Battle of Marash ( ) was a battle that took place in the early winter of 1920 between the French forces occupying the city of Maraş in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish National Forces linked to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk . It was the first major battle of the Turkish War of Independence , and the three-week-long engagement in the city ultimately forced the French to abandon and retreat from Marash and resulted in a Turkish massacre of Armenian refugees who had just been repatriated to the city following the Armenian Genocide . The controversial retreat , along with the massacre that took place under French watch , was subsequently dubbed the " Marash Affair . " After the surrender of the Ottoman Empire to the Allies in October 1918 , the city of Marash had come under the joint-occupation of the British and French armies ( the latter largely composed of Armenians from the French Armenian Legion ) . In February 1919 , Field Marshal Edmund Allenby appointed a number of French officers to oversee the administration of the region of Cilicia and the repatriation of tens of thousands of Armenians who had been deported during the war in the course of the Genocide . Within a few months , approximately 150,000 Armenians had been repatriated , including 20,000 natives from Marash
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Battle of Marash