THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
October 20, 1923
THERE was a time when Angora was famous solely,
for cats and goats. Today the shambling, timeworn
town far up in the Anatolian hills has
another, and world-wide significance. It is not
only the capital of the reconstructed Turkish
Government and the seat therefore of the most
picturesque of all contemporary experiments
in democracy, but is likewise the home of
Ghazi Mustapha Kemal Pasha—to give him
his full title—who is distinct among the few
vital personalities revealed by the bitter
backwash of the World War.
Only Lenine and Mussolini vie with him
for the center of that narrowing stage of compelling
leadership. Each of these three remarkable
men has achieved a definite result
in a manner all his own. Lenine imposed an
autocracy through force and blood. Mussolini
created a personal and political dictatorship
in which he dramatized himself. Kemal
not only led a beaten nation to victory and
dictated terms to the one-time conqueror, but
set up a new and unique system of administration.
Lenine and Mussolini have almost been
done to death by human or, in the case of the
soviet overlord, inhuman interest historians.
Kemal Pasha is still invested with an element
of mystery and aloofness largely begot of the
physical inaccessibility of his position. To
the average American he is merely a Turkish
name vaguely associated with some kind of
military achievement. The British Dardanelles
Expedition know it much better, for he
frustrated the fruits of that immense heroism
written in blood and agony on the shores of
Gallipoli. The Greeks have an even costlier
knowledge, because he was the organizer of
the victory that literally drove them into the
sea in one of the most complete debacles of
modern times.
At Angora I talked with this man in a
critical hour of the war-born Turkish Government.
The Lausanne Conference was at the
breaking point. War or peace still hung in the
balance. Only the day before, Rauf Bey, the
Prime Minister, had said to me: “If they [the Allies]
want war they can have it.” The air was charged with
tension and uncertainty. Over the troubled scene brooded
the unrelenting presence of the chieftain I had traveled
so far to see. Events, like the government itself, revolved
about him.
In difficulty of approach and in the grim and dramatic
quality of the setting, Anatolia was strongly reminiscent
of my journey a year ago to the Southern Chinese front to
see Sun Yat-sen. Between him and Kemal exists a certain
similarity. Each is a sort of inspired leader. Each has his
kindling ideal of a self-determination that is the by-product
of fallen empire. Here the parallel ends. Kemal is the
man of blood and iron—an orientalized Bismarck, as it
were—dogged, ruthless, invincible; while Sun Yat-sen
is the dreamer and visionary, eternal pawn of chance, and
with as many political existences—and I might add, governments-
-as the proverbial cat has lives.
Turkey for the Turks
AS WITH men, so with the peoples behind them. You
have another striking contrast. While China flounders
in well-nigh incredible political chaos, due to incessant
conflict of selfish purpose and lack of leadership, Turkey
has emerged as a homogeneous nation for the first time in
its long and bloody history, with defined frontiers, a real
homeland, and a nationalistic aim that may shape the
destiny of the Mohammedan world, and incidentally affect
American commercial aspirations in the Near East.
“Turkey for the Turks” is the new slogan. The instrument
and inspiration of the whole astonishing evolution—it is
little less than a miracle when you realize that in 1919
Turkey was as prostrate as defeat and bankruptcy could
bring her—has been Kemal Pasha.
He was the real objective of my trip to Turkey. Constantinople
with its gleaming mosques and minarets, and
still a queen among cities despite its dingy magnificence,
had its lure, but from the hour of my arrival on the shores
of the Golden Horn my interest was centered on Angora.
I had chosen a difficult time for the realization of this
ambition. The Lausanne Conference was apparently
mired, and the long-awaited peace seemed more distant
than ever. A state of war still existed. The army of occupation
gave the streets martial tone and color, while a vast
Allied fleet rode at anchor in the Bosporus or boomed at
Kemal Pasha as Field Marshal of the Turkish
Army. The Autograph Reads: “Ghazi Musta•
pha Kemal Pasha, Angora, July tith”
target practice in the Sea of Marmora. The capital in the
Anatolian hills had become even more inaccessible.
Every barrier based on suspicion, aloofness and general
resentment of the foreigner—the usual Turkish trilogy—
all tied up with endless red tape, worked overtime. It was
a combination disastrous to swift American action. My
subsequent experiences emphasized the truth of the wellknown
Kipling story which dealt with the fate of an energetic
Yankee in the Orient whose epitaph read: “Here
lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.”
To add to all this handicap begot of temperament and
otherwise, the Turks had begun to realize, not without
irritation, that the consummation of the Chester Concession
was not so easy as it looked on paper. The last civilian
who successfully applied for permission to go to Angora
had been compelled to linger at Constantinople seven
weeks before he got his vessica—as a visa is called in Turkish.
Two or three others had departed for home in disgust
after four weeks of watchful and fruitless waiting. The
prospect was not promising.
When I paid my respects to Rear Admiral Mark L.
Bristol, the American High Commissioner, on my first
day in Constantinople, I invoked his aid in getting to
Angora. He promptly gave me a letter of introduction
to Dr. Adnan Bey, then the principal representative of
Angora in Constantinople, through whom all permits had
to pass.
I went to see him at the famous Sublime Porte, the
Foreign Office and the scene of so much sinister Turkish
history. Here the sordid tools of Abdul-Hamid, the Red
Sultan, and others no less unscrupulous, lived their day.
I expected to find the structure almost as imposing as its
richer mate in history, the Mosque of St. Sophia. It
proved to be a dirty, rambling, yellow building without
the slightest semblance of architectural beauty, and
strongly in need of disinfecting.
In Adnan Bey I found my first Turkish ally.Moreover,
I discovered him to be a man of the world with a broad
and generous outlook. An early aid of Kemal in the
precarious days of the nationalist movement, he became
the first vice president of the Angora Government.
Moreover, he had another claim to fame, for he is
the husband of the renowned Halide Hanum, the
foremost woman reformer of Turkey, whom I
was later to meet in interesting circumstances
at Munich, and whose story will be
disclosed in a subsequent article. Adnan
Bey, however, is not what we would call a
professional husband in America. Long before
he rallied to the Kemalist cause he was
widely known as one of the ablest physicians
in Turkey.
He at once sent a telegram to Angora asking
for my permission to go. This permission
is concretely embodied in a pass—the aforesaid
vessica—which is issued by the Constantinople
prefect of police. Back in the days of
the Great War it was a difficult procedure to
get the so-called white pass which enabled
the holder to go to the front. Compared with
the coveted permission to visit Angora, that
pass was about as inaccessible as a public
handbill, as I was now to discover.
Adnan Bey told me that he would have an
answer from Angora in about three days. I
found that three days was like the Russian
word seichas which technically means “immediately”
but when employed in action or
rather lack of action on its own ground, usually
spells “next month.”
Red ,Tape Entanglements
AFTER a week passed the American Embassy
inquired of the Sublime Porte if they
had heard about my application, but no word
had come. A few days later Turkish officialdom
went mad. An order was promulgated
that no alien except of British, French or
Italian nationality could enter or leave Constantinople
without the consent of Angora.
People who had left Paris or London, and they
included various Americans, with existing credentials,
were held up at the Turkish frontier,
despite the fact that the order had been issued
after they had started. Thanks to Admiral Bristol’s
prompt and persistent endeavors, the frontier ban was
lifted from Americans. Angora became swamped overnight
with telegraphic protests and requests, and I felt that
mine was completely lost in the new and growing shuffle.
