CHAPTER 75

Mustafa Kemal (17)

Karatavuk in Gallipoli and Ibrahim in Aleppo share the strange limbo that descends upon an army that is still in existence but whose government has surrendered. Military routine continues, but no one knows what it is all for any more, and some soldiers cannot look each other in the eye, as if suspecting themselves of guilt for the defeat. Others start to chafe, carrying out orders sloppily, and losing their fear of their officers. They talk about going home, about how this might be accomplished, about whether or not there might be transport. There is a steady trickle of desertion now that it has become pointless to be a soldier, and much of the army demobilises haphazardly and unofficially. Many of those taking their weapons with them will simply become bandits in the interior, further exacerbating the misery of the population. Pay is not coming through, and the diet continues to be meagre beyond endurance. Some soldiers steal from the civilian population, and others beg.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire has been brought about by the defeat of Bulgaria, because this has opened up the possibility of an easy Allied invasion on a long front, whilst the bulk of the army is still irretrievably far away in the Caucasus and in Syria. The Grand Vizier, Tâlat Pasha, announces, “We’ve eaten shit,” and resigns. The government of Enver Pasha and the “Young Turks” falls at last, and Mustafa Kemal is disappointed not to be appointed to the new Cabinet. The British impose harsh conditions upon the new government, and Enver and his former colleagues escape to Germany. The Ottomans realise too late that the British do not share their assumption that there will be no military advances into Ottoman territory, and Mosul is occupied, breaking an agreement that the British had made two days previously. This is the new era of the fight for Turkish independence, because the commander of the Ottoman 6th Army begins secretly to accumulate weapons and supplies when he realises what is happening. In Syria, Mustafa Kemal finds that he is in charge of a border that does not officially exist on any modern maps, since it is defined by the ancient and indefinable border of the kingdom of Cilicia. The British announce that they intend to occupy Aleppo, and Mustafa Kemal takes steps to resist any incursion into Şskenderun. He is not pleased when told to desist by the government, and is recalled to Istanbul. In the meantime, he too has started to make preparations for resistance. His successor sets about removing essential supplies into the interior, where the Allies cannot sequester them. On every front, Ottoman commanders, as if knowing what is to come, set about gathering and organising supplies and munitions.

The French occupy Adana, in late 1918, and immediately set the cat among the pigeons. The Ottoman Empire has asked for an armistice, but it has not surrendered. It is weary and economically ruined, it is inconceivable that it has any fight left in it, but the victors have yet to become fully cognisant of the fantastic obstinacy of the Turks. Now that foreign troops are beginning to occupy its territory, it is inevitable that resistance will be organised, and a pattern begins to emerge: as the authorities of the empire progressively capitulate, and accede more and more to the Allies’ demands, resistance originates more and more from a loose coterie of dissident army officers. The empire begins to divide, but it will take a while for Mustafa Kemal and his brother officers to fire up the abject population. In this they are greatly helped by the French, who unleash detachments of Armenian volunteers upon the population of Adana. These volunteers set about exacting revenge upon the locals, and resistance predictably commences. All over Anatolia, Ottoman weapons stores that are under Allied guard begin to have armaments smuggled out of them.

In Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal surveys the Allied warships in the harbours and becomes depressed. He had suffered months of insomnia and sacrificed tens of thousands of men at Gallipoli in order to prevent this very thing. He is downcast, but at the same time entertains the hope that one day soon he will be head of a government that will put all this to rights and end the succession of humiliations. He rents a house from an Armenian at Osmanbey, conveniently close to the nexus of political life, and conveniently far from his mother.

The occupying French and British troops freely antagonise each other and the local population in Istanbul. The French are just setting into motion a petulant foreign policy which has remained steadfastly unchanged ever since, and whose sole object is to obstruct and irritate the Anglo-Saxon world as much as possible, even when that is against French interests. The Italian troops are pleasant to everyone, but the Italian government is plotting to frustrate Greek ambitions to reclaim territory that was anciently Greek. The British and French have a vague understanding with the Greeks that lends wings to this ambition. There are Greek troops in Istanbul, who have been ecstatically welcomed by the vast Greek population. For those such as Mustafa Kemal, this is most worrying of all, because everyone knows that the Greeks yearn to regain the ancient capital of Byzantium.

Astute Turkish politicians, however, begin to appreciate just how war-weary the Allies are, and how easy it might be to exploit their divisions. Mustafa Kemal throws himself into full-time manoeuvring, but because the politicians are incapable of mutual cooperation, it is in fact the general staff of the armed forces that becomes the focus of resistance to the Allies, and in particular that group of nationalist officers of whom Mustafa Kemal is to become the leader.

