The Turkish War of Independence: a Military History, 1919
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The Turkish War of Independence

The Turkish War of Independence A Military History, 1919–1923 Edward J. Erickson

Copyright © 2021 by Edward J. Erickson All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Erickson, Edward J., 1950-author. Title: The Turkish War of Independence : a military history, 1919–1923 / Edward J. Erickson. Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021008010 (print) | LCCN 2021008011 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440878411 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440878428 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Turkey—History—Revolution, 1918–1923. | Turkey—History, Military—20th century. | Turkey—Politics and government—1918–1960. | Turkey—History—Revolution, 1918–1923—Historiography. | Turkey—History, Military—Historiography. Classification: LCC DR589 .E757 2021 (print) | LCC DR589 (ebook) | DDC 956.1/023—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008010 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008011 ISBN: 978-1-4408-7841-1 (print) 978-1-4408-7842-8 (ebook) 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 This book is also available as an eBook. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 147 Castilian Drive Santa Barbara, California 93117 www.abc-clio.com This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my wife, Jennifer Collins, for her unstinting and tireless understanding and for encouraging me to reengage and pursue this long-delayed book.

Contents

Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii ONE

The End of World War I

1

TWO

28

THREE

Call to Arms . To the First Inönü Campaign

FOUR

The Long War against Insurgents

86

FIVE

A Short War on the Eastern Front

119

SIX

151

SEVEN

The Franco-Turkish War . Second Inönü and Kütahya-Eskis¸ehir

EIGHT

The Culminating Point at Sakarya

205

NINE

Operational and Strategic Pause

245

TEN

The Great Offensive and the Pursuit to Izmir

271

ELEVEN

The Advance to the Straits and the Armistice

307

55

178

TWELVE The Treaty of Lausanne and the Establishment of the Turkish Republic 326

viii Contents

Conclusion 341 Appendix A: Casualties by Professor Konstantinos Travlos

351

Appendix B: Campaigns of the Turkish War of Independence

361

Bibliography 365 Index 377

Illustrations

MAPS 1.1 The Ottoman Army (May 14, 1919)

11

3.1 The Greek Occupation of Eastern Thrace . 3.2 First Inönü Greek Campaign Plan

68

4.1 Internal Uprisings

90

77

5.1 Sarıkamıs¸ Offensive (September 28, 1920)

136

5.2 Encirclement of Kars (October 27, 1920)

141

6.1 Southern Front (April 1, 1920)

163

7.1 Greek Northern Advance (March 23, 1921) . 7.2 Ismet’s Pursuit (April 3, 1921)

182 185

8.1 Movement to Contact (August 14–17, 1921)

210

8.2 Tactical Pause (August 23–27, 1921)

214

8.3a Chal Dag (August 28–30, 1921)

218

8.3b Chal Dag (August 30–September 8, 1921)

219

8.4 Nationalist Counteroffensive (September 9–12, 1921)

227

8.5 The Greek Retreat to Eskis¸ehir (September 14–20, 1921)

233

9.1 The Nationalist Plan

262

10.1 Prebattle Prep (August 25, 1922)

276

10.2 The Great Offensive (Nightfall, August 26, 1922)

280

x Illustrations

10.3 Commander in Chief’s Battle (August 28–29, 1922)

286

10.4 Pursuit (September 2, 1922)

290

11.1 Dardanelles (September 28, 1922)

313

TABLES 1.1 Ottoman Army Corps, May 14, 1919

8

12.1 The Turkish Republican Army in 1923

334

A.1 Military Casualties

356

B.1 Campaigns of the Turkish War of Independence

362

Acknowledgments

I could not have completed this book without the assistance and advice of my good friend and colleague, Professor Konstantinos Travlos of Özyeg˘in University. I am incredibly indebted to Konstantinos’s brilliant analysis and keen eye for mistakes in the draft manuscripts. Moreover, he is the keystone in the architecture of nonpartisan academic balance that I believe this book represents. I also owe a personal and special thanks to my dear Turkish friend and colleague Dr. Mesut Uyar, dean of the School of Business and Social Sciences at Antalya Bilim University, whose knowledge and understanding of the Ottoman and Nationalist Armies during this period is unrivalled in the world today. I am fortunate to count among my personal friends Dr. Yücel Güçlü of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dr. Maxime Gauin, whose knowledge of Armenian activities in Cilicia is unmatched anywhere in the world. Their work and support have been particularly useful in understanding the war against the French. I am indebted to the scholarly works of the authors mentioned in my introduction and, in particular, Richard Hovannisian for his monumental study of the First Armenian Republic and Ismet Görgülü for his efforts in assembling Ottoman and Turkish orders of battle. This book could not have been produced without the encouragement and assistance of my acquisitions editor at Praeger Publishers, Dr. Vince Burns. Vince’s immediate interest and critical support of this project during the COVID-19 pandemic was critical to shepherding it through to a contract. I am also grateful for the excellent and thorough copyediting of Angel Daphnee as well as for the advice of my production editor Bridget Austiguy-Preschel.

Introduction

On this world so torn with strife I dread to see you let loose the Greek armies—for all our sakes and certainly for theirs.1 Winston S. Churchill to David Lloyd-George March 24, 1920

DÉBUT There is a large gap in the extant military historiography of the post–World War I era because there has never been a comprehensive work in the English language that integrates the various military fronts and operations conducted in the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923). In what is sometimes called the Greco-Turkish War, the Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, fought a bitter and costly war to expel the Greek, French, British, Italian, and Armenian occupying forces, many pursuing national stakes of their own, to restore Turkish sovereignty to the Anatolian heartland. Many World War I histories, written in English, end with the signing of the Mudros Armistice on October 30, 1918 (which led to the occupation of Istanbul, the Turkish Straits, and the railway passes in the Toros Mountains by the British and French). However, the narrative ought not to end there. The subsequent failure of the Allies to negotiate a fair and durable peace treaty with the Turks in 1919 led to further crises and war. The issue of who had claim to Anatolia and the Aegean littoral became a cause célèbre in the early 1920s. The Turkish War of Independence: A Military History, 1919–1923 is a strategic, operational, and tactical history of the Turkish War of

xiv Introduction

Independence. It is a synthesis based on the Turkish, Greek, British, French, and Italian official military histories, as well as the extant field of secondary sources (although, as the literature review reveals, all the official histories and much of the secondary material, especially the work of Hovannisian and Shaw, derive directly from primary sources in the official archives). The Turkish War of Independence completes a trilogy of books that I aspired to write concerning the conventional wars of the Ottoman and Turkish armies in the early twentieth century. The first two of these are Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913 (Praeger), published in 2003 and Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Praeger), published in 2001. In my defense, I was waylaid by the centenary of World War I, which focused me more narrowly on writing about the Gallipoli and Palestine campaigns. The Turkish War of Independence also complements and adds to my study of the Ottoman campaigns of counterinsurgency fought in the period 1876–1918, which was published as Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency (Palgrave Macmillan) in 2013. Taken together, these four books present a comprehensive treatment of the organization, command, and combat operations of the Ottoman Army and its successor Turkish Nationalist Army in the period 1900–1923.

DEFINING THE TURKISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE World War I in the Middle East did not end the fighting with the armistice at Mudros on October 30, 1918, nor did it settle the problem of what to do with the territory and peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the fighting continued over the next five years, finally ending with the establishment of the. modern Republic of Turkey. The Turks call this period of sustained war I stiklâl Harbi (the Independence War) and Millî Mücadele (the National Struggle), while many English-language histories call it the “Turkish War of Independence” or the “War of National Liberation.”2 The fighting in western Anatolia and the Aegean littoral is often called the “Greco-Turkish War,” but this is an incomplete description when considering the multifront entirety of the war. It was a multifront war, although there was essentially no coordination between the Greek, Armenian, and French opponents of the Nationalists, justifying the view that each of the conflicts was distinct for those nations. However, from the Nationalist

Introduction xv

perspective, these three fronts were interconnected and formed one strategic whole. Indeed, the complexity of the war, its character, and its participants make defining it with a single descriptive phrase quite difficult. It was, in many ways, never about independence as we understand that word but more about liberation from foreign occupation and resistance to foreign domination. For most Greeks and Armenians, their wars were part of national liberation struggles consummating ancient territorial claims against what they saw as a genocidal master. For the Muslims of the Anatolia and Muslim refugees who made Anatolia their last refuge—the people who increasingly saw themselves as Turks—their struggle was justified in the principle of nationality and sovereign independence. While it is trivially true that defeat would not have eliminated a Turkish state in Anatolia, that state would likely have suffered a historical trajectory similar to that of Iran, from division into foreign spheres of influence, continuous penetration of domestic politics by foreign powers, further territorial loss, and authoritarian rule by absolutists contending with regional warlords, all cumulating into an Islamist, Marxist, or mixed mass revolution. Like the American Civil War, this was a war made of wars and an existential struggle for a vast future. Starting in November 1918, foreign powers—Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Armenia—occupied significant parts of Anatolia and Thrace, leaving the rump Ottoman state with only the city of Istanbul and Mustafa Kemal’s Nationalists with only the Anatolian plateau. In the beginning stages of the war, nonstate secret societies organized to smuggle arms and equipment out of the areas of Allied occupation. Then the Nationalists defied the Ottoman government and declared a national movement dedicated to freeing the Anatolian heartland from foreign occupation. The Ottoman Army was largely persuaded to abandon its own government and join the Nationalists. In the Aegean littoral against the Greeks and in eastern Anatolia against the Armenians, the Nationalists raised conventional armies from the detritus of defeat to fight large-scale, multifront conventional wars. As the fighting intensified against the French occupation of Cilicia (south-central Anatolia), the hard-pressed Nationalists responded with irregular and militia groups. Moreover, they had to contend simultaneously with dozens of uprisings and rebellions as tribal entities, ethnic minorities, and political groups sought autonomy and independence. As the war progressed, Kemal used his growing military strength to deter the British and French in the 1922 Chanak Crisis. Kemal and the Nationalists

xvi Introduction

fought overlapping and simultaneous wars of differing types in the period 1918–1923. Using contemporary twenty-first century military terminology, these overlapping conflicts can be characterized as hybrid warfare. In 2020, NATO defines a “hybrid threat” as a combination of threats that are military and nonmilitary and employ covert and overt means, including disinformation, cyberattacks, economic pressure, and deployment of irregular armed groups in coordination with the use of regular forces.3 NATO further adds the idea of blending the activities of deniable forces (volunteers who are sometimes called “green men” today) and nonstate actors into the hybrid mix as well. The concept of hybrid warfare, therefore, might be identified as the simultaneous accretion and employment of many forms of warfare. The difficulty of responding effectively to hybrid threats cannot be overstated. This was the situation confronting Kemal and the Nationalists in 1919. Retrofitting this modern concept into the world as it existed in 1919–1923, we might consider that Kemal’s Nationalists simultaneously waged conventional wars against the Greeks and Armenians, irregular and conventional war against the French, counterinsurgency campaigns against their own citizens, a civil war and rebellion against the Ottoman government in Istanbul. Moreover, the Nationalists conducted deterrence operations against the British and French in the straits region, information warfare (mostly propaganda) against the Allied occupation forces and the sultan, arms smuggling by secret societies, resistance to economic blockade and the occupation of strategic points, cooperative diplomacy to gain the support of nonstate actors such as the early Bolsheviks, and nation-building activities to restore military capability and capacity. Lastly, an elegant solution to the problem of defining these overlapping wars is a phrase originated by Professor Konstantinos Travlos characterizing the Turkish War of Independence as a “war made of wars.”4

