The Turkish ORDEAL

The Turkish ORDEAL Being the further memoirs of HALIDE EDIB With a frontispiece in color by ALEXANDRE PANKOFF And many illustrations from photographs THE CENTURY CO. New York London DEDICATED TO THE YOUTH OF THE NATIONS REPRESENTED IN THE TURKISH ORDEAL “My story is simple. It does not aim at a moral. But I pray that the future Youth who will read it may tear away the veil behind which they slew each other and were slain . recognize their likeness in the eyes of their brothers . grip each other’s hands . and on the old Ruins of hatred and Desolation erect a New World of Brotherhood and Peace.” CONTENTS PART I IN ISTAMBOUL CHAPTER I PREPARATORY EVENTS TO THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT II THE OCCUPATION OF SMYRNA AND THE INTERNAL UPHEAVAL III REFUGEE FOR THE SECOND TIME PART II IN ANGORA IV ANGORA, MUSTAFA KEMAL, AND THE STRUGGLE V IMPORTANT PHASES OF THE CIVIL WAR VI PEOPLE, HORSES, AND DOGS VII THE LAST OF THE IRREGULARS AND THE NEW ARMY VIII THE FIRST GLIMPSE PART III AT THE FRONT IX HOW I JOINED THE ARMY X SAKARIA XI CORPORAL HALIDE XII THROUGH ORDEAL TO IDEAL XIII IN SMYRNA XIV FROM SMYRNA TO BROUSSA XV THE RESPITE CHAPTER I PREPARATORY EVENTS TO THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT (October 30, 1918 – May 15, 1919) My own condition – physical and mental – at that time might be taken as typical of the general feeling in my country after the armistice was signed and the Allied troops had entered. I felt stupefied, tired, and utterly sick of all that had happened since 1914. I was conscious that the Ottoman Empire had fallen with a crash, and that it was not only the responsible Unionist leaders who were buried beneath the crushing weight of it. Though disintegration had begun nearly a century before, and though I firmly believe that, war or no war, the empire would have been doomed anyhow, yet with the aid of a far-sighted policy, there might have resulted a less abrupt and unfortunate end. But at that moment the absolute finality of the death of the empire was an unavoidable fact. That the years of elaborate political work carried out by the different powers in Turkey among the minorities, and the series of atrocities committed by all the racial units, were going to bear fruit no one doubted. As Russia was hors de combat, it was evident that England and France – and perhaps Italy – would take the largest share of the spoils of war. Italy naturally would be compensated in Austria, but the other powers would spread their jurisdiction over a great part of the Ottoman Empire, dividing it into “mandates,” or “zones of influence.” Even those who had believed in the moral superiority of justice, rights of peoples, etc., would not be applied to this country. Yet the Fourteen Points of President Wilson so ostentatiously announced, and the supreme war weariness of all the peoples, including the victors, made it advisable to leave the Turks along in the lands where they were in an incontestable majority. In spite of their somewhat qualified feelings for the Allies, the Turks still believed them to have enough equity, or even common sense, to avoid the infliction of two thing on Turkey: first, the attempt to create an Armenia on the east and south of Turkey where the Armenians, even before the deportations and massacres, formed only from 2 to 20 percent of the population; secondly, the invasion of Asia Minor by Greece, which would inevitably mean a bloody inter-extermination. Had those two things been avoided, I believe the history of the world today would have been different. This is the rough outline of the feeling in Turkey at the end of the great war. I was myself occupied with other things at the time. Apart from my work at the Ojak, where in the new executive committee I was striving with the other members to change the statutes of the old Ojak laws, I was seriously interested in an idea upon which a few young doctors were enthusiastically working. It was an association which we called “Keuyluler,”1 or “Villagers.” 