World War I and the End of the Ottomans: From the Balkan Wars to the Armenian Genocide 9780755609093, 9781784532468

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

Illustrations Illustration I. “Muslims who have been sent back to their villages from Kavala are attacked by a gang of irregulars.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul: 1329).

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Illustration II. “The Ottoman soldiers who liberate Thrace from the enemy find a terrible massacre of Muslims.” In Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1329).

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Illustration III. “A scene in which Muslims are stabbed with bayonets and thrown into the Vardar river.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 122.

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Illustration IV. “Photograph of Muslim corpses lying on the ground.” In Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1329), p. 66 (the illustration also appeared in L’Illustration on 30 August 1913).

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Illustration V. “A Muslim youth is tied to a stake behind his back in Kavala.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 66. 92

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Illustrations VI and VII. Postcards from the personal collection ¨ . Alkan. of Mehmet O

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Illustration VIII. “Bulgarians rushing into a mosque with their boots still on, killing old people at prayer with their rifles and bayonets.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), illustration no. 16.

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Illustration IX. “Forced ceremony of conversion.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 79.

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Illustration X. “Muslim women are shown nailed to crosses because of their refusal to convert to Christianity.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 85.

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Illustration XI. “Three Muslim girls have been taken to a church for conversion to Christianity.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

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Illustration XII. “A child in the arms of her father or grandfather, probably wounded by the soldiers in Dedeag˘ac
. Behind them, three soldiers are chasing a Muslim away, while another takes a Muslim woman out of her house.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

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Illustration XIII. “A soldier is cutting off the breasts of a Muslim woman, who is surrounded by an assaulting crowd of irregulars and soldiers in Kavala” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 81.

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Illustration XIV. “Boulevard of Gallows.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

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Illustration XV. “A soldier is taking the unborn child out of a woman’s body with his bayonet.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 76.

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LIST

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Map Map. Plain of Harput/Kharpert with its Armenian towns and villages

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Table Table 7.1. Land Clauses in Reform Plans

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CONTRIBUTORS

Yig˘it Akın is Assistant Professor of History at Tulane University. His research interests include social and cultural history of the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey, with a particular focus on World War I, war and society, gender, nationalism, and social movements. He is the author of ‘Robust and Vigorous Children’: Physical Education and Sports in Early Republican Turkey (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2004). His research has been published in journals such as International Journal of Middle East Studies, International Review of Social History, and Journal of Women’s History. Currently, he is finishing a monograph titled Experiencing Ottomans’ Great War: Everyday Politics, Society, and Culture. It examines the social and cultural dimensions of Ottoman society’s catastrophic experience of World War I and analyzes the impact of the war on the empire’s civilian population. Yuval Ben-Bassat received his Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago (2007). Currently, he teaches Ottoman and Turkish history at the Department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa. His research focuses on petitions sent from Palestine to the Ottoman capital at the end of the nineteenth century, the rural population of Palestine at that time, the early Jewish-Arab conflict, and the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. He is the author of Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine (London: I.B.Tauris, 2013), and the co-editor, together with Eyal Ginio, of Rethinking Late Ottoman Palestine: The Young Turk Rule, 1908–1918 (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011).

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Hamit Bozarslan received his Ph.D. in History from the Ecole des Hautes E´tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 1992 and his Ph.D. in political sciences from the Institut d’E´tudes Politiques in Paris in 1994. He has taught at EHESS since 1999. His publications include Moyen-Orient 2011–2015: re´volutions et e´tat de violence (Paris: CNRS, 2015); Le luxe et la violence: domination et contestation chez Ibn Khalduˆn (Paris: CNRS, 2014); Histoire de la Turquie de l’empire a` nos jours (Paris: Tallandier, 2013); Sociologie politique du Moyen-Orient (Paris: La De´couverte, 2011); and Une histoire de la violence au Moyen-Orient. De la fin de l’empire ottoman a` Al-Qaı¨da / From Political Contest to Self-Sacrifice: Violence in the Middle East (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2004). Michelle U. Campos is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 2003. Her first book, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2011), was the recipient of the 2010 Yonatan Shapiro Award for Best Book in Israel Studies, awarded by the Association for Israel Studies, as well as the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture. Dr. Campos is currently writing a spatial history of intercommunal relations in Jerusalem in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Y. Dog˘an C¸etinkaya is Assistant Professor at Istanbul University (Faculty of Political Sciences). He is a member of the board of directors of Tarih Vakfı (History Foundation) and the Research Center for Labour and Society Studies (ReCLASS). He received his first M.A. in the Department of History at Bog˘azic
i University in 2002 and a second M.A. in the Department of History at Central European University (Budapest) in 2004. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2010 from Leiden University’s Institute of Area Studies/Middle Eastern Studies. Among his publications in English are The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014); “Atrocity Propaganda and the Nationalization of ‘the Masses’ in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913),” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46, 4, (November 2014); “Illustrated Atrocity: Stigmatization of Non-Muslims through Images in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars,” Journal of Modern European History 12, 4 (December 2014).

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Emre Erol is Lecturer at the School of Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University, where he has been teaching a variety of courses since 2009. He completed his Ph.D. at Leiden University and his M.A. and his undergraduate studies at Sabancı University. His doctoral dissertation is entitled ‘Capitalism, Migration, War and Nationalism in an Aegean Port Town: The Rise and Fall of a Belle E´poque in the Ottoman County of Foc
ateyn’. His research interests include the personal histories of the Young Turks, migration, nationalisms, port-towns and port-cities, and the effects of capitalism in the eastern Mediterranean. He has published articles on the history of forced migration in western Anatolia before the Great War. Recently, he has focused on the effects of the Unionists’ personal histories on their formulas of the concept of “nation-state.” Hans-Lukas Kieser is an historian specializing in the late Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey and focusing on interactions between the Middle East and the trans-Atlantic world. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Centre for the History of Violence of the University of Newcastle, New South Wales and a professor of Modern History at the University of Zurich. He is the author of Nearest East: American Millennialism and Mission to the Middle East (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); Tu¨rklu¨g˘e I˙htida (Conversion to Turkdom) (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2008); and Der verpasste Friede: Mission Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu¨rkei 1839 – 1938 (Squandered Peace: Mission, Ethnicity and the State in the Eastern Provinces of Turkey 1839 – 1938) (Zurich: Chronos, 2000; 4th ed. in Turkish, Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2013), and he is the editor of Turkey beyond Nationalism (London: I.B.Tauris, 2006). Kerem O¨ktem is Professor of Southeast Europe and Modern Turkey at the University of Graz, where he teaches at the Centre of Southeast European Studies. He is also an associate of the Centre of International Studies at the University of Oxford. Prior to his recent post, he was a Mercator-IPC Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center and research fellow at Oxford. His main interests lie in the connection between history, politics and foreign policy and in the role of nationalism and the politics of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in the shaping of modern Turkey. He completed his Ph.D. at the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 2006, with a thesis on nation building in Turkey as

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a socio-spatial project. Preceding his doctoral studies, he obtained a M.St. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the Faculty for Oriental Studies at Oxford in 2001, where he taught several courses until he moved to Graz. His latest books are Another Empire? A Decade of Turkey’s Foreign Policy under the Justice and Development Party, with A. Kadıog˘lu and M. Karlı (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2012), and Turkey since 1989: Angry Nation (London: Zed Books, 2011). Mehmet Polatel is a Ph.D. candidate in the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bog˘azic
i University, and research assistant in the History Department of Koc
University. After graduating from Middle East Technical University, he completed the M.A. program of Comparative Studies in History and Society in Koc
University. His academic interests include the land question, Armenian-Kurdish relations, and the genocide and dispossession of Armenians in the late Ottoman period. His primary works include Confiscation and Destruction: ¨ ngo¨r The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property, with Ug˘ur U¨. U (London: Continuum, 2011), and 2012 Declaration: The Seized Properties ¨ zgu¨r L. of Armenian Foundations in I˙stanbul, with Nora Mildanog˘lu, O Eren, and Mehmet Atılgan (Istanbul: Hrant Dink Foundation, 2012). Maurus Reinkowski is Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He has been teaching at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg im Breisgau. His field of specialization is the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. Among his recent major publications in English are Helpless Imperialists: Imperial Failure, Fear and Radicalization (2013), co-edited with Gregor Thum, (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), and Conspiracy Theories in the United States and the Middle East: A Comparative Approach (Tu¨bingen: University of Tu¨bingen, 2014), co-edited with Michael Butter, University of Tu¨bingen. Thomas Schmutz studied history, political science, and German literature at the University of Zurich and Universite´ Paris Diderot – Paris 7. He is interested in transnational history, global history, the history of violence, and the end of the Ottoman Empire. He recently wrote his master’s thesis on the subject of the Armenian reform question

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and German diplomacy in the years 1913– 14, which is summarized in his chapter for this volume. Vahe´ Tachjian was born in Lebanon. He earned his Ph.D. in History and Civilization at the E´cole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He is the chief editor of the houshamdyan Web site based in Berlin, a scientific project whose aim is to reconstruct the Ottoman Armenians’ local history and the memory of their lives. Among his main publications are La France en Cilicie et en Haute-Me´sopotamie. Aux confins de la Turquie, de la Syrie et de l’Irak (Paris, 2004); Les Arme´niens, 1917–1939. La queˆte d’un refuge (co-editor; Paris, 2007); Les arme´niens de Cilicie: habitat, me´moire et identite´ (co-editor; Beirut, 2012); and Ottoman Armenians: Life, Culture, Society, vol. 1 (editor; Berlin, 2014). ¨ mit U ¨ ngo¨r received his Ph.D. in 2009 at the University of Ug˘ur U Amsterdam. In 2008 –9, he was lecturer at the Department of History at the University of Sheffield, and in 2009– 10, postdoctoral research fellow at University College Dublin. Currently he is Associate Professor of History at Utrecht University and senior research fellow at the Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. His main area of interest is the historical sociology of mass political violence. His most recent publications include Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property, with Mehmet Polatel (Continuum, 2011) and The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913– 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). In 2013, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded him the Young Scientist Award for History.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like every book, this collective volume has a history of its own. In addition to intensive discussions between the three editors, it is the result of two important conferences held in Switzerland in 2013 and 2014. In October 2013, some 20 scholars participated in the conference The Ottoman Cataclysm: Its Beginnings at Basel University. The editors of the book would like to express their thanks to all colleagues who supported this event. Noureddine Wenger, research assistant at Basel’s Middle Eastern Studies, was a splendid person to work with. We are particularly grateful to the institutions that granted us crucial financial support: The Swiss National Science Foundation, Culturescapes, Stiftung Forschungsstelle Schweiz-Tu¨rkei, Nahoststudien Basel University, Osteuropa-Forum Basel, Inter-University Doctoral Cooperation in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Basel / Zu¨rich (MUBIT). In June 2014, we continued with a dedicated publication workshop in Zurich with the title The Ottoman Cataclysm. Interconnected geographies, mobilization and the road to total war (1913– 1915). We would like to express our thanks to the Department of History at the University of Zurich, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council and the University of Newcastle (NSW). Fabienne Meyer, Edith Darnay and Fatima Leine provided us with their excellent assistance. We would also like to thank the Centre of Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz for its support. Middle Eastern Studies at Basel University and the University of Newcastle, NSW, have financially supported the process of publishing the volume. Barbara Ha¨cki, Tamara Lang and Noureddine Wenger of Basel Middle Eastern Studies as well

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as Fabienne Meyer have spent many a summer day completing the book index. Finally, we are deeply thankful to Joanna Mullins, Philaldelphia (PA), for her meticulous work and her brilliant copy editing, including her many thoughtful comments regarding the argumentative structure of the book. ¨ ktem, Maurus Reinkowski, Hans-Lukas Kieser, Kerem O August 2015

INTRODUCTION WORLD WAR I AND THE END OF THE OTTOMANS: FROM THE BALKAN WARS TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE Hans-Lukas Kieser, Kerem O¨ktem and Maurus Reinkowski

This book is part of a larger intellectual effort to understand the buildup to World War I outside the classic European theatres of war. Besides the vast amount of literature that has been published during the last decades on how to interpret the causes, the course, and the consequences of World War I, we are now witnessing a plethora of conferences and books dedicated to the issue. World War I and the End of the Ottomans: From the Balkan Wars to the Armenian Genocide is a contribution to the endeavour to understand World War I in its global consequences, going beyond a narrow focus on Central Europe and expanding the perspective to include particularly the Ottoman Empire’s Anatolian and Balkan possessions, as well, in a more contrasting manner, Palestine. World War I and the End of the Ottomans is also part of a larger effort in a second and more compelling sense. It is not only a book focusing on the Ottoman world, written from the perspective of those dealing with the history of the Ottoman Empire. We are in fact making a more substantive claim: that the history of modern Turkey and of the Middle East (as far as it had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918) cannot be understood without examining the cataclysmic

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transformation that the region underwent in the years 1912– 22. Beginning with the Balkan wars in 1912– 13, continuing throughout World War I and the Armenian genocide, and finally reaching its climax with the Turkish War of Independence in 1922, this was a decade of intermittent warfare in the Ottoman world. This decade of violence and destruction fundamentally transformed the “Middle East”; or, to be more precise, and considering that the region came to be known under its name only from the 1920s,1 it is this decade that made the Middle East as we know it and that appears to be facing its unbecoming now. In fact, many of the episodes of ethnic cleansing, mass violence, and genocidal dynamics we examine in this book have returned to the region. The deserts of Syria and the mountains of Iraq are witnessing further episodes of warfare against the civilian population and instances of genocidal violence as we write these introductory lines. In order to disentangle these various dynamics, this volume extends the gaze beyond the imperial capital Istanbul, which still dominates mainstream historiography, and seeks to study three intertwined arenas of the Ottoman realm: Palestine, the mostly Kurdish–Armenian eastern provinces, and the western provinces consisting of the Aegean shores and the southern Balkans. In all three arenas, national movements questioned Ottoman viability and engaged in some form of territorial politics. All three have been theatres of conflict up to the present. The introduction, written jointly by the three editors of this book, opens up a large canvas in four sections. In section 1, “Violence, Viability and Culpability”, we sketch the general historical setting and discuss the rationale of this book. We attribute decisive importance to the cataclysmic decade of 1912–22 for understanding the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic up to the immediate present. The second section, “Imperial Entanglement: The Ottoman Empire as Subject and Object of New Imperialism”, describes the “hybrid” situation of the Ottoman Empire, an empire being subject and object, actor and recipient of colonial pretension and forms of rule. The Ottoman Empire tried to maintain its imperial competitiveness by emulating – and simulating – the strategies and strengths of European imperialism but by that very principle fought against being absorbed completely into the international system of a European imperial cum economic “world order.” Section 3, “The End of Ottomanity: Nationalisms, Quest for Territory, and Descent into Total War”, forms

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the core of the introduction, presenting the reader with the historical complexity and synchronicity of competing imperial, national, and even prenational claims and ventures at the eve of World War I. The fourth section, “Looking Back into the Future: Violence, Viability and Culpability in the Post-Ottoman Space Revisited”, brings us back to the first lines of this introduction, confronting us with the worrying presence of the past. It urges us to be aware of the political and social commitment that accrues from being an historian. In the final section, we present the individual contributions in this volume.

Violence, Viability, and Culpability In this volume we seek to elucidate the relationship between violence and viability2 in the context of the late Ottoman Empire. How did the empire’s decision makers deal with the loss of its European possessions in the First Balkan War: the lands that today form the nation-states of Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia, as well as parts of today’s Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece? How did members of the Ottoman elite react to this traumatic loss of territories that had been a central part of the empire since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? Which consequences were drawn from the mass expulsions and massacres committed by the emerging Christian nation-states against Balkan Muslim communities? One of the first and most consequential results was undoubtedly the coup d’e´tat of 23 January 1913 (Bab-i Ali baskını), which prepared the ground for unfettered Young Turk rule until 1918 and the triumvirate of the three Pashas: Cemal, Enver, and Talaat. Ottoman imperial governance had combined harsh rule in principle with leniency in the individual case. This long-established imperial routine, which had held the state intact despite strong centripetal forces, began to erode rapidly after 1912. By the time of the Armenian genocide, this tradition of governance had already ceased to exist, never to be resurrected again. To the Young Turks, modern and radical methods of rule and politics appeared necessary, both domestically and abroad. The struggle against superior imperialist forces could only be conducted in an aggressive war of survival. Much graver, however, were the consequences on the Ottoman home front. From 1913, violence exerted by the Ottoman state against its subjects reached unprecedented levels. A policy of demographic engineering set in that turned the

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multiethnic and multiconfessional Ottoman lands of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Thrace into what would then become the ethnically cleansed Turkish nation-state.3 Given the overwhelming importance of this fateful decade, it is paramount to clarify at which stage Young Turkish radicalization began to bear its full impact on the empire’s non-Muslim populations, and in particular on the Armenians. Yet there is even more to it. Debating World War I in its Ottoman and Middle Eastern context will unavoidably concentrate on the emerging Turkish nation-state as a central actor and as a key factor in historical analysis. First, Turkey is the only country among the successor states of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East that has successfully rejected a major post-World War I treaty, the Treaty of Se`vres in 1920, and that has reached a rather favourable arrangement with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which guaranteed Turkey the status of a fully sovereign country. Second, Turkey is the only country among the Ottoman successor states that is the legal successor to the empire and sees itself – at least since the second half of the twentieth century and even more so since the beginning of the twenty-first – as the rightful heir of the Ottoman heritage. Third and most important, the decade from 1912 to 1922 has been decisive in that it has a lasting impact on the political culture of Turkey even today. Revisiting the 1910s and early 1920s is an exercise far from historians’ obsession with a certain time period. The very core of Turkish national identity, its content and limits, its form and ideology, and its political culture and modes of mobilization are intrinsically bound to these years. For decades, the German debate on World War I has been dominated by the Kriegsschuldfrage, that is, the question of which countries were responsible for the unstoppable escalation of the July crisis in 1914 into a pan-European and, eventually, a global war.4 The Ottoman-Turkish equivalent to the Kriegsschuldfrage is undoubtedly the question of the Armenian genocide. In principle, the task of Turkish historiography is the same as in other comparable cases: to explain the transformation from empire to nation-state and to ascertain to what extent the policies of the nation-state were anticipated in the policy of the late empire. Yet the question about culpability is one that has only just begun to be dealt with in the context of Ottoman and Turkish historiography and remains a taboo for large parts of the Turkish public and political elite.

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Why has it been such a daunting task to take responsibility for the Armenian genocide in Turkey? Fear of restitution or compensation claims by Armenian diaspora organizations and individuals cannot be reason enough. Turkey has become wealthy enough to respond positively to such requests. Fears that Turkish “national honour” may be befouled are no explanation either, as this is standard nationalist rhetoric that is representative only of itself, not of any deeper collective sentiment. We are of the firm opinion, strengthened by the contributions in this volume, that the single most important reason for this inability to accept culpability is the centrality of the Armenian massacres for the formation of the Turkish nation-state. The deeper collective psychology within which this sentiment rests assumes that any move toward acknowledging culpability will put the very foundations of the Turkish nationstate at risk and will lead to its steady demise. This collective psychology also explains deep-seated fears of Kurdish autonomy and a very peculiar perspective on the Middle East, shaped by anti-imperialist fervour, orientalist transfiguration, and delusions of regional leadership, particularly among the current ruling elites. As central as the question of the Armenian genocide is, it should not obstruct our view onto the larger constellations of the erosion of Ottoman rule in a much larger geography. The empire’s demise and the destruction of its complex ethnic, religious, and social fabric in the 1910s is not only a defining event in the history of the Middle East and Europe and hence also constitutive of the global order. It was also a period of massive and lasting destruction of people and the built environment, nature, and cultural landscapes and an era of human suffering in all its sad variations. Only as the colonial settlements of the post-World War I consensus are breaking apart are we reminded of the cataclysmic nature of those years. These were years squandered in terms of peace, yet they witnessed the emergence of a fiercely contested new state in the Ottoman heartlands that would eventually become the Republic of Turkey. We employ the term cataclysm to highlight both the destruction and the new beginnings that mark this period. The Ottoman cataclysm opened the door for revolutionary changes and war. It squandered possible chances for a peaceful evolution in a reduced imperial geography and in line with late Ottoman reforms. It cut the Gordian knot of the international Eastern Question as well as of what leading Young Turks finally considered incurable infirmities of the

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empire. The Ottoman cataclysm is a decade of catastrophic change with fundamental consequences.5 The roots of Turkey’s unresolved conflicts, the decisive moment in the European colonization of the Middle East, the foundations of a Zionist state in Palestine, the fragility of the succeeding states, and, finally, the lingering ethnic conflicts in the Balkans can all be traced back to the decade between 1912 and the completion of the post-World War I order, which is now being reconsidered amid a set of new cataclysmic episodes.

