Talk:United Kingdom during the Turkish War of Independence

Feedback

Hi,I need a feedback about my article before it is (may be) published.I would be happy if you share with me the parts you disagree with.@Aybeg 78.174.205.204 (talk) 17:31, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Overall it looks good and is a good topic as part of history, but it needs to be redacted. Aybeg (talk) 06:17, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Saw this patroling. I have posted this article to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history for input as I know that the Turkish War of Independence is an ECP locked article, and that this is a sensitive topic area. thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 15:05, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Apologies for the edit reversion

Apologies for the edit reversion, lmk which of my edits we should reconsider! Benlittlewiki (talk) 23:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

ok BaharatlıCheetos2.0'ın devamı (talk) 10:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 13 July 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Consensus that the current title is inaccurate, and to move to United Kingdom during the Turkish War of Independence. Interested editors may open a new discussion about splitting the clashes in Mosul out, or attempt a WP:BOLD edit. (closed by non-admin page mover) BilledMammal (talk) 05:25, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

---

Anglo-Turkish War (1918–1923) → Anglo-Turkish war of 1918–1923 – There has been some move warring. At the very least, this article needs a descriptive title, as it does not have a proper name. It was briefly at the title "United Kingdom during the Turkish War of Independence". Srnec (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

• Move to United Kingdom during the Turkish War of Independence. Google Books seems to indicate that "Anglo-Turkish war" is a rare-to-nonexistent title for this (and when it does come up, it's talking about the Napoleonic Wars incident, or possibly the full Middle Eastern theatre of WWI from 1914). The current lead also needs to be dialed down a notch or three – it's acting like the British were engaged in much more severe combat against Turkey than was true in reality (where the Greeks thought that the French & British weren't backing them up enough). It's also possible that the section titled "Al Jazira front" needs to be split to its own separate article called "Clashes in Mosul vilayet (1919–1926)" or the like, which would only end with the Treaty of Ankara (1926). This bit of conflict related to the Mosul question was not 100% related to the Turkish War of Independence, since it would include things like Kurdish revolts that got Turkish support and aid, but weren't exactly Turkish regular troops or anything. SnowFire (talk) 00:54, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  Agree with the move and split suggestions. Would welcome an editor to write a better lead. Benlittlewiki (talk) 01:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Comment to add context: The name "Anglo-Turkish War" appears to have been chosen for consistency with the naming scheme of Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), Turkish-Armenian War, and Franco–Turkish War, all of which have had those names for over fifteen years, and all of which have been wikilinked in Template:Campaignbox_Theaters_of_the_Turkish_War_of_Independence by those names since 2 June 2015. Would not renaming this article logically necessitate renaming those articles as well? Huntthetroll (talk) 03:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Not necessarily. We follow the COMMONNAME in sources and sometimes the sources are inconsistent. But more generally, I think very few English-language histories think that there was a "war" between the UK & proto-Turkey separate from the Greek-Turkey war. The UK basically had what they'd have described as a peacekeeping force enforcing the Treaty of Sèvres in occupying Constantinople. Additionally, there were clashes in Mosul vilayet, although Mandatory Iraq was more a weak state dependent on Britain as an ally than full British-run territory (like, say, Mandatory Palestine), and as discussed that was more like Turkish support for local rebels rather than a full Turkish invasion. For comparison, note that we have British involvement in the Iraq War not Anglo-Iraqi War (2003-2011) or the like. SnowFire (talk) 09:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with SnowFire. "War" is a little too strong of a term here. There were certainly clashes between Turkish and British forces, but calling it a "war" really overstates the intensity of the fighting. The Chanak crisis of 1922 concerned whatever Britain would go to war with Turkey or not; as it was, public opinion in the UK did not support the plans of Lloyd George and his War Secretary, Churchill, to go to war against Turkey, which led to the downfall of the Lloyd George government. If Britain was already at "war" with Turkey, the Chanak crisis would not had happened. One might also note Kemal's statements to the British journalist George Ward-Price at the time that he wanted Britain to pull out of Asia Minor, but he did not want a war with Britain. If Turkey had been at war with Britain since 1918, Kemal's statements would make no sense at all. A better title might be Britain and the Turkish War of Independence or something along those lines. --A.S. Brown (talk) 22:52, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree with SnowFire (United Kingdom during the Turkish War of Independence) I think I must say I agree with SnowFire here, I can't say I've seen this period of Anglo-Turkish relations called an "Anglo-Turkish War" before. I will by-the-by say I don't think it is correct to ascribe the fall of Lloyd George to Chanak, there were many factors in play, not least the belief amongst Tory backbenchers that they were being forced by their own leadership to follow a radical domestic agenda that was opposed to Conservatism as they (the backbenchers) understood it. But that is an argument for another page. DuncanHill (talk) 23:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Anglo-Turkish War (1918-1923), the article should be named like this. If we should rename the article like because there was not any big conflicts, the article named Irish War of Independence is renamed with something other. Also, Turks had a lot of battle with British troops at Al-Jazeera Front. For example, during the battle of Derbent, 700-5000 Turkish troop fought against 7,000 British troop. Maybe the other conflicts was just some little clashes, Turks literally fought against the British. BaharatlıCheetos2.0'ın devamı (talk) 10:30, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

