For contemporary Istanbulites, a trip south, across the Sea of Marmara, poses nothing exceptional or treacherous. The southern shore is often a day-trip destination for those seeking to relax or sightsee in the port towns of Yalova or Çanakkale. The Marmara's southern coast is also a stop on the road to warmer, more comfortable climes farther south, such as the holiday resorts of Kuş adası or Foça. The region stands in sharp contrast to the farthest reaches of eastern Anatolia, such as Van, Diyarbakir, or Mardin, where an insurgency by Kurdish guerrillas continues to claim lives.

Yet, the tranquillity and stability of districts straddling the Marmara's southern coast were not always so ensured. In the not so distant past, during the Turkish War of Independence, this strip of coastline, stretching today from the old garrison town of Çanakkale to the industrial quarters and gecekondus of İzmit and Adapazarı, was the scene of bitter intercommunal fighting. Between 1919 and 1923, local gangs and militias fiercely contested the loyalties of towns and villages of the south Marmara.Footnote ¹ The struggle mirrored the greater conflict over the future of Anatolia, a conflict that pitted the National Forces (Kuva-yı Milliye) under Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) against the loyalist Ottoman government in Istanbul and British and Greek occupational troops. Before war's end, at a time when the Nationalists appeared down and out, plans for a separatist state in the south Marmara began to circulate among provincial notables in the region. The great Nationalist counterattack against the Greek army along the Sakarya River, followed by Mustafa Kemal's entrance into Izmir, formally put an end to these plans and solidified the south Marmara as an integral and secure part of the emerging Republic of Turkey.Footnote ²

Nationalism, intercommunal violence, and separatism are deeply ingrained themes within Ottoman and Turkish historiography. In the case of Anatolia, however, any discussion of these themes is largely confined to a select group of “usual suspects.” The charge of treason (ihanet) has particularly been reserved for Armenians and Anatolian Greeks (Rum), who are often associated with nationalist insurgencies in eastern Anatolia, the Greek occupation, or the irredentist designs of the Allied Powers.Footnote ³ In more recent years, Kurds and Kurdish nationalism have received increasing attention as a source for violence in the provinces (again, specifically in eastern Anatolia), reactionary politics, and separatism.Footnote ⁴

Yet none of these groups instigated the violence and separatism seen in the south Marmara during the War of Independence. Furthermore, the revolt against the National Movement in this portion of northwestern Anatolia did not ultimately lead historians and administrators in the Republic of Turkey to brand whole communities as traitors to the nation. Instead, consciousness of intercommunal violence and separatism in the region has seemingly vanished from the collective historical memory of contemporary Turkey.

This article surveys the origins and immediate results of this brief separatist movement in the south Marmara.Footnote ⁵ At the center of this story is the evolution of the region's North Caucasian diaspora, a population that has resided in this portion of Anatolia since the mid-19th century. Unlike Armenians and Greeks, the North Caucasians of the south Marmara are largely Sunni Muslims. More strikingly, North Caucasians (colloquially known as Circassians) were historically counted among the highest-ranking and influential members of the Ottoman elite.Footnote ⁶ Yet with the outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence in 1919, thousands of North Caucasians in the south Marmara took up arms against Mustafa Kemal's National Forces in open rebellion. By 1921 members of the Circassian elite from the contemporary provinces of Bursa, Çanakkale, Kocaeli, Sakarya, and Balıkesir banded together to appeal to Europe for the creation of a Circassian–Greek state in the region under the aegis of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points.

This essay seeks to answer two questions. First, why did Circassians in this corner of Anatolia make such a violent turn away from the post-Ottoman state and embrace Greek occupation and the prospect of Western intervention? Second, what is the historical and contemporary significance of such a movement?

EXCEPTIONAL IMMIGRANTS: NORTH CAUCASIANS DURING THE LONG 19TH CENTURY

The rebellion by separatist Circassian forces unleashed during the War of Independence was rooted in three historical experiences. North Caucasians’ arrival en masse into the south Marmara after the mid-19th century caused massive social upheaval as land rights, settlement, and communal relationships were redefined throughout the region. The second major turning point occurred with the mobilization of North Caucasians during World War I. The wartime Ottoman government recruited from the North Caucasian diaspora for the Ottoman clandestine service, the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa). Rather than integrating Circassians into Ottoman society, the wartime policies of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) strengthened the autonomy of local North Caucasian notables and paramilitaries, who collectively held a tenuous and apprehensive relationship with the Young Turks. The defeat of 1918 was the final straw for many of these Circassians. Despite claims to the contrary, local Circassian leaders in the south Marmara understood the rise of Mustafa Kemal's National Forces as nothing more than a stalking horse for the remnants of the CUP, whom they blamed for the ruined state of the economy and the nation.

