TURKEY IN TRAVAIL The Birth of a New Nation 1925 By HAROLD ARMSTRONG (Lately Assistant and Acting Military Attache to the High Commissioner, Constantinople ; Special Service Officer in War Office and on Head-quarter Staff of Allied Army of Occupation, and Supervisor of Turkish Gendarmerie)

This is a remarkable book. As the author admits, it's not meant to be history... but as an honest accounting of personal observations from having gotten up close and personal with the Turks, there is great historical value to be derived.

Harold Armstrong appears to suffer from an identity crisis. As an official representative for His Majesty's Government, he loyally spouts the propaganda that perhaps he convinced himself was the reality, thanks to its endless propagation. He talks about how the Armenians were marked for extermination, for example, in full support of the Bryce and Toynbee directed Wellington House concoctions. Yet everything he puts on the table from his personal observations contradicts the possibility.

To demonstrate how off he is when he tries to explain the "official" history, he relies on "Pan-Turanism" as the motive for extermination. "The Armenians ... were a bar to the realization of the Pan-Turanian policy, and so with ruthless cruelty they were wiped away," he writes. It's a convenient theory, but unsupported by any evidence. There were many other ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire that were just as much a bar to "Turkification," yet they were left alone... and, as David Fromkin explained, the fact that individuals in government have dreams do not necessarily translate into actual government policy.

Another poor historical example is his claim that "Mustapha Kemal and the Bolsheviks formed an alliance and portioned out Armenia between them." We know from the testimony of Armenia's first prime minister that Russia and Turkey were not at all in such cahoots. (And, of course, in the war between Turkey and Armenia in 1920, Turkey took back only what had been Turkish land for centuries, and left the real "Armenia" alone.) In fact, when Russia threatened, Armenia turned to Turkey for help. So Armstrong can't help but be partial to Armenia, loyal to the official line of his government. He writes, as another example, "In 1878 the Treaty of Berlin decided to protect the Armenians, and was the direct cause of their massacre in 1896." No mention of the Armenian terror groups that came into being largely after 1878, and the massacres they committed that forced the Turks' hand. As Kamuran Gurun astutely wrote, "At the very least it would be fair ... to remember how many people lost their lives in rebellions or disorders in their own or other countries, and think how much right they have to use the term massacre."

While Armstrong's recanting of propagandistic "history" is not to be taken seriously, what he has eyewitnessed is another matter. As a POW, the worst of the evidence he provides for the "genocide" boils down to (1) wells filled with bodies, without knowledge of who the killers were or, for that matter, whose bodies were in the wells, (2) bodies by the roadside of Armenians unable to keep up in the marches... certainly a fact, but a jump to conclude the purpose was intentional murder, and (3) Armenian women being sold by gendarmes in bazaars. [He wasn't close to a bazaar as a POW to actually witness the last one.]

In the whole book, however, he refers to the Armenians and Greeks with disdain, not unlike practically all Western travellers who weren't out of their minds with anti-Turkish bigotry, and there isn't one Turk who treats him unfairly.

There is one fellow for whom he displays much wrath, Mazlum Bey (the commander of his POW camp), for having treated British POWs badly and sometimes criminally (yet, when Armstrong decides to put Mazlum in his place, Mazlum hardly goes for Armstrong's throat. Armstrong even remains unpunished after his abortive escape attempts.) Armstrong makes sure to tell the reader Mazlum has Arabic stock.  The author isn't very keen on the Arabs, after having witnessed their bad behavior too many times.

If he eyewitnesses massacres, the massacres are not perpetrated by the Turks. In example after example, he describes how fairly, courteously and honestly the "lovable" Turks have treated him. Armstrong describes the Turks as kind and slow to be roused into anger. As a rule, the characteristic he found in the Turks was honor; one that was sorely missing in the Ottoman Christians.

He distinguishes the cruelty factor at one point as follows: "As always, the actions of the Turkish brigands were mild in comparison with the brutalities, murders and crimes of the Greeks." He gets an idea of the Orthodox mentality by recounting a conversation between the High Commissioner and M. Canelopoulos, when the latter hoped that his fellow Greeks would be murdered because he needed "a raison d’etre for advancing.” Substitute "Armenian" for "Greek," and one gets the exact same M.O.; before the war, the Armenian revolutionists would massacre Turks in hopes of getting their fellow Armenians massacred, providing the "raison d’etre" for the Europeans to step in.

