by Benny Morris
outside the city recorded, “The children began to cry and the grown- ups to
get panicky. . . . Thru my interpreter I told the children that we had gathered
to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace, who had come to teach us
how to live, that instead of war, Love and Peace and Goodwill to Men might
prevail. . . . It was the first real Christmas for many of the children as they have been in exile for five years.”294
For two days, the sides traded shot and shell. Here and there Turkish mi-
litiamen torched Armenian homes, but the irregulars’ initial focus was the
French. That changed on the 23rd. The Turks may have noted that the French
were busy defending only their own positions, several large buildings in the
town center, so they began to “kill the Armenians.”295 Missionaries heard a
Turk shouting, “Has the slaughter of the [infidels] begun?”296 In an attempt to
stop the killing and appease the population, the French released the deputy
mutesarrif. It made no difference.297
During the following fortnight, the Turks systematically murdered Arme-
nians and torched their homes, as the French, besieged in their positions,
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
stood by largely “powerless.”298 The local YMCA secretary, C. F. H. Crathern,
had a bird’s eye view of the battle from the hospital verandah in the missionary
compound on a slope north of the city: “Through our glasses we could see
Armenians escaping from their houses and fleeing before the Turks, who were
shooting them down like jack rabbits. Other Turks were hiding in the
fields behind rocks, trees and manure heaps, and shooting at those who
had escaped . . . some dropping wounded . . . and others staggering into the
mission grounds with wild eyes . . . and purple faces, telling of an awful
massacre.”299 Here and there the Armenians, ensconced in large buildings,
fought back, as did pockets of French troops.300 Most of the Armenians who
survived the massacre holed up in walled churches and in Beitschallum, a
German orphanage.301 A few apparently were protected by Turkish officials
in the local prison.302
The siege lasted almost three weeks. “Hundreds of men, women and
children [ were] massacred daily,” a missionary in the city cabled.303 The Turks
“set fire to the vari ous buildings where Armenians had taken refuge and in
one place”— apparently the Armenian church of St. George— “about 800 were
burned.”304 Those reaching the missionary compound told harrowing tales.
“ Mothers had children taken out of their arms and ripped up with knives,”
Crathern wrote. “The shrieks of the tortured we could hear a mile across the
ravine.”305 Another missionary observed, “The Turk, it seems, wastes little
ammunition on these helpless people” and often uses “the knife.” The Turks
were said to be burning some of the bodies in a lime kiln to prevent recogni-
tion. “They do this to hide the fact that they have stolen [i.e., raped] the young girls.”306 The town was completely isolated. “If we were in the jungles of Africa we would not be more cut off from the outside world than here in the in-
terior of Turkey . . . the auto road infested with bandits and all telegraph and
telephone wires cut,” a local American missionary wrote.307 The first contact
between Maraş and the outside world was on day eigh teen of the siege, when
a French airplane overflew the town.
In the missionary compound, some 2,000 “orphans and refugees” were
gathered for safety and sustenance. The missionaries raised the American flag,
in an effort to deter the Turks from attacking. Women were “ going crazy with
fear,” Crathern wrote. Down in Maraş French “soldiers are creeping stealthily
forth with benzine torches and hand grenades to set fire[s]. . . . It is sometimes
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
like Dante’s Inferno.”308 On the 25th he wrote, “News came today that scores
of women and children huddled in one house were butchered with knives and
hatchets after the men had been taken out and shot.” The men had “surren-
dered on the promise of protection.”309 On February 4th he recorded a story
related by one survivor: “Deep pits were dug, and men tied in bunches of
three, and led to the edge of it, and then shot and dumped into it, dead or
alive.”310
Crathern’s diary contains telling detail. “ Little girls, 8 and 10 years old, and
wrinkled women of 70 years were agonizing with pain from dum- dum bullet
wounds which tore great pieces of flesh from arms and legs.”311 On January 28
the wife of an Armenian protestant pastor, Reverend Solakian, reached the
hospital: “She was . . . bleeding from three bullet and three dagger or knife
wounds while a child of 18 months had been taken from her breast and slain
with a knife, and an older girl killed with an axe. To add to the sorrow of it,
this woman was pregnant and had a miscarriage as soon as she reached the
hospital.” She died the next day.312
There were about 2,200 French troops in and around the town, mostly
Senegalese and Armenians.313 They had no communications equipment and
lacked food, ammunition, and adequate clothing. Soldiers reached the hos-
pital with frostbite; arms and legs were amputated.314 Crathern reported that
by early February the French were killing their horses and mules. “We had
mule roast today and we like it fine,” a missionary recorded. “We like it better
than horse meat.”315
Vio lence occurred outside Maraş as well. While Turkish forces fought in
the town, their comrades overran a cluster of villages to the southwest, killing
as many as 1,500 Armenians.316 At Djamostil all the males were reportedly
“annihilated.”317 On February 1 two American missionaries, James Perry, the
general secretary of the International YMCA, and Frank Johnson were mur-
dered by Turks on a road near Antep.318
The siege of Maraş quickly became a rallying cry. In the days after the start
of the battle, as we already know, Kemal urged Nationalists elsewhere to join.