At first, resistance to the National Movement among Circassians in the south Marmara took the form of a popular rebellion led by an aging Circassian gendarme named Ahmet Anzavur. As a local notable with strong ties to the sultan's palace, Anzavur levied a series of populist demands against the Nationalists and mobilized a broad coalition of Circassians as well as immigrant Albanians, Bosnians, Pomaks, and local Alevis. The failure of this overwhelmingly peasant rebellion, and the coming Greek occupation of 1920–22, led many Circassian notables to seek an alternative venue to oppose the CUP's return to power. A decision to lobby for a joint Circassian–Greek state in the south Marmara during the winter of 1921 was not based on a popular, populist, or even mass nationalist effort. Rather, the prospect of an autonomous Muslim Circassian entity in Anatolia represented an alliance of political convenience between Western occupation authorities and several successors of Anzavur who sought to maintain their own provincial positions of influence. The collapse of this second attempt, in 1922, to forestall the CUP's apparent return to power in the south Marmara resulted in the exile and death of thousands of Circassians from the region.

The relationship between the peoples of the North Caucasus and the Ottoman state was engendered long before their mass exodus to the Ottoman Empire in the mid-19th century. Untold thousands of Caucasian (particularly Adige and Abkhazian) men and women sold in the slave markets around the Black Sea were employed in the harems, palaces, and barracks of the Ottoman Empire. Many ascended through the ranks of the Ottoman state, becoming some of the most powerful figures in the empire. The Russian invasion and resulting expulsion of tens of thousands of people from the northwest Caucasus transformed the nature of this Circassian diaspora in the Ottoman Empire. Although the final number is difficult to ascertain, scholars have estimated that as many as 2.5 million North Caucasians entered Ottoman lands between 1859 and 1914.Footnote ⁷ By the outbreak of World War I, the Circassian diaspora was as large or larger than the total number of Kurds living in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁸

A specific set of agendas drove the concerted placement of North Caucasian refugees in the Ottoman Empire. The regions most densely settled by these immigrants largely constituted areas of high strategic value for the Ottoman state. This included the south Marmara, a basin that enveloped the capital and its lines of communication with the Anatolian interior. In other zones of settlement, such as Kosova, Bulgaria, and eastern Anatolia, Istanbul planned to use the “warlike” North Caucasians as a buffer population against its main military adversaries, Russia, Austria–Hungary, and the Balkan states. Coupled with their services as loyal military auxiliaries, these Muslim refugees helped to dilute the number of indigenous Ottoman Christians in regions such as the south Marmara.Footnote ⁹

The arrival of Circassian refugees greatly unsettled the provinces of Karesi, Kala-i Sultaniye, Hüdavendigar, İzmit, and Adapazarı.Footnote ¹⁰ New villages were constructed to accommodate these newcomers. In other cases, older villages and neighborhoods were appropriated to make way for this influx of refugees. Either way, the settlement of Circassians resulted in the confiscation (or theft) of vast tracts of land from their original owners.Footnote ¹¹ Material support for these refugees (which often came in the form of providing food, seeds, and agricultural equipment) also came at the expense of local inhabitants. Above all, Circassian settlers gradually became synonymous with banditry, theft, and violence. Reports from local Ottoman officials consistently mention the prevalence of paramilitary activity among rural Circassians. Whole villages were implicated in the support and recruitment of gangs that robbed wealthy merchants on the main roads, stole land, or carried out murders for hire.

The social dislocation that followed the establishment of these largely poor North Caucasian communities did not subside with the turn of the 20th century. Tensions between the native population and immigrant Circassians continued well into the war period and defined the local politics of such counties as Biga, Gönen, Manyas, Adapazarı, Karacabey, and Kirmasti.

Although many refugees continued to live at the economic and social margins of the region, some members of the North Caucasian diaspora did integrate into the administrative and economic life of the south Marmara, at various levels. Some migrant families rose to local prominence in certain districts (such as the Maan, Koç, and Bağ families from Abkhazia in İzmit/Adapazarı) and were appointed to positions in the provincial administration. A select number of this local elite obtained still higher-status positions in Istanbul, often through relatives who lived and worked in the capital. Many more North Caucasians contributed to essential sectors in the local economy, particularly by raising and selling horses. Others found work as foot soldiers in the private armies of wealthy notables or as independent bandits. Some who chose the paramilitary life entered the state security service, joining the local police force, for instance, or the military.

More than any internal ethnic or linguistic differences, class and social status defined the North Caucasian diaspora in the south Marmara. A British consular report written at the end of World War I characterized the North Caucasian diaspora in Anatolia in the following way:

This anonymous British observer was correct in many regards. The North Caucasian urban elite were counted first among equals in the capital and other towns in the Ottoman Empire. They attended school alongside non-Circassians and shared the same loyalty (or disloyalty) to the Ottoman state as other members of the elite. On the flip side of this equation were lower-class North Caucasians. Whether they lived in town or in the countryside, the “less reputable” Circassians constituted a recruiting well for the military or gendarmerie (and, later on, the Ottoman clandestine service). It is this segment of the socioeconomic spectrum that created the most negative popular perceptions of the North Caucasian diaspora.Footnote ¹³

However, the class divide among Circassians was more nuanced than the British diplomat observed. More than income or occupation, education lay at the heart of the class divide in Ottoman society. Education created social networks that helped advance professional prospects and gave access to influential circles of power in the capital and the provinces. It also elicited and changed cultural tastes, from dress to behavior to systems of belief.

