by Benny Morris
manpower in the Levant, which has been reinforced, are engaged in northern
Syria. They guarantee the defense of [Christian] populations. . . . This protec-
tion has brought about the death of many thousands of French soldiers, and
many hundreds of millions in expenses.” The French claimed they had fed,
clothed, repatriated, and armed the Armenians. “All these . . . sacrifices taken . . . have not put an end to the complaints of one section of the Armenian
ele ment.” 486
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
The onset of winter 1921, which rendered roads and mountains impass-
able, changed the military landscape. The French push came to a halt; the
roads to Antep were closed.487 In Adana a “quiet resignation” took hold. The
Armenians “feel their cause is lost . . . and as a people . . . they are doomed.
The fever of emigration is again seizing upon them.” But funds were unavail-
able and passports difficult to procure. Many looked to heaven. The pastor
of the Armenian Protestant church said that “often the meetings continue so
long that he is obliged to go home without dismissing the congregation.”488
But winter also hurt the Nationalists. In Adana groups of brigands report-
edly surrendered.489 And in Antep, they were overwhelmed. On February 8
the Turkish civil authorities, on orders from Ankara, surrendered to the
besieging French, who then occupied the town.490 But the Turkish military
refused to sign the instrument of surrender and continued the fight in the
surrounding countryside.491 Indeed, within weeks the Nationalists issued a
proclamation stating “that the mosques and minarets destroyed in the con-
flicts with the French will [be rebuilt] with the skulls of Armenians.”492 In the following months, NER diverted much of its relief work in Antep to the
surviving Turkish population, which had been battered physically and eco-
nom ically. The missionaries offered this as proof of their even- handed
humanitarianism.493 The Turks were unconvinced.
The Kemalists renewed hostilities in spring 1921. The masses of Arme-
nians crowding Adana lived on tenterhooks, panicked by every rumor of
French evacuation. “The spectacles of Marash, Aintab, Sis and Hadjin pres ent
a sad outlook for Adana,” a missionary reported. The Armenians’ “spirits
are . . . crushed as I have never seen before.”494
Armenian suspicion of the French had solidified around the fate of Hacin,
which the French had not garrisoned. The town, at the edge of the French
zone, had an almost completely Armenian population of 6,000–7,000. Eight
hundred were armed.495 In March 1919 the French, then under British juris-
diction, replaced the town’s kaymakam and the commander of gendarmerie
with Armenians and armed the population. But during the following months,
“the Kemalist spirit rolled down like a small stone from a snowy mountain . . .
the rolling stone got bigger and bigger. The avalanche was approaching,” an
Armenian wrote.496
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
At some point the Armenians, led by kaymakam Armenag Keregian, took
twelve Turkish village elders as “hostages of peace.” The French disap-
proved. They replaced Keregian and released the hostages. The locals then
appointed Sarkis Jebejian, a veteran from the wars in the Caucasus, as overall
commander. He or ga nized defenses.497 On February 3, 1920, Turkish irreg-
ulars laid siege.498 Friendly Kurds warned the Armenians that, as soon as
the snows melted, they would come under attack.499 Reports reached the
Security Directorate in Constantinople that Hacin’s Turkish inhabitants
were terrified.500 By early March Hacin was entirely cut off, but it held out
for another half a year. The Christians took the town’s 300 Turks and 150
Kurds hostage.501 The Armenians were reinforced by villa gers who poured
in from the countryside. The Armenians appealed for help. The Adana
Armenian council demanded that the French send a relief column or arm
local militiamen.502
In early April the Nationalists tightened the siege by occupying the Amer-
ican missionary compound on the edge of town.503 In late May they threat-
ened the inhabitants with annihilation, boasting that they had slaughtered the
inhabitants of two nearby villages. Armenian gunmen responded by killing
as many as 200 of the hostages. Other Armenians condemned this as a “sin
and a stain on their reputation.”504 The Turks pillaged the missionary com-
pound and deported the missionaries to Talas.505
Brémond refused to send a relief column but offered to help evacuate Hacin.
The inhabitants declined. One wrote, “The Armenians of Cilicia are deter-
mined . . . to resist and die like heroes. . . . They are inspired by the law of Moses.”506 In Adana the Armenians mobilized a 500- man relief force. The
French intercepted and disarmed part of the force when it reached Sis. Turks
ambushed a third relief com pany, and a fourth, sent to save the third, was
turned back and imprisoned in Mersin by the French.507
In mid- July 1920 the Turks systematically bombarded Hacin. The Arme-
nians held on. The population reached “a point of famine. People ate horses
and donkeys and cats” as well as “the leaves . . . and bark . . . of the trees. . . .
Bones were powdered to be mixed with a handful of flour” to make bread.
