I f l !
THE TURKS
7i but b l k
GO ON WAITING
“W aiting.”
Turks Go on Waiting
E
VERY Turk in Constantinople,' and very likely in the jest Of what is still T u rk «', lias his ear cocked, no toward that conference which is to i>e held in London this week- that. ¡confer ence presided over by the allied Pre miers, and attended. by invited rep resentatives of the Greek and Turk ish Governments and oiMustapha Kemal's or ganization. It is the Mustapha Kemal ele ment that makes them cock their ears—that and what they consider the real object of the meeting. On the sur face, the Near Eastern situation is to be dis cussed. Actually, the Turks believe that the Treaty of Sevres will be revised.
I arrived in Constanti nople some time after the Turks had signed that treaty. I had the i m p r e s s i on, naive, doubtless, that there was nothing to be discussed. Everything had hung fire since the armistice, pulling back on the rope, so to speak, and the Turks had pulled back harder than any one else. I h"d recently come from Mesop,. ... where the excellent ad ministration o f the Brit ish had been hampered in details by the conduct of those in the Turkish territory beycnd Mosul, was resented the defini tion of the Mesopota mian frontier.
I had talked to Ameri can relief workers and missionaries in Turkish Diabekr and Mardin, who told me that the Turks had now refused their Christian subjects permission to leave those cities, and that the Christians were afraid ¡hat if the Turks had to sign they would take revenge by killing Chris tians within their bor ders. I knew that there were rumors that a Young Turk leader was up among the tierce Kurds urging them to fight against the Brit ish and win back some of the' Mesopota mian territory. 'V hen I passed through- the Caucasus I met Turks who spoke freely and feverishly against, the
French and British, saying that they did not intend to submit to the treaty.
But the treaty was signed, and when I came to Constantinople I expected to find resignation in the wake of the acceptance. With Con stantinople still their own, there were
plenty of pieces to pick up. I took the easy point of view that the Turks must be used by this time to losing territory; that the Sick Man of Eu rope was so accustomed to sickness that a little more could not add much to his discomfort. Anyhow, it was adding nothing to mine. I supposed tht Turks were taking their medicine and making the best of their situa tion.
Not at all; nothing had changed in Constantinople since the Spring when the British had taken control ' of the city. In spite of the fact that the Turks had. signed, the same régime continued. Constantinople was waiting for the Financial Com mission and all the other commis sions to send along their representa tives and begin governing. Every where was suspense, a feeling of tentativeness, as if, in spite of the signing, nothing was really settled. The Turks poured propaganda upon the Americans and upon the Allies whom they thought might be In fluenced, precisely as if nothing had yet been permanently decided. Turk ish women, as well as Turkish men, were armed to the teeth with argu ments, which they brandished at us without mercy.
! “ But look here,” I said to a bright young Turk who had been educated in Robert College, that American institution which has done so much for the Orient; “ The die is cast, isn’ t it? The treaty is signed.”
“ What is that worth,” he re plied, " when Mustapha Kemal has not signed? All the signing in the : world won’ t make anything certain till there is peace in the interior.”
" But the Greeks have beaten Mus tapha Kemal’ s forces; for weeks they have been holding the line, and not a Tchetta has come out against
them.” '
l knew whereof I spoke, for in the pleasant Autumn weather I had driven up to the Greek front beyond Smyrna, beyond Broussa. I had had a talk with the Greek Commander in Chief, General Raraskevepolous, a great admirer of the American na tion, and he had told me that if the British and French and Italians had not held him back he could have taken Angora, the headquarters of Mustapha Kemal and the two other strong points on the railroad for which the Greeks and Turks were fight ing.
