Elusive forces in illusive eyes: British officialdom's perception of the Anatolian resistance movement

ABSTRACT

In the aftermath of the First World War, British officials had difficulty understanding the elusive forces behind the Anatolian resistance movement. They anxiously assumed that Kemalists were being controlled by the Unionist leaders in exile and that they were part of an international conspiracy. In this confusion, the fugitive Unionist leaders received disproportionate attention and credit in British intelligence reports, with critical consequences for their political sense-making and decision-making. I argue that the preconception of ‘Young Turks’ in general as well as assumptions about Unionist leaders’ alleged and actual activities after 1918 were crucial for British officialdom's policies towards the Anatolian resistance movement.

KEYWORDS:

• Intelligence
• conspiracy theory
• Turkish War of Independence
• Young Turks
• Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
• Enver Pasha

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the comments and corrections offered by Funda Soysal, Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal and Alexander Balistreri, as well as the anonymous reviewers. Needless to say, I am alone responsible for the remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. R. Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End 1917–1923 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).

2. For a well-balanced introductory survey, see H. Kayalı, The Struggle for Independence in The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, ed. R. Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), Vol.4, pp.112–46.

3. R. Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp.81–135.

4. I would like to thank Foti Benlisoy (Istos Press, İstanbul) for calling my attention to this differentiation that conspiracy thinking is more common in macro-intelligence analyses than in micro-intelligence reports.

5. A.L. Macfie, ‘British Intelligence and the Turkish National Movement, 1919–22’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.37, No.1 (2001), p.9.

6. I do not use the term ‘Kemalist’ in its popular sense, referring to ideological followers of ‘Kemalism’. Even before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk developed his Kemalist doctrine in the late 1920s and 1930s, many contemporary Western sources used the term ‘Kemalist’ from 1919 to 1923 as an alternative term for the ‘Nationalist forces’ under Mustafa Kemal's leadership.

7. This issue has been studied in greater detail in N. Audeh, ‘The Ideological Uses of History and the Young Turks as a Problem for Historical Interpretation: Considerations of Class, Race, and Empire in British Foreign Office Attitudes Towards the Young Turks, 1908–1918’ (PhD thesis, Georgetown University, 1990).

8. Some of these misperceptions are reproduced, for instance, in S.R. Sonyel, ‘Mustafa Kemal and Enver in Conflict, 1919–22’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.25, No.4 (1989), pp.506–15.

9. For more detailed studies on British misperceptions and miscalculations in the post-war Middle East, see D. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East,1989 (20th anniversary ed., New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2009); I. Friedman, British Miscalculations: The Rise of Muslim Nationalism, 1918–1925 (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2012).

10. In his classic account on conspiracy thinking, Hofstadter writes: ‘What distinguishes the paranoid style is not, then, the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events.’ R. Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other Essays, 1965 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p.37.

11. E.J. Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Rôle of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1984).

12. P. Dumont, The Origins of Kemalist Ideology in Atatürk and the Modernization of Turkey, ed. J.M. Landau (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp.25–44; S. Deringil, ‘The Ottoman Origins of Kemalist Nationalism: Namik Kemal to Mustafa Kemal’, European History Quarterly Vol.23, No.2 (1993), 165–91; E.J. Zürcher, The Ottoman Legacy of the Kemalist Republic in The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk's Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp.136–50.

13. U.Ü. Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–50 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

14. Pioneering cultural approaches to intelligence history in British India are C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); K.A. Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010).

15. For a rather sympathetic account of gentleman spies, see J. Fisher, ‘Gentlemen Spies in Asia’, Asian Affairs Vol.41, No.2 (2010), pp.202–12.

16. P. Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.99–135.

17. E. Kedourie, ‘Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.7, No.1 (1971), pp.89–104.

18. E.W. Said, Orientalism,1978, 25th anniversary edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), pp.139–48.

19. On anti-Semitism in Britain before the outbreak of the First World War, see K. Lunn, Political Anti-semitism Before 1914: Fascism's Heritage? in British Fascism: Essays on the Radical Right in Inter-War Britain, eds. K. Lunn and R.C. Thurlow (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp.20–40.

20. Satia, Spies in Arabia, p.204. On Fitzmaurice, see G. Berridge, Gerald Fitzmaurice (1865–1939): Chief Dragoman of the British Embassy in Turkey (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2007).