Meanwhile I had acquired a fine upstanding young Turk,
Reschad Bey by name, who spoke English, French and
German fluently, as dragoman, which means courier and
interpreter. No alien can go to Angora without such an
aid, because, save in a few isolated spots, the only language
spoken in Anatolia is Turkish. Reschad Bey was really an
inheritance from Robert Imbrie, who had just retired
after a year as American consul at Angora. Reschad Bey
had been his interpreter. Much contact with Imbrie had
acquainted him with American ways and he thoroughly
sympathized with my impatience over the delay. He had
a strong pull at Angora himself and sent some telegrams
to friends in my behalf.
At the expiration of the second week Admiral Bristol
made a personal appeal to Adnan Bey to expedite my permission,
and a second strong telegram went from the Sublime
Porte to Angora. Other Turkish and American individuals
whom I had met added their requests by wire. Of
course I was occupied with other work, but I had only a
limited amount of time at my disposal and when all was
said and done, Kemal was the principal prize of the trip
and I was determined to land him. Early in July therefore
I sent Reschad Bey to Angora to find out just what
the situation was. He departed on the morning of the
Fourth. When I returned to my hotel from attending the
Independence Day celebration at the embassy I found a
telegram from Angora addressed to Reschad Bey in my
care from one of his friends in the government, saying that
my permission to go to Angora had been wired nine days
before! Yet on the previous morning the Sublime Porte
had declared that Angora was still silent on my request.
Upon investigation I found that in the tangle of red
tape at the prefecture of police the coveted telegram had
been shoved under a pile of papers and no one knew anything
about it until a long search, instigated at my request,
had disclosed the anxiously awaited message. It was a
typically Turkish procedure, and just the kind of thing
that might have happened at an official bureau anywhere
in China. Before Reschad Bey reported to me after his
return I had the ressica in my possession and was getting
ready to start.
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 9
Difficult as was this first step, it was matched in
various handicaps by nearly every stage of the actual
journey. Again I was to run afoul of Turkish official
decree.
In ordinary circumstances, if I had been a Turk I
could have boarded a train at Haidar Pasha, which is
just across the Bosporus by ferry from Constantinople
and the beginning of the Anatolian section of the
much-discussed Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, and gone
without change to Angora in approximately twentyseven
hours. It happened, however, that the whole
Turkish Army of considerably more than 250,000 men
was mobilized beyond Ismid and along the railroad
right of way. No alien was permitted to make this
journey. Instead of the comparatively easy trip by
rail—I say ” comparatively ” advisedly—he was compelled
to go by boat to Mudania, then by rail to Brusa,
and subsequently by motor all day across the Anatolian
plain to Kara Keuy, where he would pick up the
train from Haidar Pasha. Instead of twenty-seven
hours, this trip—and it was the one I had to make—
took exactly fifty-five hours.
Going to Angora these days is like making an expedition
to the heart of China or Africa. In the first
place you must carry your own food. There are other
preliminaries. One of the most essential, even if it is
not the most esthetic, is to secure half a dozen tins
of insect powder. The moment you leave Constantinople—
and for that matter even while you are within
the storied precincts of the great city—you make the
acquaintance of endless little visitors of every conceivable
kind and bite. Apparently the average Turk
has become more or less inured to the inroads of vermin,
but even long experience with trench warfare
does not cure the European of aversion to it.
It was on a brilliant sunlight Monday morning that
I left Constantinople for Angora. Admiral Bristol
had placed a submarine chaser in command of Captain
T. H. Robbins at my disposal and we were therefore
able to dispense with the crowded and none too clean
Turkish boat. Accompanied by Lewis Heck, who had
been the first American High Commissioner to Turkey
after the Armistice, and who now had a business mission
at Angora, and the faithful Reschad Bey, I made the
journey to Mudania across the Sea of Marmora in
four hours, arriving at noon. Until November, 1922,
Mudania was merely a spot on the Turkish map. After
the Greek debacle, and when the British and Turkish
armies had come within a few feet of actual collision at
Chanak, and war between the two powers seemed inevitable,
General Sir Charles Harington, commander of the
British forces in Turkey, and Ismet Pasha—the same Ismet
who led the Allied delegates such a merry diplomatic chase
at Lausanne—met here and arranged the famous truce
that was the prelude to the first Lausanne Conference.
Madame Brotte and Her Hotel
OVE RNIG HT the village became famous. The small stone
house near the quay where the conference was held is now
occupied by a Turkish family and is overrun with children.
Instead of making the forty-mile journey to Brusa in the
toy train that runs twice a day, we traveled in a brand-new
Kemal With His Puppies
Madame Kama!
American flivver just acquired by a
Brusa dealer, which had been ordered
by telegraph and which awaited us
at the dock. The hillsides were dark
with a mass of olive trees, while in
the valleys tobacco and corn grew in
abundance. The Anatolian peasant
is a thrifty and industrious soul and
apparently had got back on the job
of reconstruction even while the Greek
transports were fading out of sight.
Long before the muezzins sounded
from the minarets their musical calls
to sunset prayer we arrived in
Brusa, the ancient capital of Turkey,
and still a place of commercial importance.
Here we stopped the night
at the Hotel d’Anatolie, where I bade
farewell to anything like comfort and convenience until
my return there on my way back to Constantinople.
This hotel is one of the famous institutions of Anatolia.
It is owned by Madame Brotte, who is no less
distinguished than her hostelry. Out in her pleasant
garden, where we could listen to the musical flow of a
tiny cataract, this quaint old lady, still wearing the
white cap of the French peasant, told me her story.
She had been born in Lyons, in France, eighty-four
years ago, and came to Anatolia with her father, a silk
expert, when she was twenty-one. Brusa is the center
of the Turkish silk industry, which was founded and is
still largely operated by the French. Madame had
married the proprietor of the hotel shortly after her
advent, and on his death took over the operation.
Wars, retreats and devastations beat about her, but
she maintained her serene way. She had lived in Turkey
so long that she mixed Turkish words with her
French. Listening to her patter in that fragrant environment,
and with the memory of the excellent French
dinner she had
served, made it difficult for me to realize
that I was in Anatolia and not in France.
Anatolia, let me add, is bone-dry so far as alcohol is
concerned. The one regret that madame expressed was
that the Turks sealed up her wine cellar, and only heaven
and Angora knew when those seals would be lifted. It
is worth mentioning that during the eight days I spent
in Anatolia I never saw a drop of liquor. It is about
the only place in the world where prohibition seems to
prohibit. Constantinople is a different, and later, story.
In Madame Brotte I got another evidence of a curious
formula of colonial expansion. When you knock
about the world, and especially the outlying places,
you discover that certain races follow definite rules when
they are implanted in foreign soil. The first thing that
The Kemal Home at Angora
I now had my first contact with what has been well
called the Anatolian qxcart symphony. It is the weirdest
perhaps of all sounds, and is emitted from the ungreased
wood-wheeled carts drawn by oxen or water buffalo, which
provide the only available vehicle for the Turkish farmer.
There has been no change in its noise or construction since
the days of Saul of Tarsus. It is a violation of etiquette
for the driver of one of these carts—the roads are alive with
them—to be awake in transit, incredible as this seems when
you have heard the frightful noise. He awakes only when
the screech stops. Silence is his alarm clock. These carts
do about fifteen miles a day. When the Greeks had the
important Southern Turkish ports bottled up, all of Kemal’s
supplies were hauled in these carts for over two hundred
miles to Angora.
