Adonis Diaries

Story of Turkish dictator Mustapha Kemal “Ataturk”: As in Kenize Mourad book (Part 1)

The young general, Mustapha Kemal, was the hero of Turkey during WWI. He was the only military leader who successfully confronted two foreign armies:

1. Against the counsel of his superiors, Kemal defied the British troops and prevented them from occupying the Capital Istanbul. The British were getting ready to push forward from the Dardanelles and Kemal’s under equipped and outnumbered army stopped the British in Gallipoli.

2. Kemal recaptured the two cities of Bitlis and Mouch from the Czarist Russian armies (where genocides against Armenians were taking place by the Turkish troops).

Mustapha Kemal was nicknamed by the members of the royal women “Golden Rose” because of his blond hair.

Kemal was Albanian by origin and born in Salonika. His father was a low level custom employee in the Ottoman Empire.

Mustapha was considered handsome and arrogant. He enjoyed light skin, high cheek bones, blue eyes, and blond hair…

Sultan Vahiddedine liked to ask his judgement on the spirit of the army and listen to his non conformist opinions: the then young colonel was his aid de camp while visiting the Kaiser of Germany in 1917.

He had asked the hand of the Sultan’s favorite daughter Sabiha Sultan, and was eventually turned down while resuming the fight in Anatolia.

On March 16, 1920, the allied forces occupied Istanbul under the command of the British general Sir Charles Harington, nicknamed Gen. Tim.

The Turkish soldiers and officers left the capital and joined the resistance army in Anatolia under the command of Mustapha Kemal.

The occupying forces placed warning signs of “Death to anyone who hides a rebel” and the military police was after the woman author  and orator Halide Edib.

Former ministers and high officials were exiled to Malta.

While Kemal was organizing the resistance in Anatolia, Sabiha Sultana was wed to the Ottoman prince Omer Farouk.  Omer was from the branch in the royal family that was deposed by a military coup by the Young Turks officers.  He served as an imperial guard to the Prussian emperor and fought on the western front.

As Omer returned to Istanbul, he was attached as “aide de camp” to the Sultan and met with Sabiha and they fell crazily in love. The wedding put an end to the rivalry between the Abdul Mejid and Abu Aziz royal families.

The British pressured the Sultan to declare Kemal a traitor and to dispatch a Caliphate army to squelch the resisting Turkish army in Anatolia.  The caliphate army has initial successes but was defeated by Kemal’s army.

Mustapha was getting ready to try an attempt to reoccupy Istanbul, but the Greek army launched 8 divisions and Kemal’s army had to retreat.

In January 1920, Ismet Pasha blocked the advances of the Greek armies.

The Turkish peasants were very suspicious of Atatuk: They could not believe that Kemal was resisting to preserve the Caliphate and refused to cooperate.

Ataturk tried to lure the hereditary prince Abdul Medjid to ally with him. The prince wavered long enough for the British to get wind of the project and confined the prince to house arrest.

Prince Omer Farouk, the nationalist “Thunder”, managed to land in Anatolia, but Ataturk thanked him in a letter dispatched from Ankara and sent him packing to Istanbul.

The peace treaty signed in Versailles allocated the eastern part of Turkey to the new State of Armenia, part of the western region to Greece, particularly the city of Izmir, the southern regions of mostly Kurds were placed under French mandated power, and Istanbul was placed under international mandate.

Eventually, Mustapha Kemal counter attacked and regained all the Turkish territories that the peace treaty signed in Versailles dismembered Turkey of.

As  “Ataturk” (father of the Turks) snatched power by driving the Greek troops out of Turkey and all the foreign occupying armies vacated Turkey, the new dictator set about to enforce a secular State on the Turkish people:

1. He abolished the Caliphate and forced secular institutions

2.  Forbade women to veil their faces in public institutions

3. Forced the Latin characters to substitute the Arabic alphabet

4. Pressured France to cede the Syrian province of Iskandaroun to Turkey, which was renamed Hatai. France failed to keep its responsibility as a mandated power over Syria to retain the territory intact from foreign powers.

5. Ataturk burned the Christian houses and enterprises in Iskandarone and forced the Christian Syrian, Lebanese and Armenian to transfer to Syria and Lebanon.

6. This dictator moved the capital of Turkey to Ankara. In this quaint village, Ataturk built the government ministries and institutions and transferred the public employees to Ankara.

Note 1: Part of Ataturk biography was taken from Kenize Mourad book “From the Departed Princess“. Mourad published several books on her origin and was a specialist grand reporter in Middle-East affairs and India subcontinent for over 12 years.

Note 2: The French and Italian troops in Istanbul tacitly aided the resistance forces to steal weapons from the warehouses and cooperated in smuggling arms and ammunition to Ataturk army. Why?

France was upset that England got effective mandated power over Turkey, rich oil Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine. France was allocated just mandated power over Syria, completely surrounded by British power.

Italy was expecting to get the city of Izmir and its province, but England turned this city over to the Greek troops.