Turks Violate Treaty For over one hundred and fifty years, following the Treaty of 1514 between Turkey and the Kurdish States, the Kurds faithfully fulfilled their obligation to Turkey. They took part in all the wars of Turkey--wars of offense and defense--and sacrificed tens of thousands of lives. But the Turks, as usual, failed to keep faith. Plunder and enslavement have always been the mainspring of Turkish actions, and intrigue and the scimitar the instruments of their rule. No sooner was Sultan Suleyman beaten back at the gates of Vienna in 1683 than he set himself to a campaign of intrigue and treachery in the Kurdish States, designed to stir hate and disunion among them. Without apparently interfering with their independence, Suleyman arbitrarily designated a Governor General, who was to make his headquarters at Diarbekir, and was to be the intermediary between the Kurdish States and Constantinople. Thereafter, the policy of "Divide and Conquer" was followed with its usual success. Gradually, but surely, the Turkish invader, equipped with an inexhaustible supply of pretexts, seized the Kurdish States, and made them into Provinces. By the middle of the nineteenth century, during the rule of Abd-ul-Medjid, the Turk had annexed to his dominion almost all of the Kurdish lands, allowing the tribal chiefs only a mere nominal autonomy. In 1847, Prince Bedr Khan, ruler of Djezireh, the strongest remaining Kurdish State, was challenged by the Turkish Sultan to a test of authority. The Turkish armies, numbering over 100,000 men, suffered disastrous defeats at the hands of Bedr Khan; but Bedr Khan succumbed to the treachery of his own cousin, and the last remaining seat of Kurdish independence fell to the Turks. Since that time the Kurdish people, without a shepherd, and broken into many and irreconcilable factions, have been persecuted and bruised, and subjected to a thousand wrongs at the hands of the Turk. (16) Before the World War, religion was the common denominator of the nationality and nationalism in Turkey. To the Turk, there were only Moslems and Infidels. The Turk called himself "Moslem," not "Turk." He was the ruling race, and any race which enjoyed, with the Turk, the common patronymic" of Moslem was marked off from the rest of the people and enjoyed certain exclusive privileges, and performed certain duties, which were neither granted to nor imposed upon the others. The Turk carried arms. His main concern was to hold in check and exploit the conquered races, particularly the non-Moslem. He reserved to himself the task of soldiering. The "infidel" was not allowed to carry arms, and he was exempted from military service in consideration of a nominal head tax. The Kurd, however, shared the rights and duties of the Moslem Turk and also many of his limitations and his weaknesses. The constant and ever increasing exactions of military service depleted the Kurd's manpower; made of the woman an animal of burden; hindered and smothered the productive effort of the Kurd; demoralized and degraded his cultural life, and dragged him down to the low level of the Turk. (17) Throughout this process of suppression and oppression to which the Kurd was subjected in common even with the Turk, he, unlike the Christian, had neither the right nor the opportunity to complain of his lot, either to the Government, which was nominally at least his own, or to the world. His lot was in fact even more cruel than that of the Turk because the Turkish ruler used him as his agent against the Armenian, 18 and as the agent he had to bear the greater part of the indignation and the contumely aroused throughout the world by this savage course, perpetrated at the instigation of an for the benefit of the Turk. It was primarily the Kurd who was denounced before civilization as a marauder and murderer. Following the Armenian massacres of 1894-96, under the inspiration of Abd-ul-Hamid, a group of Kurdish leaders came at last to a realization of the disastrous effects of misguided religious fervor upon their people, as well as of the folly and the infamy of the Turk's Pan-Islamic policy. These Kurdish leaders felt that if the Kurds should continue much longer to serve as a pawn and an instrument in the hands of a mad and unscrupulous ruler, they would not only forfeit forever the right to appeal to the conscience of mankind, the civilized world, but that the Kurdish people, even as the Turks, would seal the doom of their existence. A short time before the advent of the Young Turks in 1908, Kurdish leaders started a movement looking toward the disentanglement of Kurdish life from that of the Turk, and the restoration of the cultural and national ideals and independence of the Kurdish people. Young Turks' Kurdish Policy In 1907, the edifice of the Turkish State was tottering. A few gallicized Turks, who called themselves "Young Turks," and who had found