The farther we traveled the more did the country take
on the aspect of Northern France after the war. Hollyhocks
were growing in the shell holes, and there were always
the gaunt, stark ruins of a house or village sentineling the
landscape. We passed through the village of In Onu, where
the Greeks and the Turks had met in bloody battle, and
just as the sun was setting we drew up at Kara Keuy,
which is merely a railway station flanked by a few of the
coffeehouses that you find everywhere in Turkey. A contingent
of Turkish troops was encamped near by. Before
we could get coffee we had to submit our papers for examination
by the police.
An hour later the train that had left Haidar Pasha that
morning pulled in. We bagged a first-class compartment
and started on the final lap to Angora. Midnight found
us at Eski-Shehr, once a considerable town, where the
Greeks and the Turks were at death grips for months.
After the Turkish retirement in 1921 the town was burnt
by the Greeks. No sooner was I on the train and trying
(Continued on Page 14I)
the English do is to start a bank. The Spanish invariably
build a church, while the French set up a café.
So it was in Anatolia.
It was with a certain regret that I bade farewell the
next morning to the dear old French dame. In the
same flivver that brought us up from Mudania we
started on the all-day run to Kara Keuy. At the outskirts
of Brusa I saw the first tangible signs of the
Greek disaster. Ditched along the roadside were
hundreds of motor trucks—unwilling gifts from the
Greeks—which the Turks had not even taken the
trouble to remove or salvage. As we swung into
the open country ruined farmhouses met the gaze on
every side. Whole villages had been wiped out when
the Greeks had pressed on for what they had fondly
believed to be the capture of Angora. They came
back much faster than they advanced.
Travel by Oxcart
WE WERE in the real Anatolia. This mellifluous
name, rivaled in beauty of sound only by Mesopotamia,
means “the place where the sun rises.” It had
long shone on people and events bound up in the
narrative of all human and spiritual progress, for we
now skirted what might be called the rim of the cradle
of mankind. Across these plains had stalked the
stately and immortal figures of Biblical days. Here
the armies of Alexander and Pompey had camped,
and the famous Gordian knot was cut. Here, too,
passed the mailed crusaders on the road to Jerusalem,
and amid the green hills that rose to the left and right
the civilization of the Near East was born.
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THE SfITURDAY EVENING POST 141
TEZETEL PZOIEZ
(Continued from Page 9)
to get some sleep on the hard seat, for Pullmans
are unknown in Turkey, than I began
to make the acquaintance of the little travelers
who had put the itch into Anatolia.
They are the persistent little Nature guides
to discomfort.
For hours the country had become more
and more rugged. The fertile, lowlands
with their fields of waving corn and grateful
green were now far behind. As we
climbed steadily into the hills we could see
occasional flocks of Angora goats. It was a
dull, bleak prospect, but every inch of
ground, as far as the eye could see, and beyond,
had been f ought over.
At nine o’clock the next morning we
crossed a narrow stream that wound lazily
along. Although insignificant in appearance,
like most of the other historic rivers,
it will be immortalized in Turkish song and
tradition. In all the years to come the
quaint story-tellers whom you find in the
bazaars will recount the epic story of what
happened along its rocky banks. This
inconsequential-looking river was the famous
Sakaria, which marked the high tide
of the Greek offensive and the place where
Kemal Pasha’s army made its last desperate
stand. Very near the point where we
crossed, the Greeks were hurled back and
their offensive broken. What the Marne
means to France and the Piave to Italy,
that is the Sakaria to the new Turkey. It
marks the spot where rose the star of hope.
Almost before I realized it a pall of
smoke, the invariable outpost of a city,
loomed ahead. Then I saw scattered
mosques and minarets stark and white in
the sunlight, and before long we were in
Angora. The railway station is in the outskirts
of the town and I had to drive for
more than a mile to get to my lodging.
Despite the discomforts of the trip I
must confess to something of a thrill when
I stepped from the train. At last I was in
a capital without: precedent, perhaps, in
the history of civilization. After their
temporary sojourn first at Erzerum and
then at Sivas, the Kemalists had set up
their governmental shop in this squalid,
dilapidated and half-burned village at one
railhead of the Anatolian road. It was not
without its historical association because
once the crusaders camped here, and later
Tamerlane the Terrible had overwhelmed
the Sultan Bayezid in a famous battle and
carried him off to the East as prisoner.
Angora, the Strange Capital
Almost overnight the population had
grown from ten thousand to sixty thousand.
With the advent of the Grand National
Assembly, as the Turkish parliament is
called, came the cabinet, all the members
of the government, and the innumerable
human appendages of national administration.
Until the overthrow of the Greeks
last year, Angora was also the general headquarters
of the Turkish Army and its chief
supply base.
Then, as now, Angora was more like a
Western mining town in the first flush of
a boom than the capital of a government
whose future is a source of concern in
every European chancellery. Every house,
indeed every excuse for a habitation, is
packed and jammed with people. Imbrie,
the American consul, was forced to live for
a year in a freight car which was placed at
his disposal by the government. Moreover,
he had to struggle hard to hang on to
this makeshift home. The shops are primitive,
and there are only two restaurants
that a European could patronize.
Hotels as we know them do not exist.
The nearest approach is the so-called han,
which is the Turkish. word for house.
The average Turkish village han for travelers
is merely a whitewashed structure
with a quadrangle, where caravan drivers
park their mules or camels at night and sleep
upstairs on platforms. It is full of atmosphere,
and other things more visible.
If you have any doubt about the patriotism
which animates the new Turkish
movement you have only to go to Angora
to have it dispelled. Amid an almost indescribable
lack of comfort you find high
officials, many of them former ambassadors
who once lived in the ease and luxury of
London, Paris, Berlin, Rome or Vienna,
doing their daily tasks with fortitude.
‘ Happily I had taken out some insurance
against the physical discomfort that is the
lot of every visitor to Angora. After
Kemal’s residence, about the only one fit
to occupy is the building remodeled for
the use of the Near East Relief workers,
which had lately been acquired by the
representatives of the Chester Concession.
Before leaving Constantinople I got permission
to occupy this establishment, and
it was a godsend in more ways than one.
By some miracle, but due mainly to the
three old Armenian servants whom I kept
busy scrubbing the floors and airing the
cots, I had no use for my insect powder.
In fact I carried it back with me to Constantinople
and exchanged it for some other
and more aesthetic commodities.
This reference to the Chester Concession
recalls a striking fact which was borne in
upon me before I had been in Angora half
a day. Everybody, from the most ragged
bootblack up, not only knows all about the
concession but regards it as the unfailing
panacea for Turkish wealth and expansion.
Ask a Turkish peasant about it and he will
tell you that it means a railroad siding on
his farm next month. There is a blind, almost
pathetic faith in the ability of the
Chester concessionaires to work an economic
transformation. This is one reason
why in Angora as elsewhere in Turkey the
American is, for the moment, the favorite
alien. But the whole Chester matter will
be taken up in a later article.
Reasons for the Choice
By this time you will have asked the
question, Why did the Turks pick this
unkempt apology of a town as their capital?
The answer is interesting. The first consideration
was defense. Angora is more
than two hundred miles from the sea, and
any invading army, as the Greeks found
out to their cost, must live on the country.
Even in case of immediate attack there is
a wild and rugged hinterland which affords
an avenue of escape. But this is merely
the external reason.
If a Turk is candid he will tell you that
perhaps the real motive for all this isolation
is to keep the personnel of the government
out of mischief. At Constantinople the
official is on the old stamping ground of
illicit official intercourse. The Nationalist
Government is taking no chances during its
period of transition. It was Kemal Pasha
who selected Angora, and in this choice
you have a hint of the man’s discretion.
