British Views of the Turkish National Movement in Anatolia, 1919-22

Abstract

British views of the Turkish national movement in Anatolia differed according to the point of view adopted. Whereas British officials on the spot, in Constantinople (Istanbul, occupied by the Entente Powers, Britain, France and Italy, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War) and Anatolia tended to view the movement as the product of a conspiracy, organized by elements within the Ottoman government, in particular the Ministry of War, the intelligence services, particularly those operating in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, tended to view it as pa t of an international conspiracy, organized by outside forces (CUP in exile, German right wing, Bolshevik), centred in Berlin and Moscow. This discrepancy was never fully resolved, but as events developed in Anatolia, in the period of Turkish national struggle, the view put forward by the men on the spot gained increasing acceptance. The view expressed by most of the British officials serving in Constantinople and Anatolia (General Milne, Commander of the Army of the Black Sea, Admiral Calthorpe, British High Commissioner in Constantinople, Admiral de Robeck, also a British High Commissioner, Commander Heathcote-Smith, RNVR, Captain Hurst, an officer in the Levant Consular Service, Captain Perring, a relief officer, and many others) found its clearest expression in a History of the National Movement, printed by the War Office in the autumn of 1919. Until the end of May, the History of the National Movement noted, all the Turkish corps commanders continued to dispatch armaments to Constantinople, as they were required to do by the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918). But the occupation of south-western Anatolia by the Italians, in March 1919, and the occupation of Smyrna (Izmir) by the Greeks in May entirely changed the situation. By the end of May the country was flooded with accounts of what had occurred. These accounts, which 'naturally' were exaggerated, came as a great shock to the Turks, and had a unifying effect on the various factions into which the country at that time was divided.