Imperial Entanglement: The Ottoman Empire as Subject and Object of New Imperialism Imperial states attained unprecedented levels of power in the nineteenth century. The emergence of modern weaponry, such as the machine gun and barbed wire, and the construction of new communication and transport infrastructures, such as the telegraph and railway lines, created conditions for rapid action and efficiency. This revolution of the infrastructure of war left the modern European imperial states without serious competitors in their own imperial domains. For the first time in history, empires and their leaders thought of themselves as possessing unlimited strength and power. In principle, the cadres of the Ottoman Empire were part of this seminal change. Following the example of “imperial nation-states” such as Great Britain and France, the Ottoman Empire developed its own ambitions of becoming an imperial – and, up to a point, also an imperialist – nation. The traditional Ottoman “repertoires of power”6 were hence enriched by new imperialist role models and by European notions such as the mission and the task to civilize the subject peoples.7 Even if emulated, an Ottoman mission civilisatrice extended from the imperial classroom to the cities as stages of progress: New state institutions, schools, banks, universities, barracks, train stations, and administrative buildings emerged in a self-confident neoimperial architectural style.8 Turkish became increasingly important as language of the state and as lingua franca, complementing the classic merchant languages of Italian, Armenian, and Ladino. The Ottoman Empire can be clearly distinguished from imperial nation-states such as France and Great Britain. From the nineteenth century on, the empire was caught between defending its status as imperial power and warding off encroaching European imperialism.

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It suffered enormous territorial losses in the 1870s and 1880s, with an even more disastrous contraction in the First Balkan War from 1912 to 1913. Following the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 1860s, more than 1 million Caucasian Muslims fled the region, most of them (around 800,000) for the Ottoman Empire. After its failed Russian campaign in 1877– 88, the Ottoman Empire had to relinquish an area of approximately 200,000 square kilometres to the Russian Empire, including 5.5 million people, most of whom were Armenian and Georgian Christians in the regions of Batum and Kars.9 Hundreds of thousands of Muslims from the lost territories in the Caucasus as well as the Balkans fled to the Ottoman core lands of Anatolia in the late 1870s. This massive loss of territory and shift of populations reversed the balance of Christian-Muslim relations in the empire. The Muslim subjects of the sultan had become the overwhelming majority, even before the almost complete loss of the empire’s European territories in the First Balkan War. Much like Russia, the Ottoman Empire was a product of the premodern10 period and was similarly confronted with the challenges of “new imperialism” in the nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire could not really implement a turn to new imperialism, with systematic territorial expansion as a key ingredient. It was simply too weak, militarily and economically, for such an endeavour. The Ottomans nevertheless developed new concepts of imperial self-representation in the nineteenth century different from the imperial routine of the preceding centuries. While they were trying to keep up with European imperial nations and their modern forms of power projection, they were also increasingly thinking of themselves as an “anti-colonial empire”. The United States therefore exerted some fascination after first diplomatic relations started in the 1830s. A few decades later, however, American political and missionary ideals were considered by both Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II and the Young Turks in power to be a dangerous challenge to the foundations of the Ottoman Empire. Finally, the radicalization of European imperialism played a major role in radicalizing conceptions of warfare among Ottoman political elites. European imperialists developed new forms and mentalities of violence in their colonies beyond Europe. In the context of the Ottoman Empire, escalating violence was not experienced in faraway peripheries such as Yemen but in the imperial core regions, in particular during the

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secession wars of the Balkan states, beginning with the Serbian uprising in the 1810s and ending with the Balkan wars in 1912– 13. The authors and editors of this volume concur that the violent emergence of Christian nation-states in southeast Europe in the nineteenth century not only was traumatic for the Ottoman-Turkish elite of the early twentieth century but also came to be seen as an example of how a modern nation-state has to be established.11 It is widely accepted by now that it was this unfortunate “learning process” that shaped the Ottoman perspective on the Armenians and the equally European-influenced nation-building projects of Ottoman political elites.12 What is truly remarkable with the new imperialism of the nineteenth century, both in Europe’s powerful imperial states and in the ailing Ottoman Empire, is the gap between the potential that nineteenth-century social and technological innovations made available to imperial rulers and the limited spaces in which the new means were actually deployed. The empires that seem, over the course of world history, to have the most resources with which to dominate their subject populations were among the shortest lived.13 What the European and Ottoman imperial(ist) ventures had in common was a fear of total failure based on the awareness that the resources to project power would never be sufficient to defend the imperial frontiers in moments of crisis. Around 1900, German society was deeply militarized, but the gap between the country’s ambitious imperialist goals, on the one hand, and the lack of experience in exercising (military) power in the colonies, on the other, was remarkable.14 Delusions of German grandeur and doubts whether enemies and competitors took the young empire seriously made “the fear of appearing weak become the fear of being weak”.15 From this sense of insecurity and fear of ridicule, it was only a small step to overcompensation and an excessively brutal suppression of rebellions. The genocide of the Herero and the crushing of the Maji Maji uprisings in German southwest and east Africa between 1904 and 1907 illustrate this rapid progression from weakness to genocidal violence in the colonial context. The ambivalent venture of insisting on imperial prerogatives and simultaneously dealing with the reality of a semicolonized state was, no

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doubt, a heavy psychological burden on the members of the late Ottoman elite. Ottoman bureaucrats and officers confronted with the empire’s apparently unstoppable terminal decline may have become prone to a deep frustration of their imperial imaginations. The ever-widening chasm between reality and imperial pretensions must have caused an unbearable psychological stress for many an imperial officer. Yet psychology is only one of many explanatory categories, and we have already discussed many. What we can say with near certainty is that the Ottoman Empire’s convoluted imperial entanglement with the major European powers led to a notion of “anti-Western Westernism” or “Westernism despite the West”. This is typical of many societies that have been exposed to European and Western expansionism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But “Westernism despite the West” was also at the root of the genocidal destruction of the empire’s Armenians, as well as of later episodes of ethnic cleansing and the “unmixing of people”.

The End of Ottomanity: Nationalisms, Quest for Territory, and Descent into Total War This volume’s title, World War I and the End of the Ottomans: From the Balkan Wars to the Armenian Genocide, may puzzle the reader. After all, the sultanate was abolished only in 1922, and the Republic of Turkey was declared one year later, when the Ottoman Empire legally ceased to exist. So why end the coverage of this book with the Armenian genocide of 1915? The editors of this volume, as well as its authors, consider the destruction of the Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as a definitive break with the idea of a common and civic Ottoman future. In this respect, 1915 is a point of no return, prepared and executed by the modernizing cadres of the Young Turks, namely, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, or I˙ttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti), once their political alliance with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF; in Armenian, Dashnaksutyun) had broken down. This is particularly stunning since it was the Committee and the Dashnaksutyun who had brought about the 1908 revolution together in favour of a common Ottoman constitutional state.16 The year 1915 hence was the end of Ottomanity, that is, the notion of an inclusive Ottoman identity (Osmanlılık) and the viability of a multicultural, multireligious, and multiethnic modern polity based on relations of mutual obligations

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between communities and between the sultan and his subjects. It was the definitive end of Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık) as the legitimating ideology of the state and the conception of suprareligious patriotism and loyalty toward a common state, constitution, and country. Ottomanism as state ideology and Ottomanity as a notion of shared belonging became most salient after the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908. The Young Turks organized in the Committee of Union and Progress reinstalled the Ottoman constitution and parliament, which had both been suspended by Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II in 1878. The Ottoman idea, however, was soon challenged by domestic and international developments to which the relatively fragile central state could not effectively respond. All cabinets of the constitutional regime, which began in 1908, were short lived. The parliament failed to turn into a platform of peaceful conflict resolution and balance of interest. Strikes and boycotts were frequent, particularly in the larger urban centres, while public life was often excitable and polarized. Many of the political, economic, and cultural dividing lines coincided with the boundaries of religious communities. Fuelling this polarization was a sensationalist and partisan press (cf. Chapter 3 by Dog˘an C¸etinkaya). In the parliament, members of the Committee of Union and Progress not only constituted the majority but also managed to manipulate politics through behind-the-scenes interventions. Tensions between the CUP, their political adversaries, and conservative Muslims existed from the very first months of the constitutional regime. These erupted in the countercoup of April 1909, in which thousands of soldiers and religious students filled the streets. They demanded Islamic law (sharia) and the restoration of Muslim political privileges. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II and the liberal opposition seemed to profit from the situation without having initiated the coup. Because politics failed to find a solution, a CUP-organized Action Army from Salonika crushed the insurgents and thereby gave a lasting paradigm for military intervention in politics. The Ottoman capital remained in a permanent state of emergency that curtailed the freedom of press.17 The CUP managed to win the 1912 elections thanks to a climate of intimidation but lost power for a short while following a coup in July 1912. The loss of most of Macedonia in the First Balkan War (1912– 13) was a crucial turning point that set into motion processes of

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radicalization and nationalist mobilization among both CUP members and the larger Turkish Muslim public. It triggered yet another coup by the CUP in January 1913 and, in the same year, a party dictatorship that would last until 1918. The Balkan wars also led to waves of uprooted Muslim refugees from the Balkan provinces to the imperial capital and beyond. The Muslim refugees (muhacir) came as a reminder to the Turkish-speaking Muslims of Istanbul that the war was not a distant phenomenon anymore but had come to their doorsteps. Their very livelihood might be in danger. This realization played a major role in the emergence of policies for the comprehensive ethnic cleansing of Anatolia, which would finally lead to the ethnically and religiously cleansed and, at least superficially, Turkish and Muslim territory that would become the Republic of Turkey. By 1913, CUP cadres were endorsing Turkish nationalism openly, if not exclusively. This particular brand of nationalism amalgamated Turkism and Pan Turkism as it was advocated by the Turkish Hearth and Turkish Home associations since their foundation in 1911. In favour of new ethno-Turkish belongings as well as stronger ties with anti-Armenian urban notables and Kurdish tribal chiefs in the eastern provinces, the CUP leadership terminated its cooperation with Dashnaksutyun, its partner in the 1908 revolution and ally in the elections up to 1912. More precisely, anti-Armenian actors, in particular in Diyarbekir, including the chief ideologue Ziya Go¨kalp, contributed to forming an anti-Armenian stance in the CUP.18 Dashnaksutyun, on its part, had quit the alliance in summer 1912. As a result, Ottoman Armenians risked isolation in the power plays of the imperial centre and therefore turned their hopes toward European diplomacy and its promise to advance the Armenian reform question in late 1912 (cf. Chapter 8 by Thomas Schmutz). This, in turn, the CUP resented as a betrayal of common ideals by the Armenians during the fatal First Balkan War. The “Armenian Question” was in fact one of the burning issues before the eruption of World War I. It entailed efforts for comprehensive reform in the eastern provinces, including the restitution by local feudal lords of private land and properties belonging to Armenian and other peasants – in other words the “Agrarian Question”. The Berlin Treaty of 1878 had already stipulated measures addressing the volatile security situation of Armenians in the east, yet reform efforts had not materialized since then (cf. Chapter 7 by Mehmet Polatel). In addition to

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the Armenian Question, the Balkans and the “Macedonian Question” were at the forefront of Ottoman concerns over the empire’s immediate future, while Palestine and Zionist immigration and purchase of land was considered less of a challenge. Yet several dynamics eventually led to an articulation of these conflicts. Particularly, the Macedonian and the Armenian questions became intertwined in multifarious ways. The Balkan wars deepened Muslim–Christian antagonism through the manifestations of ethnic cleansing and violence but also due to war propaganda. Intercommunity resentment and ethno-religious hatred soon spilled over into western Anatolia, home to about 2 million Ruˆm, that is, Ottoman Greek Orthodox Christians. Around 200,000 were expelled in June 1914 from the Aegean coast. This was the CUP’s first step toward the methods of demographic engineering. In response to the uprooting of Muslim communities by Christian states in the First Balkan War, Turkists had sworn to turn Anatolia into a Turkish home (Tu¨rk Yurdu),19 a safe haven and an economic base for the future of “Turks” (i.e., Muslims who were, at best, Turkish speaking) that could be defended against aggressive neighbours and European imperial advances. In the Kurdish- and Armenian-populated Six Provinces (Vilayat-i Sitte), the balance of economic and political power between Armenians and Kurds had been upset for a while. Due to centralization efforts of the state, autonomous Kurdish principalities had been abrogated by the mid-nineteenth century, while many Armenian Christians had benefited from the changing economic structures and the empire’s integration into the world market. A growing Armenian local bourgeoisie hence faced a disempowered Kurdish landlord class, as well as tribal groups and destitute villagers. The promulgation of the Land Code of 1858, which allowed for the individual purchase of land, created an avenue for compensating for this loss of Kurdish political power: Kurdish strongmen as well as urban notables were now able to purchase – or in many cases, forcibly appropriate – lands that had been cultivated by Armenian and Kurdish peasants for centuries. Thus emerged the Agrarian Question that constituted the core grievance for many Armenians: their dispossession by Kurdish overlords and urban notables. Due to the strength of loyalty towards the Caliphate, Kurdish nationalism was a latecomer. There were beginnings with Sheik Ubeydullah’s uprising after the Berlin Congress of 1878 and with Abdu¨rrezak Bedirhan’s post-1908 movement that aspired to the liberation

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of Kurdistan with Russian help and established a committee called I˙rs¸ad.20 Yet a broad Kurdish national movement whose leaders questioned their Ottoman belonging and laid claims for territory in a collective sense emerged only at the eve of World War I. Kurdish mobilization both before and after World War I was also driven by the wish to reach an amnesty and to retain appropriated lands and properties. This and the fear of reforms and foreign influence explain why many Kurdish tribes were caught up in anti-Christian policies orchestrated by the government after 1913. A decisive step toward a peaceful resolution of the Agrarian Question, which had pitted the CUP government against the ARF, was achieved, if only on paper, in the Reform Agreement of February 1914 (cf. Chapter 8 by Thomas Schmutz). It was a solid document that would have provided for equal Armenian participation in the regional administration and empowered Armenian communities all over the east. Such amelioration of the status of Armenians, however, would have also deepened the social cleavages between comparatively flourishing Christian communities, particularly in the cities, and poor Muslim communities in the eastern provinces. Unlike the Kurdish movement, whose political imagination was not yet focused on a clearly demarcated territory but rather on achieving new arrangements within the imperial order, Zionist agents and settlers acted as part of a movement whose ultimate goal was the creation of a Jewish homeland, or Eretz Israel. Even though they were part of a territorial project, Zionists sought to benefit from the protection provided by Ottoman constitutionalism. For the Armenians in the Six Provinces, such protection was an existential issue, as Kurdish encroachment on their livelihoods was proceeding rapidly. Most Armenians and Zionists chose to act within the Ottoman framework until 1915. The latter, however, enjoyed realistic post-Ottoman perspectives once this framework broke down. In waves of Ottomanization first motivated by constitutional Ottoman perspectives, then by the need to avoid expulsion, thousands of Jews applied for Ottoman citizenship up to 1915.21 The Palestinian Arab journal Filastin, however, had good reasons to ask, in December 1912, if Palestine would become “a second Macedonia”, because Zionists “buy village after village” and “eat the body of the homeland”. According to a petition of Palestinian peasants, the settlers “created a little government of their own inside the country” (cf. Chapter 5 by Michelle Campos and Chapter 6 by Yuval Ben-Bassat).

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In many ways, Ottoman Palestine is a contrasting and complementary case in this volume, albeit an important one. The cataclysmic force that destroyed the Ottoman world fully arrived in Palestine only after yet another cataclysm. Only with the Holocaust of European Jewry did the Zionist nation-building project gain sufficient international recognition to establish a state. Only then did it begin to unfold aspects of a machinery of nation building connected to hard power and well known from the Turkish case: ethnic cleansing and the destruction of cultural geography, with the aim to create national homogeneity.22 No Jewish organization wielded direct influence over or was represented among the men of power in the imperial capital after 1908. In contrast, Armenian CUP members, the Dashnaksutyun, and other Armenian representatives tied their destiny and that of their members almost entirely to the constitutional Ottoman perspective reestablished by the 1908 revolution. Macedonia and Anatolia were part of what were considered the political and economic core lands of the empire and therefore Turkish homeland (Tu¨rk Yurdu), not Palestine. In addition, Palestine was already wide open to European influence and hence beyond redemption from an Ottoman perspective. This was not the case in central and eastern Anatolia. Once Macedonia, and with it Salonika – the historical headquarters of the Committee of Union and Progress and birthplace of many of its leaders – was lost to Greece in December 1912, Anatolia emerged as the only contiguous territory that could be defended. Within this Turkish homeland, the CUP believed, non-Arab Muslims could easily be united around the project of Turkish nationalism. Living in the centre, not the periphery, of the imperial geography, Armenians were at risk. Their risk increased dramatically after the start of World War I, when pan-Turkism loomed large in the CUP. Pan-Turkism gained momentum after a secret treaty was concluded with Germany on 2 August 1914, and the German ambassador accepted an additional proposal on 6 August. This proposal suggested a future correction of Turkey’s eastern border “which shall place Turkey into direct contact with the Moslems of Russia” (cf. Chapter 1 by Hans-Lukas Kieser). Henceforth the CUP pursued an openly irredentist agenda for the “Turks” (Muslims) of Russia, particularly the Caucasus. At the same time, an unprecedented large-scale mobilization and military requisition hit Ottoman economic and political life in the whole country (cf. Chapter 2 by Yig˘it Akın). The

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declaration of Jihad on 14 November 1914, further exacerbated the tension, particularly in the eastern provinces. The pan-Turkist agenda stood in stark contrast to the Reform Agreement, so it was no surprise that it was suspended in August and abolished by the end of 1914. Its suspension dangerously exposed the Armenians as well as all other Christians in the eastern provinces and created the conditions for genocidal escalation. Only a few, though decisive, steps were sufficient: Ottoman campaigns in the Russian Caucasus and northern Persia failed catastrophically and subsequently brutalized soldiers as well as militias on the eastern front. The allied attack against the capital in March 1915 shifted Muslim public opinion even more against the allies and all groups who were considered their beneficiaries. Propaganda disseminated by the Ministry of the Interior in April insinuated that Armenians were engaging in acts of treason and were planning a general revolt that would threaten the survival of Muslims in Anatolia. Finally, a comprehensive scheme for the removal of the Armenian communities of Anatolia to Syria began in May 1915. A large proportion of this population would never reach their final destination in the deserts of Syria, and the destination was deadly in its own right. Massacres at the start and during the removal, and finally, of survivors in the desert in 1916, mark the extremity of the episodes of (anti-Armenian) violence. Another crucial factor contributed to this general dynamic of radicalization in the Ottoman heartlands: Europe descended into total war. More than a million soldiers were killed in the first months of the war. From spring 1915, poison gas was introduced on the battlefields. Submarines began to target passenger ships of neutral powers, thereby extending the war to the civilian population. Yet, in contrast to Europe, total war in the Ottoman Empire was comprehensively fought against exterior enemies as well as groups marked as interior enemies, among them first of all the Armenians.