Although the Turks maintain that Angora
is the permanent seat of government and
that the unwilling foreign governments
must sooner or later establish themselves
there, it is probably only a question of
years until Constantinople will come back
to its own as capital. Meanwhile Angora
will continue to be the Washington of the
new Turkey, while Constantinople will be
its New York.
The principal thoroughfare of Angora is
unpaved, rambling, and the fierce sun beats
down upon its incessant dust and din. At
one end is a low stucco building flying the
red Turkish flag with its white star and
crescent. Here, after the personality of
Kemal, is what might be called the soul
of the Turkish Government. It is the seat
of the Grand National Assembly. In it
Kemal was elected president, and here the
Lausanne Treaty was confirmed.
Over the president’s chair hangs this
passage from the Koran: “Solve your
problems by meeting together and discussing
them.” In Kemal’s office just across
the hall is another maxim from the same
source, which says: “And consult them in
ruling.” In this last-quoted sentence you
have the keynote of Kemal’s creed, because
up to this time he has carefully avoided the
prerogatives of dictatorship, although to all
intents and purposes he is a dictator, and
could easily continue to be one, for it is no
exaggeration to say that he is the idol of
Turkey. His picture hangs in every shop
and residence.
The Grand National Assembly is unique
among all parliamentary bodies in that it
not only elects the president of the body,
who is likewise the executive head of the
nation, but it also designates the members
of the cabinet, including the premier. By
this procedure a government cannot fall,
as is the case in England or France, when
the premier fails to get a vote of confidence.
If a cabinet minister is found undesirable
he is removed by the legislative body, a
successor is named, and the business of the
government goes on without interruption
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14 2
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
October 20,1923
The delegates to the Assembly are, of
course, elected by the people.
But all this is by way of introduction. I
was in the ken of Kemal and the job now
was to see him. I had arrived at noon on a
Wednesday and promptly sent Reschad
Bey to see Rauf Bey, the premier, to whom
I had a letter of introduction from Admiral
Bristol. The cabinet was in almost continuous
session on account of the crisis at
Lausanne, and I was unable to see him
until the following morning at nine.
I spent three hours with him in the
foreign office, a tiny stucco building meagerly
furnished, but alive with the personality
of its chief occupant. Rauf Bey is
the sailor premier—he was admiral of the
old Turkish Navy—and has the frank,
blunt, wholesome manner of the seafaring
man. He is the only member of the cabinet,
by the way, who speaks English, and he
told me that he had visited Roosevelt at the
White House in 1903. He was one of the
prominent Turks deported by the British
to Malta in 1920. In exile, he said, his
chief solace was in the intermittent copies
of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST which
reached him through friendly naval officers.
He had read these magazines so thoroughly
that he quoted long extracts from them.
He had been particularly interested in an
article of mine about General Smuts, whose
ideal of self-determination has helped to
shape the new Turkish policy.
It was Rauf Bey who made the appointment
for me to see Kemal Pasha at his
house on the following afternoon at five
o’clock. The original plan was for both of
us to dine there that evening. Subsequently
this was changed because, as Rauf
Bey put it, “The Ghazi’s in-laws are visiting
him, and his house is crowded.” By
using the term “in-laws” you can see how
quickly Rauf Bey had adapted himself to
Western phraseology.
The premier’s reference to the Ghazi requires
an explanation. Ordinarily Kemal is
referred to in Angora by the proletariat as
the Pasha. The educated Turk, however,
invariably gives him his later title of
Ghazi, voted by the assembly, which is the
Turkish word for “conqueror.” Since that
fateful day in 1453 when Mohammed the
Conqueror battered down the gates of Constantinople
and the Moslem era on the
Bosporus began, the proud title has been
conferred on only three men. One was
Topal Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna;
the second was Mukhtar Pasha, the conqueror
of the Greeks in the late ’90’s, while
the third was Mustapha Kemal.
Friday, the thirteenth, came and with it
the long-awaited interview with Kemal. He
lives in a kiosk, as the Turks call a villa, at
Tchau Kaya, a sort of summer settlement
about five miles beyond Angora. Motor
cars are scarce in Angora, so I had to drive
out in a low-necked carriage. Reschad Bey
went along. He was not present at the
talk with Kemal, however.
The Ghazi’s Residence
As we neared Kemal’s abode we began
to encounter troops, who increased in numbers
the farther we went. These soldiers
represented one of the many precautions
taken to safeguard Kemal’s life because he
is in hourly danger of assassination by some
enraged Greek or Armenian. Several attempts
have already been made to shoot
him, and in one instance his companion, a
Turkish officer, was seriously wounded by
the would-be assassin.
Two previous Turkish leaders, both of
them tools of the Germans, the notorious
Talaat Pasha and his mate in crime, the no
less odious Enver Pasha, met violent deaths
after the World War. But Kemal represents
a different kind of stewardship.
Soon an attractive white stone house,
faced with red, surmounting a verdant hill,
and surrounded by a neat garden and
almond orchard, came into view. At the
right was a smaller stone cottage. Reschad
Bey, who had been there before, informed
me that this was Kemal’s establishment,
which was the gift of the Turkish nation.
I might have otherwise known it because
the guard of sentries became thicker. When
we reached the entrance we were stopped
by a sergeant and asked to tell our business.
Reschad Bey told the man that I had an
appointment with the Ghazi and he took
my card inside.
In a few moments he returned and escorted
us into the little stone cottage, which
Kemal uses as a reception room. Here I
found the Ghazi’s father-in-law, Mouammer
Ouchakay Bey, who is the richest
merchant of Smyrna and who incidentally
was the first Turkish member of the New
York and New Orleans cotton exchanges.
He had visited America frequently and
therefore spoke English. He told me that
Kemal was engaged in a cabinet meeting
and would see me shortly.
Meanwhile I looked about the room,
which was filled with souvenirs of Kemal’s
fame and place in the Turkish heart. On
one wall was the inevitable Koran inscription.
This one read, “God has taught the
Koran.” There were various memorials
beautifully inscribed on vellum, expressing
the homage of Turkish cities, and also magnificent
jeweled gift swords. But what impressed
me most was the life-size portrait
of a sweet-faced old Turkish woman that
had the most conspicuous place in the
chamber. I knew without being told that
this was Kemal’s mother. It was on her
grave that he swore vengeance against the
Greeks, who had once driven her out of her
home. I had heard this tale many times,
and Mouammer Bey and others confirmed
it. Happily for the mother, she lived long
enough to see her son the well-beloved of
the Turkish people.
Kenzal’s Steely Eye
I had just launched into a discussion of
the Turkish economic future with Mouammer
Bey when Kemal’s aid, a well-groomed
young lieutenant in khaki, entered and said
that the Ghazi was ready to see n e. With
him I crossed a small courtyard, went
down a narrow passage, and found myself
in the drawing-room of the main residence.
It was furnished in the most approved
European style. In one corner was a grand
piano; opposite was a row of well-filled
bookcases, many of the volumes French,
while on the walls hung more gift swords.
In the adjoining room I could see a group
of men sitting around a large round table
amid a buzz of rapid talk. It was the Turkish
cabinet in session, and they were discussing
the latest telegrams from Lausanne,
where Ismet Pasha, minister of foreign
affairs, and the only absent member, had,
only the day before, delivered the Turkish
ultimatum on the Chester Concession and
the Turkish foreign debt. Economic war,
or worse, hung in the balance.
As I advanced, Rauf Bey came out and escorted
me into the room where the cabinet
sat. There was a quick group introduction.
I had eyes, however, for only one person.
