Page:The Rebirth Of Turkey 1923.pdf/225

 aegis, they had taken a drastic revenge on the Turks in Cilicia and there was doubtless ample ground for their fears that the Turks would continue the ugly business. In order to assuage their fears, the Turkish Government proclaimed a blanket amnesty, exempted them from military service which it had a legal right to claim from them, exempted them from the forty percent requisitions which it exacted from all other Turkish subjects in the country, and guaranteed their security in the strongest terms it could use. To back up these guarantees, it dispatched two of the best men it had available, Muheddin Pasha as military governor of the re-occupied territory and Hamid Bey, who has been mentioned above in connection with Samsun, as political officer. Muheddin Pasha is a representative of the finest type of old Ottoman Army officer. He was one of Mustapha Kemal Pasha's teachers in the War Academy at Constantinople and he has been introduced by Kemal Pasha as "the man who gave us all our ideas of liberty." He had nothing to do with the Armenian deportations of 1915 or with the Enver Government which ordered them; under the Hamidian regime, he had been exiled four times and twice condemned to death, and during the war he served as Ottoman commander in the Yemen which was about as far from the capital as Enver Pasha could have sent him.

The Turkish re-occupation was timed to begin Dec. 1, 1921, and to be completed by Jan. 4, 1922. On November 20, Muheddin Pasha and Hamid Bey published a proclamation in the Turkish newspaper, Yeni Adana, which was designed to assuage the Armenians' fears. On November 22, they met a