Looking Back into the Future: Violence, Viability, and Culpability in the Post-Ottoman Space Revisited This volume deals with the history of the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It seeks to understand the viability of the notion of Ottoman sociability, which allowed for its many constituent communities to live

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together well into the beginnings of the twentieth century, and the conditions of its violent destruction. This collection hence deals with history and its de- and reconstruction by historians of the Ottoman Empire. Despite this decidedly historical angle, however, the questions we encounter are relevant for us today, and a consideration of their meaning for the political challenges of our time is most appropriate. This is all the more the case since even a perfunctory glance at the political universe of the Middle East and the Balkans, Anatolia, and Palestine in 2014 reveals frightening parallels to the early twentieth century. Mass violence, often with genocidal intent, has reemerged in this space since the 1980s. From the Kurdish war in Turkey, the genocidal Anfal campaign against Kurds in Iraq, and the anti-Muslim massacres in Bosnia to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, the series of wars of destruction against the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel, and the genocidal attacks of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against Kurds, Shi’a, Christians, and Yezidis, the post-Ottoman space has come to be haunted by violence and destruction. The post-World War I arrangements, whether in the form of independent states in the Balkans and Turkey or as mandate governments in the Middle East, only barely suppressed the violence on which they were built, but all of them failed to face this history. All successor states of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and Turkey were shaped in the image of romantic or racist notions of often superficial and deeply exclusivist national projects. Some of them have partially opened up in the meantime. The Zionist project of Israel has hardened into what even prudent observers call an apartheid regime, using systematic discrimination and military power against civilian populations under its administration. As in the period under study, politics in the region today are conducted in the context of relatively weak local governments and state structures that are often used by actors of greater imperial projects – only now the main actors are not France and Great Britain but the United States, the European Union (even though France and Great Britain remain at the hem of interventions in the region), and a largely ineffective United Nations. Instead of European dominance and resentful Young Turk reaction, today aspects of neoimperialism work hand in hand with neoliberal arrangements of dispossession for many and enrichment for some, to which radical, often Islamist organizations react. Yet the current dynamics seem to show some surprising parallels with the late nineteenth and early

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twentieth centuries. Today’s new forms of postmodern warfare – unmanned drones, supposedly surgical air strikes, and ruthless antiterrorism operations – facilitate the emergence of Islamist terrorists from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. We are far from suggesting that history is repeating itself. This is certainly not the case. Yet we also have to emphasize that the core constellation of basic questions, Western intervention, and local radicalization in the Middle East today is more than just reminiscent of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What is more, these resemblances are a reminder that the demise of the Ottoman Empire, with its European-mandated eastern neighbours and the slightly better-off Balkan states, is still unfinished business. Macedonia, Kosovo, and BosniaHerzegovina cannot be seen as sustainable states with consolidated borders. In the east, the situation is even more daunting: Whether we will be speaking of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel in ten years from now or whether completely revised territorial and political arrangements will be in place is, at this point in time, impossible to say. And even though Turkey has made some strides toward Kurdish autonomy and group rights, Turkey’s territorial integrity continues to face growing challenges. The big theme of “violence and viability” remains a major challenge for this entire region: how to find progressive forms of political arrangements and civil consensus that safeguard coexistence, sociability, and viability of difference in a given territory under conditions of a structurally unjust world order. To insist on an analysis of complex causalities – to emphasize the circumstances whereby the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress were radicalized to the point of exterminating hundreds of thousands Armenians, to examine the uprooting of Balkan and Caucasian Muslims by Christian nation-states and empires, or to emphasize global power arrangements – should by no means be misunderstood as an apology for the late Ottoman and early Turkish nation builders. Neither should it pave the wave for a “denial light” or “neodenialism” as it crystallizes in current efforts of the Turkish government to win over world opinion and Armenian diasporas without accepting Turkish culpability.23 Works such as those of Justin McCarthy, which show an indefensible bias toward the Turkish official position, are also to be rejected.24 Fortunately, the postdenialist scholarly output on this era is growing fast.25

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The relationship between scholarship and the course of history is complex. Overall, however, academics have very little impact on real world events. And still, both the editors and the authors of this volume believe that a thorough study of the chain of events that led to the demise of the Ottoman Empire and its underpinning notions of sociability provides important insights for the understanding of the current crises and conflicts in the larger post-Ottoman space.

The Chapters of this Volume The volume follows a chronological trajectory in principle, as the experience of the Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 is seen as the major catalyst to the CUP’s radicalization and brutalization of policy beginning in 1914. A clear timeline is thus important to the argument of this volume. At the same time, this volume focuses on three separate but intertwined areas of the Ottoman realm: the western provinces on the Aegean shores and the southern Balkans; Palestine; and the mostly Kurdish-Armenian-populated eastern provinces. Yet we have decided not to discuss the Balkan wars themselves in detail. The events of the wars and their enormous importance for the destabilization of the European security system have been dealt with in many other publications.26 The editors are also aware of the myopia of historians of the Ottoman Empire who lose their interest in southeastern Europe with the end of the Balkan wars, thus reproducing the imperial Ottoman stance and Turkish national collective memory. Yet we are convinced that the topic dealt with in this volume is important enough in itself to justify the focus on the three arenas of the late Ottoman world. The first part addresses the repercussions of the Balkan wars on the Ottoman political elite and the effects of that experience on various fields of a steadily self-militarizing society. The second part of the volume turns to Palestine, considered more as a contrasting case, since the CUP cadres considered Palestine, Zionist emigration, and the purchase of Arab land as much less of a challenge than the Greek Orthodox and Armenian presence in Anatolia. Nevertheless, many key ingredients of the “Palestinian Question” had crystallized well before the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and before the fear arose that Palestine, too, might become a Macedonia, a territory to be lost to a rival nationalism. Part 3 finally turns to eastern Anatolia with its large Armenian population and

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the CUP’s “implementation policies” concerning military mobilization, ethnic cleansing, and the complete denial of the previous experience of Ottomanity, avowedly in order to avoid a second Macedonia. Hans-Lukas Kieser’s introductory piece, “The Ottoman Road to Total War (1913–15)”, to which Mustafa Aksakal has contributed a good deal, gives an historical overview contextualizing the following specialized case studies. It argues that, in contrast to Europe, total war in the Ottoman Empire was comprehensively fought both against exterior enemies and against stigmatized groups at home. The Young Turks at the reins of power wanted to save the imperial state, to restore its sovereignty, and to reverse painful setbacks inflicted on the empire since the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 and the First Balkan War in 1912–13. They saw World War I as an opportunity to do so, thanks to the alliance with Germany. In reality, their “war at home” destroyed the last substantial Ottoman bonds and thus the base of the empire. Ottoman identity and viability therefore ended for good in the first year of World War I. The imperative of preserving Anatolia as a sovereign and safe Turkish and Muslim haven (Tu¨rk Yurdu) served as a compass for the Young Turks and their Kemalist heirs through all turbulences, including total war, genocide, imperial chimeras, and a widespread corruption largely linked to Armenian loot. Without pan-Islamist and pan-Turkist chimeras and the campaigns they motivated, a Tu¨rk Yurdu ideal alone would not have led to genocide. It could have been compatible with a modern constitutional state and have had the chance to deal peacefully with reform, territorial losses, the muhacir (Muslim refugee) problem, and the end of empire. If it therefore lost the empire, it could at least have saved constitutional Ottomanity in Anatolia and attained the crucial goal of an independent, sovereign, and internationally secure state.

Part One: Toward War In contrast to Europe, total war in the Ottoman Empire was radically fought both against exterior enemies and against stigmatized groups at home, Hans-Lukas Kieser states in his chapter on “The Ottoman Road to Total War (1913– 15)”. This chapter examines the extent to which Ottoman total war differed from contemporary total war in the European war arena. The Young Turks at the reins of power wanted to save the imperial state, to restore its sovereignty, and to reverse painful setbacks

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inflicted to the empire since the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 and the First Balkan War in 1912– 13. They saw World War I as an opportunity to do so, thanks to the alliance with Germany. In reality, their “war at home” – the distinctive feature of Ottoman total war – destroyed the last vestiges of Ottomanity and thus the base of the empire. Ottoman identity and viability therefore ended for good in the first year of World War I. As Yig˘it Akın shows in his chapter “Seferberlik: Building up the Ottoman Home Front”, the swift and humiliating defeat in the First Balkan War was the decisive moment that drew the CUP elite to mobilize all available resources for war purposes. The Law of Military Obligation of May 1914 proved to be a product of the CUP’s wartime experiences, anxieties, and prejudices. The Ottoman Empire’s involvement in World War I required the most comprehensive mobilization of men and resources in the history of the empire. Despite huge problems of logistics, the CUP government succeeded in mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans into the armed forces on short notice. Conscription, however, disrupted social relations throughout the empire, ruined local economies, and imposed enormous physical and psychological burdens on ordinary people on the home front. It dramatically altered the circumstances on the ground and constituted a key turning point of the cataclysmic events, which eventually brought about the demise of the Ottoman social, ethnic, and religious fabric.

Part Two: Demise of Ottomanity in the Balkans and Western Anatolia Dog˘an C¸etinkaya’s contribution “‘Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!’ ‘Awakening a Nation’ through Propaganda in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars (1912–13)” opens the second part of the volume. The ultimate defeat and humiliation that the Ottoman Turks faced in the Balkan wars radicalized the political elite’s nationalist project. They paved the way for brutal clashes between different religious communities, whose already heightened tensions worsened after the wars. Atrocity propaganda, carried forward by civil organizations and official state institutions, contributed greatly to the stigmatization and demonization of non-Muslim populations. Illustrations and images enhanced the impact of atrocity reports. The call for revenge and vengeance was a continuation of a trend that the boycott

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movement before the Balkan Wars had initiated. The call for revenge was a fundamental phase in the “othering” of Christians and in the creation of an “internal enemy” from native non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire became aliens as a whole in the Balkan wars and World War I. Therefore, during and after the Balkan wars, the call for solidarity was no longer based on Ottoman identity but on Muslim identity. Thereafter, the rising tide of nationalism began to exclude non-Muslims openly. Emre Erol’s piece on “The ‘Macedonian Question’ in Western Anatolia: The Ousting of Ottoman Greeks before World War I” follows upon C¸etinkaya’s chapter. It shows that the sudden ousting of some 160,000 Ottoman Greeks in western Anatolia in 1914 was the result of an extension of the Macedonian Question to western Anatolia. Increasing polarization between Muslims and Christians, nationalism, economic pressures brought to bear by anti-Christian boycott movements, and growing insecurity caused many Ottoman Greeks to flee. Groups of bandits forced out many others. The CUP deliberately interjected the logic of nationalist mobilization in the Balkans into western Anatolia, which had been spared interethnic and intercommunal tensions when compared to the Ottoman Balkans. The ensuing exodus hence was not inevitable: It came suddenly and was largely unexpected. Erol shows that the brutal measure of uprooting the Ottoman Greeks as an “immediate necessity” for the “survival of the empire” soon evolved into significantly more radical dimensions with the mass deportation and murder of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915.

Part Three: Ottoman Perspectives in Palestine Yuval Ben-Bassat’s, “Palestine’s Population and the Question of Ottomanism during the Last Decade of Ottoman Rule”, is one of two contributions on Ottoman Palestine before and during World War I. Ben-Bassat explores reactions among Palestine’s diverse population to the propagation of Ottomanism and the question of the empire’s viability as a political entity. He examines in particular petitions submitted by Arab peasants and notables against Zionist activity in the years preceding World War I, the debate on Ottomanism in the ranks of the tiny Jewish population in Palestine (yishuv), and correspondence between Istanbul and its officials in the provinces of greater Syria during the war concerning the situation there. Ben-Bassat suggests that in

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prewar Palestine there was a surprisingly stable support for the empire, its legitimacy, and its continuation, both among the Palestinian Arab population and among considerable segments of the yishuv. At the same time, tensions were growing between Jewish settlers and Arab Palestinians, who were concerned about the way the empire handled Zionist activity on the ground. Michelle Campos’s “‘The Ottoman Sickness and Its Doctors’: Imperial Loyalty in Palestine on the Eve of World War I” is a thorough study of the Palestinian press of the time, extending from the political range of the local Arab press to local Jewish and Zionist newspapers. It resonates with Ben-Bassat’s contribution in unearthing a surprising degree of support for the empire and widespread interest in developments in the Balkans and western provinces. The turning point was, yet again, the Second Balkan War, after which “further loss of land, demographic homogenization, and the perceived success of ethno-nationalist movements in breaking off from the empire all contributed to weakening an already frail Ottomanist project”. This feeling of the loss of capacity of the empire was further aggravated by growing fears of a Zionist takeover of Palestine along the lines of Edirne’s occupation by Bulgarian troops.

Part Four: Reform or Cataclysm in the Kurdo-Armenian Eastern Provinces? Thomas Schmutz’s chapter “The German Role in the Reform Discussion of 1913– 14” shifts the focus to eastern Anatolia. In June 1913, Russia proposed a draft for an agreement to improve the status of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. After intense negotiations between the European powers and the Sublime Porte, an agreement was finally signed on 8 February 1914. Due in particular to German intervention, the agreement differed substantially from the initial Russian proposal. Another round of negotiations took place on the issue of two inspectorgenerals who would implement and monitor reforms in eastern Anatolia. These discussions, however, remained inconclusive, as they took place in early summer 1914 when Europe was already on its way to war. Schmutz, drawing on German diplomatic archival material, explicates how German concerns were expressed in the language of humanitarian concerns but were ultimately inspired by European rivalry. The reform question was seen as one issue among others like the Liman von Sanders mission or the question of arms deals. Germany acknowledged for the

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first time the need to tackle the problems behind the Armenian Question but lost this issue from sight after the July crisis of 1914. It was unprepared when its ally began to “solve” the issue by means of removal and extermination in 1915. In “The Effect of Land Disputes on the Reform Question in the Eastern Provinces”, Mehmet Polatel analyzes the land question in terms of the reform plans for the eastern provinces. The lack of intent and capacity on part of the Unionist government to resolve the issue of land disputes and manage Kurdish reactions to the prospects of reform resulted in the emergence of a new social alliance including refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus, Kurds, and local Turks on the eve of the World War I. Although the Ottoman government took some steps to solve the land question after 1908 – thanks to the agreement between the Committee of Union and Progress and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – government policy turned to be much more equivocal from 1910 onward. The internationalization of the issue of reform in 1913 had many setbacks, among them the fact that international reform schemes were vague in terms of the resolution of land disputes and thereby helped to accelerate tension and anxiety at the local level on the eve of the war. Vahe´ Tachjian’s piece “Building the ‘Model Ottoman Citizen’: Life and Death in the Region of Harput-Mamu¨retu¨laziz (1908–15)” makes the case for the study of local history as an essential tool for understanding the social life and history of the Ottoman Empire’s eastern provinces. Microhistorical studies still have a long way to go to become an established part of historical research. In this respect, the varied and rich materials written in Armenian language, such as memory books (houshamadyan), memoirs, letters, and press articles, are crucial as they contain detailed descriptions of provincial life almost nonexistent in non-Armenian sources. Tachjian zooms in on the region of Mamuret ul-Aziz (or the plain of Harput) in the period 1908– 15 and seeks to reconstruct the daily life of the local Armenian community. The primary sources written in Armenian open our view onto the world of village and town life and the rural and urban social milieus, describing changes in everyday life in impressive detail. ¨ mit U ¨ ngo¨r argues, in “Explaining Regional Variations in the Ug˘ur U Armenian Genocide”, that the Armenian genocide has become less “controversial” and depoliticized and that a rough consensus among

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scholars has been established. One among the still largely unresolved issues, he suggests, is that of the regional variations of the genocidal ¨ ngo¨r submits that in-depth research on the relationship process. U between central decision-making processes and the implementation of mass murder at the local level has proven most fruitful. Analyzing how genocidal processes evolve at the provincial, district, city, or even village level allows us to understand how local power relations influence the course and intensity of genocidal processes. Given obvious disparities in ¨ ngo¨r seeks to the Armenian genocide from province to province, U develop a model for systematic examination of regional differences in the Armenian genocide, by giving a comparative focus on the course of the genocide in several eastern provinces. The Afterword by Hamit Bozarslan not only returns to the worrying presence of the past but also suggests a trajectory of irresponsible political engineering in the Middle East with roots, as he sees them, in the Unionist experience.

Notes 1. On the origins and meaning of the term Middle East, see Roderic Davison, “Where Is the Middle East?”, Foreign Affairs 38 (1959/60), pp. 665– 75; and Osamah F. Khalil, “The Crossroads of the World: U.S. and British Foreign Policy Doctrines and the Construct of the Middle East, 1902– 2007”, Diplomatic History 38, 2 (2014), pp. 299– 344. 2. We owe this very apt phrase, “violence and viability”, to Mustafa Aksakal during a workshop in June 2014 at the University of Zurich. 3. Cf. Fuat Du¨ndar, I˙ttihat ve Terakki’nin Mu¨slu¨manları I˙skaˆn Politikası (1913 – 1918) (Istanbul: Iletis¸im Yayınları, 2001). 4. See the ferocious debate on Fritz Fischer’s Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18 (Du¨sseldorf: Droste Verlag 1961; an English translation appeared in 1967 as Germany’s Aims in the First World War), continuing into the immediate present, such as in the special issue, edited by Annika Mombauer, of Journal of Contemporary History 48, 2 (April 2013), “The Fischer Controversy after 50 Years”. 5. The editors of this book are not the first to have applied the term cataclysm to World War I; see, e.g., David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 2005). For an example how the term cataclysm was applied to other wars, see also Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology (Boston: South End Press, 1979). 6. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 3, 16.

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7. Thomas Kuehn: Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference: Ottoman Rule in Yemen, 1849– 1919 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 2, 13, aptly uses the term colonial Ottomanism to characterize the hybrid policy of colonial domination and a centralizing cum nationalizing empire. 8. Benjamin Fortna, Imperial Classroom: Islam, the State, and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Zeynep C¸elik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830– 1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008); Malte Fuhrmann and Vangelis Kechriotis, editorial to “The Late Ottoman Port-Cities and Their Inhabitants: Subjectivity, Urbanity, and Conflicting Orders. In memory of Faruk Tabak (1953 – 2008)”, special issue, Mediterranean Historical Review 24, 2 (2009), pp. 71 – 8 (see also all other contributions). 9. The loss of these eastern provinces had grave consequences for the overall demographic weight of the Ottoman Empire. The population of AustriaHungary and the Ottoman Empire had been roughly the same (around 30 million) around 1850, while in 1901 the gap had widened considerably: Austria-Hungary had reached 45.2 million inhabitants, while the Ottoman Empire had fallen to 26 million. See Erik J. Zu¨rcher: The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building. From the Ottoman Empire to Atatu¨rk’s Turkey (London: I.B.Tauris, 2010), p. 64. 10. “Premodern” is defined here as the period up to the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century in which (a) the Ottoman Empire was not integrated into the wider realm of European world economy and imperial power systems, (b) the ‘infrastructural power’ (in the meaning of Michael Mann’s differentiation between “despotic” and “infrastructural” power) of the state was not yet pervasive or even not conceived as a desired state of affairs, and (c) the paradigm of nationalism and the ethnically homogeneous state had not been established. For (b), see Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results”, in John A. Hall, (ed.), States in History (London: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 109– 36. 11. See Tanıl Bora, “Turkish National Identity, Turkish Nationalism and the ¨ zdog˘an and Kemaˆli Saybas¸ılı (eds), Balkan Problem”, in Gu¨nay Go¨ksu¨ O Balkans: A Mirror of the New International Order (Istanbul: Eren, 1995), pp. 101– 20, esp. p. 104, for a lucid analysis of Turkish feelings of having been victims of a Western conspiracy and betrayed by the former Ottoman subjects in southeastern Europe and the Arab provinces. 12. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, “Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing”, in Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth (eds), Political Violence in TwentiethCentury Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 87 – 139, esp. p. 93, characterize the massacres of 1894– 6 against the Armenians as the early result of an Ottoman “learning process”, i.e., “that Istanbul had learned the lesson of the ethnic majoritarianism that had won the Balkan nations their independence”. 13. Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History, p. 288.

