Turkey: Phoenix from the Ashes • 225Many Armenians resisted deportation from their ancestral farms and pas¬
tures, villages and towns, so the Ottoman army allowed local Turkish and
Kurdish brigands to loot and kill them. Only the hardiest and luckiest es¬
caped. Even Armenians in southwestern Anatolia and Constantinople, far
from Russia, were uprooted. About a million Armenians died. The sur¬
vivors, having lost all that they had, were bitter and vengeful. Those living
east of the lands under Turkish control formed an independent Republic
of Armenia in 1918. Some hoped to enlarge this state and put it under a
US mandate. The American public was strongly pro-Armenian and anti-
Turkish at the time, but later the US government refused any direct re¬
sponsibility for rehabilitating what we now call eastern Turkey. Part of
Armenia was absorbed by Turkey in 1920; the rest became a Soviet repub¬
lic. The Armenians, generally pro-Turkish up to World War I, became
Turkey's most implacable foes.
Turkey had other problems. Massive conscription and prolonged fight¬
ing had deprived many areas of the country of their young men. Farms
and villages fell into neglect, and weeds choked once-fertile fields. Whole
forests had been cut down to fuel the trains and run the factories when
coal grew scarce. Demoralized by defeats, disease, arrears in pay, and poor
food, many of the soldiers deserted their units and roamed the country¬
side as armed brigands. British Empire troops, aided by the Arab Revolt,
had driven the Ottomans from the Fertile Crescent. Meanwhile, in the last
year of the war, the Young Turk triumvirs, Enver, Talat, and Jemal, sent
troops deep into the Caucasus. They hoped to build a new Turanian em¬
pire among the Muslims of what had been czarist Russia, now torn by civil
war between the Whites (anticommunists) and the Reds (Bolsheviks).
One of the ironies of World War I is that Germany and the Ottoman Em¬
pire surrendered while some of their troops still occupied foreign lands.
Challenges to the Nationalists
The Mudros Armistice terminated the Young Turk regime; Enver, Talat,
and Jemal fled from Istanbul on a German warship just before the British
and the French occupied the Straits. So anxious was the Ottoman sultan to
keep his power that he aligned himself totally with the Western powers
and was ready to do whatever they demanded. Soon his brother-in-law,
Damad Ferid, took over the government, started dismantling the Ottoman
army, and tried to pacify the country. French troops entered the area of
southern Anatolia known as Cilicia (authorized by the Sykes-Picot Agree¬
ment), while the Italians laid claim to Antalya, in the southwest. Although