by Benny Morris
up the neighborhood. Riggs, who had personally rescued Armenian women,
said his life was threatened separately by four Muslim husbands. He began to
carry “a revolver in [his] hip pocket, ready for business.” Riggs was eventually
expelled by order of Mustafa Kemal.161
Sometimes Turks seeking to get back recovered women brandished a more
general threat. In early 1920 a missionary in Sivas reported that Ala Olu
(Alaoğlu) Ali, the müdür (an administrator) of Oulash (Ulaş) came to the
rescue home and spoke privately to an Armenian girl who had been a servant
in his house during the war. He told her to “accompany him home in order
to save her[self ] from the massacre of the Armenians that was shortly to take
place and from which no one was to escape.” She refused.162 Such threats were
not idle; rescued Armenians were sometimes subjected to fresh atrocities.
In May 1920 sixty- seven young girls were reported kidnapped from a
rescue home by Muslims who “used them for the appeasing of their basest
appetites.”163
By late summer– autumn 1919, the recovery efforts had begun to stall.
Western diplomats came to realize that, in the circumstances, the status quo
was preferable to the alternative. The British high commissioner wrote, “It
frequently happens that Islamized women and children are . . . better off in
their pres ent condition than if they were . . . restored to the care of their
communities. . . . I am driven to the conclusion that, from the point of view
of humanity as distinct from that of religious feeling, our best course is to
leave them as they are for the pres ent.”164 By 1922 Bristol was writing that it was
“unfortunate” that the American missionaries “ever became involved in this
practice of trying to get Christian women out of Muslim homes. . . . I recom-
mended against this practice from the very beginning.”165 At that point recovery
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
efforts in Nationalist- controlled Asia Minor had virtually ceased. “One of the
first effects of the Nationalist movement was to bring such work to an end,”
the Foreign Office concluded.166
But in Syria, under French rule since July 1920, one notable recovery effort
was ongoing, albeit in a manner “quiet and unobtrusive.” The French author-
ities were wary if not downright opposed to it, fearing pos si ble Muslim reac-
tions. But Karen Jeppe, a Danish missionary who headed the Aleppo branch of
the League of Nations Commission for the Protection of Women and Children
in the Near East, started a neutral house in 1921. For three years she clandes-
tinely ran agents in the greater Aleppo area, where 30,000 Christians were said
to be living in Muslim house holds. She reported rescuing hundreds.167
Some of the sorriest tales to emerge concerned orphans. After years in
Turkish hands, some didn’t even know their real names. According to Emma
Cushman, the American member of the League of Nations commission on ab-
ductees, the Turks not only contrived to conceal the children’s identities but
also turned the children’s minds “so far as to revile the Christians as infi-
dels.”168 In 1920 a British officer discovered this for himself on a visit to a
Turkish orphanage near Constantinople. Twelve girls there were said to be
Armenian. When approached, three wept “bitterly” and said they were
Muslim. A nine- year- old said her name was Djelile and that her parents had
been murdered by Armenians.
“Who told you that . . . ?” the officer asked.
“I was told so in the orphanage.”
He asked her name. The girl responded with a question of her own:
“Do you want to know the whole truth?”
“Yes.”
“Would you consent to adopt me as your child? Swear in the name of your
parents and God.”
“I swear.”
With this, the girl opened up. She was from Zeytun; the adults, including
her mother, had been driven from their homes. She was taken to Aleppo
“where the Turks changed my name ‘Siranush’ to Djelile.” She was compelled
to pray in Turkish. All twelve girls, Djelile confirmed, were Armenian. Then,
the officer reported, she “threw herself into my arms.”169
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
Armenian orphans boarding barges at Constantinople. Many were saved by the
American Near East Relief organ ization.