It was tke tall figure that rose from its
place at the head of the table and came
towards me with hand outstretched. I had
seen endless pictures of Kemal and I was
therefore familiar with his appearance. He
is the type to dominate men or assemblages,
first by reason of his imposing stature, for
he is nearly six feet tall, with a superb chest,
shoulders and military bearing; then by the
almost uncanny power of his eyes, which
are the most remarkable I have ever seen
in a man, and I have talked with the late
J. P. Morgan, Kitchener and Foch. Kemal’s
eyes are steely blue, cold, stony, and as
penetrating as they are implacable. He has
a trick of narrowing them when he meets a
stranger. At first glance he looks German,
for he is that rare Turkish human exhibit, a
blond.
His yellow hair was brushed back straight
from the forehead. The lack of coloring
in his broad face and the high cheek
bones refute the Teutonic impression. He
really looks like a pallid Slay. Few people
have ever seen Kemal smile. In the two
hours and a half that I spent with him his
features went through the semblance of relaxation
only once. He is like a man with
an iron mask, and that mask is his natural
f ace.
I expected to find him in uniform. Instead
he was smartly turned out in a black
morning coat with gray striped trousers
and patent-leather shoes. He wore a wing
collar and a blue-and-yellow four-in-hand
tie. He looked as if he was about to pay his
respects to a fashionable hostess at a reception
in Park Lane, London, or Fifth Avenue,
New York. Kemal, I might add, has always
been a stickler for dress. He introduced the
calpac, the high astrakhan cap which has
succeeded the long-familiar red fez as the
proper Turkish headgear, and which is a
badge of Nationalism.
Rauf Bey introduced me to Kemal in
the cabinet room. After we had exchanged
the customary salutations in French he
said, ” Perhaps we had better go into the
next room for our talk and leave the cabinet
to its deliberations.” With this he led
(Continued on Page 144)
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’44 THE SATURDAY EVENING POST October 20,1923
(Continued from Page 142)
the way into the adjacent salon. With Rauf
Bey at my right and Kemal on the left, we
sat down at a small table. A butler, no less
well groomed than his master, brought the
inevitable thick Turkish coffee and cigarettes.
The interview began.
Although the Ghazi knows both French
and German, he prefers to talk Turkish
through an interpreter. After I had expressed,
again in my alleged French, the
great pleasure I had in meeting him, Rauf
Bey interposed the statement that perhaps
it might be best for the great man to carry
on in his own language. This was agreed
upon, and henceforth the premier acted as
intermediary.
Kemal had somehow heard of the difficulties
and delays which had attended my
trip to Angora. He at once apologized, saying
that in the handicaps that beset administration
in such a place as Angora such
things were liable to happen. Then he
added, “I am very glad you came. We
want Americans in Turkey, for they can
best understand our aspirations.”
Then, straight from the shoulder, as it
were, and in the concise, clear-cut way he
has of expressing himself —it is almost like
an officer giving a command—he asked,
” What do you want me to tell you?”
“First of all,” I replied, “can you give
me some kind of message to the American
people?”
There was method in this query because
I knew that he felt friendly toward Americans
and that it would immediately loosen
the flow of speech. It is a maneuver in interviewing
taciturn people that seldom
fails to launch the talk waves.
Rdmiration for Washington
Without the slightest hesitation—and
I might add that throughout the entire
conversation he never faltered for a reply—
he said:
” With great pleasure. The ideal of the
United States is our ideal. Our National
Pact, promulgated by the Grand National
Assembly in January, 1920, is precisely
like your Declaration of Independence.
It only demands freedom of our Turkish
land from the invader and control of our
own destiny. Independence, that is all.
It is the charter and covenant of our people,
and this charter we propose to defend at
any cost.
“Turkey and America are both democracies.
In fact the Turkish Government at
present is the most democratic in the world.
It is based on the absolute sovereignty of
the people, and the Grand National Assembly,
its representative body, is the
judicial, legislative and executive power.
Between Turkey and America as sister
democracies there should be the closest relations.
” In the field of economic relations Turkey
and the United States can work together to
the greatest mutual advantage. Our rich
and varied national resources should prove
attractive to American capital. We welcome
American assistance in our development
because, unlike the capital of any
other country, American money is free
from the political intrigue that animates
the dealings of European nations with us.
In other words, American capital does not
raise the flag as soon as it is invested.
“We have already given one concrete
evidence of our faith and confidence in
America by granting the Chester Concession.
It is really a tribute to the American
people.
“All my life I have had inspiration in the
lives and deeds of Washington and Lincoln.
Between the original Thirteen States and
the new Turkey is a curious kinship. Your
early Americans threw off the British yoke.
Turkey has thrown off the old yoke of empire
with all the graft and corruption that
it carried, and what was worse, the selfish
meddling of other nations. America struggled
through to independence and prosperity.
We are now in the midst of travail
which is witnessing the birth of a nation.
With American help we will achieve our
aim.”
Then leaning forward, and with the only
animation he displayed throughout the
whole interview, he asked:
“Do you know why Washington and
Lincoln have always appealed to me? I
will tell you why. They worked solely for
the glory and emancipation of the United
States, while most other Presidents seemed
to have worked for their own deification.
The highest form of public service is unselfish
effort.”
“What is your ideal of government?”
I now asked. ” In other words, do you still
believe in Pan-Islam and in the Pan-
Turanianism idea?”
“I will tell you briefly,” was the response.
” Pan-Islam represented a federation based
on the community of religion. Pan-
Turanianism embodied the same kind of
community of effort and ambition, based on
race. Both were wrong. The idea of Pan-
Islam really died centuries ago at the gates
of Vienna, at the farthest north of the Turkish
advance in Europe. Pan-Turanianism
perished on the plains of the East.
“Both of these movements were wrong
because they were based on the idea of conquest,
which means force and imperialism.
For many years imperialism dominated
Europe. But imperialism is doomed. You
find the answer in the wreck of Germany,
Austria, Russia, and in the Turkey that
was. Democracy is the hope of the human
race.
” You may think it strange that a Turk
and a soldier like myself who has been bred
to war should talk this way. But this is
precisely the idea that is behind the new
Turkey. We want no force, no conquest.
We want to be let alone and permitted to
work out our own economic and political
destiny. Upon this is reared the whole
structure of the new Turkish democracy,
which, let me add, represents the American
idea, with this difference—we are one big
state while you are forty-eight.
“My idea of nationalism is that of a people
of kindred birth, religion and temperament.
For hundreds of years the Turkish
Empire was a conglomerate human mass in
which Turks formed the minority. We had
other so-called minorities, and they have
been the source of most of our troubles.
That, and the old idea of conquest. One
reason why Turkey fell into decay was
that she was exhausted by this very business
of difficult rulership. The old empire was
much too big and it laid itself open to trouble
at every turn.
“But that old idea of force, conquest and
expansion is dead in Turkey forever. Our
old empire was Ottoman. It meant force.
It is now banished from the vocabulary.
We are now Turks—only Turks. This is
why we want a Turkey of the Turks, based
on that ideal of self-determination which
was so well expressed by Woodrow Wilson.
It means nationalism, but not the kind of
selfish nationalism that has frustrated selfdetermination
in so many parts of Europe.
Nor does it mean arbitrary tariff walls and
frontiers. It does signify the open door to
trade, economic regeneration, a real territorial
patriotism as embodied in a homeland.
After all these years of blood and
conquest the Turks have at last attained a
fatherland. Its frontiers have been defined,
the troublesome minorities are dispersed,
and it is behind these frontiers that we
propose to make our stand and work out
our own salvation. We propose to be
masters in our own house.”
