That Freedom Talk

Halil Pasha and Patriot playing chess at Dr.Munir's home, Goztepe  Istanbul.

1919

Halil Pasha and Patriot were playing chess, as usual, after having lunch. For hours they were thinking without moving from their spot. Pasha was rubbing his chin. Patriot’s fists were on his knees, he was biting his moustache.

Jamil was watching the game. At first, he wasn't interested but now he was as interested as the players. He looked at Dr. Munir, who was reading. Jamil thought it was good that Dr. Munir was reading and not watching the game. He would have been surprised how involved all of them were with the game when the country was in so much trouble. He would have been surprised at how we can forget our troubles which are just like vultures waiting for our death.

The Doctor didn't like people thinking for hours in front of a chess board. He called that kind of thinking ‘unproductive thinking’. He used to say, ‘A chess game is not even an exercise in thinking. The real job of the mind is to find out the truth, to understand the truth completely and change it. The game of chess is wasting the mind in an unnecessary task, making the mind tired and thus preventing it from performing its real job for a short while. This is the worst kind of laziness; to use your strength for something other than your real purpose and occupy your mind at something seemingly more important. Playing chess is a good example of that kind of waste.”

Jamil lit another cigarette. Dr. Munir was sitting at the bench and reading a history book written by Naima with great attention as usual. His old fur was across his shoulders and his glasses were on the tip of his nose. Another man would have looked old with those types of glasses, but he looked like a child with them. He raised his head and looked outside for a while; then looked sad, as if he didn't like what he saw. Jamil met him in the Hospital at Damascus. He never saw him reading there. He wondered, ‘didn’t he have books available to him at that time or he did he think reading while everybody was dying was not appropriate?’

Abdulhamit

Patriot made a move on the board. After that, he went back to his deep thinking. Pasha didn't move a finger, as if his opponent didn't do anything.

Gulnihal came in to the room, silent as a cat, and left the daily papers by the doctor’s side.

Jamil took one of them, as if he didn't really want to. He checked the headlines. He yawned and stretched. He had been stuck in this house for two and a half months since February 6^th, the day Rashid the Circassian, former Governor of Diyarbakir, had died. Maksood was right. They put an arrest order for Jamil for helping a criminal escape and battery and attack to a police Officer while on duty. The injuries of the Police Officer were serious.

Worst of all was that the man Jamil had beaten had a brother who was a Police Chief at the Beyoglu Station. They were Albanians. He turned the situation in to a blood feud. He wanted to find Jamil. Even prison was not an option for him. This might end in one of the party’s death. His house and his neighborhood were under watch. Haji, the shopkeeper, was asking the whereabouts of Jamil. Some sales ladies or beggars came and knocked on their door. Some days, people came to their door pretending that they were looking for a house to rent. Salime often saw people in front of their windows or looking through the walls of the yard.

There was a search warrant for Jamil because he was considered a criminal. But other Unionists were under watch as well, even though they hadn't done anything wrong. The members of the Freedom and Accord Party and the Officers who were supporting them were after the Unionists. They were spying on them.

The Military Court Marshall headed by General Ali Fevzi was investigating ‘Young Turk’ activities as far back as 1888. Another Court Marshall headed by General Nazim was investigating the war crimes and Unionists role in them. They already hung Bogazliyan District Governor Kamal and Governor of Urfa  Nusret; so it was getting serious.

The general state of affairs was getting worse every day in the Country. In the east, the Armenian State was being found. Kurds wanted a large area to be separated from the Empire and were seeking support from the Foreign States. There was some talk about the British, French, Italian and Greek occupation of various parts of the country. All the railroads and ports were under Allied Armies’ control. It was not possible to stay in Istanbul for a long time and there were not many places in Anatolia to seek refuge either.

Dr. Munir put his book down and started to read the papers. Halil Pasha was not doing well at the game. Dr. Munir said, “That’s bad!”

“What’s bad?”

Dr. Munir put the paper down and looked over his glasses, “President Wilson approved Greek Occupation of Izmir and surrounding areas!”

“No way!”

“That’s really bad. Our Caliph couldn’t even negotiate the Mandate Solution. Maybe it would have been better to accept the Mandate of one of the Occupied Forces and keep the country together. But no, they wanted to divide the country, regardless!” He looked at Jamil and said, “You can’t go to Kuschu-bashi Ranch and rest now. It looks like you are going to be a Zaybak fighter after all, instead of being a farmer.” He was pensive. There was a wink in his eyes. He said to Jamil, “You were asking Pasha yesterday whether we could have avoided the war at the time. Pasha didn't give you a definitive answer. I wonder what he thinks about the current situation.”

“I told you before Doctor, there was no way of avoiding the war!” Halil Pasha said.

“Yes, there was a way!”

“What was that?”

“Abdulhamid would have found a way!”

“Do you think that we were wrong to dethrone him?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I don’t understand, Liberty is not a crime. We brought Freedom to the country.”

“But who wanted the Freedom?”

Halil Pasha was serious. “What do you mean ‘who wanted the Freedom’?”

“You will say that the People wanted Freedom.”

“Yes”

“That was a weak yes, my dear Pasha! We were just a small group of Military Officers and Government Employees!  How did we know the ‘People’ wanted the ‘Freedom’ when there were no widespread political organizations in the vast Empire?”