This is why it seemed to me Harold Armstrong was in "denial." He dutifully preserved his nation's propagandistic line without any evidence... but the evidence he does supply directly contradicts how a people so fair and good could evilly and systematically commit the worst crime against humanity.

 

p. 23

Sometimes we passed battalions of Turkish troops marching down to Bagdad... some 300 miles away... There the Arabs watched, and when occasion served, they killed and looted them, so that we passed many Turkish soldiers on the route. They lay by the roadside with their throats cut, left to rot like carrion for all their officers or Government cared; while far away in Anatolia the women waited eagerly, but in vain, for news of their men. Underfed, misused, paid but little and that rarely, ragged and dirty, these Turkish troops were as wretched in their liberty as we were in our captivity.

26

The Turks had massacred the Armenians

ruined villages where the wells were full of bodies

Turkish gendarmes ... selling Armenian women for a few shillings in the bazaars of Aleppo and Mosul 

28

"marched slowly to death"

I heard the sound of women and children and in the next field were a crowd of Armenians and with them white-bearded priests. I saw them marched away...under the escort of armed gendarmes. They were being marched to death, and the bodies I had seen by the roadside in the Amanus mountains were those of them who could not keep up.

 

34

They were simple, sturdy folk, these Turkish peasants. They made no pretence of wishing to fight in this war. I saw none of the wild enthusiasms of other countries {except for young and excited recruits}... the country and the people were tired of the everlasting wars, and ever and again they cursed Enver Pasha and his German crew.

35

They were a kindly, hospitable people, slowly roused and then capable of terrible anger and tremendous energy. They were the last of the aristocrats, with their vices and their virtues. They ruled as by Divine Right, as part of a caste, and without political theories. They were not vicious or cruel, but they did not understand pain in others. They had a profound contempt for the rest of mankind, and inherent laziness covered by great courtesy. Inefficient to distraction, they were eminently lovable. Their sense of humour was simple. Sleeping round the hot embers of the fire I was night after night awaked by the hideous snores of a carter, who had a face like a frog and slept with his mouth wide open. At last in desperation I begged some one to wake up Balik Pasha, or the “Fish” Pasha, and shut his fly-trap of a mouth. The name stuck. For a week the word “ Balik” roused a roar of laughter. Some one on the march would call for “ Balik Pasha with the fly-trap mouth,” and from end to end of the caravan, drivers and guards and passengers in the carts would shout with laughter and call one to another. People used to wake the little fellow at all times to tell him his nickname and then roar with applause, in which he would join. They would, as is their custom, get up at one or two in the morning, kick the fire into life and light cigarettes, and then one would call “ Balik Pasha
and the whole room would rock with laughter till they lay down to sleep again. Long afterwards a general came to inspect the troops in the area. He heard men talk of “ Balik Pasha,” and incautiously asked who he was. So they brought the little carter before the general...

 

38

Against us, their enemies, I found no animosities. Even the German nurses, though full of fierce patriotism, did all they could for us. The Turkish officers were courteous and polite. They showed no enthusiasm for the war. They avoided all controversial subjects. When we happened to talk of the war, they told me glowing accounts of the success of the British troops. It was a curious trait of the Turks to over-represent the success of the enemy.

 

49

(Relates his escape attempts; he gets caught, but faces no punishment.)

 

THE PRISON CAMP IN ANATOLIA

51

(changes prisons, shown a site where a British submarine dived under mines of the Dardanelles, went to centre of country and opened fire on a train.)

The Turks congratulated me on the courage of the commander. They looked on it as a fine feat and one to be made much of. I could not help thinking that a German or Englishman would have taken a few different  view if it had been in his country.

 

52

The Germans treated the Turks with high contempt, and more than one told me how glad he was to meet another white man in this “native” country.

Everything that went wrong was put down to the Germans... if food was short, it had been shipped to Berlin to feed Germans.