Kemal’s Constructive Program
Again he leaned toward me and said in
his sharp staccato fashion:
“Do you know what has obstructed European
peace and reconstruction? Simply
this—the interference of one nation with another.
It is part of the selfish grasping nationalism
to which I have already referred.
It has led to the substitution of politics for
economics. The German reparations tangle
is only one example. The curse of the world
is petty politics.
“There are nations who would block our
hard-won Turkish independence; who decry
our nationalism and say it is merely a
camouflage to hide the desire for conquest
of our neighbors on the east, and who maintain
that we are not capable of economic
administration. Well, they shall see.
“The first and foremost idea of the new
Turkey is not political but economic. We
want to be part of the world of production
as well as of consumption.”
” What specific aid can the United States
render this new Turkey of yours?” I asked.
“Many things,” came from the blond
giant at my left. “Turkey is essentially a
pastoral land. We must stand or fall by
our agriculture. In the program for regeneration
three main activities stand out.
They are agriculture, transportation and
hygiene, for the death rate in our villages is
appallingly large.
“First take agriculture. We must develop
a whole new science of farming, first
through the establishment of agricultural
schools, in which America can help; second
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THE SJITURD.RY EVENING POST
145
through the introduction of tractors and
other modern farm machinery. We must
develop new crops, such as cotton, and
expand our old ones, such as tobacco. The
motor, whether on the highway or the farm,
will be our first aid.
“Transportation is equally vital. Before
the World War the Germans had laid out a
comprehensive scheme of transportation for
Turkey, but it was based upcn economic
absorption of the country by them. Happily
we are rid of the Germans, and so far
as I am concerned, they will never get back
to authority. We look to America to develop
our much-needed railroads. This is
one reason why we gave them the Chester
Concession. I hope that the Americans
realize what this concession means to us.
It is not only the hope of adequate transport,
but the building of new ports and the
exploitation of our national resources,
principally oil.
“In the matter of hygiene we have already
installed a ministry of sanitation as
part of the cabinet and every effort will be
made to prevent the infant mortality. Here
America can again help.
“While I am on the matter of economics
let me deal with another question of vital
importance to the new Turkey. The
tragedy of Turkey in the past was the
selfish attitude of the great European
powers towards one another in respect of
her commercial development. It was the
inevitable result of the great game of concession
grabbing. The powers were like
dogs in a manger. If they failed in their
desires they made it their business to keep
rivals out as well. It is precisely what has
been going on in China for years, but they
will make no China out of Turkey. We
will insist upon the open door for everybody,
as it was enunciated by John Hay, and
equality of opportunity for all. If the European
powers do not like this procedure
they can keep out.”
“What is your panacea for the present
world malady?” I next asked.
“Intelligent cooperation and not unintelligent
suspicion and distrust,” was the
swift retort.
“Is the League of Nations the remedy?”
I continued.
“Yes and no,” came from Kemal. “The
League’s error lies in that it sets up certain
nations to rule, and other nations to be
ruled. The Wilsonian idea of self-determination
seems to be strangely lost.”
When I asked Kemal if he was in favor of
allying Turkey with the League of Nations
he answered:
“Conditionally, but the League as at
present operated remains an experiment.”
On two significant subjects Kemal has
views of peculiar interest. They are Germany
and Bolshevism.
II Subtle Game
I am betraying no confidence when I say
that long before the Great War, which
proved so costly to his. country largely because
of German conspyacy, he persistently
opposed the German intrigue at Constantinople.
It was his violent objection to
everything German that caused Enver
Pasha, who with Talaat Pasha divided the
mastery of government during the war, to
seek to break him in the army service and
get him out of the way.
Instead of ending Kemal’s career Enver
provided him with the means of redeeming
Turkey and making himself the national
hero. Kemal’s antagonism to the Germans
today is no less pronounced.
With the Bolshevists Kemal played a
subtle and winning game. In the early days
of the Nationalist movement he had urgent
need of arms and munitions. He angled
with Moscow until he got what he wanted
in the shape of supplies, and then gave
them the cold shoulder. At that time the
Bolshevists looked upon the new Turks as
heaven-born allies for the red conquest of
the whole Near East. They were the first
to recognize the Angora Government, and
still maintain an elaborate mission there.
Kemal and his chief colleagues are convinced
that Bolshevism has passed the peak
and is on the down grade. If the ” Bolos ”
think that they have a willing tool in
Kemal they have another guess coming.
Upon one subject of universal interest,
the emancipation of Turkish women, Kemal
has definite opinions. He not only favors
the ultimate banishment of the veil but
wants woman to be part and parcel of the
public life. His views run in this wise:
“Our women ought to be the equal of
men in education and activity. From the
earliest times of Islam there have been
women savants, authors and orators, as well
as women who opened schools and delivered
lectures. The Moslem religion even
orders women to educate themselves to the
same standard as men. In the war with the
Greeks Turkish women replaced the absent
men in all kinds of work at home, and
even undertook the transport of munitions
and supplies for the army. It was done in
response to a true sociological principle—
namely, that women should collaborate
with men in making society better and
stronger.
“It is supposed that in Turkey women
pass their lives in inactivity and in idleness.
That is a calumny. In the whole of Turkey,
except in large towns, the women work
side by side with the men in the fields, and
participate in the national work generally.
It is only in large towns that Turkish
women are sequestered by their husbands.
This arises from the fact that our women
veil and cloister themselves more than their
religion orders. Tradition has gone too far
in this respect.”
During the whole interview, save for the
two occasions when he leaned forward to
emphasize his points, Kemal had sat erect
in his chair, smoking cigarettes continually.
The only time there was the slightest
indication of a break in those stony features
was when we started to discuss more or less
personal affairs at the end of the talk, and
when I told him that I had not married
because ‘I traveled so much and that no
wife would stand such incessant action.
He thereupon said: “I have only lately
married myself.”
Madame Kemal
This naturally leads to the romance in
Kemal’s life. Like other men of iron he
has his one vulnerable point, and having
met Madame Kemal I can understand why
he succumbed. I heard the whole story at
first hand and in this fashion:
While we were in the midst of the interview
the butler entered and whispered
something in Kemal’s ear. Instantly he
turned and said, not without pride, “Madame
Kemal is coming down.”
A few moments later the most attractive
Turkish woman I had yet met entered—I
should say glided—into the room. She was
of medium height, with a full Oriental face
and brilliant dark eyes. Her every movement
was grace itself. Although she wore
a sort of non-Turkish costume—it was dark
blue—she had retained the charming headdress
which is usually worn with the veil
and which, according to the old Turkish
custom, must completely hide the hair.
The veil, however, was absent, for madame
is one of the emancipated ones, and some
of her brown tresses peeped out from
beneath the beguiling cover. A subtle perfume
emanated from her. She was a visualization
of feminine Paris literally adorning
the Angora scene.
Kemal presented me to his wife, employing
Turkish in the introduction. I addressed
her in French and she replied in
admirable English; in fact, she had a British
accent. The reason was that she had
spent some of her school life in England.
Later she studied in France. Madame
Kemal at once took her seat at the table
and listened to the cross examination of
her husband with interest.
Shortly after her arrival Kemal was summoned
into the next room, where the cabinet
was still in session, and during his
absence she told me the story of her life,
which is a charming complement to the narrative
of her distinguished husband’s more
strenuous career.
Her father, as I have already intimated,
is the richest merchant of Smyrna, which
has been for years the economic capital of
Turkey. Her name is Latife. To this must
be added the word hanum, which in Turkey
may mean either “Miss” or ” Mrs.” Thus
before her marriage she was Latife Hanum.