refuge in Europe, appealed to Armenians, Kurds, Greeks and Macedonians, to make common cause in an effort to overthrow the Hamidian tyranny, and to set up a constitutional regime founded upon the principles of equality fraternity and liberty. In the historic Congress of Paris in 1907, a pact was made between the Young turks and the leaders of the oppressed nationalities in turkey to realize the high aims professed by the Young Turks. The uprising of Salonika, in July 1908, was the outcome of the common efforts of the representatives of these various racial groups which joined in the Pact of Paris. On July 24, 1908, Hamid was forced to proclaim a constitutional system of government, and the reins of power passed into the hands of the Young Turks. But no sooner had the Young Turks attained power than they brazenly repudiated the pledges of the Pact of Paris. They now made it clear that while they did not believe in the efficacy of the Pan-Islamic policy of Hamid--although they were ready to exploit Islam world opinion in favor of Turkey--the foundation of their policy toward the non-Turks was the Ottomanization or Turkification of the Non-Turks. They would enforce that policy by assimilation, if possible; by elimination, if necessary. From 1908 to 1914 they pursued that policy. In the case of the Moslem Kurd, they tried the policy of assimilation; in the case of the Armenian, that of elimination. But the pace was too slow to satisfy them. They entered the World War primarily to fulfill the Turkification or the elimination of the Kurd, Armenian and Greek. This policy was the first step toward Pan-Turanism. Once rid of racial problems within the bounds of Turkey, they planned to reach out beyond the frontiers of Turkey and join hands with the Turanians or Turks of Persian and Russian Azerbaidjan, as well as with those beyond the Caspian. Kurds During the War The story of the tragedy of the Armenian people during the War is well known, and need not be rehearsed here, except that the deportation of nearly three-fourths of the two million Armenians who lived in Turkey in 1914, and the massacre and enslavement of nearly a million of them, were parts of a pre-conceived and calculated plan, designed to eliminate the Armenian as an inassimilable element in Turkish life and stumbling-block in the path of the Turk toward the execution of his pan-Turanian adventure. The failure of the Dardanelles expedition freed the Turk, for the first time, from the influence and restraint of European opinion. It also rendered available detachments of troops and irregulars, which were promptly employed to execute the plan of Armenian extermination, or to put down the Armenians' resistance at five or six localities. Turks Deport 700,000 Kurds Under these conditions, the Young Turks undertook the "assimilation" of the Moslem Kurd at first through pacific processes. They prevailed upon the accommodating Sultan Khaliff Rechad V. to sign a decree, which provided for the deportation of the Kurdish people from their ancestral homes and their settlement among the Turks in Western Anatolia, in proportion of 10 Kurds to 100 Turks. The two races professed a common faith and the Kurds would now be compelled to speak Turkish, and, according to the authors of this crime, the second Kurdish generation would become thoroughly Turkified. Before proceeding to the mass "assimilation" thus planned, the Turks tried out the process first by deporting groups of Kurdish notables. They discovered, much to their surprise, that the Kurds were just as averse to becoming "assimilated" as the Armenians. Losing patience, they therefore decreed for the Kurds the fate of the Armenians. The Register of the Director General of Emigration in Constantinople discloses the ghastly fact that in 1915 the Young Turks deported 700,000 Kurds from Kurdistan to Western Anatolia. Girls, women and children of tender age were enslaved by the thousands; hunger, disease and privation exacted a terrible toll on the long caravans of these helpless human beings; heaps of corpses and of the dying filled many ditches and dotted the whole line of this colossal crime upon the life of the race. Not even one-half of these unfortunates reached their destination. No one knows how many of them survive today. The extermination of the Kurd had now become a settled and avowed policy of the Turk. Kurds Fight for Turks At the outbreak of the War, most Kurds of military age were drafted into the Turkish army. In the absence of any means of communication with their home folks, they were kept in complete ignorance of the plans and acts of the Turkish Government in Kurdistan. Also, the Government was prosecuting a vigorous anti-Armenian and anti-Christian campaign among the Kurdish regular and irregular troops. The real or artificial antipathy of the Armenian for the Kurd had long been deeply rooted and sedulously cultivated