In par tic u lar, he ordered the 3rd Army Corps to help “in every way.” “It is very impor tant that the fight commenced at Marash should end to our advantage,”
he wrote. He ordered other units to prepare to “create strong armed organ-
izations” elsewhere and to force the French to “return to [their] country.”319
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Irregulars from as far afield as Elbistan joined the fight.320 Turkish forces in
Cilicia were apparently commanded by General Polad (Polat) Pasha, also
known as “Captain Shukri,” a Circassian from Yenibahçe. He had served as
Enver’s adjutant during the Great War.321
On the po liti cal side, the Nationalist defense committees around Anatolia
bombarded the foreign legations in Constantinople with tele grams alleging
Armenian atrocities in Maraş. “The French and Armenian soldiers . . . tie up
the limbs of the Mohammedans and then strike them to death with axes,” one
writer claimed. “They put the men together and burn them, while the women
and children are having their limbs cut off one by one.”322 There is no
corroboration for this in any Western documentation.
Events were portrayed similarly in messages from Maraş Turks to compa-
triots elsewhere in Anatolia. “We Turks have protected and respected [the Ar-
menians] . . . in spite of their aggressions,” one tele gram asserts. Muslims
were engaged in “self- defense.”323 Perhaps prompted by what they heard
about Maraş, on January 31 a Turkish mob killed or wounded a total of ten
Armenians in Antep. The outbreak was promptly quashed by the town’s
police and gendarmes.324
By early February General Henri Gouraud, the commander of the French
Army of the Levant, was forced to admit that there was “no longer [an] armi-
stice” in Cilicia; a “state of hostilities” prevailed between the French and the
Turks.325 On February 7 the 3,000- strong French rescue column reached the
outskirts of Maraş and the following day the main French redoubt, a position
on the slope next to the American missionary compound. Emboldened by the
reinforcements’ arrival, Armenians downtown emerged from hiding and
set alight mosques and Turkish homes.326 The Turks, exhausted and dispir-
ited, streamed out of town in large numbers.327 But instead of assaulting
and occupying the town, Querette deci ded—or was ordered—to evacuate
his forces and withdraw to Islahiye.328 The Turks apparently were on the
verge of surrender—or so, at least, the missionaries, who were in contact with
them, believed. They told Querette but failed to persuade him.329 Evidently the
French command concluded that the garrison in Maraş was untenable or that
the prize wasn’t worth the fight.
News of the impending French evacuation alarmed the Armenians and the
missionaries, who were afraid to stay behind unguarded. “The Armenians . . .
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
are frantic and desperate. They are determined to leave . . . with the French
as they fear massacre,” Crathern wrote. The missionaries pleaded with the
French for time to prepare an orderly evacuation of Christians. Querette gave
them twenty- four hours.330
Most Armenians in the compound deci ded to leave. But most of the mis-
sionaries elected to stay and care for the orphans and wounded. During the
daylong reprieve, they prepared food and clothing for those leaving on the
prospective three- day trek, “75 miles through mountain and plain,” to Isla-
hiye. “I fear that many of them will not be equal to it,” Crathern wrote. “It is
winter and God help them if the weather should be severe.” Crathern may also
have been thinking about himself—he was seventy years old.
