CHAPTER 46
Mustafa Kemal (10)
By the time that Mustafa Kemal reaches Istanbul, the war is already all but lost. The supplies of the Ottoman troops always seem to have gone to the wrong places, and they cannot work out how to operate the wonderful modern weapons with which the Germans have supplied them. They are outnumbered almost two to one. A German battleship has moved the Sultan and his wives to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus. Macedonia has been lost, and Salonika is occupied first by Greek and then by Bulgarian troops. The Albanians suddenly find themselves cut off from the empire by various Balkan armies, and take the opportunity to declare independence.
Istanbul is well defended, and Adrianopolis is still holding out against siege. The empire’s only battleship, the antique Hamidiye, in despite of a large hole in her side, has slipped past the Greek fleet in the Dardanelles, and is single-handedly and quixotically sinking Greek cargo boats and bombarding Greek towns. Its crew and its improbable commander are becoming national heroes.
The government decides to sue for peace, and the Grand Vizier considers ceding Adrianopolis and Thrace to the enemy, but the romantic, handsome and unintellectual Enver Pasha persuades the Committee of Union and Progress that Adrianopolis must not be given up. At the head of a patriotic crowd he enters the council chambers of the Sublime Porte. The Minister of War, a cigarette dangling lackadaisically from the corner of his mouth, admits Enver, but the former’s bodyguard shoots one of the intruders, and so someone immediately shoots the Minister, who falls down to the ground, exclaiming “The dogs have done me in!”
The Grand Vizier gives up his job with no apparent regret, remarking laconically, “I suppose you want the Grand Seal.”
Enver Pasha and his comrades assume absolute power, thus completing the usual trajectory of the revolutionary, who begins as a liberator and ends up the same as, or worse than, the tyrants he has displaced in the name of his liberal ideal.
Mustafa Kemal is dismayed and disgusted, but for the moment the coup is a popular one. Enver has a dashing scheme for saving Adrianopolis, which includes encircling the Bulgarian army via the Gallipoli peninsula, where Mustafa Kemal is Director of Operations. The attack is a shambles, and breaks down amid the mutual recriminations of its commanding officers, including Mustafa Kemal, who resigns. Adrianopolis falls, not least because a Serbian army has arrived, and inside its walls there are large numbers of Greeks and Bulgarians who are able to subvert its defences. Enver is forced to accept the very conditions that his coup was intended to prevent, whereupon his new War Minister is promptly assassinated. At Adrianopolis, the conquering Serbs and Bulgarians put 20,000 captured Ottoman troops on the island of Sarayiçi, where they die of disease and starvation.
Enver forms a triumvirate military dictatorship, and sets about hanging his rivals. Most fortunately for him, but inevitably and predictably, since they have never done anything else, the Balkan states start to quarrel and fall out over the carving up of the conquered territories. Bulgaria declares war on her Allies, the tide of refugees begins to flow again, and Enver is able to take advantage of the mayhem. His armies retake eastern Thrace, and he enters Adrianopolis in triumph at the head of a unit of cavalry, thus deeply irritating Mustafa Kemal and the other commanders who have actually done all the fighting and planning. Enver preens himself as the hero of the hour. He finally marries the Sultan’s niece, and goes to live in a palace on the Bosporus. In the meantime, Greece and Serbia have joyously divided between them what was taken from the Bulgarians. The latter sign a treaty with the Ottomans, arranging for an exchange of populations, supposedly of Turks and Bulgarians only, but Enver’s government takes the opportunity to expel 100,000 Greeks at the same time. Shortly afterwards they will take the further opportunity of expelling 200,000 Greeks from the Aegean coast. All is quiet until the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in June of 1914. Salonika remains in Greek hands, and becomes Thessaloníki. Mustafa Kemal says to his brother officers, “How could you leave Salonika, that beautiful home of ours? Why did you hand it over to the enemy and come here?” He will always be angry and ashamed that it was surrendered to the Greeks without a shot being fired.
Mustafa Kemal and his friend Fethi are exasperated by Enver and his regime. Mustafa is too blunt and truthful to be a success under such circumstances. He writes anonymous pamphlets attacking Enver. He and Fethi want to dispense with the paid terrorists who operate under the auspices of the Committee of Union and Progress, and consequently it seems likely that they themselves will become candidates for disposal. Their lives are probably saved by an offer that neither of them is in a position to refuse, and they are both posted to Sofia. Mustafa Kemal has to leave behind his friend Corinne, the Italian widow of an old comrade. Whether they were lovers or not is a matter known only to them, but it is certain that in her charming and interesting salon his admiration and love for Western culture became ever deeper. In Sofia this love cannot but grow, and Mustafa Kemal begins to envisage that one day opera houses and orchestras will spring up in Ankara and Istanbul.