21. For the relation of ‘Jews, Socialists and Freemasons’ to the CUP, see A.L. Macfie, The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923 (New York: Longman, 1998), pp.30–8.

22. This conceptionin the historiography was first revised in E.E. Ramsaur, The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp.103–8.

23. Robert Graves and Liddell Hart, T. E. Lawrence to his Biographers (New York: Doubleday, 1963), p.88; Fitzmaurice, letter (Constantinople) to Tyrrell, 5 November 1912, National Archives, Grey Papers, Foreign Office Papers (FO), 800.80, 3, quoted in Audeh, ‘Ideological Uses of History’, p.155.

24. H. Edib [Adıvar], Memoirs (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1926), p.278. On Young Turk conspiracy theories that Fitzmaurice was himself a conspirator in the counterrevolution, see F. Ahmad, ‘Great Britain's Relations with the Young Turks 1908-1914’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.2, No.4 (1966), pp.312–314; D. Avcıoğlu, 31 Mart'ta Yabancı Parmağı [Foreign Hands in the 31st March Incident], ed. H. Yılmaz (1969, İstanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 2013); S. Akşin, Şeriatçı Bir Ayaklanma 31 Mart Olayı [The 31st March Incident as a Reactionary Uprising]. (1970, 3rd ed., Ankara: İmge Kitabevi, 1994), pp.267–9.

25. Lowther, letter (Constantinople) to Hardinge, 29 May 1910, Lowther Papers, FO.800.193A, reprinted in the appendix of Kedourie, ‘Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews’, p.100.

26. Clayton, letter (London) to Wingate, 3 August 1916, Wingate Papers, Sudan Archives, Durham University; Lowther, letter to Hardinge, 27 April 1910, Hardinge Papers, Vol.20, p.235, Cambridge University Library. Both letters quoted in ibid., pp.91, 93.

27. Said, Orientalism, p.237.

28. Western and Middle Eastern historians continued to reproduce these misconceptions about Young Turks, as discussed in greater detail in Audeh, ‘Ideological Uses of History’, pp.545–82. This British conspiracy theory was rehashed by ‘Islamicizing-revisionist’ historians from Middle Eastern countries, depicting the Young Turks as Jews, Freemasons, Atheists and Zionists. M. Reinkowski, ‘Late Ottoman Rule over Palestine: Its Evaluation in Arab, Turkish and Israeli Histories, 1970–90’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.35, No.1 (1999), pp.69–72, 74–5. For Islamist and secularist variants of this 1908 conspiracy theory in Turkey, see also M.D. Baer, ‘An Enemy Old and New: The Dönme, Anti-Semitism, and Conspiracy Theories in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic’, Jewish Quarterly Review Vol.103, No.4 (2013), pp.523–55.

29. Lowther, letter (Constantinople) to Hardinge, 29 May 1910, Lowther Papers, FO.800.193A, in Kedourie, ‘Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews’, pp.103, 99. Emphasis mine.

30. Imperial anxieties prior to 1908 are explored in John Ferris, ‘“The Internationalism of Islam”: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840–1951’, Intelligence and National Security Vol.24, No.1 (2009), pp.59–62; M.C. Low, ‘Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance, 1865–1908’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.40, No.2 (2008), pp.269–90. A prominent example of conspiracy thinking about pan-Islamism is W.W. Hunter, The Indian Musalmans: Are They Bound in Conscience to Rebel against the Queen? (London: Williams and Norgate, 1871).

31. On Abdülhamid's pan-Islamism, see S. Deringil, ‘Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.23, No.3 (1991), pp.345–59.

32. Grey, letter (London) to Lowther, 31 July 1908, Grey Papers, F.O. 800.78, quoted in Ahmad, ‘Great Britain's Relations with the Young Turks’, p.303; similar remarks by Hardinge are cited in J. Heller, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire 1908—1914 (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1983), p.11.

33. G.W. Gawrych, ‘The Culture and Politics of Violence in Turkish Society, 1903–14’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.22, No.3 (1986), pp.307–30; R. Gingeras, Heroin, Organized Crime and the Making of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp.25–9.

34. For the troublesome relations between the Committee and the Party of the Union and Progress, see T.Z. Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasal Partiler III: İttihat ve Terakki [Political Parties in Turkey III: Union and Progress] (İstanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı Yayınları, 1989), pp.200–14, for the CUP's paramilitary branches, pp.273–99. See also N. Sohrabi, ‘Illiberal Constitutionalism: The Committee Union and Progress as a Clandestine Network and the Purges’, in L'Ivresse de la liberté: La révolution de 1908 dans l'Empire ottoman, ed. F. Georgeon (Leuvain: Peeters, 2012), pp.109–20.

