The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (123 page)

I
n his speech of June 14, 1921, Churchill had told the House that any successful Middle Eastern policy would eventually depend upon “a peaceful and lasting settlement with Turkey.”
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That was precisely what Britain lacked, and it is a supreme irony that the most damaging blow to Winston’s prestige during his two years as colonial secretary came from—of all places—the Dardanelles. Moreover, the man who dealt it was the victor of Gallipoli, General Mustapha Kemal, now Kemal Atatürk (“the Great Turk”), who had become an enlightened dictator consecrated to the transformation of his homeland into a modern state. At San Remo and in the Treaty of Sèvres, imposed on the weak sultan by the Allies, Turkey had been stripped, not only of its Arab possessions, but of many lands inhabited by Turkish people. The Bosporus and the Dardanelles were internationalized and the shores of both straits demilitarized. Moreover, Greece, Turkey’s ancient enemy, had been awarded Smyrna, Thrace, and the sultan’s Aegean islands.

Lloyd George was responsible for this. A passionate philhellenist, under the spell of Premier Venizelos, he believed the Greeks were completely justified in their determination to regain what they regarded as their lost territories in Asia Minor, including areas not awarded them at Sèvres. Churchill vehemently disagreed. For eight months he urged Lloyd George to negotiate with Kemal. The prime minister replied that Kemal was a rebel and an outcast. At a cabinet meeting in the first week of 1920, Winston recommended that British troops be withdrawn from Constantinople. George said they would leave only when Greek soldiers were ready to replace them. Curzon, the foreign secretary, agreed with Winston; so did the foreign ministers of France and Italy. Churchill pointed out that since England was not prepared to field an army against the Turks, its support of Greece’s adventurism was dangerous. Championing Kemal’s revolution as vigorously as he opposed Lenin’s, he wrote George that an attempt to force new terms on him “wd require great & powerful armies & long costly operations. On this world so torn with strife I dread to see you let loose the Greek armies.” He received no reply. He sent feelers to the Turks and learned that “Mustapha Kemal is willing to negotiate.” Again he wrote the prime minister: “No doubt my opinions seem a vy unimportant thing. But are you sure that about Turkey the line wh you are forcing us to pursue wd commend itself to the present H. of C.?” In a war, he predicted, the Turks would defeat the Greeks, and “to let the Greeks collapse at Smyrna will leave us confronted with a Turkish triumph and the Turks will have got back Smyrna by their own efforts instead of as the result of a bargain with us.” To Lord Derby he wrote: “I think we should use Kemal and a reconciled Turkey as a barrier against the Bolsheviks and to smooth down our affairs in the Middle East and in India.”
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To Lloyd George’s embarrassment, the Venizelos government fell. George still wouldn’t budge, however. Greek friendship, he told the House, was essential for England, and he was unwilling “to purchase a way out of our difficulties by betraying others.” He also reported that his ministers were in “unanimous agreement” that Smyrna should not be returned to Turkey. That was untrue, and Churchill angrily reminded Hankey, who had drafted the minutes of the meeting, that he had expressed his conviction that “the restoration of Turkish sovereignty or suzerainty over the Smyrna Province is an indispensable step to the pacification of the Middle East.” It was also his impression that these views had been shared by the lord privy seal, the chancellor of the Exchequer, and the secretary of state for India.