ORGANIZATION AND CONTENT The Turkish War of Independence presents a chronological narrative that is organized thematically around the different fighting fronts on which the Nationalist armies and forces fought—chapter 1: “The . End of World War I,” chapter 2: “Call to Arms,” chapter 3: “To the First Inönü Campaign,” chapter 4: “The Long War against Insurgents,” chapter 5: “A Short War on the Eastern Front,” chapter 6: “The Franco-Turkish War,” chapter 7: “Second

Introduction xvii

. Inönü and Kütahya-Eskis¸ehir,” chapter 8: “The Culminating Point at Sakarya,” chapter 9: “Operational and Strategic Pause,” chapter 10: “The Great Offensive and the Pursuit to Izmir,” chapter 11: “The Advance to the Straits and the Armistice,” and chapter 12: “The Treaty of Lausanne and the Establishment of the Turkish Republic.” The Turkish War of Independence focuses on the Nationalist strategy and the operational-level campaigns that were waged to fulfill their strategic objectives. It is a broad survey with a focus on understanding why and how the Nationalists balanced ends, ways, and means to achieve their strategic objectives. The book is not a cultural, diplomatic, or social history of these events, although, from time to time, these subjects must be introduced to provide context for explaining military operations. The book is also not intended as an extended biography of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk— although he played a prominent and decisive role in these wars. I have not intentionally left out airpower and sea power from the story, but these capabilities were never particularly important in these wars. Airplanes were used by all participants but almost exclusively for reconnaissance and scouting, and I have included where these were tactically useful. Some readers will likely be disappointed because I have left out first-person narratives of the experience of war on individuals, particularly refugees and displaced persons. Moreover, others will be disappointed that I have left out many details of atrocities and crimes committed against the civilian populations of the war zones, including those against Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Nestorians, Circassians, and Turks. While these threads are all important, these kinds of details are not critical to an understanding of why and how military operations were planned and undertaken. Further, in this regard, Churchillian and western-centric epigraphs are provided at the head of each chapter for contemporary context, as Europeans and Americans observed these events at the time. None of the preceding choices are meant to de-emphasize component parts of the history, individuals, or ethnic groups. In this book, I refer to Mustafa Kemal’s Nationalists in Ankara as the “Nationalists” and its military forces as the “Nationalist Army” rather than as “Turks” and the “Turkish Army.” The extant literature in English mostly refers to the Ankara government as “Turks,” and, during the period 1920– 1923, the Europeans often referred to the Nationalists as “Kemalists.” While “Turks” they may have been—and “Turks” they had been called by the Europeans since the 1300s—the term is historically inaccurate, as is the term “Kemalists.” After the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923 and the

xviii Introduction

establishment of the Republic of Turkey later that year, the proper term is indeed “Turks”—but not before. Likewise, it is inaccurate to refer to the government of the Ottoman Empire as “Turks,” and I refer to the sultan’s government in Istanbul as the “Ottomans.” To be clear, not all citizens of the Ottoman Empire were “Turks” and not all adherents of the Nationalist cause were “Kemalists.” For the sake of brevity, I use the term “Greek Army” when the proper term is the Royal Hellenic Army, as well as associated terms such as the “Greek General Staff” (rather than Royal Hellenic General Staff). For the names of individuals and organizations, I have used the most commonly found spellings in English, simply because the Ottoman Turkish, Greek, and Armenian scripts must be transliterated into the English and European alphabets, rendering direct translation impossible.5 With a few exceptions noted in the text, I have used modern Turkish place names (followed by a western or Greek place name, as appropriate) should the reader wish to refer to a modern map of the theater of war. Last, in what I think adds fidelity to the narrative, I have used the term Asia Minor when describing Greek operations and the term Anatolia when describing Nationalist operations on the Greek-Turkish fronts. LITERATURE AND SOURCES This book is a broad survey covering several overlapping wars, conflicts, and rebellions based primarily on the Turkish, Greek, British, French, and Italian official military histories, as well as on the work of American historian Richard Hovannisian (the importance of which I will explain below). The overlapping modern official military histories of the component wars are readily available in European alphabets, and all were based on the military archives of the nation. Consequently, The Turkish War of Independence: A Military History, 1919–1923 integrates the extant field of official military histories with the smaller field of secondary literature and memoirs to achieve a balanced synthesis for writing an overall narrative. A brief summary of these official histories follows. The Turkish Official Military Histories The Turkish official military histories are based entirely on the massive archival records held by the Turkish General Staff’s history and archives division (ATASE) in Ankara. They were written in the period 1930–1970 by retired army general staff officers who had served in the wars and were

Introduction xix

fluent in the written version of the Ottoman Turkish language (their names may be found in the bibliography). They also took advantage of the existence of reserve officers of Ottoman Greek descent, who were able to translate some of the Greek literature into Turkish. Those translations are in the ATASE archives.6 The volumes used in this study are published in modern Turkish (with the publication dates following in ellipses).7

World War I

This book used three of the 27 World War I official histories. • • •

1918 Yılı Hareketleri, Vnci Cilt (1967) Hicaz, Asir, Yemen Cepheleri ve Libya Harekâtı (1978) Birinci Dünya Harbı Idarı Faalıyetler ve Lojistik (1962)

Mudros Armistice

•

Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı (1962)

Western Front (Greek-Turkish War)

• • • • • • • • • •

Batı Cephesi (15 Mayıs–4 Eylül 1919) (1999) Batı Cephesi (4 Eylül 1919–9 Kasım 1920) (1999) Batı Cephesi (9 Kasım 1920–15 Nisan 1921) (1994) Kütahya, Eskis¸ehir Muharebeleri (15 Mayıs 1921–25 Temmuz 1921) (1974) . Sakarya Meydan Muharebesinden Önceki Olaylar ve Mevzi Ilerisindeki Harakât (25 Temmuz–22 Ag˘ustos 1921) (1972) Sakarya Meydan Muharebesi (23 Ag˘ustos–13 Eylül 1921) ve Sonraki Harekât (14 Eylül–10 Ekim 1921) (1973) Büyük Taarruza Hazırlık ve Büyük Taarruz (10 Ekim 1921–31 Temmuz 1922) (1967) Büyük Taarruz (1–31 Ag˘ustos 1922) (1968) Büyük Taarruzda Takip Harekâtı (31 Ag˘ustos–18 Eylül 1922) (1969) Son Safhası (18 Eylül–1 Kasım 1923) (1969)

xx Introduction

Eastern Front (Armenian-Turkish War)

•

Dog˘u Cephesi (1919–1921) (1965) Southern Front (Franco-Turkish War)

•

Güney Cephesi (2009) Rebellions and Uprisings

•

Ayaklanmalar (1919–1921) (1974) Naval and Air Operations

•

Deniz Cephesi ve Hava Harekâtı (1964) Logistics and Administration

•

. I dari Faaliyetler (15 Mayıs 1919–2 Kasım 1923) (1975)

Biographies of National, Front, Corps, Group, and Division Commanders

•

. Tümen ve daha Üst Kademelerdeki Komutanların Biyografileri (Ikinci Baskı) (1989)

Special Studies

• • • •

Kütahya ve Eskis¸ehir Muharebeleri (2006) 2nci Kolordu (1918–1921) (2006) Sakarya’dan Mudanya’ya (1972) Büyük Taarruz (1992)

The Greek Official Military History The Hellenic Army History Directorate published an English language concise history of the Greek-Turkish War in 2003. The authors are Demetrios Gedeon, Eupraxia Paschalidou, and Angeliki Dima-Dimitrou, and

Introduction xxi

the work is titled A Concise History of the Campaign in Asia Minor 1919– 1922 [English Edition] (hereafter in the text and end notes as the Concise Greek History).8 The 530-page Concise Greek History was consolidated from the following official histories, published in Greek by the Hellenic Army History Directorate, which were based on the army archives:9 • • • • • • • • •

The Greek Army in Smyrna (1957) Operations of Philadelphia, Prusa, Ishak (1958) Reconnaissance in Force December 1920–March 1921 (1963) Operations June–July 1921 (1965) Operations Towards Ankara (1965) The Events Preceding the Turkish Attack (1960) The End of the Campaign, Part 1: Struggles Related to the Withdrawal of Army Corps A and B (1962) The End of the Campaign, Part 2: Retreat of Army Corps C (1962) Operations in Thrace 1919–1923 (1969)

Armenian Military History The Republic of Armenia has produced no official military histories in a European Roman alphabet. However, the monumental work of American historian Richard G. Hovannisian, based on his original research in the Armenian state archives (as well as in western archives and Turkish sources), stands as a near-peer and reliable partner to the works previously discussed. Professor Hovannisian’s work comprises the following: • • • •

The Republic of Armenia: The First Year, 1918–1919, vol. 1 (1971) From Versailles to London, 1919–1920, vol. 2 (1982) From London to Sèvres, February–August 1920, vol. 3 (1996) Between Crescent and Sickle: Partition and Sovietization, vol. 4 (1996)

British Official History The British World War I official histories are based on the military archives and are well respected by military historians. The three volumes used in this book:

xxii Introduction

• • •

Military Operations, Egypt & Palestine: From June 1917 to the End of the War (1930) Military Operations Macedonia: From the Spring of 1917 to the End of the War (1935) The Occupation of Constantinople 1918–1923 (1944, unpublished until 2010)

French Official History The single French volume used in this study is: •

Les Armées Françaises dans la Grande Guerre: Les Fronts Secondaires, Tome IX, Ier Volume (1936)

Italian Official History The single Italian volume used in this study is: •

Il Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Anatolia (1919–1922) (2010)

