The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire (47 page)

For Mehmed Vahideddin this was unfortunate, since he was determined to rule as well as to reign. The Sultan had no liking for parliamentary institutions and did not
bother to conceal his prejudices, trying to play the political game in the style his elder half-brother had perfected after the humiliation of San Stefano. Mehmed lacked Abdulhamid’s guile
and had fewer cards to put on the table; but successive High Commissioners acknowledged his usefulness, however trimmed-down his autocracy had become. Outwardly Sultan and High Commissioners seemed
to share common objectives; the latter, too, preferred to govern through decrees rather than respect the wishes of a political forum, especially one in which they thought they detected a nascent
socialism.

There were no protests from the High Commissioners when, on 21 December, Mehmed VI dissolved parliament, following this political coup with a return to more traditional ways of
government.
⁴
The authority of the
ş
eyhülislâm
was re-established, over both education and the interpretation of family law. When, in
the first week of March 1919, Mehmed VI appointed Damat Ferid as Grand Vizier, some of the Sultan’s most loyal supporters expressed doubts over his brother-in-law’s probity and good
faith. But Mehmed insisted on upholding the Sultan’s prerogatives. He could, he reminded his critics, appoint anyone he wished—‘even the Greek or Armenian Patriarchs or the Chief
Rabbi,’ he insisted.
⁵
Soon it became clear that Damat Ferid’s ‘liberalism’ was lightly held. He would comply with most Allied
demands, while emphasizing to the High Commissioners the value of the
ulema
as guarantors of good order and discipline. British officials with experience of India were inclined to agree with
Damat: better a mullah than a red revolutionary, they believed.

None of the Ottoman ministries in the winter of 1918–19 was harshly repressive. Censorship was selective. ‘Societies for the Defence of the Rights of Turks’ were tolerated by
the Sultan’s ministers, despite protests from the High Commissioners. It is probable that Sultan Mehmed knew of the secret ‘Outpost Society’, a group of officials who smuggled
arms along the Black Sea coast to eastern Anatolia or through the Dardanelles to Smyrna. Almost certainly he was aware that his most respected general-in-mufti, Mustafa Kemal, was encouraging the
spread of a specifically Turkish nationalism. But he said nothing. He had a curious habit
of occasionally shutting his eyes in the presence of ministers and officers to whom
he had granted an audience, as Kemal himself noticed when the Sultan engaged him in conversation after a
selamlik.
⁶
Was Vahideddin’s
gesture subconsciously symbolic? At all events, and with or without the Sultan’s connivance, an embryonic resistance movement linked the main Turkish towns even before mid-January in 1919,
when the Peace Conference opened in Paris. And Kemal was one of three generals on the retired list who knew how extensive were the volunteer militia groups, as they awaited a signal to protect
their homes from foreign rule.

The pace of events was determined by what was—or was not—happening in Paris. The statesmen, diplomats and co-opted experts gave priority to the making of peace with Germany and then
concentrated on settling the fate of Austria and Hungary before they considered the needs of the Ottoman peoples in any detail. Not until 17 June 1919 was an Ottoman delegation received by the
Council of Ten, effectively the Conference’s chief executive body; another eleven months passed before the final peace terms reached the Sublime Porte. Long before then a combination of
pride, resentment and disillusionment had fostered among the Turks a new sense of national identity.

When the Armistice of Mudros was signed, genuine liberals in Constantinople confidently expected the peace-makers to redraw the map of Europe and Asia to accommodate the principles of the
American President, Woodrow Wilson, with their emphasis on self-determination as a cure for the international
malaise.
It was assumed that Wilson’s crusading idealism would somehow
expunge the secret wartime treaties for the partition of Turkey, the baits tempting Italy into the war, the bargains struck by Sir Mark Sykes and Georges-Picot, and all the other devices of a
discredited diplomacy made public by the Bolsheviks. These hopes were, for the most part, dashed. Wilson’s self-determination favoured the Armenians, partly because wealthy emigrants could
mount a well-organized campaign on both sides of the Atlantic, but also because US missionaries had long been active in the predominantly Armenian vilayets. The Peace Conference recommended the
temporary cession of disputed Ottoman lands to the victorious Great Powers as League of Nations ‘mandates’. When the League began to function
Iraq, Palestine and
(later) Transjordan became British mandates while, after fierce wrangling between Paris and London, France gained the mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. In May 1919, in a complete break with the
basic tradition of US diplomacy, President Wilson agreed to seek Congressional approval for American mandates over Armenia, and even over Constantinople itself.
⁷