If she employed her full married name now
it would be Latife Ghazi Mustapha Kemal
Hanum.
During the early days of the Greek war
she was alternately in Paris and London.
In the autumn of 1921 she returned to
Smyrna, which was then in the hands of
the Greeks, who had imprisoned her father
and who eventually arrested her on the
charge of being a Turkish spy. She was
sentenced to detention in her own home
with two Greek soldiers on guard before
the door. Here she spent three months.
One day the Greek sentries suddenly
vanished. There was the bustle and din of
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146
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
October 20, 1923
hasty retreat, and early the next morning
the conquering Turks rode into Smyrna. A
few days later Kemal entered in triumph
at the head of his victorious army. Let me
tell the rest in madame’s own naïve words,
which were:
“Although I had never met Mustapha
Kemal I invited him to be our guest during
his stay in Smyrna. I admired his courage,
patriotism and leadership, and he accepted
our invitation. I found that we had common
ideals for the reconstruction of our
country, and later we discovered that we
had something else in common. Not long
afterwards forty to fifty of our friends were
invited to the house for tea. The mufti, as
the Turkish registrar is called, was summoned,
and without any previous announcement
we were married. Our wedding ring
was brought to us later from Lausanne by
Ismet Pasha.”
Madame Kemal spoke with f rank admiration
about her husband. “He is not only a
great patriot and soldier but he is also an
unselfish leader,” she said. ” He has built a
system of government that can function
without him. He wants absolutely nothing
for himself. He would be willing to retire
at any time if he were convinced that his
ideal of the self-determined Turkey will
prevail.
“I am acting as a sort of amanuensis for
him. I read and translate the foreign
papers for him, play the piano when he
wants relaxation, and I have started to
write his biography.”
” What are your husband’s diversions?”
I asked.
He loves music and when he does find
time to read he absorbs ancient history,”
was the reply. Then pointing to three playful
pups that gamboled on the floor at our
feet she added: “I have also provided him
with these little dogs, to whom he has become
much attached.” The snapshot of
Kemal reproduced in this article shows
the pups.
Education Before Suffrage
Madame Kemal has definite ideas about
the future of Turkish women. Like Halide
Hanum, she is strong for emancipation.
Along this line she said:
“I believe in equal rights for Turkish
women, which means the right to vote and
to sit in the Grand National Assembly. I
maintain, however, that before suffrage
and public service must come education.
It would be absurd to impose suffrage on
ignorant peasants. We must have schools
for women eventually, conducted by
women. It is bound to he a slow process.
I am in favor of abolishing the veil, but
this will also be a gradual development.
We want no quick changes. It must be
evolution instead of revolution.
“On one subject I have strong views:
Education and religion in Turkey must be
separate and distinct. This is my ideal of
the mental uplift of the women of my race.”
We began to discuss books. Much to my
surprise I found that Madame Kemal was
a great admirer of Longfellow. She quoted
the whole of the Psalm of Life. I was
equally interested to find how well she
knew Keats, Shelley and Byron. I referred
to the fact that in the old days Byron’s
books were forbidden in Turkey on account
of his pro-Greek sentiments, whereupon
she remarked vivaciously, “All such procedures
are now part of the buried Turkish
past.”
At this juncture Kemal returned, and
the threads of the interview with him were
picked up. When we concluded, twilight
had come and it was time to go. I had
brought with me a photograph of the Ghazi
that I had obtained in Angora. It was
taken in the early days of 1920. As he
looked at it he said wistfully, “That reminds
me of my youth.” He signed it and
then gave me two others at my request.
The farewells were now said, and I left.
As I drove back to Angora through the
gathering night, hailed at intervals by cavalry
patrols, for the watch on Kemal increases
with the dark, and with bugle calls
echoing across the still air, I realized that I
had established contact with a strong and
dominating personality, a unique leader
among men.
It remains only to reveal the somewhat
brief and crowded span of Kemal’s life so
far. He is the son of an obscure petty government
official and was born forty-three
years ago at Saloniki, which was then under
the Turkish flag. The fact of his birth here
has given rise to the widespread belief that
he is a Jew, which is not true. The surmise
was natural because during the Spanish
persecutions Saloniki became the haven
of innumerable oppressed Israelites. Here,
as elsewhere in the Turkey that was, and
is, they have become important factors in
both the commercial and the political life.
The Turks are a mixed race, however, because
of the old itch for conquest, and
Kemal’s mother had a strain of Albania
in her.
Kemal was destined for the army and at
the proper age entered the military school
at Monastir. Once in the army, he impressed
his colleagues by a real love of
soldiering. Then, as now, he was a nationalist.
In those days this was heresy, because
Turkey was in the grip of a corrupt stewardship
which combined control of both church
and state in the sultanate. In other words,
the sultan was not only ruler but as grand
caliph was also defender of the faith.
A comrade of Kemal’s early soldiering
days told me in Constantinople that when
the Committee of Union and Progress,
which was controlled by Enver Pasha, and
which brought about the revolution of 1908
and the counter revolution of 1909, was at
the height of its power, the future emancipator
of his country said: “These politicians
are bound to fail because they
represent a class and not a country. Their
motives are purely political. Some day I
shall help to redeem Turkey.” Like Napoleon,
he believed that he was a man of
destiny, and his subsequent achievements
have confirmed that early belief.
Kemal at the Dardanelles
It is interesting to add that at a time
when smart officers in Turkey had brilliant
prospects in politics Kemal stuck to his profession.
He fought in Tripoli against the
Italians, but it was not until the World
War that he emerged from the more or less
anonymity of the average officer’s life.
With his antipathy for the Germans, he
naturally opposed Turkey’s entrance into
the war on the side of the Central Powers.
At once he incurred the bitter enmity of
Enver Pasha, and this hostility became
more acute during the years of the conflict.
Enver tried in every way to humble him,
but he was too good a soldier to be sacked.
At one time he temporarily left the front
to accompany the future Sultan Mohammed
VI, then the crown prince, on a state
visit to Germany.
Prior to the Dardanelles campaign Kemal
was a colonel of infantry. Even before the
British and French made their ill-fated
landing he had been given a command on
Gallipoli. Soon after, he was made a
brigadier general- –this gave him the title of
Pasha—and he took over the 19th Division.
When the notorious Liman von Sanders
fell from favor he became one of the chief
ranking Turkish officers on the peninsula.
Most people do not know that it was
largely through Kemal’s quick judgment
that the Dardanelles expedition failed. On
the day that the Australians made their
historic attack at Anzac Beach, Kemal
had ordered the two best regiments of his
division on parade, fully equipped for a
maneuver against the very heights where
the Anzacs, as the Australians were known,
were about to operate. When the news of
the landing and of the defeat of the Turkish
troops along the coast first reached him it
was coupled with the information that the
movement was merely a feint, and with a
request that he would detach only one
battalion to deal with it.
Kemal judged from the firing, and from
the direction of the advance, that this was
no mere feint but a serious attack. He
took it on himself at once to order all three
battalions standing on parade to carry out
their prearranged maneuver. They were
followed by the whole of a second regiment
and by a mountain battery which Mustapha
himself posted and directed. He had committed
the commander of the other division
as well as his more cautious superiors, and
had, in fact, saved the situation.
At the close of the World War Turkey
lay prostrate. The British Fleet was in the
Bosporus, and the Sultan and his advisers
were under the thumb of the Allies. When
the Armistice of Mudros was signed in 1918
and the Turks surrendered, Kemal had just
returned from Palestine, where, after a
heroic struggle, he saved the Turkish rearguard.
