by Benny Morris
hours or face battle.417
Two days later the Turks, joined by local Kurds and Arabs, attacked the
450–700- strong French garrison comprising mainly Algerian and Senegalese
troops— “heroes of Verdun,” an American missionary called them.418 What
followed was a two- month siege. The French responded by intermittently
shelling the Turkish parts of town and provided local Armenians with some
arms.419 But, despite Turkish sniping, the Armenians stayed neutral.420 The
French lived on “short rations, horse meat and black bread, [and] beans.” 421
The French “have blundered and blundered,” an American missionary
later wrote. But no blunder was worse than that of April 8 in Urfa.422 That
day the French commander, Major G. Hauger, agreed to withdraw. In ex-
change the Turks guaranteed the safety of the town’s Christians and prom-
ised to provide the French with pack animals and an escort of gendarmes to
aid their withdrawal. It would be “a withdrawal with honor and safety,” Mute-
sarrif Ali Rıza Bey said.423 But Ali Rıza knew what was coming. He told a
westerner who planned to accompany the column that it was unsafe to go, as
the route was surrounded by tribes “in a state of agitation.” 424
The French left early on April 11, with sixty camels and thirty horses.
They met their fate nine miles out, at Sebeke Pass.425 According to Ali
Rıza, “tribesmen” and “some of the population of the city . . . without the
knowledge of the government and of the commander of the Nationalist
forces” ambushed the column. The fight lasted over two hours. Rıza claimed
the French feigned surrender and then “treacherously” opened fire, so the
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
ambushers cut them down.426 Garnet Woodward, a British NER worker who
accompanied the column, had witnessed something diff er ent. He reported
that the French attempted to surrender but were shot down by Kurds and
Turks, who proceeded to finish off the wounded. Gendarmes sent from Urfa
eventually ended the killing and saved some of the soldiers.427 Between 50
and 161 troopers, most of them Muslim Algerians and Tunisians, survived
and were brought back to Urfa.428 Three hundred or more soldiers died.
For weeks thereafter Urfa’s Turks lived in fear that the French would take
revenge. The Turks thus behaved well toward the town’s Armenians, at least
for a while. The Armenians were even allowed to retain arms.429 Some time
later Sheikh Sanussi used Urfa as a base, from which he delivered sermons
inciting against the Christians.430 The French blamed the Armenians for the
debacle at Urfa, aggravating Franco- Armenian relations.431
A few days before Urfa’s fall, Turkish villa gers massacred the Armenian in-
habitants of nearby Ehneche. At first local gendarmes intervened. But they
were soon supplanted by a new troop, which arrived with the kaymakam of
Kheldedi. The kaymakam and his twenty men tied up the villa gers and
marched them down the road to Kamışlı (Qamishli). According to the Arme-
nian Patriarchate, the Turks “then cut up the small children to pieces, next
they led the men to the banks of the Euphrates and massacred them
there . . . crushing . . . heads under large stones, skinning, dismembering them alive and so forth. Fi nally came the women’s turn; they were placed on the
sand by the side of the river, and burnt alive.” Two men and three women
escaped; one hundred and sixty- four were murdered.432
At Antep the Armenians and the French held on from the slopes outside
the city. Armenian artisans and jewelers manufactured ammunition.433 The
Turks periodically bombarded the Christian quarters, and the Armenians
responded with what they had. On April 28 Kılıç Ali— signing as Sayf Ullah,
“the sword of God”— gave the Armenians an ultimatum: they had twenty- four
hours to turn over their arms or else “be considered rebels.” In that case the
Turks would “resort to vio lence.” “Marash should give you an indication” of
what might happen, Kılıç Ali said.434 But the Armenians kept fighting.
