by Chris James
Meanwhile, three thousand, two hundred kilometres to the southeast, the crew on the bridge of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt watched the drama unfolding in the Mediterranean with, it can be assumed, a certain concern. The naval military tactic of swamping a ship’s defences had for decades been well established in doctrine, but those involved realised abruptly that the Caliphate’s attack exceeded their worst projections by a frightening margin. Despite the shock, NATO responded to the assault with all means at its disposal. Bases on Crete and the European mainland readied and launched PeaceMaker and other ACAs which hurried to the fleet’s assistance, only to draw off a fraction of the attacking force.
The Ronald Regan’s Pulsar cannons fell silent at 03.24. The Mississippi changed course to close on the carrier, in a vain attempt to draw the Blackswans’ attention, but the situation was hopeless. The SkyWatcher directed the reinforcement NATO ACAs to protect the fleet as much as possible, but while these distracted a few tens of Blackswans, hundreds more raced in to destroy the ships. The Ronald Reagan and Mississippi sank together at 03.26, the former’s last recorded communication being Captain Burgess giving the order to abandon ship. The cruiser Cleveland held out until 03.28, and the remaining three destroyer-escorts were obliterated in quick succession.
The Royal Navy squadron fared little better, with one important exception that would play a vital part as the war progressed. The Royal Navy’s version of the Pulsar Mk. III laser cannon, called the Sea Striker, allowed miniscule variations in each shot’s coherence length. The US version did not have this feature, as the Americans regarded the range to be too small to make any combat difference. However, Captain Wexley, commanding HMS Hyperion, had studied his ship’s weapons systems to great depth, and now seeing its predicament, as a last resort he instructed the super AI to vary the coherence length shot by shot. In the midst of intense action, Captain Wexley saw a marginal increase in this length lower the number of shots required to destroy a Blackswan. These data were passed on to the other five ships, which between them managed to destroy fifty-eight Blackswans before they were finally overwhelmed. All of this information was relayed to Navy Command Headquarters in Whitehall, London, where through the shock some members of the Fleet Battle Staff gained an inkling of how NATO might progress.
The last Royal Navy ship disappeared beneath the waves at 03.42. The engagement had lasted less than forty-five minutes, and resulted in a rout for NATO. There was also a sting in the tail. Once the ships had been sunk, the Blackswan ACAs hovered over the area and dispatched Spiders to detonate close to surviving seamen. At length, the Blackswans returned to North Africa, leaving behind more than five thousand casualties. Only two crew members from the fifteen ships survived, both of whom have been quoted above.
Records show that the shock and violence of the attack on the Mediterranean fleet caused an understandable paralysis in Washington. Since the war, there has been much debate as to whether the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt carrier group in the Arabian Sea could have been saved from meeting the same fate. However, it fell to the commanders on the scene to decide. Communications show that the captain of the carrier was fully aware of the likely outcome, but the group would not flee from the approaching storm, and ships with a top speed of thirty-five knots would in any case not outrun Blackswans travelling at Mach 8. From 03.49, thousands of Caliphate ACAs descended on the carrier group, and in addition to the Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US Navy lost two cruisers, five destroyers, four destroyer-escorts, and three supply ships. On this occasion, there were no survivors. The Caliphate had shown the world that technological progress had rendered the modern blue-sea navy obsolete.
II. THE RAPE OF TURKEY
Before the last destroyer had settled on the Mediterranean seabed and while the crews of the Arabian Sea carrier group mulled their fate, the Caliphate began its assault on Turkey. From 03.40 to 04.00, more than one hundred waves totalling fifty thousand Blackswans entered the demilitarised zone and raced towards Turkey’s southern border, on a line of attack from Iskenderun in the west to Mardin in the east, a front of some four hundred kilometres. They entered a thoroughly divided country.