He was now made inspector-general
of the remnants of the Turkish forces in
Asia Minor with a view to bringing order
out of the chaos into which the defeated
Turkish Army had been plunged.
(Continued on Page leg)
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THE SATURDAY EVENING POST 149
(Continued from Page 146)
In May, 1919, the Greeks occupied
Smyrna, which they had long coveted.
This ill-advised procedure was due almost
entirely to Lloyd George, and, although the
British premier did not realize it at the
time, was the first of the events that hurled
him from power.
Just as it marked the beginning of ultimate
disaster for the Greeks, and the final
overthrow of Lloyd George, so did it at the
same time mean that Kemal’s great hour
had come. The occupation of Smyrna by
the Greeks, together with the brutal way
they imposed their will, was the spark, as
it were, that started the flame of the new
nationalism in Turkey.
Far up beyond Erzerum was Kemal
with the remnants of an army which he had
been sent to demobilize and disarm. As
news of the Greek outrages in and around
Smyrna, and accounts of the deportation of
many of his Constantinople colleagues by
the British filtered in, he realized that the
time to strike was at hand. Instead of
demobilization and disarmament he sent
out a call for arms and volunteers with
which to resist what he believed was the
inevitable extinction of his country. He
began to organize a counter government
whose platform was the liberation of Turkey
from foreign domination. Since he was the
head and front of the movement his followers
came to be called Kemalists. The
first capital of this new nationalist movement
was Erzerum, in what was Turkish
Armenia. Later it was moved to Sivas, and
early in 1920 to Angora.
Meanwhile the Sultan’s government at
Constantinople, at Allied dictation, had
sent peremptory word to Kemal to return.
When he refused he was outlawed and sentenced
to death. This only added to his
growing popularity.
Kemal’s task was twofold: One phase was
to “Drive out the Greeks,” as the slogan
became; the other was to perfect the Nationalist
Government. Both consummations
were achieved. They required the
genius and strategy of military leadership
on the one hand, and keen, organizing
statesmanship on the other. Kemal combined
all these necessary qualities in himself.
There is no space here to recount the
story of those two years of fighting in which
the Greeks advanced as far as the Sakaria
River, which means that they were forty
miles from Angora, and how under Kemal
and the no less astute Ismet Pasha, who is
a soldier and not a diplomat by training,
the invaders were driven back into the sea.
It is an oft-told tale.
Turkey’s New Constitution
What concerns us mainly is the system of
government that Kemal created amid the
hardship and discomfort of Angora, and
with every alien hand except ours raised
against him. It is really a striking adventure
in democracy. Although not so technically
designated, it is for all practical and
working purposes a republic.
Under the so-called National Pact adopted
by the Grand National Assembly in Angora
in 1920 the Turks paralleled the American
Declaration of Independence. It declared,
among other things, that “it is a fundamental
condition of our life and continued
existence that we, like every country, should
enjoy complete independence and liberty in
the matter of assuring the means of our
development, in order that our national
and economic development should be rendered
possible.”
The -new Turkish Constitution is embodied
in what is known as the Fundamental
Law, which decrees that the sovereignty
of the nation rests with the nation as
exercised by the Grand National Assembly
elected by the people. This assembly alone
can declare war or make peace. It elects its
president—the office now held by Kemal
Pasha—who is the first official of the state.
As I have already pointed out, the assembly
also chooses the members of the cabinet.
Far more significant than these innovations,
when you consider the past history of
Turkey, is the absolute separation of church
and state. The sultan business is finished,
and the head of the Moslem faith reposes
in a caliph named by the Grand National
Assembly. He continues as spiritual chief
of the Mohammedan world but has no
influence upon Turkish affairs. In brief, he
is the pope of the Moslems.
This separation of church and state has
a big meaning for the foreigner and his
business interests. Until the Nationalist
movement a sort of extraterritoriality under
the name of capitulations existed. These
were necessary under the old regime because
religion and law were closely related.
The church throve upon the ignorance and
superstition of the masses. The Pious
Foundation—the Evkaf, as it is called—
which controls all church property, is one
of the richest trusts in the world. Hence,
as in China, the alien had to have his own
courts. One of the first things that Kemal
did was to abolish the capitulations. With
the courts purged of religious influence the
alien now has a square deal.
Personal Characteristics
By this time you will have realized that
Kemal is no ordinary person. When you
study} the man and his method you discover
that two qualities underlie his astounding
performance. One is doggedness of purpose
which marches at the behest of an iron will;
the other is his profound respect for public
opinion. Although the adored of his people,
who have implicit faith in his judgment,
he has, from the start, consulted
them in every step. When he wants to put
over a proposition he goes to the masses
and through the agency of what we should
call a town meeting states his case. So in
his relations with the Grand National Assembly.
Although he is a stickler for smart
clothes and etiquette his whole life has been
marked by a direct simplicity. When he
went to the front to lead the last stand of
the Turks against the advancing Greeks
the only document that he left behind was
the following brief note fr- Dr. Adnan Bey,
who was then vice presider’, of the Grand
National Assembly:
To the Vice President of the Grand National
Assembly: I am leaving for the front and I ask
you kindly to take care of my affairs during my
absence.
MUSTAPHA KEMAL
President of the Grand National Assembly.
Compare the failure of Enver Pasha with
the success of Kemal Pasha and you can
see how they differed in strategy. Enver
went straight ahead to the fulfillment of his
purpose. If he struck a stone wall he tried
to batter it down. Eventually he succumbed.
Kemal, when he meets an obstacle,
waits patiently until he can get
around it, and he usually gains his ends.
The patience to which I have just alluded
stood him in good stead at Sakaria, which
represents the peak of his military career.
For days the outlook was desperate. Regiment
after regiment had been hurled
against the Greeks, who fought them back
with terrible loss. Three divisional generals
were killed in the first day’s fighting. Turkish
disaster seemed inevitable. An orderly
dashed up to Kemal saying that another
position had been lost. Turmoil raged all
round him, but the commander in chief
stood unmoved and without the slightest
expression on that sphinxlike face.
At the critical hour he gave a quiet word
of command and five thousand picked
troops, which he had kept in reserve and
under cover, leaped into action. Their
instructions were not to fire until they saw
the whites of the enemy’s eyes. They turned
the tide and the Greek retreat began.
For the moment Kemal is secure on the
dizzy eminence where the tide of his accomplishments,
aided by the almost frenzied
acclaim of his people, has landed him.
On August fourteenth last he was reelected
president of the Grand National Assembly.
Only one vote was cast against him. It was
for Ismet Pasha, and the impression is that
Keinal so honored his eminent associate.
Thus for two years his post is safe.
Meanwhile his troubles will begin. Just
now he dominates—in fact he is–the
so-called Defense of Rights Party, whici is
the People’s Party, and which has practically
no opposition. Another wing must
eventually develop and the inevitable
political division will arise.
More immediate is the task of translating
that kindling formula of economic and
political self-determination, the Magna
Charta of the new Turkey, into cold and
practical reality. The tumult and shouting
have died out. Peace is signed. The
wounds of conflict must now be bound up.
Kemal’s real test as national leader, therefore,
will be to bring order and prosperity
out of the rack and ruin wrought by twelve
years of almost continuous warfare.
Whether as economic messiah he will
duplicate his astounding record in field and
forum remains to be seen. Whatever fate
holds out for him, he has already written
himself large in the history of his time.
kemal-pasha-october-1923[1]
