PARIS 1919 (66 page)

The Albanians were horrified, reported Wilson, who had received a number of petitions, at the thought of an Italian mandate. Perhaps they should have their independence. “I really don't know what they would do with it,” replied Lloyd George, “except cut each other's throats.” Albania would be just like the Scottish highlands in the fifteenth century. “Don't speak ill of the mountains of Scotland,” said Wilson, “it is my family's place of origin.” And that was the end of the matter as far as the Council of Four was concerned.
⁴¹

In the summer of 1919, when a new and more conciliatory government came to power in Italy, it made an agreement with Venizelos, himself under pressure to settle Greece's disputed claims. The deal was a matter of old-style horse-trading: Italy would support Greek claims, including those to Thrace, if Greece gave up its claims to the territory Italy wanted in the southern part of Asia Minor. Italy would also hand over all of the Dodecanese islands except the most important one, Rhodes. (This was not as much of a sacrifice as it sounded, because Italy had no legal claim to them.) In the case of Albania, Italy agreed that Greece should have the south; in return, Greece would recognize Italy's possession of the port of Vlorë and its hinterland, and an Italian mandate over what was left. As a symbol of the new spirit of compromise, a railway would be built from Vlorë to Athens.

Almost immediately, other powers raised objections. The French refused to leave Korçë until a more general settlement was achieved. The new state of Yugoslavia was agitated at the thought of so much Italian territory along its borders. And if Greece and Italy were getting pieces of Albania, then it wanted some in the north.

The final blow to the agreement came in February 1920 from an unexpected quarter. President Wilson, defeated in his struggle to get the Treaty of Versailles accepted by Congress, still clung to his principles. The United States, he said in a note to his European allies, was not prepared to do an injustice to the people of Albania. By the spring, the Albanians were in full-scale revolt against the Italian occupation. By August, Italy was prepared to sign an armistice that left it with only the island of Sazan, facing the port of Vlorë. “It is very sad,” commented an Italian newspaper, “to witness this debacle after so much noble and generous Italian blood has been given and so many millions have been expended for a great work of civilisation and for the security of our frontiers.”
⁴²
The French pulled out of Korçë, and Greece and Yugoslavia, for the time being, dropped their demands. At the end of 1920 Albania was admitted to the League of Nations as an independent state, its boundaries virtually the same as they had been in 1913.

Not for nothing was Albania the birthplace of the king who gave his name to the Pyrrhic victory. Internal politics continued in their turbulent fashion. Essad briefly achieved his dream of being king, but he never sat on his throne. In spite of his bodyguards and Browning revolvers, as he left the Hôtel Continental in Paris an old enemy gunned him down. The assassin was killed in turn, on the orders of Essad's nephew Zog, who duly became king.

Italy never completely abandoned its designs. Under Mussolini, Italian influence continued to grow; finally, on the eve of the Second World War, Italy annexed Albania. After the war, a former teacher of French, Enver Hoxha, set up one of the stranger and more reactionary communist regimes. Repeated attempts by the Albanian resistance and their Western supporters to restore King Zog came to nothing, largely because they were betrayed by the leading Soviet mole in the West, Kim Philby. In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, Essad's great-nephew, an arms dealer from South Africa, revived his claim to the throne.

Greece did much better in Thrace, where Venizelos claimed almost the whole. What he glossed over, with much clever juggling of statistics, was the population mix. Eastern Thrace probably had a Greek majority; in the western part, which had belonged to Bulgaria since 1913, Turks outnumbered Greeks by almost three to one. There was also a significant Bulgarian minority. This was awkward; if the principle of nationality were to apply, something the Americans always favored, then Greece could claim only eastern Thrace. Western Thrace should go back to Turkey or possibly stay with Bulgaria, which needed its seaports. The Italians, who were rumored to be intriguing with the Bulgarian government against Serbia, supported the latter solution. In either case, another country would sit between the main part of Greece and its new province of eastern Thrace. The Greeks argued that the Bulgarians, and many of the Turks, were really Greek. As one delegate assured Bonsal, “They are of straight Attic descent and the land is full of them; but to pacify their ferocious Slav neighbors, and so that they may be understood in their daily life and pursuits, many of them have lost all knowledge of their mother tongue.” The Greek fallback position was that the Muslim majority in western Thrace, whether Bulgarian- or Turkish-speaking, would prefer rule by Greece. Conveniently, Venizelos produced a pleading letter from local Muslims: “It would not be just to allow us to suffer under the hardest and most un-pitying yoke that one can imagine—under the Bulgarian yoke.”
⁴³

In any case, the Greeks urged, why should defeated enemies be given consideration? Venizelos was prepared to allow Ottoman Turkey a small slice of Thrace just to the north of Constantinople. (He hoped, of course, that the city and its surroundings would soon be Greek.) As for western Thrace, it would be better for the future safety of the world, not to say the Balkans, if Bulgaria relinquished the whole to Greece. “Whatever concessions might be made would be useless, for Bulgaria would never rest until the whole of the Balkans were handed over to her. Bulgaria claimed complete hegemony over the whole of the Peninsula, and she would seize every opportunity to fulfil her ambitions. Bulgaria represented in the Balkans, the Prussia of Western Europe.”
⁴⁴
The British and French, who disliked Bulgaria, agreed. Apart from any other considerations, Greece needed a land link to eastern Thrace.

