CHAPTER 30

Mustafa Kemal, His Own Policeman (7)

The Young Turks’ plans to root out corruption and nepotism, to improve education, to update the armed forces, all come to nothing in the face of old habits, opportunistic vendettas and tribal loyalties. The vast majority of the population are deeply conservative, because for them the Sultan is chief of all the Muslims, the Shadow of God on Earth. To rebel against him or to contest with him is tantamount to sacrilege. Officials appointed under the ancien régime find themselves undermined and operating under ambiguous loyalties. The deputies in the new parliament, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Albanians, Jews, Serbs, Armenians, Bulgarians and a Vlach, prove themselves incapable of any ideal higher than ethnic self-interest. Unrest grows in the army as officers promoted from the ranks see their chances of further promotion diminished. Military units become fractious because of being transferred away from Istanbul on the grounds of their dubious loyalty. A Mohammedan Union arises to combat the secularism of the Young Turks, to fight for the adoption of the sharia law, and for the exemption of religious students from military service in the event of their failing their religious exams. The press, which now has freedom under the reinstated constitution, begins to agitate vociferously, like a dog that barks with no clear intention at the moon. An opposition journalist is murdered on the Galata Bridge, and his funeral becomes a mass protest.

In April 1909 there is a mutiny among troops sent to Istanbul under the assumption that they would be loyal. They are joined by Islamic students and teachers, and they march on parliament, chanting “We want the Holy Law” and killing a naval officer and two politicians who had been mistaken for someone else. From Salonika the Young Turks send soldiers, among them Mustafa Kemal in charge of a division, and the mutiny is suppressed. The Sultan is deposed, fainting into the arms of his chief eunuch when he is informed that he is to be sent to Salonika, and his trepidatious, pliable brother is released from thirty years’ house arrest in order to be enthroned in his place. Eighty counter-revolutionaries are hanged, including the leader of the Mohammedan Union, and even the unfortunate who used to blend the Sultan’s tobacco. In Adana, the hot-headed and nominally Christian Archbishop Moushegh encourages his fellow Armenians to acquire arms and kill Muslims, causing a backlash that leads to the burning of the town and the massacre of twenty thousand Armenians and two thousand Muslims. Çemal Pasha arrives and quells the disturbances, executing forty-seven guilty Muslims and one Armenian.

Mustafa Kemal begins to argue that it is necessary to keep the army out of politics. He says that members of the Committee of Union and Progress should decide whether they want to be politicians or soldiers, and to forswear political activity altogether should they opt for the latter. This does not prove popular with politicised officers such as the handsome and respectable Enver Pasha. Mustafa Kemal’s assassination is set in train, but the latter suspects the young man who has been sent to talk to him, and he places a revolver before him on the desk. His revolver, coupled with his cool eloquence, so impress the young man that he confesses to his mission, and announces a change of heart. Now the party arranges for Yakup Cemil to kill Mustafa Kemal, but the former has much admiration for the latter, refuses the mission and warns him in advance. One dark night Kemal ducks into a doorway and draws his revolver because he senses that he is being followed. The man who passes by is Enver Pasha’s uncle. Kemal boasts, “I am my own policeman.”