After the Armistice of Mudros, Merzifon was one of the few small towns in the interior of the Black Sea region where foreign troops were stationed directly. In the spring of 1919 a British detachment arrived from Samsun and settled in the town, while the American College on its northern edge came to be known in those years as both a school and a focal point of political tension in the region. Merzifon appears several times in the telegrams that Mustafa Kemal Pasha sent to the Ministry of War from Samsun and Havza. In the first months of the Turkish War of Independence on the Black Sea, the town was a place where the British military presence, Pontic claims and local resistance organization intersected. Because the general story of the War of Independence is told elsewhere, only Merzifon is treated here: the beginning of the occupation, what happened around the college, and how the matter closed in 1921.

The Town and Its College before the Armistice

From the Danishmendids onward, Merzifon was an Anatolian town with a distinctly Turkish-Islamic character. The marketplace that took shape in the fifteenth century around the Çelebi Mehmed Madrasa, the soup kitchen and the mosques acquired a new skyline in the seventeenth century with the complex of Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha; the Pasha Mosque, the Bedesten, the Taşhan, the library and the baths remain the buildings that defined the town's commercial and endowment life. At the end of the nineteenth century the population was around twenty thousand. According to Vital Cuinet, about 13,380 of these were Muslims, 5,820 Armenians and some 800 Greeks. This mixed composition formed the ground for what happened during the War of Independence.

American Board missionaries had opened a station in Merzifon in the early 1850s and in the 1860s moved the seminary and the girls' school from Bebek in Istanbul to the town. The school began teaching on 8 September 1886 under the name Anatolia College, with Charles C. Tracy as its first president. The college's charter was approved by the State of Massachusetts in 1894, and the Ottoman government recognized it as an American school in 1899. Within the walled grounds were the mission center, a girls' school, a hospital, a library and various workshops; the students were mostly Armenian and Greek, and a large part of the teaching staff came from the same two communities. In the 1913-1914 academic year, of 425 students about 200 were Greek, 160 Armenian, 40 Russian and 25 Turkish. In the college's records the only Turkish graduate is Nureddin Pehlivanzade, who entered in 1909 and graduated in 1914.

The roots of the political debate around the college reach back before the Armistice. The Hunchak and Dashnak committees were active in Merzifon under Abdülhamid II, and the events that broke out in the town in 1893 were discussed for a long time. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Greek students at the college founded clubs. According to studies based on Turkish archival documents, the Pontus Club opened in 1904, the Greek-Hellenic Athletic Club in the same year and the Greek Enlightenment Club in 1907; it is claimed that these clubs formed the nucleus of the Pontus Society, which later opened branches along the Black Sea coast. This account has to be read together with the explanation given by the college's administrators, that the clubs were founded only so that students could learn their mother tongues and that the name Pontus came from the region's ancient name. Both sides rely on their own documents and testimony: on one side stands Ankara's decision of 1921, on the other the reports that American officials wrote to Boston.

The Closing of the College during the War

In the First World War the region was declared a war zone after the Russian advance on the Eastern Front. On 10 May 1916 the college and hospital buildings were requisitioned for military purposes, and the American personnel were sent to Istanbul on 16 May. The college president, George E. White, went to America and worked there for about three years as director of the Near East Relief in Minnesota. According to the testimony of the American missionaries, the Armenian community of Merzifon was deported in 1915, and some of the college's staff were caught up in that process. White's accounts, published in the American press in 1917, and Bertha Morley's diary are the main Western sources for these events. Turkish researchers, for their part, regard White's speeches as propaganda material that fed hostility toward Turkey in American public opinion. These events in Merzifon are still described under different names by two separate historiographies.

The Armistice of Mudros and Insecurity on the Black Sea

When the Ottoman Empire signed the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918, the Black Sea coast and its interior had not yet been occupied, but public order in the region had long since broken down. The demobilization of soldiers, the inadequacy of the gendarmerie and the deportation and resettlement measures of the war years had led to the appearance of armed groups made up of Muslim, Greek and Armenian elements. According to the reports Mustafa Kemal Pasha sent from Samsun, nearly forty Greek bands were active in and around Samsun. Muslim villagers, who did not feel safe under the protection of the local government, had in some places formed their own defense groups.

In British sources the same picture looks different. The British control officers sent to the Black Sea reported to the High Commissioner's office in Istanbul that Christians were under threat from Muslim bands, and there are also records that Greek clergy were inciting the population. Admiral Calthorpe passed the complaint of the American Tobacco Company, that Muslims in the region were being armed, to London, and Acting High Commissioner Admiral Webb asked on 17 February 1919 for troops to be sent to secure order in Trabzon and Samsun. The request resulted in military units being sent to Samsun and Merzifon in March 1919. Along with the units, control officers such as Captain J. S. Perring and Captain L. H. Hurst were assigned to the region.