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14. Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 137. 15. Hull, Absolute Destruction, p. 178. 16. M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902– 1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 191– 209. 17. Nader Soharabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 224– 83. ¨. U ¨ ngo¨r, “Disastrous Decade: Armenians and Kurds in the Young Turk 18. Ug˘ur U Era”, in Joost Jongerden and Jelle Verheij (eds), Social Relations in Ottoman Diarbekir, 1870–1915 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 270–5; Vahe´ Tachjian, “Yerel anlatılar ile genel anlatıları birles¸tirmek. Osmanlı Palusu’nda Ermenilerin hayatı”, in Cengiz Aktar, (ed.), Diyarbakir Teblig˘leri: Diyarbakir ve cevresi toplumsal ve ekonomik tarihi konferansi (I˙stanbul: Hrant Dink Vakfı Yayınları, 2013), p. 110. 19. Hans L. Kieser, Tu¨rklu¨g˘e ihtida. 1870 –1939 I˙svic
re’sinde yeni Tu¨rkiye’nin o¨ncu¨leri (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im), pp. 109– 14 and 250– 1. 20. Michael A. Reynolds, “Abdu¨rrezzak Bedirhan: Ottoman Kurd and Russophile in the Twilight of Empire”, in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, 2 (spring 2011), pp. 411– 50. 21. M. Talha C¸ic
ek, War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate during World War I, 1914– 17 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 83 – 4. 22. Particularly impressive is the study by Meron Benvenisti, whose father, a geographer, had contributed to transform the landscape of Palestine: Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 23. Kerem O¨ktem and Chris Sisserian, “Turkey’s Armenian Opening: Towards 2015”, OpenDemocracy 25 (June 2014); Sossie Kasbarian and Kerem O¨ktem, “Armenians, Turks and Kurds beyond Denial: An Introduction”, Patterns of Prejudice 48, 2 (2014). 24. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821– 1922 (London: Darwin, 1995). 25. I˙pek Yosmaog˘lu, Blood Ties: Religion, Violence, and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014); Fatma Mu¨ge Go¨
cek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789– 2009 (Oxford and New York: Oxford ¨ mit U ¨ ngo¨r and Ara University Press, 2014); Tovmas G. Mkrtichean, Ug˘ur U Sarafian, The Diyarbekir Massacres and Kurdish Atrocities (London: Gomidas Institute, 2013); Ugur U¨mit U¨ngo¨r, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913– 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); as well as many contributions in this volume. 26. See, e.g., Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2012), and his thorough discussion of how the Balkan wars fundamentally eroded the position of Austria-Hungary in European power relations.

CHAPTER 1 THE OTTOMAN ROAD TO TOTAL WAR (1913—15) Hans-Lukas Kieser1

An Ottoman Road to Total War? This chapter examines the extent to which Ottoman total war differed from contemporary total war in the European war arena.2 It deals with what “Ottoman total war” meant – once World War I arrived on this stage. It does so within this volume’s framework that conceptualizes the last Ottoman decade, dating roughly from 1911 to 1922, as both a catastrophic and an acutely transformative “Ottoman cataclysm”. The road to be scrutinized in this chapter leads from the massive Ottoman losses of the Italian war (September 1911–October 1912) and the First Balkan War (October 1912–May 1913), to the large-scale expulsion of Ottoman Greek Orthodox Christians (Ruˆm) in June 1914,3 to an all-embracing military mobilization beginning in August, a declaration of jihad in mid-November, and failed offensives at different fronts in the winter of 1914–15. The first military success on this road was the defence of the Ottoman capital at the Dardanelles, beginning in March 1915. The road reached its climax during the following months when, in April, the Young Turk regime merged the war at its borders with a “war” at home. From the very beginning of the war, the state questioned the imperial loyalties of certain populations. It saw Maronite Christians in Mount Lebanon as the potential allies of France, Jews in Palestine as those of Britain, Arabs around Sharif Husayn of Mecca also as those of Britain,

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and both Kurds and Armenians as those of Russia. This perception intensified over the course of the war. In 1915 the state arrested and publicly hanged Arab leaders for treason, and it launched a programme to deport the entire Ottoman Armenian community from Anatolia. Moving Armenians to Syria meant not only moving a vulnerable people into a region already struck by severe food shortages but also exposing them to desert conditions without adequate supplies. Wartime conditions and state policies destroyed Ottoman imperial bonds as much as, and before, military defeat in 1918. In a mirror image to populations it considered potentially disloyal, the top Ottoman leadership regarded certain populations residing in enemy territories – Georgians and Muslims in the Caucasus, Muslims in Central Asia, and Egyptians under British rule – as natural allies. Afghanistan and Iran, too, the central powers hoped, could be won over to their side. The ideologies of pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism and the discourse of Christian and European oppression could all be deployed to attract the support of these varied populations. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 had revived the Ottoman reform ideal of democratic equality in an ethno-religiously pluralistic society. The revolution sidelined the sultan, brought back the constitution of 1876, and provided for empire-wide elections and the reopening of the Ottoman parliament. To bring the revolution to fruition, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) had collaborated with fellow secret organizations of various ethnic stripes, in particular the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF).4 Having restored the constitution by arms, the CUP presented itself as the liberator of all Ottomans. The new political space opened up by the revolution, however, was quickly filled by a multitude of political parties and social organizations. In the face of Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria’s declaration of independence, and Crete’s union with Greece – all in rapid succession – these groups found themselves united in their demands for the empire’s sovereignty and international security. Boycotts of Austrian, Bulgarian, and Greek businesses and goods extended from Trabzon to Beirut. Large crowds, often numbering in the thousands, gathered in protests for public burnings or tearings of Austrian-made fezzes. By 1910–11, the boycott movement began to target the shops of Christian and Jewish Ottomans as well.5

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On 23 January 1913, CUP militants including Enver and Talaat stormed the offices of the grand vizier and forced him to resign. From mid1913 on, the Unionists ruled increasingly through censorship and coercion. The CUP marginalized any political alternative, in particular the group of Prince Sabahaddin, who had advocated a decentralized empire and private (not state-controlled) initiative in economy and culture. Acquainted with defeat and loss since the Italian usurpation of Ottoman Libya in 1911, and then by the Balkan wars, CUP activists saw the outbreak of World War I as an opportunity to forge a new deal internally and in their external relations. By this time, the CUP regime contemplated the adoption of policies of imperial expansion and pan ideologies. Even if the road to 1915 demonstrates longer-term continuities since the late nineteenth century from the age of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II, context nonetheless matters. Without Europe’s embrace of the risk of total war in June 1914, the Ottoman road to total war would have been impossible. At the same time, the European World War I would have been considerably different, less global and total, without willing Ottoman participation. Only beginning with the First Balkan War and the CUP putsch of 1913 can we talk about a tangible and concrete Ottoman road to total war. The first part of this chapter deals with the total character of the Ottoman World War I. The second explores a climax of propaganda and mobilization since 1912. It also analyzes Ottoman war strategies since the autumn of 1914 in their relation to ideology in an empire soon struck by famine. The third part exposes a crucial particularity of Ottoman total war: removal and genocide.

Ottoman Total War We argue in this volume that the Ottoman World War I was a “total war” from its very beginning. It may, in some important points, be considered more comprehensive than the World War I in Europe. We argue so not because of industrial warfare, since the Ottoman Empire lacked a developed and broad industry that could have been completely put at the service of war; nor because of an efficient and thoroughly organized home front to back the struggle at the front. Yet the Ottoman Empire began mobilizing in August 1914 to a degree it had never done before in its over-600-year history.6

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World War I differed from the empire’s wars in 1911 and 1912 – 13 in crucial respects. While the earlier wars remained geographically confined, the war of 1914 affected all regions of the empire all at once. Food shortages affected civilian populations as early as August 1914, from Thrace in the north to Yemen in the south. The closure of the port of Beirut put an end to grain imports for the city of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, the epicentre of the Syrian famine. In Syria, over half a million civilians starved to death in 1915 and 1916.7 The horrors of the famine constitute a central aspect of the Ottoman cataclysm. Along with those who perished also vanished the bonds that tied the regions of the empire together. Sharif Husayn’s decision to break with Istanbul, finally, in 1916 must be seen in the context of the famine and the increasing strength of the British all around him, in Egypt and in Basra. The main reason for thinking of the Ottoman World War I as a total war is that it was offensively fought both to the exterior and the interior. From 2 August 1914, when the secret war alliance with Germany was concluded, the principal Young Turk leaders – War Minister Ismail Enver and Interior Minister Talaat Pasha – perceived both exterior (the Entente cordiale) and interior enemies (Ottoman Christians). Consequently, their war aims comprehended territorial defence and expansion as well as “revolutionary” changes at home. These aims were ambitious, to say the least – and especially so with regard to imperial restoration and expansion. In contrast to Germany’s diffuse aspiration to dominance in Europe and Weltgeltung (global standing), however, the CUP possessed a concrete, minimal goal: the preservation of the Young Turk power organization together with the establishment of a firm Turkish Muslim base or home in Asia Minor. Since 1913, Asia Minor had been projected by influential circles of the new ethno-nationalist movements of the Tu¨rk Ocag˘ı and Tu¨rk Yurdu, which were sponsored by the CUP, as a Turkish Muslim national home (Tu¨rk Yurdu) and a safe haven for Muslim refugees from the Balkan and the Caucasus.8 For the Young Turks, the participation in World War I served the preservation of the state and the establishment of its full sovereignty. In this regard it can be called a Young Turk “war of independence”.9 Expansive dreams, social Darwinist notions, and panideologies taken into account, it was, however, an overstrung “struggle for imperial existence”.

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The Ottoman World War I anticipated phenomena that would emerge only in later stages of the European era of the world wars. There was a revolutionary group at the reins of imperial power. It engineered demographic and economic transformations tantamount to a genocide of its state’s own citizens. The design and effects of this policy transcended in quality and quantity the considerable wartime removals, including atrocities by Russia, Germany, or Austria-Hungary.10 In the Ottoman case, the state’s fighting the war abroad and at home made it total. Moreover, we emphasize as crucial that the interior destruction and restructuring since the first year of the Ottoman World War I coincided with frustrated designs of imperial restoration and expansion based on pan-Turkist and pan-Islamist ideas. Broadly spread by propaganda since August 1914, these pan ideologies informed the CUP government’s total war effort, in particular domestically and toward the Caucasus and central Asia. They have to be taken more seriously into account by historians of the Ottoman cataclysm than was the case with Kemalist historiography and its Western partners. The Ottoman cataclysm reached its climax with the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community in 1915 – 16 – the central piece of a comprehensive demographic engineering of Asia Minor headed by Interior Minister Talaat.11 This transformation went hand in hand with incisive measures to establish a national economy, that is an economy dominated by Muslim Turks. With these drastic changes, the centuries-old plural Ottoman social fabric was destroyed irreversibly in 1915. The Ottoman world itself, as far as groups declared as disloyal were concerned, was turned into an area of total war, in particular in the eastern provinces. The mobilization of religion for the sake of modern war was a factor of total war not only in the Ottoman Empire. War homilies were common in Western countries, particularly in Germany since its national “Whitsun event” (its quasi-religious nationalist enthusiasm) of August 1914.12 Specific to the Ottoman landscape, however, was the destruction in the name of religion of its own citizens, who had been for centuries, religiously speaking, members of a protected community (zimmi). During the long reign of the pious sultan Abdu¨lhamid II, jihad had never been proclaimed. A member of the CUP and intimate of Talaat, the sheik ul-Islam Mustafa Hayri Efendi wrote the jihad fatwa that was solemnly read out on 14 November 1914.13 Although this declaration

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must be seen in the context of pan-Islamist anti-Entente propaganda, jihad must also be pondered, since late 1914, in the reality of religious polarization and the brutalization of a war that included militias, irregulars, and tribes at the eastern front. If jihad there began to mean a religiously sanctioned war that resulted in the destruction of Christian communities in the eastern provinces and partly in northern Iran, even as late as 1916 the state at times aimed propaganda at its Christian and Jewish populations. A publication by Major Mehmed S¸u¨kru¨, an army recruiting officer in Zonguldak on the Black Sea, addressed directly the role of non-Muslims. Even though fighting on behalf of the state was a religious duty, non-Muslims should be full participants in this struggle to save the state, he claimed: Our Christian and Jewish friends are also the children of this homeland. Together with us they, too, are obligated to fight against the enemy for the defense of our homeland, that is to say, for their mother, and to spill their blood and to kill and be killed on this journey. And so just as Muslims, Christians, and Jews harvest the fields together and make a living, in wartime they must fire cannons and rifles, throw bombs, and wield swords together.14 On the other side of an eastern front that divided communities rather than territories, Armenian and Assyrian militias sponsored by Russia had internalized anti-Muslim hatred. This may be comprehensible particularly for the Armenians in the eastern provinces against the background of the great massacres of 1895.15 In regional terms, a road led from these massacres, which had targeted men and youngsters if they did not convert, to the extreme or even “total violence” of 1915 that targeted potentially all members of the community, including those converted.16 The religious sanction of the massacre of Armenians, Ottoman fellow subjects, dates also back to the 1890s. Compared to 1915, however, these massacres did not aim at the destruction of the whole Armenian community. Moreover, conversion to Islam was a means to escape them. In history books on the genesis of World War I, the eastern provinces in contrast to the Balkans are almost absent. They were, however, the theatre of internationally noted problems since the mid-nineteenth century, in particular since the Congress of Berlin, and of serious troubles on the eve of World War I. These troubles emerged from antagonistic

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struggles for Kurdish autonomy, for Muslim wealth and maintenance of dominance, as well as for Armenian security and equal participation in the state. Based on article 61 of the Berlin Treaty and backed by the great powers, the Russian– Ottoman Reform Agreement of 8 February 1914, for the eastern provinces aimed at realizing security, fair participation of all groups, and, of high significance, the restoration of land taken from Armenian peasants. This land problem, the so-called Agrarian Question, stood at the centre of the Armenian Question.17 The CUP aligned with Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II’s attitude when it obstructed reforms that it feared would undermine state sovereignty in the eastern provinces.18 Both for Abdu¨lhamid II and the CUP, the readiness to violent obstruction was linked to the fear that the loss of Balkan territories would be followed by the loss of eastern provinces. By 1913, the CUP read the Armenian Question through the lenses of the Macedonian Question. It resented the Armenian reactivation of international diplomacy in late 1912 as betrayal. Those in the CUP who preferred to side with anti-Armenian forces in the eastern provinces now prevailed over those who had argued that the CUP should not, with Finance Minister Cavid Bey’s words of 1911, “hurt an element that is most loyal to us”, but defend legitimate Ottoman Armenian interests.19 The 1914 Reform Agreement, even if a solid compromise of various interests,20 suffered from the fundamental fact that a mix of universally oriented humanitarianism with orientalist imperialism and intervention had marked Europe-sponsored reforms in the Ottoman world since the Tanzimat.21 The European powers therefore not only lacked the trust needed for the implementation of the reforms but also reinforced CUP fears and rhetoric of international conspiracy and the vision of the Armenians as troublemakers and traitors worse than the Ruˆm during the Balkan wars. Consequently, the annulment of the reforms was a central war aim. In fact, the formation of the Ottoman total-war mind-set and politics in the 1910s resulted from the combination of dynamics from the late Ottoman eastern provinces with those from the Balkans, including the muhacir (refugees) and the expulsion of Ruˆm at the Aegean coast. Ziya Go¨kalp, a Kurd from Diyarbekir, embodied this combination that became decisive for the CUP on the eve of World War I. He was a member of the CUP central committee since 1909 and the friend and brother-in-law of Feyzi Pirinccizaˆde, whose father, Arif, had been a

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co-organizer of the 1895 anti-Armenian massacres in Diyarbekir.22 Feyzi Bey himself became an Ottoman deputy in place of his father, who died in 1909. He was a main CUP representative in Diyarbekir, a fierce adversary of the 1914 Armenian Reform Agreement, and deeply involved in the anti-Christian persecution of 1915. Total war required a totalizing ideology. In support of CUP policies, Ziya Go¨kalp formulated such a totalizing nationalism. His modernist Turkism assimilated Islam and mythical Turkish ethnicity. In 1912 – 13, he had given up Ottomanism in favour of pan-Turkism. Born and raised in Diyarbekir, he first became a member of the CUP committee in his home province before joining, in 1909, the CUP central committee in Salonika and then in Istanbul. In Salonika, Go¨kalp personified the combination of the Macedonian and Armenian questions on the eve of World War I. As a poet, scholar, and public intellectual, he powerfully projected a superior Turkish future and declared it worth all struggles and sacrifices.

