When the united western countries, which set their minds to abolish the Ottoman Empire, began to share the state they had declared as a "sick man" through a series of agreements between them, they abundantly exploited the seventh article of the Armistice of Mudros, signed on October 3, 1918. This article is as follows: “The Allies to have the right to occupy any strategic points in the event of any situation arising which threatens the security of the Allies.” Based on this article, when the allies who "saw their safety in danger" decided to expand their occupation zone, Maraş was also included in this area. Maraş was occupied first by the British and then by the French as per the agreement reached between the Allies. Upon the rumors of the invasion, the military units in Maraş were withdrawn in order not to cause any conflict and to save the soldiers and equipment. In the barracks, Lieutenant Cemal was left alone with a troop of soldiers. The city had a population of 50 thousand at that time. 14 thousand of them were Armenians.

Knowing the difficulty or even the impossibility of the Allies to settle directly in the Ottoman lands and establish a British or French domination there, they wanted to establish one of the small states as a Kurdish State in Southern Anatolia and another as an Armenian State in Cilicia, as they would later implement in all Ottoman lands. For this reason, when the British began to occupy Maraş under the command of Max Doryan on February 23, 1919, the Armenians came out and greeted them with their preparations that they had been carrying out for weeks. The band of the Transanta priests was playing marches, exhilarating hundreds of Armenian girls who were throwing their arms around the necks of the soldiers in the British unit, and Armenian boys were shouting slogans: "Long live the British, long live the French, down with the Sultan." And the city was occupied under the helpless gaze of the people of Maraş, who were in a terrible hatred, disappointment and anguish. There were American colleges and missionaries in the city. How they found the permission and courage to open schools and carry out de facto Christianization activities in the most remote cities of the Ottoman Empire is whole another issue. According to the numerous false reports that these American missionaries conveyed to the western press, "the Turks are in the plan to exile and gradually eliminate all Armenians in the Ottoman lands," and that's why the Christian forces came to protect their lives. Thus, with the occupation, Armenian militants began to pour into the city, not only from the Ottoman lands, but also from other countries. The first thing they did was to identify the Armenians who had converted to Islam for years and collect them. They were offering them to leave Islam and return, to become members of the Armenian state that would soon be established. Some agreed and some seemed to agree. Those who resisted were tortured. On the other hand, the British, who were determined to implement their insidious plans under a moderate appearance, were faltering when the Armenians wanted something to be done as soon as possible. All the Muslims in the city were under the molestation of the Armenians. The British commander, who could not stop the Armenians, who inappropriately confiscated the property of the people with one or two foreign witnesses, inevitably took their side and wanted to intimidate the Muslims.

Meanwhile, the local Armenians were slaughtering the Turks who were in conflict in one way or another. Almost all of these remained unanswered, the Turks tried not to be tricked and to find solutions to the events with complaints. However, these remained inconclusive. Those who complained and applied both to save their usurped property and to demand that the blood spilled be accounted for in the judicial authorities were also subjected to torture by the British and Armenians, or at least they were beaten horribly. In the meantime, the events were reflected against the British commander and it was reported that the Turks did not give peace to the Armenians. The tension was rising. The obvious injustices were actually intended as a provocation. Finally, as a requirement of this plan, the commander of the British occupation forces, Max Doryan, who later came to Maraş, called the notables of the city to the barracks with a memorandum and threatened them: “The persecution of the Armenians by both the Ottoman government and the people will be put to an end immediately. Otherwise, necessary measures will be taken.” Mufti Tekerekzâde Mehmet Tevfik, Dayızâde Mehmet Emin, the Orphanage Director Refet, Karakucukzâde Hacı Mehmet, Seyyidî Hanzâde Osman, Leblebicizâde Hafız Ali, Emir Abdülcelîzâde Şeyh Ali Sezaî masters, who listened to this ultimatum, objected that "Armenians have not been persecuted for eight centuries, and nothing is done now, but on the contrary, Armenians committed massacres and usurps and pressured Muslims to cause an incident," but they were not even listened to. While the events continued in this way, the allied states were holding new meetings and dividing the Ottoman lands generously among themselves. In accordance with a new agreement reached at this time, it was decided that Maraş and its environs would be left to the French, and the British would seize the Mosul region.

Hearing of this decision aroused a new wave of excitement. The Muslims, who could not be happy that they would get rid of the British scourge, were worried that they would be left alone with the French, who this time had set much more daring targets in the Armenian issue. But it wasn't just Maraş Muslims who were worried. In fact, the Armenians were covered with great fuss. Because before the departure of the French to Maraş, the withdrawal of the British was in question. In this case, all of the Armenians thought that they would not be left alive until the French came. For this reason, the Armenian notables immediately went to Adana and received assurances that the British would not leave the city before the French moved to Maraş. These telegrams sent by the people of Maraş, who knew how the French did atrocities in the places they went, to both the Sultan and the British Marshal Allenbi, were of course useless. On October 15, 1919, Armenian atrocities were expressed in a rally organized by Doctor Mustafa in the Grand Mosque. The events were told one by one. While all this was happening, the people of Maraş began to believe that something had to be done about a national resistance. There was no army, they had to fend for themselves. However, it was necessary not to make the enemy suspect prematurely. For this reason, the restraint was recommended to the public and it was announced that what was necessary should be done together. The demonstrations across the country were of no use, and the French gradually began to occupy the areas they had reserved for themselves. Kadıoğulları, Doctor Mustafa, Pharmacist Lütfi, Kocabaşoğlu Ömer, Emirmahmutoğlu Hasip and Sarıkâtipoğlu Mehmet, among the notables of Maraş, went to the surrounding cities and towns to procure weapons and ammunition, but they returned empty-handed. Meanwhile, the British were saying that they lost time to move to their new places as soon as possible, while the French were trying to reinforce their forces, which could not be enough to dominate the region, with the special Armenian legions they had just formed. Thus, the Armenian Regiments were established. Finally, when the French forces outnumbered the British, they took action. There were only a quarter of the French soldiers in the French troops. Some of the rest were Muslim soldiers brought from the French colony of Algeria, but mostly new Armenian troops. Thus, both the French plan and the fact that more than half of the French troops were made up of Armenians, in a sense, the threads were literally in the hands of Armenian ideals, and the idea of an Armenian state came to the fore more vigorously.

Towards the end of October, the Armenian committees threw their hats into the air with a telegram from Osmaniye: The French were on their way to Maraş on October 29, 1919. The Armenians, who prepared with extraordinary effort, started to sew hundreds of Armenian flags, the shape of which they had determined for a long time, and on that day, the crazy band of the Transanta priests, hundreds of low-cut Armenian girls and youth, poured into the plain under the city with their flags in their hands. Gazing into the eyes of their hundreds of years old bearers, the Ottoman Turks, under whose immense protection and tolerance they had lived with their religions, names, traditions and customs and costumes for centuries, they welcomed the French shouting: "Long live the French, long live the Armenians, down with the Sultan". While they were going to the barracks crossing all along the city with the French they met in the lower part of the city, they were shouting the following stanza without being ashamed to look at the faces of their Muslim neighbors, whom they had received only kindness for centuries: The moon rose the sun rose / This land became Armenia / The Frence ate the delight / The Muslims ate s.................. And the very next day, the first bullet of the events called the National Struggle, the purpose of which this article was written, was fired in Maraş: The incident would go down in history as the “Sütçü imam Incident”: The Armenians, who learned that reinforcements were coming to the French on Thursday, October 30th, went even too far. They began to shout that the "Maraş Cilician Armenian State" had been declared. They attacked left and right in complete drunkenness and insulted the Muslims they encountered. A group of Muslims applied to Governor Ata Bey and asked for an end to these outrages. The governor was in a confused state. Since he could not find anything to do, he tried to prevent the events from unfolding by arresting the applicant Muslims. This completely encouraged the Armenians. The 400 Armenian soldiers in the reinforcement unit completely encouraged the Armenians. The 400 Armenian soldiers, 100 French and 500 Algerian soldiers forming the reinforcement unit were met with great fury.

The Armenians went out to inspect the city with the occupation soldiers that very day. They were from the Armenian legion and convinced the French commander saying that, "You don't know Muslims, let's patrol alongside the soldiers, we know the city and the people."
While they were patrolling the city with the French soldiers, they tried to do things such as asking the Muslim soldier on duty in front of the government office about the brothel, slapping anyone they wanted, and finally molesting the Muslim women coming out of the Uzunoluk Bath. Here is the first bullet, which went down in history as the Sütçü İmam Incident, and was fired as follows: According to historical records, Armenians stopped women who wanted to leave the bath and go to their homes; they wanted to remove their veils and rape them, saying, "This is no longer the land Turks, you cannot wander around with veils in the French country." Muslims intervened in the events from a nearby coffeehouse. The Armenians, who were dressed in French uniforms, were given advice and told to go on their way, but they insisted, they did not leave the women, they hit those who intervened with butts, and when the conflict broke out, Çakmakçı Sait and Gaffar Osman were wounded with butts and bullets. The Karadağ brand, which the muezzin of the mosque, known as Sütçü İmam, who was watching the incidents, brought from his house, shot the Armenian who haunted the women with his gun, which made a big noise when it exploded. While the Armenians were taking the shot Armenian to the hospital, they again engaged in extreme outbursts, shooting from right and left that very day, wounding innocent people, and martyring Zülfikar Çavuşoğlu Hüseyin. The next day, the aggressor Armenian died. The French and Armenians, who decided to use this event immediately, started a general terror movement by keeping the body in the church for days with a squad of soldiers and ringing the church bells for three days. Their intention was to intimidate Muslims. The aggressor Armenian, who was supremely conscious of changing everything from the flag of the country to its name and putting it under the yoke of an established or to be established state, of course, a Christian state, was buried like a hero.

Using this incident as an excuse, the weapons in the hands of the people would begin to be collected (by the way, the British, who were greeted as saviors, left Maraş without a single Armenian saying goodbye); Tiyeklioğlu Kadir, the son of the uncle of the hiding Sütçü İmam, would be tortured to death by having his nose and ears cut off; Nasıroğlu Mehmet would be beheaded with a machete; a Muhajir would be martyred on the same night; while adhan was being read, the Armenians would come together and shout “Donkey brays” and perform demonstrations; they would swear at the religion of the Muslims they met, they would take them to the barracks and torture them; they would roam the streets shouting and drunk, that they would kill the Muslims and take their women; they would rob the weapons in the barracks by wearing Turkish clothes; they would injure those who realized the situation and kill Ökkeş, son of Mustafa; while the funeral ceremony of Hacı Mehmet, who died of sadness after the bride of the Karaküçüks, whom they killed with torture because she did not convert from Islam, was being held, they would exhibit another unbelievable example of offense by saying "He owed us a debt, we will not let you bury him before it is paid” and they would plan massacres by piling up huge amounts of weapons and ammunition in the city... But all of these would be destroyed by the same resistance, organization and armed struggle provided by the first bullet that took shape and shot from the Muslim spirit of Sütçü İmam; the French would have to flee the city on February 12, 1920, suffering heavy losses. Without even informing the Armenians who welcomed them as saviors... And taking many Muslims hostage with them in order to get back to their main troops safely... During the occupation that lasted for more than two years, at the end of the tensions that rose with the persecution and torture and the increasing arrogance and provocation of the Armenians, on January 21, 1920, the French wanted to give the people a final and definitive intimidation. The war, which lasted for 22 days and nights, and which the people of Maraş continued with their own will, determination, Islamic dynamism and without any basis other than Allah, had begun.