by Benny Morris
Armenians— apparently local irregulars— murdered an Armenian “traitor”
and spiked a Ramadan gun in Tarsus.204 In February 1919 tension between
the Armenians and companies of (Muslim) Algerian French troops in Alex-
andretta led the French to disband several of the Armenian companies.
Throughout, the French had discriminated against the legionnaires in
pay and equipment. Under local Turkish pressure and inducements—
apparently including financial and sexual bribes of French officers— the
French command gradually sidelined and replaced the Armenian soldiers
with North African colonials. The Legion withered away. By mid-1919 only
five hundred Armenians remained in the Legion, and in August 1920 it was
officially disbanded.205 Most of the ex- troopers joined local Armenian
militias.
In March– April 1919 Gates toured central and southern Anatolia. He re-
ported worsening po liti cal conditions. The Turks feared Armenian revenge.
In Adana there was vio lence. Turks sniped at Armenian soldiers; here and
there, Armenians killed Turks. And the Turks feared the creation of an in de-
pen dent Armenian “kingdom” in which they would fare badly.206 Armenian
deportees were streaming into the city. The French pressed the British to
disarm the Turks and themselves armed Armenians and helped set up mili-
tias in outlying Armenian villages. The Turks resented the prohibition on
flying Turkish flags and the installation of Armenians as gendarmes and ad-
ministrators. The Turks also complained of arbitrary arrests and financial ex-
tortion by Armenian troops.207
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
The British, bombarded with these Turkish complaints, grew unhappy
with the deployment of the legionnaires. Allenby wrote that “the excesses
committed by the Armenian troops” had created “general insecurity” in
Cilicia.208 Curzon told the French that “the sooner” the legionnaires “dis-
appeared from the scene the better.”209
But there also was pushback in the other direction. In May the French
began to press the British to allow them to take over the whole Beirut- Mersin
coastline and Cilicia, per Sykes- Picot.210 On September 13, Clemenceau and
Lloyd George reached agreement.211 The changing of the guard took place in
late October and November, the British withdrawing to Palestine, Mosul, and
Mesopotamia.212 In Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, the British were
replaced by Arab forces loyal to Faisal, who had been ensconced by Allenby
in Damascus in October 1918. The French occupied Cilicia and northern
Aleppo vilayet.
The British were moderately sanguine about the future of the Mediterra-
nean littoral. But they were less hopeful about the interior, to the east and
north. Allenby cabled the War Office, “Disorders will arise in the area north
and east of Aleppo.” He feared an anti- Western juncture of “extreme Arab Na-
tionalists” and “Mustapha Kemal,” and he predicted that “the chief sufferers
will be the Armenians. . . . The commencement of our withdrawal will prob-
ably start a panic and result in large numbers of repatriated Armenians again
streaming south.” He proposed that Armenian refugees in Syria be moved to
Cilicia, where he assumed they would enjoy French protection.213 The For-
eign Office endorsed concentrating the Armenians in Cilicia.214 Transports
of deportees left Damascus and Aleppo for Cilicia and Antep.215
But some British officials were deeply suspicious of French intentions. Al-
lenby’s chief po liti cal officer, Col o nel Richard Meinertzhagen, warned that
“any French failure to substitute good French troops for ours will encourage
Extremists, and first to suffer will be thousands of defenseless Armenians
whom we have collected and distributed in Cilicia and Aleppo.”216 His sus-
picion that France intended to man Cilicia with low- grade colonial troops
was accurate. In 1919, the French had only 20,000 troops in Syria and
Cilicia. Most were poorly trained Senegalese and North Africans. The
French armed thousands of local Armenians as militiamen and gendarmes.
The prevailing assessment, expressed by NER’s William Peet, was that “the
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
French took upon themselves the occupation of Cilicia without counting the
cost or making any adequate military preparation.” Moreover, the mere pres-
ence of the colonial and Armenian troops “excited great [Muslim] opposi-
tion.” This was compounded by French be hav ior: “They seem to have suc-
ceeded in making themselves cordially hated by all classes of the people,”
an American missionary wrote.217 The local Turks feared that the French
takeover augured permanent occupation, the dismemberment of Turkey, and
preferential treatment for Christians.
