The Franco–Turkish War, called the Cilicia Campaign (French: campagne de Cilicie) in France and the Southern Front (Turkish: Güney Cephesi) of the Turkish War of Independence in Turkey, was fought between French occupation troops and Turkish nationalist forces in Cilicia and southeastern Anatolia. The French occupation began after the Armistice of Mudros in 1918. Fighting intensified in late 1919 and ended with the Ankara Agreement of 20 October 1921.
The nationalists initially relied on local irregular bands, later joined by regular army units. They attacked French garrisons and supply routes and fought for control of several towns. French forces withdrew from Maraş and Urfa and lost a column at Karboğazı, but held Adana and other main positions. They captured Aintab in February 1921, and also successfully broke the local irregulars.
The French army was not decisively defeated. France, nevertheless, agreed to leave most of Cilicia. The government wanted to reduce military expenditure, secure its position in Syria and cultivate relations with Ankara, due to deteriorating French–British relations and the latter's support for Greece. The October agreement left France in control of its Syrian mandate, including Alexandretta, and gave Ankara most of the former French occupation zone. The evacuation prompted a large exodus of Armenians and other Christian inhabitants.
Background
Postwar agreements and occupation
The Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 envisaged French influence in Ottoman Syria and Cilicia. The ports, railways and routes into northern Syria made the region valuable to France. British troops occupied much of Cilicia after the Ottoman armistice, but an Anglo-French agreement in September 1919 provided for their replacement. French reinforcements arrived the following month.
The population of Cilicia included Muslim Turks, Armenians and other communities. Many Armenians had been deported during the Armenian genocide. Survivors returned after the war, some expecting protection from the French occupation forces. Opposition to French rule among local Muslims, together with the return of Armenian refugees, contributed to mounting communal tensions.
The French force comprised metropolitan and colonial troops and the French Armenian Legion, recruited from Armenian volunteers and refugees. General Julien Dufieux commanded in Cilicia under Henri Gouraud, commander of the Army of the Levant. France also needed troops in Syria, where it was establishing its mandate.
Nationalist armed opposition
Armed opposition grew after the French replaced British troops in late 1919. A report by the Armenian Patriarchate stated that Kemal had ordered the organization of armed bands in 1919 and Turkish officers had been sent into Cilicia. Truly, in November, Mustafa Kemal sent Kılıç Ali to the Maraş district to organize armed groups. Ankara supplied weapons and ammunition to local fighters, many of them former soldiers. The French referred to these irregular bands as tchétés (çetes). They attacked French convoys and Armenian civilians as well as military posts.
In 1921 the French military officer Pierre-Jean-Daniel André (pseudonym Pierre Redan) described an incursion by what he estimated to be 2,000–3,000 Kemalist irregulars. He claimed that they compelled villagers to enlist, provide money and supply food and livestock. His estimate concerned the forces involved in the operations he described.
A British War Office report dated 15 March 1920 expected the nationalists to rely on guerrilla attacks and raids against isolated Allied posts. It warned that such fighting could make the occupation costly by disrupting communications and forcing the Allies to maintain scattered garrisons.
French occupation of Anatolia
Black Sea and western Anatolia
French troops held positions outside Cilicia as well. In March 1919 French warships landed men at Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli to secure the coalfields. They later left Ereğli but remained at Zonguldak. Other French units served in the Allied occupation of Constantinople and briefly occupied part of the Mudanya–Bursa railway. In February 1920 General Louis Franchet d'Espèrey withdrew the railway detachment to Constantinople to avoid another clash with Turkish nationalists.
Cilicia campaign
The first nationalist attacks were led mainly by local militias, but regular units joined the fighting. The Turkish 11th Infantry Division operated in the Taurus Mountains, and regular troops also fought around Adana and Urfa. In early 1920 the nationalists tried to cut the roads and railways linking Adana with Mersin and Syria.
Maraş and Urfa
Raids on the roads around Maraş developed into a siege of the town in January 1920. General Quérette's French garrison had difficulty receiving supplies and communicating with other French units. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Normand led a relief column into the town, but the French commanders decided they could not hold it with the routes still threatened. They evacuated Maraş on the night of 10–11 February, taking several thousand Armenian civilians with them. Many Armenians remained behind and suffered massacres during and after the fighting. Some of the besiegers had sought a ceasefire shortly before the withdrawal, but the evacuation nonetheless gave the nationalists control of Maraş.
At Urfa, Ali Saip Bey commanded Turkish, Kurdish and Arab fighters against a garrison of French troops. The siege began in February 1920. French relief forces encountered regular Turkish troops, and the garrison eventually agreed to withdraw in April. The Turks then breached safe conduct, with most of the French soldiers getting massacred when the departing column was attacked, while the survivors were taken prisoner.
Adana campaign and the Taurus passes
The nationalists also tried to cut Adana off from Mersin and Syria by occupying the railways through the Taurus Mountains. The Turkish 11th Infantry Division joined the advance. A French battalion under Major Mesnil resisted attacks at Pozantı, but attempts to relieve it failed. Mesnil tried to break out in May and surrendered after his column was ambushed near Karboğazı.
The French still held Adana. The defence of Pozantı and other posts had delayed the nationalist advance long enough to prevent a concentrated attack on the city. Under a truce concluded in June 1920, French troops left exposed positions and strengthened their hold on the main towns and railway. The truce also gave Ankara an opportunity to send men to the front against Greece and to operations against Armenia.