Towards one government’s ambitions Woodrow Wilson remained as hostile as the Ottoman liberals had hoped. He strongly opposed Italian attempts to secure a foothold in Asia Minor, largely
because there were no Italian communities already established there. Yet here, too, Wilson’s principles proved disastrous for the Turks; the arguments with which he reproached the
‘colonialists’ in Rome were twisted by Venizelos, the chief Greek delegate, to further his own ambitions. In Smyrna, the finest Ottoman port on the Aegean, there remained a large Greek
community; and it was not difficult for Venizelos to convince Wilson of the need for Greek troops to occupy the port and its hinterland, both to protect their compatriots from the Turks and to
forestall an Italian leap from the Dodecanese to the mainland of Asia. Venizelos had long enjoyed the warm backing of the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George. Within two months of the opening of
the Paris Peace Conference, he could count on support from both the British and the American delegations. Reports of violent attacks by Turkish militia upon Greek communities in western Anatolia
gave Venizelos his opportunity. A full division of the Greek army was transported to Smyrna on 15 May 1919, their landing protected by British, French and American warships lying out to
sea.
⁸

This decisive move followed three weeks in which it had seemed likely the Allies would soon occupy every harbour and sizeable town remaining within the Ottoman Empire. Disorder was spreading
rapidly through the outlying provinces. A stern warning was delivered to the Sultan by the High Commissioner, who laid particular emphasis on the anarchy prevailing along the Black Sea coast, where
the Ottoman Ninth Army seemed incapable of policing a turbulent region.
⁹
Mehmed VI Vahideddin was most conciliatory: a high-powered military mission,
led by a vigorous Inspector-General, should at once be sent to impose discipline on the Ninth Army; and, the British authorities were assured in the last days of
April, he
had every confidence in the skill of General Mustafa Kemal Pasha to undertake just such a mission. With some hesitancy, the British took the Sultan at his word: a visa was duly stamped authorizing
Kemal, as Inspector-General of the Ninth Army, to sail from Constantinople for the small port of Samsun. Accordingly, on the day after the Greeks landed in Smyrna, Kemal boarded a British-built
coaster, the
Bandirma
, and set off through the Bosphorus, pledged to restore order along the Black Sea coast. ‘Pasha, you can save the country,’ the Sultan told him in a farewell
audience, with that cryptic obscurity which he found more congenial than clear directives. A few hours later a British officer spotted Kemal’s name on a list of dangerous troublemakers. At
once the British military attaché set out for the Porte, with orders to see the Grand Vizier and make certain the Inspector-General remained in the capital. ‘Too late,
Excellency,’ Damit blandly told him. ‘The bird has flown.’
¹⁰

In the modern Turkish Republic Kemal’s arrival at Samsun, on 19 May, is still commemorated each year with a national holiday, as if it were the start of the revolution which was to sweep
away Sultan and sultanate. Yet the landing at Samsun was not in itself a remarkable event. For more than a week Kemal behaved cautiously. Only when he set out for the Anatolian plateau, officially
to impose order in towns where there had been clashes between the Turks and national minorities, did he begin to show independence. The first genuinely revolutionary act was taken at Amasya, the
old Hittite fortress overhanging the gorge of the river Yesirlimak. There, on 21 June, Kemal issued a Declaration of Independence, calling on the Turkish people to send delegates to a national
congress, which would be held at Sivas in Anatolia because the Sultan, his capital city and his administration were all under foreign duress. Peremptorily the Inspector-General was summoned back to
Constantinople, but he refused to go. On 8 July he resigned his commission.

There followed eight months of political confusion. Kemal was not the first of the military commanders to urge resistance in what was already being called a ‘War of Independence’,
but he was certainly the ablest of the generals to take to the mountains; and his ascendancy was recognized by a congress at Erzerum as well as the Sivas meeting. In some respects the Sivas
Congress was a disappointment; only thirty-nine
men were able to make the journey there. But at both meetings the delegates endorsed a manifesto whose principles were later
clarified and embodied in what became known as the ‘National Pact’.
¹¹
The manifesto insisted that ethnic Turks had a right to
self-determination, that Anatolia and all European Turkey constituted an indivisible entity in which there could be no Armenian or Greek state, and that the Allies should abandon their plans for
partitioning the empire and regulating the government in Constantinople. From Sivas came, too, a call for a new, elected parliament, to meet in a city where deputies would not be intimidated by an
Allied military or naval presence.