in the Kurdish mind by Turkish propagandists. The Young Turks now told the Kurds that the Armenians had made common cause with the Allies; that only a month or so before the entry of Turkey into the war, the Armenians of the Trans-Caucasus and of Turkey had entered into a written agreement with Russia, whereby Russia would help them in the invasion and conquest of Turkish Armenia and of Kurdistan, and that quite naturally the Armenian would exact a terrible vengeance from the Kurd for past wrongs, etc. This sort of propaganda was impressive and convincing. It won the Kurdish fighter to the side of the Moslem Turk. In thus playing into the hands of the Turks, the Kurds suffered terribly both physically and morally, and contributed greatly to the destruction of their own fortunes and homes, and to their present plight. After the Armistice During the last days of October '9'8, the ring-leaders of the Young Turk camarilla saw the handwriting on the wall, and they turned the Government over to a "pro-ally" group, Reouf Bey, who subsequently became Kemal's Premier, signed for Turkey the Armistice of Moudros with the Allies. The Articles of the Armistice provided expressly for terms of peace, including the expulsion of Turkey from non-Turkish regions, which the Allies, in conformity with their war-time pledges, proposed to impose upon Turkey. Turkey lay prostrate. 19 The wartime Turkish army of 1,200,000 men had now shrunk to 50,000 men, with about 150,000 desertions. Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine had already been cut off from the Empire; the region east of the Euphrates had been practically denuded of its Turkish population as of its Armenian population; the Government had almost ceased to function in Asia Minor, and the central Government in Constantinople was soon to fall into the hands of the Allies (March 1919). Prompt and honest action by the Allies would have liquidated, once for all, the problem of the Turk and should have ended the agony of those whom the Turk had oppressed for a thousand years. But misguided and uninformed humanitarianism, or unwarranted meddlesomeness, was to destroy once again the hopes and prayers of the ages, and to offer the wily Turk a fresh opportunity to reassert himself--for a while longer. American Intervention Disastrous for Oppressed Races For the first time in history, the Allied Powers were really honest in their professions of redeeming the Armenian, Kurd, Arab and Greek from the incubus of Turkish misrule. The Allies who, by the secret treaties of 1915 and 1916, had cut up turkey into spheres of influences, were now willing and ready at the hour of victory to recognize the national rights of the inhabitants concerned. In his opening speech on January 19, 1919 at the Versailles Conference, the President of France said that "... the rights of the oppressed, of the victims and of the martyrs ... shall be vindicated ..." The Allies, in full recognition of the general chaos that obtained in Turkey, were determined to settle the Turkish problem before they undertook the consideration of the more complicated terms of general peace. The Turkish case, therefore, was taken up in February 1919. At the invitation of the Conference, a Kurdish Delegation, headed by General Sherif Pasha, like the Armenian Delegation, presented the Kurdish case. The Armenian Delegation claimed considerable territories, extending from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which were to be united with the then existing Armenian Republic (Russian Armenia), and in view of the depleted and disorganized condition of their people and country, a request was made for provisional financial and physical aid. Whereupon the President of the United States, who was intensely interested in the then proposed League of Nations, and obviously believed that he interpreted the sense of sympathy felt by the American people for the Armenian people, intervened, and advised the Peace Conference that American would be glad to lend Armenia the help she needed--if and when America joined the League. At the same time he requested the Conference to defer action upon the Turkish case. The sincerity and magnanimity of the President of the United States could not be questioned; the Allies could not, without inviting upon themselves the suspicion of the world, proceeded with the matter at issue; but the delay which the American action imposed upon the Allies resulted, as was fully expected by informed persons, in the subsequent intrigues amongst the Allies, the resurgence of Kemal, and in the appalling tragedy that overtook Kurd and Armenian alike. (20) Kemal Appears on Scene No sooner had the Conference pigeonholed the Turkish case than the Turks and their agents moved into action. Americans played the leading role in the events that followed. American residents of Constantinople, and particularly most