Given the length of these wars and the scope of these events, the official histories are numerous and robust. However, the secondary field of literature about the military history of these wars and events for the English language reader is surprisingly limited. In addition to the works listed above, the most useful of the English language field includes W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff’s Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828–1921 (1953); Briton Cooper Busch’s Mudros to Lausanne: Britain’s Frontier in West Asia, 1918–1923 (1976); Bruce Clark’s Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (2006); Winston S. Churchill’s The World Crisis: The Aftermath, vol. 5 (1929); David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (1989); George W. Gawrych’s The Young Atatürk: From Ottoman Soldier to Statesman of Turkey (2015); Michael Llewellyn-Smith’s Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922 (1973); Andrew Mango’s Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (1999); Justin McCarthy’s Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922 (1995); Sean McMeekin’s The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East 1908–1923 (2015); Michael A. Reynold’s Shattering Empires: The

Introduction xxiii

Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (2011); Heinz A. Richter’s The Greek-Turkish War 1919–1922 (2016); Jeremy Salt’s The Last Ottoman Wars: The Human Cost, 1877–1923 (2020); Stanford Shaw’s From Republic to Empire: The Turkish War of National Liberation, 5 vols. (2000); David Walder’s The Chanak Affair (1969); and Robert F. Zeidner’s The Tricolor over the Taurus: The French in Cilicia and Vicinity, 1918–1922 (2005). There are several additional works in the Turkish language, including memoirs and secondary sources. I have listed these in the bibliography for those interested in a more thorough understanding of the references used in this book.10 There is also a massive amount of literature in Greek, which I cannot read, but of which numerous relevant parts were provided to me by Professor Konstantinos Travlos. According to Professor Travlos, almost all the commanders of the Field Army of Asia Minor who survived the war produced memoirs or books about their experience (e.g., Leonidas Paraskevopoulos and Anastasios Papoulas), and there is a hard-to-find and overpriced apologia for Georgios Chatzanestes. Some commanders of major units, such as Nikolaos Trikoupes, published apologia as well. Some access to the early Greek military history can be found in the various entries of the Great Military and Naval Encyclopedia, printed between 1924 and 1928, which essentially became the first official Greek history.11 Professor Travlos notes that the decision-makers who were privy to the debates on Greek strategy also produced works, often apologia and often reprinting archival documents (including Victor Dousmanes and Xenophon Strategos). A large secondary literature has developed, but it is marred by the continued legacy of the National Schism and is mostly focused on the Asia Minor Disaster; the destruction of the Ottoman Greek community because of the war; or issues of diplomacy, politics, or grand strategy. Both the Turkish and Greek secondary literature lack operational- and tactical-level critical analysis studies of battles and military operations of the kind that dominate the study of World Wars I and II (what is often called guns-and-trumpets history). Professor Travlos asserts, for example, that the only critical military history analysis of a specific operation that he is aware of is the limited-print two-volume work by Lieutenant General Christos Karrasos (published in 1968) of the Greek offensive of March/April 1921 (which is exceedingly hard to come by).12 Recently, Brigadier General (ret.) Basileios Loumiotes began engaging in the kind of archive-based, cross-referencing sources with battlefield archaeology study of specific actions during the war (specifically the activity of Colonel Plasteras). In

xxiv Introduction

Turkey, amateur battlefield archaeologists such as Serdar Aydın or ones working for the few national military history parks, such as Dr. Selim Erdog˘an, are introducing the type of battlefield archaeology studies that have become a hallmark of modern military history, complementing the work of Loumiotes. However, the lack of trained military historians who both command the new methodologies and have the linguistic command of Greek and Turkish, or Armenian and Turkish, is noticeable. Also problematic is the shadow cast by the Greek-Turkish and Armenia-Turkish interstate rivalries and the lack of any resolution on a common understanding of the shared history of these states, which makes collaboration across borders difficult and opens those who try to write robust military history at the operational and tactical level to attacks by the self-appointed adherents of politicized national and diaspora narratives. Hopefully this work will help provide a foundation for a younger generation of scholars to delve into the “as yet unexploited history” of these conflicts to produce high-quality, balanced military history in English. All translations of Turkish, French, and Italian are my own, and I hope that I have not introduced any factual or contextual errors into the narrative. I have used the modern European calendar in all cases in this book, rather than the old-style Greek calendar (which differs by 13 or 14 days, depending on the month and year) or the Ottoman calendar (which differs in both month and year). Any errors I have introduced regarding specific dates are unintentional and due to my conversions of Greek and Ottoman calendars.

FINIS The resilience and capacity of the Nationalist Army surprised the world in the early 1920s in the same way that its Ottoman predecessor surprised the world in 1914–1918. In World War I, the Allies expected the armies of the Sick Man of Europe to be easy prey. But they were not easy prey . . . and even in late 1918, the Ottoman Army remained in the field, fighting. In 1919 and 1920, in the same way, the Allies—especially the Greeks—expected the Ottoman Empire to collapse in the same way as the Romanov, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern Empires had collapsed, leaving them with geographical prizes unimaginable in 1914. Instead, while the rump Ottoman government clung to tenuous legitimacy in Istanbul, a powerful Nationalist

Introduction xxv

movement began in central Anatolia, led by Mustafa Kemal. And there the unthinkable happened “among the stern hills and valleys of the ‘Turkish Homelands’ in Anatolia, there dwelt that company of poor men . . . who would not see it settled so.”13

NOTES 1. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, The Aftermath, vol. 5 (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1929), 378. 2. I am grateful to Professor Konstantinos Travlos for this information regarding how this war is named. A more radical suggestion is to name the series of wars the Wars of Anatolian Succession, since they might make more sense as a complex of wars rather than as one war. Similar conditions characterize the Russian Civil War, which connects with a series of wars and civil wars, and could be seen as the Wars of Eurasian Succession. Indeed, if we shear these wars of their ideological or national patina, is it that paradoxical to see them as wars of succession between competing territorial stakes and, thus, cousins to the great wars of the succession of the eighteenth century? 3. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), “NATO’s Response to Hybrid Threats,” ­https://​­www​.­nato​.­int​/­cps​/­en​/­natohq​/­topics​ _156338​.­htm. 4. Applying the phrase “a war made of wars” to the Turkish War of Independence originates in the fertile mind of my friend and colleague Professor Konstantinos Travlos. In my opinion, it is the perfect characterization for these events. 5. It is important to keep in mind that many of the individuals living at the end of the Imperial Ottoman and early Turkish Republican periods did not have a surname. Atatürk’s Surname Law of 1934 required all Turkish citizens to adopt and maintain a hereditary surname. 6. Interestingly, the publication of the official Turkish history followed the initiation in 1957 of the publication of the official Greek history. 7. In a truly generous act, the Turkish general staff has put scanned PDF versions of all books online. This website can be reached at no cost and without copyright infringements at ­https://​­msb​.­gov​.­tr​/­ArsivAskeriTarih​ /­icerik​/­turk​-­­istiklal​​-­­harbi​​-­­serisi, though the scanning quality varies. Hopefully the Greek General Staff will also follow suit. Both set of books are not readily available outside of the secondhand and antiquarian book markets.

xxvi Introduction

8. For many years, this was the only military history of the conflict written in English. It should be noted that the translation, outsourced to translators in the United States, is very problematic—at times contradicting the narrative or the included maps. A new translation is very much needed, and the centenary of the war should offer the opportunity. 9. Once more, as in the case of the Turkish official histories, the Greek Army, especially in the 1930s when the study of military history as part of the tasks of the General Staff took off, relied on Greek translations of the earlier works of Turkish authors. These translations are deposited in the Army History Directorate of the Army General Staff (DIS) in Athens. 10. A good guide for the literature in Turkish can be found in chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Erik-Jan Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010). 11. This is available for free at the excellent Anemi Digital Library of Modern Greek Studies: ­https://​­anemi​.­lib​.­uoc​.­gr​/­metadata​/­e​/­3​/­e​/­metadata​ -­­01​​-­­0001601​​.­tkl. 12. This book is so rare that only two libraries in Greece have copies, and potentially the only copy available in Turkey is in the hands of Dr. Konstantinos Travlos. The work is available in the antiquarian bookstores in Athens at inflated prices. 13. Churchill, The Aftermath, 368.

ONE The End of World War I

Venizelos is entitled to plead that in going to Smyrna he acted as mandatory for the four greatest powers. But he went as readily as a duck will swim.1 Winston S. Churchill, 1919

INTRODUCTION As late as September 1, 1918, the Ottoman government could believe that the war might end on favorable terms. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended the Russian threat. The fronts in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Macedonia appeared to be holding fast, and the Pozantı tunnel complex traversing the Taurus Mountains was nearly completed (October 9, 1918). Moreover, Ottoman armies in the Caucasus had conquered Armenia and Azerbaijan and were advancing north to Derbent, Russia, along the west side of the Caspian Sea. Under these circumstances, a favorable negotiated peace seemed possible. However, the Ottomans did not understand the full effects of the failed German spring 1918 offensives in France on the German strategic position. Likewise, they did not understand the psychological impact of the Battle of Amiens, August 8–11, 1918, which resulted in the “black day of the German Army.”2 In truth, the Germans, as well as the Austro-Hungarians and the Bulgarians, were on their last legs, and the Ottoman Empire’s strategic position was more like a house of cards than anything else. Moreover, the British economic blockade affected the Ottoman Empire to a far more damaging degree than its Central powers allies.3

2

The Turkish War of Independence

In early October 1918, the sudden collapse of the fronts in Palestine and Macedonia led to a strategically unrecoverable position, and, just a month later, the Allies occupied Istanbul, and the Ottoman Young Turk regime fled, seeking asylum in Germany. An armistice concluded at Mudros Harbor (known as Mondros by the Turks) on the island of Lemnos ended World War I in the Middle East on October 30, 1918. The Ottomans had held out far longer than anyone thought possible, and they expected a fair peace, based largely on Wilsonian principles. However, the crippling terms imposed on the Ottomans at Mudros shocked the government, the military, and the population and led to conditions that matured into a war to the finish between Greece and the Turkish Nationalists. THE MUDROS ARMISTICE By late September 1918, the end of World War I in the Middle East was in sight. British general Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force had shattered the Ottoman Army’s Yildirim Army Group in Palestine and was advancing northward through Syria toward Damascus and Aleppo. In Europe, an Anglo-French offensive had broken open the Macedonian front, and General Sir George Milne’s British force was advancing on Istanbul (then called Constantinople by Europeans). In the east, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, the Ottoman Army of Islam had shattered the Armenian Army, seized Baku, and was advancing on Derbent, Russia. The Ottoman Army overall, however, was on its last legs—its reserves used up and its manpower pool depleted.4 Thus, on October 4, 1918, the sultan sent Rüs¸tü Bey (Tevfik Rüs¸tü [Aras] who was a high-ranking member of the government) to Switzerland with peace proposals not only to end the war but also to begin the process of overthrowing the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) regime. The sultan’s proposals were ignored but, at nearly the same time, CUP Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha extended peace feelers as well.5 With the war ending catastrophically, the regime began to break apart, with Talaat Pasha resigning on . October 13, 1918. The sultan asked retired general and war hero Ahmet .Izzet (Furgaç) Pasha to form a peace cabinet and, on October 19, Ahmet Izzet secured approval to negotiate an armistice.6 Importantly, because their armies were still fighting, the Ottomans believed a generous peace was possible based on American president Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.7 Armistice negotiations took place

