Midnight at the Pera Palace_The Birth of Modern Istanbul

by Charles King

  British diplomats tried desperately to salvage what remained of the Sèvres treaty, but the Allies were by now largely spectators to the unfolding violence. The cost of continued occupation was outstripping any strategic benefits. By the summer of 1921, the Italians made a separate deal with the Turkish nationalists and removed their troops from Anatolia. The French followed suit in October. Late the next summer, Turkish nationalists began an offensive against the remaining Hellenic positions, with the spearhead of the advance pointed toward the key redoubt of Smyrna, the city from which Greece had launched its bid for dominance three years earlier. The two forces were roughly equal in size—some 225,000 Hellenic troops against 208,000 Turks—but Hellenic emplacements were stretched across virtually the breadth of Anatolia, with nothing behind them but the sea.

  Hellenic military detachments fled toward the coast. They left behind rubble-strewn villages, burned croplands, and toppled minarets. “The atrocities perpetrated by the Greeks, since they landed in Smyrna, exceed all similar crimes recorded up to now in the annals of history,” declared a Turkish report. “There is not the slightest doubt that the savageries committed by the Greeks of Greece and by that section of the indigenous Greeks, who sided with them, have been deliberately planned and carried out under orders proceeding from the Commanders of the various Greek military units.”

  It took only days for the Turkish troops to reach Smyrna. On September 9, 1922, Turkish nationalists marched into the city and began pushing out the last remnants of the foreign army. Local Greek Orthodox Christians, fearing reprisals from the nationalists as well as from their Muslim neighbors, rushed to join the Hellenic soldiers in retreat. Refugees crowded the docklands. Mobs ruled the streets. The Greek archbishop was lynched by a Muslim crowd whipped up by the Turkish commander in the city. A fire broke out in the Armenian section of Smyrna and roared through other neighborhoods, turning the sea the color of burnished copper and pushing even more people toward the waterfront. In the panic and disorder, thousands died before Hellenic and Allied ships arrived to ferry the survivors to the Greek mainland. Some 213,000 people, mainly Greek Orthodox and Armenian families who had lived in Smyrna for countless generations, left it for good. Three-quarters of the city was in ruins.

  As news of the Smyrna catastrophe reached Istanbul, locals and Allies worried that it might well turn out to be a dress rehearsal for what could happen in the old capital: a Turkish nationalist attack followed by the chaotic emptying of the city’s minorities and a dash for the door by the Allies. “Foreigners are nervous . . . remembering the fate of Smyrna,” Ernest Hemingway reported from the scene, “and have booked outgoing trains for the weeks ahead.” Processions of Turkish Muslims marched through the streets shouting, “Down with the English.” Portraits of Mustafa Kemal appeared in Muslim-majority districts throughout the city. Gone were the Hellenic flags and blue-and-white streamers that had once adorned the storefronts of Greek-owned businesses. “A fear of the future sits heavily upon these poor people now,” a British lieutenant wrote in a letter home. “What will become of them when we leave?”

  A year before the fall of Smyrna, Allied generals had issued a directive in Istanbul reminding Turkish soldiers that they were required to salute uniformed officers of the Allied contingent. A special commission had been created to study the problem of whether an Allied officer was required to salute back. Now, power had clearly shifted to the Turkish side. General Harington, the British commander, was reduced to issuing more and more strident—and less and less effective—declarations to Istanbul’s civilian population. Possible death sentences were authorized for people found guilty of illegal possession of firearms, firing on Allied troops, destruction of telephone or telegraph lines, receiving stolen Allied goods, or “any other act or thing inimical to the interests or safety of the Allied Troops.” Few people believed the sentences could be carried out.

  The British, as the lead partner in the dwindling Allied force, faced a common dilemma among occupiers. Their friendliest local partner—the sultan—was the least legitimate among the native population, while the most legitimate—the Kemalists—were making plans to march on Istanbul and send the occupiers running. Mehmed VI was weak and unpopular, as were the remaining ministers and advisers around him. Their acceptance of the Hellenic occupation of Smyrna and the Treaty of Sèvres had diminished the prestige of the old regime and made the Ottoman establishment even less credible as a future government for post-occupation Istanbul. The Allied powers had painted themselves into a corner.

