TALAAT PASHA, EX-GRAND VIZIER OF TURKEY
In 1914, when the war broke out, Talaat was Minister of the Interior and the most influential leader in the Committee of Union and Progress, the secret organization which controlled the Turkish Empire. A few years ago Talaat was a letter-carrier, and afterward a telegraph operator in Adrianople. His talents are those of a great political boss. He represented Turkey in the peace negotiations with Russia and his signature appears on the Brest-Litovsk treaty.
TURKISH INFANTRY AND CAVALRY
In January, 1914, the Turkish Army was a ragged, undisciplined force. These troops, drilled by German military instructors, show the result of six months’ training.
Asia Minor, inevitably the Greeks in this region formed a barrier to Pan-German aspirations. As long as this region remained Greek, it formed a natural obstacle to Germany’s road to the Persian Gulf, precisely as did Serbia. Any one who has read even cursorily the literature of Pan-Germania is familiar with the peculiar method which German publicists have advocated for dealing with populations that stand in Germany’s way. That is by deportation. The violent shifting of whole peoples from one part of Europe to another, as though they were so many herds of cattle, has for years been part of the Kaiser’s plans for German expansion. This is the treatment which, since the war began, she has applied to Belgium, to Poland, to Serbia; its most hideous manifestation, as I shall show, has been to Armenia. Acting under Germany’s prompting, Turkey now began to apply this principle of deportation to her Greek subjects in Asia Minor. Three years afterward the German admiral, Usedom, who had been stationed in the Dardanelles during the bombardment, told me that it was the Germans “who urgently made the suggestion that the Greeks be moved from the seashore.” The German motive, Admiral Usedom said, was purely military. Whether Talaat and his associates realized that they were playing the German game I am not sure, but there is no doubt that the Germans were constantly instigating them in this congenial task.
The events that followed foreshadowed the policy adopted in the Armenian massacres. The Turkish officials pounced upon the Greeks, herded them in groups and marched them toward the ships. They gave them no time to settle their private affairs, and they took no pains to keep families together. The plan was to transport the Greeks to the wholly Greek islands in the Ægean. Naturally the Greeks rebelled against such treatment, and occasional massacres were the result, especially in Phocaea, where more than fifty people were murdered. The Turks demanded that all foreign establishments in Smyrna dismiss their Greek employees and replace them with Moslems. Among other American concerns, the Singer Manufacturing Company received such instructions, and though I interceded and obtained sixty days’ delay, ultimately this American concern had to obey the mandate. An official boycott was established against all Christians, not only in Asia Minor, but in Constantinople, but this boycott did not discriminate against the Jews, who have always been more popular with the Turks than have the Christians. The officials particularly requested Jewish merchants to put signs over their doors indicating their nationality and trade—such signs as “Abraham the Jew, tailor,” “Isaac the Jew, shoemaker,” and the like. I looked upon this boycott as illustrating the topsy-turvy national organization of Turkey, for here we had a nation engaging in a commercial boycott against its own subjects.
This procedure against the Greeks not improperly aroused my indignation. I did not have the slightest suspicion at that time that the Germans had instigated these deportations, but I looked upon them merely as an outburst of Turkish ferocity and chauvinism. By this time I knew Talaat well; I saw him nearly every day, and he used to discuss practically every phase of international relations with me. I objected vigorously to his treatment of the Greeks; I told him that it would make the worst possible impression abroad and that it affected American interests. Talaat explained his national policy: these different blocs in the Turkish Empire, he said, had always conspired against Turkey; because of the hostility of these native populations, Turkey had lost province after province—Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Tripoli. In this way the Turkish Empire had dwindled almost to the vanishing point. If what was left of Turkey was to survive, added Talaat, he must get rid of these alien peoples. “Turkey for the Turks” was now Talaat’s controlling idea. Therefore he proposed to Turkify Smyrna and the adjoining islands. Already 40,000 Greeks had left, and he asked me again to urge American business houses to employ only Turks. He said that the accounts of violence and murder had been greatly exaggerated and suggested that a commission be sent to investigate. “They want a commission to whitewash Turkey,” Sir Louis Mallet, the British Ambassador, told me. True enough, when this commission did bring in its report, it exculpated Turkey.
The Greeks in Turkey had one great advantage over the Armenians, for there was such a thing as a Greek government, which naturally has a protecting interest in them. The Turks knew that these deportations would precipitate a war with Greece; in fact, they welcomed such a war and were preparing for it. So enthusiastic were the Turkish people that they had raised money by popular subscription and had purchased a Brazilian dreadnaught which was then under construction in England. The government had ordered also a second dreadnaught in England, and several submarines and destroyers in France. The purpose of these naval preparations was no secret in Constantinople. As soon as they obtained these ships, or even the one dreadnaught which was nearing completion, Turkey intended to attack Greece and take back the islands. A single modern battleship like the Sultan Osman—this was the name the Turks had given the Brazilian vessel—could easily overpower the whole Greek navy and control the Ægean Sea. As this powerful vessel would be finished and commissioned in a few months, we all expected the Greco-Turkish war to break out in the fall. What could the Greek navy possibly do against this impending danger?