On May 23 a strong French column under Col o nel Debieuvre reached
Antep, reportedly killing 1,200 and capturing “thousands” of Turks along the
way.435 The Turks also suffered severe losses inside the town: one report
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
spoke of 400 dead. But they, too, kept fighting.436 On May 27 the Turks
ambushed a French garrison at Pozantı. Many were killed or taken prisoner.437
According to one report, the garrison’s 450 Algerians were spared but 120
Frenchmen were executed.438
On May 29 Robert de Caix, secretary general of the French high commis-
sion in Constantinople, met Kemal in Ankara and signed a limited, twenty-
day armistice. The accord provided for French evacuation of Sis, Pozantı, and
Antep within ten days, while the Turks were not to attack Antep’s Arme-
nians.439 The agreement represented a partial French capitulation.440 As one
British naval officer observed, the French position in Cilicia was, at this point,
“extremely critical,” and they needed a breather. The garrisons were too weak
to successfully withdraw and were “likely to be exterminated” unless consid-
erably reinforced.441
Missionaries called the armistice “a farce,” partly because it made no pro-
vision for impor tant Armenian sites under siege, principally Hacin, Dörtyol,
and Hasanbeyli.442 The French maintained that their aims in Cilicia included
protecting the Christians, but they quietly urged Armenians to move to areas
closer to the coast where such protection could be effectively exercised. “Sev-
eral thousand” Armenians accordingly trekked from Antep to Kilis.443
Emir Faisal, in Damascus, while himself at loggerheads with the French,
regarded the armistice with misgivings. It would mark “the commencement
of a series of defeats in Near East in which not only French but all of [our]
Allies will be involved and will shortly menace peace of Mesopotamia, Mosul
and other places.” The armistice, he warned, opened the way for the Turks
to extend their “domination” southward.444
Despite Turkish violations of the ceasefire during the first week of June,
the French duly evacuated Sis. The town’s 6,000–8,000 Armenians, locals
and rural refugees who had clustered in the town, were “ordered” by the
French “to leave within 24 hours” for Adana. “The Armenians begged to
be allowed to remain . . . rather than go out to become beggars,” but they were
refused. “If they stayed behind, the French guns would be turned on them,” an
American missionary reported. So they left, abandoning their property.445
Kemal “refused to extend [the] armistice,” and hostilities resumed after
June 20.446 The Turks shelled the French outposts at Mersin and almost sur-
rounded the Adana plain, which was dotted with Armenian refugee camps.447
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
In August the French abandoned Hasanbeyli; its 1,500 Armenians, under
French escort, trekked to Dörtyol. “They were 32 days on the road,” arriving
at their destination “with only their clothes on their back.”
448
At Antep, the French proposed that all the Armenians leave and promised
to provide transport. But the Armenians there felt much like their compa-
triots in Sis, responding that “instead of going out to die as tramps and beg-
gars, they will stick to their arms and defend themselves, their families and
property, as long as they have left a piece of bread and a single cartridge.”
The missionaries worried that, if the Armenians stayed, “Fifteen thousand
souls will surely perish.” 449 The French relented, withdrawing from the
town center and urging the Armenians to negotiate with the Nationalists.450
The resulting ceasefire had unusually good terms, from the Armenians’
standpoint. Antep was to be policed by a thousand Turkish regulars. The
Turks offered amnesty to the Armenian fighters and agreed to pull all the brig-
ands out of town and allow the Armenians to retain their arms.451 But 3,500
Armenians, “consisting of el derly people, paupers and non- combatants,” left
in early June.452 The town calmed down during the following weeks, though
the Turks continued nonviolent forms of persecution, boycotting Armenian
traders and refusing to sell to Armenians. The Armenians received substantial
missionary aid.453
By July the Cilician countryside, ravaged by Kemal’s irregulars, had emp-
tied of Armenian villa gers. All had fled to the towns. There were reportedly
80,000 Armenians in Adana and its environs.454 Many, perhaps most, of
Adana’s Turks had fled, either under Armenian duress or in fear of mas-
sacre.455 Because Armenians were unable to cultivate their fields, there was
widespread hunger. In Adana alone 20,000 women and children reportedly
were begging in the streets.456 Here too, Western aid agencies helped stave off
famine and epidemics.
In July the French won a victory over the Arabs in Maysalun and ousted
Faisal from Damascus, leading some Armenians to believe that the French
would go on to reassert control in Cilicia. But nothing changed.457 Adana’s
Christians deci ded to act. On August 4 representatives of the town’s Chris-
tian communities, with the Armenians in the lead, issued a “declaration of
[Cilician] autonomy,” albeit under French Mandate. Some called the new
polity the Republic of Amanus. The next day the representatives elected an
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Armenian prime minister and a cabinet consisting of six Armenians, a Greek,
a Turk, an Assyrian, and an Arab. The cabinet took over the konak and ex-
pelled the Turkish gendarmes and officials. The vali and others were placed
under house arrest.458
Brémond reacted swiftly. His soldiers stormed the konak “with fixed bay-
onets” threw out the cabinet, and declared martial law. General Dufieux pro-
claimed, “Enough masquerades, fiery speeches and comedies!” 459 A series of
pro- Turkish steps followed. The French removed Brémond, who, despite
crushing the short- lived “republic,” was regarded as pro- Armenian. On
September 18 Gouraud ordered his commanders in Adana to “[re]estab-
lish a Turkish government,” in conformity with the just- concluded provisions
of the Treaty of Sèvres.460 The thousands of Armenian refugees camped
