The İstanbul Cabinets and the British Intelligence Service during the War of Liberation

Abstract

Immediately after the Mondros Truce was signed on 30 October 1918, notably, the Allied Powers representing Britain, France, and Italy violated the terms of the truce and began to occupy various parts of Anatolia with a special concentration in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Among the occupying countries, Britain in particular ordered its sinister Intelligence Service into action and it incited a variety of incidents not only in Istanbul but throughout the whole of Anatolia. The British Intelligence Service by means of their agents as intermediaries infiltrated the sultanic and bureaucratic circles, especially in İstanbul, thereby gaining access to some of the most confidential state secrets, which were at once forwarded to the British government. They utilized agents of all kinds: those Greeks, Armenians, and other non-Muslims who knew good Turkish, opponents of the regime, supporters of the sultan and the British, opportunists, charlatan politicians, indiscreet charge d'affaires, members of the press, travelers in Anatolia, missionaries, and priests and, furthermore, they profited from certain rumors being passed around and which occasionally contained some truth. In the present piece, the author discloses by a text either in full or in summary the contents of the most interesting reports of the British Intelligence Service pertaining to the sultan and the politicians, obtained in the course of the large-scale research conducted by the author over the past thirty years in the British Public Record Office. These records, which were accounted quite confidential at the time, reveal the politics of Britain, the policy it applied and by whom applied; and how closely a method was gauged accordingly toward the Ottoman state, Kemalist Turkey and Islamic countries. These records may serve as a cautionary to today's generation.