In an article in The Times (July 19, 2010), Claudia Calleja wrote: “Almost a century after a Turkish politician was exiled to Malta his five great-grandchildren and their families are visiting the island, curious to see where their ancestor was imprisoned for 21 months. Their great-grandfather, Mehmed Seref (prisoner 2779) was arrested and exiled to Malta between 1919 and 1920.”
Seref’s contemporary Rahmi Bey, an intelligent and cultured Turk, a composer, musician and enlightened politician, also suffered the same fate. As Bey (governor) he had ruled Smyrna, now Izmir, a city that generated a good part of the wealth of the Ottoman Empire. A genial, gin-drinking host and guest, Rahmi was an exceptional man.
Families of European extraction had, since the 18th century, exploited lucrative business opportunities in Smyrna by exporting fruit, Oriental carpets, cotton and other textiles.
These ‘Levantines’ as they were known, developed mining, ran shipping companies and organised banking and insurance. They lived well, hosting social events to which journalists, who would publish articles describing women’s fashions, were invited. The Bey was always on the guest list, and as a host himself, concerned that these gatherings would make an irresistible target for brigands, would place troops on all routes leading to the event.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Sultan in Constantinople was head of a dynasty that had ruled the Ottoman Empire for more than four-and-a-half centuries, a regime that had been in decline for years. In 1908 a ‘Young Turk’ movement came to power, depriving the Sultan of much of his authority. A triumvirate of Young Turks made virtually all the decisions.
Rahmi Arslan was among the leading figures and was soon given the governorship of Smyrna. At that time there were many ethnic Greeks and Armenians in Anatolia. The Young Turk movement had a charismatic leader, Mustafa Kemal, later to be known as Ataturk. Their uprising drove the Greeks from Anatolia and established a provisional government in Ankara in 1921.
In the wake of World War I, British forces formally occupied Constantinople in March 1920. Ministers, city governors and officials were arrested and subsequently deported to Malta, where they were held without trial in a military prison. Among those seized by the British was Rahmi Bey, pro-Allied Ottoman governor of Smyrna during the conflict, who was living in Istanbul (as Constantinople came to be known) at the time of the military occupation.
He protested his innocence and found ready support from his Levantine friends in Smyrna, but the British military officials refused to listen to his pleas. In their eyes, Rahmi was tainted by his association with the old regime. He was incarcerated in Malta – prisoner no. 2691 – and his only consolation was that his case would soon become a cause célèbre.
The great Levantine families of Smyrna were appalled by the incarceration of their wartime ally and protector. They were even more shocked to discover that he was being held without any prospect of trial.
To them it seemed a gross travesty of justice, yet the British no longer displayed any interest in the international rule of law. It was announced at the time of the arrests that the prisoners were “to be tried and punished in such a manner as the Allies may subsequently decide upon”.
Rahmi was, in fact, in possession of a letter written by Earl Granville, the British Ambassador in Athens, in which he expressed the profound gratitude of his government and the British nation for the kind sympathy and powerful protection Rahmi had accorded to British subjects during the war.
The Levantines petitioned the British authorities in Constantinople, begging them to release the man who had guaranteed their lives and fortunes during the Great War. Their pleas fell on deaf ears.
“I consider it most undesirable that a man of his character and importance should be set at liberty,” wrote the acting High Commissioner in Constantinople. “There seems to me no justification for his release solely on the grounds that he did not order the massacre of the foreign population in Smyrna.”
Nevertheless there was growing unease in the Foreign Office about the decision to imprison Rahmi Bey. He had previously attempted to negotiate a peace with the British government and been prepared to stage a coup d’état against the discredited wartime administration of Enver Pasha.
A senior British diplomat living in Constantinople declared himself appalled by the actions of his government, even going so far as to describe the establishment of the prison camp in Malta as “the one action of ours since 1918 which I am absolutely incapable of defending”.
The following exchange is recorded in Hansard, the official record of daily debate in the House of Commons in London, on February 17, 1921.
The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, was asked:
“. . . whether any other Turkish official besides Rahmi Bey has been officially thanked for kindness to British residents in Turkey during the war, and subsequently imprisoned by His Majesty’s government for two years without any charge being preferred against him?”
