Clandestine Operations Ë 167
Fig. 6.7.From left: Alikhan Kantemir, Khalil bey Khasmammadov, and Haidar Bammat, Istanbul,
1938.
so on 10 August Turkey was obliged to le a protest to the Japanese ambassador
in Ankara. As a consequence, Bammat, Kantemir and their supporters were expelled
from Turkey.¹⁶²Many of them settled in Berlin for the time being, while Bammat found
residence in Switzerland. Their expulsion in turn eliminated the suspicion of some
émigré Armenians toward the Bammat group (which Armenians suspected of being
pro-Turkish). Consequently, a small Armenian group joined the Caucasus group in
1939.¹⁶³
In France, as in Turkey, Moscow made every eort to suppress émigré political
activity. “The importance which Stalin attached to the activities of the Georgian émi-
grés,” as one historian has noted, was “displayed in 1938, when the Soviet embassy in
Paris brought eectual pressure to bear on a pusillanimous French government to ban
162 See top-secret Soviet references on Bammat and Kantemir in RGASPI, f. 82, op. 2, d. 1090, ll.
138–41, and the particularly illuminating report, dated 15 August 1938, by Captain Leleu of the French
military attaché’s o ce in Istanbul: Service historique de l’armeé de Terre (Château de Vincennes), Se-
ries 7 N-3227. Leleu correctly pointed out that Turkey also feared losing hegemony among the Muslims
in Eurasia.
163 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 226.