To objections raised by the Americans and the Italians that Bulgaria would suffer economically if it lost all its ports on the Mediterranean, Venizelos, as always, had an answer: “The principle of nationality should take precedence over economic considerations. Bulgaria had excellent ports on the Black Sea.” And, given Bulgaria's past record, it was quite capable of building submarine bases on the Aegean and menacing Greece. If Bulgaria really needed an outlet, Greece would allow it to use a port. (When such a provision was eventually drawn up, Bulgaria rejected it outright: “A Bulgarian outlet to the sea through Turkish and Greek territory is not only impossible, but also unacceptable psychologically.”
⁴⁵
)

Although the Greek commission finally recommended giving both parts of Thrace to Greece, the Peace Conference postponed making any decision at all on the grounds that it was premature, since the fate of Constantinople had not yet been settled. (There was talk of the United States taking a mandate.) When Thrace came up before the Peace Conference again in the summer of 1919, the United States had given up the idea of the mandate and was now also firmly opposed to giving western Thrace to Greece. Instead, the Americans argued for leaving it with Bulgaria, much to the irritation of the British, who pointed out that if one of Greece's claims were denied, the whole lot would have to be reviewed. Venizelos was coming under attack at home; he told Lloyd George that his position would be very dangerous unless he could show some solid gains.
⁴⁶

The gradual withdrawal of the United States from Europe made it possible for the European powers to ignore its wishes. In the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria, which was signed in November 1919, Bulgaria lost western Thrace. The Bulgarian delegation made one last futile appeal: “The exclusion of Bulgaria from Western Thrace, of which even our enemies the Greeks and the Serbians, who were our conquerors in the war of 1912–1913, did not have the courage to deprive us, . . . will further separate Bulgaria geographically from France and the great sea powers.”
⁴⁷
In 1920, western and eastern Thrace, which had by now been taken from Turkey, were handed over by the Allies to Greece. The Greeks were to enjoy their new acquisition in peace for precisely two years. Far to the south, in Asia Minor, the “great idea” was crashing rudely against reality. Greece had stretched too far; in doing so it had awoken the forces of Turkish nationalism.

26

The End of the Ottomans

FAR AWAY FROM PARIS, at the southeast tip of Europe, another great city had been lamenting the past and thinking uneasily about the future. Byzantium to the Greeks and Romans, Constantinople to the peacemakers, Istanbul, as it was to the Turks, had once been the capital of the glorious Byzantine empire and then, after 1453, of the victorious Ottoman Turks. Now the Ottoman empire in its turn was on a downward path. The city was crammed with refugees and soldiers from the defeated armies, short of fuel, food and hope. Their fate—indeed, that of the whole empire—appeared to depend on the Peace Conference.

Layers of history had fallen over Constantinople, leaving churches, mosques, frescoes, mosaics, palaces, covered markets and fishing villages. The massive city walls had seen invaders from Europe and the East, Persians, Crusaders, Arabs and finally the Turks. The last Byzantine emperor had chosen death there in 1453, as the Ottoman Turks completed their conquest of his empire. Underneath the streets of Istanbul lay the shards of antiquity; walls, vaults, passageways, a great Byzantine cistern where Greek and Roman columns held up the roof. Above, the minarets of the mosques—some of them, such as the massive Santa Sophia, converted from Christian churches—and the great tower built by the Genoese brooded over the city's hills. Across the deep inlet of the Golden Horn, the old city of Stamboul, with its squalor and its magnificence, faced the more spacious modern quarter where foreigners lived. It was a city with many memories and many peoples.

All around was the water. To the northwest, the Bosphorus stretched up into the Black Sea toward Russia and central Asia; southwest, the Sea of Marmara led into the Dardanelles and the Mediterranean. Geography had created the city, and geography had kept it important through the centuries. From antiquity, when Jason sailed through and Alexander the Great won a great victory over the Persians nearby, to more modern times, when Catherine the Great of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany both reached out to grasp it, the city had always been a prize.

Much of the diplomacy of the nineteenth century had revolved around controlling vital waterways such as this. Russia longed for warm-water ports with access to the world's seas. Britain in turn bolstered an ailing Ottoman empire to keep the Russians safely bottled up in the Black Sea. (Only in the most desperate moments of the war had the British conceded Russian control over the straits; fortunately, owing to the revolutions of 1917, Russia would not be collecting its prize.) The Ottoman Turks, who had once reached the gates of Vienna, had little to say. Even the Young Turk revolt just before the Great War did little to arrest their decline. Their empire shrank, in the Balkans and across North Africa.

