian diplomats now recalled that offer as an argument, not so much to lay a claim to Smyrna—as their subsequent attitude showed—as to prevent a change to Italy’s disadvantage in the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean, and an infringement of the London treaty that guaranteed her definite possession of the Dodecanese.

Moreover, according to Article 9 of the London treaty, in case of a partition of Asia Minor, or merely in case zones of influence should be marked out in it, Italy was to have the same share as the other Powers and receive, together with the province of Adalia, where she had acquired a paramount influence and obtained a recognition of her rights from Turkey in 1912, the neighbouring regions. In accordance with this article, the Conference seemed inclined to give Italy an international mandate for all the part of Asia Minor that was to be left to the Turks—namely, all the Anatolian plateau, including the vilayets of Kastamuni, Brusa, Angora, Konia, and Sivas. It is obvious that the difficulties raised by the assignment of Smyrna to Greece could not but be aggravated by the new political situation in case this mandate should be given to the Italians.

Consequently, when the Italians saw Smyrna assigned to Greece, they were all the more anxious to give to their new zone of influence in Asia Minor an outlet to the sea that should not depend on the great port of Western Asia Minor. After considering Adalia, Makri, and Marmaris, which are good harbours but do not communicate with the interior and are not connected with the chief commercial routes of the continent, their attention was drawn to Kush-Adassi, called by the Greeks New Ephesus and by themselves Scala Nuova, a port that numbered about 6,000 souls before the war, lying opposite to Samos, in the Gulf of Ephesus, about ten miles from the ruin of the old town of the same name and the Smyrna-Aidin railway.

This port, which is situated on the mouth of the Meander, might easily be connected by a few miles of railroad with the main railway line to the south of Ayasaluk which brings towards the Ægean Sea all the produce of Asia Minor; then it would divert from Smyrna much of the trade of Aidin, Denizli, and the lake region. To the merchants of Asia Minor—who deal with Syria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and all Western Europe, excepting those who trade with the Black Sea—the Kush-Adassi line would be both faster and cheaper, if this port was as well equipped as Smyrna.

But, as Kush-Adassi happened to be in the zone which at first had been assigned to Greece and whose frontier goes down to the south as far as Hieronda Bay, Italy endeavoured in every way to carry farther to the north the boundaries of the Italian zone, in order to include this port in it. For this purpose, Italy took advantage of the troubled condition of the area round Aidin, Sokia, and Cape Mycale to send a police force up the Meander and the railway line along it, in order to carry her control up to the Gulf of Ephesus. Of course the territory lying between Hieronda and Kush-Adassi still remained part of the Greek zone of occupation, but, all the same, Italy set foot in it. Her diplomats soon turned this fact into a right of possession.

M. Tittoni soon after agreed to play the part of arbiter in the question of the southern frontier of Bulgaria; and in July, 1919, it was announced that after some conversations between M. Venizelos and M. Tittoni an understanding had been reached about Thrace and Northern Epirus, whereby Greece agreed to enlarge the northern part of the Italian zone of occupation in Asia Minor, and gave up to Italy the valley of the Meander. So, though on the whole M. Tittoni’s arbitration was in favour of Greece, Italy obtained the territorial triangle included between Hieronda, Nazili, and Kush-Adassi, the control over the Meander, and to a certain extent over the railway. In return for this, Italy promised to cede to Greece the Dodecanese except one, captured by Italy in 1912 during her war with Turkey, together with the Isle of Rhodes, though she had a right to keep the latter for at least five years. In case England should grant the inhabitants of Cyprus the right to pass under Greek sovereignty, Italy was to hold a plebiscite in Rhodes and let the native population become Greeks if they wished. By supporting the Greek claims in Thrace, Italy won the sympathies of Greece at a time when the latter both consolidated the rights of Italy on the continent and strengthened her own situation in the Dodecanese.

The control over the eastern part of Asia Minor which was to fall to the lot of the Armenians and included the vilayets of Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Kharput, Diarbekir, and probably Trebizond—the population of the latter vilayet consisting chiefly of Moslems with a Greek minority—was to be assumed, so the Great Powers thought, by the United States.

It should be remembered that the question of the eastern vilayets was raised for the first time by the Tsars of Russia, and gave them a pretext for intervening in the domestic affairs of Turkey and thus carrying out their plans of expansion in Asia Minor. As a matter of fact, those vilayets were not really Armenian. The Armenians were in a minority there, except in two or three districts where, as throughout the Ottoman Empire, they were mixed up with Turks. They had lived peaceably together till the Powers thought fit to support the claims of the Armenians and incite them to rebel, in order to further their own aims in Turkey, by a misuse of the privileges granted them by the Capitulations.