missionaries, were averse to the dismemberment of Turkey. They felt that the proposed independent Armenia and Kurdistan, and a revived Hellenism, might, and in all probability would, bring to an end their attempts at proselyting and close out what had come to be a very large business with tremendous property interests; whereas Turkey, as it then stood, and the Russian Trans-Caucasus, under American control, would become a happy hunting ground both for possible converts and economic concessions. Gates, Bristol and others became the most violent propagandists for an American unitary mandate, and Dr. Gates carried a private letter from Talaat Pasha, chief organizer of Armenian massacres, to the American Peace Mission in Paris, advocating an American unitary mandate for Turkey, etc. The Turks knew full well the utter impracticability of the scheme, which they apparently favored; but they were playing for time. They were well aware that the proposal, if carried into effect, would destroy the prestige and position of the Allies in the Near East, and they knew also that even the possibility of the consideration of the proposal would stir up discord amongst the Allies, and force them to a policy of "sauve qui peut." They were right. In May 1919, Brigadier-General Mustapha Kemal Pasha left Constantinople for Anatolia, ostensibly as Inspector of the non-existent Third Turkish Army, but in reality to organize resistance to the Allies. Simultaneously, Turkish agents started to flirt with France and Italy with some success. The arrival of Kemal in Anatolia coincided with the seizure of Smyrna by the Greeks. Great Britain sponsored this movement. The Greek action enabled Kemal to improvise a nondescript force of about 35,000 men by August, 1919. He established his headquarters at Sivas, where General Harbord, about a month later, paid Kemal his respects. At this time Kurdish leaders, fearful of the course of events, held a meeting at Kahta, near Malatia, and organized a force designed to arrest Kemal's adventure. Unfortunately, however, there arrived then at Malatia Col. Bell, chief of the British Intelligence Service at Aleppo, who, in the name of his Government, advised the Kurds against any warlike operations, and reassured them of the settled purpose of the Allies to solve the Kurdish case in accordance with their war pledges. There can be no doubt but that the Kurds were then more than able to crush Kemal, as the Armenian Republic of Erivan could easily have occupied Turkish Armenia. But both the Kurds and Armenians committed the unpardonable folly of giving full value to the words of the Allied and Associated Nations. Had these two races known then, as they know now, that the basis of international diplomacy is the fait accompli, and that international "morality" is as yet an empty platitude, they would have saved themselves all their subsequent misery. Kemal Joins Moscow The British support of Greece in the matter of Smyrna definitely broke up the Allied front against Turkey. Italy was intolerant of Hellenic expansion in Western Asia Minor and France exploited the opportunity to secure for herself certain economic concessions from the Kemalists. In the meantime, Turkish emissaries established contact with Moscow; Enver, Kutchuk, Talaat, Halil Pasha, Behaedin attended, in the late summer of 1919 the Congress of the Eastern Peoples at Baku, which was presided over by Zinoviev. Here the Turk and the Bolshevik agreed upon a plan against the "imperialistic" Powers, the first part of which was the elimination of the Armenian Republic from their path. This agreement was later embodied in another, signed in Constantinople on November 29, 1919, and later in a more definite and comprehensive treaty, which was signed at Erzerum on April 15, 1920. (21) In the face of this threatening danger, the frantic and pitiful appeals of the Armenian Republic to the Allied and Associated Nations for arms and munitions for self-defense fell on deaf ears. The latter sent only Committees and Commissions of Inquiry, and addressed notes of warning to the Kemalists, while Mr. Balfour characterized Kemal in the House of Commons as a plain "bandit." It should here be noted that the Kemalists and the Bolsheviki, who were without the pale of international law, might perhaps justify themselves in resorting to common action against those whom they recognized as their enemies. But the stupidity, sordid greed and negligence and irresponsibility of the Allied and Associated Nations, can neither be explained nor excused. They stand guilty of a willful crime at the bar of history. Kurdistan in the Sevres Treaty Under these conditions, the Allies met at San Remo in April 1920, and agreed upon the terms of the treaty to be made with Turkey. This Treaty was subsequently signed at Sevres on August 10, 1920. At this time, the Armenian Republic (Russian Armenia), which had been