35. Ahmad, ‘Great Britain's Relations with the Young Turks’, pp.321–25.

36. Lowther, letter (Constantinople) to Hardinge, 29 May 1910, Lowther Papers, FO.800.193A, in Kedourie, ‘Young Turks, Freemasons and Jews’, p.103. How anti-Semitic and anti-German attitudes were interlinked is discussed in C. Holmes, Anti-semitism in British Society: 1876–1939 (London: Arnold, 1979), pp.121–40; P. Panayi, ‘“The Hidden Hand”: British Myths about German Control of Britain During the First World War’, Immigrants & Minorities Vol.7, No.3 (1988),pp.253–72.

37. F.A.K. Yasamee, Ottoman Empire, in Decisions for War, 1914, ed. K.M. Wilson (London: UCL Press, 1995), p.237. See also M. Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

38. T. Lüdke, Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (Münster: LIT-Verlag, 2005), pp.62–70.

39. Ferris, ‘“The Internationalism of Islam”’, pp.62–4, Curzon's quote on p.64.

40. On initial British reactions, see D. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.136–39. On British reactions throughout the war, see M. Tusan,‘“Crimes Against Humanity”: Human Rights, the British Empire, and the Origins of the Response to the Armenian Genocide’, The American Historical Review Vol.119, No.1 (2014), pp.56–64.

41. R. W. Seton-Watson, The Rise of Nationality in the Balkans (London: Constable, 1917), pp.134–6.

42. On the British perception of the Russian Revolution as a Jewish conspiracy, see S. Kadish, Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community Britain and the Russian Revolution (London: Frank Cass, 1992), pp.10–55.

43. Crowe, minute, 18 November 1918, FO.371.4369.513, quoted in J. Fisher, ‘British Responses to Mahdist and Other Unrest in North and West Africa, 1919–1930’, Australian Journal of Politics and History Vol.52, No.3 (2006), p.348.

44. Quoted in Friedman, British Miscalculations, p.6.

45. H. Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası [Behind the Scenes of Two Periods], ed. S.N. Tansu (İstanbul: SebilYayınevi, 1996), pp.164–70. See also A.A. Cruickshank, ‘The Young Turk Challenge in Postwar Turkey’, Middle East Journal Vol.22, No.1 (1968), pp.18–20.

46. Halil Kut, İttihat ve Terakki'den Cumhuriyet'e Bitmeyen Savaş [Endless War from Union and Progress to the Republic], ed. T. Sorgun (İstanbul: Kum Saati Yayınları, 2007), p.202. For the activities of the Karakol Cemiyeti, see F. Tevetoğlu, Milli Mücadele Yıllarındaki Kuruluşlar: Karakol Cemiyeti, Türkiyeʼde İngiliz Muhibleri Cemiyeti, Wilson Prensibleri Cemiyeti, Yeşilordu Cemiyeti [Organisations During the National Struggle Years: The Sentinel Society, the Society of Anglophiles of Turkey, the Society of Wilson's Principles, the Green Army Society] (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1988), pp.3–50; N.B Criss, Istanbul Under Allied Occupation, 1918–1923 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp.97–114; E. Ülker, ‘Sultanists, Republicans, Communists: The Turkish National Movement in Istanbul, 1918–1923’ (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2013), pp.14–39.

47. Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası, p.167.

48. E.M. Wilson, Deconstructing the Shadows in Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty, ed. E.M. Wilson (New York: Pluto Press, 2009), pp.13–55.

49. Kayalı, ‘Struggle for Independence’, p.119.

50. Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, pp.152–3.

51. Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores, pp.55–80.

52. Zürcher, Unionist Factor, p.168.

53. M. Yamauchi, ed., The Green Crescent under the Red Star: Enver Pasha in Soviet Russia, 1919–1922 (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1991), pp.11–2.

54. A. Yenen, ‘The Young Turk Aftermath: Making Sense of Transnational Contentious Politics at the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1918–1922’ (PhD thesis, University of Basel, 2016), pp.117–50.

