by Ahmet Altan
When he went over to Rıfkı Bey, he slammed down the telephone and swore colorfully.
In spite of the difficult situation, Ragıp Bey smiled because he remembered how irritable Rıfkı had been at school.
“How’s it going?”
Rıfkı Bey raised his head, looked at him for a moment, then grumbled, “Who are you?”
“I guess things aren’t going well.”
“What are you saying, man, who are you?”
“If you’re confused enough not to recognize me, the situation must be really bad.”
This time Rıfkı Bey looked at him carefully, then slapped him on the shoulder.
“Shame on you. What’s with the getup, did you join intelligence too?”
“You can’t see it in here, but the people outside don’t like officers’ uniforms, on the way here I counted seven who’d been killed, they shot Spathari right in front of me. If I’d come here from Nişantaşı in uniform I’d be with them now.”
“You came from Nişantaşı?”
“Yes, I took the long way around. Don’t pay attention to the crowd outside, an artillery battery and a maxim detachment could disperse them, they don’t have any commanders.”
“What are you saying, their numbers are growing every minute, look, I just heard that the Fifth Regiment in Zincirlikuyu and the second battalion of the Seventh Regiment are going to join the mutineers.”
“Rıfkı, I’m telling you what I saw with my own eyes, they’re indecisive, tell Muhtar Pasha, I’m volunteering, give me an artillery battery and two battalions with heavy machine guns, I’ll have Istanbul quiet again in two hours.”
“Do you know they’ve besieged the parliament building?”
“I told you I just came from there, aren’t you listening to me?”
“It would be best if I take you to the Pasha, you can tell him in person.”
“Find me a uniform first so I can get out of these civilian clothes.”
“I have a spare uniform, put it on if it fits.”
“Where?”
They went into a small room to the side, Rıfkı Bey took out his major’s uniform and gave it to him, then went back to the office so he could change in private. After Ragıp Bey had put on the uniform he sighed deeply, he no longer felt half naked.
When he went back, he saw everyone in the office shouting cheerfully and slapping each other on the back.
“What’s going on?”
“The First Cavalry Brigade is on the way, they’re about to enter the square. Come, let’s go upstairs and watch.”
When they reached the windows on the top floor, the cavalry brigade was galloping into the square with the pennants on their long lances waving in the wind as they attacked the crowd. From above, they could see that as the cavalry charged through the crowd they left a corridor empty of people behind them, like a child drawing a line in the sand with his finger. The cavalrymen galloped in circles around the square, creating more lines empty of people. Then the square was completely empty. Just a moment ago there’d been thousands of people there, but they’d vanished, as if those who’d been watching them had imagined them, there was no sound in the square but that of the galloping horses. There was no sign of the thousands of people who’d been there just a moment ago.
Rıfkı Bey slapped Ragıp Bey on the back. “Good for the cavalry, see, sometimes they come in handy too.”
After the cavalry brigade charged through the square one more time, they started entering the ministry garden through the large gate at an arrogant trot. Ragıp Bey didn’t pay attention to the cavalry coming in but looked at the narrow streets that led into the square, as the cavalry came in through the gate, the crowds were starting to appear at the ends of these streets.
Ragıp Bey made a face.
“Don’t get all excited for nothing, Rıfkı, this isn’t something that can be taken care of with circus acts, the square will be full again in less than five minutes.”
As soon as he’d finished speaking, the square started to fill up again; the skirmishers were in front with their rifles, and the growing crowd of civilians was behind them, they were approaching the iron fence.
“Rıfkı, take me to the pasha, the only solution is the one I’m proposing, we really have to make a sortie and disperse this crowd, I’m telling you, every minute we wait will work against us.”
“Let’s go, you’ve convinced me, let’s see if you can convince the pasha.”
They hurried downstairs and went to Muhtar Pasha’s waiting room, the room was full of officers, informants, clerks, they all wanted to see the pasha as soon as possible and tell him whatever news they had. Rıfkı found the chief clerk and pulled him aside.
“Ragıp Bey just came from the parliament building, he saw the skirmishers’ positions, he saw their guns, he has something very important to tell the pasha, the pasha knows him from Germany too and likes him, I beg you, we don’t have any time to lose.”
The chief clerk and Rıfkı Bey had worked together before, they went way back, he knew he wasn’t asking to see the pasha for nothing.
“I’ll take you in, but you have five minutes, the major needs to say whatever he has to say quickly.”
When they went in, Muhtar Pasha was standing straight in front of his desk, listening to what the staff officers around him were saying. He was a handsome man and was known as a good soldier, officers respected him, he’d spent many years in Germany, there he’d been known not just as a good soldier but for his skill at fencing and with beautiful women, he earned the friendship of the German military aristocracy. Now he didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to put down this mutiny, which he thought was idiotic; it was difficult for him to shed the blood of soldiers who had served under him, but it was also an affront to his honor to be attacked and besieged by his own men.
When he saw two majors waiting for him at attention, he spoke in a slightly irritated tone.
“What is it?”