At some point during the turn of the 20th century, Istanbul took note of the martial potential of the Circassian diaspora living in the south Marmara. During the reign of Sultan Abdülhamit II (1876–1909), the Ottoman state exhibited keen interest in tying its North Caucasian population to the state through military service. One plan called for drafting North Caucasian agricultural slaves in exchange for the promise of emancipation (and a monetary settlement with their owners).Footnote ¹⁴ While in the army or the gendarmerie, North Caucasian officers and men were made to feel privileged and unique. They were organized into special units of the gendarmerie and the army, and were allowed to wear “native dress” (notably the kalpak, a large fur hat, as well as a long overcoat with bandolier). Most importantly, it appears that many units comprised members of the same extended family, who were settled in the same village and placed under the command of a regional or “tribal” notable.

However, this recruitment policy does not appear at all indiscriminate. Central to the recruitment of North Caucasians into the state's security services were filial and professional networks. We see the inner workings of these networks with establishment of the Special Organization, which privileged the south Marmara as a particular source of recruitment into its ranks. Hüsamettin Ertürk, one of the founders of the Special Organization, states in his memoirs that Circassian “privates and officers” from Gönen, Adapazarı, and Kandıra were specifically recruited for service in Iraq.Footnote ¹⁵ Yet many of these same Circassians, men employed in some of the most vital and secret aspects of the Ottoman war effort, later took up arms against one another with the outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence.

Elements of testimony presented before the 1919 Istanbul Military Tribunal reveal some details of the state's recruitment policy in the south Marmara. In a telegram, Musa Bey, the governor (mutasarrıf) of Karesi, made the following observations about conscription of “paramilitaries” in the liva of Balıkesir:

This document alludes to more than the violence inflicted upon the civilian population of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus and who is responsible for such acts. Correspondence of this type reveals that local administrators, in this case Musa Bey, were acutely aware of the kind of men wanted for such an operation and where and through whom they could be attained. In other words, the men chosen to take part in such a suggestive task as “paramilitary action” were not acquired at random; they were known, either through reputation or suggestion, and thus came under someone's jurisdiction or authority.

Those responsible for drafting these foot soldiers into the CUP's secret war against the British, Russians, and Ottoman Christians were largely leaders of private militias in the south Marmara. We know the names of several local strongmen employed by the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa: (Ançok) Ahmet Anzavur, (Süngülü) Davut, Şah İsmail, (Maan) Ali, (Maan) Şirin, Çerkes Bekir Sıtkı, Çerkes Reşit, and his brother Ethem. Yet these figures were most likely only middlemen for much more influential Circassian officers based in the capital. Each of these individuals listed was recruited by or served under Circassian officers with close ties to the CUP. (Ç’ince) Hüseyin Rauf Orbay, secretary of the Navy, was an old comrade of Çerkes Reşit. Şirin and Ali had served with Eşref Kuşçubaşı, founder of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. Ahmet Anzavur entered into the Special Organization with the assistance of Yusuf İzzet (Met Çanatuka) Paşa, whom he met through the Şimali Kafkas Cemiyeti (North Caucasian Association), a group composed of prominent North Caucasian immigrants such as Rauf Orbay.Footnote ¹⁷

When defeat in 1918 brought these men home from war, hardship and bitterness greeted many from the south Marmara. Starvation was rampant, forcing many, such as in Mudanya, to collect grass for food.Footnote ¹⁸ The region became the point of departure and the repository for tens of thousands of refugees. Armenians, Greeks, Bosnians, and Albanians from İzmit, Adapazarı, Balıkesir, Lapseki, Orhangazi, Armutlu, Mudanya, and Ezine were forced from their homes and deported to points in southern and eastern Anatolia. Ongoing Allied assaults compelled tens of thousands of refugees to seek assistance from the Ottoman government, with many relocating to the south Marmara. Desertion from the Ottoman army and the withdrawal of mounted gendarmes from the south Marmara resulted in a dramatic increase in theft and banditry in the years 1917 and 1918.Footnote ¹⁹ As Istanbul's control over the region waned, whole towns and counties fell under the influence of provincial notables, paramilitary leaders, and other strongmen.

