In fact, signs of Turco-Arab co-operation became everywhere apparent. To
be sure, this co-operation was not openly avowed either by Mustapha
Kemal or by the deposed King Feisal who, fleeing to Italy, continued his
diplomatic manoeuvres. But Arabs fought beside Turks against the
French in Cilicia; Turks and Kurds joined the Syrian Arabs in their
continual local risings; while Kemal's hand was clearly apparent in the
rebellion against the British in Mesopotamia.
This Arab _entente_ was not the whole of Mustapha Kemal's foreign
policy. He was also reaching out north-eastward to the Tartars of
Transcaucasia and the Turkomans of Persian Azerbaidjan. The Caucasus was
by this time the scene of a highly complicated struggle between Moslem
Tartars and Turkomans, Christian Armenians and Georgians, and various
Russian factions, which was fast reducing that unhappy region to chaos.
Among the Tartar-Turkomans, long leavened by Pan-Turanian propaganda,
Mustapha Kemal found enthusiastic adherents; and his efforts were
supported by a third ally--Bolshevik Russia. Bolshevik policy, which, as
we have already stated, was seeking to stir up trouble against the
Western Powers throughout the East, had watched Kemal's rise with great
satisfaction. At first the Bolsheviki could do very little for the
Turkish nationalists because they were not in direct touch, but the
collapse of Wrangel's "White" army in November, 1920, and the consequent
overrunning of all south Russia by the Red armies, opened a direct line
from Moscow to Angora via the Caucasus, and henceforth Mustapha Kemal
was supplied with money, arms, and a few men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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