It is amusing to note that the British Government’s relations with the Sultan during the Allied occupation of Constantinople [1918-23] were attacked by the Turkish Nationalists and by the Indian Moslems with equal bitterness, but with diametrically opposite presumptions as to their character. Apparently the Indians considered that the Sultan was a prisoner under duress, and that the British Government were restraining him from exercising his lawful authority as Caliph of Islam. Undoubtedly the Turkish Nationalists regarded him as an opponent of constitutional government and almost as a traitor to his country, who was lending himself to British designs against their movement in the hope of recovering the autocratic power formerly enjoyed by Abdu’l-Hamid. In the Indians’ eyes he was a tragic captive, in his own countrymen’s a sordid tool.
The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, A Study in the Contact of Civilizations, Constable, 1922