THE ORIGINS OF DISENCHANTMENT: CIRCASSIANS AND THE BEGINNING OF THE TURKISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The CUP had long prepared for the possibility of the empire's defeat and occupation.Footnote ²⁰ A postwar insurgency against European occupation almost immediately followed the Modros Armistice in November 1918. This campaign, led by CUP officers and their provincial retainers, first manifested itself in the south Marmara in the environs of İzmit and Adapazarı.Footnote ²¹ Although principally directed against British occupation, the main targets of the CUP's first offensive were Armenians and Greeks returning from exile.Footnote ²² Greece's occupation of Izmir transformed the direction and organization of this insurgency. By November 1919, six months after the first landing of Greek troops on the shores of the Aegean, Mustafa Kemal consolidated his control over this resistance and renamed it the National Forces.

A few Circassians in the south Marmara answered the Nationalist call to arms against the Greeks. In the weeks after the occupation of Izmir, Çerkes Ethem, then only a low-ranking and little-known Special Organization officer and paramilitary leader, was recruited into the National Movement through the efforts of his brother Reşit, Rauf Orbay, and Bekir Sami (Günsev).Footnote ²³ The Nationalists secured another Circassian paramilitary from Manyas, named Takığ Şevket, through the intersession of Rauf Orbay's brother-in-law, Aziz Bey.Footnote ²⁴ In both cases, the interlocutors between the Nationalists and these local Circassian strongmen were also Circassians and individuals with strong ties to the CUP. In other words, their recruitment into the National Forces was a continuation of the wartime recruitment policies of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa.

In the months between May and November 1919, the emerging leadership of the National Movement undertook a concerted effort to recruit other paramilitary leaders in the mold of Ethem and Takığ in districts such as Karacabey, Kirmasti, Bilecik, İzmit, and Biga. According to the evidence available to us, the Nationalists had few comers. Among the Circassians who had returned to Biga from their service in the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, the consensus was purportedly against joining the National Movement (as it had been declared an uprising by the sultan and the sheikh ul-Islam).Footnote ²⁵ The forced requisitioning of foodstuffs and other matériel by the Ottoman army and Nationalist troops contributed to this antipathy. Generally speaking, much of the population had grown “sick of war.”Footnote ²⁶

Of all the factors leading to revolt in the south Marmara, Nationalist interference into local disputes involving North Caucasians was critical in turning many away from the National Movement. In the winter of 1919, a Pomak gang leader named Kara Hasan (or Black Hasan) took over the town of Biga and asserted himself as the de facto boss over the district.Footnote ²⁷ Hasan's play for local authority directly clashed with the designs of a rival paramilitary force under the command of Çerkes Ne'şet, a North Caucasian. In a temporary alliance of convenience, Hasan, with the backing of both local notables and Nationalist sympathizers, drove Ne'şet from the county and decimated his gang.Footnote ²⁸ Nationalists took a similar antagonistic posture toward a group of Laz and Georgian paramilitaries in the environs of Karamürsel and Değirmendere in a dispute with an Albanian militia previously under the employment of Talat Paşa's brother-in-law.Footnote ²⁹

The greatest crisis occurred between July and November 1919, when two rival cliques of notables in Karacabey and Kirmasti mobilized against one another in a dispute over the office of deputy administrator (kaymakam vekili) in Karacabey. Initially a clique of Albanian notables (who had immigrated from Ottoman Macedonia) captured the position for themselves (after the first appointee, a Circassian, was driven out of town by Albanian militiamen). With a local Albanian now deputy administrator, Circassian notables retaliated by organizing a massive campaign of raiding against Albanian-owned farms and businesses. Again, the Nationalists, who were more interested in maintaining unanimity among Muslims in the region in the face of Western occupation, sided with the Albanians and demanded the return of all property stolen by the Circassians.Footnote ³⁰ One Nationalist commander (possibly against the wishes of the high command) even attempted to arrest a group of Circassians involved in the conflict in the Karacabey/Kirmasti region. Circasssian paramilitaries in Karacabey killed the arresting officers before they could their hands on the suspects and then drove Nationalist troops out of town.Footnote ³¹

Despite this humiliation, Nationalist district commander Bekir Sami (Günsev) maintained in his official correspondence that the Circassian paramilitaries responsible for the Kirmasti fiasco could still be brought into the Nationalist camp. At that point, however, many North Caucasian provincial notables took these clashes with the Nationalists as dark signs of things to come. In addition to day-to-day hardships and the fearful prospects of yet another war, Circassian paramilitaries and other local notables read Nationalist support for their provincial rivals as an indication that the Young Turks-turned-Nationalists planned to destroy them as they had the Armenians and Greeks.