  Before the Smyrna offensive, Istanbul had been the only place in Turkey where troops still loyal to the Ottoman government outnumbered the nationalists: 1,200 Ottoman troops against 1,000 Kemalists. Over the coming months, however, that balance shifted dramatically in favor of Mustafa Kemal. In late September 1922, fresh from the fighting in Smyrna, Turkish nationalist forces entered a neutral zone that the Allies had established along the Straits. British and nationalist troops squared off across their own entrenched positions, exchanging potshots that threatened to destroy the armistice, which by now had dragged on for nearly four years. “I know somebody will let his rifle off cleaning it, and then there will be another European war!!!” wrote Billy Fox-Pitt, an officer in the Welsh Guards, from the trenches.

  The British government was inclined to stand up to the nationalists and ordered General Harington to prepare to fight, but Harington astutely ignored his direct orders. He proceeded with plans to meet Turkish negotiators at Mudanya, a small town on the Sea of Marmara, to draft a new agreement that would take into account the radically changed military situation. “No humbler setting could have been chosen for the negotiations of an agreement upon which depended the issue of peace or war between the Allied Powers and the Turkish Nationalists,” wrote G. Ward Price, the Daily Mail correspondent who covered the talks. The British delegation arrived in force on the flagship Iron Duke. The Turks were led by smet, the hero of the earlier battles of nönü against the Hellenes. smet had emerged as one of the key military leaders under Mustafa Kemal and now held the rank of pasha, or senior general. In driving rain and high winds, on October 11, 1922, Harington and smet Pasha crafted an accord that, in a roundabout way, saved Istanbul from destruction.

  The Mudanya document governed the evacuation of Hellenic troops from eastern Thrace and their replacement by soldiers of the Grand National Assembly, essentially providing a way for Turkish troops to surround Istanbul on all sides in an orderly and peaceful manner. Mudanya in 1922 was in many ways the bookend to Mudros in 1918—the moment when the political and military advantage shifted from the Allies to the Turks, with the latter now in a much stronger position to influence the terms of a final peace. In a city that had seen rather few real heroes for some time, the levelheadedness of Harington and smet prevented Istanbul from repeating the horrors of Smyrna. The Sèvres treaty—signed but never implemented—was now dead, and a new set of concerns began to occupy both Harington in Istanbul and Allied diplomats farther afield: how to end the occupation and turn over control of the city to the de facto rulers, the Kemalists, who had marched steadily westward out of Anatolia over the previous three years. Almost as soon as he left Mudanya and returned to Istanbul, Harington was faced with a direct challenge to the embattled ruler he had been trying to prop up: the Ottoman sultan.

  General Charles Harington—or Tim, as he was known—was a professional soldier of cool judgment and, like his predecessor, General Milne, of considerable experience. But where Milne had the distinction of superintending the Ottoman capital on behalf of Britain and the Allies, Harington’s role was to figure out how to give it up.

  Harington appeared at official functions in Sam Browne belt and beribboned tunic, the image of duty and resolve with his swagger stick and pencil mustache. Trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, he had served in the King’s Regiment during the Boer War. After the First World War, he was personally appointed by Winston Churchill, then Britain’s secretary of state for
war, to manage the delicate situation in Istanbul. To foreigners and non-Muslims in the city, he had a reputation for keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of rapid change and near-miss calamities.