There were indeed battles in Mosul, but they were mostly between Iraqi forces and Kurdish rebels (who were supported by Turkey). It wasn't a full on "Anglo-Turkish War".

As for the Battle of Derbent, I've added a disputed tag. I don't know what's going on here, but something is very suspicious - while Turkish sources are absolutely valid to counteract Anglophone bias, there are currently 0 English sources, and I'm skeptical these are high quality Turkish sources, or you've drastically misinterpreted them. Edmund Allenby's article doesn't say boo about him being in Iraq in the 1920s - it says he was in Egypt, which sounds right. A near-total loss of 7,000 British troops would be a total disaster that would have caused major waves for the era, yet I've never heard anything about this despite reading literature on Iraq of this period. And 7,000 British troops were wiped out by just 500 Turkish troops?! Such a standoff would surely have already had an article had it really happened. This sounds like a source fantasizing about Turkish revenge against Allenby after Allenby's successes in WWI. I searched Edward J. Erickson's 2021 book on The Turkish War of Independence for "Derbent", and while "Derbent" comes up, it's entirely talking about Derbent, Russia and the Ottoman invasion of the Caucuses in 1918. Nothing in the book about Derbent, Iraq. SnowFire (talk) 09:31, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Checking more closely, yes, this is all sourced to Turkish nationalist webpages of dubious credibility. If I had to guess at what really happened, the writer read somewhere about 7,000 British forces in Iraq, and read about a tiny skirmish in Derbent, and assumed that the entire British force in Iraq teleported there for the battle. Considering the sloppy sourcing about thinking Allenby was involved, I'm not inclined to give these accounts a lot of credit. (Although to their credit, I don't see anything in them about the British forces being wiped out with near 100% casualties, unlike the current Wikipedia article - was that in a different reference, or just a misreading?) SnowFire (talk) 10:38, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

@SnowFire, Benlittlewiki, DuncanHill, and A.S. Brown: I've moved the article as proposed, but additional cleanup work is needed to remove the aspects that refer to this as a war. I'm notifying you as editors more familiar with the topic than I, and as the editors who supported such a move. BilledMammal (talk) 05:27, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Original Turkish quotes

@BaharatlıCheetos2.0'ın devamı, Benlittlewiki here!

There are a couple paragraphs in this article which were written with bad English which I couldn't edit to be more coherent without seeing the original Turkish quote. If you could attach the original Turkish quotes in an invisible comment so I can better translate them into English, that would be great! Below are the two areas in question, with specific sentences italicized:

>Refi Cevat (Ulunay), editor of the Alemdar, in his article dated 17 March 1920, wrote: "He claimed that the Ittihadist movement was resurrected and born under the name of Kuva-yi Milliye." Refi Cevat In another article, for the Turkish War of Independence cadres, he said, "The form of İttihadism in Anatolia was the opposite of Bolshevism." "It is a form of crimson.” he said.

>The British also accused the Turkish nationalists of being Bolsheviks. With this propaganda, the United Kingdom aimed to both remind Europe of the Bolshevik danger, to protect the conservatives, and to negatively influence the Turkish people and the Islamic world. This didn't stop the Turkish nationalists from using Socialist geopolitical outlooks. According to an article without signatures in Hakimiyet-i Milliye, communism represented a war against the imperialist British Empire and national hegemony. The world was divided into two great armies and these armies are oppressors, represented by England and capitalists. The Russians are included in the category of oppressed nations. Benlittlewiki (talk) 23:04, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

References