The End of World War I

3

aboard the HMS Agamemnon in Mudros Harbor over four days (October 27–30, 1918). The new minister of marine, Rauf (Orbay) Bey, led the Ottoman delegation that was negotiating with British admiral Arthur Gough-Calthorpe. Rauf was hamstrung by instructions from the sultan that, above all else, the armistice was to allow the continuation of the sultanate.8 Gough-Calthorpe used this as leverage to achieve far more than he had hoped for.9 In order to save the sultanate, Rauf was forced to sign an agreement that amounted to a British ultimatum. Like its counterpart, the Compiègne armistice (signed on November 11), the Mudros armistice was designed to leave the Ottoman Empire defenseless and unable to oppose humiliating and damaging peace terms subsequently imposed by the Allies. The agreement was signed on October 30 and contained 25 clauses. The clauses that are important to this narrative are summarized here: Clause 1. The Allies would immediately occupy the Dardanelles and Bosporus fortifications. Clauses 2/3. The Ottomans would assist with and ensure the demining of the straits. Clause 4. The Ottomans would collect in Istanbul and release all Allied prisoners of war and Armenian interned persons. Clause 5. The Ottomans would immediately demobilize military forces, except for those authorized by the Allies as necessary for frontier and internal security. Clause 7. The Allies would be allowed to occupy strategic points. Clause 8. The Allies had the right to use Istanbul and all Ottoman ports as naval bases. Clause 10. The Allies would occupy the Taurus and Amanus tunnel systems. Clause 11. The Ottomans would retreat their forces in the Transcaucasus and in Persia to the 1914 frontier. Clause 12. The Allies would supervise all Ottoman telephone, telegraph, and cable stations. Clause 15. Entente supervisory officers would supervise all Ottoman railroads. Clauses 16/17. The Ottomans would surrender all forces in the Arabian Peninsula, Libya, Syria, and Cilicia.

4

The Turkish War of Independence

Clause 18. All German and Austrian personnel would surrender to the nearest British or Entente commander. Clause 22. Ottoman prisoners of war would remain under the control of Entente forces. Clause 24. The Allies reserved the right to occupy any part of what they called “six Armenian provinces” to protect Ottoman Armenians. Clause 25. Hostilities would cease at noon local time, Thursday, October 31, 1918. Rauf returned to Istanbul on November 1 and was, alternately, hailed as a hero by the population who badly misunderstood the terms of the armistice and as a traitor by the sultan and the military. In upper Mesopotamia, British general Sir William Marshall, on instructions from London, immediately violated the armistice by seizing the oil-rich city of Mosul on November 2.10 There was immediate disagreement about the . meaning of much of the terminology, and Ahmet Izzet unsuccessfully attempted to alter some of the clauses. In particular, the ambiguous identification of “strategic points” enabled the British to subsequently occupy any place they chose, and the clause regarding the railroad tunnels enabled the French to occupy all of the territory between Aleppo and the tunnels themselves. On the night of November 2–3, the CUP triumvirate who were the de facto wartime rulers of the empire—Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Cemal Pasha—fled on a German freighter for ports in the Ukraine, . which was still occupied by the German Army. Most certainly, Ahmet Izzet knew of their plans and let them escape, but, on November 3, he “went through the motions of demanding that the Germans return the fugitives.”11 THE OCCUPATION On November 6, Admiral Gough-Calthorpe was appointed British high commissioner for the Ottoman Empire, while the French appointed Vice Admiral Jean Amet on November 13. From November 6–12, the British 28th Infantry Division occupied the Dardanelles fortifications, and the Ottomans demined a path through the straits. An allied fleet, led by HMS Superb, placed Istanbul under the guns of its battleships, landing a French brigade on November 12 and a British brigade the following day. Istanbul was, in the technical sense, not occupied by the Allies, but they i­ mmediately

The End of World War I

5

established an allied control commission in the city to arrange armisticerelated matters. However, the commission and its garrison constituted such a pervasive presence that it amounted to a de facto occupation. The Allies occupied the Bosporus fortifications on November 13. The famous Ottoman Fifth Army, the victor of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, withdrew from the peninsula to garrisons in Thrace on November 28.12 . Ahmet Izzet’s government proved to be short-lived, as it resisted British encroachments on the Mudros Agreement and was replaced on November 11 by a more malleable government led by Tevfik Pasha. Additional armistice violations appeared in the form of French incursions. Although France had played a very minor role in the defeat of the Ottomans, French premier Georges Clemenceau was furious with the British, who had cut the French out of the armistice talks, but he acted quickly to take advantage of Ottoman weaknesses. On December 7, the French occupied Adana and Mersin and occupied Gaziantepe 10 days later.13 By March 1919, they also took Maras¸ and Urfa. The British and French War Offices reached an agreement in late November regarding Allied command and control in the soon-to-be occupied territories of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied commander-in-chief of the Macedonian front, French general Franchet d’Espèrey, retained command of European Turkey (eastern Thrace), and British general Sir George Milne took control of the Istanbul police.14 In Cilicia and what is now southeast Turkey, British general Sir Edmund Allenby assumed control of the strategic points. The Black Sea littorals were, however, figuratively up for grabs in that no firm decisions regarding occupation had been reached. The sultan dissolved the parliament on December 21, but Tevfik continued in a caretaker role until March 4, 1919, when the sultan’s son-in-law, Damat Ferit, organized another government. The uncertainty of the terms and details of the Anglo-French occupation did not stop the British from sending troops to occupy Batum on December 22 (see chapter 5). This occupation led the British to establish the British Army of the Black Sea, which, by the spring of 1919, was composed of two infantry divisions with headquarters in Tiflis (Tbilisi) and Haydarpasha in Istanbul.15 Like the French, the Italians were enraged by the unilateral nature of the British armistice negotiations, but they sent Count Carlo Sforza as their high commissioner to Istanbul anyway. The Italians had held the Dodecanese Islands since 1911, and they had waged a minor counterinsurgency campaign against the Ottoman-led Senussi tribe members in Libya during the war. Overall, they played an even lesser role in defeating the

6

The Turkish War of Independence

Ottomans than had the French. Nevertheless, by mid-May 1919, the Italians occupied Antalya, Bodrum, Fethiye, and Konya.16 However, in many locations, the Allied occupation forces were tiny elements of a platoon or detachment size.

DEMOBILIZATION The Ottoman Army sustained terrible losses during the war but still had some 900,000 men on its rolls, organized into 26 infantry divisions, at the armistice.17 Although the armies in Syria, Mesopotamia, Asir, and Yemen were badly worn down by combat and desertion, the armies in the Caucasus, Thrace, and Gallipoli were mostly at their established war strength. In November 1918, the Ottoman Army did not, as Lenin famously remarked about the Russian Army when it quit the war in 1917, vote with its feet and return home. Instead, the Ottoman Army remained a disciplined force under competent command authority. Unlike Germany, the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice that did not require the immediate demobilization of its army and the surrender of its weapons.18 Rather, the Ottoman demobilization would be coordinated with the British authorities and would be contingent on internal and external security requirements. In contrast, under the terms of the armistice with Germany, the German Army had to surrender almost immediately 5,000 artillery guns, 3,000 mortars, 1,700 19 military aircraft, 5,000 motor lorries, and 25,000 machine guns. . The Ottoman General Staff, under direction from Ahmet Izzet Pasha, sent out telegraphic instructions concerning the implementation of the armistice to all armies and garrisons on October 31.20 Further instructions followed in November 1918, outlining the timelines and geographic parameters of the turnover of strategic points to the Allies. The Yildirim Army Group and the Seventh Army were inactivated on November 4 and the surviving units subsumed into the Second Army in Adana. The Eastern Army Group and the 1st Caucasian Corps were inactivated on November 21, followed by the inactivation of the Army of Islam on 27th.21 By late November, the Ottoman General Staff had completed the reorganization process and issued orders to all corps and divisions, assigning them to peacetime garrisons within the Anatolian heartland.22 By December, several armies and corps, as well as seven infantry divisions were inactivated, including the Eighth Army, which was being reconstituted near Izmir after its destruction in Palestine.

