British Intelligence and the Turkish National Movement, 1919-22

Abstract

Readers of Keith Jeffery and Alan Sharp's article 'Lord Curzon and Secret Intelligence', in Christopher Andrew and Jeremy Noakes (eds.) Intelligence and International Relations (University of Exeter, 1987), and Robin Denniston's Churchill's Secret War (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1997), might be excused for concluding that British intelligence regarding the Turkish national movement in Anatolia in the period of national struggle, 1919-22, was obtained almost entirely from intercepts of Turkish, Greek, French, Italian and other telegraphic and radio communications, decoded where necessary either by British Military Intelligence, Constantinople, or by the British Code and Cypher School (BCCS), set up in 1919, or its predecessors, Room 40, Old Building, Admiralty, and MI lb, War Office. Such was not the case. Throughout the period of national struggle MI lc, later known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the other, associated British intelligence services, in particular Naval Intelligence, provided a great deal of information about events in Anatolia, most of which was obtained, not from intercepts, but from the more traditional sources of information available at the time. These included Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Arab agents, locally recruited by MI Ic, Constantinople, and the various British intelligence services, operating in Syria and Mesopotamia; members of the Ottoman government, the Turkish national movement and the Greek Orthodox Church, friendly to Britain; employees of the Levant Consular Service; reports published in the local and foreign press (Journal d'Orient, Yeni Gun, Ileri, Hakimiet-i-Millie, Ankara Press Agency, Chicago Tribune and many others); contacts in the French, Italian and Greek intelligence services; and British control officers and other personnel posted at strategic points in Anatolia, until the spring of 1920, when following the Allied (British, French and Italian) occupation of Constantinople (the previous occupation had been unofficial), British personnel were either arrested or expelled from the area. Until the spring of 1920, therefore, information regarding events in Anatolia was more than plentiful. Only following the