The British Detachment Enters Merzifon

The sources give slightly different dates. The Atatürk-Samsun chronology of the Samsun Governorship records that on 9 March 1919 the British landed 200 soldiers at Samsun, contrary to the terms of the armistice, and brought 100 more on 17 May. Some studies write that these soldiers were moved to Merzifon in order to push into the interior. A more detailed account of the occupation of Merzifon states that on the evening of 30 March 1919 some sixty British soldiers arrived in Merzifon from Samsun. This unit used the Kara Mustafa Pasha Primary School as its headquarters. The officer at its head was Captain Salter, whose name appears in the sources also as Solter; he was hosted in the home of Mr. Getchell, a college teacher who was also a member of the Near East Relief. The next morning Salter went to the government house, lowered the Ottoman flag without notifying any authority, raised the British flag in its place and entered the district governor's office.

In those same days the college was coming back to life. Mr. and Mrs. Getchell, Miss Willard and Miss Zbinden, among the missionaries who had left when the buildings were requisitioned during the war, had remained in Merzifon and after the armistice set about reopening the school. The Merzifon members of the Near East Relief, which had set out from New York on 16 February 1919, settled in the college buildings under Mr. Pye on 14 March 1919. British soldiers entered the town two weeks after this arrival. The closeness between the American relief workers and the British officers soon drew the attention of the Turkish authorities.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha's Reports on Merzifon

Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who landed at Samsun as Inspector of the Ninth Army Troops, was charged in his orders with putting an end to the disorder around Samsun. In the telegram to the Ministry of War explaining his move from Samsun to Havza, he gave as the reason the examination, on the spot, of security complaints coming from places such as Merzifon, Vezirköprü, Amasya, Lâdik and Havza. When he reached Havza on 25 May 1919 he first sent a telegram asking about the population of the district, the robberies of the past two months and the contacts of the Greek and Armenian communities with British and American officials. On 27 May the British control officer in Merzifon, Salter, came to Havza to visit Mustafa Kemal and spoke of the lack of security for minorities. Mustafa Kemal's answer was to ask what had been done so far about the attacks against Muslims.

In a report to the Ministry of War on 5 June 1919, he stated that the British officers and American officials in Merzifon were in very close contact with the Greeks of both Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy, that this was emboldening the Greeks, and that these developments should not be overlooked. In a cipher of 10 June he wrote that crates had been brought to the college, that they bore Ottoman American markings and might be weapons; he added that the gathering of four British officers at the American College raised the suspicion that the college had been made a center for negotiation and initiative. A letter of 3 July says that this suspicion had given way to a firm conviction, and that an investigation found the crates to contain weapons. The claim that British control officers in Merzifon were organizing Greeks and Armenians and that weapons were being brought to the college every day under the name of goods appears in this form in the Turkish military archival documents. No document has been found that shows how the British and American sides answered these claims.

The Rally of 9 June

The occupation of Izmir by Greek forces on 15 May 1919 was met with protest rallies in many parts of Anatolia. In Merzifon too a Defense of Rights Society had been founded under the leadership of Vehbi Efendi, and on 9 June 1919 a protest rally for Izmir was held in the town. According to Mustafa Kemal's telegram of 10 June, the British captain had wanted to send patrols through the neighborhoods on the grounds of keeping order; when the district governorship said this would be misunderstood by the public, he said he had learned that a rally was to be held and that he intended to prevent it with all his strength. On the district governorship's favorable reply the patrols were withdrawn. The captain had still wished at first to prevent the gathering, but the rally passed quietly. In his report of 12 June, Hurst wrote that Greeks and Armenians had also been invited to the Izmir rally, that the speeches were faultless and that the movement gave the impression of being limited to verbal protest; he then thanked the district governor for the calm course of events.

Hurst's return from Merzifon to Samsun was not very brilliant for him. Setting out on 10 June, the captain was stopped and robbed near Kavak by the band of Hüsnü Çavuş; because not a single shot had been fired he was accused of cowardice and brought before a military court, and was saved only at the request of the British Foreign Office. Hurst put the responsibility for the robbery on Mustafa Kemal and claimed that the attack had been planned by him, but later inquiries did not bear this claim out. In those same days, in a telegram of 11 June, Mustafa Kemal reported that six soldiers passing through the village of Mahmutlu, in the district of Merzifon, had been killed and that this was part of the Greek committees' policy of plunder and destruction against Muslims.

