The Lions of Marash

The Lions of Marash

Stanley E. Kerr

University of New York Press

Fifty-two years ago Turkish insurgents fought the French army of occupation in the ancient city of Marash, Turkey. It was the first major battle of the Turkish War of Independence, a war which ended in the expulsion from Anatolia of all foreign armies and the overthrow of the sultanate by Mustafa Kemal Pasha.

In 1914 some eighty-six thousand Armenians lived in Marash and its neighboring villages. By January 1923 none of them remained. I worked in Marash as a member of Near East Relief during 1920 and 1922, the years of the last two phases of the decimation of the Armenians in Turkey. This book reviews the deportations of 1915, the siege of 1920, and the final