The formal end to the recoveries came at Lausanne, where the Turks re-
fused to include in the peace treaty any provision concerning the rights of
abductees.170 The Armenian Red Cross estimated that “about 60,000”
Christians remained in “Turkish harems” at this time.171 During 1922–1923,
the Nationalists closed all Christian orphanages in Anatolia and ordered the
removal from them of girls rescued from Turkish harems.172 In some areas,
the Turks ordered Christian orphanages to send away all girls and boys older
than fifteen. The girls were forced to find employment in Muslim homes or
“starve.”173
Arresting and Prosecuting Perpetrators
At the end of World War I, Curzon described Turkey as “a culprit waiting to
hear the sentence.”174 The Allies sought to punish Turkey— for launching the
war in the Middle East and for its war crimes, including maltreatment of Al-
lied war prisoners— and theoretically had two means at their disposal. One
was territorial dismemberment. The other was to penalize individual war crim-
inals. The British were the most resolute of the Allies in this regard— partly
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
out of a moral sense and partly out of a sense of guilt. Britain had, after all,
prevented Rus sia’s annexation in 1878 of Turkey’s eastern provinces, where
the Turks later massacred the Armenians. “History will always hold us cul-
pable,” Lloyd George declared.175
On May 24, 1915, a few days after the start of the Armenian deportations
and massacres, the governments of France, Britain, and Rus sia sent a joint
letter to the Sublime Porte warning the Turks against committing “crimes
against humanity.”176 After the war, Gough- Calthorpe, then the British high
commissioner, cabled the Turkish government, “His Majesty’s Government
is resolved to have proper punishment inflicted on those responsible for Ar-
menian massacres.”177 He also called for the “arrest and exemplary punish-
ment” of Enver, Talât, Şakır, and their like.178 On January 23, 1919, British
leaders deci ded on the prosecution of war criminals and demanded that the
Turks arrest those deemed responsible. The British handed over lists of sus-
pects. But the Turks balked: they reluctantly arrested a handful and refused
to hand them over. Instead they produced a lengthy folder containing docu-
ments proving that the Armenians had been at fault and that their “deporta-
tion” had been justified.179 The British reacted by themselves rounding up
suspects and shipping them to a detention center in Malta.180
But who would try them? Allied jurists spent months mulling over the
matter. London proposed setting up Allied military courts but dropped the
idea after France and Tu
rkey objected. The possibility of establishing an in-
ternational criminal court also fell through.
The buck thus passed to the Constantinople government. In November
1918 the Turks convened a special court martial, and Enver and Cemal were
tried in absentia— but not for massacring Christians. The following month,
they began arresting war crimes suspects and trying them at regular military
tribunals. Altogether several hundred were taken in, most on the basis of the
British lists. Some were identified by Christian survivors. In January 1919
travelling commissions of inquiry were sent to the provinces, and in February
extraordinary military tribunals were established in Constantinople and the
provinces to try a portion of the suspects.181
The first trial with the accused pres ent took place in Constantinople in Feb-
ruary 1919. The defendants were charged with persecuting Armenians in
Yozgat. Sixty- two further trials followed. In one, CUP Central Committee
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
members and Special Organ ization officials were tried. In two others, cabinet
ministers and CUP responsible secretaries and delegates appeared in the
dock. But the courts, especially those in the vilayets, handed down few guilty
verdicts. Indeed, investigating magistrates were either remiss in pursuing
evidence and suspects or found it impossible to overcome the recalcitrance
of local officials and police and actually bring suspects to book. For example,
Setrag Karageuzian, an Armenian investigating magistrate in Trabzon, proved
unable to bring any suspects to trial despite three and a half months of work
during winter- spring 1919.182
The Turks had initially agreed to hold the trials in the hope of softening
Allied punishment of Turkey itself. But within months they stopped the pro-
ceedings. In Paris the Allies had ruled that the Turkish people were “guilty
of murdering Armenians without justification.”183 But the Turkish authorities,
both in Constantinople and Ankara, rejected the notion of collective guilt. The
first postwar grand vizier, Ahmet Izzet Pasha, a Talât appointee, during his
three weeks in office destroyed incriminating documents, helped suspects flee,
and blocked arrests.184 Izzet’s successors, Tevfik Pasha and Prince Damat
Ferid Pasha, agreed under pressure from the Allies, the press, and a renascent
po liti cal opposition to the princi ple of punishing war criminals. But these officials thought that Talât, Enver, and Cemal should be punished rather than
“the innocent Turkish nation free of the stain of injustice.”185
The Yozgat trial ended with the conviction and execution in Constantino-
ple’s Beyazit Square on April 10, 1919, of Kemal Bey, the onetime mutesarrif of
Boğazlıyan. His funeral the next day, which turned into an anti- Allied demon-
stration, was conducted with great “pomp and ceremony.” “Numerous Young
Turks [ were] pres ent,” as well as “many officers and soldiers” and medical stu-
dents. One of the students, “holding a bunch of flowers,” eulogized: “Hark oh
people. . . . Hark oh Mussulmen! He whom we leave lying here is the hero
Kemal Bey. The En glish have been ejected from Odessa, let us drive them out of
Constantinople. What are you waiting for? . . . With the help of God we will
soon be able to crush their heads.” Gough- Calthorpe observed that Kemal Bey
“was treated as a hero and martyr.”186 The popu lar mood no doubt dampened
the government’s interest in punishing additional perpetrators. “Not one Turk
in a thousand can conceive that there might be a Turk who deserves to be
hanged for the killing of Christians,” the Foreign Office commented.187
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
The Greek invasion of Smyrna, and the nationwide protests that followed,
served to reinforce Turkish recalcitrance. On May 17, just after the Smyrna
landing, the Turks stopped the trials and arrests of suspects. Some were freed.