 

pp. 110-123

CHAPTER XIII

The Treaty of Sèvres. The Storm Bursts,
1920

IRRITATED by this show of resistance on the part of a defeated enemy, the Allies decided to teach the Turks a lesson. The British Commander, General Sir George Milne, had some idea of the strength of the Nationalists. The French from their Cilician experiences had more. The Embassies had very little and the Allied Premiers in Paris had no conception at all of the situation that now faced them. They did not realize that they were dealing with a live force and not with the decrepit relics of the old Ottoman Empire. Anatolia was not affected by an economic blockade, nor did it care whether or not it was recognized as one of the family of nations. It was only through Constantinople that punishment could be inflicted, and it was decided to occupy Constantinople officially on the 16th of March.

The occupation was to be carried out by Lieut.-General Sir Henry Wilson as the Officer Commanding the Allied troops of the area. The French and Italian Governments signed the instructions. Their departments in Paris and Rome held up the executive orders.

The occupation was carried out, but by British sailors and soldiers alone; and only when the French and Italians saw that it had been successful and that the whole control of the city and area would be in British hands, did they combine and claim a share in this control. Martial law was proclaimed. The life of the city was to continue as before. The Ottoman Government was allowed to work, but every branch was to be carefully supervised. The Ministry of War, the Admiralty, the customs, passports, ports, telegraphs and newspapers were watched and controlled by Allied officers. The Allied Police Commission already in existence was strengthened, and the French had some organization for the gendarmerie.

On the night prior to the occupation a number of
prominent Turks were arrested as active supporters of the Nationalists. In the prisons there were already many officials and officers, accused of participation in massacres or ill-treatment of prisoners-of-war. They were all shipped off at once and imprisoned in a camp at Malta.

The story of these deportees is a sorry one. Among them were evil criminals, who had murdered prisoners-of-war. Many were ordinary normal Turks who had been leading men in Turkey during the war. Some were arrested on the poor evidence of a couple of Armenian women or on that of an enemy. More than one was arrested in error. They were imprisoned in conditions quite out of keeping with their rank or position. They were kept two years in confinement without being charged with any crime. They were herded all together, those arrested for political offences old and new, and those for massacre, murder and evil crimes. Thus the foul beast Mazlum Bey from Afion-Kara-Hissar, who had murdered British prisoners-of-war and committed loathsome crimes and offences, was confined with Said Halim Pasha, the old Grand Vizier, who had opposed the declaration of war and had been persuaded by Enver Pasha against his better judgment to sign. It was as if the victorious Germans had shut Lord Balfour in with a gang of criminals like Crippen and Mahon. As pressed continually on the Home Government the matter could have been disposed of easily and well. A court could have tried each case, hung the murderer, sent the evil-doer to hard labour, released the innocent and, if considered necessary, interned those politically dangerous. But the affair dragged on, and late in 1921 all these prisoners without distinction were released, and those who wished it were shipped back to Turkey. The results of these deportations were considerable.

All Turks of military age began to leave for Anatolia, and all men of any importance made for Angora. The Sultan’s advisers were believed to have supplied many of the names, and hatred against the Sultan increased. The belief in British justice suffered a rude shock. Many of the deportees were men of great importance. When released they became ministers and deputies in the Angora Government, and their hatred of the British was not diminished by their imprisonment, degradation and general treatment in Malta.

The deportations and the occupation of Constantinople encouraged the Sultan and his supporters. Both he and his brother-in-law Damad Ferid Pasha were early convinced that Mustapha Kemal and the Nationalists were intent on forming a separate Government. It is hard to say how far this attitude on their part drove the Nationalists to separation, or how far the Sultan and his supporters knew their own countrymen well enough to realize that, if given a free hand, they would take this line. The Sultan endeavoured to involve us on his side. We struggled to keep clear, for in February 1919 the High Commissioner had received instructions to protect the Sultan, but to take no action against any Turks who might come into power, even if they were members of the old hostile Committee of Union and Progress, and on no account to become involved in local Turkish affairs.