From Havza to Amasya

Mustafa Kemal Pasha stayed in Havza between 25 May and 12 June 1919, and on 12 June he moved to Amasya. Different dates have also been given for the day of departure, but local sources point to Thursday, 12 June. Among the reasons for this sudden departure, according to one account, was the possibility that the British detachment in Merzifon would take the Çeltik Pass and Havza in a sudden raid and leave him unable to act. On the basis of Hurst's reports the British High Commission was also pressing the Sublime Porte to recall Mustafa Kemal to Istanbul. In his reply to the Ministry of War on 11 June, Mustafa Kemal asked the reason for the summons and learned that it had been made at British request. The later developments at Amasya, that is, the Amasya Circular and the other decisions, fall outside the subject of Merzifon and are not treated here.

The Withdrawal of the British Troops

As the influence of the national movement grew, the position of the British soldiers in Merzifon became harder. Turkish sources and the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam record that the British withdrew from Merzifon on 28 September 1919. A study based on British documents says that the withdrawal began in September 1919. After this the control officers proposed landing new units in the region, and when that proved impossible they proposed arming and organizing the Greeks. According to the study, the officers' aim was to set Turkish units and Greek bands against each other, and in this they succeeded to a certain degree. At the college meanwhile instruction was resuming: on 6 September 1919 classes began again with the diploma ceremony of Timotheus M. Papadopoulos, who had been called up in 1916 and so could not graduate, and 166 students, six of them in preschool, most of them Greek, were enrolled.

The departure of the British officers did not end the problem of the bands. According to the TDV, most of the incidents in the Merzifon region until the end of 1920 were organized by Greek bands, and the local Muslim population organized in turn and neutralized these movements. In the spring of 1920, Perring's reports describe the American consul, returning from Amasya and Merzifon, as having come across armed Turkish groups of about 150 men each heading toward Kavak, and Perring interpreted this as Christians being under threat. It is also reported, again from British documents, that Greek clergy met in Samsun in April 1919 and decided to organize in Merzifon, Amasya, Havza and other places. The same events are described in Turkish sources in the language of restoring public order, and in British sources in the language of protecting Christians.

The Search and Closure of the College

The Central Army, founded on 9 December 1920, began to take more effective measures against the Pontus movement on the Black Sea. In a search of the house of a Greek named Lazarus in Tokat, documents marked Pontus were found, along with five pamphlets written by Kantarcıoğlu under the title Merzifon Anatolia Colleges and a regulation, claimed to have been drawn up jointly with the Americans, on merging the Pontus schools with the Merzifon American College. These documents focused the attention of the Ankara Government on the college. The Greeks of the area, when the Pontusists began to be arrested, killed Zeki Efendi, the Turkish teacher, whom they suspected of informing. Turkish sources write that the murder was committed two nights before the search of the college. White, for his part, states that he believes the killers of Zeki Bey, who was killed on 12 February 1921, were Turks.

On 16 February 1921 the Merzifon American Hospital and College were searched, with the commander of the Fifth Division also present. No weapons or ammunition were found, but the existence of the Pontus Club of 1904, the Greek-Hellenic Athletic Club founded in the same year and the Greek Enlightenment Club founded in 1907 was established. The club's charter, its seals, Greek flags, a map showing the borders of a Pontus Republic, photographs and some documents were seized. When the charter was translated it was concluded that the club encouraged Greeks to serve Greek ambitions and to establish a Pontus government. The club was closed, its Greek president and the members of its board were arrested, and only statements were taken from the American members. It is also stated that the search turned up correspondence between the college administration and the American representative in Samsun concerning the smuggling of Greek and Armenian killers to Europe.

White drew a different picture in the reports he sent to the American Board's headquarters in Boston. He wrote that the clubs were founded so that students of different nationalities could learn their own mother tongues, that the name Pontus came from the old name of the region, and that the seized map was a map of Roman provinces printed in Chicago a few years earlier. He added that the Greeks felt sympathy for the Kingdom of Greece but that he did not believe they were preparing a rebellion. Turkish researchers find this explanation inadequate in the light of the correspondence and documents mentioned above. There is no third source to arbitrate; there are only the documents in the Turkish military archive and the reports of the American officials, and the two describe the same event within different frames.

Closure and Trial

The college was closed. Two male and one female American missionary, chosen by the government, stayed to protect the buildings and property, and the remaining twenty-nine people left Merzifon on 22 March 1921. The arrested Pontusists were sent to Amasya. Kuyumcuoğlu Therlides, the president of the college's club, and its members Haralambos, Yorgi, Anastas, Simon and Pavlos were tried before the Independence Tribunal at Amasya. Turkish sources give 12 September 1921 as the date of the trial. It is recorded that the defendants were sentenced to death on the grounds that they had provided education in line with Greek aims, enrolled members in order to defy authority and played a part in the killing of Zeki Bey. Western sources, on the other hand, write that Evstathiades, Lamprianos and Theocharides, former teachers of the college, together with some students, were executed at Amasya in August on a charge of preparing armed rebellion. The two accounts differ in date and in the number of defendants; both point to the closure of the college and the trial at Amasya.