  “Life went on gaily, especially at night,” Harington recalled in his memoirs. Ceremonial parades featured infantry march-pasts and gun salutes from ships on the Bosphorus. The British drank to the health of King George V on his birthday and held seven-a-side rugby matches on weekends. “There was something for everyone: hunting, polo, shooting, fishing, yachting, golf, cricket, hockey, tennis, squash, etc., a good club and good cafes.” The hounds ran at Maslak, in the European suburbs, chasing any animal worthy of sport. A small bear, Mishu, had been liberated by British soldiers from the Caucasus mountains and entertained the troops with acrobatics. When officers helped him down a glass of port at Christmas, Mishu attempted to walk along a railing at the edge of the Bosphorus and promptly toppled into the water. He was rescued by fishermen stunned at the odd catch they had drawn up from the swift current.

  But the Allied occupiers, as well as the sultan, were living on borrowed time. “[T]he main preoccupation of the Allied Governments,” reported G. Ward Price, “was to withdraw their troops from Turkey with the minimum of humiliation.” The indecision regarding the final status of Istanbul and the empire, coupled with the devastating terms finally forced on the sultan’s government at Sèvres, had contributed to the disorder in Anatolia. Britain’s support had emboldened King Constantine and sealed the fate of Smyrna.

  The Turkish nationalist government was in a stronger position than ever, with both the control of territory and the demonstrated military power to press its advantage. Turkish soldiers were encamped east and west of Istanbul, with Allied naval power the only obstacle to their taking the city by force. In Ankara, the Grand National Assembly was increasingly assertive, acting like the confident governing parliament of a real country, even if no major power accepted it as such. The assembly retroactively declared that Istanbul had ceased to be the capital from the moment the Allies took control of it. On November 4, 1922, Refet Pasha, a representative of the Grand National Assembly, arrived in Istanbul with the news that he would be assuming control of the city’s gendarmerie and police, customs houses, public sanitation, and other municipal functions. Allied officials expressed frustration at the rapid erosion of their authority, but they remained powerless to stop it as long as the city was surrounded by thousands of Turkish troops whose presence was protected by the Mudanya accord. “Measures now being taken by Nationalists simply aim at gradual extraction of our means of control at every turn and reducing of our occupation to a farce,” a British official cabled to London.

  That was precisely what Refet Pasha, acting on behalf of Mustafa Kemal, had in mind. “It certainly came as a surprise to us when we realised we were passing through a revolution,” said Harington. Later in the month, the Ankara government began the fundamental reorganization of the state itself. The sultan had acquiesced to the occupation, signed a paper treaty that would have apportioned his lands to Greece and the Allies, and watched helplessly as the nationalists took the lead in pushing back the Hellenic invaders. The monarchy was now formally abolished. The emerging country was to be a republic.

  This news was a particular problem for Mehmed VI, who remained ensconced in Yıldız Palace. On November 16, 1922, almost four years to the day after Allied troops first stepped ashore, General Harington received a visit from the chief bandmaster of the sultan’s household. Harington knew that the maestro was more than a court musician. He was in fact the sultan’s most trusted confidant, and he carried startling news. Given the Grand National Assembly’s recent declaration ending the monarchy, the sultan was convinced that his life was in danger and that plans were afoot to murder him during the next selâmlık. The Kemalists had done away with the sultanate; now he feared they were preparing to do away with the sultan, too.

  Harington realized that the story, if true, would mark a turning point not only in the occupation but also in the history of the Ottoman Empire. He insisted on having the request in writing. Some time later the bandmaster returned with a note. “Considering my life in danger in Constantinople,” Mehmed wrote, “I take refuge with the British Government, and request my transfer as soon as possible from Constantinople to another place.” Harington and his senior officers were on the brink of achieving something that no foreign power in five centuries had dreamed possible: They were going to kidnap—at the monarch’s own request—the head of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of the world’s Muslims. Working with a small group of commanders, Harington devised a daring scheme to spirit Mehmed away from the city.

  On Friday morning, November 17, the general rose at four o’clock and downed a breakfast of bacon and eggs. The late autumn rains had already descended on Istanbul, so the officers and men of the Grenadier Guards grumbled when Harington informed them that they would be conducting a predawn drill in the barracks yard near Yıldız Palace. Around six o’clock, the sultan, his son, and a small group of servants took an early morning walk in the garden. When they reached the section of the garden adjacent to the barracks yard, the servants threw open the back gate, exposing the garden to the drilling guardsmen.