Very soon the Sultan’s enemies became our enemies, and, in acting in our defence, it was difficult to avoid acting on his behalf. To those on the spot to stand by the Sultan was clearly the sound policy. He represented the de juTe Government. He was friendly, prepared to carry out the Allies’ orders, and he was within their control. British interests were few. We required the Straits open, and fair play for our traders. We needed the moral support of the Khalif for our Moslem subjects. There was on us a moral obligation to protect the Christian minorities. In the early months of 1919 and in 1920, given moral support, a loan and a free hand, the Sultan could have asserted himself and dealt with the first efforts of Mustapha Kemal. The peasantry were still loyal. They believed that they were enlisting to save him. He sent his Grand Vizier hot-foot to the Embassies with warnings and requests to be allowed to act. He was refused permission. He was tied hand and foot and then called upon to carry out the Allies’ demands. As the power passed to the Nationalists, he became valueless. He was an old man, living in constant fear of assassination, and he was dominated by his Grand Vizier.

Damad Ferid was of a far different type. He was a stubborn, brave, unwise old man. He was an Albanian with a touch of Kurdish blood in him, and he had all the fierce hatred of the blood feud in his soul. He was a clansman without compromise. Throughout he had warned the British of the dangers and he had taken what steps he could to destroy the Nationalists, until the breach between Angora and Constantinople was broad and unbridgeable. His personality counted for much. His lack of compromise and his pursuit of his vendetta against his enemies made reconciliation impossible.

Faced by the same enemies, despite intentions to the contrary, we found ourselves working with the Sultan’s party. Undoubtedly a number of the deportees were arrested at Damad Ferid’s request. Now threatened by the Nationalists, we went a step farther. Sir George Milne sent one of his staff, Colonel Shuttleworth, to discuss with Zeki and Hamdi Pashas at the Ministry of War the formation of two divisions of royalist troops to be organized with British officers. As soon as these were ready, they were to be taken by sea to the north coast of Anatolia and marched in on the Nationalist flank and rear.

The Sultan bestirred himself. He issued an Imperial Iradé proclaiming Mustapha Kemal and his associates outlaws and a Fetwa which excommunicated them. He dissolved the Ottoman Government, and recalled back to power Damad Ferid, who had been forced to resign some months before. He tried to raise the Kurds to his aid. The Allies agreed and he arranged for arms and stores to be sent from the depots under Allied control to the Circassians fighting for him under Ahmed Anzayour. He sent troops to Yalova and Ismidt. Still the Allies did not back him fully. Few of the arms and stores reached the Circassians. The local officials held them up and these officials were under Allied control. Up to the end why we should not act together against a common enemy to our mutual advantage was not understood by the Sultan nor by Damad Ferid, nor yet by any reasonable person in possession of the facts.

The result of the Sultan’s actions was negligible, but it drove the Nationalists to fury. They denounced the Central Government. They swore vengeance on Damad Ferid. They formed at Angora the Grand National Assembly to carry on the government of the country, as long as Constantinople was in bondage. They prepared to fight to the end.

Then the full storm burst on us with blow on crashing blow. Hardly had the occupation been completed before the Turks surrounded the British garrison at Eski-Shehir. All other garrisons and Control Officers had been withdrawn to avoid capture or arrest except this one, and it had been left on the railway junction to assist the retirement of Italian troops from Konia. The garrison cut its way out, but lost a number of men and animals. The Italians with their line of retreat gone were forced to turn off at Afion-Kara-Hissar, and escape by the Greek zone and Smyrna. In Europe Germany showed signs of revolt, and a revolution in favour of the Kaiser blazed up for a while. Ireland was twisted in pain, and all the force of England was concentrated in holding her down. The Kurds were rising on the Mesopotamian frontier. Behind us in Eastern Thrace a certain Jaffar Tahir had raised the Turks, and they were arming and drilling and organizing from Adrianople.

Harold Armstrong would go on to author a mostly unflattering portrait of Kemal Ataturk in a 1932 book

Infuriated at the attitude of the Sultan, Mustapha Kemal and the new Government at Angora proceeded forthwith to make a military convention with the Bolshevik Government of Moscow. Denikin and his counter-revolutionary troops had been smashed. They had shown neither efficiency nor honesty. The Turks and the Bolsheviks had a common aim in the destruction of the British Empire, their common enemy. They struck at her feet in the East. The Bolsheviks seized Azerbaijan. By a concentrated action with the Turks from the south they forced Armenia to her knees, and captured Kars and Nakhitchevan. Now Nakhitchevan and Kars form the back door of Anatolia and a side door to Persia, and are on the way to Mesopotamia. The Allied general staffs became alarmed. They prepared plans to stop the Russian advance southwards. They feared Bolshevik propaganda on the heels of victorious troops. The British discussed the safety of Bagdad and Jerusalem and even produced schemes to cover the Suez Canal.