Summer fighting and siege of Aintab
Fighting resumed during the summer. Nationalist bands raided railways, bridges and convoys, making travel between French positions hazardous. The French nevertheless defeated nationalist troops in several open engagements. Their position improved as Gouraud established French control of Syria and could devote more attention to the Cilician front.
French troops counterattacked near Aintab and continued their siege of the town. They broke a Turkish offensive in October 1920, and further nationalist attacks in November made little progress. Aintab surrendered on 9 February 1921. Guévork Gotikian describes repeated nationalist failures outside the town before the surrender and calls its capture a French victory that came too late to change the government's policy toward Ankara. By then, the nationalists held much of the northern and western countryside, whereas Adana, Alexandretta and Aintab remained under French control.
Other French counterattacks also succeeded. André Mandelstam, drawing on the account of French commander Édouard Brémond, wrote that Colonel Gracy's column retook Yenice, relieved Tarsus and reopened the route to Mersin in July 1920. The siege of Adana was lifted on 19 August.
Fighting in the Alexandretta district
In the Sanjak of Alexandretta, the nationalist guerrilla campaign began later than it did farther north. An attack on Beylan (now Belen) on 4 September 1920 failed. Irregular bands remained active through the autumn, but French attacks in the winter of 1920–1921 brought the armed opposition in this district to an end.
Military outcome
The fighting ranged from sieges and conventional engagements to raids on isolated posts and transport links. Turkish irregulars were able to make the French occupation of the countryside difficult, but they could not take the principal French bases. France could easily defeat nationalist troops in open battle, but lacked enough men to protect every road, railway and outpost. Maintaining control of the whole region would have required a larger French force.
Historian Andrew Orr argues that the nationalists' failure to capture the main French positions in 1920 cost them their best chance of an operational victory. French control of Syria was growing stronger, and Ankara had to commit forces against Greece and Armenia. In Alexandretta, the failed attack on Beylan and the French winter offensive had already ended nationalist armed opposition in that district.
Edward J. Erickson writes that Mustafa Kemal could not win a military victory over France. Historian Ousseynou Faye calls the Franco-Turkish agreement of 10 March 1921 a confirmation of French military victory, although that provisional agreement never took effect. Major T. E. Compton, writing in 1922, called the campaign an "ultimate French victory", militarily.
Negotiations and end of hostilities
French representatives began discussions with the Turkish nationalists before the fighting ended. At the London conference in February 1920, diplomat Philippe Berthelot said that France did not intend to remain permanently in Cilicia. He proposed returning it to Turkish suzerainty while preserving some French control.
The government had other priorities. The occupation of Cilicia was expensive, while France was still establishing its rule in Syria and faced financial pressures at home, including the dispute over German reparations. Britain supported Greece in the war against Ankara, and relations between the Allies were strained by their competing interests in the Near East. France wanted a workable frontier with Turkish-controlled territory and hoped to retain commercial access to the region.
A preliminary agreement reached in London in March 1921 was never implemented. In correspondence that month, Prime Minister Aristide Briand opposed proposals that might delay a settlement. General Gouraud objected to Turkish demands that he believed would endanger French equipment and civilians connected to the occupation.
French military commanders did not necessarily share Paris's preference for an agreement. Generals who wanted to attack the nationalist forces when they were under pressure were actually denied political and diplomatic support. The French government instead pursued negotiations, despite the army's ability to hold the principal towns.
After Briand formed his government in early 1921, French negotiators sought a frontier that would secure Syria and allow France to maintain its economic and cultural interests in Turkey. The withdrawal also formed part of a longer dispute over French rule along the Turkish–Syrian frontier and the treatment of the region's minorities.
Henry Franklin-Bouillon negotiated directly with Mustafa Kemal, and the Ankara Agreement was signed on 20 October 1921. France undertook to evacuate most of Cilicia, and Ankara accepted French authority over Syria and the Sanjak of Alexandretta. A joint commission organized the withdrawal and transfer of the towns to Turkish administration.
France surrendered areas its soldiers still held. Ankara, in turn, gave up claims to land south of the new frontier that had been included in the National Pact. Orr describes the agreement as a compromise that favoured the Turkish nationalists. It also left France pursuing a separate policy from its wartime Allies.
France expected concessions in return for its withdrawal. The agreement provided for special administrative arrangements in Alexandretta, while accompanying letters dealt with railway interests and possible mining concessions for French firms. These economic arrangements helped Paris justify the agreement, but they were less immediate than the territorial gains obtained by Ankara.
Some French writers accused their government of abandoning Cilicia unnecessarily. Reviewing Paul du Véou's La Passion de la Cilicie in 1938, Raymond Janin argued that earlier action could have prevented French withdrawals and blamed concessions to Ankara for weakening the army's position. Michel Paillarès, an outspoken opponent of Kemalism, made a similar criticism in 1922, arguing that French policy had allowed the nationalist insurgency to grow.
Atrocities
In March 1920, up to 12,000 Armenians were killed during and after the fighting at Maraş in January and February 1920. Several thousand escaped with the departing French troops, but many remained in the town. Armenian civilians had also been attacked before the siege. American missionaries reported the killing of men, women and children during the fighting. Some young Armenian women were abducted and bodies were burned to conceal sexual violence.