After the college was closed, the American High Commission protested through the Swedish Embassy on 14 May 1921 against the closing of the school and hospital by the Amasya Governorate. The Ottoman Government rejected the request on the ground that it had no official relations with the Ankara Government. A second protest was turned back on the same ground on 30 June 1921. After this the missionaries gave up hope of returning to Merzifon. In 1924 the college was reopened in Thessaloniki, Greece, under the name Anatolia College, and it is still there today. Among the buildings in Merzifon, the Girls' School (1865), the Hospital (1889) and the Main Office and Library (1910-1914) survive.

Summer 1921: The Removal of the Greek Population to the Interior

On 9 June 1921 the Greek fleet bombarded Inebolu, and as the possibility of a landing grew, the Ankara Government declared the Black Sea coast a war zone. On 26 June 1921, to prevent the enemy from finding auxiliary forces in the event of a landing and to secure the rear of the detachments guarding the coast, it decided to move Greek men between the ages of fifteen and fifty who were able to bear arms from the region to the interior. The Greek population in the immediate vicinity of Merzifon was affected by this measure. In the same period the Greeks whom the Migrants Commission, formed within the Greek Metropolitanate of Samsun, had brought from Russia and the interior of Anatolia and settled in the region were also sent back to their homelands.

The reports of American officials, among them Dr. W. W. Peet, treasurer of the American Board, J. P. Xenides, a former teacher at the college, and Stanley E. Hopkins, who worked with the Near East Relief, describe this period very differently. Peet writes that in the days after 23 June 1921, after the men of Merzifon had been forced to leave, a massacre was carried out on the women and children left behind, and that the Ankara Government did nothing about it and said the work was that of bands. Xenides claims that the Greeks suffered persecution and injustice and that the removals had been planned beforehand; Hopkins interprets the aim of the operation as the destruction of all the Greeks of Anatolia. Turkish researchers regard these reports as propaganda aimed at accusing Ankara and assess the measure within the framework of a military precaution on a threatened coast. The gap between these two accounts about what befell civilians in Merzifon has not been closed even today.

Merzifon's Place in the War of Independence

Merzifon is not mentioned as often as Samsun, Havza or Amasya in accounts of the War of Independence, but it is a town that clearly shows the balances in the interior of the Black Sea region. The British military presence, which lasted about six months from March to September 1919, directly affected Mustafa Kemal Pasha's first weeks in Havza and is cited among the reasons for his move to Amasya. The Defense of Rights Society and the rally of 9 June are among the first examples in Merzifon of the organized reaction of the local people. The closing of the college in 1921 and the trial at Amasya appear in histories of the War of Independence as one of the best-known examples on the Black Sea of the harsh steps Ankara took against movements it regarded as domestic separatism. In Western sources the same events are recalled in terms of the losses suffered by Greeks and Armenians.

Chronology

30 October 1918: The Armistice of Mudros was signed.

16 February 1919: The Near East Relief set out from New York for Istanbul.

9 March 1919: According to the Samsun Governorship, the British landed 200 soldiers at Samsun.

14 March 1919: The Merzifon members of the Near East Relief settled in the college buildings.

30 March 1919: British soldiers arriving from Samsun entered Merzifon and the Ottoman flag was lowered from the government house.

19 May 1919: Mustafa Kemal Pasha landed at Samsun.

25 May 1919: Mustafa Kemal moved to Havza.

27 May 1919: Salter, the British control officer in Merzifon, visited Mustafa Kemal at Havza.

5 June 1919: Mustafa Kemal reported to the Ministry of War the close contact of British and American officials in Merzifon with the Greeks.

9 June 1919: A protest rally for Izmir was held in Merzifon.

10-11 June 1919: Telegrams about the crates brought to the college; six soldiers killed in the village of Mahmutlu.

12 June 1919: Mustafa Kemal moved from Havza to Amasya.

6 September 1919: Instruction resumed at the college.

28 September 1919: The British soldiers withdrew from Merzifon.

9 December 1920: The Central Army was founded.

12 February 1921: Zeki Bey, the college's Turkish teacher, was killed (according to White).

16 February 1921: The Merzifon American Hospital and College were searched.

22 March 1921: Twenty-nine Americans left Merzifon.

14 May and 30 June 1921: The American protests were rejected.

26 June 1921: It was decided to move Greek men on the Black Sea coast to the interior.

August-September 1921: The defendants of the Pontus Club were tried and executed at Amasya (the date differs between sources).

1924: The college was reopened in Thessaloniki.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources