THE "GENTLE TURK."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17270, 20 September 1919, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE "GENTLE TURK."

SHOCKING REVELATIONS.

BRITISH COLONEL DRIVEN;. MAD.

Shocking stories of cruelty to British subjects by the Turks are told by the Times' Constantinople correspondent.

Mrs. T., the British-born -wife of a Syrian, Protestant, an accomplished and refined woman.known: to the writer, was deported with her husband to Anatolia from Beirut. At Sivas she was attacked by a gendarme, who broke into her bedroom and flogged her, after" which she was forced to march with the convoy of deported persons through ■' the town in her nightdress. She died of ill-treatment and privation at Tokat.

At Constantinople, Colonel. Churchill, of the Ottoman Gendarmerie, a British subject in the Turkish service, who had shown such seal for the Ottoman cause during the Cretan troubles of 1898 and 1899 as to be obliged to flee the island after the Turco-British incident at Candia, was arrested and accused of having dabbled in Turkish politics, and was put to the torture by the orders of Bedri Bey, the infamous chief of police. He went mad, and eventually died from shock, but not before he was seen by British residents, a pitiable wreck, lamed by the bastinado,. Of the houses, some 300 in number requisitioned by Turks or Germans from British owners, all were pillaged, and

wanton damage was often added to theft. The fact that the owners had often been most charitable to the Turkish poor who lived near them, made no difference. The British Masonic Lodge, no doubt on account of the refusal of the British Freemasons to recognise the highly political Grand Orient of Turkey, was seized and converted into a lock hospital for Turkish prostitutes, and was left in a state beggaring description. Houses taken in the absence of their owners by Turks were generally more or less looted. Thus, Mr. J., an old resident of Prinkipo, was expelled from his house late in 1914. An old and delicate man, he did not long survive. Hi? agent let the house to a Turco Kurdish Pasha, who departed in 1916, taking £1500 worth of furniture with him in barges.