Franco-Turkish War
 | This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. (December 2009) |
| Franco-Turkish War | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Turkish War of Independence | |||||||
 Armenian soldiers. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Turkish Revolutionaries | |||||||
Franco-Turkish war or Cilicia war (French: La campagne de Cilicie, Turkish: Güney Cephesi - the southern front) was a series of conflicts fought between the French Colonial Forces established with the French Armenian Legion of the French Army and Turkish National Forces directed by Turkish Grand National Assembly in the aftermath of the World War I from May 1920 to October 1921. The French interest towards the region was established with the Sykes-Picot Agreement and subsequent French-Armenian Agreement (1916) that lead to the establishment of Armenian forces under the French Army. At the turn of 1921, France held better relations with the Turkish nationals as chiefly it broke the solidarity with the Triple Entente and signed the Franklin-Bouillon Agreement.
Background
The initial French interest towards the Çukurova region, although manifest since Napoleon's 1798-1800 Egypt-Syria campaign, had become more focused and concentrated since the acquisition in 1909 by French capitalists, as against part of Ottoman debts, of Sultan Abdülhamid II's vast (1100 km², the size of Martinique) Mercimek Farm (Mercimek Çiftliği), privately-owned although managed as a state farm in development since the 1880s and roughly corresponding to a strip starting at the ports of Yumurtalık and Karataş until the vicinity of Kozan and İmamoğlu.[1]
Agreements
The French army had moved into the region, based on the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, after the Armistice of Mudros. The Sykes-Picot Agreement foresaw that, apart from Syria, the French would lay their hands on southern Anatolia, where the fertile plain of Çukurova (Cilicia), the ports of Mersin and İskenderun (Alexandretta) and the copper mines in Ergani, to the north of upper Mesopotamia, constituted the strategic pinpoints. On the other hand, the oil fields of the Ottoman vilayet of Musul were an absolute priority for the British. According to the arrangement agreed, the British would keep the cities of Antep, Maraş and Urfa until they saw the French heading to settle exclusively in the southern Anatolian regions allocated to them in the agreement.
The French-Armenian agreement regarding the support of Armenian nationalists of the Armenian national liberation movement on the side of allies during World War I was signed onOctober 27, 1916. Foreign Minister Aristide Briand used this opportunity to provide troops for French commitments.[2] The French Armenian Legion was planned under the command of General Edmund Allenby. Armenians fought in Palestine and Syria, and also in Cilicia after the Armistice of Mudros. The aim in constituting the Legion was to allow an Armenian contribution to the dismemberment of the southern Anatolia region from the Ottoman Empire.
French Occupation of Turkey
Black Sea landings
After the armistice of Mudros, the first thing the French military did was to control the strategically important Ottoman coal mines in which French capital held significant stakes. The goal was both to take control of the energy source and cover the French military needs. It also prevented the distribution of coal in Anatolia, which could be used in activities to support insurgency.
On March 18, 1919, two French gunboats sent respective troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli to command the Ottoman coal mining region. With the resistance they faced during their one year stay in the region, French units begin to retire their troops from Karadeniz Ereğli on June 8, 1920. They continued to pursue their occupation in Zonguldak, where they occupied the city as a whole on June 18, 1920.
Constantinople and Thrace operations
The main operations in this side was aimed to give support for the allied strategic goals. A French brigade enters Constantinople on Nov 12, 1918. On February 08, 1919 French general Franchet d'Esperey, commander-in-chief of allied occupation forces in Ottoman Empire arrives to Constantinople.[3] He will be coordinating the activities of Ottoman Government under occupation.
The city of Bursa, a former Ottoman capital of central importance in northwest Anatolia was held by French forces as well, for a brief period before the great summer offensive of the Greek army in 1920, at which time that city fell to the Greeks.
Cilicia Campaign (Cilicia war)
| Southern Front Battles | ||||||||
| Name | Land/Sea | side (1) | General | side (2) | General | Date | Side | Treaty |
| Maraş | France | National Forces | Ali Fuat Pasha | 20 Jan - 10 Feb 1920 | ||||
| Urfa | France | National Forces | Ali Saip Bey | 9 Feb - 11 Apr 1920 | Cilicia Peace Treaty on March 9, 1921 | |||
| Antep Defense | France | National Forces | Kilic Ali Bey | 1 Apr 1920 - 9 Feb 1921 | ||||
| Siege of Antep | France | National Forces | Sefik Ozdemir Bey | 5 August 1920 - 9 Feb 1921 | ||||
The first landing took place on the 17th of November 1918 at Mersin with ca. 15,000 men, mainly volunteers from the French Armenian Legion, accompanied by 150 French officers. The first targets of that Expeditionary Force was to occupy ports and dismantle the Ottoman administration. On the 19th of November Tarsus was occupied to secure the surroundings and prepare for the establishment of the Head Quarters in Adana.
After the occupation of Cilicia proper end-1918, French troops occupied the Ottoman provinces of Antep, Maraş and Urfa in southern Anatolia end-1919, taking these cities over from British troops as agreed. At the eastern tip of the occupation zone in the south, the city of Mardin was also occupied for one day (on 21 November 1919) until the evening when the French thought it better to abandon the occupation attempt.
