WAR IN ASIA MINOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 April 1921, Page 5

WAR IN ASIA MINOR.

TURKS IN RETREAT. By TeicffTaph.—Pres* Assn.—Copyright. Athens, March 30. A communique states that the First Army Corps continued its attack on the Balmalmout and Pachakeuy heights. After heavy fighting the enemy retreated towards Konia, suffering heavy losses.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.

THE TURKISH LEADER.

MUSTAPHA KEMAL’S CAREER. Mustapha Kemal, the leader of the Turkish Nationalists, against whom Greece has embarked upon war for the retention of Smyrna, is the virtual ruler of Asiatic Turkey. Delegates from his Government, established at Angora, in Anatolia, accompanied the delegates from the Sultan’s Government at Constantinople to the recent conference in London, and were accorded a hearing by the Allies. A correspondent in the London Daily Express thus describes the Turkish Nationalist leader: — “An active, slim, medium-sized soldier of about forty years of age, whiteskinned, black-haired. Face nearly expressionless, except for a smooth energy, seldom betraying any sign of strain; quick speech, but shallow. The appearance very much of a carefully dressed professional officer, with little mind putside warfare. “His career was normal until he was appointed to command a division in Gallipoli. At this he prospered rapidly till he was in control of all the Helles defence, and at last, due partly to Turkish irritation against General von Sanders, he came to be little less than com-mands-in-chief of the peninsula. “The British retirement set the Seal on his success. Enver feared his growing reputation in Constantinople, and appointed him to the police exile of the Yilderim army, the special force

which, under General von Falkenhayn, was assembled at Aleppo to drive the British out of Bagdad. “Mustapha Kemal has always been anti-German, though German-trained, and he soon fell out with his German colleagues. For tnis and other reasons, the Bagdad expedition hung fire, and Mustapha delayed in Aleppo, taking a main part in those anti-Enver and antiGerman secret leagues which distracted the Turkish Army throughout 1918. “When General Allenby’s great advance to Damascus and Aleppo brought about the .fall of Turkey in September and Octobet, 1918, Mustapha Kemal remained passive. He withdrew with his staff and organisation into the hills of and after Enver fled and the Constantinople Government opened the straits to* the British, the Turks discovered that he was the greatest organised force left to their country. . “To him, the narrow-minded, greedy, but patriotic soldier, the politicians and Nationalists of the Young Turk Party, rallied through 1919, until gradually they turned his army staff into a Government and his remnants of troops into a National army. “He himself has no skill in politics or sense of administration, but his courses in 1920 have been ably directed by the secret committee which acts in Ijis name, and his successes near Smyrna, against Armenia, against French Cilicia, and against the Sultan’s troops in 4he Marmora region have gradually persuaded him that he’is a force to be reckoned with, and an inspired leader of his country. , “In truth, he is little more than a brave and. dandified puppet—but his legend is growing, and after two years he has become the embodiment of the new Turkish spirit of Anatolia—the spirit that abhors Enver’s memory as a subjection to Germany, and the Sultan s name, as indicating subjection to the Allies; a spirit. which finds Turkey’s future in Asia, not on the Bosphorus, and its power not in subject provinces of Arabs Kurds, or Armenians, but uniting in one Turkish Government, preferably republican, the scattered .Turkish races and provinces of Western Afeia.