Chapter 15 – Mustafa

Many details in this chapter are taken from Andrew Mango’s biography Atatürk . Key details include:

p. 127 - Mustafa Kemal held the following view of the German mission: “Our comrades reduced the Turkish nation and army to an unnatural state. It was unnatural because the army was handed over to a foreign military mission”.

p. 131 - In 1914, Lieutenant Colonel Kemal was stationed in Sofia, Bulgaria, as Military Attaché.

p. 133 – Enver anticipated support from a Muslim uprising, in response to a call made in the name of the Ottoman sultan caliph, including Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, Parts of Russia, India and North Africa.

p. 135 -  On 20 October, The Ottoman Government signed an agreement for a German loan of 5 million gold liras, most of which was to be disbursed after the Ottoman state entered the war.

p. 136 - Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 2 November 1914, Britain and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire 5 November 1914. The Ottoman government responded with its own declaration of war on 11 November 1914, and two days later, Sultan Mehmet V issued a Fatwa that proclaimed a Jihad.

Some details of the Young Turk coup, including Enver’s involvement in ceasing power are described in Secrets of the Bosphorous , by, Henry Mogenthau, American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time of the events described (published 1918) (p. 7-10). Enver and Talaat let a mob that stormed Parliament. The Minister for War, Nazim Pasha, tried to calm the mob and was shot dead. The Grand Visier, Kiamil Pasha resigned his post on being threatened with the same fate (p. 9).

Les Carlyon records in Gallipoli : “Russia declared war on Turkey on 2 November and nothing would ever be the same again…Jevad Bey said after the war: ‘The bombardment of November 3 warned me, and I realised that I must spend the rest of my time in developing and strengthening the defence by every means.’” (p. 47).

Edward Erickson records in Gallipoli – The Ottoman Campaign , that Mustafa Kemal had experience of military command on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1912 as Chief of Operations for the Gallipoli Army (p. 46).

In 1913, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett published a book With the Turks in Thrace , as a record of his time spent with the Turkish Army in Thrace during the Balkan revolt of 1912. In this account, Ashmead-Bartlett concludes: ‘Nations, like individuals, have their obligations, and the Turks, having proved wanting, must now pay the just penalty of their incapacity. In the course of five centuries which they have spent in Europe, they have proved incapable of governing their conquests. They have not attempted to initiate a sound economic system; they have not given their subjects the first postulate of progress, justice or education; they have built no roads, neither have they cultivated the land…The future of the Turk lies in Asia. Let him return to the land of his fathers and develop those matchless resources which constant wars and preoccupations in Europe have caused him to neglect.’ (p. 325-326).

Mustafa Kemal may not have read Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett’s book With the Turks in Thrace. However, it seems plausible as Kemal was interested in military strategy and had a long link with the Ottoman presence in the Balkan states.