55. FO.605.115. See also M. Okur, İstanbul İngiliz Yüksek Komiserligi'nin İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti'ne Dair Bir Raporu [A Report by the British High Commissioner in Istanbul on the Committee of Union and Progress] in İttihatçılar ve İttihatçılık Sempozyumu: 25 Kasım 2014, Ankara: Bildiriler [Unionists and Unionism Symposium: 25 November 2014, Ankara: Papers], 3 Vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2015), Vol.1, pp.1–32.

56. Calthorpe, letter (Constantinople) to British Embassy (Berne), 4 May 1919, FO.371.3717.123065, p.102.

57. H. Whittall, ‘The Nearer East and the British Empire’, 5 June 1919, FO.371.4142.90575, pp.76.

58. M. Bardakçı, ed., Talat Paşa'nın Evrak-ı Metrukesi: Sadrazam Talat Paşa'nın Özel Arşivinde Bulunan Ermeni Tehciri Konusundaki Belgeler ve Hususi Yazışmalar [Talat Pasha's Remaining Papers: Documents on the Armenian Deportation and Other Private Correspondence Found in Grand Vizier Talat Pasha's Private Archive] (İstanbul: Everest, 2009), pp.152–8.

59. Heathcote-Smith, report (Constantinople) on the ‘Activities of the National Defence Organization’, 24 July 1919, FO.371.4158.118411, p.6.

60. K. Karabekir, Report to the Third Army Inspector Mustafa Kemal Pasha, 22 June 1919, Genelkurmay Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüt Başkanlığı Arşivi (Turkish General Staff's Directorate for Military History and Strategic Studies, in short ATASE), Atatürk Collection (ATAZB), Box No.17, File No.7.

61. Perring, Report (Samsun) to de Robeck (Constantinople), 1 October 1919, FO.406.41. p.292, No.139-1 in B.N. Şimşir, ed. British Documents on Atatürk (1919–1938), (in short BDA) 8 Vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1973–2006), Vol.1, p.159.

62. Webb, Report (Constantinople) to Curzon, 18 October 1919, FO.406.41, pp.291–2, No.139 in ibid., p.158.

63. M.M. Kansu, Erzurum'dan Ölümüne kadar Atatürk'le Beraber [Together with Atatürk from Erzurum Until His Death] 2 Vols. (4th ed., Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1997), Vol.1, p. 219. British officials were aware of the formal disavowal of the CUP at the Sivas Congress. A. Ryan, The Last of the Dragomans, ed. R. Bullard (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951), pp.135–7.

64. E. Kısıklı, ‘Milli Mücadele Başlangıcında, Mustafa Kemal Paşa'nın Milli Hareketi, İttihat ve Terakki Faaliyetlerinden Uzak Tutma Teşebbüsleri’ [Mustafa Kemal Pasha's Attempts to Keep the National Movement Away from the Activities of the Committee of Union and Progress], Ankara Üniversitesi Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Atatürk Yolu Dergisi, No.5 (1990), pp.109–27; S. Akşin, İç Savaş ve Sevr'de Ölüm [Civil War and Death at Sèvres] (İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010), pp.292–304.

65. O. Akandere and H.A. Polat, ‘Damat Ferit Paşa Hükümetleri Tarafından Kuva-yı Milliyecilere Yöneltilen İttihatçılık Suçlamalarının Boyutları’ [The Dimensions of Unionist Accusations against the National Forces by the Damat Ferit Pasha Governments], in İttihatçılar ve İttihatçılık Sempozyumu, Vol.1, pp.227–52.

66. B. Kocaoğlu, Mütarekede İttihatçılık: İttihat ve Terakki Fırkasının Dağılması (1918–1920) [Unionism During the Armistice: The Disintegration of the Party of Union and Progress (1918-1920)] (İstanbul: Temel Yayınları, 2006), pp.187–250.

67. Şevket, cipher (Constantinople) to 3rd Army Corps, 12 October 1919, ATASE, ATAZB, Box No.9, File No.83.

68. M. Kemal, cipher (Sivas) to Şevket (Constantinople), 10 October 1919, ATASE, ATAZB, Box No.9, File No.83.

69. United States Radio Press, Nationalist Party in Turkey, 15 October 1919, FO.406.41, p.299, No.140-5 in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.1, p.171.

70. K. Karabekir, cipher (Van) to Ministry of War, 1 November 1919, ATASE, İstiklal Harbi Koleksiyonu (War of Independence Collection, hereafter, İSH), Box No.197, File No.224.

