CHAPTER SEVEN

RELUCTANTLY TO ANKARA, 1924–38

On 2 October 1923 the Allied occupation of Constantinople had come to an end. However, ratifying the Treaty of Lausanne proved an extremely slow process and it was 6 August 1924 before all instruments of rati- fi cation were deposited and the state of war with Turkey was formally terminated. Th is delay had not only annoyed the Turks and made the task of the British High Commission in dealing with them more diffi cult but also led to the postponement of decisions on three questions that could now be postponed no longer. First, what was to become of the dragomanate of the embassy? Th is was closely identifi ed with the Old Turkey but local expertise remained as important as ever. Secondly, what was to be the status of Britain’s regular diplomatic mission in Turkey? Some thought it should resume its status as an embassy but others thought it should now be a mere legation. Th irdly, should the British mission—whatever its status—remain in Constantinople or follow the Nationalists to Ankara? Th ere were good arguments on this question on both sides.

A Dragomanate By Any Other Name . . .

Th e dragomanate of the embassy at Constantinople had oft en been thought of as the fl agship of the Levant Service but by the end of 1924 it seemed to have disappeared. Th e capitulations, the judicial provisions of which had given it so much of its work with the British colony, had been abolished by the Treaty of Lausanne, and three weeks aft er this entered into force in early August, the chief dragoman, Andrew Ryan, left the city for good. He had, he said later, wound up the “moribund Dragomanate”, which was “an offi ce full of old documents, mostly useless in the new conditions”.1 Shortly aft er this, knowing only too well that the title ‘dragoman’ was associated by the Turks with the humiliating regime of the capitulations, the Foreign Offi ce decided

1 Ryan, Th e Last of the Dragomans, pp. 225–7. reluctantly to ankara, 1924–38 141 that it should be abolished altogether.2 So it was that Ryan claimed to be ‘the last of the dragomans’. In practice, while many of their old chores had gone, the former dragomans could not be so easily got rid of; nor was it desired that they should be. Instead, these men, all Levant Service offi cers, were simply given local diplomatic rank and titles,3 and left to use their specialist skills and knowledge to get on with those essential tasks of the former dragomanate that remained: translating, interpreting, gath- ering intelligence, and so on.4 Until 1931 this de facto dragomanate saw only one change in personnel, and thereaft er very few more until the outbreak of the next war. While its strength dropped from three to two in 1937, there was also great stability at the top because it had the same head throughout the 1930s: James Morgan, who had entered the Levant Service well before the First World War and was given the local rank of counsellor in 1930. As always, it was the dragomans in the embassy, whatever they were called, who provided the continuity and local expertise. Changes which were to have a damaging impact on the ‘dragomanate’ were, however, soon to occur. To begin with, the pre-war system under which new entrants to the Levant Service were sent to Cambridge for two years of initial training, although it was resumed in truncated form immediately on the cessation of hostilities, did not survive for long. By the end of the 1920s it seems that those selected to study Turkish were sent more or less directly to the embassy in Ankara, which itself had to organize courses for them.5 Th ere was also little incentive to engage in preparatory study of Turkish since—unlike Persian and Arabic—it

2 See papers in TNA, FO366/813. 3 It had at fi rst been thought that the dragomanate might be re-named the ‘oriental secretariat’, and its members ‘oriental secretary’, ‘second oriental secretary’, and so on. But it was soon realized that this would not do either: the Turks now regarded themselves as “very up to date”, and so hated being thought of as ‘orientals’, TNA, Lindsay to Oliphant, 1 Oct. 1924, FO366/813. 4 W. S. Edmonds, the former second dragoman, was brought back from his post as consul-general in Smyrna in order to replace Ryan as de facto fi rst dragoman; William Matthews, who was ‘Acting First Dragoman’ for three months until he arrived—thereby giving him rather than Ryan a case for being ‘the last of the [so-called] dragomans’—was made de facto second dragoman; while Knox Helm simply became de facto rather than nominal third dragoman. Not until 1946 did the FO List cease to describe these men and their successors as performing “the duties formerly undertaken by the Dragomans”. 5 TNA, Tyrrell to Sec. to the Treasury, 18 Dec. 1918, T1/12301, and papers gener- ally in T162/257; Scarbrough Report, pp. 47, 53, 83–4; Grafft ey-Smith, Bright Levant, p. 14.