Late in 1918 the State Department asked the Navy Department to send a J high ranking naval officer and a station ship to Constantinople to protect American interests in the Near East. Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, USN, who was then commanding the U. S. Naval Base, Plymouth, England, was selected for this assignment. Early in January, 1919, he went to Paris to confer with President Wilson and other U. S. officials who were assembled there for the Peace Conference. He received only very broad instructions, in effect to “protect American interests and do what was right,” and for the very good reason that no one knew for sure what was happening in Turkey nor what might happen in the future. It was necessary to be ready for almost any development.
He arrived in Constantinople (Istanbul) late in January, 1919, where he established headquarters in the American Embassy. From that headquarters Admiral Bristol plunged into what was to be one of the most complex and varied tasks ever undertaken by a U. S. naval officer. Before tracing that task in some detail it is desirable to outline briefly our earlier relations with Turkey to point up the difficulties which he faced.
The once powerful Ottoman Empire still embraced most of the Moslem world as recently as the nineteenth century, when Russia, Austria-Hungary, England, France, and later Italy and Germany, engaged in intrigues, secret diplomacy, shows of force, and wars over and with the empire in a record that is extremely involved and still obscure and controversial. By the beginning of World War I the Ottoman Empire was reduced to Turkey in Europe and Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Iraq; indeed, the conflict of interests in the Near East was one of the major contributing causes of that war.
Within the empire European nations enjoyed a privileged status. Extra-territoriality, known there as capitulations, gave foreign nationals immunity from Turkish courts and permitted their trial in their own courts. Foreign commercial interests could establish businesses in the empire without the consent or knowledge of the Ottoman government and most businesses were foreign-owned and directed. Essentially an agricultural country, it practiced methods that were primitive and little changed from Biblical times. An Islamic state, its educational levels were low by European standards, and illiteracy was high, with the mass of the people living in poverty. Known as “the Sick Man of Europe,” it was stricken with fatal illness in 1914.
The United States had never engaged in the intrigues, and only a modest trade existed under conditions comparable to those of the European nations. A change in this pattern occurred when Captain Colby M. Chester, commanding the battleship Kentucky, went to Constantinople in the then commonplace practice of showing the flag and to act as a persuader upon the Sultan in settling an American claim. The then Rear Admiral Chester returned to Constantinople in 1908 as a representative of a New York financial group interested in acquiring a railroad concession in Turkey, but the actual negotiations were conducted by his son, Commander Arthur Chester. With assurance of favorable action, the latter returned to New York to organize the Ottoman American Development Company. The project was strongly opposed by European concessionaires, especially the Germans, but it had the active support of the State Department. It was not until late in 1911 that the Turkish Parliament was ready to act upon the concession. But by then the company no longer had a representative in Turkey and the American Minister had to inform the government that its application was withdrawn. This was the only American effort to secure a major concession in the Ottoman Empire, although the Standard Oil Company of New York was the largest foreign oil concern in Turkey.
One of the most extensive American activities in Turkey was that of missionaries, which began in about 1820. They worked among the minority Christian groups and were not permitted to attempt to convert Moslems. By 1914 there was an extensive chain of mission stations and schools throughout the country. The independent Robert College for men in Constantinople and Constantinople College for Women were founded by missionaries.
By 1914 American interests in the empire were largely emotional rather than material. Oppressions and massacres of minority groups, especially Christian Armenians and Greeks, had created a deep sympathy for these groups in the United States and a corresponding distrust of and dislike for Turkey. Large numbers of the oppressed people emigrated to the United States and their presence and tales contributed to that feeling. The “Terrible Turk” sums up the general attitude towards that empire and its people at the outbreak of World War I.
The empire joined Germany as an ally in that war, declaring at the same time that capitulations were abolished. The United States continued normal relations until its declaration of war on Germany in April, 1917, when the Ottoman government, under German pressure, severed relations. The United States never declared war upon the empire and its affairs were entrusted to the Swedish Legation. By October, 1918, the empire was in a state of chaos and collapse, and it appealed to President Wilson to arrange an armistice. Receiving no immediate reply, the Turks sent emissaries to treat directly with Allied commanders, and on October 30 a stiff armistice was signed at Mudros. Two weeks later an Allied fleet was at Constantinople restoring the pre-war foreign controls. It was soon apparent that the European Allies who had been at war with Turkey were eager to carve up and distribute among themselves the cadaver of the Ottoman Empire. England had a major part in the defeat of the empire and took the lead in post-war relations.