The Sultan’s troops, sent to Yalova and Adabazar, refused to fight in the civil war. Those under Ahmed Anzavour were driven back, and wiped out, and he was himself killed.

In May the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres were published. President Wilson and the Americans had left the Conference in December 1919, and with them they took all their idealism. The Peace Conference reverted to old European methods and diplomacy. The secret treaties of the war, that had hovered behind the Conference like pale ghosts, afraid of the light from America, now came forward. The march of events had at last warned the Allies and they set to work to be finished with Turkey. The result was the Treaty of Sèvres.

It was based and bound on the secret treaties. Italy and Greece, before they entered the war with the Allies, had bargained for their prices and had been promised sections of Anatolia as payment. France had her aspirations, and England her policies. They were all fitted into the treaty. Annexation of territory was concealed behind the American idea of " mandates." Syria and Cilicia went to France. Smyrna and Western Thrace and most of Eastern Thrace to Greece. Italy got the islands. Russia had been promised Constantinople and the area of the Straits and the Bosphorus. But she was out of the running and they were put under an international régime with the Greeks down the western shore of the Marmora and on the Gallipoli peninsula.

The Turks, with Smyrna cut out, were to have Anatolia as far as the Georgian, Armenian, Kurdish, and Mesopotamian frontiers, but every detail of their lives was to be supervised. There were Commissions and Sub-Commissions. There was the Sub-Commission of Organization to disband the Turkish army and to form the new forces of a limited volunteer army and gendarmerie. There was a Sub-Commission to look after custom officials, forest guards and urban and rural police. Nominal sovereign rights were left to the Turks, but they were bound hand and foot with rigid irons. Their finances were strictly controlled.

Attached to the treaty, and not made public until Damad Ferid had signed, was a tripartite agreement between England, France and Italy. It divided Anatolia into three pieces. In the Southern portion the "special interests of Italy were recognized." In the Eastern section "the special interests of France were recognized." The remaining portion was not allotted, but it was presumed that England would have "special interests" there. Beyond this all the sections of the old Ottoman Empire were portioned off to Arabs and Kurds and Jews.
It was incredible that under the conditions in existence at that moment such a treaty could have been proposed. The Ottoman Empire was dead, and so far as the treaty marked that fact it was of value; but it took no stock of the new forces, of the weakness of the Allies and the strength of the enemy. Compromises undoubtedly made it unreal. Those who framed it must have been completely ignorant of the position of affairs, and their advisers woefully ignorant of geography and ethnology. I was amazed at the attitude of some of the advisers.

On his way to Paris, one sat in my office and blandly discussed whether Proportional Representation rather than the Majority Electoral System had better be included in the constitution of the Kurdish state, about to be framed; and for some time it was seriously considered giving the mandate of the Jewish home in Palestine to the Arab King of the Hedjaz. The treaty was grossly immoral. This portioning out of the homelands of a people into sections like slabs of bread to be devoured by various powers has, throughout modern history, been considered immoral. Moreover, by its “spheres of interest” it perpetrated the ancient rivalry between the nations in Turkey.

The publication of the terms had an instantaneous effect. All Turks realized that it meant their destruction. The sea-shore was to be taken from them, and they were to be confined to central Anatolia. A hostile Armenia was to be formed in their rear, and they were to be chained hand and foot by controls. Their attitude stiffened. They were now to fight not the Greeks alone, but all the Allies, to save themselves from annihilation. They at once attacked and captured the French garrison Bozanti, and the French Government was glad to to terms and sign an armistice with them.

Turks set their teeth and reorganized. They smashed what was left of the Sultan’s troops and finished the civil war. All dissensions and quarrels among them disappeared. The Eastern troops were put under Kiazim Kara Bekir and the Western under Ali Fuad Pasha with the central supreme command of Mustapha Kemal at Angora. Now all parties, except the immediate entourage of the Sultan, combined in the struggle to save their country, and every Turk worth his salt became a Nationalist.

It was a fight to the finish. They closed in on the Allies in Constantinople. They attacked the French battalion that protected the coal mines at Zangulduk and this was at once withdrawn. The last few troops of the Italians scampered out of Anatolia to avoid destruction.