around the city were ordered to leave for “Smyrna, Constantinople, Erivan,
Marseilles or Amer i ca” or to French- governed Alexandretta and Beirut.461
But they refused to budge.462 The French surrounded the camps and
threatened to deport “ women, children and old men” and cut off the refu-
gees’ rations.463 The large camp near the new railway station was eventually
cleared, but many refugees responded by moving into empty houses in
town.464 Some were sent to Mersin.465 The French disarmed the local Arme-
nian militia and jailed its commander. They also disarmed a volunteer column
that had set out to relieve the besieged town of Hacin, shut down Adana’s
Armenian newspapers, and arrested journalists and members of the Arme-
nian National Council. All were deported to Alexandretta.466 The Armenians
said that the deportations came at Turkish request.467 The French invited
Muslims who had fled Adana to return.468
The French later described the trajectory of their actions. At first “arms
were distributed to the Armenians for the purposes of defending their villages
and forming auxiliary contingents [for] . . . the French forces.” But “the Ar-
menians, profiting by the acquisition of arms, conducted a campaign of re-
venge against the Turkish inhabitants in the form of massacres, pillage and
incendiarism. When an appeal was made to them to rally to the relief of
Tarsus, out of the two thousand volunteers promised, seventeen joined the
French troops. . . . Eventually it was found necessary to disarm the Arme-
nians.” As for the volunteers heading for Hacin, they were disarmed “upon
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
an attempt by the Armenians of Adana to proclaim an Armenian republic in
Cilicia to the exclusion of the Turks.” 469
Back in Antep, battle— this time strictly between the Turks and the
French— was resumed on July 29.470 It began with a bombardment of the
American missionary compound after the French refused to vacate the build-
ings.471 An infantry assault failed, and the French responded by bombarding
the town’s Turkish quarters with artillery and aircraft. Two- thirds of the
Turkish homes were reported destroyed. The Armenians, of whom there
were 8,000–9,000 left, remained neutral. They refused to allow the Turks to
use their quarter to launch attacks. A joint Armenian- Turkish com pany pa-
trolled the Armenian quarter. Nonetheless, six Armenians were reportedly
killed in a firefight with the Turks. Turkish- Armenian relations deteriorated.472
On August 10 a 5,000- strong French column broke through the siege,
surrounded Antep, and delivered an ultimatum. The Turks were called to
surrender the town.473 As far as the French were concerned, Antep was
theirs, awarded to them that very day at Sèvres. Already in May the Allies
had published a draft summary of the provisions. The draft augured the par-
tition of Cilicia into French- and Turkish- ruled zones, in effect awarding
France only a small part of the area designated in Sykes- Picot. The Arme-
nians protested, demanding that Cilicia, together with Antep, be left intact
as a political- administrative Armenian entity, under Western mandate.474
The publication of the draft affected French decision- making. In May
Gouraud argued that under the treaty, Cilicia, including Adana, Mersin,
Tarsus, Maraş, and Hacin was to be returned to the Turks but not “Killis,
Aintab, Biredjik and Urfa,” which were to be incorporated in French- ruled
Syria.475 But a month later, the French told the British that Sèvres was no
longer the guideline, and that they intended to withdraw from “Bozanti, Urfa,
Biridjik and Marash,” as these were “dangerously exposed.” But they had “no
intention” of evacuating “Mersina, Tarsus, Adana, Osmanie and Aintab.” 476
Clearly, there was confusion in French ranks.
They appeared to want to hold Antep. But the Turks refused to sur
render,
and the French renewed their bombardment.477 Thousands of Turks fled to
the countryside. The French hoped the blockade and shelling would elicit
surrender, but the siege was not tight enough; supplies came in at night from
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
Malatya.478 Moreover, the French were still getting no help from the Arme-
nians, who remained neutral despite the horrific effects the siege was having
on them. A desperate food shortage led to Armenian riots in August.479 Only
in September, caught between hammer and anvil, did the Armenians at last
join the fight. They won French admiration for their bravery and skill.480
Nonetheless, the Armenians were sure the French wanted them to leave.
The meager rations the French provided seemed to demonstrate as much, but
matters were not that straightforward. In Paris there was a serious policy
strug gle that summer. Some senators called for “peace with Mustafa Kemal,”
others for a new offensive to cow the Nationalists. For a brief moment, the latter prevailed. But all agreed that to hold the core of Syria, additional troops were
needed. A further division was shipped to Alexandretta.481 Meanwhile, thou-
sands of Armenians left Antep while the French bombarded the Turks. The
casualties included the mutesarrif and his son.482
In mid- September Gouraud reportedly told his chief aides, Brémond and
Dufieux, that he intended “to evacuate Cilicia forthwith.” 483 He could not hold
both Syria and Cilicia. Even so, after the arrival of the reinforcements, he
launched a major push to clear the roads and countryside between Alexan-
dretta, Kilis, and Antep.484 The French commanders promised that northern
Aleppo vilayet would be “calm within eight months.” They wanted to incor-
porate Antep, Urfa, Mardin, Rakka, and Deir Zor in their Syrian mandate
while abandoning the core of Cilicia.485 The new push was to be the last
French effort to achieve victory, albeit a limited one.
Meanwhile France sought to clarify its policy vis- à- vis the Armenians. “The
French government is committed not to evacuate Cilicia without insuring
the protection of Christian minorities and receiving from the Turks all neces-
sary guaranties,” an internal memorandum read. “Three quarters of French
