On Monday we talked about the history of Asia Minor, history in times of the Byzantine Empire. Yesterday we made a first approach to the history of the Janissaries. Today we continue our monograph with an indisputable character from the beginning of the 20th century.
Today we move to contemporary times and it is the turn of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, possibly the most famous statesman in Turkey in the 20th century. Even today he is idolized almost as a divinity, due to the progress and advancement that he brought to the country. Although thousands of young Turks still have him as a role model, another current is gaining strength in the Asian country: Ottomanism. With Erdoğan’s rise to power, the cult of what they consider to be the golden age of his nation, the times of the Ottoman Empire, has begun. But this article is not about that, but rather aims to give a few brushstrokes on the figure of the Father of the Turks, a brief review that will help us better understand how we got to what happened last July 15.
This story begins in Thessaloniki in 1881, there he would be born into a lower-middle class family where only he and his sister Makbule would survive childhood. He is assumed to have a Slavic origin and even a Jewish convert, however the line between reality and fiction is very blurred in the figure of Atatürk due to the large number of hagiographers and detractors who have been doing and undoing at will.
Be that as it may, this young Turk would have blue eyes, fair skin, and blond hair. He was born as Mustafa, but he would soon receive another nickname, “Kemal” – perfect – by his Mathematics teacher, who considered him someone brilliant already in his youth. Mustafa is not an uncommon name in the empire, which is why it also served to distinguish him. When he is old enough he will join the army, where he will begin to permeate a growing nationalism and create a secret society together with his companions.
In 1908, a liberal revolution known as the Young Turk Revolution triumphed, at that time, the sultan lost most of his powers and a constitutional regime was instituted that would govern the destiny of the Turkish people and dismantle the empire as it was. He was known. In spite of everything, they will not be exempt from problems since they will have to face liberal and reactionary insurrections, in addition, the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 is well known, to which we will dedicate a specific article. Be that as it may, the Committee of Union and Progress (as the Young Turks called themselves) began a slow modernization of the bureaucratic mechanisms of the state.
For his part, Kemal will have to face different wars in the Empire. The ambitions of Italy on the coasts of the Ottoman Tripolitania (whose epicenter is the current Libya) will be the first of them. In 1911 a rebellion broke out in Yemen that would make the Ottoman garrison of the territory move to Arabia, this moment would be used by the Italians to take an amphibious army there with about 120,000 men. Only 8,000 Turks and 20,000 Bedouin irregulars would elaborate the defense of the territory. The British, who controlled the Ottoman provinces of Egypt and Sudan, denied the access of new troops, so different commanders, among which Mustafa Kemal stands out, had to cross the border dressed as Arabs to be allowed passage. There he would be in charge of keeping the Italians at bay, giving various minor victories to the Empire, as is the case of the Battle of Tobruk. He would also be injured in one of his eyes, losing some vision ability. Despite the efforts of the Ottoman commanders, the Italian capacity exceeded the declining power, ending the conflict on October 18, 1912. The Italians managed to annex a series of islands near Asia Minor, Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezán.
Ten days before the first Balkan war broke out, where he would have a minor role taking part in some landings until the imperial defeat on May 30, 1913. Then the second Balkan war would break out against Bulgaria, which they would defeat with allies such as Greece, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. Ending this conflict on August 10, 1913, he would be promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel the following year.
In 1914 the Great War broke out with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo. The Ottoman Empire, known for decades as the sick man of Europe, is allied with the central powers due to territorial quarrels with France, the United Kingdom and Russia. These powers seemed to have a great interest in the peripheral provinces of the empire, fears that were fully founded and that at the end of the war would prove to be real. For their part, they wanted to recover the Balkans, Thessaloniki or Thrace among other lost territories, in short, they wanted to retake areas that previously belonged to them. For this reason, the sultan called the jihad, but virtually no one responded to her.
Their approach was merely defensive, although they dedicated themselves to the bombardment of Russian ports and some offensive, the tsarist troops rejected practically all of them until they left the war. The greatest victory would take place in Gallipoli, and it would be in it that our protagonist would participate.
On March 18, 1915, the first attempt began by French and British forces – highlighting ANZAC forces: New Zealanders and Australians – but they could not reach the coast because the sea was mined. On April 18 it would be repeated, failing again as on March 18, where the Ottoman forces were fully prepared for the attack.
