Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/157

 XIV

SMYRNA, 1919

KEMAL RETURNS TO CONSTANTINOPLE—TURKISH CONFUSION IN THE CAPITAL—THE TURKS ASK FOR AN AMERICAN MANDATE—HOW KEMAL AND RAUF BEY LEFT FOR SAMSUN AND SMYRNA, RESPECTIVELY—THE GREEK PONTUS PROGRAM—THE GREEK OCCUPATION OF SMYRNA—THE TURKS GO BACK TO WAR.

General Allenby's great break-through in Palestine had thrown Mustapha Kemal Pasha back to Adana in Cilicia, where a cypher telegram from Constantinople told him that Rauf Bey was on his way to Mudros to sign an armistice with the British. It was the end of the world for Kemal.

He returned to the capital to find an Anglo-French command quartered in Pera and the entire Constantinople area under effective military occupation. None of the twenty-five clauses of the Mudros armistice seems to have authorized such an occupation. The only mention of Constantinople which occurred in the armistice was a stipulation in clause 4 that Allied prisoners of war and interned Armenians were "to be collected in Constantinople and handed over unconditionally to the Allies." Allied "use of all ship repair facilities at all Turkish ports and arsenals" was provided in clause 9