In this programme there was little to which the Sultan or his Grand Vizier could object. Although the Sultan confirmed orders for Kemal’s arrest, contact was maintained between
Constantinople and the Nationalists. Eleven days after the Sivas Congress finished, a US fact-finding team, commissioned by the President to discover whether an American mandate was a feasible
proposition, visited Sivas and discussed the problems of self-determination with Mustafa Kemal. Four weeks later the rebellious general received the Ottoman Minister of Marine at Amasya, and sent
him back to the capital with a version of the National Pact. As chairman of the Nationalist Representative Committee, Kemal asked for elections to be held for a parliament which would meet in a
town free from foreign domination, and he also requested that the NRC should have the opportunity of vetoing the appointment of Ottoman delegates to the Peace Conference. These terms were rejected
by Ali Riza Pasha, who had succeeded Damat Ferid as Grand Vizier on 2 October.
¹²
For parliament to meet in any town where its work could not be
scrutinized by the Sultan seemed unthinkable to Mehmed VI. He had no wish to exchange the comfortable security of his Bosphorus palaces for some remote, impromptu capital in Anatolia. Elections
were duly held; Kemal’s Nationalists won more seats in the lower House than any other party; but when parliament met, in the second week of January 1920, the deputies still gathered in
Stamboul.

Surviving letters show that the British authorities could not make up their minds over Kemal.
¹³
To some he was a bandit, to others a brigand; it
was a fine distinction. None looked upon him as a responsible
spokesman for the Turkish people. He had been elected to represent Erzerum, but he stayed away from a city
where he would almost certainly have been arrested or killed. As an absentee deputy, he may even have made a greater impact on the parliament than had he spoken in the chamber. Immediately after
the Sultan’s formal opening speech, a message of welcome telegraphed by Kemal from Ankara (then Angora) was read to the deputies; and throughout the nine weeks of the parliamentary session,
the Nationalists determined the day-to-day work of the chamber. A group of deputies secretly sought to have him elected as President (Speaker) of the Chamber, hoping that official status would give
him immunity from arrest. The proposal was dropped for fear it might prompt the Sultan to dissolve the assembly. By keeping parliament in session, the deputies were able to endorse Kemal’s
National Pact in the second week of February, thus giving constitutional recognition to the Sivas manifesto.

The defiant mood of the Ottoman Parliament alarmed the British High Commissioner, Admiral Sir John de Robeck, who had succeeded Admiral Calthorpe a few months earlier. He was already concerned
by reports that substantial stocks of arms were reaching Kemal, some from French and Italian sources. Against whom would they be employed? In London, detailed discussion of the treaty terms to be
offered the Sultan continued throughout the weeks that the Ottoman Parliament was in session. If these demands ran counter to the National Pact, Sir John de Robeck anticipated prolonged resistance
from the Turks. He sought permission for the High Commissioners to take preventive action strengthening Allied control over the Sultan and the administration in Constantinople.
¹⁴

This request posed awkward problems at the highest level. The United States was fast withdrawing into isolation: Wilson’s grave illness and the hostility of many Democrats and all
Republicans to the League of Nations ensured that the proposed American mandates were already being written off as historical aberrations, though it was not until June that Congress formally
declined to accept them. The three Allied Powers had difficulty in agreeing on policy or objectives. Friction between Britain and France over the Levant antedated the World War: ‘So far as
Syria is
concerned it is France and not Turkey that is the enemy,’ T.E. Lawrence had written in February 1915 (though in a private letter home, rather than an official
report).
¹⁵
The French, for their part, deeply resented the speed with which the British had seized Mosul in the last days of the war, for Sykes and
Picot had considered that rich oil-producing district to fall within the French sphere of influence. Nor were Anglo-Italian relations any easier. For four years Italy had opposed British support
for Venizelist Greece, whether in Macedonia, Albania or the Aegean; and the government in Rome resented Lloyd George’s patronage of the Greek adventure in Anatolia. The actions of both their
Allies continued to puzzle the British. François Georges-Picot had travelled to Anatolia and met Kemal personally towards the end of 1919 and, although Kemalist troops subsequently fired on
French forces occupying the predominantly Armenian districts around Marash, by the following spring it was clear that the French were preparing to pull back from their advanced line in Cilicia, to
make sure of their hold on Syria. The Italians, too, appeared to seek an understanding with Kemal, provided always that they could retain the Dodecanese. Yet, despite such disunity and mistrust
among the Allies, the Supreme Council responded favourably to Robeck’s request: the High Commissioners might complete the occupation of the Ottoman capital, arrest dangerous dissidents, and
send them to Malta for internment.
¹⁶