French troops reached Antep around October 25, 1919.218 Almost imme-
diately, Turkish officials protested against unspecified “breaches of the
peace” by Armenian soldiers. The British handed over control of Antep on
November 4 and Kilis on the 7th, and left.219 French units occupied Urfa
and Maraş on November 1.220 The troops were Armenian, Algerian, and
Senegalese, the officers French.221 According to a Turkish source, in Maraş
the Armenians welcomed the incoming troops “with a band and bouquet of
flowers. ‘Damn the Sultan! Damn the Turks! Long live the French and the
Armenians’, they were yelling.”222
By November 23, the French were “responsible for [the] whole of
Cilicia.”223 Here and there Turks nibbled at the withdrawing British columns,
as at Katma where, on November 4, three Indian troopers were killed.224
Acting swiftly, the French executed a number of Turks.225
Wishing to avoid overextension, the French desisted from deploying troops
as far east as Diyarbekir and as far north as Sivas and Harput, though these
towns were earmarked for French rule under Sykes- Picot.226 The forces that
fanned out between Mersin, Islahiye, and Urfa were thin on the ground and
insufficient to control both the towns and their access routes. From early 1920,
almost all the garrisons were effectively besieged by the Nationalists. French
supply lines, stretching from the ports of Mersin and Alexandretta, were pe-
riodically blocked. The French frantically shipped in reinforcements and by
May 1920 had 40,000 troops in Cilicia.227 In the towns there was anti- French
and anti- Armenian terrorism, and in the countryside irregulars raided Chris-
tian villages and ambushed French convoys and patrols.228
To some degree the opposition to the occupation was a byproduct of French
conduct. Bristol left a graphic description— originating with an American mis-
sionary, Francis Kelsey—of the French takeover of Tarsus, the birthplace of
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
Paul the Apostle and the site of Antony and Cleopatra’s first meeting. Tarsus
had 15,000 inhabitants, 9,000 of them non- Christians. Entering the town, the
French, headed by Major Coustilliers, staged an “imposing ceremony.” The
Christians and the town’s schoolchildren were assembled in front of the bar-
racks. The
children were taught the “Marseillaise.” “Speeches of felicitation”
followed. “All glorified the French valour and civilization. . . . ‘Nous sommes ici et nous resterons ici’ (we are here and we are here to stay),” Coustilliers announced.229 The French hoped to garner Armenian backing for their rule
in Cilicia, but the Armenian leadership, aware of French imperial ambitions,
preferred an American or British mandate if outright Armenian in de pen dence
was impossible. From the first, the French were seen as opponents of Arme-
nian nationalist aspirations.
Initially the French told Turkish officials that their occupation would be
“provisional and purely military.” But within weeks the French began to
interfere with local government. They notified the Turks that they would
“participate in the administration of the districts of Urfa, Marash and Aintab,
that the gendarmerie would be placed under the control of the [French]
military . . . and that an officer would . . . control . . . finances.” They proceeded to remove Turkish officials, including the mutesarrif of Maraş, from
their posts. The Turks complained that the French occupation extended to
territory beyond what the British had controlled.230
From Alexandretta the British vice- consul, Joseph Catoni, reported that the
French were “very unpop u lar, neither the men nor the officers were respectful
to women, native or Eu ro pe an. . . . The French officers were a bad class and corruption was rife. . . . The officers filled their pockets with bribes.” They
also slighted the foreign consuls. A local lady put it this way: “Les Anglais ont envoyés les fils de leurs ‘Lords’, mais les Français ont envoyés leurs valets.” (“The En glish have sent the sons of their ‘lords’, but the French have sent their
valets.”)231
Before taking over, the French had been unhappy about the transfer of
masses of Armenians to Cilicia. Surely Faisal’s Arabs, once in charge in Aleppo,
would protect “their” Armenians? As to the “Mesopotamian” Armenians, the
French argued, they were best not moved to Cilicia, as they would not be self-
supporting. But the real French fear lay elsewhere. “Objections,” the French
argued, might arise “to grouping Armenians in Cilicia where there would be
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
a risk of their forming an artificial majority of which the Mohammedans might
complain and where their presence might later be taken as a reason to justify
the creation of a great Armenia from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean which
would be in opposition to . . . the economic and po liti cal connection between
[French- ruled] Cilicia and Syria.”232 In short, even before taking over, the
French worried about the Muslim reaction to an Armenian Cilicia and, in
any case, wanted Cilicia for themselves, not as part of an Armenian state.
And the French almost immediately were put off by the Armenians they
came in contact with. As Clemenceau put it, “the Armenians were a dan-
gerous lot to get mixed up with. They required a great deal of money, and
gave very little satisfaction.”233
But maintaining their hold on Cilicia and northern Aleppo vilayet posed
a considerable military prob lem. Allenby wrote, “I do not think that French
can occupy Urfa and places to the east of Aleppo in view of difficulty of com-
munications, roads being impossible during winter and railway being outside
blue area.”234 The prob lem wasn’t restricted to points east of Aleppo. Logistics and communications between the ports— Mersin, Alexandretta, and Beirut,
through which French supplies and reinforcements arrived— and the urban
centers of Cilicia as well as northern Aleppo vilayet were to be the Achilles
heel of the French position.