“Sir, Ragıp Bey has just come from the parliament building, he got a look at the mutineers, if you’ll allow him, he has something to say.”
Muhtar Pasha just looked at him.
“Ragıp, aren’t you the Ragıp who got a medal for the maneuvers in Germany?”
“Yes, commander.”
“Have you been reassigned to headquarters?”
“No, pasha, I came here because my units have joined the mutiny.”
The pasha nodded his head.
“O.K., Ragıp, tell me, what is it.”
“Pasha, this morning I walked here from Nişantaşı in civilian clothes, I walked among the mutineers. The people outside are just riffraff, there are more vagrants than soldiers, there’s no commander in charge. They’re just roaming around in a disorderly way, killing any officers they come across. We could disperse them in half an hour with an artillery battery and a machine gun unit, with your permission I would like to volunteer to do this.”
“You think you can scatter them in just half an hour?”
“I can, pasha, I’m sure they’ll scatter when they see a determined unit and heavy guns, in any case they’re not from Istanbul, they have nowhere to go, they’ll all go back to their barracks, we can catch the ringleaders in the evening”
Muhtar Pasha took a pointer from his desk and started tapping his boots with it.
“Yes, I know you and I believe what you say, but the Grand Vizier gave strict orders, we’re not to open fire on the mutineers, the minister of war has resigned. He even wants us not to shoot even if they do, but I informed them that we will shoot if they attack.”
“Pasha, you yourself know better than I do, but we have to strike while the iron is hot, more soldiers will join the mutiny if we delay, at the moment most of the units in Istanbul have yet to make a decision, but every passing hour works in favor of the mutineers and a
gainst us.”
The pasha couldn’t decide. He hesitated to attack his own soldiers, but the real reason for his indecisiveness was that he didn’t understand the real reason for the mutiny, he didn’t know who was behind it. When the mutineering units fired, who would he be shooting at; what made him think was that there might be some power behind the mutineers that he didn’t know about, in the end he could get into trouble, he could end up being seen as a traitor who’d killed his own troops.
Then a clerk came in and handed the pasha a telegram. Once the pasha had read the telegram, he looked at Ragıp Bey.
“A group from parliament is going to the palace to speak with His Majesty the Sultan, we’ve been ordered to wait until this meeting is over.”
Ragıp Bey didn’t know what the pasha was thinking, he’d never given a thought to the political aspects of this mutiny, all he wanted was to teach the soldiers who’d killed an officer before his eyes a lesson. The thought of surrendering the capital to them made him crazy with anger, for a moment he couldn’t control himself.
“You’re making a mistake, pasha!”
When Muhtar Pasha turned and looked at Ragıp Bey, he had the rage of a real soldier in his eyes.
“I don’t understand, Major.”
Ragıp Bey realized he’d gone too far, he was being disrespectful.
“Pasha, if we delay putting down the mutiny until evening, the mutineers will control the capital tomorrow, all of the units will join them, every second that passes will make them bolder and stronger.”
Muhtar Pasha was no longer listening to Ragıp Bey.
“You’re dismissed, Major, we’re going to wait and see what the outcome of the meeting at the palace is.”
As Ragıp Bey left the room grumbling, “We lost Istanbul today, Rıfkı, just now,” the elderly Sultan, to whom a delegation from parliament had been sent, looked like an anxious fortune-teller through the smoke from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, the large nose and the hennaed beard that had once given his face a look of grandeur now gave him the comic and feeble appearance of a carnival mask and made him seem comical and weak. He glanced at the note the young clerk had brought and then put it on the coffee table next to him. Doctor Reşit Pasha thought that the Sultan had forgotten the cigarette in his mouth and that it would burn his lips, but he took the cigarette, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and sighed deeply as he lit another one.
“Just look at the state of things, doctor, the worst disgrace of our life occurs in our old age as we’re preparing to leave the world, soldiers are killing our officers in the capital, two groups of soldiers are facing off against each other.”
“Why are you complaining, my Sultan, your soldier slaves are shouting ‘Long live the Sultan’ everywhere, they’re shouting out their loyalty to you.”
The Sultan looked at Reşit Pasha with a smile that mixed understanding and mockery, as if, despite his great dismay, he was looking at someone even more desperate than he himself was.
“Doctor, you’ve been with me for years, in this very room you’ve heard me say so many things about the state of the nation, but you’ve learned nothing, you’re a good doctor but you don’t understand politics.”
The doctor, who was accustomed to this self-satisfied attitude that denigrated everyone around him, simply bowed his head and said nothing.
“Who wouldn’t seem incapable in comparison to you, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t say that, doctor, at the moment I’m the one who’s desperate and helpless, I’ve been ensnared in such an intricate conspiracy that there’s no way out.”
“Why do you say that, Your Majesty, your soldiers are shouting your name.”
“Oh doctor, don’t you see that the people who are shouting my name are the ones who are going to lose this battle, do you know what happens to the man whose name the losing side shouts?”
Reşit Pasha didn’t dare ask what would happen, in any case the Sultan didn’t expect him to say anything and continued.