Propaganda, Mobilization, and Strategies of War The Ottoman state declared mobilization on 3 August 1914. Over the next four years, it conscripted some 3 million men from all across the empire. About a quarter of them died in combat and of disease, half a million deserted, and some 250,000 were captured and taken prisoner.23 On 29 October 1914, a small fleet of German and Ottoman ships steamed into the Black Sea. Led by the German battle cruiser Goeben, the fleet opened fire on Russian coastal cities, sank several of the tsar’s vessels, and took dozens of crew prisoners-of-war. The men at the helm of the Ottoman state took the decision for war in a climate shaped by recent military defeats in North Africa and southeastern Europe. Armed conflicts at home, too, gave politics a bloody tinge, most notably in Macedonia and Yemen. In 1914, the sense of humiliation and urgency and the image of the Ottoman Empire as a victim of the international system, as we shall see, prevailed not only among those in high office. In September 1911, Italy had attacked and occupied the Ottoman Province of Trablusgarb (Libya) and the Dodecanese Islands in the Aegean Sea. In October 1912, the Balkan League, consisting of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia, swiftly broke through Ottoman defences and seized the empire’s European territories. In the Second

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Balkan War the following year, Ottoman forces achieved a rare military victory. Led by Major Enver Bey, the future war minister and effective commander-in-chief, Ottoman forces retook the city of Edirne (Adrianople). The capture of Edirne, a former Ottoman capital, after so much defeat carried with it a world of emotion and symbolism. It lifted the CUP’s prestige. It also fed the belief that determination and will could stem the tide threatening the empire and even bring recovery. Beginning in 1908, economic boycotts politicized the empire’s urban populations. These boycotts protested initially the Habsburg Empire’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The region had been occupied by Vienna since the Berlin Congress of 1878 (an arrangement that would prompt Gavrilo Princip to assassinate the Habsburg archduke over three and a half decades later). The boycotts targeted European companies but also businesses owned by Ottoman Christians. The latter were often cast as opportunistic and selfish or, worse, as disloyal to the Ottoman state.24 International and domestic affairs in Ottoman politics rarely were distinguishable. The association of the empire’s Christians with foreign powers continued during the First Balkan War, which witnessed atrocities against civilians on all sides. The First Balkan War produced renewed boycotts and charges of disloyalty against Anatolia’s Christian populations. Newspapers and books bolstered further the idea that the Concert of Europe was, in fact, the Concert of Europe to Dismember the Ottoman Empire. The French and now the Italian invasion of North Africa; Russia’s occupation of Ardahan, Batum, and Kars in 1878; and British rule in Cyprus and Egypt made the charge appear highly plausible. The Ottomans in 1914 faced their own version, they believed, of the German Einkreisung, or encirclement. It was not only urban populations and political elites who experienced international developments firsthand, however. Across Anatolia, Ottoman Muslim refugees from lost territories were living proof of the injustices visited upon Muslims. Anatolians could read or (in the case of those who could not read themselves) listen to accounts of atrocities committed by Christians and Christian powers. Many of these publications, moreover, were sponsored by and received their information from the state.25 These atrocity reports intensified with the wars of 1911 and 1912. Faced with unexpected resistance in North Africa, in October 1911

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Italian forces systematically killed over a thousand civilians in retribution and executed publicly any insurgents or anyone suspected of insurgency. News of the tragedy spread quickly across the empire, prompting the staging of a play in Izmir, The Holy Jihad, or the OttomanItalian War in Tripoli.26 From Iran, moreover, Shi’ite clerics castigated Italy’s action with fatwas that legitimized armed resistance against the occupier as jihad. The Ottoman state itself refrained from an official declaration of jihad, however, in 1911, as in 1912 or 1913.27 The cover of the textbook on diplomatic history used to train Ottoman officials featured the following thought: “The great questions of the time will not be resolved by parliamentary speeches and majority decisions, but by iron and blood.”28 The words were Bismarck’s but were put on the cover by the book’s author, Ahmed Selaheddin, a professor of law, because they captured, in his view, the way the world appeared from Istanbul. The wars before World War I are important not only because they shaped Ottoman decision-making and policies in 1914 and throughout the war but also because they put the CUP back into the driver’s seat and triggered what we call, in this volume, “Ottoman cataclysm”. It was in the immediate aftermath of the First Balkan War, on 23 January 1913, that Enver Bey and members of the CUP stormed the offices of the grand vizier. There they forced Grand Vizier Kaˆmil Pasha to resign, killing the minister of war in the process. The initial euphoria over the restoration of the constitution in 1908 had quickly given way to the more tedious aspects of government. By 1912, the CUP demonstrated much less acumen in parliamentary politics than in seizing power, and its support waned considerably. While the CUP pursued the empire’s “union and progress” through centralizing policies, opposition parties such as the Liberal Entente (Hu¨rriyet ve I˙tilaˆf Fırkası) allowed for greater regional participation. Whether the Liberal Entente or any other party would ever have been successful in sidelining the CUP or in solving the empire’s very serious problems is an unanswerable question. The Balkan wars exacerbated these problems by adding to them the need to settle hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees. Throughout August and September 1914, publications and large festive gatherings celebrated the prospect of the Ottoman state finally taking back its sovereignty. The war was cast as a war for full independence. On 9 September the government announced that the capitulations would be abrogated as of 1 October. In scenes that evoked

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the restoration of the constitution in 1908, large crowds celebrated the news. The capitulations had become a powerful symbol of Ottoman subjugation and injustice, and fighting the war was linked to fighting such injustice. Efforts to motivate soldiers and win the support of civilians drew largely on religious sentiments and on concepts of honour.29 These were illustrated and dramatized in soldiers’ pamphlets and publications such as Harb Mecmuası, al-Sharq, and Hijaz. The latter two appeared in Arabic and were funded by Cemal Pasha.30 Soon after the naval attack on Russia that launched the Ottoman entry into the war, the German General Colmar von der Goltz congratulated Enver. “Bravo!” wrote Goltz, who would later, in 1916, serve and perish in Baghdad. “Old Turkey now has the opportunity . . . in one fell swoop, to lift itself up to the heights of its former glory. May she not miss this opportunity!” And on 2 November 1914, Cemal noted: “When I contemplate all that Russia has done for centuries to bring about our destruction, and all that Britain has done during these last few years, then I consider this new crisis that has emerged to be a blessing. I believe that it is the Turks’ [Tu¨rklerin] ultimate duty either to live like an honourable nation or to exit the stage of history gloriously.”31 The architects of the alliance with Germany saw it not first as a road to war but as a road to international security. After signing the alliance, they hoped to sit on the alliance and to sit out the war. Once Berlin threatened to rupture the alliance, however, after three months of procrastination the Ottomans accepted the risk of war and jumped into the fire. The road to security – and salvation, as they saw it – first ran through war. On 4 August 1914, London’s confiscation of two battleships recently completed for the Ottoman navy touched off a storm of outrage. The ships had been paid for in part with donations collected by the Ottoman Navy Society in the name of saving the empire. On 10 August 1914, two German ships, hunted by a small Entente fleet, arrived in the Ottoman capital. The contrast between friend and foe appeared crystal clear. The story of the two German ships is often told as a tale of two vessels finding themselves in hot waters at the outbreak war. In fact, the ships had been requested by Enver Pasha on the night of 1 August, during the negotiations of the German –Ottoman alliance, a request the German emperor had approved personally.32 Illustrated with war posters in Donanma, the Navy Society’s popular journal propagated

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in its issues “the idea of a great war as essential for the salvation of the empire” as early as mid-August 1914.33 Following the naval attack on Russia, the Ottomans launched three campaigns. Two of these were military, one ideological. The latter, as we have seen, was the proclamation of jihad in November 1914. Both military campaigns focused on regions with Muslims inhabitants and hoped to draw on their support. The first campaign, across the Russian border into the Caucasus in December 1914, targeted the three Ottoman provinces lost in 1878 and the oil-rich city of Baku. Enver Pasha himself led the campaign. The campaign’s virtues had been promoted passionately by Muslim e´migre´s from Russia, most prominently Yusuf Akcura and Ahmed Ag˘aog˘lu. The second campaign, launched across the Sinai and the Suez Canal into Egypt in January 1915, was led by Cemal Pasha. His force consisted of Druze, Kurdish, Circassian, Libyan, and Bulgarian Muslim troops, fighting under the banner of “The Savior Islamic Army of Egypt”.34 Both campaigns, moreover, were designed to demonstrate to the Ottomans’ central powers allies that they were willing to shoulder a considerable burden in their joined war effort. Ottoman sacrifice on the battlefield, Enver argued with his German partners, made them equals in the alliance and earned them a seat in any future peace negotiation. The campaign in the Caucasus tied down Russian troops, providing, at least in theory, relief to Habsburg armies operating on the eastern front. And the Suez offensive was calculated to hold back British imperial forces that might otherwise have been deployed to the western front. CUP strategy, however, did not result in the empire’s “union and progress” or in its salvation but in the cataclysm, dissolution, and misery of the Ottoman world.

Removal and Genocide35 A central aspect of the Ottoman cataclysm was war at home, including coercive and violent demographic engineering. It responded to late Ottoman developments, in particular the muhacir (Muslim refugees) influx of the First Balkan War, and destroyed the traditional Ottoman social fabric for good. In spring 1914, the Ottoman government took steps toward population exchanges with its Greek and Bulgarian neighbours. In the absence of a comprehensive agreement, the CUP

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began to implement an agenda of anti-Christian demographic engineering in interrelation with the problem of the refugees. The paramilitaries of its newly founded Special Organization expelled from the Aegean littoral some 200,000 Ruˆm (Ottoman Greek Orthodox). When, on 6 July 1914, the Ottoman parliament discussed the expulsions, Talaat emphasized the need to settle the muhacir of the Balkans in those emptied villages. He emphasized that transferring the muhacir to empty, desert regions would entail their death.36 The international crisis of July 1914 saved the regime from a possible war with Greece and diplomatic backlash against these expulsions. Under the shield of its alliance with Germany and seemingly as wartime measures only, the Young Turk regime continued its policy of removal after its official entrance into World War I in November. Eager to win over neutral Greece, the Ottomans’ German ally insisted, however, that acts of violence against Ruˆm henceforth be avoided. Approximately 300,000 Ruˆm were removed from different coastal regions to the interior in the course of World War I, beginning in February 1915, and while some of the deportees suffered violent attacks, they were neither systematically massacred nor sent into the desert.37 On 6 August 1914, the German ambassador Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim had accepted six new Ottoman proposals additional to the secret treaty of 2 August, among them “a small correction of her [Turkey’s] eastern border which shall place Turkey into direct contact with the Moslems of Russia”.38 The main Armenian settlement area was located between the Turkish-speaking Muslims in Asia Minor and the Caucasus, in the Ottoman and the Russian empires, respectively. Also in early August, the CUP started to make plans for joint hostilities with Russia and invited the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), its political ally from 1907 to 1912, to lead an anti-Russian guerrilla war in the Caucasus, aimed at preparing a future Ottoman conquest. The ARF balked at these plans and stated that all Armenians should remain loyal to the country in which they lived. Attempts at insurrection in the Caucasus without the ARF began in August 1914.39 At the same time, the Armenian National Bureau at Tiflis received similar offers from the Russian governor of the Caucasus, Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, in a letter of 30 August 1914, warned against any Russian action before a rupture with Turkey had taken place. Unaware of the

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secret treaty of 2 August, he still mentioned the chance of a treaty with Turkey. The Armenian National Bureau accepted Vorontsov-Dashkov’s contingency “plan for revolt among the Turkish Armenians” and, with Russian aid, established five volunteer battalions.40 Ottoman troops together with Kurdish tribal forces attacked Persian Urmia, 110 km east of Hakkaˆri in the province of Van, whereas Christians on the Ottoman and the Iranian sides of the frontier looked to Russia for protection. From August 1914, Russia built up a local Iranian Christian militia based on Christian Armeno-Syriac solidarity.41 Both yielding to German pressure and pursuing expansion, Enver Pasha launched in December a campaign against the Russian Caucasus that included the former Ottoman province of Kars. In the first days of 1915, this campaign failed catastrophically in the snowy mountains of Sarıkamıs¸ near Kars. Half or even more of the 120,000 soldiers perished. Epidemics began to spread among the survivors and in the whole region. In early 1915, smaller campaigns with irregular forces led by Enver’s brother-in-law Cevdet and Enver’s uncle General Halil in northern Persia harmed Armenian and Syriac villages but again failed in their military objectives. The Ottoman forces were decisively defeated in the battle of Dilman in mid-April. General Andranik Ozanian’s Armenian volunteer brigade in the Russian army participated in the battle.42 As a consequence of the defeats at Sarıkamıs¸ and Dilman, panTurkist hopes, which had galvanized CUP elites in the capital, turned to trauma in winter and spring 1915. The long eastern front was brutalized and religiously polarized. Irregulars and regulars, militias and forces of self-defence, were engaged in low-intensity warfare that took a heavy toll on civilians. Many Armenians had fled to Russian Armenia, among them several thousand young Armenians who became volunteers in the Russian army. Christians, where possible, tried to rely on Russian help. Best known is the Russian relief of the Armenians in Van in mid-May 1915. Since 20 April, after massacres in Armenian villages and the murder of Armenian individuals from Van, Armenian activists had resisted Cevdet’s repression. Once relieved, they mistreated and killed Muslim civilians and contributed to the flight of large numbers.43 The failed campaigns and the chaos at the long eastern front infuriated CUP leaders and made the local Armenian and Syriac Christians an easy target for the propaganda of jihad.44 These again hoped for a Russian advance and help.

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CUP policies radicalized in the context of a general escalation and brutalization of World War I in spring 1915. In eastern Anatolia first, along the Russian and Persian borderlands, they began to converge on a comprehensive anti-Armenian policy. Interior Minister Talaat coordinated the developing policy in three main phases: (1) the arrest of Armenian political, religious, and intellectual leaders in April and May 1915; (2) from late spring to autumn, the removal of the Armenian population of Anatolia and European Turkey to camps in the Syrian desert east of Aleppo, excluding Armenian men in eastern Anatolia, who were systematically massacred on the spot; (3) the starvation to death of most of those in the camps, except a large group resettled by Cemal Pasha, and the final massacre of those in the camps who still survived in 1916.45 In two seminal ciphered telegrams of 24 April, to the provincial governors and to the army, with reference to Van and a few other places, Talaat defined the situation in Asia Minor as that of a general Armenian rebellion; of Armenians helping the enemy’s war efforts; and of revolutionary committees that had long wished to establish Armenian self-determination and now believed they could achieve it as a result of the war.46 Provincial and military authorities as well as CUP commissaries sent to the provinces henceforth spread propaganda throughout Anatolia of treacherous Armenian neighbours who stabbed Muslims in the back.47 On the night of 24 – 25 April, security forces began to arrest Armenian elites throughout Anatolia, starting with Istanbul, and to question, torture, and murder most of them. Sources from observers on the ground as well as published Ottoman army sources of spring 1915 from the provinces do not support the claim of a general uprising,48 although there were instances of sabotage and some resistance to oppression, as well as many desertions of both Muslims and non-Muslims.49 After mid-August 1914, Talaat asked the provincial and military authorities to produce pieces of justification for the anti-Armenian policy. A recent study has analyzed the lengthy report written then by the governor of Diyarbekir and qualified the report’s main arguments – alleged Armenian conspiracy, circulation of secret plans, secret mobilization, American missionaries leading an Armenian revolt – as “little more than nonsense.”50 On 24 April, a telegram from Talaat to Cemal Pasha, military governor of Syria, announced that henceforth Armenians should be

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deported not to Konya, as had been the limited case of the Armenians expelled from Cilician Zeytun in March, but to northern Syria.51 A provisional law of 27 May – the parliament had been closed on 13 March – allowed repression and mass deportation if national security were at issue. The law served as legal cover for a comprehensive policy of removal. Although it did not limit Armenian removal to clearly defined zones, and although the Entente publicly warned the Ottoman authorities of future punishment for crimes against humanity on 24 May, Ambassador Wangenheim supported the measures, supposing them to be limited. German approval was a decisive breakthrough for a regime that a few months previously had found itself strictly bound to implement, jointly backed by Germany, a monitored coexistence of Christians and Muslims, Armenians, Syriacs, Kurds, and Turks in eastern Asia Minor, according to the Reform Agreement.52 The removal of the Armenians from eastern Asia Minor mainly took place from May to September; from western Anatolia and the province of Edirne in Thrace, from July to October 1915. In eastern Anatolia, men and youngsters were mostly massacred on the spot, with those in the army, separated into unarmed labour battalions, also killed. At the Dardanelles and in Arabia, Armenian soldiers continued to fight in the Ottoman army. Removal from the west included the men, and some of the deportees went by train. Women and children from central and eastern Asia Minor endured starvation, mass rape, and enslavement on their marches. In certain places, in particular in the province of Diyarbekir under Governor Mehmed Res¸id, removal amounted to the extermination of men, women, and children. Extermination and robbery struck also more than half of Diayrbekir’s Syriac Christians.53 As early as 26 October 1914, Talaat had ordered the governor of Van to remove the Christian Syriac population in Hakkaˆri near the Persian border. He considered this population unreliable and wanted to disperse it among a Muslim majority in the western provinces. He could not, however, implement this early policy of removal and dispersal in the autumn of 191454 and did not transform it into a general policy of removal cum extermination, as in the case of the Armenians. Regional representatives of the regime nevertheless applied a policy of destruction against the Syriac Christians in the provinces of Diyarbekir, Bitlis and Van. In the case of the region of

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Hakkaˆri in the province of Van, two-thirds of about 100,000 Syrians perished, while the others managed to escape to Russian-held territory.55 Most Christians, Armenian and Syriac, were massacred in or removed from the eastern provinces from spring 1915. Several hundred thousand destitute Armenian deportees arrived in Syria in summer and fall of 1915. Most of them were not resettled, as had been promised, but isolated in camps and starved to death according to rules that their local or regional demographic proportion must not exceed a few percent.56 Those who nevertheless survived were massacred in 1916. Only recently have scholars published witness accounts of the extreme horror of this second phase of the genocide and studies on limited efforts to help the victims.57 The major group of survivors were 100,000– 150,000 Armenians whom the CUP leader and Fourth Army Commander Jemal Pasha, based in Damascus, settled in southern Syria, converting them to Islam.58 The destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was symbolically completed in August 1916, when the Armenian Nizaˆmnaˆme of 1863 was entirely revised, the Patriarch Zaven Der Yghiayan exiled, and with this the Tanzimat principle of equality cum plurality once and for all abolished.59 In contrast to the massacres in the 1890s, conversion in Anatolia warranted survival in 1915–16 only if the Ministry of Interior permitted it exceptionally. Conversion of religious identity and confession of faith was secondary to the demographic rationale; or, as the governor of Trabzon put it at the beginning of July 1915, “an Armenian converted to Islam will be expelled as a Muslim Armenian”.60 This policy was a definitive break with Ottoman imperial tradition – and with Ottoman and international law. This chapter suggests to understand genocide as a highly asymmetrical form of total war at home. Not only the radical governor Res¸id but also his superior Talaat was a longtime CUP activist “who worked for a higher goal” beyond the duties of his office and “beyond Ottoman law”. Murder was acceptable practice for CUP revolutionaries if it served “higher goals”. In contrast to Res¸id, Talaat mastered the state apparatus and its language. Even though he appointed the Mazhar Commission to investigate unlawful conduct in fall 1915, there was not one officially filed case “for crimes committed against Armenians”, despite the commission’s incriminating findings.61 Asymmetry, totality, ethno-religious specificity, and impunity identify Ottoman “total war at home”.

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During World War I, the CUP considered Jews in Palestine, too, to be unreliable on the whole. The CUP viewed Jews as nonassimilable to Turkishness and as possibly separatist, like Armenians in Asia Minor. Cemal Pasha thus made plans to remove them to other places within the empire or to expel them, even though more than 20,000 Jews had successfully applied for Ottoman citizenship since the eve of the war.62 Ten thousand Jews were resettled by the end of 1915 and a smaller group of foreign nationals and Zionists expelled.63 Since, for the CUP, Palestine was less central than Anatolia, and Germany and the United States applied pressure in favour of the Jews, the Yishuv did not, despite many fears, experience a fate like that of the Armenians.64

Conclusion In contrast to Europe, total war in the Ottoman Empire was radically fought both against exterior enemies and against stigmatized groups at home. The Young Turks at the reins of power wanted to save the imperial state, to restore its sovereignty, and to reverse painful setbacks inflicted on the empire since the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911 and the First Balkan War in 1912–13. They saw World War I as an opportunity to do so, thanks to the alliance with Germany. In reality, their war at home destroyed the last substantial Ottoman bonds and thus the base of the empire. Ottoman identity and viability therefore ended for good in the first year of World War I. The small CUP group who engineered the alliance with Germany of 2 August 1914, saw it not as a road to war but foremost as a road to international security and national sovereignty. After signing the alliance, it hoped on the one hand to sit on the alliance and to sit out the war. On the other hand, infected by Europe-wide excitation and exaltation, many CUP activists dreamed of a restored and even expanded empire. They believed in propaganda that promised the redemption of Russia’s “Turks” (Muslims) from Russian yoke.65 Once Berlin threatened to rupture the alliance, after months of procrastination, the leading Young Turks embraced war and launched a fatal campaign of conquest against the Russian Caucasus. Nevertheless, CUP members never completely lost sight of their main or minimal goal of an independent, sovereign, and internationally secure state.