In response it was “hoped that the question of the detention of Rahmi Bey might be dealt with as a part of the Turkish settlement”.
Another MP asked:
“Is it not a fact that neither Rahmi Bey nor the other Turkish deputies who have been arbitrarily arrested in Constantinople and are in prison, ever fought in the War, and how therefore can the Hon. gentleman justify their continued internment as prisoners of war? Is it not contrary to all traditions of British justice to keep men in prison like this for over a year without any charge?”
First MP: “If we are to punish Rahmi Bey and other men who have been good to us during the War, cannot we punish the German criminals?”
The Prime Minister’s spokesman replied: “There is no ground for that suggestion. We had better leave this matter to be dealt with as was indicated.”
Second MP: “Are we not to have an answer on the legal point as to whether a man is a prisoner of war when he has never fought?”
The last word went to the government spokesman: “I am not in a position to give a legal decision.”
After June 1921 the Malta deportees no longer qualified as prisoners awaiting charge and trial, but as pawns to be used in exchange for British hostages, the only alternative being to retain them as hostages and to release them against British prisoners.
British authorities used Polverista Barracks to intern Turkish dissidents and alleged war criminals. The regimen in the Malta prisons was harsh. There was no provision for reading, study or religious worship and no sports equipment. Outdoor recreation, in conditions frequently hot and unbearably dusty, ended an hour before sunset, a stifling prospect in summer with cell windows to the outside boarded up. Overcrowding and lack of water led to all sorts of infections.
Unsurprisingly the number of insane and suicidal prisoners was alarming. One young Turk, Nejdet Saadi, owner of a pet monkey which apparently played a minor part in the proceedings, attempted the assassination of a political opponent and was murdered by the intended victim, a Major Hagi Ali Isa. The latter was convicted and, despite local outrage, was hanged in Corradino prison in April 1917.
In the end, Charlton, of the Levantine Whittall dynasty, secured Rahmi’s release by using his influence with the British government – “and quite possibly threatening to use his extensive media contacts to ensure damaging publicity in The Times and elsewhere.”
Prisoner 2691 was set free in October 1921. There were no apologies for having held him without trial and no question of compensation. He headed to Morocco to enjoy the comforts and sunshine in Casablanca.
In a curious twist of fate, many members of the Whittall dynasty were shipped to Malta in 1922 and lodged in a disused military barracks at the Lazaretto.
They were accorded no respect by the British government in whose care they now found themselves. The barracks were damp and unsanitary, and the military rations virtually inedible.
The Whittalls were proud of their British roots – they had always viewed Britain as the mother country. Now they discovered that the feeling was not reciprocated.
This fact was confirmed by the Bishop of Gibraltar, John Greig, which he published in The Gibraltar Diocesan Gazette of November 1922.
Bishop Greig arrived in Malta on September 29 in a sweltering sirocco. Before he had finished unpacking he received a first-hand account of conditions in Smyrna and heard more disturbing accounts the following day, prompting this visit.
Saturday, September 30. – “This afternoon I drove to the Lazaretto. It was the most pathetic thing that I have ever seen. There are about 250, including 80 children, but the saddest section are those men of, say, 60 years, who have worked hard all their lives for one firm, and now both they and the firm have lost their all.
“‘We want work, but who will take us on at our age? Yet, if we can’t get work we must starve or go to the workhouse.’
“I stayed with them for over two hours, and talked first with one then with another in small groups. I often had real difficulty to keep back the tears as I saw their pluck and cheerfulness and their pitiful plight.
“The head of the Whittall family, Herbert Octavius, was one of those in Maltese lodgings. He used the facilities of De Giorgio and Azzopardi on Strada Mercanti in Valletta to communicate his fears and frustrations to friends and family abroad. One young relation observed: ‘We could not know how precarious was the basis of our ordered lives’.”
Disillusioned, Herbert Octavius eventually retired to Tunis, while other family members went to the US, Canada or colonial Africa to scrape a living.
Rahmi Bey had no wish to return to Constantinople, which was then under British jurisdiction. He went to Casablanca, Morocco, where, less than three years later – on May 12, 1924 – he died of heart disease, aged 60.