“The price of a cat was a gold pound. Dogs, rats, animals of any kind, even
the skin of sheep and oxen were eaten after being broiled.”508 “The people
had become walking skeletons,” a missionary wrote.509 In August and
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
September the Hacin defenders mounted sorties against the Turks, capturing
cannon, ammunition, and food. In October, the Turks sent reinforcements.
The town was subjected to a new bombardment.510 “The last days of Hadjin
were days of hell. Men were struggling with empty stomachs to defend the
city. The women were screaming and fainting, the children were crying. . . .
The orphans were busy . . . carry ing ammunition from ditch to ditch,” one
chronicler recorded. Two men reportedly killed “their families” before com-
mitting suicide; others fled to the mountains, abandoning their “loved
one[s].”511 Hacin fell on October 17. The Turks systematically torched the
town, shooting those fleeing the flames. There was little left to loot.512
After stamping out the last pockets of re sis tance and hunting down refugees
in the mountains, the Turks “gathered the living relics . . . into the monas-
tery and separated the men, women and children.” The women were ordered
to take off their clothes and were shot or stabbed. The men were then taken
in batches of five or ten “God knows where.” Eleven wounded women were
said to have crawled out from under the bodies and were later recaptured
and murdered, but only after telling their story to other survivors, who
eventually reached Adana.513 About 450 men managed to reach a nearby
Turkish village, where the local aga, Hasan Kâhya, “was like an oasis in the
desert of the Turks” and helped them; some 350 eventually reached safety in
Cihan.514 “Thirty children” were said to have reached Guelisa
n (Gürleşen?).515
These were the survivors of Hacin’s population.516
Armenian suffering was not limited to the extremities of the French zone.
The situation on the Cilician coast in July 1920 was pithily described by a
visiting American officer: “[Mersin] closely besieged. . . . Tarsus: Closely be-
sieged and liable to fall by September 1 of starvation. . . . Alexandretta: . . .
measles and malaria prevalent.”517
In Adana there was “famine. . . . Mothers abandon their children in the
streets. The surrounding vineyards and crops have been destroyed. . . . Hungry
young men go out of the city to try, at the risk of their lives, to find a pos si ble handful of wheat. Few of them return.”518 The Turks intermittently shelled the
city and the vast refugee camps outside.519 The French fortified the towns;
beyond the trenches, the Nationalists wrought havoc. Bristol described the area
after a visit in March 1921: “The country[side] looks absolutely desolate, and
the rich fields that ordinarily would be cultivated have no sign of life.”520
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
By January 1921 the French had 80,000 troops in Syria and Cilicia, with
several companies of light tanks and four squadrons of aircraft.521 But they
knew Cilicia was lost. Syria could be held if Cilicia was abandoned. The
French were “only waiting for someone to whom they can turn it over.”522
Nonetheless, the Franco- Turkish strug gle, and minor Turkish- Armenian
clashes, continued for months. Everywhere the Nationalists carried out a
campaign of persecution, intimidation, and expulsion.523 A messenger from
Mardin who reached Mosul reported that forty boys were taken forcibly, pos-
sibly to be slaughtered, from a missionary orphanage. Girls recovered from
Muslim homes were carried off for a night from mission quarters and returned
the next day. One night, Muslims robbed the American missionary Agnes
Fenanga of her gold, which had been used to aid refugees and orphans.524
As in 1920 French efforts to supply and reinforce the garrisons met with
ambushes and, often, disaster. In many sites, Armenians were involved. Note-
worthy was the Turko- Armenian battle for Zeytun, the mountain redoubt.
Like Hacin, it was not garrisoned by the French. In early 1921 Zeytun had
about 1,500 Armenians inhabitants, survivors of the 1915 deportations.525
The houses were in ruins and many inhabitants lived in the empty barracks.
In May 1921 the Turks demanded that the Zeytunlis give up their arms and
agree to serve in labor battalions. The Zeytunlis, who knew what that meant,
refused.526 A siege ensued. The Armenians subsisted “mainly . . . [on] grass
and herbs.” About 300 el derly people, women, and children surrendered and
were shipped to Maraş. The Turks bombarded the barracks. On June 27 the
remaining Zeytunlis, mostly able- bodied men, deci ded to fight their way out.
Irregulars and soldiers gave chase. Dozens were killed. On July 3 the fighters
were cornered with their backs to the Cihan River. Many threw themselves
in. Three survived and reached Adana, where they told their tale.527 Zeytun
was left empty and in ruins. In September some 600 Armenians, mostly
women and children from surrounding villages, were deported to Maraş. Some
died during the trek.528 In early November the Turks deported the remaining
Zeytunlis from Maraş to villages around Chermoug. Many died of starvation
and typhus.529
On October 19 the French and Nationalist governments, represented by
Henry Franklin- Bouillon— designated by Rumbold “the Prince of Levantines”—
and Foreign Minister Youssouf Kemal, signed the agreement that brought
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
the Franco- Turkish war to an end.530 The accord capped the first French de-
feat in a colonial war since 1763.531 Franklin- Bouillon accurately repre-
sented the wishes of the Quai d’Orsay and the French high commissioners
in Constantinople. The accord vindicated the words of Jean Amet, the first
French high commissioner, uttered in November 1918: “the traditional
friendship for Turkey remains a pillar of French policy.”532
The agreement provided for immediate cessation of hostilities, exchange
of prisoners, and French withdrawal to a line representing the new border
between Turkey and French- ruled Syria. Contrary to the Sèvres treaty, Payas,
Dörtyol, Osmaniye, Islahiye, Antep, Urfa, and Mardin were to be on the
Turkish side. The French were awarded railroad and mining concessions, and
the Turks committed to protecting their Christian minorities.533 Secret an-
nexes provided for the sale of arms and other materiel to the Nationalists and
French support for Turkey’s territorial claims in Eastern Thrace.534
The agreement was subsequently described by a French diplomat as “un-
sound in princi ple and derogatory to the dignity and prestige of France.”535
From Beirut, the British consul general reported that General Dufieux, in pro-
test, requested to be allowed immediate retirement. In Beirut Muslims saw
the agreement as “a triumph for Islam”; there was “a more ostentatious cele-
bration” than usual of the Prophet’s birthday.536 Franklin- Bouillon told
American missionaries the truth: the French were leaving because they
feared defeat “and also for financial reasons.”537 France, he said, was
spending 500,000,000 Francs a year in Cilicia— between 1 and 2 billion
current U.S. dollars in adjusted value, depending on calculation method— and
there were “already 5,000 French graves” there. He claimed that France had
incurred these losses “in defense of the Armenians,” making it the only
Allied power to have sacrificed troops for their cause. It was therefore
“monstrous . . . to charge France with having abandoned the Armenians.”538
But that was how Armenian spokesmen saw it. They were stunned, or
pretended to be. The Armenians knew they would have to evacuate the areas
awarded to the Turks, or face “certain extermination.”539 A French intelli-
gence officer reported, “Armenian population and other Christians say they
do not trust any obligation undertaken by Turks and wish to leave the
country.”540 An American missionary wrote that Adana “is panic- stricken,
and the only business going on is securing passports.”541 Another missionary
Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists
reported, “A little Turkish girl in the Seminary told her Armenian compan-
ions that they were all going to be killed soon.” Within days of the signing of
the accord, Adana’s “wealthy and intelligent” began leaving.542 Chambers
reported that the Armenians’ trepidation was shared by the other Christian
communities and by “many Moslems . . . who have been loyal to the French
administration.”543 Christians began selling their property “at wretched
prices,” but there were few buyers.544 Muslims understood that the properties
would shortly fall into their hands like ripe plums.545
In follow-up talks with the French, the Nationalists promised that the Chris-
tians in Cilicia would enjoy “full security” and be free to decide whether to
stay or leave.546 But they made their real int
entions clear in party newspapers.
Yeni Adana, the Kemalist newspaper that appeared in Pozantı, warned, in bold
“crimson” lettering, “We hear of [Armenian] preparations . . . to emigrate.
Have patience. When we come we will have accounts to settle, after which you
may think of emigration.” Turks visiting Adana spoke openly of Der Tag— the coming “Day” of vengeance.547
Britain regarded France’s conduct as “most reprehensible.” The Cabinet
proposed an Allied- Kemalist conference in an effort to modify the accord.548
But the agreement, Rumbold wrote, had put the Nationalists in an “unyielding
and intractable frame of mind.”549 They would not be conciliatory.
On November 22, to allay Armenians’ concerns, Franklin- Bouillon and two
Nationalist officials jointly declared that “the enemies of peace”— perhaps Ar-
menian politicians or American missionaries— had initiated a campaign to
sow panic in the Armenian population.550 In other words, there was nothing
to fear. But the Turks were exultant, with a hint of menace, a missionary wrote.
Christians continued to worry about the prospect of massacre or coerced na-
tional ser vice.551
The Evacuation
The Franco- Turkish agreement ushered in the final stage of the Armenian
departure from Anatolia. In late 1918–1919, tens of thousands of deportees
had returned to Turkey. The start of the Turco- French and Turco- Armenian
hostilities in Cilicia in January 1920 sparked a reversal of the pro cess.
The Franklin Bouillon– Kemal agreement and its implementation dramati-
Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924
cally speeded up the exodus. Within months, Anatolia was emptied of
Armenians.
In spring 1920 Jackson, looking at what had just happened in Maraş, Antep,
and Urfa, concluded that the Turks aimed “to exterminate the Armenians.”552
Certainly, from 1920 on, Turkish policy was at least to finally clear the Arme-
nians out of the country. The Franco- Turkish war in southern Turkey and to a
lesser extent, the parallel Greco- Turkish war to the north and west (see
Chapter 9), acted as a major spur to, and as cover for, Armenian flight. From