1 the idea behind this movement was a composite one. The ideals of Tolstoy, the social work in America as expressed in “Hull House,” by Miss Jane Addams, the publications of the admirers of Edmond Desmoulins’ school in Turkey – all contributed to create our small movement. The idea was non-political, belonging to a small group who had an unbounded desire to reconstruct a new Turkey. After 1908 all the parties and governments were bound to be progressive, but the more hurried the coming of reform or change, the more it is bound to be only on the surface. The creation of a new Turkey demanded the individual change of a large section of the Turkish masses (mostly the rural classes), and this change could be effected only by individuals whose lifelong work must be a slower but deeper reconstruction. Our little group was to undertake the health and the education of a small district in which it would A few weeks before the armistice the Talaat Pasha cabinet resigned, and the Izzet Pasha cabinet negotiated the terms of the armistice in Mudros. Admiral Calthorpe as the Allied representative, and Rauf Bey, the minister of marine, as the Turkish representative, signed it on October 30, 1918. With the entry of the Allied armies the insolence of the Greeks and the Armenians and the treatment of the peaceful Turkish citizens in the streets became scandalous. The Senegalese soldiers especially had become so uncontrollable that there were rumors that they bit the Turkish women in public and roasted Turkish babies for their evening meals. Large numbers of Turks were continually arrested on some pretext, fined, and sometimes badly beaten at the Allied headquarters. The requisition of the houses, the throwing out of the inhabitants without allowing them to take their personal belongings – those were the mildest forms of bad treatment. The Greek and Armenian interpreters and assistants of the Allied police – the English particularly – greatly influenced and colored the behavior of these men toward the Turks. Apart from the unjust as well as unwise policy of the Allies toward Turkey, their armies of occupation in the first months saw the Turks with the eyes of the Greeks and Armenians, and perhaps this was what hurt the man in the street most at the time. One often saw Turkish women roughly pushed out of tramcars, and heard Turkish children called “bloody cusses.” The tearing of the fezzes or the tearing of the veils of women were common sights, and all these things were borne with admirable dignity and silence by the townspeople. Let it be added that the Turk forgets and forgives wrongs and even massacres, but he rarely forgets and insult to his self-respect. As the Turkish press was tightly muzzled by the Allied censor, and as very few of these things could be published, the rumors became more serious and probably more exaggerated. Colonel Heathcote Smythe, who seemed to be the most powerful person in the English headquarters, had gone to inspect the Turkish prisons in Istamboul. The Turkish prisons, or some of them, are horrible; but there were no political prisoners in them, and a Turkish prisoner was exposed to the same hardship as a Christian. Colonel Heathcote Smythe had ordered all the Christian criminals to be set free. Most of them were ordinary murderers. In a country like Turkey, where so many political offenders are easily punished by death, it is astonishing to note that the courts rarely pass death sentences on murderers. Among the released Christians, there was an Armenian who had killed two members of his own family; I remember hearing about the fear of the others. There was a Greek who had shot the son of Hairi Pasha just a week before. His victim was a quiet Turkish youth. The shooting had taken place at the door of Tokatlian (a well-known Armenian restaurant in Pera), and the Greek had done it for the fun of shooting a Turk. As the Turkish population was entirely unarmed and anyone found with arms was very severely punished, and as all the Christians had deliberately armed themselves, a series of murders verging on massacre started in the Turkish quarters, especially in the Ak-Serai and Fatih regions, where the streets are dark and covered over with lonely ruins of past fires. Soon I began to notice a gradual awakening even among the Turkish youth, usually so despairing and indifferent to everything after the war. I well remember several talks at the Ojak. A few Turkish choose to work. And we chose Tavshanly, a district in Kutahia. Four doctors started to work by opening little centers officers expressed profound surprise at the regular Allied forces allowing such disorder and anarchy to go on. A few civilians abused all the soldiers including our own and said that there was nothing left for the Turk but to turn Bolshevik and pull down the inhuman edifice which we called Western civilization. One man said: “I though the British had more intelligence if not more humanity. We are the only possible obstacle to the great wave of Bolshevism. We would have been the only buffer state if they had treated us decently. Now we will let it inoculate us and pass the germ on to the West.” But the worst had not come yet. Among these painful impressions which I gathered from the people I was beginning to realize that a country belongs to its women more than to its men.

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