In 1914, the Ottoman leaders decided to confront Russia, now allied to their old friend Britain: the empire joined the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was a gamble that failed. The Ottoman empire fought astonishingly bravely, given its relative weakness. In Mesopotamia and at Gallipoli, Turkish soldiers humiliated the Allies, who had expected quick victories. But by 1918, Ottoman luck had run out. The collapse of Bulgaria in September opened the road to Constantinople from the west, while British and Indian troops pushed in from the south and east. Out on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, Allied warships gathered in ominous numbers. Only on its northeastern borders, where the old Russian empire was disintegrating, was there respite, but the Ottomans were too weak to benefit. Their empire had gone piecemeal before the war; now it melted like snow. The Arab territories had gone, from Mesopotamia to Palestine, from Syria down to the Arabian peninsula. On the eastern end of the Black Sea, subject peoples—Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds—struggled to establish new states in the borderlands with Russia. “General attitude among Turks,” reported an American diplomat, “is one of hopelessness, waiting the outcome of the Peace Conference.” Like so many other peoples, they hoped the Americans would rescue them; self-determination might salvage at least the Turkish-speaking areas in eastern Thrace and Anatolia. In Constantinople, intellectuals founded a “Wilsonian Principles Society.”
¹

The men who had led the empire into the war resigned in the first week of October and fled on a German warship, and a caretaker government sent word to the British that it wanted peace. The British government agreed to open talks promptly at the Aegean island of Mudros, partly to keep the French on the sidelines. Although the British had consulted with the French on the armistice terms, they made the dubious argument that since the Ottoman empire had contacted them first, it was Britain's responsibility to handle negotiations. The French government and the senior French admiral at Mudros both protested in vain. All negotiations were handled by the British commander, Admiral Arthur Calthorpe.
²

The Ottoman delegates were led by Hussein Rauf, a young naval hero and the new minister of the navy. On October 28 they arrived at Calthorpe's flagship, the
Agamemnon.
The negotiations were civil, even friendly. Rauf found Calthorpe honest and straightforward—and reassuring when he promised that Britain would treat Turkey, for that was all that remained of the empire, gently. Constantinople probably would not be occupied; certainly no Greek or Italian troops, particular bugbears of the Turks, would be allowed to land. When Rauf arrived home, he told a reporter: “I assure you that not a single enemy soldier will disembark at our Istanbul.” The British had treated them extraordinarily well: “The armistice we have concluded is beyond our hopes.” Even though they had accepted all the clauses put forward by the British, Rauf trusted Calthorpe, who promised that the armistice terms would not be used unfairly. The British were really only interested in free passage through the straits; why would they want to occupy Constantinople, or indeed anywhere else? Rauf told himself that, after all, the British had already taken the Arab territories: “I could think of no other area they would want from the point of view of their national interests and so might try to seize.”
³

When the two men put their signatures to the armistice on October 30, they cheerfully toasted each other in champagne. Rauf, the
Agamemnon'
s captain wrote to his wife, “made me a very graceful little speech thanking me for my hospitality and consideration to him as a technical enemy.” The photograph of the captain's young twin sons, said Rauf, had been a source of inspiration to him. “Wasn't that nice?”
⁴

In London, the British cabinet received the news of the armistice with delight and fell to discussing how Constantinople ought to be occupied, given “the mentality of the East.” The British and their allies had every intention of enforcing the armistice rigorously. All Turkish garrisons were to surrender; all the railways and telegraphs would be run by the Allies; and Turkish ports were to be available for Allied warships. But the most damaging clause was the seventh, which read simply: “The Allies have the right to occupy any strategic points in the event of a situation arising which threatens the security of the Allies.” Years later Rauf looked back: “There was a general conviction in our country that England and France were countries faithful not only to their written pacts, but also to their promises. And I had this conviction too. What a shame that we were mistaken in our beliefs and convictions!”
⁵

From his post far away to the south, by the Syrian border, a friend of Rauf's who was also a war hero wrote to his government with dismay: “It is my sincere and frank opinion that if we demobilize our troops and give in to everything the British want, without taking steps to end misunderstandings and false interpretations of the armistice, it will be impossible for us to put any sort of brake on Britain's covetous designs.” Mustafa Kemal—better known today as Atatürk—dashed north to Constantinople and urged everyone he could see, from leading politicians to the sultan himself, to establish a strong nationalist government to stand up to the foreigners. He found sympathy in many quarters, but the sultan, Mehmed VI, preferred to placate the Allies. In November 1918, Mehmed dissolved parliament and tried to govern through his own men.
⁶

