Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/172

 XV

THE ORTHODOX SCHISM IN ANATOLIA

KEMAL FALLS TO THE STATUS OF A "BANDIT"—TURKISH NATIONALISM BEGINS TO RE-MOBILIZE AND RE-EQUIP ITS FORCES—THE ERZERUM PROGRAM AND THE NATIONALIST VICTORY IN THE OTTOMAN ELECTIONS—HOW PAPA EFTIM EFFENDI BROKE WITH THE OECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE—THE TURKISH ORTHODOX CHURCH—PAPA EFTIM HIMSELF.

Mr. Lloyd George had announced his program at Smyrna. He proposed to build a new Near East on the basis of its Christian minorities, confronting Soviet Russia with a Greek fait accompli across the Straits on a parity with the American mandate in Trans-Caucasia and the eastern provinces, the British Persia and the Afghan-Bokharan business with which it was proposed to confront it elsewhere. As for Islam, he would impose alone upon it that fate which the British Foreign Office and Czarist Russia had agreed in 1907 to impose together.

The reply to this program was Turkish Nationalism. Rid of the burden of the old Empire, freed of sole responsibility for the Caliphate, Mustapha Kemal Pasha proposed to break the religious deadlock in which the Turks had threshed themselves to