71. K. Karabekir, cipher (Erzurum) to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3 December 1919, ATASE, İSH, Box No.45, File No.51.

72. Military Intelligence (Constantinople), ‘Weekly Summary of Intelligence Reports’, 26 February 1920, FO.371.5166.E-1782 in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.1, pp.426–27.

73. Adam, memorandum (Paris) on ‘Constantinople and the Straits’, 10 January 1920, in Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, First Series (in short DBFP) 27 Vols. (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1947–1986), Vol.4, pp.1026–7.

74. My emphasis. K. Karabekir, İstiklal Harbimizde Enver Paşa ve İttihat-Terakki Erkanı [Enver Pasha and the Union and Progress Leaders During Our War of Independence] (İstanbul: Yapı ve Kredi Yayınları, 2010), pp.7, 29–30, 32.

75. E.J. Zürcher, ‘Young Turk Memoirs as a Historical Source: Kazım Karabekir's İstiklal Harbimiz’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.22, No.4 (1986), pp.562–70.

76. Talat, letter (Berlin) to Cavid (Switzerland), 21 December 1919 in H.C. Yalçın and O.S. Kocahanoğlu, eds. İttihatçı Liderlerin Gizli Mektupları: Bir Devri Aydınlatan Tarihi Mektuplar [Secret Letters of the Unionist Leaders: Historical Letters that Shed Light on an Era] (İstanbul: Temel Yayınları, 2002), p.145; diary entry, 27 December 1919, in C. Bey, Meşrutiyet Ruznamesi [Diary of the Constitutional Era], 4 Vols., ed. H. Babacan and S. Avşar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2014–2015), Vol.4, pp.52–3; S. İlkin and İ. Tekeli, ‘Kurtuluş Savaşında Talat Paşaile Mustafa Kemal’ in Mektuplaşması’ [Correspondence Between Talat Pasha and Mustafa Kemal During the War of Independence], Belleten Vol.44, No.174 (1980), pp.309–15.

77. İsmet, cipher to Salih, 21 February 1920, ATASE, ATAZB, Box No.23, File No.110.

78. M. Kemal, letter (Ankara) to Talat (Berlin), 29 February 1920 in Yalçın and Kocahanoğlu, İttihatçı Liderlerin Gizli Mektupları, p.218.

79. M. Kemal, letter (Ankara) to Kazım Karabekir (Erzurum), 30 May 1920, ATASE, İSH, Box No.613, File No.45.

80. M. Kemal, letter (Ankara) to Kazım Karabekir (Erzurum), 20 June 1920, ATASE, İSH, Box No.613, File No.80.

81. E.J. Zürcher, The Politician as Historian, Historians in Politics: On the Nutuk (Speech) of Mustafa Kemal Pasha in The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building, p.14; H.L. Eissenstat, ‘The Limits of Imagination: Debating the Nation and Constructing the State in Early Turkish Nationalism’ (PhD thesis, University of California, 2007), pp.74–6.

82. A. Yenen, The “Young Turk Zeitgeist” in the Middle Eastern Uprisings in the Aftermath of World War I in War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State, eds. M.H. Yavuz and F. Ahmad (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016), pp.1181–216.

83. Hirtzel, minute, 26 August 1919, quoted in J. Ferris, The British Empire vs. The Hidden Hand: British Intelligence and Strategy and ‘The CUP-Jew-German-Bolshevik combination’, 1918–1924 in The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856–1956: Essays in Honour of David French, eds. K. Neilson and G. Kennedy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p.340.

84. Ryan, memorandum, 25 December 1919, in DBFP, Vol.4, p.1003.

85. Hedley, notes on an interview with Enver Pasha, 6 January 1920, National Archives, War Office Papers (WO) 32.5620, quoted in Ferris, ‘British Empire vs. Hidden Hand’, p.325.

86. Hedley, notes on a second interview with Enver Pasha, n.d., WO.32.5620, quoted in ibid., p.335.

87. Hedley, report (Berlin) on a telephone conversation with Enver Pasha, 25 February 1920, FO.371.5211. E-1311, pp.39–40.

88. FO, letter to the Secretary of the Army Council, 26 March 1920, FO.371.5211. E-1311, p.42.

89. Ferris, ‘British Empire vs. Hidden Hand’, p.335.

90. These ambiguities are best summarised in Eissenstat, ‘The Limits of Imagination’, pp.67–127.

91. E.J. Zürcher, ‘The Vocabulary of Muslim Nationalism’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language Vol.137, No.1 (1999), pp.81–92.