This was not an unfounded fear. As early as 1917, a CUP official had circulated the idea of deporting all Circassians and Georgians from the provinces of Karesi and Hüdavendigar to reduce the threat of banditry in the region and free up land for other immigrants and refugees (Talat Paşa personally overruled the plan).Footnote ³² At war's end rumors continued to surface that all North Caucasians would be deported “like the Armenians.”Footnote ³³ The violent clashes between North Caucasians and the National Forces around Karacabey and Kirmasti even led two prominent Circassian notables to approach Bekir Sami (Günsev) to confirm whether “the Turks” (i.e., the CUP/Nationalists) were planning to destroy Circassians because of their “unity” (ittihad) and “solidarity” (ittifak).Footnote ³⁴

Circassians who raised these deportation fears understood the reasoning and implications of such a policy. The tightly knit Circassian diaspora of the south Marmara was in many ways governed by an elite and by customs imported from the North Caucasus. Because of this “unity” and “solidarity,” Circassian villages and districts were able to resist the Young Turks’ centralizing efforts. Although counted in principle among the loyal Sunni Muslim population of the empire, Circassians exercised the same manner of communal autonomy and provincial influence as Armenians and Greeks. With the outbreak of war, such autonomy (which could lead to sedition) was not to be tolerated. As foot soldiers and lieutenants in the CUP's war of extermination against Armenians and Greeks, these notables, as well as others, well understood that deportation meant near certain death.

A LOYALISTʾS REVENGE: CIRCASSIANS AND THE UPRISING OF AHMET ANZAVUR

As tensions in the south Marmara between North Caucasians and supporters of Mustafa Kemal reached a fever pitch in late October 1919, a man soon to champion popular dissent in the region made his first appearance at a horse race outside of Manyas. On 25 October, Ahmet Anzavur, a retired gendarme and landowner from Biga, appeared before a crowd of Circassian spectators and declared his intension to march on Balıkesir in order to arrest (or kill) Nationalist commander Hacim Muhittin (Çarıklı).Footnote ³⁵ In the days following this speech in Manyas, Anzavur declared in person and in letters that he had been sent to northwestern Anatolia by the sultan and that he would lead his own army, at no cost to the population, against the Greeks. The Nationalists, he argued, must support him in this venture; otherwise they, too, would be considered an even greater threat to the caliph and his sublime Islamic state.Footnote ³⁶

Ahmet Anzavur represents an older class of provincial notables who led the charge against the Kuva-yı Milliye. Born in what is today the autonomous Adige Republic in the Russian Federation, Anzavur came to Anatolia during the great Circassian migration of 1864. Illiterate in Turkish, he was nonetheless appointed by Abdülhamit II to the Makrıköy (Bakırköy) Gendarmerie (reportedly through the influence of his sister, who was one of the sultan's concubines).Footnote ³⁷ His career reached its apex in 1911, when Anzavur, leading his unit of Circassian volunteers, pursued and captured the feared bandits of Çakırcalı in the vilayet of Aydın.Footnote ³⁸ Sultan Abdülhamit II awarded Anzavur numerous laurels, including a jewel-encrusted sword and several Circassian wives. Thereafter he settled in Biga and became a large landowner.Footnote ³⁹ After his patron was removed from office following the Young Turk Revolution, Anzavur was ostracized by the CUP and eventually relegated to retirement. Nevertheless, Anzavur, like hundreds of other North Caucasians, served in the Ottoman clandestine service during World War I and at war's end still carried considerable weight among the North Caucasian diaspora in the south Marmara and at the sultan's palace.

During the first two weeks of November 1919, Anzavur toured the provinces of Karesi, Kala-ı Sultaniye, and Hüdavendigar and called upon the population to join him in his march on Balıkesir. Although the number of his recruits fluctuated from week to week, hundreds of North Caucasians, as well as Albanians, Pomaks, Kurds, Bosnians, Çetmi, and other immigrants and marginalized peoples, chose to ride with him.Footnote ⁴⁰ This first campaign abruptly ended on 15 November 1919, when his forces were routed by a Nationalist column commanded by Çerkes Ethem.

For the following two months Anzavur and his lieutenants laid low but continued to tour the Circassian villages of Karesi. When a second revolt broke out in February 1920, Anzavur's largely Circassian army was joined by rebellious Pomaks from his native county of Biga.Footnote ⁴¹ Within two months, this combined rebel army took the former Nationalist strongholds of Biga, Bandırma, Karacabey, Kirmasti, and Gönen, and executed or killed several prominent Nationalist field commanders. At this hour of crisis Çerkes Ethem again rode to the Nationalists’ rescue and defeated Anzavur's men in battle outside the village of Yahyaköy (near Susurluk). After the battle ended on 15 April 1920, Anzavur and his close associates took flight and sailed back to Istanbul.

Anzavur took to the field one month later outside of İzmit in support of a third anti-Nationalist rebellion (begun by North Caucasian immigrants in the environs of Düzce and Adapazarı).Footnote ⁴² This time, he and his Circassian allies served in a subordinate role to Süleyman Şefik Paşa, the commander of the loyalist Kuva-yı İnzibatiye (Disciplinary Force). Anzavur was again defeated that May and returned to Istanbul a second time, with a broken leg. Anzavur's third return to the south Marmara cost him his life in the spring of 1921, when pro-Nationalist guerrillas assassinated him outside the town of Karabiga.Footnote ⁴³

There is little doubt that Anzavur was sent to the south Mamara at the behest of Sultan Vahdeddin and the Liberty and Understanding Party leadership in Istanbul.Footnote ⁴⁴ The subsequent moral and financial support given to Anzavur's insurgency by the Istanbul government led Nationalist commanders at the front and in Ankara to call the Circassian “an English tool” and a patsy for the duplicitous sultan.Footnote ⁴⁵ These accusations are in part true. Anzavur did apparently receive some kind of support from the British High Commission in Istanbul, and he certainly served the selfish interests of the palace.Footnote ⁴⁶ However, to stop there is to lose sight of the overarching motivations that compelled Anzavur and thousands of other Circassian (and non-Circassian) supporters to gamble with their lives in the revolt against the National Movement.

Anzavur's campaign of 1919/1920 struck a taproot of popular discontent with the Young Turk wartime government. According to Anzavur, the policies of the CUP regime had plunged the empire into a needless war and brought suffering to the poorest members of society. In one letter to his followers, he writes,

In this summation, the culprits for the people's suffering were not only members of the former CUP government in Istanbul, but also their allies in the provinces. For Anzavur, the men who now filled the ranks of the National Movement were the very same people responsible for wartime hardships. This conclusion was not all that far-fetched for those who followed Anzavur into battle. The same military recruiters, mayors, merchants, and gendarmes from the wartime CUP administration had only changed hats in demanding now greater sacrifices in the name of Mustafa Kemal and the National Movement.

Anzavur's message reached out to the most marginalized groups in society, particularly poor immigrants and refugees. More importantly, his rhetoric was a deliberate attempt to stake a deeper claim to Islamic symbolism as a source of legitimacy, viability, and justice than that of the National Movement. His means and aims were not strictly political, however, but social. Central to Anzavur's insurgency against the National Movement was the promise of plunder. In addition to local government offices, Anzavur's men repeatedly raided the properties of tax collectors, military recruiters, merchants, and large landowners.Footnote ⁴⁸ The economic tensions Anzavur unleashed are epitomized by the capture and execution of the Nationalist commander of Biga, (Köprülülü) Hamdi. Hamdi, upon arriving in Biga in January 1920, demanded an exorbitant amount of material support from the district.Footnote ⁴⁹ In celebrating his death, one of Anzavur's lieutenants, a Pomak named Gavur İmam, stated that Hamdi had tried to snap off the necks of the people. Yet now it was he who had his neck snapped.Footnote ⁵⁰

For Anzavur and other local notables, there were even deeper personal reasons for taking up arms against Mustafa Kemal. Anzavur was a man of the provinces, with most of his wealth invested in the small town of Biga. With no formal education, he had no place in the CUP state, where high party officials were by and large educated in a Western manner in the empire's finest schools. In his letters, Anzavur repeatedly alludes to the Unionists almost as a body of foreigners, who, like the Freemasons, possessed customs and values alien to his own. The possibility of a Nationalist victory clearly represented to Anzavur the continuation of the CUP regime in one form or another, thereby ending any chance that he or his family would continue to hold any position of influence in the state. The only option remaining for Anzavur was to seek the assistance of the sultan's palace, an institution also threatened by the possible return of the CUP (now seemingly under the command of Mustafa Kemal).Footnote ⁵¹

Anzavur's assassination did not end the troubles facing the National Movement in the south Marmara. Within two months of Anzavur's retreat from Karesi, Greek forces stormed out of their beachhead in Aydın and pushed Mustafa Kemal's ragtag forces east beyond the Sakarya River. By September 1920 the provinces of Kala-ı Sultaniye, Karesi, Hüdavendigar, and İzmit were placed under a joint Greek and British occupation. Intercommunal violence escalated dramatically during the following two years. Deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing and massacre by Greek troops and allied local forces accounted for a great deal of this surge in violence. In Bursa, Greek occupation forces purportedly killed 822 individuals, and in Karesi and İzmit, several Circassian gangs were implicated in attacks on Muslim and Christian civilians.Footnote ⁵² In Biga, a gang belonging to Ahmet Anzavur's son, Kadir, waged a bloody campaign against Nationalist guerrillas and Ottoman officers implicated in his father's death.Footnote ⁵³

The “treason” committed by these Circassian partisans clearly angered the commander of Nationalist guerrilla forces operating in Karesi, Akıncı İbrahim Ethem. Circassians joining the Greeks, he argued, were driven by a desire to “crush the Turks” as well as by the opportunity to “fill their purses.”Footnote ⁵⁴ As Muslims siding with a Christian enemy, such acts of treason were even more unforgivable. “You are either a Muslim or an infidel,” he exclaimed to the population of one Circassian village. “I cannot understand [how] one remains between the two.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The defection of Çerkes Ethem in January 1921 brought out the full ire of İbrahim Ethem as well as other members of the National Movement. Although Çerkes Ethem's sedition was driven by personal conflicts with the high command in Ankara, one Nationalist saw his departure as representative of all Circassians:

This opinion of Circassians also appeared at local levels. In reporting on (Anzavuroğlu) Kadir's activities in Manyas, the head of the local gendarmerie said about Circassians in general:

Evidence and statements such as these suggest that many within the Nationalist camp, particularly in the south Marmara, linked Circassians, crime, treason, and apostasy.

