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and the road from there to Aleppo to supply their army in Syria was amere pretext: the demand for the surrender of the 7th Army in Syria confırmedit. The Prime Minister had seen no harm in granting this "justifiablerequest" 26 .On 6 November, in reporting his action to the Prime Minister in atelegram marked "Penalty of death for delay", Atatürk said: "The Britishrequest is not justifıable. I assure you that the intention is not to supplythe British army at Aleppo, but by occupying iskenderun and movingalong the Iskenderun-Kınkhan-Katma road to cut the line of retreat of the7th Army and to place it in a position where it cannot avoid surrender,just as vvas done to the 6th Army in Mosul. The fact that the British havetoday put Armenian gangs into action in islahiye lends strength to thissuspicion. Therefore I am excused in having been the means of informingthe British commander in Syria of the state of affairs. I have ordered thatthe British are to be opposed by force if they try to land troops at iskenderununder any pretext vvhatever, and I have ordered the 7th Army to leavea vveak outpost organization on the line it occupies today and to move toits main body in the direction Katma-Islahiye and to get vvithin the Cilicianborder. Since my character is not suited to carrying out these ordersand since I vvould naturally be open to many accusations if I could not actin accordance vvith the convictions of the Chief of the General Staff, Imost particularly beg that the person vvhom you vvill appoint in my placebe designated svviftly in order that I may relinquish my command immediately."27iskenderun had been occupied by tvvo squadrons of British troops on9 November, the Turkish garrison of the tovvn only vvithdravving from itafter repeated refusals to do so had been met by a threat that a landingvvould be made by force if the locality vvas not instantly evacuated. Accordingto Atatürk, the British troops had no right to advance beyond theline vvhich they actually occupied at middayjan 31 October 1918 and underthe terms of the armistice this extension öf the British occupation vvasnot in order. During the vvithdravval Turkish military authorities left behindlarge numbers of armed soldiers in the guise of gendarmerie, vviththe object of embarrassing the Allies and obtaining Turkish control of theiskenderun region. It vvas mainly his opposition to the orders receivedfrom the Sublime Porte for the evacuation of iskenderun that promptedAtatürk to resign his military command and move in on istanbul to tacklethe political situation head on 28 .The victory at Haritan had enabled Atatürk to fix a natural boundaryline belovv the Taurus and Amanus mountain ranges on the southern fron-26. Ibid.27. Les Souvenirs du Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Revue des Etudes Islamiques, I(1927), p. 174.28. Atatürk (1934), p. 526.634