TURKISH INTERPRETATION OF AMERICA’S ATTITUDE
Of our American responsibility for the destruction of the Christians of
the Near East, I write with great hesitation and sorrow and must confine
myself to the statement of certain universally known facts.
The days and months leading up to the fearful events at Smyrna were noisy
with the Chester concession and pro-Turk propaganda. The enthusiastic
pro-Turk articles in the press of the two Chesters—father and son—are
still fresh in the public memory. Other pro-Turk and anti-Christian
writers were busy, some among them doubtless earning their daily bread.
The Turks were in funds. They had been busy picking the bones of the
Christians and had laid their hands on great sums.
The shrewd Europeanized group of Turks who inhabit Constantinople overdid
themselves in the courtesies and hospitality which they lavished on
foreign diplomats. This sort of Oriental is the most plausible and
fascinating man in the world. The educated hanum, also, is extremely
charming, and has a seductive grace that is hardly granted to her alien
sisters. If a few of them take off their veils and show their lovely
faces in Constantinople, they have little difficulty in persuading
diplomats that they are emancipated and that polygamy is a thing of the
past among Mohammedans; that the Greeks burned Smyrna, that a million and
a half Christians practically committed suicide and were not actually
massacred, or anything else they wish.
What can one do but believe when he is taken back to the days of
Haroun-al-Raschid, and floats off to a palace perfumed with roses of
Cashmere on an enchanted carpet?
Our representative at Constantinople, Admiral Mark L. Bristol, is an
extremely attractive personality: honest, brave, generous, with frank
and winning manners. By the sheer magnetism of his genial and engaging
character he gathers about himself, wherever he is, a school of admirers
and disciples who ardently defend the admiral and everything that he
thinks and does.
The naval officers who came to Smyrna at the Consulate’s request were
typical of the American naval officer in general, high-type intelligent
gentlemen, of an efficiency that may be described as well-nigh perfect.
They were under certain orders at Smyrna which it was incumbent upon
them to carry out. They accomplished all their duties there thoroughly
and correctly and performed prodigies after the fire in saving refugees.
I was somewhat puzzled, however, when an American lady at Smyrna informed
me that one of the officers had told her that he was “pro-Turk.” Another,
a commander, made the same remark at Athens, at luncheon, during one of
the trips which the destroyers were making back and forth between that
city and Smyrna.
While stopping at the Army and Navy Club in Washington in 1922, I asked
a naval officer of high rank if it was true that he was pro-Turk, and he
replied:
“Yes, I am, because I was brought up as a boy to the belief
that the Turks were always chasing Greeks and Armenians around
with a knife. Well, I have been over there to Constantinople
several times and I have never seen anything of the kind, so I
have come to the conclusion that it is all buncombe.”
This is all right. Every man is entitled to his opinions, no matter on
what evidence or process of reasoning founded. My surprise was due to the
fact that I had thought that the officers who came to Smyrna were under
orders to be neutral.
I was sitting in the ward room of one of our destroyers moored in the
harbor of Smyrna. At a moment when the massacre had begun to assume
alarming proportions, a newspaper correspondent, a passenger on the same
naval unit, entered the room, opened his typewriter and began to write.
When he had finished about half a page, he read it carefully, took it
out of the machine, and said: “I can’t send this stuff. It’ll queer me
at Constantinople. I must get busy on Greek atrocities.” I have often
wondered what he meant. I was sitting quite close to him and heard him
very distinctly.
Let us briefly review the situation which enabled the Turks in the year
of our Lord, 1922, to complete the extinction of Christianity in the
Near East: The Germans were, as long as they lasted, the active allies
of the Turks, and during this period nearly a million Armenians and many
thousands of Greeks perished; after the Armistice and during the period
which led up to the destruction of Smyrna and the accompanying massacre,
the French and Italians were allies of the Turk, and furnished him
moral and material support; the British gave no aid to the Greeks, but
contented themselves with publishing an account of the dreadful events
that had been taking place in the Ottoman Empire; the Americans gained
the reputation of being pro-Turk, true friends, who would ultimately, on
account of this friendship, be given the permission to put through great
schemes which would result in the development of the Ottoman Empire and,
incidentally, fill certain American pocketbooks. The Turks confidently
believed that commercial avarice would prevent us from interfering with
their savagery, or even strongly condemning it.
Never in the world had the Turk so good an opportunity to glut his lust
for Christian blood without fear of interference or criticism.
The first Lausanne Conference closed, after reaching no agreement, on
February 7, 1923, and the second opened on April twenty-third of the same
year. On April tenth, still of the same year, the National Assembly at
Angora ratified the Chester Concession. As the terms of this concession
conflicted sharply with British and French interests, the date of its
ratification is highly suggestive.
This concession is dead now, and there was never enough in it to cause a
serious row between the United States and any European power. The State
Department has denied the official support of this scheme and must be
believed. This, however, has not prevented a general conviction in Turkey
that it was a project under the especial protection of the American
Government. Such a belief is very easy to create in Turkey, where even
the Mission Schools are popularly supposed to be government institutions.
At any rate, it is not probable that great sums of American capital will
flow into Turkey under present conditions. Whatever public sentiment
may be, or whatever apathy may exist as to the fate of some millions of
our fellow creatures, who howl annoyingly when they are massacred or if
their families are torn apart, or if they are robbed of homes, capital is
cautious; it does not believe in railroads built in a country of ruined
cities, nor does it connect massacre with prosperity and progress.
And in all this tangle of conflicting interests, during which the
Turk continued massacring, the thoughtful observer is impressed with
one thing—the clearness of John Bull’s vision and the directness and
tenacity of his purpose; he knew what he wanted and he took it. There are
copious oil wells at Maidan i Naftun, from which the oil is piped down
to Mukamra, not far from Basra, on the Persian Gulf, where the British
landed early in the war. There are rich oil fields at Mousul. General
Townsend was on his way there when the Turks stopped him at Kut el Mara,
but that did not stop Cousin John. He is at Mousul now and the Turks
would have liked to give Mousul to Admiral Chester and the others. No
wonder the State Department says that it kept out of that.