 Complete the following phrase:  Carlak was born in 1899. Depending on the sources, his hometown is reported as Baghdad or Samarra. His family was of Iraqi Turkmen descent, originally from Kirkuk, Iraq. In his early teens, he met Meral, the daughter of Sheikh Tahir, a Turkmen tribal leader, and got engaged to her. Just before the wedding, World War I broke out and Carlak had to leave her. His activity during the war is unknown, but at the end he was in India, where he lived for some time in the jungle. While in Iran, he found out accidentally that the family of his fiancée had moved nearby. While planning his wedding again, he read in a newspaper that in Turkey the struggle for independence had begun. Deciding to join the insurgents, both tried to reach Anatolia. As they passed through a steep-sided gorge, his fiancée slipped, fell down a cliff and was killed. Carlak then reached the insurgents, serving under Kâzım Karabekir in the eastern front of the Turkish War of Independence. Then Carlak fought in Antep and Kilis, and belonged to one of the formations that 