Constantinople and the Straits seemed likely to be internationalised.

Lastly, the Arabian part of the Turkish Empire was to be cut off from it, though nobody could tell expressly in what manner, but in a way which it was easy to foresee.

We shall deal later on with the negotiations that took place during the war between the British Government and Hussein, Grand Sherif of Mecca, the Emir Feisal’s father, and we have already mentioned the help given to the British army by the Emir Feisal’s troops, after the aforesaid negotiations. These facts throw a light on the policy pursued by England later on; and besides, immediately after the hostilities, in a speech made in London on Friday, November 1, 1918, Mr. Barnes, a Labour member of the British Cabinet, while speaking on the armistice with Turkey, acknowledged:

“We could have signed it before, for we held the Turks at our discretion. For the last fortnight the Turks had been suing for peace, but we were on the way to Aleppo, which is to be the capital of the future independent Arab State, established in an Arab country and governed by Arabs. So we did not want to have done with the Turks till we had taken Aleppo.”

Such was the condition of the Turkish problem when the Peace Conference took it in hand for the first time.

Rivalries naturally soon arose.

The Emir Feisal, supported by England, laid claim not only to the whole of Arabia, but also to Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia to make up a huge Arab Empire, under his father’s rule. France, who opposed that plan, convened a Syrian Congress in Marseilles, to raise a protest against the partition of Syria as had been laid down by the Franco-English agreement of 1916.

Soon after the landing of Greek troops in Smyrna on the morning of May 15, 1919, brought about a serious conflict.

It is noteworthy that after General Allenby’s victories in Palestine and the resignation and flight of Talaat, Enver, and Jemal, General Izzet Pasha, who had been appointed Grand Vizier, had signed, on October 31, 1918, a convention of armistice, which put Turkish ports and railways under the Allies’ provisional control and allowed them “in case things should become alarming for them” to occupy “all strategic points.” This armistice had been concluded on the basis of Mr. Wilson’s principle that “to the Turkish regions of the Ottoman Empire an unqualified sovereignty should be ensured.” In no respect had the Turks broken the agreement when the Allies infringed it by allowing the Greeks to occupy Smyrna. This occupation, carried on in spite of France, who was not energetic enough, and one might almost say in spite of Italy, created a very serious situation.

Indeed, no good reason could be given in support of this decision. By the help of misleading or false information cleverly worded and widely distributed by a propaganda which overwhelmed the Press—and was only equalled by the propaganda carried on by Poland—political manœuvres induced the Allies to allow Greece, who wished to become “Greater Greece” and wanted Epirus, Thrace, Constantinople, Smyrna, Trebizond, and Adana, to occupy a region belonging to Anatolia, where the Turkish element predominates more than in all the rest of the Ottoman Empire, for there are only 300,000 Greeks against about 1,300,000 Turks. This permission granted to Greece was the more surprising as it seems to have been obtained because the Greek Government had informed the Supreme Council that the disorder prevailing in the vilayet of Smyrna was a danger to the non-Turkish populations.

Now the report of the Inter-allied Commission about the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the neighbouring territories which was sent later on and was dated from Constantinople, October 12, 1919, began as follows:

“The inquiry has proved that since the armistice the general condition of the Christians of the vilayet of Aidin has been satisfactory, and their security has not been threatened.

“If the occupation of Smyrna was ordered by the Peace Conference owing to inaccurate information, the primary responsibility lies with the individuals or governments that gave or transmitted inconsiderately such information as is mentioned in No. 1 of the established facts.

“It is obvious, therefore, that this occupation was not at all justifiable, and violated the terms of the armistice concluded between the Powers and Turkey.”

Moreover, to quote the very words of that report, the Greek occupation, “far from appearing as carrying out a civilising mission, has immediately put on the aspect of a conquest and a crusade.”

This inquiry, on the one hand, acknowledged that the responsibility for the events that took place at Smyrna on May 15 and 16 and in the immediate neighbourhood during the first days following the landing, lay with the Greek headquarters and some officers who did not perform their duty. On the other hand it stated that part of the responsibility rested with the Turkish authorities at Smyrna, who took no step to prevent the escape and arming of common law prisoners before the coming of the Greeks. Then it went on as follows:

“In the person of the high civil authority that represents it at Smyrna, the Greek Government is responsible for the serious disturbances that ended in bloodshed in the interior of the country during the advance of the Greek troops.... The Greeks alone are responsible for the bloodshed at Menemen.... The Greek officers who were at Menemen quite neglected their duty.”