The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, submits a memorandum in which Greece lays claim to Thrace and to western Anatolia. He proposes a voluntary exchange of Turkish and Greek populations. The idea seems terribly sensible, as if it is a perfectly acceptable idea that the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals should be arbitrarily disrupted in the interests of nation-building. In Istanbul, the Greek Orthodox patriarch announces on behalf of the Greek population that it is no longer Ottoman, and declares union with Greece. Unsurprisingly, Turkish societies for the defence of national rights begin to proliferate all over Turkey. The Italians decide to frustrate the Greeks, and land troops in Antalya. Uniquely among the Allies, the Italian policy is to butter up the Turkish population at every possible opportunity, and treat respectfully with Ottoman emissaries.

Under Allied authority the Greek government sends soldiers to occupy Smyrna, and ultimately another war will be sparked off. Instead of going home, Karatavuk and Ibrahim will find themselves embroiled in a campaign which will be marked particularly by its dishonour and viciousness. Back in Eskibahçe, where there is now a small detachment of Italian troops, the lovely Philothei, more melancholy than ever, still yearns for the return of her fiancé, believing, as so many girls do, that life does not truly begin until one is a bride. She knows that when he returns she will have to become a Muslim, but this prospect has little meaning for her, as she will still be able to leave little offerings in front of the icon of the Panagia Glykophilousa, and it has always been the pattern for a woman to take her husband’s faith, and there have been certain Muslim and Christian families in Eskibahçe that have customarily intermarried since memory began. She is comforted by Drosoula, who talks of nothing but hope, and by Leyla Hanim, who tries to force her to learn to play the oud, thrusting it into her hands and explaining how to use the cherrywood plectrum. Philothei resolutely refuses, forbidden by her own gentleness from explaining that in common opinion hereabouts, the only kind of woman who plays the oud is a whore.

Philothei has long ago ceased to wear a veil, because unhappiness has reduced the joys of vanity and, apart from the tatterdemalion Italian soldiers who awake from their perpetual siesta under the plane trees of the meydan in order to blow her kisses that she scornfully disdains, there are no men left in the place who might become quarrelsome on account of her beauty.

The Allied occupation of Istanbul proceeds with comic effect. The British and the French continue to irritate both each other and the populace, and the Italians continue to be kind to everyone. The latter have been promised the Smyrna region, but they know from bitter experience in Libya that it isn’t easy to occupy Ottoman territory. It takes fewer men and less trouble just to establish a zone of influence, and they astutely choose the role of protecting the Turks against Greek ambition, which is to take the western coast, and create Greater Greece. The Ottoman government is alarmed by the presence of Greek troops and warships in Istanbul, where a very substantial proportion of the population is Greek.

Mustafa Kemal throws himself into the demoralising and complicated machinations required to lever him into a position of power. He is convinced that only he can lead the Turks to national independence. He exploits contacts in the press, and has fruitless interviews with the Sultan. He plots to obstruct the appointment of a new and uncongenial Grand Vizier.

The British persuade the Ottoman government to take action against those officials and officers who have been implicated in war crimes, such as the death marches of Armenians and British prisoners of war, and the deportations of west-coast Greeks in 1914. This is a good opportunity to get rid of Enver Pasha’s old cronies from the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks who are not quite so young any more, and many of whom have blood on their hands. Mustafa Kemal is not arrested, and the Italian ambassador offers to protect him, should the British decide to exile him. In any case, he has never been implicated in any war crimes, and his military career has been nothing but distinguished. The Sultan checks the legal validity of the death sentences with the Sheikulislam, and the executions begin. Mustafa Kemal enters into full-time plotting with other nationalist officers; their plan is to get rid of the Allies in the entire Turkish heartland.

The nationalists contrive to obstruct the demobilisation and disarmament of the Ottoman army, and to retain sympathisers in high office. The gendarmerie mysteriously gets bigger as the army gets smaller. An officer named Kâzim Karabekir, another child of Destiny, calls in on Mustafa Kemal to sound him out about the idea of forming a national government in eastern Anatolia, in defiance, if necessary, of the government in Istanbul. “It’s an idea,” says Kemal. There are dozens of like-minded officers waiting for the right moment.