During the course of the war Russia, England, France, and Italy, by means of secret and other agreements, had parceled out the empire among themselves. The Bolshevik Revolution eliminated Russia from the grab and later the Bolsheviks repudiated all czarist claims in Turkey. But the others were intent upon getting their spoils. Greece also wanted all of Turkey in Europe (Thrace) as well as a foothold in Asia Minor.
Soon after his arrival in Constantinople, Admiral Bristol became aware of these agreements and the greedy attitude towards Turkey that they inspired in the other Allied representatives. He was displeased with this attitude, and from the first he acted as he thought right and fair, maintaining formal but relatively pleasant relations with his colleagues. He soon decided that Allied plans and policies were breeding a major war in the Near East, one that he worked hard to avert. In dealing with the Turks he handled formal written matters through the Swedish Legation, but he found that he could accomplish more by direct conversations with Turkish officials.
Cable facilities were limited, expensive, and foreign-controlled, so that one of his first steps was to establish a radio station in the Embassy, capable of communicating direct with Washington and with the ships assigned to his command.
A particularly urgent problem at the time of his arrival was the distribution of relief supplies. The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later absorbed into the Near East Relief) was already active in getting relief supplies to those people who were starving by the thousands. In January, 1919, three naval cargo ships were sent from New York to Constantinople. This was the first of a veritable stream of American relief supplies that flowed towards the Near East for the next three years. In February, 1919, Congress appropriated 100 million dollars for the relief of non-enemy countries of Europe, including the Armenians, Syrians, Greeks, and other Christians and Jews in Asia Minor.
At first Admiral Bristol’s command consisted of only small craft, but by May larger ships and destroyers were also in Turkish waters. From the beginning the destroyers were the work-horses of the command. They were stationed in Turkish and Black Sea ports where they reported on local conditions and formed part of a radio network which was the chief, if not the only, rapid communication system in the region. They transported American officials, business men, and missionaries, carried mail and even bullion, and were familiar and welcome sights in the various ports for the next several years. Their number reached twenty in 1922.
Naval officers were stationed in the principal ports of the region where they assisted in the distribution of relief supplies and were available to assist all Americans on legitimate business. The distribution of relief was his major concern for the first two years, but Admiral Bristol had other pressing problems at the same time.
One of the first of these brought him to international attention. In May, 1919, with the approval of England, France, and Italy, Greek forces occupied the city of Smyrna (now Izmir) in Anatolia. The occupation was accompanied by such allegations of excesses that an Allied Commission of Inquiry was formed to investigate the circumstances. Admiral Bristol was its president and its report was very critical of the Greeks, stating that the occupation appeared to be an outright annexation. It recommended that the Greek forces be withdrawn from Smyrna and be replaced by a small Allied force. The fate of this report is obscure, for it was not published officially and no action was taken on its principal recommendation. As a result of it Admiral Bristol became know as pro-Turk, although his real purpose was to avert a Greek disaster which he thought would result from a war with Turkey. It took courage to make such a report under the conditions existing at the time and it is a tribute to his skill as a negotiator. He was to show throughout that he was fair but firm to Turk, Greek, Armenian, and Ally alike.
His position during the first few months was awkward because his status was not clear, and there was some confusion as to his correct relationship with other American officials. Also, the Allied representatives were High Commissioners with the rank of ambassador, while his only title was his naval rank. In August, 1919, he was named United States High Commissioner to Turkey. The State Department instructed all of its consular and other officers to place themselves under his direction. Thereafter he maintained two separate staffs at the Embassy, one diplomatic and one purely naval. As High Commissioner he was responsible to the State Department, but he was also under the Navy Department as Commander of the U. S. Naval Detachment in Turkish waters.
Another urgent and complex Near Eastern problem that attracted his keen interest was the future status of Armenia. After a visit to the Caucasus in the summer of 1919 he was convinced that the recently declared Republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia should remain a part of Turkey, especially Armenia, as there were very few Armenians left in that region.
Turkish representatives appeared at the Paris Peace Conference to plead their case for a peace treaty, but when it was learned that their chief proposal was to be that the United States be given a mandate over all of Asiatic Turkey, they were told to go home and wait; it would be a long time before the conference got around to Turkey. The Allies would not place all of Turkey under the protection of the United States, but they were willing to give it a mandate over Armenia. Fully aware of the sympathy for Armenians in the United States, President Wilson was agreeable to that arrangement.
In July, 1919, an American Army officer was named Allied High Commissioner in Armenia. Major General James G. Harbord also headed an American Military Mission to Armenia to investigate conditions there, and this mission submitted a detailed and realistic report after an on-the-spot study.
