Turkish Irregulars against the Greeks

Discussions on the final era of the Ottoman Empire, from the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
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Peter H
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Turkish Irregulars against the Greeks

#1

Post by Peter H » 13 Apr 2007, 07:54

http://www.arts.yorku.ca/hist/tgallant/ ... aizmir.pdf
Until a properly disciplined Turkish army was put together in 1921,armed irregulars (efes, Fetes, zeybeks) served as the backbone of the resistance against the Greeks in western Anatolia. As was the case with their Greek counterparts, the names of the Muslin Fetes do not suggest that these groups had deep roots in the area or belonged to reputable professions. The better known among them were Yuruk (Nomad) Osman, Deli (Mad) Osman, Koca Arap (Big Arab), Parmakslz Arap (Thumbless Arab), Kiirt (Kurd) Mustafa,Harput'lu (from Harput) Omer, Pic(Bastard) Oman.Kara Ali, the righthand man of the famous bandit, Cakircali had deserted his army post in Yemen and found his way to western Anatolia...

....The origins of the armed irregulars who joined the nationalist forces were diverse. There were draft dodgers, tax evaders, and petty criminals among them. But a great many of them originated from among the tribal communities
who had been moved from the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire as part of the state's recurrent campaigns of settling nomadic groups...

...It is estimated that at the end of the nineteenth century there were at least 4,000 bandits organized in tens of different groups in western Anatolia; against them the state could field no more than 125 policemen and 2,035 gendarme forces in the region. The Ottoman army organized a number of campaigns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to punish these cetes and restore the authority of the central administration in the countryside, but the advantage in these encounters lay with the brigands who were organized in smaller units dispersed in the terrain, and had created a network of support for themselves....

...Needless to say, their service during the war improved the image of the Cetes significantly in Turkey. For example, Mustafa Kemal invited four hundred followers of one of the more notorious bandits, Demirci Mehmet Efe,
to Ankara during the war and gave him the rank of colonel in the Turkish army..

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Peter H
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#2

Post by Peter H » 13 Apr 2007, 07:58

1st June 1919:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology ... dependence
Greek troops occupy Ödemiş after a six hour exchange of fire in the Circassian village of Hacıilyas, ten kilometers west of Ödemiş, which prides itself for being the spot where the "first bullets" by irregular forces, soon to form into militias, were fired. The village, burned in whole by the Greek army after the fighting is named İlkkurşun since ("first bullet" in Turkish).

İlkkurşun
http://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0lkkur%C5%9Fun


Tosun Saral
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#3

Post by Tosun Saral » 14 Apr 2007, 22:02

My post and pictures of regulars and irregulars:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... hlight=efe

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