And the Commission wound up its report with this:

“In the occupied region, putting aside the towns of Smyrna—where the number of Christians is high, but the number of Greek Christians much inferior to that of the Turks—and Aivali, the predominance of the Turkish element over the Greek element is undeniable.”

So we easily understand the violent and justifiable indignation felt by the Turks when the Greek troops landed, for they could not forget that now there were no Turks in Thessaly, where they numbered 150,000 in 1878, or in the Morea, where there had once been 300,000, and that in Greece only about 20,000 were left of the 100,000 that had once lived there.

M. Venizelos, in a letter addressed on May 29 to the President of the Conference, thought it his duty to give particulars about the way the occupation had been effected. After setting right what he styled “the wrong and misleading information given by newspapers,” he stated that the Greeks had “arrived at Aidin, on the southern side, east of Nymphaton and north of the River Ermos.” The Great Powers having asked the Greek Government, as he said expressly in his letter, “to occupy Smyrna and its environs” without stating exactly how far the environs of Smyrna reached, he thought he had a right to look upon this operation—which had been attended with a few incidents and had not been received everywhere with unmixed joy—as the outcome of a settled policy. After this occupation public meetings of protest took place in Constantinople.

An important Crown Council was held in the afternoon of May 26 at Yildiz-Kiosk, in order to enable the various political groups to express their opinion concerning the recent events.

The Sultan, attended by the princes of the Imperial Family, opened the meeting, and stated it had been thought necessary to call together the most eminent men of Turkey that they might express their opinion about the critical condition of the country.

The Grand Vizier, after recalling the events that had taken place in Turkey since the beginning of the war, asked the audience to let him have their opinions.

The Unionist group said they were dissatisfied with the composition of the Ministry, and demanded a Coalition Government, in which all parties should be represented.

Another political group asked the Crown Council to form itself into a National Assembly.

Somebody else showed the inanity of such suggestions and proposed to entrust the mandate of the administration of Turkey to a Great Power—without mentioning which Power. He added: “Otherwise Turkey will be dismembered, which would be her ruin.”

As the assembly had merely consultative powers, no decision was reached.

At the beginning of June, 1919, the Ottoman League sent from Geneva to Mr. Montagu, British Secretary for India, the following note:

“The Ottoman League has examined the statements which your Excellency was so kind as to make at the Peace Conference, regarding the subsequent fate of the Ottoman Empire.

“We have always been convinced that His Britannic Majesty’s Government in its relations with our country would resume its traditional policy, which was started and advocated by the most famous English statesmen, and that, after obtaining the guarantees required for the safety of its huge dominions, it would refuse to countenance any measure aiming at the oppression and persecution of Moslems.

“The British Government can realise better than any other Power the disastrous consequences that would necessarily follow throughout Islam on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and any blow struck at its vital parts, especially at its capital, the universally revered seat of the Khilafat, where the best works of Moslem civilisation have been gathered for centuries.

“We feel certain that your Excellency will also realise better than anybody else of what importance would be to Great Britain the loyalty, not only of the Ottoman Moslems without any distinction of race, but of all the Mohammedans whose destiny is presided over by His Britannic Majesty.”

At last, about the end of the month, the treaty with Turkey was drafted by the Conference, and on June 11 the Turkish representatives were brought to France on board the French ironclad _Démocratie_.

The delegation included Tewfik Pasha, Riza Tewfik Bey, with Reshid Bey, former Minister of the Interior, as adviser. At its head was Damad Ferid Pasha, the Sultan’s brother-in-law, who, after the resignation of the Tewfik Pasha Cabinet at the beginning of March, 1919, had formed a new Ministry.

As was stated in the Allies’ answer to the Porte in the letter addressed to the Turkish Premier, Damad Ferid Pasha, Turkey had not attempted in the memorandum handed to the Conference to excuse the Germano-Turkish intrigues which had paved the way for her to take part in the war on the side of the Germans; neither had she attempted to clear herself of all the crimes she was charged with. Damad Ferid Pasha had simply pleaded that only the “Young Turks” of the Committee of Union and Progress were responsible for the Ottoman policy during the last five years, and that, if they had governed the Empire, as it were, in the name of the Germans, the whole Turkish nation could not be held responsible for this.

The Allies pointed out in their reply that they could not accept the distinction which cast all the blame on the Government and alleged the misdeeds were not imputable to the Turkish people merely because these misdeeds were abhorrent to Turkish ideas, as shown in the course of centuries. So the Allies informed the delegation they could not grant their request to restore Ottoman sovereignty over territories that had been taken away from them before.

Yet the Council, though they declared they could not accept such views or enter upon such a controversy, launched into considerations on Turkish ideas and Turkish influence in the world which, to say the least, were most questionable, as will be seen later on.