As the British withdrew, Armenians were still pouring into Cilicia and
northern Aleppo vilayet. They were coming not only from the deportation
sites to the east but also from Sivas, Kayseri, Niğde, and Konya vilayets. The
Turks believed that the Allies were engaged in a deliberate effort to bolster
Armenian numbers in Cilicia to reinforce their territorial claim; Armenians
were even arriving from the United States and Eu rope. Constantinople acted
swiftly. The government’s Security Directorate and the Ministry’s Special Bu-
reau ordered local governors to prevent Armenians from reaching Cilicia.235
At the same time, the Turks complained that Armenian gendarmes in Adana
were committing “all kinds of cruelties.”236 The Sublime Porte claimed falsely
that most of the troops occupying Maraş, Urfa, and Antep were Armenian,
and that they were animated by “racial hatred” of Muslims.237 At the end of
November the Turks alleged that in Maraş Armenian troops had “insulted and
beaten . . . Mohammedan inhabitants,” Muslim women had been “obliged to
uncover their faces,” and a Muslim had been murdered outside town.238
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
Yet the Turks understood that the French Army, though “interfer[ing] in . . . the civil administration” and coming “as conquerors and” being “annexationist,”
was protecting the Muslim population from Armenian depredations.239
For the Armenians, the switch from British to French occupation had
drastic consequences. Take Kilis. The British had overseen the repatriation
of its deportees, who had found their “houses in great part destroyed, the gar-
dens devastated, the trees uprooted and their property occupied.” The
British granted “pecuniary assistance,” “founded institutions” for widows and
orphans, reclaimed women and girls from “distant towns,” restored real es-
tate to its owners, and planned reconstruction. (The focus was on rebuilding;
the perpetrators of the genocide remained “at large.”) With the arrival of the
French, almost all financial assistance ceased, as did efforts to restore prop-
erty or indemnify Armenians for losses. Indeed, the French appeared to ac-
cept that property restoration should be contingent on Muslim agreement, in
line with the guidelines from Constantinople.240 Moreover, the French ignored
Turkish attacks, even when Armenians were murdered. Meanwhile their
officers “entertain[ed] Turkish officials and brigand chiefs” and allowed
Muslims to publicly carry arms while denying the privilege to Christians.241
This be hav ior triggered Armenian despair, then animosity. In Adana, the
Turkish vali, Celal, asserted that “three- fourths of the inhabitants . . . including Armenians . . . hate” the new administration. He even added, absurdly, that
“the Armenians would prefer to live as before with the Turks [in control]
rather than to see the prolongation . . . of the French Administration.”242
The Turks inundated the British and French high commissions with pro-
tests against the French. On November 12, 1919, even before the French had
properly settled in, Kemal condemned the French for “dismembering” Turkey
and “depriving our nation” of its “most beautiful parts”: “Aintab, Marash, and
Ourfa.” He further accused them of perpetrating “massacres, oppression, and
atrocities and [a] policy of extermination.” French be hav ior was “identical”
to the Greeks’ be hav ior in Smyrna, he concluded. The British considered this
a
particularly “violent pronouncement.”243
The French occupiers faced an impossible task: to take over territory
inhabited and claimed by both Turks and Armenians, and maintain law,
order, and peace, while trying to placate both populations. But meeting
Muslim demands took priority, as they formed a majority in almost every
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
site, many were armed and, to a man, they resented the occupation. This ul-
timately resulted in a “Turkophil policy,” as the British called it. The policy
had numerous manifestations.244 In most towns, the Turkish administration,
however hobbled, was left in place. The French also ignored Turkish mis-
behavior toward Christians in order, one Armenian lobbyist concluded, to
“ingratiate themselves with the Turks.”245 Indeed, paradoxically, some se nior
French officials signaled from the start their willingness to leave. According
to Kemal, at a secret meeting around December 6, 1919, Picot gave him his
“private opinion” that “in exchange for securing eco nom ical advantages in
Adana, the French might prob ably evacuate Maraş, Antep, Urfa, and their
vicinity, and also Cilicia.” Picot apparently also told Kemal he had
“order[ed]” the withdrawal of the Armenian Legion and suggested that the
Nationalists continue to or ga nize themselves in Adana, Maraş, and Antep.
But Picot asked that the Nationalists refrain from an actual “rising.”246
Clearly there were impor tant Frenchmen who supported “the main plank of
the Nationalists’ programme, namely the maintenance of an undivided
Turkey.”247
As it turned out, two years were to pass before France and Kemal fi nally
reached an understanding. Meanwhile, the Turks unleashed a gradually ex-
panding guerrilla war against the occupiers— and what they saw as their Ar-
menian allies— that was to result in a complete French withdrawal at the end
of 1921. The Turkish campaign also led to the death of thousands of Arme-
nians and their wholesale evacuation from Cilicia and northern Aleppo vilayet.
But the Turks’ postwar anti- Armenian campaign had begun already in early
1919, well before the French occupation, and was a natu ral follow-up to the