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However, in western Arabia, Fahrettin Pasha still commanded more than 10,500 men and maintained control of Medina and its hinterlands.23 British officers attached to Emir Ali’s headquarters notified Fahrettin of the signing of the Mudros armistice, especially of paragraph 16, which specified that the Ottoman Army would withdraw from Yemen, the Asir, and the Hejaz. However, Fahrettin was unsure if the . information was true and how to proceed if it were, so he wrote to Ahmet Izzet Pasha, for instructions while holding his position.24 It was not until January 20, 1919 that Fahrettin received instructions from Istanbul ordering him to stand down and surrender his men. As his story spread in the postwar Ottoman Empire, he became known to the 25 public as the “Lion . of the Desert” and the “Defender of Medina.” General Ali Insan Pasha’s Sixth Army continued to guard the southeastern frontier approaches along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. However, it was also inactivated in mid-February 1919. The surviving XIII Corps absorbed the remnants of the army and withdrew behind the agreed-upon lines under the armistice. British high commissioner Gough-Calthorpe dictated the Allied demobilization schedule on November 26, 1918.26 According to the British schedule, all men in year groups 1866–1884 were to demobilize beginning on November 6 (and this was apparently already in progress); all men in year groups 1885–1893 were to be demobilized beginning on November 28; and the 1897–1899 year groups would begin demobilization on January 6, 1919. About 10,000 officers and 264,339 men were discharged under this schedule by January 22, 1919, which still left the army with about 60,000 more men than the British thought appropriate to Ottoman military requirements at that point.27 Reducing the number further was left on the table, but the Turks were willing to repatriate 10,000 Arab and 4,300 Greek soldiers who were then serving in the Ottoman Army to areas outside the rump Ottoman State. Demobilization resumed in February on a massive scale, as forces returned home from the Caucasus. By the end of March 1919, the Ottoman Army had discharged another 337,615 soldiers, leaving 61,223 men on active duty.28

THE ARMISTICE ARMY The Ottoman General Staff finalized its plans for the new peacetime active army on January 21, 1919.29 The army inactivated most of its surviving field army headquarters and returned to its prewar system of army

8

The Turkish War of Independence

inspectorates. Under the inspectorate system, a field army–level commander was responsible for the training and mobilization of military forces within his geographic area of responsibility. In keeping with its reduced land mass, the Ottoman General Staff planned to activate three inspectorates by June 7, 1919: the First Army Inspectorate in Istanbul, the Second Army Inspectorate in Konya, and the Third Army Inspectorate in Erzurum.30 The Ninth Army, which was retreating from Persia, was briefly named the Ninth Army Inspectorate, but it was inactivated on April 3, 1919, providing the staff for the new Third Army Inspectorate. However, by May 14, the plan completely fell apart with the government decision to inactivate all three inspectorates.31 The army authorized a postwar establishment of 20 infantry divisions organized into nine army corps. Rather than reactivating sequential numbered army corps (from I to IX) or divisions (from 1 to 20) the General Staff retained the wartime designations and colors (see table 1.1). Table 1.1 Ottoman Army Corps, May 14, 1919 Corps

Headquarters

I Corps

Edirne

III Corps

Sivas

VIII Corps

Diyarbakir

XII Corps

Konya

Subordinate Divisions & Regiments—Locations 49th Division—Kırklareli 60th Division—Kes¸an 5th Caucasian Division—Amasya 15th Division—Samsun 2nd Division—Silvan 5th Division—Mardin 5th Cavalry Regiment—Siverek 11th Cavalry Regiment—Malatya 11th Division—Nig˘de 24th Division—Ereg˘li 41st Division—Karaman 7th Cavalry Regiment—Beys¸ehir

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Table 1.1 (continued) Corps

Headquarters

XIV Corps

Bandirma

XV Corps

Erzurum

XX Corps

Ankara

XXV Corps

Istanbul

XVII Corps

Izmir

Subordinate Divisions & Regiments—Locations 20th Cavalry Regiment—Aksaray 61st Division—Bandırma 55th Division—Tekirdag˘ 3rd Caucasian Division—Tortum 9th Caucasian Division—Erzurum 11th Caucasian Division—Van 12th Division—Horasan 23rd Division— Afyonkarahisar . 1st Division—Izmit 10th Caucasian Division—Istanbul 57th Division—Aydin 56th Division—Izmir

. Source: Tevfik Bıyıklıog˘lu, Türk I stiklâl Harbi I, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1962), Map 8, between pages 184 and 185.

The General Staff returned to a scaled-down version of the cadre organization that the active army used prior to the war, and each division was authorized 1,540 riflemen, 36 machine guns, and 8 artillery pieces.32 Additional artillery was held at the corps level, as were more machine guns. Altogether, there were roughly 41,000 men and 256 artillery pieces in the active Ottoman field army in late spring 1919. The total strength of the army, including staff, schools, and garrisons, was approximately 61,000 officers and men. These active strengths were governed by the strict economies of the bankrupt Ottoman Empire, but the army held the

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The Turkish War of Independence

substantial reserves of a far larger force—791,000 rifles, 2,000 machine guns (light and heavy), and 945 artillery pieces, as well as large quantities of ammunition.33 However, much of this material lay in magazines located in areas controlled by the Allies. As will be seen, the retention and storage of these armaments would prove critically important to the resurrection of the Nationalist Army in 1920 and 1921. The prewar triangular structure of infantry divisions was retained, as was an independent assault battalion in some of the divisions. When called to full mobilization under this plan, the Ottomans would have an active army of 20 combat divisions, fielding about 250,000 men. Moreover, using the reserve equipment stockpiled in Anatolia, they retained the capacity to activate another 10 infantry divisions. Additionally, the Ottoman General Staff itself continued to exist and continued to function as a directing staff. The professional corps of trained general staff officers was, likewise, retained and, as would be expected, continued to hold the important command and staff posts within the army (see map 1.1).34 THE RETREAT FROM THE CASPIAN Events in the Caucasus in 1918 had moved in unpredictable directions. The collapse of the Russian Army in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution led to the Ottoman Army drawing down its strength in the region as well. By the end of 1917, the Ottomans had reduced their strength there by half, withdrawing the entire Second Army and leaving the Third Army (composed of nine infantry divisions). At the same time, the staff received reports that the Armenians were building strength and Muslim Azeris were being massacred. In early January 1918, the ever-aggressive Enver Pasha decided to conduct a Caucasian offensive to recover the territory lost in 1916, which had been abandoned by the Russians and claimed by the Armenians.35 Enver reinforced the Third Army with several infantry divisions and additional equipment and supplies. The Armenians, with the help of the Russian general headquarters on the Caucasian front, had formed a small national army of two infantry divisions and three infantry brigades.36 On February 12, 1918, General Vehip Pasha’s Ottoman troops went forward, capturing Erzincan and Trabzon. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on March 3, 1918, restored the 1878 Russo-Ottoman border, thereby returning three provinces to the empire, including the cities of Kars, Batum, and Sarıkamıs¸. Vehip immediately seized Erzurum, destroying most of the

Courtesy of the Turkish General Staff Military History and Strategy Institute (ATASE).

Map 1.1 The Ottoman Army (May 14, 1919) As the Ottoman Army demobilized following World War I, its surviving divisions and corps headquarters returned to the army’s garrisons in Anatolia. The postwar army had 20 reduced-strength cadre infantry divisions and four cavalry regiments. Rather than renumbering the surviving divisions from 1 to 20 and the surviving corps headquarters from I to IX, the General Staff retained the wartime division and corps designations.

12

The Turkish War of Independence

small Armenian Army. His army then marched to the 1914 border on March 25. Flush with victory and having eliminated Armenian resistance, Enver decided to push on to the 1878 border, and then to Azerbaijan. Batum fell on April 14, 1918, and Kars fell 10 days later.37 In May 1918, the short-lived Transcaucasian Federation dissolved, and its three republics, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia declared independence. Germany assumed a protectorate over the new Georgian republic, causing difficulties between the Ottomans and the Germans. On June 7, the hot-tempered Enver Pasha reorganized his armies for a drive to Baku on the Caspian Sea. Ottoman forces swiftly conquered Armenia and invaded Azerbaijan, capturing Baku itself on September 15, 1918.38 Offensive operations in Azerbaijan and Persia continued beyond the Mudros armistice, but the agreement called for withdrawals back to the 1914 borders. The British were quick to occupy Caucasian strategic points under the terms of the armistice. On November 14, Major General William Thomson’s North Persia Force landed at Baku.39 The Ottoman ministry of war thought the withdrawal would take two months, and, on November 17 and 18, the Ottoman armies in the east began the withdrawal from Baku and Tabriz, respectively. Since the Ottomans had restored the railways, the artillery and most of the army’s supplies returned from Baku to Kars by rail. Determined to exert control in the east, General Milne’s newly established Army of the Black Sea ordered Major General George Forestier-Walker’s 27th Division to Batum, with a headquarters to be established in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Royal Navy detachments took control of Batum’s port on December 19, clearing the way for Forestier-Walker’s men to land on 22nd.40 There was much Ottoman unhappiness over the Mudros clause requiring a withdrawal to the 1914 border because three largely Muslim inhabited sanjacks (a county-like municipal area), Ardahan, Batum, and Kars, lay beyond that frontier. The Ottoman Ninth Army commander, General Yakup S¸evki (Subas¸ı) Pasha, encouraged the Kars Municipal Council to organize resistance, which resulted in the Great Congress at Kars on November 30, 1918. This proto-Nationalist gathering began stockpiling weapons and advocated for a plebiscite. One hundred thirty-one delegates attended a subsequent congress on January 17–19, 1919, adding other Ottoman inhabited towns and proclaiming the Provisional National Government of the Southwest Caucasus.41 They wrote a constitution and formed a government that included Russians and Greeks. At the same time, Forestier-Walker and S¸evki entered into negotiations that were designed to

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install British garrisons in key infrastructure to deny it to the rapidly advancing (and revived) Armenian Army, as well as to coordinate the withdrawal of Ottoman Army units by sea to Istanbul.42 On January 18, the Ottoman 5th Caucasian Division marched out of Batum, and, five days later, the Ottoman commander, General Cemal, departed by sea for Istanbul as well. The British initially recognized the Kars government, but they were unable to prevent outbreaks of violence against Muslim inhabitants, attributed to Armenian forces that were led by the well-known Armenian general Andranik (Ozanian).43 Andranik had led Armenian irregulars throughout World War I and brutally occupied Kars and Sarıkamis¸. His men continued raiding as far south as Van, and hundreds of atrocities against Muslim inhabitants of the disputed area were reported.44 Yakup S¸evki protested vigorously but to no avail. On April 12, the British occupied Kars and arrested 11 members of the quasi government putting an end to the self-proclaimed Nationalist government. The orderly withdrawal of the Ottoman Army from the Caucasus continued, and the Ottoman General Staff inactivated the Ninth Army on April 2, with Yakup S¸evki returning to the capital on the 14th. Command and control of the area fell to General Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV Corps, which was then reorganizing in Erzurum. Kâzım was an experienced and resourceful soldier who proved to be an excellent choice for command of the critical eastern theater. In the following months, both Kâzım and British Colonel Anthony Rawlinson reported to their respective capitals that the Armenians perpetrated large numbers of massacres and atrocities on the Muslim inhabitants of the newly proclaimed Armenia and in the contested 1878–1914 border area.45 Historian Stanford Shaw gravely understated the problem, noting, “The result was tremendously increased tension.”46 Tensions were not limited to the Armenian frontier. The Muslim inhabitants of the Black Sea port city of Trabzon became worried by the vocal Nationalist aspirations of the Pontic Greeks and formed Muslim militia groups in January 1919, as well as a Trabzon Defense of National Rights Society. Several congresses were held and plans made to resist a takeover by Pontic Greeks.47 However, the Pontic Greek leaders knew that armed rebellion would be a foolish move, and they opted for political agitation. This strategy was fostered by the Greek government itself, which sent a mission under Colonel Dimitrios Katheniotis to coordinate with the Pontic Greeks. However, in his report to Athens, Katheniotis said that Greek-supported

14

The Turkish War of Independence

independence for the Pontus was unfeasible, and he suggested that the Pontic Greeks ask the Armenians for support. In any case, as 1919 unfolded, violence against Pontic Greeks by Muslims and, reciprocally, against Muslims by Pontic Greeks increased in frequency.