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As Lloyd George climbed farther and farther out on his limb, Kemal completed his ruthless suppression of his Turkish rivals and united the country behind him. The caliphate had been abolished, ending fourteen centuries of Islamic rule. Elected president and appointed commander in chief of the armed forces, Kemal vowed to reconquer all Turkish territories occupied by foreign forces. In defiance of the Allies, he had kept the sultan’s army intact, and his
askari
, with their preference for the bayonet and their fearsome war cry—
“Uhra, Uhra!”
(“Kill, Kill!”)—routed the Armenians and Georgians in the east and then the French in the south. While he was preoccupied with these theaters, the Greek army invaded Turkey. At first their advance was virtually unopposed. Riddell wrote in his diary: “L.G. is still very pro-Greek and much elated at the Greek military successes. He said we always regarded the Turk as a first-class fighting man but even here he had broken down. L.G. told me he believes the Greeks will capture Constantinople, and he evidently hopes they will.” Frances Stevenson wrote: “D. very interested in the Greek advance. He has had a great fight in the Cabinet to back the Greeks (not only in the field but morally) & he & Balfour are the only pro-Greeks there. All the others have done their best to obstruct & the W.O. have behaved abominably. However D. has got his way, but he is much afraid lest the Greek attack should be a failure, & he should be proved to have been wrong. He says his political reputation depends a great deal on what happens in Asia Minor.” He kept such doubts from his colleagues, jubilantly telling the House: “Turkey is no more!”
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He was wrong. In the summer of 1921, when the Greek invaders were within thirty miles of Angora (now Ankara), Kemal turned and defeated them on the Sakarya River. The Allies, alarmed, tried appeasing him by forbidding the Greeks to approach Constantinople and offering unspecified revisions of the Sèvres treaty. Kemal, who had already denounced its provisions, ignored them. Mounting a counteroffensive, he crushed the Greeks in the battles of Afyon Karahisar and Bursa. They broke and fled in confusion across the Dumlu Pinar plateau, toward the coast. In the second week of August he was within a day’s march of Smyrna. By now he had become a terrible myth—
“le mangeur d’homme,”
the French called him—and his frantic enemies, unable to stand against him, turned on the civilian population. Every Turkish village in the path of their flight was burned to the ground. Inside Smyrna, Turkish women and children were put to the sword. But Smyrna was home to thousands of Armenians and Greeks, too. When the Greek soldiers escaped by sea, and Armenians unwisely resisted the onrushing
askari,
the Turks ran amok. Moving systematically from street to street, they dragged all civilians who weren’t Turks from their hiding places and butchered them on their own thresholds. Those who sought refuge in Smyrna’s wooden churches faced an even ghastlier fate. The church walls were drenched with benzine and then fired. Refugees who attempted escape from cremation were bayoneted as they leapt out. The flames spread. Kemal’s men sealed off the Turkish quarter, encircled the rest of the city, and cheered as it was reduced to ashes. The few civilians still alive were then massacred. Except for the homes of the Turkish natives and a few buildings near the Kassambra railroad station, Smyrna was destroyed.