For the preceding two decades, successive Turkish governments had promoted a return to traditional Muslim values. After the financial crisis in the late 2030s, populist political parties began to take a greater share of the vote, which culminated in the Allah Her Yerdedir party’s outright majority in the 2049 election. Led by the charismatic but corrupt Yagiz Demir, the new government immediately changed the country’s constitution to allow religious interference in judicial decisions, and in keeping with the popular sentiment of the day, extended the period between elections in the country from four to ten years. History regards the corpulent Demir as a venal, self-serving sycophant of the Caliphate. The facts support this view. The 2059 election is widely accepted to have been manipulated to return Demir to power with an overwhelming majority. Scandal erupted in February 2060 when the body of the leader of Turkey’s main moderate opposition party washed up, headless, on the south bank of the Bosporus close to Istanbul. Thus Turkish citizens, many of whom held fierce loyalty to their country’s traditional secular independence, found their country divided by a political elite who had more sympathy for the Caliphate than interest in maintaining the European status quo.
NATO members and European countries tried to pressure the Ankara government into moderating its more hard-line domestic policies; Demir responded in August 2060 by taking Turkey out of NATO. Unsurprisingly, Russia and China welcomed Ankara’s show of independence, but among ordinary Turkish citizens there was much concern. Furkan Polat, a thirty-three-year-old lawyer with a wife and young child, expressed the fears of many when he wrote to relatives in Germany: ‘… and the situation worsens by the week. Western capital is fleeing the country with only a trickle coming in from the Chinese, which won’t make up the difference. We hear rumours that Demir has begun radicalising the army, and last week the TBMM [Turkish Parliament] passed a law giving the state a minimum 50% stake in all media organisations. This angered everyone in the firm, until the managing partner said with scorn: “Just wait till next year. I’ll bet you that fat maniac Demir will order a referendum on whether to join the Caliphate.” That really made us think. Things in the south are bad enough as it is, but what if the Caliphate thought it would be welcome here?’
Many moderate Muslim Turks expressed similar fears. Hazan Yilmaz, an erudite, single mother-of-two working as a part-time secretary in the town of Eskisehir, wrote to her aging parents: ‘I’m getting scared now. We seem to be going backwards, into the past. That nearly all of us are of the faith will mean little if the Caliphate decides to bring its hard-line hatefulness here. I don’t believe its public policy of only assimilating countries that request to join it. I don’t believe there can be anything like the peace and prosperity inside its borders which its propaganda in the press keeps claiming. And I don’t believe the Caliphate can bring any good to the rest of the world.’
However, this was by no means the view shared by everyone in the country. Kuzey Uzun, a fifty-six year old low-ranking civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, related to a friend a meeting he attended, ‘The atmosphere was calm, congenial even. Demir’s government really wasn’t the hotbed of extremism the Europeans were trying to make it out to be. I sensed a feeling of change around the table. We were discussing forecast crop yields for 2062 through 2066 when the Vice-Minister wondered aloud if the Caliphate wouldn’t be a better export partner. This was followed by murmurs of approval, and criticisms of Europe’s constant belligerency towards the peace-loving Caliphate. Finally, I thought, we could get some proper values to return to our shallow, libertarian society.’
If this sounds absurd today, it nevertheless demonstrates the degree to which the Caliphate’s propaganda convinced a sizable proportion of the country’s population, until they were disabused of its benevolent intentions in the early hours of that Monday morning. Of greater significance, h
owever, is that since Turkey had withdrawn from NATO the previous year, its military no longer benefitted from the intelligence network and mutual support the organisation offered. Thus, when the Caliphate invaded, the bulk of the Turkish army was on a broadly peacetime footing.
The general commanding the Turkish Land Forces was Mahmut Binici, a fifty-eight-year-old career soldier who had never seen combat, and who was due to retire that summer. His young aide, Siraç Sadik, had the unenviable task of waking him and delivering the news. After somnolent consideration, Gen. Binici wondered aloud if a welcoming committee should not be prepared, until Sadik informed him again that the lead Caliphate ACAs were already advancing on Ankara.
A dismayed Sadik later said, ‘The speed with which events unfolded on that infamous day still cause a shudder inside me. The General had no concept of what had befallen our great country. Of course I knew my place, but my spirit wept in frustration as monitoring stations reported that they were under attack, and then fell silent. I took it on myself to contact Ankara in the General’s stead. An adjutant insisted I must be wrong, that the Caliphate were merely testing our defences. Only at that moment did I realise, with horror, how far the cancer of Caliphate sympathy had penetrated our military. I understood then that we were doomed.’