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A never-before-seen large-scale mobilization and military requisition hit Ottoman life in August 1914, three months before the Ottoman Empire officially entered the war. The new state of affairs affected the political and social atmosphere in the Ottoman world. War propaganda began together with the mobilization in August 1914, and its Islamist and pan-Turkist overtones stood in stark contrast to Ottomanism and the Armenian Reform Agreement of February 1914. The government suspended the Armenian Reform Agreement in August and abolished it by the end of 1914. All this exposed the Christians in the eastern provinces dangerously. From there to genocide it took only a few, though crucial, steps: catastrophically failed campaigns against the Russian Caucasus and northern Iran; an eastern front brutalized by militias from both sides; an allied attack against the Ottoman capital in March 1915; the Interior Ministry’s propaganda of Armenian revolt in all of Anatolia in April; and a comprehensive scheme of population removal from May 1915, whose de facto destination for most deportees was not resettlement in Syria but death. Modern Ottomanism had meant suprareligious patriotism together with loyal adherence to a common state, constitution, country, and history. Modern Ottomanism had burgeoned during the Tanzimat and flourished for a short while after July 1908, though without becoming operational. All cabinets of the constitutional re´gime since 1908 were of short life; the parliament, of little effect. Strikes and boycotts were frequent and public life polarized, often along religious lines. The Ottoman state was therefore not reempowered after 1908. It dramatically lost territory. Most important, it did not become – as both the ideal of the 1908 Revolution and urgent problems demanded – a constitutional state with rule of law and equal participation of all Ottoman groups and individuals. It lacked the capacity to solve problems. If the Armenians were the strongest adherents to the constitutional state, of which they had most to gain, they had also most to lose if it failed. The Agrarian Question – the land problem in the centre of the Armenian Question – could not be solved by the constitutional regime as the ARF and the CUP had agreed upon when they started their alliance. Celaˆl Bey, CUP member and governor of Erzurum in 1909 – 11, wrote in retrospect that “brigands took by force or other

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means the land they liked although it belonged to other people weaker than them”, and “that this problem could only be solved if the government committed itself to it”, but that the government failed to do so.66 As a fatal consequence, the Armenians asked for international help in late 1912: reforms based on the Berlin Treaty. This made them traitors in the eyes of former “revolutionary brothers”, whereas the CUP, back in power in January 1913, sided now even more with anti-Armenian landlords and notables in the eastern provinces. These were fierce adversaries of reforms. They became the regional partners of the CUP by power or realpolitik, not because they adhered to the ideals of the 1908 Revolution. In 1915, they were the CUP’s efficient regional partners67 in the destructive removal of their Christian neighbours. More than any other single event, the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, natives of Asia Minor since antiquity, signified a definitive break and a point of no return to Ottomanism. No Jewish organization wielded direct influence over or was represented among the men of power in the imperial capital after 1908. In contrast, Armenian CUP members, the ARF, and other Armenian representatives tied their destiny and the destiny of their members almost entirely to the constitutional Ottoman perspective reopened by the 1908 Revolution. Zionist strategy of the 1910s could envisage autonomy and post-Ottoman independence because Palestine was not Ottoman core land, as were Macedonia and Anatolia. If the preservation of the imperial state was the CUP’s general imperative, its categorical imperative was that Anatolia should never share the fate of Macedonia, once Macedonia with Salonika was lost to Greece in late 1912. The ideal of a Turkish homeland (Tu¨rk Yurdu) coincided with the categorical imperative of preserving Anatolia as a sovereign and safe Turkish and Muslim haven, including for muhacir. This imperative went back to Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II and served as a compass for the Young Turks and their Kemalist heirs through all turbulences, including total war, genocide, imperial chimeras, and a widespread corruption largely linked to Armenian loot. De facto antiChristian pan-Islamist and pan-Turkist chimeras of fall 1914 strongly revived after the Russian Revolution and Russian retreat in early 1918. Without these chimeras and the campaigns they motivated, a Tu¨rk Yurdu ideal alone would not have led to genocide. A realistic Tu¨rk Yurdu

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ideal could, on the contrary, have been compatible with a modern constitutional state and have had the chance to deal peacefully with reform, territorial losses, the muhacir problem, and the end of empire. If it therefore lost the empire, it could at least have saved constitutional Ottomanism in Anatolia and attained the crucial goal of an independent, sovereign, and internationally secure state. Both empire and constitutional Ottomanism were lost in 1918. The Turkist nation-state that emerged a few years later would have to cope for many decades with the almost incurable trauma of the latter’s loss during total war at home.

Notes 1. This chapter owes a great deal to exchange and discussion with Mustafa Aksakal; many thanks. The author, however, alone is responsible for it. 2. Roger Chickering and Stieg Fo¨rster (eds), Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914 – 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 3. Cf. Chapter 4 by Emre Erol in this book. 4. M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902– 1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 191– 209. 5. Y. Dog˘an C¸etinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014), pp. 39–159. 6. Cf. Chapter 2 by Yıg˘ıt Akın in this book. 7. Linda Schatkowski Schilcher, “The Famine of 1915– 1918 in Greater Syria”, in John P. Spagnolo (ed.), Problems of the Modern Middle East in Historical Perspective (Berkshire: Ithaca Press, 1992), pp. 229–58. 8. Yurdcular Yasası. I˙svicre’de Cenevre ¸sehrine yakın Petit-Lancy Ko¨yu¨nde Pension Racine’de kurulan I˙kinci Yurdcular Derneg˘i’nin muzakerat ve mukerreratı (Istanbul: Yeni Turan Matbaası, n.d. [1913]), pp. 69 – 70; and Hans-Lukas Kieser, Tu¨rklu¨g˘e ihtida. 1870 –1939 I˙svicre’sinde yeni Tu¨rkiye’nin o¨ncu¨leri (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im), pp. 109– 14 and 250– 51. 9. Zafer Toprak, Milli I˙ktisat – Milli Burjuvazi: Tu¨rkiye’de Ekonomi ve Toplum (1908 – 1950) (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1995), p. 6. 10. Donald Bloxham and Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Genocide”, in Jay Winter and Charles J. Stille (eds), The Cambridge History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), vol. 1, pp. 594– 96. 11. Fuat Du¨ndar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878 – 1918) (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2010). See also European Journal of Turkish Studies 7 (2008), 12 (2011), and 16 (2013) on “Demographic Engineering”, available at http://ejts.revues.org.

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12. Manfred Gailus, Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur nationalsozialistischen Durchdringung des protestantischen Sozialmilieus in Berlin (Cologne: Bo¨hlau, 2001), pp. 637– 66. 13. Ali S. U¨rgu¨plu¨, Der Nachlass des Mustafa Hayri Efendi (Ph.D. diss., University of Bamberg, 2012), pp. 357– 61. 14. Mehmed S¸u¨kru¨, Heyet-i I˙htiyariye (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Askeriye, [1332]1916), pp. 45 – 6. 15. Jelle Verheij, “Diyarbekir and the Armenian Crisis of 1895”, in J. Jongerden and J. Verheij (eds), Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, 1870–1915 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 85–145; and idem, “Die armenischen Massaker von 1894–1896. Anatomie und Hintergru¨nde einer Krise”, in H. Kieser (ed.), Die armenische Frage und die Schweiz (1896–1923) (Zu¨rich: Chronos, 1999), pp. 69–129. 16. Hilmar Kaiser therefore prefers the specific term extermination to the broader term genocide in his analysis of Diyarbekir, one of the eastern provinces: The Extermination of Armenians in the Diarbekir Region (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2014). 17. See Chapter 7 by Mehmet Polatel and Chapter 8 by Thomas Schmutz in this volume. 18. Francois Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, le sultan calife (Paris: Fayard, 2003), p. 289. 19. Cavid Bey, Mes¸rutiyet Ruznaˆmesi (Ankara: TTK, 2014), p. 62. On Armenian loyalty toward the consitutional state, see also Erzurum Vali Celaˆl’s retrospective (“Ermeni vakayi’i, esbaˆb ve tesiratı”, Vakit, 29 November and 1 – 2 December 1919); and articles of Tanıˆn journalist Ahmet S¸erif, who toured through Anatolia in the years before 1914 (Anadolu’da Tanıˆn, ed. Mehmed C¸. Bo¨rekci [Ankara: TTK, 1999]). 20. Roderic Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774– 1923: The Impact of the West (London: Saqi Books, 1990), p. 196. 21. Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815– 1914. The Emergence of a European Concept and International Practice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 22. Verheij, “Diyarbekir and the Armenian Crisis of 1895”. 23. Yu¨cel Yanıkdag˘, Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914 – 1939 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 16 – 20. 24. C¸etinkaya, Young Turks and the Boycott Movement; Yavuz Ko¨se, “Between Protest and Envy: Foreign Companies and Ottoman Muslim Society”, in Eleni Gara, M. Erdem Kabadayı, and Christoph K. Neumann (eds), Popular Protest and Political Participation in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2011), pp. 261– 85. See Chapter 3 by Dog˘an C¸etinkaya in this volume. 25. Y. Dog˘an C¸etinkaya, “Atrocity Propaganda and the Nationalization of the Masses in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars (1912 –13)”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, 4 (November 2014), pp. 759– 78. 26. Cihad-ı Mukaddes yahud Trablusgarb’da Osmanlı-I˙talya Cengi (Izmir: Kes¸is¸yan Matbaası, 1327/1911).

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27. Mustafa Aksakal, “Holy War Made in Germany? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad Declaration”, War in History 18, 2 (2011), pp. 184– 99. 28. Ahmed Selaheddin, Makedonya Mes’elesi ve Balkan Harb-i Ahiri (Istanbul: Kanaat Matbaası 1331/1912): “Mesail-i azime hazıra, parlamento nutuklarıyla ve ekseriyetlerin kararıyla deg˘il, demirle, kanla hal olunacakdır. 30 Eylu¨l 1862” (this Bismarck citation is on the cover). 29. Mehmet Bes¸ikci, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 61 –7, 71 – 3. 30. M. Talha C¸icek, War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate during World War I (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 58 – 9. 31. For quotes, see Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 17 and 19. 32. Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War in 1914, pp. 103– 4. 33. Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, p. 52. 34. Halaskaˆr Mısır Ordu-yu I˙slamiyesi; see Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908– 1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 189. 35. This section borrows elements from the article “Minorities (Ottoman Empire/ Middle East)”, by Hans-Lukas Kieser, to be published in “1914– 1918 online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War”. 36. Du¨ndar, Crime of Numbers, pp. 78 – 9. 37. Taner Akcam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 97 – 123. 38. Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914– 1918 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), 28. “Turkey” appears in the original. 39. Raymond Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des Arme´niens (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), pp. 221 and 274– 82. 40. Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 73. Sazonov’s letter to Prime-Minister Ivan Goremykin appears in Otto Hoetsch (ed.), Die internationalen Beziehungen im Zeitalter des Imperialismus: Dokumente aus den Archiven der zarischen und der provisorischen Regierung, vol. 6 (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1934), pp. 144– 5. 41. David Gaunt, “The Ottoman Treatment of the Assyrians”, in Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Mu¨ge Go¨c¸ek, and Norman M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 249. 42. Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des Arme´niens, p. 285. 43. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Der verpasste Friede. Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu¨rkei 1839– 1938 (Zu¨rich: Chronos, 2000), pp. 448– 53. 44. David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2006), p. 63.

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45. Taner Akcam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 158– 93. 46. T. C. Genelkurmay Bas¸kanlıg˘ı, Ars¸iv belgeleriyle Ermeni faaliyetleri 1914– 1918 (Armenian Activities in the Archive Documents 1914– 1918) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basım Evi, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 424– 5; Akcam, Crime, pp. 186– 7. 47. E.g., in Eskis¸ehir – see Ahmed Refik, I˙ki komite, iki kital (Ankara: Kebikec, 1994), pp. 28– 46 – and in Urfa – see Jakob Ku¨nzler, In the Land of Blood and Tears: Experiences in Mesopotamia during the World War (1914 – 1918) (Arlington, Va.: Armenian Cultural Foundation, 2007), pp. 16 and 21. 48. Ars¸iv belgeleriyle, vol. 1, p. 79. 49. Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, pp. 247– 309. 50. Kaiser, Extermination of Armenians in Diarbekir, p. 217. A similar piece of retrospective justification for Talaat’s argument of 24 April 1915, of a general uprising is a report of the General Headquarters Ars¸iv belgeleriyle, vol. 1, pp. 27–121. 51. Directorate of Ottoman Archives, ed., Armenians in Ottoman Documents (1915 – 1920) (Ankara: Bas¸bakanlık Basımevi, 1995), p. 26. 52. Politisches Archiv des Auswa¨rtigen Amts, Berlin (hereafter PA-AA): Botschafter Wangenheim an das Auswa¨rtige Amt, 31 May 1915, PA-AA/ R14086; Johannes Lepsius, Der Todesgang des armenischen Volkes: Bericht u¨ber das Schicksal des armenischen Volkes in der Tu¨rkei wa¨hrend des Weltkrieges (Potsdam: Tempel, 1919), v– vii; Trumpener, Germany, pp. 209– 10. 53. David Gaunt, “Relations between Kurds and Syriacs and Assyrians in Late Ottoman Diyarbekir”, in Joost Jongerden and Jelle Verheij (eds), Social Relations in Ottoman Diarbekir, 1870– 1915 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 263. 54. Order in Gaunt, Massacres, p. 447. 55. Gaunt, Massacres, p. 188; Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des Arme´niens, p. 463. 56. Du¨ndar, Crime of Numbers, pp. 113– 19; Akcam, Crime, pp. 242– 63. 57. Aram Andonian, En ces sombres jours, trans. Herve´ Georgelin (Geneva: Me´tis, 2007); Hilmar Kaiser, At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas, 2001). 58. Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des Arme´niens, pp. 832– 9. 59. Andre´ N. Mandelstam, Le sort de l’empire ottoman, Lausanne: Payot, 1917, pp. 284– 5. Zaven Der Yeghiayan, My patriarchal memoirs (Barrington RI: Mayreni Publishing, 2002), p. 123. 60. German consul in Trabzon, Bergfeld, to the Reichskanzler on 9 July 1915, PAAA/R14086; Akcam, Crime, pp. 296– 301. 61. Kaiser, Extermination of Armenians in Diarbekir, p. 406, on the Mazhar Commission, and p. 403, regarding the activist Res¸id. 62. Cf. Chapter 5 by Michelle Campos in this book. 63. Fuat Du¨ndar, Modern Tu¨rkiyen’nin S¸ifresi. I˙ttihat ve Terakki’nin etnisite mu¨hendislig˘i (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2008), pp. 362– 95; Talha C¸icek, War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate during World War I, 1914– 1917 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 78 – 89.

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64. On the attitude of the Yishuv toward the Armenians in 1915, see Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2000), pp. 67 –95. 65. Rahmi Apak, Yetmis¸lik bir subayın hatıraları (Ankara: TTK, 1988), p. 95. 66. Celaˆl, “Ermeni vakayi’i, esbaˆb ve tesiratı”. 67. Cf. Kaiser, Extermination of Armenians in Diarbekir, pp. 415– 31.

CHAPTER 2

SEFERBERLIK: BUILDING UP THE OTTOMAN HOME FRONT Yig˘it Akın

Throughout the Second Constitutional Period, the Ottoman Empire suffered almost constantly from wars and internal rebellions, with only brief intervals of peace and tranquility. While provincial revolts in Albania, Syria, and Yemen sapped the empire’s military energy considerably, the war with the Italians in 1911 resulted in the loss of the last Ottoman provinces in Africa. None of these, however, proved to be more disastrous for the Ottomans than the Balkan wars of 1912– 13. The empire’s abrupt and humiliating defeat at the hands of four smaller Balkan states forced the government to relinquish most of its territory in Europe, home to almost 4 million inhabitants. The loss of these provinces, which had been under Ottoman rule for centuries, had enormous repercussions on Ottoman politics, society, and culture. A thorough consideration of the devastating experience of the Balkan wars is therefore essential to an understanding of the cataclysmic years of World War I. Many of the official policies and practices that would deeply affect the lives of Ottoman citizens during the war were actually based on the lessons drawn from the Balkan wars by the Unionist elite. The Balkan war experiences and the subsequent demands arising from the empire’s involvement in World War I led to dramatic changes in the way the Ottoman state functioned and its capacity for intervention.

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The Unionist elite strongly believed that one of the major reasons behind the Ottoman loss in the Balkan wars was the government’s reluctance and inability to implement policies that would help to mobilize all available resources for war purposes. They were determined not to repeat the same mistake in World War I. In order to wage a war of unprecedented scope effectively, the Ottoman government had to assume new powers, undertake new responsibilities, and expand its authority in many areas. In the aftermath of the Balkan wars, Ottoman policy makers were well aware of the fact that they could not wage and win the war with the existing “infrastructural capacity” of the Ottoman state.1 Before and during the war, government and military policies extended the state’s capacity to intervene in the distant corners of the empire to extract people and resources to a degree not seen before. The Ottoman home front was the main theatre of this process. Although the Balkan war experiences thoroughly shaped later Ottoman policies and practices, nowhere was this relationship more evident than in the tremendous task of transforming citizens into soldiers. Conscription of hundreds of thousands of Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans on the eve of World War I disrupted social relations throughout the empire, ruined local economies, and imposed enormous physical and psychological burdens on ordinary people on the home front. It dramatically altered the circumstances on the ground and constituted a key episode of the cataclysmic events, which eventually brought about the demise of the Ottoman social, ethnic, and religious fabric.

Balkan Wars and the New Law of Military Obligation (1914) For many observers, the Balkan wars manifested the fighting prowess, skill, and training of the soldiers in the Balkan armies (especially Bulgarian soldiers) while exposing the weaknesses of Ottoman army organization, as well as acute problems related to the conduct of the war and the wartime performance of conscripts.2 The conflict revealed the grim facts that the majority of Ottoman conscripts were not properly trained and that some were not trained at all during peacetime.3 When pitted against a strong, fast, and capable enemy, these soldiers panicked and deserted their ranks by the thousands.

