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Updated: May 18, 2025
South Albania also perceived that the self-styled "liberators" who poured in from Greece were but brigands intent on gain and murder, and on November 28, 1912, Ismail Kemal, who was in Constantinople when war broke out, managed with difficulty to return to his native town Valona, where he hoisted the National flag, proclaimed the independence of Albania, and formed a provisional government.
His offer was accepted, and 100,000 Greek troops landed at Smyrna. But the Greek campaign was not a success. Even 100,000 men soon wore thin when spread out over the vast Asia Minor plateau. Mustapha Kemal avoided decisive battle, harassing the Greeks by guerilla warfare just as he was harassing the French in Cilicia at the other end of the line.
Some said it was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where we passed. Just short of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three Germans. They were in terror when we took them, and afterward said that they had expected to be shot.
In the first stage, Bolshevism is quite ready to respect Oriental faiths and customs and to back Oriental nationalist movements. In the second stage, religions like Islam and nationalists like Mustapha Kemal are to be branded as "bourgeois" and relentlessly destroyed. How Bolshevik diplomacy endeavours to work these two schemes in double harness, we shall presently see.
The Allied masters of Constantinople compelled the Sultan to appoint a "friendly" cabinet which solemnly denounced Mustapha Kemal and his "rebels," and sent a hand-picked delegation to Sèvres, France, where they dutifully "signed on the dotted line" the treaty that the Allies had prepared. The Allies had thus "imposed their will" on paper.
For months past the Turkish nationalists, knowing what was in store for them, had been building up a centre of resistance in the interior of Asia Minor. Of course the former nationalist leaders such as Enver Pasha had long since fled to distant havens like Transcaucasia or Bolshevik Russia, but new leaders appeared, notably a young officer of marked military talent, Mustapha Kemal Pasha.
Furthermore, Kemal and the Bolsheviki were starting trouble in Persia. That country was in a most deplorable condition. During the war Persia, despite her technical neutrality, had been a battle-ground between the Anglo-Russians on the one hand and the Turco-Germans on the other.
He spoke with contempt of Ismail Kemal and the provisional governmental Liter, at the house of Avdi bey, a number of refugees from Dibra arrived and told of the sufferings in the villages annexed by the Serbs. They asserted five hundred burnt-out destitute persons had been prevented by the Serbs from receiving help from the agent of the Macedonian Relief Committee. We arranged to send maize.
Kemal Bey, a Nationalist of Salonika, with the help of Ziya Bey, collected round him a group of young writers, and these proceeded to translate the Koran out of Arabic into Turkish, and to publish the prayers for the Caliphate in their own language, and orders went out that these revised versions should be used in all mosques.
You peasants in Anatolia have rushed to the banner of Kemal Pasha in order to fight against the foreign invasion, but at the same time we hear that you are trying to organize your own party, a genuine peasants' party that will be willing to fight even if the Pashas are to make their peace with the Entente exploiters.
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