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There was also a shared sense in that historic moment that the person most fit to articulate this position would be Major Kâmil (rather than Sami Pasha, who was still reeling from his dismissal). It has also been remarked that the Major seemed in a jubilant mood as bishops, community leaders, and journalists started filing out onto the balcony. The expression on Sami Pasha’s face when the Major informed him that the new governor Ibrahim Hakkı had been killed by a bullet to the head told the young officer that the news had thrown the Pasha into a state of despondency.

“No one is going to listen to us now!” exclaimed Sami Pasha in a burst of candor.

“On the contrary, Your Excellency,” began the Major, improvising a response that would soon become famous: “If we take a step forward now and announce the revolution, Mingheria’s progressive-minded people will take not one but two steps forward with us.”

It has always been difficult for nationalist and conservative Ottoman and Turkish historians to understand the context within which words like “progress” and “revolution” might have been used on the island in the year 1901. Unable to accept that the island may have wanted to sever itself from Ottoman rule because of the Empire’s inadequacies, and because there really was such a thing as a Mingherian nation, they have also come to see it as their mission to insinuate at every opportunity that there must have been other, more mysterious reasons for what transpired, and all sorts of hidden forces at work. These people believe that the moment in which the “revolution” took place could simply never have happened “as described.” The proof, as they see it, is that as a relatively low-ranking officer, and one who had, moreover, just been imprisoned for insubordination, the thirty-one-year-old Major would never have spoken to the “old” governor—a seasoned bureaucrat, a pasha, and a man more than twenty years his senior—in such an authoritative manner.

Of course one of the main features of any revolution is that things that have never happened before, and that no one ever thought or even dreamed could happen, will start happening one after the other.

The Major had nothing to rely on but his own experiences, his conscience, and his sincere devotion to the people of the island. It was his innocence and integrity that moved him to act in spite of all the pressures he faced, the fear, and the Ottoman medals and badges pinned to his chest. As the guests began to take their places on the State Hall balcony in accordance with the Pasha’s plan, the Major turned once more to Sami Pasha and delivered a heartfelt speech he made sure Doctor Nuri and everyone else could also hear:

“Your Excellency, as long as His Royal Highness Sultan Abdul Hamid remains on the throne, both you and I will find that any roads that might lead us safely back to our old lives and to Istanbul are forever closed.”

He had once again spoken loud enough for all to hear, and having made this declaration—which would come to hold a “prophetic” significance for Princess Pakize and her husband for many years to come—the Major raised his voice again and continued with increased rhetorical and poetic flourish:

“But you must not be disheartened, Pasha, for there is one consolation. We are not alone. The Mingherian nation stands with us. Everyone upon this island, the whole of the Mingherian nation understands that as long as we continue to receive our orders by telegram from Abdul Hamid, any roads that might lead us safely away from this plague will too remain forever closed.”

It was the first time in the history of the island that anyone had spoken publicly of a “Mingherian nation” and in open defiance of Abdul Hamid. This alone was enough to frighten everyone present.

The Major had now reached the balcony railing. “As soon as we stop waiting for telegrams from Istanbul and start governing ourselves, this quarantine will end, the outbreak will subside, and we will all be saved,” he said, his manner like that of a consummate politician.

Then, he turned toward the square and shouted as loud as he could: “Long live Mingheria! Long live Mingherians! Long live the Mingherian nation!”

The square had finally begun to fill up. There must have been one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty people there. Most of them had gathered a little earlier, scattered when the gun battle had erupted, and then returned, intrigued, to find out what might have happened. Meanwhile, all the coachmen, the guards, and the street hawkers who had previously taken shelter in the shops, behind the columns, and under the trees around the State Hall Square had also emerged, drawn by the sight of Sheikh Hamdullah and Archbishop Constantinos Effendi standing on the balcony beside the old governor and the Prince Consort. To give everyone more time to gather, the Major turned again toward Sami Pasha and—as confirmed by witness accounts and by Princess Pakize’s letters—uttered the following historic words:

“Your Excellency, we would never have come this far without your exemplary guidance. You are the greatest governor we have ever had. God bless you! But you are no longer the Sultan’s governor now; you are the people’s governor! From this moment on, our committee declares Mingheria independent. From this moment on, our island is free. Long live Mingheria, long live the Mingherian nation, long live liberty!”