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In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Unionist political and military elite responded to the collapse of the army with a comprehensive reform plan. The main goal of this massive reorganization was to revive the Ottoman army after the grave losses it had endured during the Balkan wars and turn it into an effective fighting force. The entire military system and army organization underwent a dramatic process of transformation and reorganization. From the creation of new military units and the elimination of old ones to the introduction of new training schemes, preparation of new campaign and mobilization plans, and formation of paramilitary youth organizations, the new leadership dealt with a series of problems that had been plaguing the Ottoman military system.4 Along with these changes, arguably the most crucial component of military reform proved to be the enactment of a new Law of Military Obligation in May 1914 (Mu¨kellefiyet-i Askeriye Kanun-ı Muvakkatı). The new law required all Ottoman male citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike (excluding the members of the Ottoman dynasty), to perform military service. Military obligation would commence after the recruits had reached 20 years of age and would end at the age of 45. However, in case of a war, the law permitted the conscription of Ottoman male citizens who were 19 and 20 years old. The new conscription law aimed primarily to increase the number of trained recruits by decreasing the active military service period to two years, thereby increasing the number of recruits drafted at each call. More important, the new law completely abolished exemptions permitted to those who were the sole breadwinners of their households (muin); limited the waiver of active service granted in return for an exemption fee (bedel) to peacetime; and severely restricted the exemption of government officials, religious functionaries, and students in universities and high schools. The political and military elites of the empire regarded exemptions as a major cause of the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan wars and an enduring problem that had eroded the strength of the once-mighty Ottoman army. “It is mostly because of such leniencies that seven million people of the Balkans could defeat twenty-five million Ottomans”, wrote Hafız Hakkı Bey, a leading Unionist officer and the future commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Third Army. With a significant portion of the male population exempt from military service, these privileges were starting

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to pose a serious threat to the very survival of the empire. “It is painful to separate a family, an old woman from her only support”, Hafız Hakkı Bey asserted. But, as the empire needed to conscript all of its men in order to survive, the Ottomans should endure this pain.5 Another officer, Lieutenant Colonel Behic Bey, similarly argued that the unnecessary leniency shown especially to the sole breadwinners (muins) resulted in the Balkan Muslims’ loss of their foremost protector (muin), the Ottoman state: “Their properties were extorted, their chastity and honor were trampled, their mosques were destroyed or converted into churches. The blood of innocent women and elders was shed. Why? Because the army was incapable of defending and protecting its nation.”6 Such exemptions, the Unionist leaders believed, severely impaired the army’s ability to fight. More than perhaps any other factor, they constituted a major obstacle to the army’s execution of its most fundamental duty. Convinced that modern wars could be won only by mobilizing all available resources of the nation and fielding well-trained, strong armies, the Unionists continually worked to harness as many ablebodied men as possible for the Ottoman military machine from the earliest days of their rule.7 However, recent political and military developments, particularly the disastrous Balkan war experiences of 1912–13, added fresh urgency to their concerns. The humiliating defeats inflicted on the Ottoman forces by the better organized and better trained armies of four Balkan states revealed the burning need for a stronger and wider net of conscription. The new Law of Military Obligation of 1914 was meant to address all these problems and thus marked a critical milestone in the universalization of military service in the Ottoman Empire. Through the law, the leaders of the Unionist regime sought to achieve a higher level of military preparedness and raise a more effective mass army for a future conflict they saw as unavoidable and imminent. A circular published by the central committee of the CUP in June 1914 stressed this point, portraying the new law of conscription as essential to the survival of the empire. The central committee commended the new law for requiring each and every able-bodied Ottoman man to serve in the military and regarded it as an important step toward the creation of the “armed nation” (millet-i mu¨sellaha).8 The abolition of exemptions, according to the circular, was at the core of the new legislation. The circular harshly criticized the outdated (ko¨hne) Law of Conscription of the

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Abdu¨lhamid era for exempting a significant portion of potential recruits from serving in the last conflict, while the Bulgarians had mobilized everyone: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, students and nonstudents alike. Even Bulgarian women were employed in transportation. By restricting these exemptions, the new law would allow the Ottomans to develop an equally formidable fighting force.9 The Law of Military Obligation of 1914 significantly extended the scope of conscription and provided an efficient legal tool for officials to intervene on the home front to extract men for the army. The law, however, attracted severe criticism from various social and political groups around the empire. Deputies from the Arab provinces, for instance, conveyed the anger of their people, “bordering on rebellion”, to Ismail Enver Pasha, who adamantly refused any revision of the law, saying, “We are on the verge of a general war, and I can in no way retract the law.”10 Similarly, the World Congress of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation held in Erzurum in July 1914 passed a resolution harshly criticizing new measures regarding the military service. “Accepting that everyone should fulfill his duty to serve his country”, the World Congress opposed the conscription of sole breadwinners (the “muensiz” (sic)) and proposed to draft Christians only up to the age of 31.11 These concerns and criticisms, not surprisingly, fell on deaf ears. For many individuals and social groups who had historically enjoyed the privilege of exemption from military service, it was a shocking experience to find out that they were also being called up when the mobilization for the war was ordered in August 1914.

Seferberlik: Ottoman Mobilization for World War I Upon the start of the war in Europe in early August 1914, the Ottoman Empire declared “armed neutrality” (mu¨sellah bitaraflık), which it maintained for almost three months. In the meantime, the Unionist leaders concluded a secret alliance with Germany.12 Aware of the fact that the rapidly escalating conflict would eventually spread to Ottoman lands, the Unionist leadership wanted to keep the army prepared for a war. For that purpose, it decided to order the mobilization (seferberlik) of the army and the navy immediately after the first shots were fired on European battlefields. Several leading military and civilian figures, as well as some cabinet ministers, objected to the idea of ordering a general

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mobilization on the grounds that such a comprehensive call to arms might provoke Russia and, more important, would place an insurmountable burden on the Ottoman people and bankrupt the empire.13 Other ministers and, particularly, high-ranking officers argued in favour of the mobilization, maintaining that it might take an extensive amount of time to prepare the army for conflict. Enver Pasha, the main architect of the alliance with Germany, was aware of the fact that the army was not ready to fight. In March 1914, he had explained to cabinet members that he needed at least five years of peace to prepare it for a major war.14 Thus it seems reasonable to argue that he might have wanted to exploit this opportunity to train a significant portion of the male population and acquaint them with military discipline and combat techniques. The lessons of the Balkan wars once again came into focus and led the government and the army’s high command to proceed with mobilization before losing any more time. In the First Balkan War, only two weeks had passed from the beginning of the Ottoman mobilization to the outbreak of the war. Not surprisingly, the imperial army was caught woefully underprepared for a war against four Balkan armies. The Ottoman state announced the mobilization mainly through newspapers, town criers, and red posters decorated with green flags, a gun, a saber, and a cannon. Local state officials placed these posters on the walls of government buildings, mosques, coffeehouses, and schools and also sent them to village headmen to be placed accordingly.15 The message on the poster was plain and simple: “Mobilization is in effect. All soldiers to arms!” (“Seferberlik var. Asker olanlar silah altına”).16 Its meaning, however, was difficult to comprehend for many. Although the criers explained the message to those who could not read it, the announcement of mobilization through visual material was a novelty for Ottomans, and many did not know how to respond to the call. The initial confusion was profound.17 In some places, people mistook the second word, var (literally, “there is/are”), with van (the name of a town in eastern Anatolia), as the last letter written on the poster, r, resembled the letter n of the Ottoman alphabet.18 It soon became clear that the Ottoman state had effectively ordered the conscription of all males, regardless of ethnicity or religion, between the ages of 20 and 45 who were fit for service. The law concerning the draft and related announcements specifically stated that the inhabitants of the capital city and all non-Muslims (bilumum milel-i gayri mu¨slime),

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who had historically been exempted from military service, were now obliged to serve.19 Street criers announced everywhere the state’s order that all eligible men would have to show up at the nearest enlistment office within five days. By the time the general mobilization was ordered, 200,000 soldiers were already in uniform (those born in 1891– 93).20 With the mobilization, 16 classes of the active army’s reserves (ihtiyat, those born in 1875– 90) and seven classes of territorial guards (mu¨stahfız, those born in 1868– 74) were summoned. According to the new mobilization plans, the army aimed at expanding its fighting power to 450,000 men-at-arms. By mid-October 1914, the Ottoman state had reached this number and managed to bring a total of nearly a million men under arms, including the soldiers employed in the logistics organization, fortress garrisons, and coastal defenses.21 Contemporary observers noticed the high turnout of draftees in the early days of mobilization. However, they attributed this interest almost exclusively to citizens’ eagerness to join the ranks and to serve in the army to protect the empire and Islam against their enemies. What they neglected is an extremely important amendment to the Military Penal Law (Askeri Ceza Kanunname-i Hu¨mayunu) that might have been the prime mover behind recruits’ rush to enlistment offices. The amendment called for severe punishments of those who did not enlist and those who deserted their battalions. According to the new law, men who did not show up at recruitment centres within ten days of having received the draft order and who lacked any valid excuse (mazaret-i sahihe) would be subject to capital punishment. Those who deserted and failed to return within seven days would also be sentenced to death. In addition, the law condemned to prison those who facilitated such crimes and were negligent or lenient in the application of these new provisions.22 People generally heard about the order of mobilization concurrently with state’s threat of execution by hanging. The army’s high command asked the army corps to expend every effort in announcing the provisions of this new law so as to expedite the mobilization process and to maintain the highest possible rate of participation.23 Official proclamations and town criers, who summoned people to recruitment offices to enlist, announced that noncompliance would be met with severe punishment.24 For instance, an official statement published in al-Ittihad al-Uthmani regarding those who did not report for duty reads: “Those who do not come to the barracks within forty-eight hours and do

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not establish their presence . . . will be subject to investigation and their relatives punished instead of them. If they flee, they will be executed immediately upon arrest. As for those reported within the appointed time, they will be excused.”25 In a similar vein, the proclamation of the governor of Baghdad, published to stir the enthusiasm of Muslims for the war, openly included this threat by citing examples from the capital: “Those who deserted or did not obey the invitation to join the army according to the lists to be submitted by conscription branches were, without loss of time, executed in Constantinople.”26 Gendarmes and policemen who patrolled the streets day and night routinely asked people for evidence of enlistment or exemption and reminded them of the dire consequences of noncompliance.27 Due mostly to this threat of severe punishment, the first mobilization call brought in high turnouts. Except for a few regions where the state’s authority was relatively weak, people throughout the empire rushed to conscription offices (ahz-ı asker ¸subeleri) to enlist. The sight of thousands of recruits flocking to town centres and recruiting stations, sometimes with their families, led contemporary Ottoman observers to liken these buildings to “messy marketplaces” (intizamsız pazar yerleri)28 and the general situation to “the day of judgment” (mahs¸er gu¨nu¨).29 Muhammad Izzat Darwaza, a postal official in Nablus, described those first days of mobilization as “an apocalypse, which appeared in the form of thousands of people from towns and villages all around the empire registering their names and receiving their documents in enlistment offices in the space of a week”.30 Without taking into consideration the enormous demands created by the need to shelter and provide for tens of thousands of men, the military authorities called up all classes at once. In the words of the head of the enlistment office in a small Anatolian town, “except for the invalids and the elderly, no one remained outside the reach of conscription”.31 It was most likely the lack of regular and reliable population records and military rolls that compelled the authorities to act in this manner. They could not be certain how many people would respond to the recruitment call and whether that number would suffice to meet the wartime needs of the army.32 In the face of this uncertainty and immeasurable risk, calling up the highest number of potential recruits must have seemed to Unionist leaders and the army’s high command to be the safest way to ensure a sizable fighting force.

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The recruits’ suffering, which for many of them would continue for four long years, started even before they officially became soldiers. Although they were ordered to take with them five days’ worth of their own food,33 in many places recruits had to wait much longer, sometimes weeks, to be enlisted. As all the available inns, hotels, and other facilities in towns were overflowing with recruits, those remaining had to stay wherever they could while waiting their turn to enroll and be assigned to their respective units. This lack of organization produced disheartening scenes of soldiers sleeping in the streets and in mosque yards and seeking help from civilians.34 Kazım Karabekir, then a major and the head of the Bureau of Intelligence at the army headquarters, recounts his mother’s imprecations (beddua), directed at the authorities who caused this suffering, when she witnessed the lamentable condition of soldiers sleeping in the yard of the Fatih Mosque.35 These scenes must have created the impression in the minds of both soldiers and civilian witnesses that the Ottoman state was not fully prepared for the mobilization and upcoming war.

The Impact of the Mobilization With the announcement of the mobilization and the accompanying threat of death for noncompliance, a wave of fear and anxiety swept through Ottoman towns and villages. This fear emanated not only from the extremely negative perceptions of military service that were prevalent but also from the terror created by police officers, gendarmes, and governmental officials responsible for the conscription process. Especially in places where the records of potential recruits in enlistment offices were missing or incomplete, patrols went from house to house searching for men of draft age. On the streets and in public places, they asked for the necessary documentation evidencing exemption, the absence of which usually meant immediate detention and draft.36 In the words of a Jew from Baghdad, “The Turkish gendarmerie hunted us like wild animals and when we were caught they sent us to the qishle [barracks] and treated us like prisoners of war.”37 The fear and anxiety caused by the mobilization led men eligible for military service in some regions to flee to areas where they thought they would be more secure.38 The mobilization’s immediate impact was quite visible in Ottoman towns and throughout the countryside. An American observer of the mobilization in Syria rightfully argued that, in the ten days between

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1 and 10 August 1914, the whole country was completely transformed. Conscription of a significant section of the male population brought the commercial life of the region to a halt: “There were no young men to be seen in the streets, shops were closed, business was paralyzed, and the anxious countenances of women and children already bespoke fear and anxiety as to where they should find their next meal.”39 The conscription of hundreds of thousands of men had badly depleted Ottoman towns and villages. An eyewitness account notes similar negative effects on Baghdad caused by the mobilization and the war: “The streets of the inner town, through which it was hard to move in 1912, gaped emptily. The shops were mostly closed, the coffeehouses only half filled, and the countrywomen who sold food in normal times were absent. . . . There was no longer any life in the town, formerly one of the busiest in the Orient.”40 Along with the economic recession in cities, a major problem resulting from the mobilization was the removal of a considerable portion of the labour force from agricultural production during the high season. The government’s call and accompanying threat of capital punishment obliged thousands of agricultural producers to abandon their crops and rush to the town centres.41 Clarence Douglas Ussher, an American physician and missionary stationed in Van, vividly described the abrupt cessation of farm work in the early days of mobilization: Sickles lying in half-cut fields of grain, sheaves of wheat dropped on the way to the stack, and a little later weeping women with bags of bread or clothing on their backs running to overtake their men, who had been taken from the fields without time allowed them to secure necessary provisions from their homes or to say good-bye to their families. Conscription – for a war not yet declared.42 This turned out to be a gross mistake on the part of the Unionist government, as the crop yield in 1914 was exceptionally good.43 The observations of Dr Daniel Thom, a longtime missionary in Mardin, indicate the most deplorable effects of the war on agriculture: The government has robbed the city, and the country around, of its men, of its animals, of its money, leaving the threshing floors loaded down with a richer harvest than has ever been laid upon, to

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rot where they [the crops] are, for lack of men and beasts to tread them out and care for them. The millions that will be lost to the people and the Government cannot be estimated. Such a suicidal conduct of a government I have not seen, during this variegated life I have lived.44 Satisfied with the unexpectedly high turnout rate and concerned about the unfinished harvest work in the fields, the Ottoman state decided to release a certain segment of recruits, those who were older and untrained (gayri muallem, soldiers 38 to 45 years of age), on a temporary basis.45 By discharging this older segment of recruits, the army aimed not only to accelerate the harvest but also to mitigate the problem of provisioning, which, for many military units around the empire, was becoming increasingly unbearable by the day. Recruits who had been released were instructed to be ready to rejoin their respective units when given 24 hours’ notice. In his edict on the conscription issued on 13 August 1914, the sultan expressed his gratitude for his subjects’ willingness to join the colours and emphasized his desire to live in peace. He also underscored his expectations of those who were released to carry out the farm work of their brothers under arms. Similarly, in his proclamation on the conscription and discharges, Enver Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman armies, stated that the effort and enthusiasm were good signs, but, in order to get rid of the “shame of desertion of the Balkan War”, the army should be willing to make the greatest sacrifices with its very heart and soul.46 While the released soldiers were allowed to return to their villages for a short time, thousands of younger recruits were leaving towns for gathering locations (tecemmu¨ bo¨lgeleri) or depot regiments (depo alayları), where they would receive rudimentary military training. Recruits from the same town were usually sent together under the supervision of an officer. As they were leaving their hometowns, high officials, religious authorities, family members, relatives, schoolchildren, and others would often bid farewell to them and accompany their convoys for a couple of miles. These farewell scenes were heart-rending, as both the recruits and the people who were sending them off knew that there was little chance they would ever return from the battlefields. In the words of a soldier who was preparing to leave his relatives and his hometown, “The mountains are crying, the stones are crying, in short, the world is crying.”47 From time to time,

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anger and frustration also poured out of these farewell ceremonies. In Malatya, for instance, an old woman reacted angrily to people shouting “Long live the sultan” (Padis¸ahım C¸ok Yas¸a): “Down with the Sultan! Those who left [for the fronts] never returned. He wiped out our people.”48 To avoid these kinds of disturbances and tragic scenes, some convoys left the towns at night, when martial law kept people indoors.49

The Mobilization and Ottoman Non-Muslims While the Ottoman state coped with the task of filling the ranks, significant developments were taking place regarding the conscription of non-Muslim subjects. As discussed above, the call for mobilization included all male subjects of the empire, irrespective of their ethnoreligious identity. The recruitment of non-Muslim soldiers, however, had always been a controversial issue for the Ottomans, and that had not changed since 1909, when their exemption from service was formally abolished.50 Despite occasional calls for equality before the law and fellowship in carrying the burdens of protecting “the Ottoman nation”, neither Muslims nor non-Muslims had shown much enthusiasm for the idea of serving together in the ranks.51 During World War I, however, conscription became an equally insurmountable burden for Ottoman non-Muslims, who, on the eve of the war, constituted about 20 per cent of the empire’s population. Even before the start of the war, the army high command seemed to be developing a strong sense of distrust toward non-Muslim soldiers. This was another legacy of the Balkan wars. In the first days of mobilization, the Ministry of Interior sent a circular to the provinces regarding the army’s decision to employ non-Muslim soldiers in road construction.52 This decision, however, was not intended to separate all non-Muslims from their units by sending them to labour battalions. There is evidence that the army began to disarm Armenian soldiers in eastern Anatolia and place them in labour battalions in October 1914.53 But especially after its defeat on the Caucasus front, the army embraced a considerably more radical stance toward non-Muslim soldiers. Responding to rumours that increasing numbers of Armenians were voluntarily surrendering to the enemy or sharing secrets about Ottoman forces, in February 1915 the army high command decided to remove non-Muslims from active service and form them into labour battalions.

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Before being sent to labour battalions, the soldiers were disarmed and their uniforms were taken away. For many of them, this was a humiliating shock. Alexander Aaronsohn, a Jewish soldier from a small village named Zicron-Jacob south of Mount Carmel (today Haifa in northern Israel), recalls his feelings as follows: “I shall never forget the humiliation of that day when we, who, after all, were the best-disciplined troops of the lot, were first herded to our work of pushing wheelbarrows and handling spades, by grinning Arabs, rifle on shoulder.”54 In a similar vein, Khalil Sakakini, an Arab Orthodox Christian and a noted intellectual, recorded this feeling of humiliation in his diary: Today a large number of Christians were recruited as garbage collectors to Bethlehem and Bait Jala. Each was given a broom, a shovel, and a bucket and they were distributed among the alleys of the town. Conscripts would shout at each home they passed, “send us your garbage.” The women of Bethlehem looked out from their windows and wept. No doubt this is the ultimate humiliation. We have gone back to the days of bondage in Roman and Assyrian days.55 The fear of being disarmed, the humiliation, and the increased sense of threat and foreboding led many non-Muslim soldiers to desert the labour battalions.56 The army usually employed the soldiers of labour battalions in constructing new roads and repairing old ones; cutting down trees for fuel for locomotives; transporting wood, ammunition, and other military provisions; and in several municipal services.57 Ottoman authorities also used labour battalions in the Arab provinces of the empire, in the cities of Beirut, Damascus, Jaffa, and Aleppo, not only for military construction but also for grandiose renovation projects initiated by Cemal Pasha, the commander general of the Fourth Ottoman Army. War, in the words of historian Salim Tamari, transformed these provinces “into one huge construction site”, and these battalions provided the necessary free labour.58 Not surprisingly, non-Muslim soldiers employed in labor battalions suffered from extreme weather conditions, back-breaking work, undernourishment, and, finally, mistreatment at the hands of their guards. When the deportation of the Armenians began in April

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1915, unarmed Armenian soldiers in labour battalions found themselves to be, in the words of Erik J. Zu¨rcher, “sitting ducks”. Especially on the eastern front, they were either marched off to their deaths or killed by gendarmes and tribesmen.59

Conclusion Conscription proved to be a major component of the wartime experience for the Ottoman home-front population. Mobilization on such a scale was disruptive for society and disastrous for the economy. The exigencies of the war compelled the state to find ever new ways to extract men in order to fill the depleted ranks of the army. By continuously amending existing laws, drafting new legislation, and resorting to extrajudicial methods of recruitment, the government and the army’s high command sought to cast the net of conscription as widely as they could. In the words of Bronsart von Schellendorff, the chief of the Ottoman General Staff, they “screw[ed] the bolt as tight as possible” in order to get the most out of the country’s available manpower resources.60 While the state continuously tried to improve its extractive capacity by adopting new measures, hundreds of thousands of Ottoman soldiers evaded service or deserted their ranks over the course of the war. The Balkan war experiences played a critical role in shaping the mind-set of the Unionist elite about the manpower mobilization. The new Law of Military Obligation proved to be a product of their anxieties, prejudices, and observations. The Unionists’ determination to field a big, trained, capable, and reliable army deeply affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans and their families. Later cataclysmic events, which marked the demise of the Ottoman ethno-religious fabric, would take place on such dramatically transformed social landscape.