General Harbord assumed that his mission was a preliminary to a United States mandate. Emphasizing the difficulties of such a mandate over remote Armenia, he recommended a mandate over all of Turkey as more logical and easier to administer. But that would be expensive and would involve the United States in troublesome Near East affairs with war as a possibility. Admiral Bristol was consulted by General Harbord and agreed fully with his views.
Early in 1920 the League of Nations offered the Armenian mandate to the United States. When President Wilson asked Congress for authority to accept it, the Senate promptly rejected the idea by a two to one vote. By that time Bolshevik advances into the trans-Caucasus forced the evacuation of High Commission and Near East Relief representatives from the region.
The fate of Armenia was closely linked to the growth of the Turkish Nationalist Movement under the leadership of Mustapha Kemal. Shortly before the Greeks occupied Smyrna, he was appointed inspector general of the skeleton Turkish army allowed by the Allies to remain in Asiatic Turkey. After the Greek occupation of Smyrna, lie became the leader of the Nationalist Movement. In eastern Turkey the new Nationalist Party adopted a program of safeguarding Turkey from foreign encroachments on its territory and the Sultanate. Early in 1920 the Constantinople Parliament approved the Kemal- ist program, which became known as the Declaration of Independence of New Turkey. It asserted the right of Turkey to be completely free to develop her national and economic resources without outside restrictions and to end extra-territoriality.
This development brought a new Allied occupation of Constantinople. Many influential Turks who had expressed patriotic opinions were deported by the British. That action gave Kemal much ammunition for his cause, and Turks began to rally to his movement in numbers. He formed a Nationalist Government at Angora (now Ankara),and in June, 1920, when the Greeks began to move inland from Smyrna, his forces waged open war against them. The Nationalists were denounced as rebels in Constantinople, and Allied resentment against the Nationalists increased when Kemal made agreements with the Bolsheviks and the Caucasian Soviet Republics through which he received money, military equipment, and moral support.
The Allied peace treaty with Turkey was signed by representatives of the Constantinople government at Sevres, in August, 1920. This treaty retained the old foreign control over Turkey and established an international control of the Straits. One article provided that President Wilson was to arbitrate the boundary between Turkey and Armenia. Turkish Nationalist opposition coupled with growing dissension among the Allies combined to render that treaty ineffectual.
Few believed that the Nationalists had any real political power at that time, but Admiral Bristol was one of the few. He reported, in September, that the Nationalist Movement grew out of the Greek occupation of Smyrna, that it represented the vast majority of Turks, that they would not give up Armenia, and he cautioned that if the President acted as arbitrator he might have to use force to enforce his award. Nevertheless, the President announced his award on November 22.
Fearing that the Allies might cut the Black Sea supply lines between Russia and Turkey, in the fall of 1920 the Nationalists attacked Armenia from the west as the Bolsheviks moved in from the east. That made short shrift of the infant republic. An Armenian Soviet Republic was proclaimed early in December, thus fully justifying the Admiral’s earlier warning about the Presidential boundary arbitration.
Through his attitude of fairness to all, Admiral Bristol gradually gained the confidence and respect of the Nationalists, and they, in turn, became convinced that the United States, at least, had no territorial designs on Turkey.
The fall of Armenia was soon followed by a flood of refugees to be cared for: Russians fleeing before the growing Bolshevik power. In November, 1920, with White Russian General Wrangel’s defeat imminent, Admiral Bristol sent the cruiser St. Louis, several destroyers, and two American steamships to Crimean ports to evacuate all Americans and selected Russians. Other Russians, fearing their fate with the Bolsheviks, moved out in Russian warships and merchant vessels. Later Admiral Bristol’s force assisted in caring for about 100,000 Russian refugees who were on board some eighty Russian ships at Constantinople.
Early in 1921 the Navy Department wanted to reduce his force, then consisting of two small cruisers, twelve destroyers, and some small craft, but the State Department objected on the ground that conditions were still too unsettled in the Near East. In the fall of 1921 American relief supplies were sent to starving Russians in southern Russia and this assistance continued through most of 1922. Throughout this period destroyers made regular rounds of Black Sea ports, providing transportation, mail, and communication facilities.
In 1921 Admiral Bristol also was faced with discriminations against American business interests. This problem was complicated by the fact that many of the “Americans” were naturalized emigres of the region who had returned to the Near East. Screening their legitimate complaints from their abuses of American citizenship was not always easy. The discriminatory taxes of Constantinople, backed by the European Allies, were also a sore spot. Consumption taxes were directed against American goods. Such a tax on flour, for example, was working great hardships upon Turkish consumers.