THE GREEKS, ITALIANS, AND THE OCCUPATION OF IZMIR As early as January 1915, British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey dangled the idea of the acquisition of the eastern Aegean littoral in front of an eager Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos of Greece. On January 23, 1915, Grey wired the British minister in Athens to offer “most important territorial compensation on the coast of Asia Minor”48 in exchange for Greece joining the Allies in the war. Venizelos was an ardent Nationalist and a fierce proponent of what was called the Great Idea (Megali Idea or simply Megali) of a revived Greek Empire, encompassing the lands inhabited by Greeks in ancient times. These included Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia, the Peloponnese, Crete, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese and Aegean islands. Importantly, Megali also included Thrace and Istanbul, Izmir (then known as Smyrna), the west and southwest Anatolian coast and hinterlands, and the Pontus (the Anatolian Black Sea coast). These regions were heavily populated by ethnic Greeks, and their recovery fit neatly into the irredentist schemes of Venizelos. As a matter of practical concern, however, Ottoman Muslims outnumbered their Greek neighbors in many of these places. Moreover, 2,000 years of cultural diffusion created such anomalies as the Karamanli, who were Turkish Orthodox Christians who spoke and wrote in Greek, as well as Greeks who had converted to Islam and only spoke Turkish. Adding to the confusion were several million displaced refugees from the wars of 1877–1878, 1898, 1912–1913, and most recently 1914–1918, many of whom were Muslims. Venizelos, who was originally from Crete, was 55 years old in 1919, and he was serving his third term as prime minister (1910–February 1915, August–September 1915, and June 1917–November 4, 1920). Venizelos was at the center of an internecine Greek political struggle called the National Schism between pro-Allied Greeks like himself and pro-German Greeks like King Constantine.49 The divide tore Greece apart, but slowly—starting in 1915, when Venizelos allowed the Allies to bring their armies into Lemnos and Salonika—Greece leaned toward an Entente with the Allies. Over the next year, the Allies decided to depose King Constantine and permit

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Venizelos to unite the country under his government. In a way, the Allies installed Venizelos as the de facto leader of the country. Throughout this period, Venizelos negotiated with the Allies to secure postwar territorial gains in exchange for entering the war, similar to the promises that the Allies had made to lure Italy into abandoning the Central Alliance and joining the Entente. Britain and France recognized the Venizelos government in December 1916, and the king went into exile a few months later. Greece joined the Allies in May 1917 and her army participated in the Macedonian campaign against Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany. As Venizelos desired, at the end of the war, Greece was positioned to demand territorial compensation for her cooperation and efforts in defeating the Central Powers. Like the French and the Italians, Britain cut the Greeks out of the armistice talks, much to the dismay of Venizelos. However, this did not stop the Greeks from occupying irredentist claims. In late 1918, General Milne’s British forces occupied the area between Xanthi and Alexandropoulis, which had been awarded to Bulgaria in 1913, but the main Greek Army remained well to the west, near Salonika.50 On January 14, 1919, the Greek Army sent officers east to monitor the railway stations of western Thrace from the Bulgarian border to Hadımköy. According to historian Stanford Shaw, the appearance of uniformed Greek officers caused local Greeks to “express their joy by pillaging and burning Turkish and Jewish homes and shops.”51 However, the Greeks did not stop there, and they prepared for further encroachments on Ottoman territory. The wartime Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne between Britain, France, and Italy divided parts of the Ottoman Empire among the three signatories. Signed on April 17, 1917, it never came into force because the British and French had second thoughts about an Italian occupation of southeastern Anatolia and repudiated the agreement.52 Under the agreement, Italy would receive most of southwest Anatolia, including Izmir, Bodrum, Antalya, and Konya. The overanxious and impatient Italians landed troops at Antalya and Marmaris in March 1919, ostensibly to keep order, and appeared poised to land troops at Izmir. By April, the Italian Army landed the 33rd Division, composed of the Livorno Brigade (the 33rd and 34th Infantry Regiments and two bersaglieri battalions) and supporting divisional troops.53 Italy referred to this force as the Anatolian Expeditionary Corps and stationed its headquarters in the port city of Antalya. This overt act energized British prime minister Lloyd George to push American president Woodrow Wilson (both leaders were then at

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Versailles working on the peace treaty with Germany) to intervene to stop the Italians. The Americans had not gone to war with the Ottoman Empire and were more or less neutral. Wilson threatened to send in the U.S. Navy, forcing the Italians to withdraw from the peace conference for consultations at home.54 The Italians returned to Versailles on May 7 and, at the suggestion of Lloyd George (who did not want the Italians in Izmir), agreed to ask the Greeks to land men to keep civil order.55 The Greeks were ready for such a request. Previously, the Greek Navy had sailed the destroyer Leon into the Gulf of Izmir on December 24, 1918, raising a wave of celebrations among the Greek inhabitants of Izmir.56 The ship carried a high representative—in this case, Captain Ilias Mavroudes, the well-known captain of the famous armored cruiser Georgios Averof. A few days later, Greek transports landed a Greek Red Cross element in the city. Venizelos then surfaced the proposals for occupations in parliament in January 1919, and the Greek staff began to plan seriously for expeditionary operations in Asia Minor. The Army Staff Service alerted the 1st Infantry Division, which was available, commanded by Colonel Nikolaos Zafeiriou, for the occupation of Izmir. On the Ottoman side of the hill, the Eighth Army, which had been destroyed in Palestine in September 1918, was in the process of being reactivated, with the XVII and XXI Corps assigned to it. However, these plans were terminated after the armistice, leaving the XVII Corps in Izmir with the 56th and 57th Infantry Divisions under its command (both previously organized in the fall of 1916). On January 20, General Nurettin (Sakallı) took command of the Aydin military area and the forces stationed therein (including Izmir).57 Nurettin was a professional soldier who had come up through the officer ranks, but he was not member of the elite Ottoman General Staff officer corps. Rather, he was promoted because he was a fighting general. Nurettin had won the battle of Ctesiphon and then pursued and encircled British major general Charles Townshend at Kut al-Amara in 1915, although the credit for the 1916 victory went to Enver Pasha’s uncle Halil (Kut) Pasha. Nurettin stepped into a domestic hornet’s nest. According to the Turks today, similarly to the unrest in Thrace and in the Pontus, minority groups began to conduct episodes of banditry and violence directed against their Muslim neighbors. In fact, the so-called bandits were returning Ottoman Greek citizens who had been sent involuntarily to Greece in the Venizelos-CUP population removals of 1913–1914 and who were determined to recover their confiscated property (see chapter 12 for an

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explanation of the forcible population exchanges). They returned to find their homes confiscated and the property gone, causing justifiable outbursts of anger and violence. The Ottomans did not see it that way. Moreover, inflammatory articles supporting the Megali Idea appeared in Greek and British newspapers, which were extremely worrisome to General Mustafa Fevzi (Çakmak), chief of the Ottoman General Staff, who alerted all area commanders to be on the watch for outbreaks of banditry. Nurettin immediately had to confront a growing problem of uprisings and banditry in Urla (a town west of Izmir), where, on January 5, 1919, an armed gang of 20 to 30 Greeks stopped a vehicle and killed two travelers.58 The Greek bandits (Turkish: Rum çetesi—translated, depending on context, as bandits, rebels, or guerrillas) began to prey on local Muslims and Jews. The problem accelerated in February with the landing of some Greek soldiers in nearby Ayvalık, who provided weapons and assistance to the bandits—who the Ottoman government now termed rebels.59 Nurettin rushed to attack the bandits by mobilizing local Jandarma and police forces and crushed them. He was also careful to keep the local British, French, and Italian Allied Control Commission representatives apprised of his actions by reassuring them that he guaranteed the safety of the local Christians. Episodes such as the Urla and Ayvalık incidents as well as localized violence in southwest Anatolia provided the Italians with plenty of reasons to intervene in an area they believed belonged to Italy. However, due to the active diplomacy of Lloyd George and Wilson, the Greeks reached Izmir first. Escorted by a combined Royal Navy-Greek Navy squadron, the Greek 1st Division began landing in Izmir at 7:50 a.m., Thursday, May . 15.60 Minister of War Ahmet Izzet Pasha instructed Ottoman XVII Corps commander, General Ali Nadir Pasha, not to oppose the landings and for his soldiers to remain in their barracks. The Turks assert that the Evzone Regiment (elite light infantry) of the Greek division marched in a victory parade to the joy of local Greeks and Armenians, who celebrated en masse, resulting in violence against local Muslims. A victory parade was not what army colonel Zafeiriou had planned. Instead naval captain Mavroudes intervened in Zafeiriou’s initial plans and made a crucial change in the itinerary of the 3rd Battalion of 2/39th Evzone Regiment, making the march highly visible, which inflamed the situation. Violence broke out almost immediately when gunshots were heard at the customs house. Various histories present the events differently. According to the Greeks, Nurettin planned to resist the occupation and prepared

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groups of soldiers and civilians to attack the occupiers.61 The Greeks maintain that a raging firefight broke out in which 13 Turkish military, 47 civilians, and two Greek soldiers were killed, after which corps commander Ali Nadir Pasha, 56th Division commander Lieutenant Colonel Hürrem, 150 officers, and 540 soldiers were taken prisoner (along with 2,000 irregular fighters) and confined to the Greek steamship Patris.62 Turkish sources claim that Ali Nadir Pasha kept his men in barracks but that 141 officers and men were killed that day.63 Both agree on the number imprisoned on the Patris, but the Turks assert that some 2,000 died on the ship from maltreatment before urgent Allied appeals forced the Greeks to release the survivors on May 18. A British scholar wrote that 300–400 Turks and about 100 Greeks were killed or wounded on May 15 and that many atrocities were committed against Turks in the days that followed.64 In any case, the violence accompanying the Greek landings at Izmir foreshadowed the grim events to come in the next four years. The Greek Army restored order to the city and returned the remaining Ottoman Jandarma and local police to duty. However, a gathering Turkish resistance movement was now real and growing by the moment. The remnants of Ali Nadir Pasha’s men, perhaps as many as 800 soldiers and 4,000 irregulars armed with machine guns and some artillery, withdrew to Aydin and established a strong presence there. With Ali Nadir detained, the newly appointed chief of the Ottoman General Staff, Cevat Pasha, ordered the XVII Corps chief of staff, Colonel Bekir Sami (Günsav) to assume command of the corps. To protect their coastal enclave, the Greeks felt they had to expand their perimeter, and they pushed north toward Ayvalık, west to Kus¸adası, and east toward Manisa. On May 27, the Greek Army pushed the Turkish Nationalists out of Aydin. Unfortunately, this enabled angry and now propertyless returning Greek refugees to subject local Muslims to a three-day spree of massacre and robbery.65 Although Venizelos pressured the army to stop such incidents, conduct such as this inflamed the sensibilities of the Muslim Ottoman population and contributed to the gathering wave of anti-Allied Nationalist sentiment. THE HUNT FOR WAR CRIMINALS World War I unleashed waves of varied cause célèbres and generated a worldwide sense of humanitarianism that would come to characterize the 1920s. Violation of neutral nations’ sovereignty, unrestricted submarine

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warfare, indiscriminate aerial bombing, and the killing of noncombatants were some of the humanitarian concerns affecting the ongoing negotiations in Versailles in the spring of 1919. In the Middle East, the Allies were concerned about the treatment of prisoners of war—especially those surrendered at Kut in 1916, the relocation of parts of the Ottoman Greek population, and the massacres perpetrated against Ottoman Armenians during the wartime relocations. The escape of Cemal, Enver, and Talaat brought these concerns to a head when the Allies forced the Ottoman government to request their extradition from Germany on November 11, 1918. The subsequent accusations, investigations, arrests, and trials of Ottoman officials charged with war crimes went on for three years and remains a bitterly politicized and contested history to this day.66 In any case, Admiral Gough-Calthorpe was the man on the spot and now had to balance judicial demands from London (mainly from British solicitor general Sir Ernest Pollock) against the actions and reactions of the Ottoman government. During the war itself, some 1,673 Ottoman civil and military officials were tried and sentenced to death or hard labor by the Ottoman judiciary for crimes committed against Ottoman Armenians.67 After the armistice, there were two sources of Ottoman inquiry and judicial action against what would today be considered war crimes and crimes against humanity. In the first case, deputies in the Ottoman parliament investigated from November 5–December 21, 1918. Commissions at the national and provincial level were established—the most well-known today is the Istanbul Court Martial—to try Ottoman officials and soldiers for crimes against Ottoman Armenians and Greeks. There was much objection to these trials in parliament, but when parliament dissolved, Damat Ferit continued cooperating with the Allies and assembled dossiers on individuals accused of crimes. On January 3, 1919, Admiral Gough-Calthorpe, frustrated by armistice violations and inaction by the Ottoman government, cabled London, asking permission to imprison the accused.68 Gough-Calthorpe expanded his definition of crimes to include such thing as insulting Allied officers and breaches of the customs of war. Gough-Calthorpe’s roundup of accused war criminals began on January 5 and continued for two months. Most of the accused were former members or supporters of the routed Committee of Union and Progress. In May 1919, the British imprisoned the accused on Malta to await trial, which pleased the anti-CUP Damat, who had asked for their removal. The dossiers assembled by the government were heavily politicized because most of the accused were members of the CUP. Often the documents

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were forged or constructed piecemeal to build a cherry-picked narrative. The most well-known forged document to appear was the infamous Ten Commandments of the Committee of Union and Progress, acquired by Royal Navy intelligence officer Commander C. E. Heathcote-Smith on February 4, 1919, which originated from an Armenian-Greek Committee in Izmir.69 The document purported a plan to exterminate the Ottoman Armenian population and, although undated, was supposedly written in December 1914 or January 1915. More forged documents surfaced, which purportedly showed extermination orders flowing from the CUP government in Istanbul to Cemal Pasha in Syria. The authenticity of these documents is bitterly contested today, but many contemporary politically neutral scholars dispute them. Not all the accused were genuine war criminals. The French demanded the arrest of all wartime cabinet officials simply because they might have committed crimes or supported the continuation of the war. Damat told the British on March 8, 1919 that he was arresting every individual on the British list of suspects, and he apprehended an additional 60 Ottoman officials. This sweep included not only government officials but also journalists and editors who had expressed sympathy for the gathering resistance movement in Anatolia. Simultaneously, with the extradition of the Allied suspects to Malta, the Ottoman government conducted the now well-known 1919 trials, which began with the first conviction on April 8 of Mehmed Kemal Bey for massacring Ottoman Armenians; he was sentenced to death by hanging.70 Kemal Bey’s funeral caused massive demonstrations against the government in Istanbul and in provincial capitals. The entire inner committee CUP regime was tried in absentia, including Enver, Talaat, Cemal, Bahattin S¸akir, and Dr. Nazim Bey, who were all sentenced to death. The trials continued through July 5, when the indictments and remaining suspects then in custody were turned over to the British for transport to Malta. The British ultimately sent more than 100 Ottoman officials and civilians to Malta, including Third. Army commander Mahmud Kâmil Pasha, Sixth Army commander Ali Insan Pasha, Medina commander Fahrettin Pasha, Prime Minister Said Halim Pasha, Chief of the General Staff Cevat Pasha, Minister of the Marine Rauf Bey, Minister of War Cemal (Mersinli) Pasha, Nationalist writer Ziya Gökalp, journal. ists Celal Nuri (Ileri) and Ahmet Emin (Yalman), and Kurdish Nationalist Süleyman Nazif.71 Within the British government itself, their legal status was much in dispute, but by mid-1921, about . a third had been released, while some escaped—notably Rauf and Ali Insan.72 On October 23, 1921 the remaining 59 prisoners were released in exchange for a handful of

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British prisoners held in Anatolia. In the end, due to a lack of authentic evidence, none of the Malta prisoners were tried by the British.

THE POSTWAR OTTOMAN GOVERNMENT The last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI Vahdettin (1861–1926), took the throne on July 4, 1918 upon the death of Mehmed V Res¸ad. Sultan Vahdettin’s reign lasted until November 1, 1922 when the Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate. The 57-year-old new sultan spent most of his time trying to maintain the legitimacy of his dynasty and remain the titular head of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman parliament had existed since 1876 but had not met from 1878 until 1908 when the empire functionally became a constitutional monarchy. The Ottoman prime minister also held the post of grand vizier, a position that dated back to the earliest days of the sultanate. During World War I, the CUP Triumvirate (Enver, Talaat, and Cemal), rather than Said Halim Pasha, the prime minister, made all the important decisions in the operation of the government. In the armistice period, there were 12 governments and seven prime ministers, which grew gradually weaker as the Nationalist movement in the Anatolia interior grew stronger. . Ahmet Tevfik replaced Ahmet Izzet Pasha on November 11, 1918, and Ottoman politics entered an extremely turbulent period. The CUP was formally disbanded and its property confiscated, although it had previously dissolved itself. Damat Ferit revived the Liberal Union Party under his own leadership, and he adopted the position that it was the CUP, rather than the Ottomans, that had lost the war.73 The surviving members of the CUP mostly joined the new Regeneration Party, which embraced secular and Nationalist ideologies, or the Ottoman Freedom-Loving People’s Party, which advocated a liberal agenda retaining the sultanate. Other new parties sprang into existence, complicating parliamentary unity. An attempt at political unification came from the newly formed National Congress, organized by some well-known Istanbul professionals, which held several meetings in November and December. According to historian Stanford Shaw, “In the face of the CUP revival and the proliferation of political groups opposing the peace settlement and Allied occupation, the Sultan finally dissolved parliament (21 December 1918) to deprive them of a forum and enable the government to rule by decree without the need for popular consultation.”74

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Over the next few months, patriotic organizations, Nationalist societies, military and naval associations, and university student organizations—in other words, those who might publicly cause trouble and dissent—were dissolved or disbanded. This period of centralized rule came to an end on March 4 when Damat Ferit formed a government with himself as prime minister. Structurally, the cabinet remained fundamentally unchanged from the wartime cabinet, and the Ministry of the Interior was the principal administrative office working with the Allied Control Commission. During most of 1919, the most influential man in the Ottoman government was Damat Ferit (1854–1923), who was married to Sultan Abdülmecid I’s daughter, in turn becoming Sultan Mehmed VI’s brother-in-law. Although he had served many years in the Foreign Service in Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and London, he was judged “of limited competence and narrow vision.”75 As a lifelong enemy of the CUP, Damat was devoted to the idea of the Sultanate. His government lasted until October 2, 1919 when Ali Riza Pasha became prime minister. Damat was pro-British and supported Admiral Gough-Calthorpe in almost all the demands and requests made by the commissioners. Moreover, the Ottoman prime minister could not do anything substantial without the approval of the Allies. In truth, much of what Britain did in those days, in terms of trying to limit Greek and Italian expansion in Anatolia, as well as their willingness to imprison former CUP members, aligned with the sultan and Damat’s political objectives. Damat was so successful in marginalizing members of the party that had brought the empire into the war that on February 1, 1919, the Istanbul government abolished the CUP as a legal political party in the empire.

CONCLUSION While the armistice and Damat preserved the sultanate, the dysfunction and authoritarian actions of the Ottoman government served to increase feelings of nationalism among those who called themselves Turks. The Allies contributed to this with their high-handed de facto occupation of Istanbul and their support for Venizelos and his efforts to carve parts of the Ottoman Empire away from the Turks. There was a growing sense among the Turkish part of the Ottoman population that the Allies were something of a pack of hungry wolves circling for the kill. Likewise, there was a growing sense among the Greeks, Armenians, and some of the

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non-Turkish Muslim minorities that a window of opportunity for throwing off the shackles of Ottoman rule was opening.

NOTES 1. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath, vol. 5 (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1929), 366. 2. John Terraine, Douglas Haig, The Educated Soldier (London: Hutchinson, 1963), 460–461. 3. Archibald C. Bell, “The Turkish Breakdown,” in A History of the Blockade of Germany and of the Countries Associated with Her in the Great War: Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey 1914–1918 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1937), unpaginated. See also Marion C. Siney, “British Official Histories of the Blockade of the Central Powers during the First World War,” The American Historical Review 68, no. 2 (1963): 392–401, ­https://​­doi​.­org​/­10​.­2307​/­1904539. 4. Stanford J. Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation, The Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, 1300– 1918, 5 vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2000), 65–67. See also Briton Cooper Busch, Mudros to Lausanne: Britain’s Frontier in West Asia, 1918–1923 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976), 12–20. 5. David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1989), 368–369. Although somewhat dated, Fromkin’s narrative of the armistice negotiations is. by far the most readable. 6. Metin Ayıs¸ıg˘ı, Mares¸al Ahmet Izzet Pasha (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1997), 163–172. 7. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 72–75. 8. Erik-Jan Zürcher, “The Ottoman Empire and the Armistice of Moudros,” in At the Eleventh Hour: Reflections, Hopes, and Anxieties at the Closing of the Great War, 1918, eds. Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (London: Leo Cooper, 1998), 266–275. 9. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 78–93. The late Professor Shaw’s exposition of the armistice negotiations is the most comprehensive in the English language. . 10. Tevfik Bıyıklıog˘lu, Türk I stiklâl Harbi I: Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1962), 80–81.

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11. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 372. 12. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 113–115. 13. A note on city names. In 1973 the city of Maras¸ was renamed Kahramanmaras¸; however, for brevity I have used the 1920s name Maras¸. Antep (or Ainteb) was renamed Gaziantepe in February 1921. Urfa is the central city in S¸anlıurfa Province. 14. Cyril Falls and A. F. Becke, Military Operations Macedonia: From the Spring of 1917 to the End of the War (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1935), 306. 15. Ibid., 308–309. 16. Ismet Görgülü, On Yıllık Harbin Kadrosu 1912–1922 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurum Basımevi, 1993), 197. 17. Fahri Belen, Birinci Cihan Harbinde Türk Harbi 1914 Yılı Hareketleri, Vnci Cilt (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1967). Ek: Harpte kurulan tümenler (Chart: Divisions organized in the war), pages 250–251. Twenty-six divisions remained on establishment of the 62 infantry divisions organized during the war. None of the five cavalry divisions organized during the war survived. 18. The armistice, signed at Mudros Harbor on October 30, 1918, called for the surrender of strategic points such as the Dardanelles and the Toros and Amanus tunnel complexes, but it left the Ottoman Army’s leadership intact. See Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 373. 19. Cyril Falls, The Great War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959), 416. 20. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 46–47. 21. Zekeriya Türkmen, Mütareke Döneminde Ordunun Durumu ve Yeniden Yapılanması (1918–1920) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2001), 30–31. 22. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 68–69. 23. S¸ükrü Erkal, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi VIncı, Hicaz, Asir, Yemen Cepheleri ve Libya Harekâtı 1914–1918 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1978), 375. 24. Ibid., 385. . 25. Ismail Bilgin, Medine Müdafaası: Çöl Kaplanı Fahrettin Pas¸a (Istanbul: Timas¸ Yayınları, 2009), 291. 26. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 184–185. This source erroneously identifies Admiral Sir John de Robeck as the officer responsible for the demobilization schedule. 27. Ibid., 185. 28. Ibid., 185.

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29. Ibid., 177–178. 30. Görgülü, On Yıllık Harbin Kadrosu, 200. 31. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, Map 8, following 184. 32. Ibid., 180. 33. Necmi Koral, Remzi Önal, Rauf Atakan, Nusret Baycan, and Selâttin Kızılırmak, Birinci Dünya Harbı Idarı Faalıyetler ve Lojistik, Xncü Cilt (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1962), 583. 34. Görgülü, On Yıllık Harbin Kadrosu, 197–213. 35. Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 182–184. 36. W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border 1828–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 458–459. 37. Mesut Uyar, The Ottoman Army and the First World War (London: Routledge, 2021), 396–416. 38. See Erickson, Ordered to Die, 179–192 for a narrative of these campaigns. 39. Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia: The First Year, 1918–1919, vol. 1 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 60–61. 40. Falls and Becke, Military Operations Macedonia, 307–309. 41. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 924–925. 42. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 164–165 43. Ibid., 167. The Turkish official history uses the phrase “systematic massacre” to describe Andranik’s activities, but this is contested by Armenian sources. See Hovannisian, The First Year, 1918–1919, 427. 44. Ibid., 162. 45. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 934–937. 46. Ibid., 937. 47. Ibid., 938–942. 48. Edward Grey to Sir Francis Elliot, F. O. Papers, Series 371, Volume 2242 (Jan. 23, 1915), quoted in Michael Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 35. 49. For a superb view of Venizelos, see Konstantinos Travlos et al., “The Correlates of Obsession: Selectorate Dynamics and the Decision of Venizelos for Military Intervention in Asia Minor,” in Salvation and Catastrophe: The Greek-Turkish War, 1919–1922, ed. Konstantinos Travlos (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020), 67–107.

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50. James E. Edmonds, The Occupation of Constantinople 1918–1923 (Provisional) (Draft manuscript written in 1944, transcribed by Neil J. Wells and published in 2009) (Brambleside, East Sussex: The Naval and Military Press, 2010), 3. 51. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 463. 52. Paul C. Helmreich, “Italy and the Anglo-French Repudiation of the 1917 St. Jean De Maurienne Agreement,” The Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2 (1976): 99–139, ­http://​­www​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­1877819. 53. Giovanni Cecini, Il Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Anatolia (1919– 1922) (Rome: Stato Maggiore Dell’Esercito, Ufficio Storico, 2010), 77–78. 54. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, 392–393. 55. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 480–495. 56. Demetrios Gedeon, Eupraxia Paschalidou, and Angeliki Dima-Dimitrou, A Concise History of the Campaign in Asia Minor 1919– 1922, English ed. (Athens: Hellenic Army History Directorate, 2003), 7. The dates in this book conform to the Old Greek calendar and are 13 or 14 days earlier than the European calendar (depending on the month and year). Therefore, when I present a date from this book, I convert the date using the following online program: ­http://​­aulis​.­org​/­Calendar​/­Old​_%­26 ​_New​_Style​_Dates​.­html. . 57. Necati Ökse, Nusret Baycan, and Salih Sakaryalı, Türk I stiklâl Harbi’ne Katılan Tümen ve daha Üst Kademelerdeki Komutanların Biyo. grafileri (I kinci Baskı) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1989), 229–231. 58. Bıyıklıog˘lu, Mondros Mütarekesi ve Tatbikatı, 136. 59. Ibid., 137. 60. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 493–507. Professor Shaw provides the most coherent account of the complex diplomacy behind these events. 61. Gedeon, Paschalidou, and Dima-Dimitrou, A Concise History of the Campaign in Asia Minor, 16–18. 62. Ibid. 63. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 2, 510–511; and Ökse, Baycan, and Sakaryalı, Komutanların Biyografileri, 243. 64. Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision, 90. 65. Ibid., 91. 66. For a short summary taken exclusively from western sources see Michelle Tusan, “‘Crimes against Humanity’: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide,” The American Historical Review 119, no. 1 (February 2014): 47–77. For

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opposing perspective taken almost entirely from Ottoman sources see Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 303–329. There is vast extant literature on this topic related to the debate of whether the relocation and massacres of Ottoman Armenians in 1915–1916 constituted a genocide. 67. Pulat Tacar and Maxime Gauin, “State Identity, Continuity, and Responsibility: The Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide: A Reply to Vahagn Avedian,” The European Journal of International Law 23, no. 3 (2012): 827–828. 68. Arthur Gough-Calthorpe to F. O. Papers, No. 14 Secret, FO 371/4172/2391 (Jan. 3, 1919), quoted in Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 309–310. 69. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 312. 70. Ibid., 321. 71. Ökse, Baycan, and Sakaryalı, Komutanların Biyografileri, 192–193. 72. See Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 303–344 for a comprehensive narrative of the legal positions of the British government based on documents from the British archives. 73. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 332. 74. Ibid., 333. 75. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, vol. 1, 156.

TWO Call to Arms

There has now arrived at Erzeroum the Inspector-General of the Turkish Eastern armies, who has since become famous as Mustapha Kemal Pasha, a great Turk.1 Lt. Col. Anthony Rawlinson, 1919

INTRODUCTION It was remarkable that the Osmanlı dynasty continued in power after the collapse of its Romanov, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern counterparts at the end of World War I. However, that the famously named sick man of Europe endured until 1922 was not as much a tribute to its strength but rather an indictment of its malleability in the hands of the Allies. Soon after the armistice, Nationalist officers in the army conspired to form a resistance to Allied occupation and to the encroachments of the agreed terms of Mudros. At first, the Nationalists thought to act within the apparatus of the Ottoman government, but they soon realized that the Sultan and his government were simply pawns of the victors. This led to a growing sense of alarm and to the evolution of a Nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal in Anatolia. A Nationalist assembly grew into a Nationalist government centered in Ankara, which claimed political legitimacy based on maintaining the territorial integrity of the nation.

Call to Arms

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MUSTAFA KEMAL AND THE ARMISTICE Mustafa Kemal was 38 years old in spring 1919. It is hard to imagine that a man so young could have such an effect on his times and on history, but Kemal was, in the words of Winston Churchill, a man of destiny.2 He was well prepared to step onto the stage of world history and had served with distinction at Gallipoli and in Palestine in World War I. By the end of the war, he commanded the Ottoman Seventh Army, saving it from destruction in Syria. He was highly educated, a graduate of the Ottoman War Academy—a three-year curriculum stressing operations and national-level strategy. In addition to Ottoman Turkish, Kemal spoke German and French and read voraciously in all three languages.3 Kemal was an ardent Nationalist and modernizer and had been an early member of the Young Turks (the CUP), but his attempts to break into the inner circle of party leadership were unsuccessful. In January 1918, Mustafa Kemal was moderately well known to the Ottoman public for his brilliant performance during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915; however, his criticisms of Enver and the Germans had led to his dismissal in 1917.4 As 1918 arrived, Kemal was without an appointment and sick, and he watched from the sidelines as the Ottoman Empire became progressively weaker. Upon the succession of Sultan Vahdettin, who was an admirer, Kemal was professionally and politically rehabilitated to command the Ottoman Seventh Army in Palestine. He arrived there in late August and was caught up in the disastrous defeat at Megiddo in September. During the retreat from Palestine, Kemal was constantly in touch with the new cabinet in Istanbul, seeking a political appointment. When he received the full text of the armistice on November 3, 1918, Kemal was furious with the terms, which turned over control of such key strategic locations as Istanbul, the Dardanelles, the Pozantı tunnel, and Mosul to the allies. This caused him to send telegrams to the capital opposing certain clauses of the armistice and stating that he. intended to oppose the British occupation of Iskenderun by force. Ahmet Izzet ordered him to peacefully turn over the city and then promptly resigned as prime minister—but not before relieving Kemal of his post.5 On November 10, 1918, Kemal turned over command of the Second Army and departed from Adana by train for the capital. Kemal arrived in Istanbul on November 13, once again without an appointment and seemingly finished career-wise, to find the Allied fleet anchored off the city’s Golden Horn.6

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The Turkish W