The column of 10,000 French troops and Armenian civilians, along with
a handful of missionaries, left Maraş in the dead of night on February 10–11.331
“It was . . . bitterly” cold, Crathern recorded. “The city was in flames. Guns
were booming from the hills covering our retreat.”332 Nationalist soldiers, who
knew nothing of the evacuation, continued their withdrawal from Maraş.333
The French refrained from notifying the Armenians holding out inside
the town, but many got wind of what was happening and desperately tried
to join the evacuating column.334 Many apparently were killed by Turkish
fighters in the attempt.335
February 12 was a “severely cold day.” Trudging through deep snow, “Many
of the weak ones dropped by the wayside to freeze or to starve.”336 There was
little accommodation, so the travelers camped in the open, hungry and ex-
posed.337 Most of those who walked were able to keep warm enough to sur-
vive, but infants and children carried by their mothers or riding in carts or on animals froze to death.338 “Turkish villages were burnt by the soldiers after
the column had passed through,” and troops ate cows and oxen the fleeing
villa gers left behind.339 Come dawn February 13, a blizzard “raged”; a mis-
sionary reported that it was the worst storm the area had experienced in sev-
enteen years.340 At noon, the sun came out. An Armenian pastor, Pascal
Maljian, recorded: “We climbed the mountains, descended, only to climb
again and descend. It was a new Israel searching for the Promised Land of
Cilicia.”341 Some 1,000–1,200 refugees and dozens of soldiers died before the
column reached Islahiye later that day. “The Islahiye road,” a missionary later
observed, “is bordered with the skeletons of those who perished. In one
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
defile are hundreds still unburied, lying where they fell.”342 More Arme-
nians died at Islahiye, which offered little food and no accommodation. The
Turkish governor, French command, and American missionaries did their
best to tend to the refugees, who eventually were transported to Adana.343
One source speaks of 6,000 Maraş Armenians who died between Jan-
uary 21 and February 10, mostly unarmed civilians.344 Another speaks of
20,000 deaths in and around Maraş during the whole period, covering the
siege, battle, and evacuation.345 Curzon said that “in all probability, as many
as 15,000 had perished.”346 But the French military— assailed by charges of
incompetence and of abandoning the Armenians— rejected British and Ar-
menian figures and questioned whether “ there had been massacres of Arme-
nians anywhere.” The French also doubted that their policies, conceived by
Kemal’s troops as pro- Armenian, were responsible for the Turks’ belligerent
attitude toward the Armenians.347 According to R. A. Lambert— the NER di-
rector at Aleppo, who visited Maraş in March— the Turks claimed they had
lost 4,500 killed in the battle.348 The French had suffered 800 casualties.349
Back in Maraş, Armenian and Turkish representatives, with American mis-
sionaries mediating, reached an accord on February 11 or 12. The town’s
remaining Armenians—8,500–10,000, “almost all women”— agreed to give
up their arms and leave their downtown redoubts, and the Turkish authorities
promised them protection.350 A few days later, James Lyman and Dr. Marion
Wilson, two of the American missionaries who had stayed behind, telegraphed
Constantinople that the Armenians were safe under Turkish guard. “No
more Armenians were killed after that,” and Armenians who had fled to
Mersin were returning.351
There was not much to come back for. It was estimated that about 40 percent
of Maraş’s houses, most of them belonging to Armenians, were destroyed
during the vio lence. The Turks also renewed the boycott and robbed Arme-
nians as they made their way back to their looted, ruined homes.352 “ Every”
Armenian was “grimy with dirt and lice, and half- starved,” Wilson wrote.353
The protection granted in the immediate aftermath of the January– February
battle and massacre was short- lived. An April report from Armenian lobby-
ists claims that “over fifty” men dis appeared from Maraş without a trace.354
At the same time, Jackson noted that thirty- four prominent Maraş Armenians
were in jail, and the Nationalists were “preparing to deport the survivors” of
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
the massacre. He also pointed to its lingering effects: ten to fifteen were dying daily from hunger and illness.355
In
July an American missionary wrote that Armenians weren’t allowed to
leave the city and had “few houses, no money, no work, and are in constant
fear.”356 The Turks confiscated absent Armenians’ homes and closed mis-
sionary institutions serving orphans and refugees, though American relief
workers were able to feed them through 1920. Armenian women were said
to be “knitting socks” for Kemal’s army.357 In summer 1921 the Turks de-
ported hundreds of Zeytunli refugees from Maraş; stragglers were mur-
dered outside the town. James Lyman, an American missionary, said in 1922
that there had been a “good deal of promiscuous killing of Armenians” in
and around the town after the French departure, with as many as 2,000
murdered.358
The battle and massacre in Maraş proved to be the key event in the Franco-
Turkish war. The French did not give up immediately. Amid recurrent policy
debates in Paris, they massively reinforced their units in the Levant and had
occasional tactical successes. But the strategic outcome of the Maraş retreat
was clear: Cilicia was lost. Instead the French focused on the area to the south,
encompassing Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut. With Cilicia off the table, the
real battle would be over the borderlands along the Alexandretta- Antep- Urfa-
Mardin axis.
London, too, understood that Cilicia was lost; British policy would have
to be adjusted accordingly. At the highest level of strategic consideration, de
Robeck advised restraint in the peace pro cess. Imposing a “drastic peace,” as
the Allies had done with Germany, would only stoke the anger the Turks had
shown at Maraş.359 Henceforward the British quietly regarded the French as
inept at best. Bristol was of similar mind. Putting the French in charge in Cilicia amounted to sending “a boy to do a man’s job.”360 The Armenians were out-spoken on the matter. The French, as one notable put it, were “mean, treach-
erous, cowards and dishonest.”361
The Turks understandably lost their fear of the French.362 More widely,
after Maraş, the Turks understood that no Western power would intervene
on the Armenians’ behalf. This meant the Turks could do as they pleased with
the Armenians under their control. The Turks prob ably also noticed that a