ONE LAST GASP: REASSESSING CIRCASSIAN SEDITION

As the National Forces dug in behind the Sakarya River during the winter of 1921, a conspiracy of Circassian notables began to coalesce in the south Marmara. On 24 November 1921, twenty-two Circassians met in a coffeehouse in the middle of Izmir. They were largely drawn from the south Marmara towns and counties of Adapazarı, İzmit, Karamürsel, Kandıra, Bilecik, Geyve, Bursa, Gönen, Erdek, Bandırma, and Balıkesir. There were also representatives from Hendek, Düzce, Manisa, Aydın, Eskişehir, and Kütahya. Many of the men had been at the forefront of Anzavur's resistance movement, while others may have remained in the background of the 1919/1920 uprisings. Even Çerkes Reşit, once a central figure in the Kuva-yı Milliye and the CUP, took part in the meeting, as well as his brother Ethem.Footnote ⁵⁸ At the end of the meeting, the men, calling themselves representatives of the Association for the Strengthening of Near Eastern Circassian Rights (Şark-ı Karib Çerkesleri Temin-i Hukuk Cemiyeti), released a document entitled “The General Statement of the Circassian Nation to the Great Powers and the Civilized World.” It reads in part as follows:

In closing the document, each undersigning participant identifies himself by clan name (such as Pşev, Çule, Ançok, or Bağ) and the locality he represents. Although the group makes no exact territorial claim, the likely core of this autonomous region was centered on the district of Balıkesir, just south of the Marmara coast.Footnote ⁶⁰

The declaration, which was later sent to representatives of Britain, Greece, and France, is striking as a dramatic departure in the political and rhetorical representation of the Circassian resistance in the south Marmara. Gone were the populist pretenses that defined Anzavur's campaign against the Kuva-yı Milliye. Rather than attempting to forge a coalition of other dissident groups, such as Pomaks, Çetmi, or Albanian immigrants, the authors of this appeal negated the existence of other groups in the south Marmara (with the exception of the Rum and Armenians) and argued strictly from the North Caucasian position. Like Anzavur, participants of the congress placed themselves at the center of a long history of abuse that intensified under the reign of the CUP. Yet, Anzavur never presented himself, officially at least, as the leader of a strictly Circassian movement, nor as a proponent of separatism.

The very notion of a petition to the Great Powers indicates that delegates at the congress understood the international implications of their struggle. In laying their claim, the authors of this document understood that there was a higher power, greater than Great Britain or France, to which they could appeal: international law. Thus, the policy of Turkification and the violence of the Kemalist movement were more than acts of cruelty and inhumanity; they were violations of the “civil and political rights” of the Circassian “minority.” Their demand for protection, and by extension autonomy, directly alluded to the twelfth of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. The petition suggests that Circassians were justified in their claims because they were distant peers of the European powers. They were, as the document states, “white Aryans” from the highest strata of “civilization,” forcibly exiled to the Orient. Although Muslims, Circassians remained committed to a secular (and seemingly democratic) system of government. This assertion highlights the contrast to the archetypal “fanatical” and “despotic” Orientals, a caricature often seen in the Western press and political debate.Footnote ⁶¹

In short, the changing political climate in the south Marmara between 1920 and 1922 inspired these dissident provincial notables to undertake a new approach to old problems. Upholding their local authority and influence remained at the core of their opposition to the Nationalists, but the onset of occupation changed the outlets and venues for expressing this opposition. The Kuva-yı Milliye was gone, and the Ottoman government in Istanbul, which functioned under the supervision of British troops, was at best powerless in the south Marmara. A year into the occupation, these Circassian notables appeared to believe that the writing was on the wall for the Ottoman Empire and that their collective fates rested in the hands of the Greeks. The battle was now for the future of the region and the role that the Circassian elite would play in that future. Like the struggle undertaken by the Nationalists, this was a fight to be won not only on the battlefield, but also at the negotiating table. Like the Müdafaa-ı Hukuk, the primary bureaucratic agent of the National Movement, the Association for the Strengthening of Near Eastern Circassian Rights was not a popular organization in the truest sense of the word. It was a body comprising local notables not popularly chosen or elected. Evidence suggests that the Circassian communities these notables claimed to represent were informed of their decision only after the congress had adjourned.Footnote ⁶²