The great line of sultans that had produced Suleiman the Magnificent had dwindled to Mehmed VI. His main achievement was to have survived the rule of three brothers: one who was deposed when he went mad; his paranoid and cruel successor, so fearful of enemies that he employed a eunuch to take the first puff of every cigarette; and the timid old man who ruled until the summer of 1918. Mehmed VI was sane but it was difficult to gauge whether there were many ideas in his bony head. He took over as sultan with deep misgivings. “I am at a loss,” he told a religious leader. “Pray for me.”
⁷

The power of the throne, which had once made the world tremble, had slipped away. Orders from the government, reported the American representative, “often receive but scant consideration in the provinces and public safety is very poor throughout Asia Minor.” Although Constantinople was not officially occupied at first, Allied soldiers and diplomats “were everywhere—advising and ordering and suggesting.” Allied warships packed the harbor so tightly that they looked a solid mass. “I am ill,” murmured the sultan, “I can't look out the window. I hate to see them.” Atatürk had a very different thought: “As they have come, so they shall go.”
⁸

Atatürk was a complicated, brave, determined and dangerous man whose picture, with its startling blue eyes, is still everywhere in Turkey today. In 1919 few foreigners had ever heard of him; four years later he had humbled Britain and France and brought into existence the new nation-state of Turkey. The tenth of November, the anniversary of his death, is a national day of remembrance. He could be ruthless, as both his friends and his enemies found; after his great victories, he tried some of his oldest associates, including Rauf, for treason. He could also be charming, as the many women in his life discovered. Children loved him, and he loved them; he always said, however, that it was just as well he was childless since the sons of great men are usually degenerates. He had a rational and scientific mind, but in later life grew fascinated by the esoteric. He refused to allow Ankara radio to play traditional Turkish music; it was what he listened to with his friends. He wanted to emancipate Turkish women, yet when he divorced the only woman he ever married, he did so in the traditional Muslim way. He was a dictator who tried to order democracy into existence. In 1930 he created an opposition party and chose its leaders; when it started to challenge him, he closed it down. He was capricious, but in his own way fair. His subordinates knew that any order he had given at night during one of his frequent drinking bouts should be ignored.
⁹

The man who made Turkey was born on the fringes of the old Ottoman empire in the Macedonian seaport of Salonika. His mother was a peasant who could barely read and write, his father an unsuccessful merchant. Like the Ottoman empire itself, Salonika contained many nationalities. Even the laborers on the docks spoke half a dozen languages. About half of Salonika's people were Jews; the rest ranged from Turks to Greeks, Armenians to Albanians.
¹⁰
Western Europeans dominated the trade and commerce, just as European nations dominated the Ottoman empire.

Early on Atatürk developed a contempt for religion that never left him. Islam—and its leaders and holy men—were “a poisonous dagger which is directed at the heart of my people.” From the evening when, as a student, he saw sheikhs and dervishes whipping a crowd into a frenzy, he loathed what he saw as primitive fanaticism. “I flatly refuse to believe that today, in the luminous presence of science, knowledge, and civilization in all its aspects, there exist, in the civilized community of Turkey, men so primitive as to seek their material and moral well-being from the guidance of one or another sheikh.”
¹¹

Over his mother's objections, he insisted on being educated in military schools. In those days these were not only training leaders of the future; they were centers of the growing nationalist and revolutionary sentiment. Atatürk's particular aptitudes were for mathematics and politics. He learned French so that he could read political philosophers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu. When he was nineteen, Atatürk won a place in the infantry college in Constantinople. He found a worldly, cosmopolitan capital. Less than half its population was Muslim. The rest were a mix of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors had escaped from Christian Spain centuries before, Polish patriots fleeing tsarist rule, and Orthodox Armenians, Rumanians, Albanians and Greeks. Despite four centuries of Ottoman rule, the Greeks still dominated commerce. (Even after the Second World War, over half the members of Istanbul's chamber of commerce had Greek names.) Europeans ran the most important industries, and Western lenders kept the government solvent and supervised its finances. The Ottomans were now so weak that they were forced to give Westerners even more of the special privileges, which first started in the sixteenth century capitulations, which included freedom from Turkish taxes and Turkish courts. As a Turkish journalist wrote sadly: “We have remained mere spectators while our commerce, our trades and even our broken-down huts have been given to the foreigners.”
¹²

The infantry college where Atatürk studied was on the north side of the Golden Horn, in the newer part of the city, with its wide streets, gas lighting, opera house, cafés, chamber of commerce, banks, shops with the latest European fashions, even brothels with pink satin sofas just like those in Paris. Atatürk explored it with enthusiasm, carousing and whoring and reading widely, but he always remained ambivalent about Constantinople. It was a place to be enjoyed but dangerous to governments.
¹³
He later moved the capital far inland to the obscure city of Ankara.