Supported by German experts, the Turkish forces were holding off the combined Allied 30,000 men in the Dardanelles. The biggest mistake of France and Great Britain had been not to take into account the factor of the terrain, since they were very steep areas that were easy to defend. If the other day we told you about how Churchill had participated in Omdurman, this time he also had quite a leading role, having quite a few disagreements with Horatio Kitchener, an Irish soldier and one of the commanders of the battle.
An entertaining way to approach this confrontation is from the point of view of two soldiers from the ANZAC forces (played by Mel Gibson and Mark Lee) in the film “Gallipoli” by Peter Weir (Master & Commander, the Truman Show… ). In addition, Australian television broadcast the miniseries “Gallipoli” in memory of the 100th anniversary of the participation of its soldiers in the battle.
Be that as it may, 250,000 Ottoman soldiers faced nearly 300,000 members of the Triple Entente in this territory, and Mustafa Kemal played a leading role in it. What exactly did he do? He was in charge of the nineteenth division in the fifth army – where he had started his military career. There he quickly anticipated an allied offensive preventing them from being overwhelmed, he held the position until the enemies had withdrawn, which is why he would gain such prestige that he would be commissioned to form a new army, which he refused.
Later, he would be sent to the Caucasus campaign where a huge Russian offensive had taken several cities in Anatolia. Mustafa, in charge of the sixteenth corps of the second army, would be in charge of carrying out a counteroffensive that would be very successful.
Later, in the summer of 1917, he would go to the seventh army in the service of a German commander. There, Mustafa called for the German commanders to be removed and Turkish generals to be used, but was rebuffed. In any case, the balance had already tipped in favor of the entente that was defeating the central states. His biographer, John Patrick Douglas, claims that Atatürk would be the only Ottoman general not to suffer any defeat in World War I.
When he returned to Istanbul, he would find the city occupied by the European powers that were going to dismember the Ottoman Empire at will. Thus began the Turkish War of Independence.
The armistice of Mudros (October 30, 1918) sealed the end of the Great War in the East, by means of this treaty, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles became a zone of occupation of the allies, in addition they could also control any territory if something happened. threatening situation. In November a French brigade began the occupation of Constantinople (Istanbul) and its metropolitan area. Later, a fleet from a conglomerate of allied states would land an even larger force of soldiers. Eastern Thrace (Turkey’s European zone) would also be occupied by Franco-Greek troops.
At the Paris peace conference, Greece would try to keep a good part of the Empire, supporting an old nationalist idea of unifying all the territories with a Greek population. This included the entire coast of Asia Minor and there was even speculation of placing the capital at Constantinople. Italy, for its part, would keep southern Anatolia and France undertook to create a state for the Armenian people in the Mediterranean for its support during the war.
Mustafa Kemal had been appointed military inspector of eastern Anatolia, there he had a double objective: to put an end to the occupation and at the same time to the Ottoman Empire. For this he met with the different opposing factions and united them under his banner, on the other hand, the empire dismissed him from his work as supervisor and ordered him to be arrested. However, the generals who were supposed to do so joined him. This is how the Turkish nationalist movement gained strength and Atatürk was shaping himself as the leader of this growing opposition. His mission was to eliminate the enemy minority authorities, that is, the Kurds – whom he easily eliminated – and then the Armenians.
To combat the latter, Kazim Karabekir, whose troops had been sent to stop Atatürk himself, would now be in charge of defeating the new state. Between September and December 1920 he would defeat the Armenians and seize about 50% of his territory and force the disarmament of a good part of his army, he received the name of Peace of Gümrü. The Democratic Republic of Armenia would not survive more than a year, when the USSR annexed the remaining territories.
Meanwhile, Ankara had become the capital of the new Turkey. The country was fragmented into two powers, that of the sultan Mehmed VI and that of Mustafa himself, who would be elected president by the parliamentarians who had fled Constantinople when the courts had been dissolved. Mehmed was totally dependent on the allied states, and he tried to sentence the Turkish statesman to death, but no one obeyed. In October 1921, the French and Italians withdrew from Anatolia and recognized Ankara’s rule after minor clashes.
The victories over the different powers would not have been possible without a very important figure, that of…