Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/201

 had withdrawn to Bozanti, a town at the top of the Taurus Range. The French front extended from the Taurus east to the Mosul province, but it was in Cilicia that the weight of the French occupation made itself chiefly felt. The Armenians revenged the undoubted wrongs which they had suffered under the Ottoman Sultans in drastic fashion and there were streets even in Adana itself in which it was not safe for a Turk to show himself after dark. The Turkish towns outside the rim of the French area, possibly inflamed by the tales of Turkish refugees from Adana, soon launched a guerilla warfare against the Franco-Armenian regular troops and began isolating out-lying garrisons. Much of this was directed by the Turkish ex-administration at Bozanti, but it was carried on largely by Turkish irregulars with any following which they could impress into service.

As for the Greek front behind Smyrna, the first defense which was used was that of the Circassian bandit leader, Edhem, but the Greek command soon won him over and made a considerable hero of him. This left Kemal, Fevzi and Rafet Pashas without defense and the skeleton Third Army which was hastily transferred from Amasia, covering Samsun, to the Smyrna front was too depleted in strength to offer effective resistance. Nuri Ismet Pasha, a slight deaf man but an able pupil of von der Goltz and the Potsdam War College, was given command on the Smyrna front and the hasty extemporization of munition factories began at Konia in his rear. Until his forces should be built up to an effective strength, however, he restricted himself to keeping in touch with the Greeks, and