92. A. Kırmızı, After Empire, Before Nation: Competing Ideologies and the Bolshevik Moment of the Anatolian Revolution in Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: 1917 and its Aftermath from a Global Perspective, eds. S. Rinke and M. Wildt (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2017), pp.119–37, here p.125. This argument is also put forward in S. Selek, Anadolu İhtilali [The Anatolian Revolution] (İstanbul: İstanbul Matbuası, 1968); E. Akal, Milli Mücadelenin Başlangıcında Mustafa Kemal, İttihat Terakki ve Bolşevizm [Mustafa Kemal, Union and Progress, and Bolshevism at the Beginning of the National Struggle] (3rd ed., İstanbul: TÜSTAV Türkiye Sosyal Tarihve Araştırma Vakfı, 2008).

93. M.Ş. Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp.102–9.

94. Emphasis added. Report on ‘Connection of Nationalists and Pan-Islamists with Russian Bolshevists’, 5 May 1920, FO.371.5178. E-4689.

95. A. Yenen, The Other Jihad: Enver Pasha, Bolsheviks, and Politics of Anticolonial Muslim Nationalism During the Baku Congress 1920 in The First World War and its Aftermath: The Shaping of the Middle East, ed. T.G. Fraser (London: Gingko Library Press, 2015), pp.273–93.

96. Secretary of State of India to Civil Commissioner (Baghdad), 23 September 1920, WO 106.200, quoted in I. Friedman, British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915–1922: A Critical Appraisal (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2010), p.223.

97. E. Tauber, ‘Syrian and Iraqi Nationalist Attitudes to the Kemalist and Bolshevik Movements’, Middle Eastern Studies Vol.30, No.4 (1994), p.909.

98. Bray, ‘Preliminary Report on Causes of Unrest in Mesopotamia’, September 1920, FO.371.5230. E-12339, also CAB/24/112; ‘Causes of the Unrest in Mesopotamia – Report No.II’, September 1920, FO.371.5231. E-7765; ‘An Examination of the Cause of the Outbreak in Mesopotamia’, October 1920, WO.33.969. For a brief summary of these reports, see ‘Relations Between Bolsheviks and Turkish Nationalists’, 20 November 1920, FO.371.5178. E-14638.

99. Bray, ‘Preliminary Report on Causes of Unrest in Mesopotamia’, September 1920, FO.371.5230. E-12339, p.3.

100. Bray, ‘Causes of the Unrest in Mesopotamia’, September 1920, FO.371.5231. E-7765.

101. Satia, Spies in Arabia, p.204.

102. The Times, ‘The Red Flag in the East’, 23 September 1920.

103. N. Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (3rd ed., Chico CA: Scholars Press, 1981), p.152.

104. Morning Post, 17, 21, 27 July and 4 August 1920, quoted in S.K. Kent, Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain 1918–1931 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p.60.

105. Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace, p.469.

106. H.A. Gwynne, ed., The Cause of World Unrest: With an Introduction by the Editors of ‘The Morning Post’ (of London) (London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920), pp.180–1.

107. Report on ‘Anatolian Affairs’ (Constantinople), 12 August 1920, FO.371.5178. E-11072.

108. Osborne, minute, 23 September 1920, FO.371.4946. E11702.

109. Tyrrell, note on ‘Anatolian Affairs’, 12 August 1920, FO.371.5178.E-11072.

110. R.W. Cottam, Foreign Policy Motivation: A General Theory and a Case Study (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), pp.258–76.

111. Sir Horace Rumbold, letter (Constantinople) to Earl Curzon (London), 21 March 1921, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.3, pp.264–7.

112. Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi [Prime Ministerial Republican Archives], BCA-030-0-018-001-001-2-38-18.

113. Fevzi, letter (Ankara) to Southern Front Command (Antalya), 27 February 1921; 26 May 1921, ATASE, İSH, Box No.742, File No.8.

114. Fevzi, arrest warrant for Enver Pasha and his friends, 29 May 1921, in Murat Bardakçı, Enver (İstanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 2015), p.562.

115. M. Kemal, letter (Ankara) to KazımKarabekir (Erzurum), 3 June 1921, ATASE, İSH, Box No.1167, File No.115. It was only after the spring of 1921 that the Enverist factions in Anatolia started to pose a serious challenge to the Ankara Government. Yenen, ‘The Young Turk Aftermath’, pp.432–53; Ülker, ‘Sultanists, Republicans, Communists’, pp.79–90.