The Italians move in on western Anatolia, officially in order to put an end to brigandage, but really to get there before the Greeks. Ottoman Societies for the Defence of National Rights spring up like toadstools, and violence increases between rival ethnicities. Prince Abdürrahim sets off on a conciliation mission, and is welcomed by Muslims in Smyrna. In Antalya and Konya the cynical Italians, who also happen to be the only occupying force with any sense, turn out their own soldiers to greet him with full honours. Whilst the Prince is there, news comes in of the Greek landing at Smyrna. The royal attempts at peacemaking are boycotted everywhere by Christians, who do not want peace. In Pontus, on the south coast of the Black Sea, where the disappeared Armenians are being replaced by Greek refugees from communist Russia, the Greeks are demanding independence. The Muslims, many of them also refugees from Russia and the Caucasus, would rather die fighting than submit to Greeks and Armenians. Their bandit chiefs inaugurate a campaign of terror against the local Christians. The British make token efforts to restore order, but they lack the will to do it properly. They are beginning the long process of realising that to be the world’s police force and to have the largest empire in the history of the world is expensive, tiresome and unrewarding.

Mustafa Kemal is appointed by the Sultan to investigate Greek complaints and prevent the formation of soviets in the 9th Army. His powers are so great that the Sultan has effectively appointed him the military and civil commander of eastern Anatolia. Nothing could be better for Mustafa Kemal. The 9th Army is large, powerful, well equipped, a long way from Istanbul and in exactly the right place. The Sultan presents him with a gold watch. Kemal is just about to go, when the Greeks land at Smyrna.

The Greeks have been given permission to do so by Presidents Wilson and Clemenceau, and Prime Minister Lloyd George. The Allied intention is to use one Ally, Greece, to frustrate another Ally, the Italians. Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, really wants to annex western Anatolia permanently, to accomplish what the Greeks have always referred to as “The Big Idea.” It almost amounts to the rebuilding of Byzantium. In the British government, Lloyd George, sanguine and ignorant, is the only one who thinks that the Greek landing is a good thing.

The landing goes disastrously wrong, and within a few days many Turks have been killed by Greek troops and rioting Greek civilians. After a few days Aristeides Stergiadis arrives and takes control. He is a tough and principled man with an extraordinary sense of fair play, so that local Greeks routinely accuse him of being pro-Turk, but even he cannot control the Bashi-Bazouks and renegade soldiers in the interior, nor repair the intercommunal damage done by the fiasco of the landing. Stergiadis offends the local bigwigs mainly by refusing to go to their dinner parties. He has to cope with an anomalous situation in which a British general in Istanbul is technically in command of the Greek army, even though he isn’t, in a place which is technically still under the sovereignty of the Sultan, but is actually under Greek rule.

The Allies inform the Ottoman government of the landing only the day before it happens, and Mustafa Kemal finds everyone in a state of outraged disbelief. An Italian occupation might have been acceptable, but a Greek one is intolerable. It puts steel into the hearts of Mustafa Kemal and everyone like him. The British hesitate before granting him a travel permit.

Before he goes, his ship is inspected for smuggled goods, and Mustafa Kemal says, “We are not taking contraband or weapons, but faith and determination.”

Back in Eskibahçe, a little strength and determination is rekindling in the inhabitants, along with the return of some of its menfolk, who are beginning to arrive from all directions, starving, ragged and bootless. Many of them are deserters, and others are from units that have somehow dissolved in the general chaos. Some of them say that they can’t stay long, they’ve got to find Mustafa Kemal. Karatavuk’s brother comes back, provoking wails of joy from their mother, Nermin, who immediately runs to tell Ayse and Polyxeni.

Ayse has been reduced to penury by the death of Abdulhamid Hodja. She does not have his skill in cultivation, and, worse than this, she has very little hope. “I am waiting to die,” she says, “and I pray it might be soon.” She has been living off the charity of her friends, who also have nothing. Even Ayse, however, is affected by the arrival of the long lost, and casts around for something positive to do. She finds a pot of whitewash in the corner of Nilufer’s empty stable, and she has a good idea. She collects twenty large stones and paints them white.

One by one she takes them down to Abdulhamid’s grave, and lays them around it to make a border.

She has another idea. She goes to fetch the brass ornaments and the blue beads and the green ribbons. She rubs the verdigris off the brass with vinegar, and takes Abdulhamid’s spade from its hook on the wall.

She overturns a few spadefuls of earth, and buries Nilufer’s accoutrements in her husband’s grave. She stands over it for a few moments, leaning on the spade to catch her breath, feeling weak and dizzy. She reflects that by now Abdulhamid must be nothing other than ochre bones. When she has recovered she kneels down and whispers into the earth so that he can hear her clearly. “My lion,” she says. She thinks about how she is going to continue, because one has to be economical when addressing the deceased. “I expect that Nilufer is dead by now,” she says. “I’ve brought you her things, and now you can ride her in Heaven.”

Ayse puts her ear to the earth, and listens.