From the Sultan to Atatürk: Turkey

This volume, from the perspective of Turkey, is one of 32 in this series describing the personalities, circumstances and events surrounding the countries that were ‘remade’ after the Paris Treaties. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War as an ally of Germany, not only saw its dissolution, it also marked the beginning of a prolonged and bloody transitionto an independent Turkey, by the partitioning desires of the western Allies, the three leading minorities within its borders (Greeks, Turks and Armenians), including those who believed that a new Turkey could rise from the chaos. One of them was Atatŭrk.

From the Sultan to Atatŭrk. Turkey describes the tortuous rise of the Turkish State throughout negotiations of the Paris Peace Treaties and the three-year war with Greece that followed. Turkish nationalists battled with various combinations of western Allies, Russia and eventually the Bolsheviks and built their independence firstly on the battlefield and then through diplomacy, as Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) was a careful and patient statesman, averse to military adventures. Following the earlier Paris treaties, while the weakened Ottomans were still being ruled by the Sultan in an Istanbul occupied by the British, the shrewd Mustafa Kemal remained in Ankara, creating a fledgling alternative ‘Government of the Grand National Assembly’. This clever name allowed the fiction that the government was ‘Ottoman’ instead of ‘Turkish’, added later. Mango comments, “Mustafa Kemal was a master tactician who used fictions when they served his purpose. ”

Three attempts were made to sign a peace treaty between the Allies and the Ottoman delegation. The Treaty of Sèvres signed on 10th August1920 only served to prolong the war between Greece and Turkey. Lloyd George had allowed his ally Greece to word a crushing ultimatum whereby, if the Ottomans refused to sign, the Allies reserved the right to “drive the Turks out of Europe for ever”. The Allies (initially Britain, France and Italy) had conflicting designs on Turkey that changed over the years, with each new alliance and with each new head of state. Mango writes of The Treaty of Lausanne, signed on the second attempt three years after Sèvres, “Of all the treaties concluded after the Great War, the Lausanne treaty alone has survived. The Turkish insistence that it should be a treaty freely negotiated by all the parties paid off. ”

Mango provides rich detail on the nationalities, political and economic interests and migrations within the dying Empire. The population went from 2.5million Orthodox Greeks in 1914 to fewer than 5,000 today. Forced and voluntary movements of peoples culminated in a grand exodus after the last battle in Smyrna in 1922. Within a few days 213,000 Greeks, Armenians and other Ottoman subjects were evacuated and carried to safety on board Allied warships and merchantmen. Once they left, Smyrna/Izmir was revived by returning Muslim refugees from the Balkans. Mango punctuates his narrative with many little-known anecdotes. Following the abolition of the monarchy by the nationalists in November 1922, Ali Kemal a journalist hated by nationalists (incidentally the great grandfather of Boris Johnson), was murdered. Now fearing for his life, the Sultan paused only to marry a young girl from his harem, before fleeing in the back of an ambulance.

Andrew Mango is author of Atatürk (John Murray, 1999) and The Turks Today (John Murray, 2004). He was head of BBC Turkish broadcasting for 14 years, and later Head of its South European Service.