I rode on a horse that seemed as high as a hill to th î Greek front line,
which was held much as we hold our Mexican, border. I looked through a strong observation glass, which gave me a sweep of twenty miles or so of Mustapha Kemal’ s country. Not a single Tehetta did I see; not even a peasant on the road or in the fields. They were all afraid come out. The Greek officers said that at first the Turks had shown splendid confidence, had brought 300,000 men against them. But now their courage had failed, their ammunition was failing, and many de serters were coming over to the Greek lines, who said they had been dragged away from their plows by Mustapha K e mal’s people, and made to fight when they did not want to. All they wanted was peace and a chance to live in their their own homes and at tend to'what was left of their own business.
As tactfully as I could, I put these statements before the young Turk. He nodded fretfully.
“ That is the way it may look on the sur face,” he said, “ but how do we know what Mustapha Kemal’ s plans really are! W e do not know what his • real strength is. W e don’ t know anything. The Sultan and his Govern ment are playing an honest game with the Allies. W e are not in secret partnership with Mustapha Kemal.”
” But if you are with the Allies, then why all this tentativeness?”
" Because,” he said, explosively, “ after all, the people of Turkey are not the same thing as the Sultan’s Govern ment or as Mustapha Kemal’ s Gov ernment. There are thousands of us who want, in the first place, peace, ar.d after that, as much of our old territory as we can manage to ar range for. That’ s only human, isn’t it? Mustapha Rental is trying to capture it; we don’ t know how far he will be allowed to go—or who can stop him. We don’ t see what steps to take to get this peace we want so much. We are not certain what the policy of the Allies is. Perhaps they don’ t know themselves what they want the Turks and the Greeks to do. Do the Allies intend to let the Greeks settle Mustapha Kemal and
then get out of a lot of the territory th'"- are occupying? Or do they in tend to let the Grbeks settle Musta pha Kemal and then remain in this occupied territory?
“ I f it is only a rebel on our hands we have in Mustapha Keirtilt. lei us put him down—if we are told how we can do it, and are allowed to do it. i f we have a great patriot in Mus tapha Kemal—then what are we to do? We could raise troops if we knew what the policy of the Allies really is, at)d how far it squares with our own interests. We could nol be expected to raise troops, however, if they were for the purpose of mak ing Turkey die a little more rapidly than she is already dying. The un certainty is appalling, and day by day it grows more tense. Mere wait ing adds to the tenseness; and when events happen, they don't bring any solution.”
1 stayed long enough in Constan tinople to see that this young man reflected the attitude of many of the Turks, perhaps- of the majority. As a matter of fact, in their hearts, they have not signed that treaty, whatever their hands may have done. They have unwillingly seen Syria and Mesopotamia taken away from them by the course of events in the war; that much they are re signed to lose.
“ That much,” said a Turk to me, “ we give up as a payment for being led into joining the Germans. That was not the fault of the Turkish people; we were deceived into it, and then we would nol desert as Bulgaria did. We are willing to pay a certain amount for huving been fools, but to give up Anatolia, to lose Smyrna, that is too much. We keep hoping for something that will prove to the Allies that we must get I sick not only Anatolia but part or all of Thrace and Armenia.”
This attitude of “ hoping for some thing to turn up ” makes the Turks seethe over every event that may have a bearing on their future. When President Wilson defined the borders of Armenia, they seethed. When the French threw out Emir Feisul and took Damascus and Aleppo and the rest of that inde pendent Arab territory, about Sep tember, they seethed. They said that if the French could go back on their Sykes-Pieot treaty with the Arabs, why could not the treaty with Turkey be changed? They seethed \ when the Bolshevist movement grew in that part of Anatolia still held by Turkey. A number of lower-class Turks, especially in the region of Aintab, saw profit in setting up a rule that would take power and prop erty away from upper-class Turks and put it in their own hands. This excited the Turks in Constantinople. Most especially did they seethe over W ran gel's defeat and over (he con sequent hordes of Russian refugees that poured into Constantinople, and
over the Bolshevist advance into A r menia.