In early 1921, after the Allies offered a revision of the Treaty of Sevres without result, France and Italy withdrew their troops from Turkey. England continued to back Greece, but when the Greeks failed to take Angora by August, the Allies announced their neutrality in the Greco-Turkish war. Thereafter, the Greek military and economic position deteriorated rapidly and by the summer of 1922 their resources were exhausted. Their troops fell back on Smyrna in what became a rout. On September 9 a victorious Nationalist Turkish army entered that city. That created a new crisis for Admiral Bristol.
With the fall of Smyrna imminent, he was authorized to send destroyers for the protection of American lives and property, with the restriction that they were not to intervene or mediate on either side. He sent three ships to the city with his Chief of Staff, Captain Arthur J. Hepburn, in charge. Admiral Bristol reported the situation then as most alarming, estimating that about 300,000 destitute refugees would have to be evacuated because if returned to their homes there would be almost certain Turkish reprisals against them. An estimated 150,000 were in Smyrna alone. Their most urgent need was food, and fortunately Captain Hepburn obtained the Turkish general’s permission for food to be sent to the city. Admiral Bristol, resentful of apparent Greek and Allied apathy, took the lead in mustering shipping, including the commandeering of Greek ships. He bluntly told a British official that the time had come to form a British relief organization to help in such situations.
On September 13 a huge fire broke out in Smyrna that destroyed the Jewish and Christian sections of the city but left the Moslem section relatively undamaged. The responsibility for this fire has never been satisfactorily fixed. Admiral Bristol felt at the time that the Turks were negligent in policing and in letting the fire get out of control. All Americans were evacuated to Athens, and the destroyers began to evacuate refugees on the day the fire started. Captain Hepburn obtained Kemal’s permission to use ten Greek ships to assist in the evacuation, but the Turks would not permit the evacuation of men between the ages of 18 and 45, as they were considered prisoners of war. On September 22 Admiral Bristol, still disturbed by the apathy of the Greeks, proposed that Greece demobilize her army in order that she “devote such war expenses to her demobilized troops and the refugees that she had created devastating Anatolia.”1
By October 20 more than 200,000 refugees had been evacuated from Smyrna alone, 140,000 of them in Greek ships under American naval direction. With those from other ports of Asia Minor, the grand total evacuated was 262,587.
Fearing that the Turks would next drive on Constantinople and cross into Europe to drive the Greeks from Thrace, Allied leaders arranged an armistice which was signed at Mudania on October 11. Hostilities between Greece and Turkey ceased. The armistice provided that Turkish Nationalists would occupy eastern Thrace—a notable victory for Kemal since the Treaty of Sevres had awarded all of Thrace, except a small hinterland of Constantinople, to Greece.
The Mudania armistice paved the way for a new peace treaty with Turkey to replace the all but dead Treaty of Sevres. The Allies invited both Constantinople and Angora to send delegates to Lausanne for a conference. But Kemal then proclaimed the abolition of the Sultanate, following which the Sultan fled to Malta in a British battleship. That insured that there would be but one delegation at Lausanne—the Nationalists. Their chief delegate was Ismet Pasha, Kemal’s right hand man, who proved to be a tough negotiator. The United States, not a party to the Treaty of Sevres, was invited to send “observers.” Richard Washburn Child, Ambassador to Italy, Admiral Bristol, and Joseph C. Grew, Minister to Switzerland, were named.
The Lausanne Conference met in November and it proved to be a drawn-out affair. The story of that conference has been told in detail by Mr. Grew in his memoirs2 and need not be reviewed here. The American observers attending the various meetings stated their country’s position on points of American interest, but took no part in the actual negotiations. Mr. Grew found Admiral Bristol to be able, though inclined to be talkative. On the latter point he quoted Ambassador Child as saying: “When I try to milk the Admiral’s intellectual capacity, all four teats run at once.”3
The conference dragged on until February, 1923, when it broke up because the Turks would not accept terms which the Allies insisted upon. It reassembled in April at the request of the Allies. Mr. Grew headed the American observer group at this session and Admiral Bristol remained in Turkey. By then the American group was embarrassed by a recent development in Turkey, the revival of the Chester concession of 1911, but now with different financial backing.
In September, 1922, Commander Arthur Chester returned to Turkey as an agent of the revived Ottoman American Development Company to seek a new railway concession with oil rights. The State Department kept aloof from the project and in January, 1923, instructed the High Commissioner to inform the Turkish government that the United States had no more interest in this concession than one for any other American company. Admiral Bristol did nothing to assist the promoters, but their negotiations were successful, and on April 10, just two weeks before the reassembling of the Lausanne Conference, the concession was granted.