  A select group of British soldiers who had been briefed on the mission quickly bundled the sultan and his retinue into two waiting ambulances, which accelerated out of the parade ground. A nest of machine gunners covered the departure, while the rest of the surprised Grenadiers stood at attention. The ambulances raced down the hill toward Dolmabahçe Palace and pulled up at the quay. A small British naval detachment, supposedly on an early morning drill, sat waiting.

  The sultan was transferred to the boats and then to the dockyards farther down the Bosphorus, where Harington stood waiting in his personal launch. From there, Mehmed joined the British commander for his last crossing of the Bosphorus, a short ride to the British battleship Malaya, and a long sea journey toward voluntary exile. Harington had hoped the sultan would give him a small token to commemorate the event—a cigarette case, perhaps—but Mehmed instead entrusted him with looking after his five wives, whom he had left at the palace. For some time thereafter, Harington acted as a messenger between the sultan and his family. They were eventually reunited in a haven for ousted monarchs and erstwhile nobles, San Remo on the Italian Riviera.

  Later that day, thousands of people came out as usual for the selâmlık and waited patiently for the sultan’s carriage to appear. Hours went by, and the crowds eventually dispersed, left to wonder why the ruler had skipped the Friday service. The story of what had really happened soon spread through the city. The sultan had abandoned Istanbul and the empire. A few days later, the Grand National Assembly named the crown prince, Mehmed’s cousin Abdülmecid, as caliph but without the additional title of sultan. The roles of universal Islamic leader and imperial ruler were now separated for the first time in centuries. The dynasty of the House of Osman, which had governed an empire for more than six hundred years and had commanded Istanbul for four hundred sixty-nine, was no more. The sultan himself had become a refugee.

  MOSCOW ON THE BOSPHORUS

  Floor show: Two young women, probably Russians, working as dancers in an Istanbul club.

  GENERAL CHARLES HARINGTON HAD ARRIVED in Istanbul at what would turn out to be a decisive moment in the fading history of the Ottoman Empire. His tenure had begun with the Kemalist advance westward, and he was on hand both to witness the fall of Smyrna and to spirit away the last Ottoman sultan. At the time, however, it was hard to see these events as part of a single grand narrative of imperial collapse and national revolution. Harington was troubled by a more immediate set of concerns.

  The fact that would have most impressed anyone living in Istanbul at the time was that it was a city teeming with refugees, military deserters, and out-of-work state employees. Some had been there since the early weeks of the First World War. Others had arrived after fighting flared between Hellenic troops and Turkish nationa
lists. Despite the Unionists’ deportation of Armenian community leaders and intellectuals several years earlier, the influx of Armenian refugees fleeing the warfare in Anatolia meant there soon would be more Armenians in Istanbul than in all the rest of Turkey. They now shared space with displaced Muslims—more than 400,000 in Istanbul and western Anatolia combined—who had arrived from Greece and the Balkans since 1912.

  Caring for many of these people naturally fell to the Allies, the only officials capable of wrangling adequate food, clothing, and medical care. The Allies had agreed that the French forces would be responsible for dealing with refugee issues, but the problem was so great that other countries quickly joined in. The US Navy set up a canteen in the yard of Sirkeci station, with open-air ovens and boilers turning out bread and hot cocoa. Members of Britain’s Hampshire Regiment gave up their personal rations, including locally requisitioned milk that was needed for thousands of refugee children. Private charities ramped up their efforts. Within weeks of his arrival, Harington organized his own program for housing and feeding multitudes, even devising a ticket system to sort out the massive numbers seeking assistance. Colored chits were issued that corresponded to colored tubs from which families could retrieve soup and other meals. By the end of 1920, Allied soup kitchens were feeding 165,000 people a day, nearly a fifth of Istanbul’s prewar population.