STRONG MAN OF TURKEY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 238, 20 September 1922, Page 4

STRONG MAN OF TURKEY.

WHAT KEMAL IS LIKE. NATIONAL LEADER AT 41. SCHEMER AND MAN OF ACTION. Who is Kemal Pasha? Many have heard his name in the past couple of years, but few could give any detailed account of him if asked upon the spur of the moment. He is not an historical figure, like Enver of the more than nine lives. A few years ago he was an obscure fugitive; to-day be is dictator of Turkey and the hero of a large part of the Moslem world. Nothing more dramatic or more highly charged with sinister possibilities of widespread disturbance has occurred since the armistice than Jemal’s rise to power. He ik probably the most capable and resourceful Turk alive. He has been called the personification of the Turkish people. First and always, he is a soldier. He became a military cadet at 12. and at 41 he is a Field Marshal. Kemal, said a recent writer, is a type of the officerpoliticians who have played such an important part in Turkey’s later history. As a young member of the general staff at Constantinople, he had a hand in the intrigues for the formation of the Society of Liberty and the Society of Union and Progress. He was banished te a cavajry regiment at Damascus by Abdul Hamid’s Government. For years after that his life consisted of exile .after exilei—any subterfuge to keep him out of Constantinople. KEMAL BREAKS AWAY. When the death-knell of the old Ottoman Empire changed in 1907 he was the head of the insurgent Young Turks, but as soon as it became plain that Enver was merely continuing Abdul Hamid’s regime without Abdul Hamid, Kemal went into Opposition. Until his boastful threats of the last few days, he consistently demanded a rigidly defensive line of policy in the Empire’s external affairs, pending such an overhauling of its internal affairs as would ultimately admit it on a basis of equality’ into the family of the world’s white nations. Throughout the war he opppsed Enver’s policy of repeated military offences, and his political attitude was such that Enver dismissed him from one command after another, and finally he ended in disgrace. This, however, did not prevent him from becoming a national military hero. GREEKS OCCUPY SMYRNA. In the confusion which followed the Mudros armistice, he returned to Constantinople, his policy the same as it had ever been. He was sent to Asia Minor, where he set to work to unite the local defence organisations into a National Party. This led to an open break with Constantinople, and the Nationalist Government at Angora was born. Asia Minor became the scene* of a faction fight, the officials of Kemal and the Constantinople Government arresting and deporting each other as circumstances permitted. In May, 1919, the Greeks, with the aid of British naval and military’ forces, occupied Smyrna. Their advance inland and the subsequent campaign united Anatolia under Kemal, whose success has left him the only leader whom the Turks possess.