In the square below, the crowd kept growing and the photographers kept taking pictures. Their rather hopeful shots of the island’s various dignitaries all standing together on the balcony would end up illustrating several news reports chronicling the day, the twenty-eighth of June 1901, when the island of Mingheria finally stepped onto the stage of world history. The images would be published in hundreds of newspapers across five continents and later be reproduced in countless books, in encyclopedias, on postage stamps, and in historical monographs.

The first of these photographs to be published was a shot taken by Arhis Bey, carried to Crete and from there to France with the assistance of the French consul and one of the fishing boats that was still smuggling people off the island, and printed three days later, on Monday, the first of July 1901, alongside a report on the second page of Paris’s principal conservative right-wing newspaper Le Figaro:

Revolution in Mingheria (Révolution à Minguère)

The little Ottoman island of Mingheria, situated in the Eastern Mediterranean and famous for its marble and roses, has declared independence. For the past nine weeks, the island, whose population of eighty thousand is split evenly between Christians and Muslims, has recently been gripped by a terrible outbreak of plague. With the island’s local Quarantine Authority failing to control the outbreak, the international community—encouraged by the Ottoman Empire—had sent four warships to blockade the island and prevent the plague from spreading to Europe. Three years ago, pilgrims returning to the island from the Hejaz had revolted against harsh quarantine regulations, with seven pilgrims and one soldier killed in the resulting clash. There are reports of gunshots having been fired in the city during the revolution, and Ottoman soldiers have been seen marching on the streets.

That last sentence had been somewhat exaggerated. We have not given much room in this book to correcting this kind of misinformation, and we will not spend any time on this particular fabrication either, except to note that the French might have included it in their report in order to give the impression that the island remained under Ottoman control.

Another interesting theory around this falsehood is that it might have been designed as an attempt to trick the Sublime Porte and even Abdul Hamid himself. The Ottoman government in Istanbul did not quite know what was happening in Mingheria. With telegraph lines down, and the only reports from the island coming through smugglers—most of whom were of Greek origins, and whom Abdul Hamid could not easily infiltrate with his network of spies—even Istanbul was not sure of who was currently in power there.

Arhis Bey’s photograph of the gathering on the balcony had taken up a quarter of a page in Le Figaro, with the caption: “The moment Mingheria declares independence from the balcony of its Ottoman State Hall.” A week later, the French magazine L’Illustration would publish an engraving based on the same photograph, including a similar description below. Of course the French press had no idea who any of the people in the photograph were. We have therefore listed their names here for the purposes of our history: Sheikh Hamdullah; head of the Orthodox Christian congregation, Archbishop Constantinos Laneras; former governor Sami Pasha; Doctor and Prince Consort Nuri; all of the consuls; Chief Scrutineer Mazhar Effendi; five municipal guards; and two others whom we are not able to identify today. (The new governor’s deputy, Hadi, had been locked up in the cells in the State Hall basement, along with Ramiz and his surviving henchmen.)

A day later, The Times published the same photograph together with a caption that would prove so popular with historians that they would end up repeating it over and over again until it turned into one of those hackneyed statements people make without giving them much thought: “The island of Mingheria declares independence with an announcement from the Ottoman State Hall building made jointly by the leaders of its Christian and Muslim communities.”

Abdul Hamid and the Ottoman government in Istanbul would find out about this declaration of independence when their ambassador in Paris, Münir Pasha, and their London ambassador, Costaki Anthopoulos Pasha, sent telegrams detailing the reports they had read in foreign newspapers. Some mean-spirited and overblown rumors have also alleged, among other things, that Abdul Hamid couldn’t quite believe the news, and wanting to see the respective issues of Le Figaro and The Times with his own eyes, he had dispatched special sleuths to the port of Sirkeci, where mail coming from Europe to Istanbul was first unloaded. As Mingheria was not responding to any telegrams, it is not surprising that both the Sultan and the bureaucrats of the Sublime Porte should have been eager to find out how this nationalist uprising had started and, more important, who its ringleaders might be.

CHAPTER 53

There was a brief silence after the Major’s announcement in Turkish that Mingheria was now free and independent. In that moment, a man named Haşmet, the oldest of the State Hall’s caretakers, took the “flag” from the Major’s bloodied hand, deftly tied it to a heavy staff he had armed himself with in anticipation of an attack, and passed it back to the Major.

So it was that this caretaker who had never left the island in his life and hardly even knew how to read and write came to be remembered for a time as an important historical figure. Many years later, the new nationalist government, which took power in Mingheria after the end of the Italian occupation of the island, would name a new school in Haşmet’s ancestral village in his honor, calling it the Flagbearer Haşmet Primary School. Several painters would also immortalize the moment the elderly caretaker had secured the flag to the staff. But eventually, after the education ministry decided it would be more appropriate for the images on the island’s banknotes to show two young women handing the flag to Commander Kâmil, rather than some elderly janitor, depictions of Haşmet became increasingly rare, and by the 1970s, he had been forgotten altogether. Today he is only remembered in his own village.

The aging caretaker’s “gesture,” whose significance so many painters would also grasp, had prompted the Major into action too. He put his gun down, grabbed the flagpole with both his blood-soaked and his clean hand, and began to wave it, holding it out horizontally so that the whole square could see. His wound was aching, and the banner and pole were heavy, but Commander Kâmil managed to wave the flag right and left three times. When he was satisfied that everyone had seen the color of the flag and how it billowed in the air, he handed it over to Haşmet and repeated the words he had just said in French too:

“Vive Minguère, vive Les Minguèriens! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!”

“Long live Mingheria, long live Mingherians! Liberty, equality, fraternity!” he added in Turkish.

“The Mingherian nation is a great nation,” he continued. “The Mingherian people shall vanquish the plague and advance under the direction of our esteemed committee and of our governor toward liberty, progress, and civilization. Long live Mingheria, long live Mingherians. Long live our soldiers, long live our quarantine officers, and long live our Quarantine Regiment!”

Most of the dignitaries gathered on the balcony felt the Major had overstepped. But they also believed this must all be a performance orchestrated by Sami Pasha, and as its purpose remained ambiguous, they had decided to wait patiently for its conclusion. The most valuable account we have on this subject is a passage penned by the daughter of Archbishop Constantinos Effendi—leader of the Greek community—in her memoirs Winds of Mingheria, published in Athens in 1932. According to his daughter, Constantinos Effendi made it clear later that afternoon that he was not at all happy that the island was being plucked away from Ottoman control. On the contrary, he was dismayed and perturbed. While the balcony speeches were still going on, the bishop had found out that Governor Sami Pasha had been dismissed from his post two days ago, that the new governor, İbrahim Hakkı Pasha, had just been killed, and that his deputy had been wounded, and at home that day, he had spoken again and again of how they were on the verge of a great catastrophe and of how Abdul Hamid would not let this senseless act of rebellion go unpunished. The bishop knew very well that whenever revolts of this kind happened on other islands, it was never too long before one of the Ottoman navy warships was deployed to indiscriminately bomb towns and villages and anything else they could reach.

But as his daughter also wrote in her memoirs, her father was somewhat reassured by the fact that the island was still surrounded by the Great Powers’ warships, and that when it came to the handling of the plague-infected island of Mingheria, there was therefore an open political partnership between Abdul Hamid and the Western governments. Abdul Hamid wouldn’t dare break the blockade on his own and send the Mahmudiye or the Orhaniye to bomb the island. According to the bishop, the former governor must have cunningly evaluated all of these factors before coming up with these claims of freedom and independence. In other words, his answer to Abdul Hamid and Istanbul’s question “Who is the instigator and ringleader of this revolt?” would have been the old governor Sami Pasha.

After the Telegraph Raid and his subsequent arrest, the Major had gained fame and stature among those in the Muslim community who had grown resentful of Istanbul and the Governor. Even wealthy Greek families who had no interest in what went on in the Muslim neighborhoods knew who he was. By now, people were finding it increasingly difficult to believe that this brilliant officer, clearly destined for greater things, could have accidentally ended up on the island because he’d been tasked with guarding a sultan’s daughter and some obscure delegation supposedly traveling to China to counsel the Muslims there, and in their hopelessness they slowly became convinced that the Major must actually be there on some other, secret mission.