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Atatürk’s headquarters discovered in Syria’s Afrin: Report
Atatürk’s headquarters discovered in Syria’s Afrin: Report
The house used by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a military headquarters during World War I was discovered in a village in the northern Syrian town of Afrin, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported on July 2. Click through for the story in photos...
Turkey launched “Operation Olive Branch” into Afrin on Jan. 20 to remove the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terrorist group for its links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
After Afrin was taken under control on March 18, the new local town council supported by Turkey launched efforts to find Atatürk’s former headquarters in the village of Hacı Halil in the Raju region.
The stone building built in 1890 had belonged to Hanif Ağa, a local landlord, in 1918 when the Ottoman Empire was fighting the British army in Syria during the Great War, the council’s Syrian Kurdish President İbrahim Halil Ali told Anadolu Agency.
“When Atatürk came here, local Kurds collaborated with the Ottomans and sabotaged the British-controlled railway between the village of Midan İkbis and Kilis town center. Atatürk used the house, which is on top of a commanding hill, to plan the operations,” Ali said, adding that locals now want to renovate the crumbling building. (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is seen in the photo in Tripoli, Libya, while organizing the local resistance against Italian army in the 1911-12 war.)
According to Hatay Mustafa Kemal University history professor Süleyman Hatipoğlu, Atatürk was in charge of the Ottoman Seventh Army in Palestine when he came to Afrin via Aleppo in October 1918.
He organized the local resistance by mobilizing pro-Ottoman Arabs and Kurds in the area from his headquarters near the Katma train station in Raju in the face of the impending British invasion.
British soldiers, supported by pro-British Arabs, entered the Afrin area on Oct. 26, but they were repulsed by Atatürk’s forces in the Battle of Aleppo.
It was a Pyrrhic victory, as the Ottomans accepted defeat in World War I and signed the Armistice of Mudros on Oct. 30.
The line of defense Atatürk’s forces successfully defended against the British largely formed the modern Turkish-Syria border.
“I have decided on a line and told my forces the enemy must not go ahead of this line,” Atatürk wrote in his diary.
After he was called back to Turkey following the Ottoman surrender, he told the Turkish Parliament that “the Great War is over, but the guerilla war will start now” to announce the Turkish War of Independence, which would ultimately be won to establish the modern Republic of Turkey.
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