In the interior perpetrators who had gone to ground were emboldened; they
“walked about fearlessly.”188 In June the Turks officially reconvened the Con-
stantinople trials, but the British dismissed this as a deception.189 Webb con-
cluded, “ There are . . . many thousands of Mussulmen in this country who
deserve to be treated with the most extreme penalties of the law, but, to my
everlasting regret, it appears impracticable.”190 In October the Nationalists and
Constantinople secretly agreed that British investigation of Turkish military
commanders must cease, Turks exiled by Britain be repatriated, and Arme-
nians be prosecuted for their war crimes.191 After the Allies occupied Constantinople in March 1920, arrested, and exiled to Malta dozens of Nationalist
figures, including some implicated in war crimes, the Nationalists responded
by arresting dozens of Britons in Anatolia.
One more Turk was to be tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes—
Nusret Bey, a subdistrict governor in Urfa, hanged on August 5, 1920. His pun-
ishment caused widespread revulsion in Turkey. In 1921 a military court of
appeals overturned the verdict and put on trial those who had tried him. Gen-
eral Nemrud Kurd Mustafa Pasha, the chief judge of the Turkish court- martial
and one of the judges in the Nusret proceedings, was dismissed, charged with
mishandling the war- crimes proceedings, and sentenced to three months in
prison.192 At his trial, the general denounced his accusers—in effect, the war time CUP establishment, which was by then back in the saddle under the Nationalist
label. He blamed them for abominable crimes:
The pashas who have carried out unpre ce dented and inconceivable
crimes and who, in ser vice of their personal interests, have thus reduced
the country to its pres ent straits, continue to cause mischief. They have
produced vari ous kinds of tyranny, or ga nized deportations and massa-
cres, burnt breast- feeding infants with petrol, raped women and young
girls in the presence of their garroted or wounded parents, separated
young girls from their fathers and mothers, confiscated their movable
and immovable properties, and exiled them as far as Mosul in a la men-
ta ble state. . . .
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
They have thrown thousands of innocents from boats into the sea. They
have had town criers call upon non- Muslims loyal to the government to
deny their religion and embrace Islam. . . . They have marched famished
elders for entire months; they have sent them to forced labor. They have
had young women thrown into houses of ill repute . . . without pre ce-
dent in the history of nations.193
Nusret’s successful, albeit posthumous, appeal and the indictment of
Nemrud delegitimized the whole war crimes pro cess and, by implication,
helped subvert the notion that the Turks had massacred the Armenians.194
There were no further prosecutions. That same year, 1921, the British freed
all the Malta prisoners in exchange for the Britons the Nationalists had taken
hostage.195
The French Arrive
Most of the postwar deportation, flight, and murder of Armenians in Anatolia
occurred in Cilicia and northern Aleppo vilayet, under nominal French con-
trol between late 1919 and 1921. These territories had been part of the Blue
Area, earmarked for French rule under the secret Sykes- Picot agreement of
1916. The British handover of these territories to French control three years
later was, in effect, a fulfillment of the agreement’s provisions.
Already in December 1918, four battalions of the French Army— the
4,000- strong Legion d’Orient, later renamed the Legion Armenienne and
consisting mainly of Armenian volunteers— landed at Mersin and Alexan-
dretta, serving as part of Allenby’s occupation force. Thousands more
reached the two ports in June– July 1919, as British units were pulled out to
contend with anti- British unrest in Egypt.196
The core of the Legion consisted of young Armenians who had been res-
cued from Musadağ in September 1915 and temporarily housed in a refugee
camp in Port Said. Already in early 1915 Armenian nationalists had asked the
British to help set up an Armenian volunteer corps to serve in British ranks
or, alternatively, raise insurrection in Cilicia. The War Office dismissed both
ideas.197 But in 1916 the French pressed the British to establish a volunteer
corps, specifically to help in the liberation and occupation of Cilicia, destined
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
for French rule.198 At the end of the year, hundreds of volunteers began training
in Egypt and then Cyprus. The Legion, three battalions of Armenian volun-
teers from the Middle East and United States, and a battalion of Syrian Arab
exiles, was incorporated in January 1917 into the French Army’s Detachment
français de Palestine- Syrie, under Lieutenant- Colonel Philipin de Piepape.199
The Legion saw action in September– October 1918 in northern Palestine and
Syria.200 After landing in Mersin and Alexandretta, the battalions fanned out to
Dörtyol, Toprakkale, Islahiye, Pozantı, Tarsus, Adana, Misis, and Cihan.201
They hoisted the Armenian flag over the government building in Adana and
ordered the kaymakams of Payas and Dörtyol to expel the Turkish gendarmes
from their towns.202 The legionnaires liberated women from Turkish homes
and may have murdered a Turk outside Alexandretta.203 A few months later,