“This will end in our losing the throne, or even, God forbid, losing our head, I’m not upset at the prospect of our own death, but they’d crush our children, our family, this is what I’m worried about.”
Reşit Pasha, who’d thought from the beginning that the Sultan had a part in this mutiny and that the old man hadn’t told him because it was his nature not to trust anyone, lowered his head so the Sultan wouldn’t see disbelief in his eyes. The Sultan, who for his entire life had done everything he could to understand whoever was in his presence, who combined the instincts of both hunter and prey because he’d lived both as a hunter who pursued people and tried to capture them and as prey who feared being killed by others, and who had sharpened his skills to the point that he was like a lightning rod that gathered clouds of emotion around it, immediately sensed what the doctor was thinking.
“You don’t believe me, Pasha?”
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, is it a slave’s place not to believe?”
The Sultan laughed abruptly, it cheered him up to put someone in a difficult position.
“Of course no one tells a sultan they don’t believe him, they can’t, but they all make the same gesture to conceal their disbelief, I sense their disbelief from what they do to conceal what they think, for example the way you bowed your head and averted your eyes just now . . . ”
Then he returned to his former mood and made a face.
“I always tell you to read murder mysteries, those books contain the secret of life and of power . . . You get better at analyzing what’s going on. Don’t you see that there’s something peculiar about what’s happening, you’d see if you were accustomed looking at things carefully. The skirmisher brigades the Committee brought in are rebelling, who were they brought in to oppose, they were brought in to oppose me, now they’re rebelling against the people who brought them. If Muhtar Pasha, Commander of the First Army, were to make the slightest move with the First Army, he could crush them, besides, the skirmisher battalions aren’t being led by officers, the soldiers either killed them or they fled to save their lives. But the First Army isn’t making a move. Why, doctor? Why hasn’t the First Army made a move? This is what makes me think.”
He lit another cigarette.
“Intelligence has been coming in since morning, of course I know what’s going on everywhere, but there’s no one I can give orders to. The First Army doesn’t move, the Grand Vizier doesn’t move. It looks as if the mutineers are against the Committee, but the Committee doesn’t move. If the Committee pressured the Grand Vizier a bit, if they told Muhtar Pasha that they supported him, they could put the mutiny down. But they don’t. They know Muhtar Pasha won’t make a move, that he won’t attack unless he gets a direct order, that he’ll fear for his own head. Tell me, doctor, why doesn’t the Committee do anything, what happened to the heroes of constitutional monarchy, why are they so quiet? My enemy is their silence, doctor.”
This time Reşit Pasha was truly confused.
“So, who incited them to mutiny, Your Majesty?”
“The people who had Hasan Fehmi Bey killed are behind the mutiny, doctor.”
The doctor was unable to contain himself and shouted out:
“The Committee!”
The Sultan looked silently out the window at the vibrantly sparkling, phosphorescent blue of the Bosphorus, nothing about his manner seemed to confirm what Reşit Pasha had said. When the silence continued for longer than he could bear, Reşit Pasha asked:
“Wasn’t it the Committee?”
“I doubt they’re that intelligent, doctor, if they were capable of this they would long since have been able to seize the reins of the empire, but they weren’t able to . . . They haven’t been able to take control of Istanbul. Why Salonika, that’s what you should ask, doctor. Because the Third Army, which the Committee controls, is in Salonika. They couldn’t be th
e masters of Istanbul without bringing the Third Army here, they knew this. But how could they bring this army here?”
Even though the situation was so uncertain, it pleased him to see that Reşit Pasha was listening to him admiringly, it always pleased him to see his mind and his superiority reflected in other people.
“The troops of the Third Army will come to the capital soon, doctor, they set up supply depots a long time ago, I was curious about why they were stocking supplies, even though it occurred to me I wondered how they could do that when the First Army was here. It didn’t occur to me that the First Army could be rendered ineffective.”
Reşit Pasha shook his head and murmured to himself:
“So it is the Committee . . . ”
“I doubt the Committee organized all of these things, doctor.”
If Reşit Pasha hadn’t been able to control himself he would have lost his temper and shouted, “So, who then?” but he contained himself and looked at the Sultan like a curious child.
“You need to be intelligent to pull something like this off, and the Committee isn’t intelligent, though Talat might be a bit smarter than the others. Second, you need a lot of money . . . Who has money, doctor?”
Reşit Pasha almost said, “You do, Your Majesty,” but he managed to stop himself at the last moment.
The Sultan suddenly asked him a seemingly unrelated question.
“Where is Enver now?”
Reşit Pasha replied innocently:
“In Berlin.”
Then he was astounded by his own answer.
“The Germans . . . Do you suspect the Germans, Your Majesty?”
“It’s very possible, Reşit Pasha. It’s very possible.”
“What about summoning the German ambassador and discussing it?”
“They would laugh at me, doctor, what would the man say, would he admit it? You said it too, the mutineers are shouting my name, what evidence do I have for blaming the Germans?”
The Pasha was now very confused.
“Could the Committee take their treachery to that level, Your Majesty?”