British field reports do suggest some local consensus among Circassians from the south Marmara who desired the establishment of an autonomous Circassian state under Greek protection as early as October 1920.Footnote ⁶³ Greek occupation authorities, for their part, consistently demonstrated sensitivity to the demands of North Caucasian rebels and purportedly planned to relocate some Circassian notables to Thrace to act as their “Cossacks” along the Ottoman–Greek border.Footnote ⁶⁴ Nevertheless, British officers in the field as well as in London looked upon the declaration issued by the Circassian congress as somewhat of a farce. Sir Horace Rumbold, head of the British High Commission in Istanbul, categorically stated that Circassians deserved no special treatment as a “racial minority” in Anatolia and that Greek protection was an impossibility because many Circassians lived in territories not under Greek control. One desk officer in London commented on the side that it was “pretty clear that [the association's statement] is Greek propaganda.” All seemed to agree that “nothing special” could be done for Circassians and that ultimately they (as well as Greeks and Armenians) had to rely upon a general government amnesty in the war's aftermath.Footnote ⁶⁵

KILLING ANZAVURʾS GHOST: CIRCASSIAN RESISTANCE AND THE BIRTH OF THE TURKISH REPUBLIC

A massive Nationalist counterattack in September 1922 put an end to the congress’ separatist ambitions. Mustafa Kemal's forces swooped down upon the south Marmara with a bloody vengeance, purportedly executing thirty-three notables for treason in Susurluk alone.Footnote ⁶⁶ Several members of the Association for the Strengthening of Near Eastern Circassian Rights, including its leader, (Çule) İbrahim Hakkı, went into exile on the Greek island of Midilli (Lesbos) or fled across the border, into western Thrace.Footnote ⁶⁷ By spring 1923, perhaps over twenty thousand North Caucasians were living in makeshift refugee camps in Greek territory. Some of these men, including (Anzavuro glu) Kadir Anzavur, continued to plot their return to the Anatolian mainland. Kadir and several others, trained and backed by the Greek crown, sent at least three armed expeditions into the south Marmara in 1923 in hopes of raising a new rebellion against Ankara.Footnote ⁶⁸ All efforts undertaken by these displaced Circassians failed.

By June 1923, the Ankara government decided to strike at the roots of this continued resistance. Between May and November 1923, approximately 10,000 North Caucasians, inhabiting a total of forty-three villages in the vicinity of the towns of Gönen and Manyas, were forcibly deported to eastern Anatolia.Footnote ⁶⁹ Almost a year later, in April 1924, the Grand National Turkish Assembly compiled a list of twenty-eight Circassian notables from Gönen and Manyas—“traitors to the fatherland” (vatan hainleri)—and stripped them of Turkish citizenship. Although no specific charges were levelled against them, it can be surmised from the parliamentary minutes that they were implicated, along with participants of the congress at Izmir, in having participated in acts of collaboration and resistance during the War of Independence.Footnote ⁷⁰

Circassians, like other Muslim “minority” elements during the first decade of the Turkish Republic, were the focus of a deliberate campaign of suppression. Caucasian languages and even the epithet “Circassian” (Çerkes) were banned from public use.Footnote ⁷¹ State interior services carefully monitored the whereabouts and actions of migrant Circassian laborers and North Caucasians in the south Marmara who were known to possess arms as rumors of a Circassian rebellion continued well into the 1930s.Footnote ⁷² After the death of Atatürk, however, North Caucasians were officially rehabilitated. Since 1950, a variety of North Caucasian diaspora organizations (dernekler) devoted to education and foreign-policy activism have emerged.Footnote ⁷³ Radio and television broadcasts in Adige, the most common language spoken by Circassians, have recently begun in Turkey.Footnote ⁷⁴ Only in very rare exceptions is the history of “treason” among Circassians revived in a public forum.Footnote ⁷⁵

Miroslav Hroch, in a seminal work on the social origins of nationalism in Eastern Europe, describes a phenomenon he calls “disintegrating nationalism.” According to Hroch, a nationalism that “fails” is one that never progresses into a mass movement due to the late development (political or economic) of the bourgeoisie as an active promoter of national consciousness.Footnote ⁷⁶ It is tempting to look at the case of the Circassians of the south Marmara in such a light. An embryonic movement based in Istanbul did attempt to promote North Caucasian nationalism among the diaspora of the Ottoman Empire. Many groups, such as the North Caucasus Association (Şimali Kafkas Cemiyeti), were largely concerned with contemporary affairs in the North Caucasus. Meanwhile, other Circassians within elite circles in Istanbul were successful in establishing Adige-language publications and schools during the years before World War I.Footnote ⁷⁷

Yet these efforts had little to do with what occurred in the south Marmara during the Turkish War of Independence. Anzavur made no pronouncements about Circassian nationalism. British and Ottoman accounts similarly suggest that the Association for the Strengthening of Near Eastern Circassian Rights had very little influence upon the constituents it claimed to represent. Political insecurity among the elite and popular social and economic discontent were the crucial factors that drove North Caucasians in the south Marmara to reject Mustafa Kemal's National Forces.