For several years after the war historians argued over the real reason for Turkey’s abrupt and total collapse. Many of the refugees who managed to escape were scathing in their condemnation of Demir’s policy of moderation towards the Caliphate, with some accusing him of complicity in Turkey’s eventual assimilation. However, as with so many conspiracy theories driven by bitter emotion, the facts do not support them. On that bright, fresh Monday morning, many units of the Turkish army defended their positions as best they could, and it is to posterity’s detriment that so few survived to tell the tale. History rightly knows General Binici as an incompetent commander, however the most relevant fact is that the Caliphate attacked with an overwhelming number of ACAs, closely followed by warriors. Perhaps a fully prepared foe could have delayed the advance, but the outcome was in little doubt irrespective of how much effort Demir and Binici put into defending their country.
NATO leaders followed developments with only one eye as the first Caliphate warrior transports crossed the Turkish border at 10.26. Simultaneously, the enemy’s jamming ACAs proceeded to burn out local and regional components with powerful, directed microwave bursts, adding to the confusion among Turkish citizens. NATO ACAs were hurriedly directed to the northern regions of the country. Each PeaceMaker carried defensive bomblets which proved effective that afternoon, despite being hopelessly outnumbered. In addition, the PeaceMakers succeeded in capturing fragments of the distress in border towns as Caliphate warriors advanced. These snippets hinted at the thoroughness with which the Caliphate had prepared for its invasion and ultimate assimilation of a country it had already demarked into provinces.
In addition, the onslaught led to a wave of refugees fleeing ahead of Caliphate forces. The Turkish civilian transport infrastructure felt the full fury of the Spiders. Key rail and road junctions were obliterated in the first few hours, further hindering Turkey’s already feeble military response. While Caliphate warriors began their ruthless subjugation of the towns and cites they entered, their Blackswans roamed supreme over the land, streaking north-westwards to Ankara and then on to Istanbul. Taha Asker, the Turkish Foreign Minister, was an accomplished diplomat who had held on to his post through the most delicate political manoeuvring. He had never completely given up hope of his country moving back towards the West and rejoining NATO. At around 17.00 he was trying unilaterally to contact Western leaders to plead for more support. As will be shown below, however, by this time NATO was embroiled in a disaster that had already reduced Turkey’s plight to a sideshow.
As Asker desperately tried to reach NATO, the first Blackswans arrived in Istanbul. Their primary military objective was to sever the three bridges which connected Asia to Europe. At this time one of the most famous images of the first day’s fighting was captured and transmitted around the world. Sanaz Tilki, a twenty-four-year-old mother, had taken her young son Poyraz and a rucksack of provisions, and joined the crowds thronging the Third Bridge in central Istanbul in headlong flight from the Caliphate. The image shows her crouching, a hand protecting the head of her child, a look of terror on her face. The first Spider is almost on her, its articulated claws wrapping around her in a fatal embrace. The instant after the scene was recorded, the Spider detonated, destroying the middle span of the bridge, and removing Tilki, her son, and several hundred more civilians to the Bosporus below.
III. HEADLONG FLIGHT
Over the following days and weeks, such scenes were repeated a thousand-fold across the country. In The Great European Disaster, G. K. Morrow devotes several chapters to piecing together the extent of the mayhem, and the few fragments of the disaster the NATO ACAs could capture before they were destroyed. Much of this humanitarian tragedy does not bear repeating here, although English security files recently released prove that the British cabinet - and by extension other NATO leaders - were sufficiently informed on that Monday of the barbarity of the Caliphate warriors.
In the years immediately after the war, many media outlets accused Western governments of failing to do enough to aid the Turkish people. However, even though NATO knew the extent of the disaster, it is difficult to see how it could have responded any more effectively, especially given that Turkey had officially left the organisation. As many ordinary Turks realised at the time, the only hope of survival lay outside their country’s borders.