Was this triumph o£ Bolshevism going to be temporary or raor; than temporary, and, if so, how could the Turks use it? The Turkish attitude toward Bolshevism is decidedly mixed. Turks will tell you that this unjust treaty has added fuel to the flames of Bolshevism; that if you hear of Armenians being massacred now, you must put that down to Bol shevism, not to the Turks, who are not cruel. Other Turks will say that the allied powers have condemned Turkey to death, and that if, by combining with the Bolshevik. Tur- ey can see a chance to reprieve her self, she is bound to Sake that chance, treaty or no treaty.
In short, the longer I stayed in Constantinople, the less difference I could see in the ideals of the Kemal- : ists and the Government party. I never knew w'hich sort of Turk I *
was talking to unless he told me, and even though he always said he was either of the Government party, or else only wanting peace, or else as neutral as a Turk could be, he was presently uttering the same senti ments, the same sort of propaganda as Kemalists I had met in Anatolia. Only once did I meet a Turk in Con stantinople who confessed to me that he was a Kemalist. I do not sup pose he would have been so frank except that he was watching with me something that aroused all his national passion.
We were sitting together in the American Sailors’ Club on the Grand Rue de Pera, a beautifully furnished house run by the American Young Men’s Christian Association to which I delighted to go, because I loved
i to watch our fresh-faced younglings
i having a glorious time in the one ! place in Constantinople where they ! could get good food cheaply, enter- i tainment for nothing.
The Turk and I were looking out of the window toward the Greek Military Headquarters, watching the flag being hauled down. The Turk ish policeman held up his hand and halted the traffic on the Grand Rue de Pera—a street car had to stop and a camel with two big boxes on his hack, a British motor car and a French motor car, a couple of Turks driving carriages, and a number of porters sidling along the curbstones. They stood while the Greek guards left the headquarters, crossed the road in front of all this traffic, and slowly and reverently saluted their flag.
" Do you think that sort of thing is easy to bear, here in our own City of Constantinople?" cried the Turk to me. “ Do you think it is easy to
pass that headquarters and read the Greek communiqués, to see Greek soldiers passing down the streets here, and know that not so long since they were killing Turks on the Smyrna front? Do you think it is easy to see strangers here trying to get the trade of the Orient? Musta pha Kemal was right not to wait, but to take matters in his own hands. The Allies try to sow disunion among the Turks, to separate us. It is K e mal who sees the wise course. If ever Turkey is saved from being shredded to nothingness, it will be I Mustapha Kemal who will be the
j savior.”
Once, grown surfeited with the propaganda which was always swept upon me whenever I met a Turk who could talk English or French, I i asked the man I was speaking with why politics was so constantly dis cussed now that the Turks had signed.
“ Because we want the United States particularly to be our friend,” he replied. “ The United States has a sense of justice, and we are a mis understood people. No one seems to sympathize with us, and yet look at our position. We have over a hun dred millions of enemies about us, ready some day to leap at our throats. The United States has high moral feelings; has not morality been defeated for years by the pow ers in this matter of Turkey? Great statesmen of four great powers have tried to solve the problem of the Orient for the good of their own countries, and to that end have ex cited ill feeling among other nations that had no reason for quarreling. The machinations of these- great pow ers have kept small Christian nations practically enslaved. Should this be permitted? ”
Rather amusing, that, to hear a Turk feeling moral indignation over ill-used Christian nations, consider
ing the way the Turks have for years been deleting the Armenians. Since the armistice was signed I have iieard various Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians confess that their countries had been at fault in enter ing the war. But I have never heard a Turk admit that Turkey had ever done anything deplorable. (The sub ject of Armenians they sheer a\ ay from.) I have heard Germans say that it had been wrong to make mi>- itarism such a strong national ideal. But I have never heard a Turk say that Turkey had failed in its govern ment of other races.
Timet (M - V . J Z * ' ) t j
( C opyright, 1921, by The New Y ork Tim es Company.)
Istanbul Şehir Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi Taha Toros Arşivi