set up in May, 1918, was already recognized by the Allied and Associated Nations. The Sevres Treaty provided for the allotment of certain lands in Turkish Armenia to the Armenian Republic, the boundaries of which were to be defined by the President of the United States. The Treaty of Sevres also provided for a Kurdish State. The three Articles, concerning Kurdistan, read as follows: SECTION III KURDISTAN Article 62 A Commission sitting at Constantinople and composed of three members appointed by the British, French and Italian Governments respectively shall draft within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates, south of the Southern Boundary of Armenia, as it may be hereafter determined, and north of the frontiers of turkey with Syria and Mesopotamia, as defined in article 27, II, (2) and (3) If unanimity cannot be secured on any question it will be referred by the members of the Commission to their respective Governments. The scheme shall contain full safeguards for the protection of the Assyro-Chaldeans and other racial or religious minorities within these areas, and with this object, a Commission composed of British, French, Italian, Persian and Kurdish representatives shall visit the spot to examine and decide what ratifications, if any, should be made in the Turkish frontier where under the provisions of the present Treaty, that frontier coincides with that of Persia. Article 63 The Turkish Government hereby agrees to accept and execute the decisions of both the Commissions mentioned in Article 62 within three months from their communication to the said Government. Article 64 If within one year from the coming into force of the present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to the Council of the League of Nations in such a manner as to show that a majority of the population of these areas desires independence from Turkey, and if the council then considers that these peoples are capable of such independence and recommends that it should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all rights and title over these areas. The detailed provisions for such renunciation will form the subject of a separate agreement between the Principal Allied Powers and Turkey. If and when such renunciation takes place, no objection will be raised y the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul Vilayet. While this Treaty was being signed at Sevres by the representatives of the Principal Allies and by those of Turkey and Armenia, Kemal and Moscow were at work to thwart its execution. Kemal Attacks Armenia In May and June, 1920, Bolshevist uprisings took place in several districts of Armenia, which the Government suppressed. In June, Moscow sent an ultimatum to the Armenian Republic, demanding the passage of Bolshevist troops over Armenian railways to join hands with the Turks. Armenia rejected it. Refusal of a second ultimatum in July was followed by invasion in August. Simultaneously therewith, Kemal attacked the Armenian Republic, but was repulsed. Then, in the latter part of September 1920, a reinforced Kemalist army, under Kiazim Kara Bekir Pasha, moved upon Armenia from the southeast, while Soviet troops invaded her from the northeast. On December 2, 1920, the Armenian Government was ousted; it returned in February 1921, but was driven out of Armenian soil by Bolshevist bayonets in July, 1921. (22) Kemal had now established direct contact with the Bolsheviki, who furnished him generously with arms, munitions and gold. By the Treaty of 1921 with France, Kemal had been relieved from further pressure in Cilicia; Italy maintained a "benevolent neutrality," and Kemal now could turn his undivided attention to the Greeks, who had remained unwisely quiescent while Armenia was being attacked. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Political divergences at home, dissensions amongst the Allies, and other factors, had destroyed the morale of the Greek army. The Greeks made one serious thrust at Kemal and then they quit. Kemal reached Smyrna without any serious resistance. He covered 185 miles in 15 days. On September 13, 1922, Kemal ordered the destruction of Smyrna, and here was enacted one of the most revolting crimes of all history. Over 100,000 men, women and children were put to the sword or were burned to death, and over 25,000 girls were enslaved. The story of the tragedy of Smyrna is well described in a recent book, "The Blight of Asia," by George Horton, former American Consul General in Smyrna. The breathing spell, which America offered the Turks, gave Kemal his chance, with the active aid of Moscow and of two other Powers, to effect the repudiation of the Treaty of Sevres. From Smyrna, Kemal went to Lausanne to negotiate a new treaty. Here, backed by Moscow and America, he faced the Allies, no longer united, who made no secret of their anxiety to patch up any kind of a treaty.