By the morning of Tuesday 6 February, US satellites had counted some ten thousand boats of all sizes, from rowing boats to commercial ferries, hurrying away from Turkey’s southern coast. To the north, a further six thousand vessels had begun the perilous journey across the Black Sea. Conditions remained calm throughout the week in the western Mediterranean, and many boats were able to island-hop to temporary safety, but on the Tuesday night a severe storm developed in the Black Sea, and thousands are known to have drowned. At the time mystery surrounded why the Caliphate let the refugees escape in this manner, but later in the war brain-scanning interrogation of captured warriors demonstrated that the purpose of allowing these people to escape was to let them carry warnings to the rest of Europe.
In a previously hidden journal, a young engineering student called Berat Kartal recalled his flight from his home town of Usak to the coastal city of Izmir, one-hundred-and-twenty kilometres along roads packed with refugees like him. When the Caliphate’s microwave bursts burned out sensitive digital components, Kartal had the wit to abandon his devices and collect a paper notepad and pen to record the scenes he witnessed. Recently discovered in an attic in Düsseldorf, Kartal’s journal had lain undisturbed for over thirty years. He made his handwritten notes as his journey progressed: ‘…the sun is setting and I have arrived in Güre, a small town of a couple of thousand. Now its narrow streets are crowded with people like me, all running away towards Izmir. There is one policeman who doesn’t know a thing as the communications have all been destroyed. I have decided to keep cycling through the night. I still have some water and won’t be able to get anything to eat here. One old woman stands on a wooden crate by a road junction shouting that the Caliphate will kill us all. It’s unnerving. As I pushed my bicycle past her, someone shouted out that she was mad, and she shrieked back that one of her sons told her Caliphate warriors were killing non-believers with powerful lasers mounted on vehicles, burning them to a crisp. I was happy to finally pedal away.’
As Kartal’s journey continued, he recorded more scenes of distress and suffering. He finally reached the outskirts of the port city of Izmir on Thursday 9 February, by which point the disintegration of Turkey as a nation state was much advanced. Kartal found this out in the district of Bornova, where, ‘… a group of policemen have established a refugee centre on a school campus close to a hospital. I spoke to a young family wh
ile queuing for water from a bowser, and they directed me to a notice board with pinned sheets of paper at the hospital’s main entrance. I got some water, went back to the entrance, and muddled through the people to read. One A4 sheet which caught my eye gave official advice for citizens to shelter as far away from built-up areas and important and historical buildings as possible, because Caliphate ACAs were expected to attack those places. I caught snatches of conversation in the crowd around me, some of whom were telling anyone who’d listen that Caliphate warriors had already reached Ankara. Feeling sad, I left and made my way to the port. I’m writing this sheltering under a tarpaulin in a warehouse, by penlight.’
It is likely that the camp to which Kartal refers was the Devlet centre, the full tragedy of which G. K. Morrow laid bare in The Great European Disaster and which was indeed attacked the following day. Matters improved for Kartal the next morning when he managed to gain passage on a small, local ferry whose captain was on his twenty-third voyage of the week, determined to rescue as many of his countrymen as he could. Although Kartal found himself obliged to leave his bicycle and pay what money he had, the next entry in his journal reveals his pleasure at enjoying his first hot meal - a bowl of iskembe soup - in a week. The small, heavily laden ferry arrived in Athens on Friday evening, but this was only the beginning of Kartal’s remarkable odyssey across Europe in the midst of war, and more will be heard from his journal below.
Although numbers are difficult to estimate, the accepted figure is that some two million Turkish people lost their lives in the first month of the war, and many more during the country’s assimilation into the Caliphate. While the anecdotal evidence of rape and murder provided by Morrow seems overwhelming, it is also important to consider that Caliphate warriors and the following majlis-led administration units, who were quickly installed in the conquered provinces, welcomed numerous sympathisers. Tales abounded of families, villages and towns torn asunder by divided loyalties and questionable morality. It is likely that many of those who survived the onslaught chose to cooperate with the new regime out of expediency; it is equally probable that more than a few of them nevertheless fell victim to a Caliphate laser or warrior blade if their motives were doubted.