Halil Pasha looked like he was going to answer to this immediately but he hesitated and tried to laugh. He said; “You Freemason, you Pig! Let’s say you are right for a minute, let’s say the people didn't ask for Freedom. Let’s say we didn't even know what Freedom really meant for the country.”

“That’s right, even we didn't know...”

“Let’s say we didn't know. Damn it! The country was collapsing. We wanted democracy to save the country.”

“How did we know that democracy was going to save the country?”

“Enough already! There was that Freedom talk everywhere, we took it and used it against Abdulhamid!”

“Then we got disappointed and we didn’t know what to do.”

“Yes.”

“We asked, ‘Now that we had our revolution, what are we going to do with it?’I resigned from the Party, and you, I mean the rulers of the Party, started to look for new recruits, hoping to manage better in the future!”

General Halil Kut

Halil Pasha nodded. He said, “We didn't think about human resources until we started ruling the country! We didn’t know that it was necessary to have a cadre, a core group of trained personnel to run the country. We thought if we could bring back the Constitution, then all the Ottoman population would work together for the good of the country. We thought everything would change for the better. After thirty- two years of autocratic government, we thought all those who opposed Abdulhamid were our friends. Those people were the best people in the country. We thought everybody would work hard and within a year we expected to see the results. Especially our intellectual friends in Europe were optimistic. They opposed Abdulhamid and they were clever enough to find solutions to all the difficult problems that we faced. Then we found out some were not knowledgeable, some lacked experience. They wanted to help but their methods didn't work. Some thought about their personal gains. Within six months we understood that we were in trouble. This shows you two things. First, we were not total fools and we were working in good faith. We brought back the Constitution and we didn’t take positions in the Government right away. We didn't think about taking advantage of our positions and robbing the country, like the ones before us. You know that better than anybody.”

Halil Pasha was silent a while as if he was expecting an answer, then he sighed and continued. “We realized soon that we needed people for the executive and administrative positions. However, there was no time to prepare. I thought about this problem a lot! We should have chosen the Cabinet Members and administrative personnel before the Revolution, so that they would be ready to take responsibility soon after. We weren't prepared and we didn't have time to think about that after the Revolution either. Our ship was in the middle of the worst storm that the world had ever seen. From mast to the bilge, the ship cracked and showed the signs of eminent dismantling. Do you remember Vehib Pasha? When he returned from Diyarbakir he was full of joy. You have seen him, he was so happy to have found the sociologist Ziya Gokalp. He was saying, ’we found our light, He is going to direct us.’ At the time nobody knew Ziya Gokalp. You call him a ‘phony’ but remember how we treated him then. We thought we really had found a treasure and gave him all the resources we could. We thought everything he said was important. The youth of the country were our only hope, yet we have let Ziya Gokalp educate them. He had complete authority over recruiting the personnel and training them. If you think he misused his power that wouldn't be fair to him. He did the best he could. He was not trained for a job like that. His knowledge was limited. That’s why he listened more than he talked and he often looked pensive. You used to say that he was dozing off. As he was trying to train the youth he was also working hard on his own education. He fell off the cliff like everyone else with the collapse of the Empire. He tried to form an ideology from three contradictory ideas: Ottomanism, Islamism and Pan-Turkism. When you take that road, you have to accept that it will result in failure, and we failed.”

\

Halil Pasha rubbed his face. “We governed the country 9 years, 8 months and 12 days. In this short period of time we had so many disastrous wars. Even in those hard times we had the best people working for us in the country. They all came together under the Unionist Party’s roof. Even today, whoever wants to do anything in this Country in this dismantled state, they will only find the Unionists for the job. If they refuse to employ Unionists; they can’t accomplish anything!”

“You are right in that respect, Pasha!”

“I am right on the other subject to. They imply that we could have chosen not to enter the War. Did we have any liberty especially in an important matter like that? We didn’t have enough time to even consider building a Primary School properly. You know very well how the Officers of the Third Army joined the Party en mass. In a couple of years everybody was concerned about having a Democratic Constitution. It was because we were losing Roumeli. In fact, we should have known that we had already lost that territory after the Balkan Wars.  After the Reval Entente, what was left of the Empire? We could have just given up and waited for the execution or taken action without thinking about the outcome. We chose the second option. Even though we didn't have hope, we wanted to fight. At first the English supported us because they didn't want Germany to have so much presence in the Ottoman Empire. We didn't know that was the reason why we were successful in the Young Turk Revolution. The Freedom came too easily to us. We thought it was our own power. We had reached our goal of saving the Constitution. Then things took a turn for the worse. Germany’s policies changed and we were disappointed. The rest was just slipping down the hill fast. We were relying on Islam but that didn't work either. Democracy didn't work for us... Everyone wanted to separate.  We chose wrong paths and became ruthless. We only found Anatolian Turks with us. And we were aware of the conditions that the Anatolian Turks were facing. The Empire needed other resources. The Germans started telling us pan Tooranism stories at that desperate moment. We believed in those stories like it was our survival. We wanted the support of Turks in Caucasia and Central Asia. There was no other choice at the time. It was too late when we finally realized that they were different from us.”

From the book: The Tired Warrior
by Kemal Tahir

Translated by Elif Erkmen

Unionists are Commitee of Union and Progress Members
Turkish Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti