
George Chalmers was a British Army officer who was stationed in Ottoman Turkey during the post-World War I occupation of Constantinople. Chalmers developed a strong hatred of Turks from his mother, and, while stationed in Constantinople, he secretly harbored desires of restoring Constantinople to its Byzantine-era Christian society, eradicating Turkish culture in the city, and reducing the city's Turks to day laborers and servants while committing genocide against the rest. This personal obsession with Turkophobia led to Chalmers secretly plotting to have the Turkish nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Pasha assassinated at the Pera Palace Hotel in 1919, but he made an enemy of the socialite Peride Efendi and, later, her time-traveling twin sister Esra Köksüz after Esra discovered Peride’s body and assumed Chalmers had killed Peride after Esra taunted Chalmers and his officers by saying that Kemal would be a great general who would ensure that the British left Turkey the same way they came in.
Chalmers initially recruited the black marketeer Halit Vatansever to kill Kemal, but Halit was soon revealed to be a double agent for the Turkish National Movement, and Halit was arrested in April 1919 for attempting to steal a British arms stockpile to be sent to Turkish nationalists in Anatolia. After Halit's arrest, Chalmers recruited the Belarusian duchess-turned-maid Sonya to kill Esra (who was posing as Peride, as no one knew Peride had been killed), promising to restore her pre-Russian Revolution riches, and recruited lieutenant Reşat Bey to assassinate Kemal with a bomb aboard SS Bandirma on 16 May 1919. However, “Peride” persuaded Reşat to abandon Chalmers after providing him with evidence of Chalmers' genocidal plans against the Turks, and Reşat freed Halit, enabling Halit and “Peride” to save Kemal from the bombing. Turkish police proceeded to arrive at the hotel to arrest Chalmers, who was captured after a shootout.