At Lausanne it was suspected that this action by the Turks was designed to secure American support in their treaty negotiations. The circumstances suggest that there might have been some substance in that suspicion, but if so, it did no good. Both the British and the French were opposed to the Chester concession for it conflicted with their own earlier concessions and interests.
A new treaty of peace between the Allies and Turkey was concluded in July, mainly on Turkish terms; the only negotiated peace treaty that followed World War I. The Allies came to the conference split among themselves, while Ismet Pasha returned more determined than ever to secure the complete independence of Turkey. Following the treaty’s ratification, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in October.
The treaty had an immediate effect upon Admiral Bristol’s naval command. While the conference was still in session, ships were withdrawn with State Department concurrence. On the day after the Grand National Assembly ratified the treaty, ..the Allies began to evacuate Constantinople. Bristol was given to understand that the remaining American ships were also expected to leave, and all departed before the Turks occupied Constantinople early in October. By November his Near East Detachment was reduced to six destroyers, a tender, and a few smaller craft. By the spring of 1924 conditions in the Near East had so stabilized that the remaining destroyers were withdrawn.
Returning from Lausanne Ismet Pasha indicated to Admiral Bristol the desire of Turkey to conclude a separate treaty with the United States', and he renewed the subject with Mr. Grew when he returned to Lausanne. The State Department was unwilling to conclude any treaty before the peace treaty with the Allies was signed, but it authorized Mr. Grew to conduct conversations with Ismet. These were prolonged, and it was not until August that a treaty reestablishing diplomatic and commercial relations between the two countries was worked out and signed.
Meanwhile, Admiral Bristol was following the fortunes of the Ottoman American Development Company with interest. One of the terms of the concession was that work must start within six months. The Turks became concerned when the company failed to show signs of life and a few days before the expiration of the six-month period the State Department informed him that it had refused to ask the Turkish government to extend the concession. Admiral Bristol believed that the Turks wanted the terms of the concession carried out and shortly afterward he reported that an extension had been granted. He warned that the prestige of the United States would suffer if the Chester project failed and that he anticipated failure. By November the company made a half-hearted move to start work. The Turks were suspicious of its ability to continue, and in December they annulled the concession on the ground that the company failed to comply with its terms. It was the only foreign concession granted by the Kemal regime. Thereafter the Turks proceeded with the economic development of the country themselves.
The Lausanne Treaty came under fire in the Senate when it was submitted to that body early in 1924. It was charged that the treaty was a sellout of the Armenians and to American vested interests, i.e., the Chester concession, and the Senate adjourned in May without acting on the treaty. Meanwhile in Constantinople Admiral Bristol negotiated an understanding for the handling of American claims in Turkey. In December he reported that Turkey would not ratify the treaty or other agreements until the Senate had acted.
The Democrats made the Lausanne Treaty and the Chester concession a campaign issue in the 1924 Presidential campaign and no action was taken on the treaty in 1925. Early in 1926 Admiral Bristol concluded a modus vivendi with the Turks by which relations would be conducted under the principle of the most favored nation, thus formalizing a condition that was long since de facto. Finally, in January, 1927, the Senate rejected the treaty by a margin of six votes and Admiral Bristol was instructed to arrange for resuming normal diplomatic relations under the most favored nation principle by an exchange of notes. This he did by the end of February. He was then told that President Coolidge, having his own naval career in mind, did not want him to remain in Turkey after June. Mr. Joseph C. Grew was named Ambassador in May, and a week later Admiral Bristol left for home, after more than eight years as High Commissioner and during which time normal and formal diplomatic relations did not exist.
He would have been recalled in 1924 had the Lausanne Treaty been ratified. In 1925 the State Department, also mindful of his naval career, was willing to release him, but President Coolidge decided that his experience and success made him too valuable where he was.
Admiral Bristol was conspicuously successful in Turkey mainly because at all times he tried to be fair to everyone and to carry out his original instructions literally; “protect American interests and do what is right.” By his fairness and willingness to recognize from the first that the Turk was not always wrong, he created a special and favored position for himself and the United States in Turkey. His destroyers and other ships were for the most part engaged in errands of mercy in assisting in the distribution of relief supplies and the evacuation of refugees. By providing transportation, mail, and communication services for all legitimate Americans, they were a real factor in the protection and promotion of American interests. For his services he was commended by three Secretaries of State, Lansing, Hughes, and Kellogg. In a personal letter of appreciation in June, 1927, President Coolidge called his success, “notable in the annals of American diplomacy.” That success forms a chapter in the history of the U. S. Navy to which it can point with great pride.
1. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922, II, p. 431.
2. Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era, 2 vols. (Boston, 1952), I. Chapters XVIII-XXI.
3. Ibid., I, pp. 503-041