116. R.G. Hovannisian, ‘Armenia and the Caucasus in the Genesis of the Soviet-Turkish Entente’, International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol.4, No.2 (1973),pp.129–47.

117. Ryan, memorandum, n.d., enclosed in Rattigan, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 8 June 1921, FO.406/46, pp.87–8, No.61/1, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.3, p.371.

118. Rattigan, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 8 July 1921, in ibid., p.476.

119. Harington, letter (Constantinople) to the WO (London), 7 July 1921, FO.371.6473, E-8417.

120. Yenen, ‘The Young Turk Aftermath’, pp.414–5, 448–53.

121. Rattigan, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 12 July 1921, FO.406/47, pp.16–7, No.10, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.3, p.511.

122. Rattigan, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 24 July 1921, FO.371.6524. E-8527, in ibid., pp.554–5.

123. Rumbold, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 29 November 1921, FO.406/48, p.91, No.38, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.4, p.92.

124. Rumbold, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 29 November 1921, FO.406/48, pp.93–4, No.40, in ibid., pp.92–3.

125. Rumbold, letter (Constantinople) to Curzon (London), 24 January 1922, FO, 406/49, pp.68–70, No.20, in ibid., pp.188–9.

126. A. Orr, ‘“We Call You to Holy War”: Mustafa Kemal, Communism, and Germany in French Intelligence Nightmares, 1919-1923’, The Journal of Military History Vol.75 (2011), p. 1120.

127. A. Kemal, ‘Enver'in Yeni Celadetleri’ [Enver's New Acts of Gallantry], Peyam-ı Sabah, 3 July 1922.

128. Henderson, letter (Constantinople) to Balfour, 11 July 1922, FO.7868, E-7072, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.4, p.301. For relations between ‘Sultanists’ and ‘Enverists’ in Constantinople in this period, see Ülker, ‘Sultanists, Republicans, Communists’, pp.92–8.

129. For an intelligence report of the Ankara officials dated 8 July 1922, mentioning Ali Kemal's article, see Ankara Üniversitesi, Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü Arşivi (Ankara University, Institute of the Turkish Revolution History Archives), Box No.67, File No.96. Enver Pasha's brother Kamil in Berlin considered this article by Ali Kemal as a signal from the British officials to reach a settlement with Enver Pasha in Central Asia. Kamil, letter (Berlin) to Enver (Turkestan), 10 July 1922, Türk Tarih Kurumu Arşivi (Archive of the Turkish Historical Society), Enver Pasha Collection, Box No.01, File No.86.

130. Henderson, letter (Constantinople) to Balfour, 11 July 1922, FO.7868, E-7072, in Şimşir, BDA, Vol.4, p.302.

131. Besides the contributions to the continuity thesis by Zürcher, Dumont, Deringil, Eissenstat and Üngör as cited above, see also the various contributions on the intellectual origins of the Kemalist Republic in T. Bora and M. Gültekingil, eds., Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce I: Cumhuriyet'e Devreden Düşünce Mirası: Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet'in Birikimi [Political Thought in Modern Turkey I: The lntellectual Legacy Inherited by the Republic: Heritage of the Tanzimat and the Constitutional Eras] (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004). Long overdue credit belongs also to socio-economic historian İdris Küçükömer, who first formulated the continuity thesis between the Unionism and Kemalism in 1969, later republished in İ. Küçükömer, Düzenin Yabancılaşması: Batılaşma [Alienation of the Order: Westification] (İstanbul: Bağlam Yayınları, 2006). See also K. Kayalı, Zürcher İdris Küçükömer Okudu Mu?’ [Did Zürcher Read İdris Küçükömer?] in Türk Kültür Dünyasından Portreler [Portraits from the Turkish Cultural World] (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), pp.123–4.

132. R. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

133. Macfie, ‘British Intelligence and the Turkish National Movement’, p.14.

134. J.M. Bale, ‘Political Paranoia v. Political Realism: On Distinguishing between Bogus Conspiracy Theories and Genuine Conspiratorial Politics’, Patterns of Prejudice Vol.41, No.1 (2007), pp.45–60; J. Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp.25–36.

135. Ryan, Last of the Dragomans, pp.171–2.