These appalling events were unknown to the outside world for several weeks. Royal Marines had evacuated British subjects from Smyrna before the atrocities began. It was the consensus of European statesmen—with the exception of Lloyd George, who stubbornly doubted the Greeks had suffered “a complete debacle”—that the invaders had asked for it. Paris urged Athens to sue for an armistice, and Sir Horace Rumbold, the British high commissioner in Constantinople, agreed, cabling Curzon that any such truce must be followed by “the immediate and orderly evacuation of Asia Minor by Greeks.”
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But by now the situation was beyond the control of anyone except Kemal, whose momentum kept growing. Soon the straits and even the Gallipoli peninsula were in danger. Here the Turks faced, not Greeks, but British, French, and Italian soldiers. At Sèvres the Allies had established “neutral zones,” including the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus, which were proclaimed international waters to be guarded by Allied infantry. Kemal, however, recognized no neutrals in his struggle. On Turkish soil anyone not for him was against him, and putting Smyrna behind him, he wheeled toward the Sea of Marmara, on whose shores a force of demoralized Greek soldiers had taken refuge. But they were not his main objective. The horrified maritime powers—chiefly England—realized that he meant to close the straits.

Now, as in 1915, the key position there was Chanak, the Dardanelles’ port of entry, a seedy waterfront town of crooked streets and high walls still pocked and pitted from de Robeck’s shelling. Once it became clear that Kemal had designs upon it, the French and Italian contingents stationed there withdrew, leaving a few thousand British troops to confront fifty-two thousand Turks. Churchill suggested that the Tommies be boated across to the European shore, thereby yielding everything on the Asian side to Kemal. If this were done, the first lord of the Admiralty assured the cabinet, the Royal Navy could still keep the channel open. The War Office forwarded the proposal to General Sir Charles Harington, the commander of the occupation force in Constantinople, but Harington insisted that his men remain in the town as a rear guard. Lloyd George was against Winston’s idea anyway. He said that if they were to “scuttle” from the threat, “our credit would entirely disappear.”
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Colonel Digby Shuttleworth, a tactful officer, was dispatched to Chanak. At his request, the Admiralty sent the battleships
Ajax, Iron Duke,
and
Marlborough
and the seaplane carrier
Pegasus
to anchor between Chanak and Gallipoli and train their guns on the approaches to the town.

Churchill had a sickening feeling of déjà vu. The ghosts of de Robeck, Fisher, and Kitchener rose before him. He told the cabinet that he felt “very uncomfortable” about the weakness of Shuttleworth’s position and recommended that not only Chanak but also Constantinople be abandoned, drawing “the whole of the British forces” into Gallipoli. This, he said, would involve “no serious risk,” and had “the very great merit that it would mystify, confuse, and hold up the enemy.” Lloyd George shook his head. To take that line, he said, “would be the greatest loss of prestige which could possibly be inflicted on the British Empire.” Churchill withdrew his motion and switched course. “The line of deep water separating Asia from Europe,” he said, was “a line of great significance, and we must make that line very secure by every means within our power. If the Turks take the Gallipoli Peninsula… we shall have lost the whole fruits of our victory, and another Balkan war would be inevitable.” He then joined Lloyd George, Balfour, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, and F. E. Smith—who had become Lord Birkenhead in 1919—in a hardline bloc. “We made common cause,” Winston later wrote. “The Government might break up, and we might be relieved of our burden. The nation might not support us; they could find others to advise them. The Press might howl; the Allies might bolt. We intended to force the Turk to a negotiated peace before he set foot in Europe.”
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On September 15, 1922, they sent Kemal an ultimatum. He was told that he remained in the neutral zones at his peril: “It is the intention of His Majesty’s Government to reinforce immediately… the troops at the disposal of Sir Charles Harington, the Allied Commander-in-Chief at Constantinople, and orders have been given to the British Fleet in the Mediterranean to oppose by every means any infraction of the neutral zones by the Turks or any attempt by them to cross the European shores.” But where were Harington’s reinforcements coming from? Not from Italy or France; their men were gone. Raymond Poincaré had announced in Paris that the French “would not consider themselves bound by any responsibility for any development that might result from the action which General Harington had been authorized to take.” And not from the Empire, either; it was on this occasion that Churchill, on instructions from Lloyd George, asked the Dominions for troops and was turned down by all except New Zealand and Newfoundland. Winston was dining at Sir Philip Sassoon’s Park Lane home on September 25 when word arrived that Kemal had finally responded to the British note. He had rejected it. Churchill was furious. Hankey, a fellow guest, wrote in his diary: “We talked late into the night. Winston, hitherto a strong Turko-phile, had swung round at the threat to his beloved Dardanelles and become violently Turko-phobe and even Phil-Hellene.”
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Actually, the crisis had come and gone four days earlier, after some two hundred
askari
had occupied the village of Eren Keui, less than ten miles from Chanak, and moved toward the British outposts. Told to retire, they halted but stood their ground. Then eight hundred Turkish horsemen rode closer. The British retreated toward prepared positions. The horsemen, to their relief, did not pursue them. Shuttleworth wired Harington: “Peaceful penetration by armed men who did not wish to fight, and yet refused either to withdraw or to halt, had not been foreseen.” Harington cautioned him to avoid any “unnecessary” exchanges of fire.
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The tension continued for two weeks, and at one point Harington seriously considered ordering an attempt to drive the Turks off, but early in October they marched away on Kemal’s orders. After reflection Atatürk announced that he would respect the neutral zones; the Greek soldiers on the Sea of Marmara were permitted to retire unmolested into Thrace. An armistice was signed, and the following year, in the Treaty of Lausanne, the straits, Eastern Thrace, and Constantinople—which Kemal renamed Istanbul in 1930—were peaceably awarded to Turkey.