Cilicia (Turkish: Çukurova) governors assigned by France to the French occupation zone in the south were, from Jan 1 1919 to Sep 4 1920, Édouard Brémond and from September 1920 to 23 December 1921, Julien Dufieux.
In the regions they occupied, the French were faced with the resistance of the Turkish majority as of the first hour, especially by reason of having associated themselves with Armenian objectives.
The French wanted to settle in Syria. With a pressure against French, Cilicia would be easily left to the Turkish nationalists. The Taurus Mountains were critical for Mustafa Kemal. The French soldiers were foreign to the region and they were using Armenian militia to acquire their intelligence. Turkish nationals had been in cooperation with Arab tribes in this area. Compared to the Greek threat, the French were less dangerous for Mustafa Kemal. He proposed that if the Greek threat could be disseminated, the French would not resist.
The resistance of the national forces was a big surprise to France. They blamed the British forces which did not curb the resistance power of the local sources. The strategic goal of opening a front at the south by moving Armenians against the Turkish National forces was a failure after the defeat of the Greek-British forces on the west.
On 1 November 1919, two days after the French take-over of Maraş, Sütçü İmam Incident, termed after the defender of three Turkish women who were being harassed and molested in the street by French Armenian Legion auxiliaries, sowed the seeds of tension in the city. Sütçü İmam shot one of the molesters in the skirmish and had to go into hiding. The incident triggered a series of events that led the Turkish majority of Maraş to rise against the occupation forces and culminated in the wholescale urban warfare two months after the incident.
After twenty-two days of urban battle, on 11 February 1920, the French occupation troops found themselves forced to evacuate Maraş faced to the resistance and assaults of the Turkish Revolutionaries, with the local Armenian community following them.
Maraş militia forces pursued the war effort by taking part in the re-capture of other centers of the region, forcing the French forces to retreat gradually and town by town.
Cilicia Peace Treaty
| Cilicia | ||||||||
| Name | Land/Sea | side (1) | General | side (2) | General | Date | Side | Treaty |
| Adana | France | National Forces | Ali Fuat Pasha | 21 Jan 1920 - 20 Oct 1921 | Treaty of Ankara on October 20 1921 | |||
End of hostilities
The conflicts officially ended with the Accord of Ankara signed between the representative of the French government and the Turkish Grand National Assembly on October 20, 1921, which was finalized with Armistice of Mudanya.
Withdrawal and population movements
The French forces withdrew from the occupation zone in the first days of 1922, about ten months before the Armistice of Mudanya. Beginning on January 3, French troops evacuated Mersin and Dörtyol; on January 5, Adana, Ceyhan and Tarsus. The evacuation was completed on the January 7 with the last troops leaving Osmaniye.
In the early stages, 1919, under military cooperation, joint French-Greek troops crossed the Meriç River and occupied the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis till the train station of Hadımköy near Çatalca on the outskirts of İstanbul. On September 1922, at the end of Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), during the Greek pull-out after advance of Turkish revolutionaries, French forces pulled out from their positions near Dardanelles, but the British seemed prepared to hold their ground. The British government issued a request for military support from its colonies. The response of its colonies to British was negative and French leaving British on the straits signaled that the Allies were unwilling to intervene on the side of Greece. Greek troops and the French withdrew beyond the Meriç River.
Aftermath
France held better relations with the Turkish nationals during the Turkish War of Independence, chiefly for breaking Triple Entente solidarity and signing a separate agreement with the Turkish revolutionaries. The Treaty of Ankara or the Franklin-Bouillon Agreement did not resolve the problems in connection with the sanjak of Alexandretta. However positive relations, Turkish-France, at least until the question of Alexandretta was solved, was maintained according to the principle of defending territorial integrity and national independence which these concepts were easy to negotiate (see:French Revolution). French policy that supported Turkish independence movement took a blow during the Conference of Lausanne on the abolition of the capitulations (see: Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire). The French objections during the discussions on abolition, perceived as France was contravening the full Turkish independence and sovereignty. Furthermore, the fact that the sanjak of Alexandretta , which according to Misak-ı Milli should have been included within Turkish national borders, remained under French control also contributed to the tension between the two countries. The positive attitude developed with the Treaty of Ankara stayed mainly on a friendly, if limited, basis.
The French interest which its financial side, Ottoman debts, were cleared by the young Republic of Turkey in line with the Treaty of Lausanne. Attempts at modifying the ethnic structure of the region, to the advantage of the Armenian minority fed with new settlers, also played a role.
See also
External links
- Cilicia Campaign (1919-1921): birth of modern Turkey Site about French Cilicia Campaign, with documents (1920) and photos (2006)
Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream, (Basic Books, 2005), 57; "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930..".
References
- ^ From Ceyhun to Ceyhan - 29 March-1 April 2006 symposium by the municipality of Ceyhan (in Turkish)
- ^ Stanley Elphinstone Kerr. The Lions of Marash: personal experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 p. 30
- ^ Finkel, Caroline, Osman's Dream, (Basic Books, 2005), 57; "Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930..".