The Bolsheviks had pushed in across the Caucasus and, to avoid contact, as ordered by the War Office the British retired and so evacuated Batum and all the Caucasus. This left the flank of Wrangel’s anti-revolutionary army exposed. The Bolsheviks had swung into northern Persia and with their coming the treaty signed between England and Persia on the 9th of August, 1919, and all the structure that was built on it, collapsed.

That treaty is worthy of a passing notice, for it aptly illustrates, from Persia, much that led to the failure in Turkey. It was a treaty made in haste and secrecy and only published when signed. It was done under the supervision of Lord Curzon, who as a distinguished amateur diplomatist had had an exceptional record of failure. It was made against the advice of many great experts, such as Lord Grey. It was the old diplomatic method of trying to get ahead of other Powers, but it only annoyed our Allies and helped to break the Entente. As in the Treaty of Sèvres, it ignored the size of the military forces of the British Empire. It took on vast commitments without the means to carry them out. The British army was being reduced to a few divisions.

These were needed for India and Ireland. It is not too much to say that if all the schemes of Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Curzon had been carried out, troops would have been required to police a frontier from Burma to Teheran, from Teheran to the Caspian with a post at Constantinople. The Bolshevik advance finally disposed of that treaty.

The East was up. A sheet of flame ran across it. India was seething. A great Moslem pilgrimage to Kabul was in progress as a protest against British Christian rule. The Amir thinking that India was in disorder followed the tradition of his ancestors, declared war and advanced on India for his loot. The Hindus were unsettled and the Amritzar riots were a symptom. In Egypt there was revolt. The East was indeed aflame, and it was not merely the Moslem East for Hindus and Moslems in India, Syria Christians and Mohammedans in Syria against the French, and Copts and Moslems in Egypt, had combined for resistance on common grounds.

June found the British Empire in the East buffeted with great blows and rocking to its foundations. Of force there was none to employ. Ireland had absorbed the small army that the British were prepared to support. We had enmeshed ourselves in the wastes of Mesopotamia, and the Arabs rose against our benign rule on the 3rd of June. In Turkey the Nationalists had cleared all Anatolia of Allied troops, except the Greeks in the Smyrna area, and the British had fallen back on a line behind Ismidt to cover Constantinople. In front of them entrenched was the last remnant of the Sultan’s troops. The Turks waited no more. Ali Fuad Pasha attacked. He drove in the half-hearted Sultanic troops without effort, and they retired through the British lines. Without hesitation the Nationalists attacked the British. On the night of the 15th-16th of June three assaults were repulsed with difficulty. The French were hard pressed at Heraclea. Irregulars raided the villages on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus and from Beicos opened fire on the fleet as it lay at anchor there. A shot or two struck the Austrian Embassy where the British High Commissioner and his staff were lodged.

I was asleep on a terrace in the Embassy when I was awaked before dawn by the rifle fire. There was confusion and panic and noise. Across the Bosphorus came firing and shouting. Below in the village on our side the Christians were running round in terror. A battleship opened fire with its light guns and a regiment of Indian infantry was hurried up. But it was a lesson. The raiders were the skirmishers of the Turkish Army. Constantinople, the High Commission, the handful of Allied troops lay naked and exposed to them except for the navy; and in an affair of this nature ships are of little value except for evacuation.

The few troops in the Asiatic shore were in detachments down the railway to Ismidt that runs along the shore of the Marmora. As soon as the Turks realized the position they proceeded to pass down the flank towards Constantinople. At Derindje the depot of stores was burnt and blown up in preparation for retreat. The long bridge on the railway beyond Guebze was mined for destruction. The Turks were seen to be massing for an attack on the Ismidt detachment. It was a critical hour. The fleet opened fire and the great shells blew up the Cloth Factory of Ismidt behind which the enemy troops were concentrating, and did great damage. For the minute the Turks hesitated. On the Dardanelles they were pressing in and the defences and guns there were destroyed. All preparation for a hurried evacuation of the Allies’ forces was made. The townspeople of Constantinople were in terror, for they could not but see what was happening. There were but two alternatives—to fight or run, and the Allies did not appear able or willing to fight.