Notes 1. Here, I use the term infrastructural capacity in the sense that has been developed by Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results”, Archives europe´enes de sociologie 25 (1984), pp. 185–213. 2. The Ottomans debated the reasons for the defeat heatedly and extensively. For examples, see A. [Ali I˙hsan Sabis], Balkan Harbinde Neden Mu¨nhezim Olduk?

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4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

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(Dersaadet: Kitabhane-i I˙slam ve Askeri, 1329 [1913]); A. [Ali I˙hsan Sabis], Balkan Harbinde Askeri Mag˘lubiyetlerimizin Esbabı: [Neden Mu¨nhezim Olduk] Eserinin Kısm-ı Sanisidir (Dersaadet: Kitabhane-i I˙slam ve Askeri, 1329 [1913]); Ali Fethi, Bolayır Muharebesinde Adem-i Muvaffakiyetin Esbabı: “Askeri Mag˘lubiyetlerimizin Esbabı Muharririne Cevap” (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1330 [1914]). Res¸at Hallı, Balkan Harbi (1912 – 1913), vol.1, Harbin Sebepleri, Askeri Hazırlıklar ve Osmanlı Devletinin Harbe Giris¸i (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1970), pp. 121–2; Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatu¨rk (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger Security International/ABC-CLIO, 2009), pp. 232– 3. Mehmet Bes¸ikci, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 102– 7. Hafız Hakkı, Bozgun (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1330 [1914]), pp. 145– 6. Kaymakam Behic, Mu¨kellefiyet-i Askeriye Kanun-ı Muvakkatının I˙zahı (Istanbul: Kitabhane-i I˙slam ve Askeri, 1331 [1915]), 9. For more on the impact of these policies on Ottoman women, see Yig˘it Akın, “War, Women, and the State: The Politics of Sacrifice in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War”, Journal of Women’s History 26, 3 (2014), pp. 12 – 35. The CUP managed to curtail a number of exemptions from the military service, including those granted to non-Muslims, inhabitants of the capital city, and students of religious seminaries, from 1909 onward. See, e.g., Mehmet Hacısalihog˘lu, “Inclusion and Exclusion: Conscription in the Ottoman Empire”, Journal of Modern European History 5, 2 (2007), pp. 277– 84; Ufuk Gu¨lsoy, Osmanlı Gayrimu¨slimlerinin Askerlik Seru¨veni (Istanbul: Simurg Yayınları, 2000), pp. 127– 71; Amit Bein, “Politics, Military Conscription, and Religious Education in the Late Ottoman Empire”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, 2 (2006), pp. 294– 8; Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, pp. 95 –102. “Millet-i Mu¨sellahaya Dog˘ru: Ordu Nasıl Tes¸kil Edilir?” Tanin (27 June 1914), p. 3. The term armed nation was coined by Colmar von der Goltz in his extremely influential Das Volk in Waffen (1883). “Millet-i Mu¨sellahaya Dog˘ru: Ordu Nasıl Tes¸kil Edilir?” Tanin (27 June 1914), p. 3. See also “Millet-i Mu¨sellahaya Dog˘ru: Yeni Ahz-ı Asker Kanunu Etrafında”, Tanin (23 June 1914), p. 3. Actually, the British General Staff War Office stated that the Law of 1914 was “unquestionably an imitation of the Bulgarian military law”. See Handbook of the Turkish Army (London: The Imperial War Museum, 1996 [1916]), p. 32. Kamal S. Salibi, “Beirut under the Young Turks: As Depicted in the Political Memoirs of Salim ’Ali Salam, (1868 – 1938)”, in Jacques Berque and Dominique Chevallier (eds), Les Arabes par leurs archives (XVIe-XXe siecles) (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1976), p. 211.

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11. Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908– 1914 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004), p. 220. 12. For the details of this process, see Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 13. Cavid Bey, the Minister of Finance, and C¸u¨ru¨ksulu Mahmud Pasha, the Minister of Public Works, were the two most vocal politicians who opposed the idea of a general mobilization. Sene 1334 Meclis-i Mebusan Encu¨men Mazbataları ve Tekalif-i Kanuniyye ile Said Halim ve Mehmet Talat Pas¸alar Kabineleri Azalarının Divan-ı Aliye Sevkleri Hakkında Bes¸inci S¸ubece I˙cra Kılınan Tahkikat, vol.1 (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 1993), pp. 99 – 102. For the criticism of Ahmet I˙zzet Pasha, a well-respected military figure and the former Minister of War, see Ahmet I˙zzet Pas¸a, Feryadım, vol.1 (Istanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1992), p. 182. 14. Report dated 23 March 1914, by M. N. Girs, Russia’s ambassador to the Porte, to Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov, cited in Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908– 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 107. 15. In some districts, sealed envelopes containing mobilization posters had been distributed to village leaders beforehand, with strict instructions not to open them until ordered to do so. With the mobilization, gendarmes brought orders to open envelopes. Eugene Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850 –1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 220; Emin C¸o¨l, C¸anakkale-Sina Savas¸ları: Bir Erin Anıları (Istanbul: No¨betci Yayınevi, 2009 [1977]), pp. 21 –2; Frances E. Newton, Fifty Years in Palestine (London and Brussels: Coldharbour Press, 1948), p. 105. 16. “Seferberlik I˙lanı”, I˙kdam (3 August 1914), p. 1. 17. Levent Alpat, Bir Osmanlı Askerinin Anıları, ed. Ozan Arslan and Ahmet Mehmetefendiog˘lu (I˙zmir: S¸enocak Yayınları, 2010), p. 67. 18. M. To¨rehan Serdar, Bitlis’in I˙¸sgali ve Kurtulus¸u (Bitlis: Van Yu¨zu¨ncu¨ Yıl U¨niversitesi Bitlis Meslek Yu¨ksek Okulu Yayınları, 1995), p. 2. 19. “45 Yas¸ına Kadar Olanların Hizmet-i Askeriye ile Mu¨kellefiyetleri Hakkında Kanun-u Muvakkat”, Du¨stur, I˙kinci Tertip, vol. 6, 11 Ramazan 1332 (3 August 1914), pp. 912– 13. As discussed above, these groups had been liable for service since 1909, but the law once again underlined their obligation. 20. Tu¨rk Silahlı Kuvvetleri Tarihi, vol. 3, pt. 6: 1908– 1920 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1971), p. 288; Cemal Akbay, Birinci Du¨nya Harbi’nde Tu¨rk Harbi, vol.1: Osmanlı I˙mparatorlug˘u’nun Siyasi ve Askeri Hazırlıkları ve Harbe Giris¸i (Ankara: Genelkurmay Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etu¨t Bas¸kanlıg˘ı Yayınları, 1991), p. 127. Maurice Larcher gives this number as 150,000 and argues that the active army was composed of two classes. See Maurice Larcher, La guerre turque dans la guerre mondiale (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1926), p. 590. 21. Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, Ct., and London: Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 7; Akbay,

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23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

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Birinci Du¨nya Harbi’nde Tu¨rk Harbi, p. 127; Ali I˙hsan Sabis, Harb Hatıralarım, vol.1, Birinci Cihan Harbinden Evvelki Hadiseler, Harbin Zuhuru ve Seferberlik I˙lanı, Harbe Nasıl Su¨ru¨klendik? (Istanbul: I˙nkılap Kitabevi, 1943), pp. 195– 6. Sabis, who was then a major and the head of the Bureau of Operations at the Ottoman Chief of Staff, also gives the distribution of this number for the army corps. For an informed discussion of these numbers, see also Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, pp. 112– 15. BOA.DH.HMS¸ 23/102 (6 August 1914); “Askeri Ceza Kanunu’na Mu¨zeyyel Kanun-u Muvakkat”, Du¨stur, I˙kinci Tertip, vol. 6, 14 Ramazan 1332 (6 August 1914), pp. 981– 2. For the circular issued by the Ministry of War on the implementation of this law, see Yarbay Selahattin, Kafkas Cephesi’nde 10 ncu Kolordunun Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı’nın Bas¸langıcından Sarıkamıs¸ Muharebelerinin Sonuna Kadar Olan Harekatı, ed. Zekeriya Tu¨rkmen, Alev Keskin, and Fatma I˙lhan (Ankara: Genelkurmay Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etu¨t Bas¸kanlıg˘ı Yayınları, 2006 [1931]), p. 5. Selahattin, Kafkas Cephesi’nde 10 ncu Kolordunun, p. 6. See, e.g., S¸evket Rado, ed., “Tu¨rk I˙stiklal Savas¸ının Arifesinde Bir Emekli Subayın Not Defteri: Birinci Umumi Harpte ve Mu¨tareke Gu¨nlerinde I˙stanbul”, Hayat Tarih Mecmuası 1 (1971), p. 5; Abraham H. Hartunian, Neither to Laugh nor to Weep: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide by Abraham H. Hartunian, trans. Vartan Hartunian (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 52; I˙. Hakkı Sunata, Gelibolu’dan Kafkaslara: Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı Anılarım, ed. Mu¨rs¸it Balabanlılar (Istanbul: Tu¨rkiye I˙s¸ Bankası Ku¨ltu¨r Yayınları, 2003), p. 20; Henry H. Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915– 1917 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Gomidas Institute, 1997), p. 3; Siham Tergeman, Daughter of Damascus, trans. Andrea Rugh (Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1994), p. 176. Nicholas Z. Ajay, Jr., “Mount Lebanon and the Wilayah of Beirut, 1914– 1918: The War Years”, (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1972), p. 157. National Archives of the United States (hereafter “National Archives”), RG 59, 867.00/735 (8 August 1914). I˙zzet Derveze, Osmanlı Filistininde Bir Posta Memuru, trans. Ali Benli (Istanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2007), pp. 315– 16. Baki, Bu¨yu¨k Harpte Kafkas Cephesi, vol. 1, Methal: Tes¸kilat, Seferberolma, Tecemmu¨, Harp I˙lanına Kadar (Istanbul: Askeri Matbaa, 1933), p. 36. Mehmet Dervis¸ Kuntman, Bir Doktorun Harp ve Memleket Anıları, ed. Metin O¨zata (2nd ed.; Ankara: Genelkurmay Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etu¨t Bas¸kanlıg˘ı Yayınları, 2010), p. 71. Derveze, Osmanlı Filistininde Bir Posta Memuru, p. 316. Sebahattin Engin, ed., Seferden Sefere: Piyade Albay M. Hilmi Engin’in Balkan, 1. Du¨nya ve Kurtulus¸ Savas¸ı Anıları (Konya: Ko¨men Yayınları, 2007), p. 87. Sabis, Harb Hatıralarım, 111; Kaymakam S¸erif Bey, Sarıkamıs¸ I˙hata Manevrası, ed. Murat C¸ulcu (Istanbul: Arba Yayınları, 1998 [1922]), pp. 60 – 1. See also the statements of Bronsart von Schellendorff on the lack of reliable data about

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33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

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the people who would and could be drafted: “1914– 1918 Du¨nya Savas¸ında Tu¨rk Askeri Hareketlerinin Kısaca Tasviri”, in Akdes Nimet Kurat (ed.), Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı Sırasında Tu¨rkiye’de Bulunan Alman Generallerinin Raporları (Ankara: Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨nu¨ Aras¸tırma Enstitu¨su¨ Yayınları, 1966), p. 27. Fahri C¸akır, Elli Yıl O¨nce S¸ark Cephesi ve Anadolu Hatıraları (Istanbul: C¸ınar Matbaası, 1967), p. 9; Gu¨liz Bes¸e Erginsoy, ed., Dedem Hu¨seyin Atıf Bes¸e: Bir Cemiyet-i Osmaniye Askerinin Savas¸ Hatıratı ve Bir Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti Vatandas¸ının Yas¸am O¨yku¨su¨ (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 2004), p. 135; Clarence Douglas Ussher, An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and in War (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917), p. 216; Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia, p. 3; “Seferberlik I˙lanı”, I˙kdam (3 August 1914), p. 1. Sami O¨nal (ed.), Tug˘general Ziya Yergo¨k’u¨n Anıları: Sarıkamıs¸’tan Esarete (1915 – 1920) (6th ed.; Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2006), pp. 23 – 4; Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia, p. 6. Kazım Karabekir, Birinci Cihan Harbine Nasıl Girdik, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Emre Yayınları, 1994 [1937]), pp. 163– 4. Reeva Spector Simon, “The View from Baghdad”, in The Creation of Iraq, 1914– 1922, ed. Reeva Spector Simon and Eleanor H. Tejirian (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 40– 1; Derveze, Osmanlı Filistininde Bir Posta Memuru, pp. 315– 16; Damar Arıkog˘lu, Hatıralarım (Istanbul: Tan Gazetesi ve Matbaası, 1961), p. 63. Mordechai Zaken, Jewish Subjects and Their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan: A Study in Survival (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), p. 272. In Beirut, for instance, people fled to Mount Lebanon, as this region enjoyed a special status that provided its residents exemption from several taxes and military service. National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/638 (3 August 1914); National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/659 (22 August 1914). On the special status of Mount Lebanon in this period, see Engin Akarlı, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861– 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Margaret McGilvary, The Dawn of a New Era in Syria (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2001 [1920]), p. 58. Alois Musil, The Middle Euphrates: A Topographical Itinerary (New York: AMS Press, 1978 [1927]), pp. 128– 9. Along similar lines, the Reverend E. C. Woodley of Maras¸ reported that trade was at a standstill and that half of the shops in the bazaar were closed. E. C. Woodley, “The State of Things in Marash”, Missionary Herald 110 (1914), p. 510. M. Zekai Konrapa, Bolu Tarihi (Bolu: Bolu Vilayet Matbaası, 1960), p. 615. Ussher, American Physician in Turkey, pp. 213– 14. Ahmed Emin Yalman, Yakın Tarihte Go¨rdu¨klerim ve Gecirdiklerim, vol. 1, 1888– 1918 (Istanbul: Yenilik Basımevi, 1970), p. 270. Apparently, the same was true for the cotton crop, which, in the words of the US consul in Mersin, “promised to be the largest in the history of the province of Adana” but “will doubtless go to waste for the most part”. See National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/652 (15 August 1914).

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44. Cited in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu¨rkei, 1839– 1938 (Zu¨rich: Chronos Verlag, 2000), p. 336. 45. Which classes were temporarily released varied from region to region. In Aleppo, for instance, seven classes of cavalry and artillery from ages 33 to 40 were released and given notice that they must answer the call within 12 hours. See National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/677 (3 September 1914). According to British intelligence reports, men from 23 to 30 years of age were mostly drafted into active units, while men from 30 to 38 years of age were sent to depot formations for training. Some men from 38 to 45 years of age received rudimentary training for a few weeks and were then sent home with instructions to be ready to rejoin when ordered to do so. F. J. Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914–1918 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923), p. 31. 46. For the sultan’s edict and Enver Pasha’s declaration, see Arif Baytın, I˙lk Du¨nya Harbi’nde Kafkas Cephesi: Sessiz O¨lu¨m, Sarıkamıs¸ Gu¨nlu¨g˘u¨, ed. I˙smail Dervis¸og˘lu (Istanbul: Yeditepe Yayınevi, 2007 [1946]), pp. 16 – 17. 47. Ali Rıza Eti, Bir Onbas¸ının Dog˘u Cephesi Gu¨nlu¨g˘u¨, (1914– 1915), ed. Go¨nu¨l Eti (Istanbul: Tu¨rkiye I˙s¸ Bankası Ku¨ltu¨r Yayınları, 2009), p. 8. 48. Adnan Is¸ık, Malatya, 1830– 1919 (Istanbul: n.p., 1998), p. 763. 49. See, e.g., the observations of the Reverend John E. Merrill, president of the Central Turkey College in Antep (Aintab): John E. Merrill, “Seen and Heard in Aintab”, Missionary Herald 110 (1914), p. 509. 50. “Anasır-ı Gayrimu¨slimenin Kuraları Hakkında Kanun”, Du¨stur, I˙kinci Tertip, vol. 1, 20 Recep 1327 (August 7, 1909): 420; Sinan Kuneralp, “I˙kinci Mes¸rutiyet Do¨neminde Gayrimu¨slimlerin Askerlik Meselesi (1908– 1912)”, Toplumsal Tarih 72 (1999), pp. 11 – 15. 51. Ufuk Gu¨lsoy, Osmanlı Gayrimu¨slimlerinin Askerlik Seru¨veni (Istanbul: Simurg Yayınları, 2000); Mehmet Hacısalihog˘lu, “Inclusion and Exclusion: Conscription in the Ottoman Empire”, Journal of Modern European History 5 (2007), pp. 266– 83; Erik J. Zu¨rcher, “The Ottoman Conscription System in Theory and Practice, 1844– 1918”, in Erik J. Zu¨rcher (ed.), Arming the State: Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia, 1775– 1925 (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 1999), pp. 87 – 90. 52. BOA.DH.S¸FR 43/214 (10 August 1914). 53. Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005), p. 228; Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, p. 131. 54. Alexander Aaronsohn, With the Turks in Palestine (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916), p. 24. 55. Khalil Sakakini, Yawmiyat, vol. 2, 28 March 1915, pp. 158– 9. Cited in Salim Tamari, “The Short Life of Private Ihsan: Jerusalem 1915”, Jerusalem Quarterly 30 (2007), p. 47. 56. Ussher, American Physician in Turkey, p. 217; Cengiz Mutlu, Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı’nda Amele Taburları (1914 – 1918) (Istanbul: IQ Ku¨ltu¨r Sanat Yayıncılık, 2007); Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, p. 134.

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57. Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah / The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah (Zu¨rich: Chronos Verlag, 2002), p. 191; Stanford J. Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War I, vol. 1, Prelude to War (Ankara: Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2006), pp. 339– 52. Citing ¨ zdemir, “I. Du¨nya Savas¸ı’nda Amele Taburları” (master’s thesis, Gazi Zekeriya O University, 1994), Bes¸ikci gives the number of soldiers employed in labour battalions as revolving around 100,000. See Bes¸ikci, Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, p. 132. 58. Salim Tamari, “The Great War and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past”, in Camille Mansour and Leila Fawaz (eds), Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East in Honor of Walid Khalidi (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2009), p. 108. See also Ali Fuad Erden, Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı’nda Suriye Hatıraları (Istanbul: Tu¨rkiye I˙s¸ Bankası Ku¨ltu¨r Yayınları, 2003), p. 94. 59. Zu¨rcher, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I”, p. 192; Raymond H. Ke´vorkian, “Recueil de te´moignages sur l’extermination des amele tabouri ou battaillons de soldats-ouvriers arme´niens de l’arme´e ottomane”, Revue d’histoire arme´nienne contemporaine 1 (1995), pp. 289– 303. Forced conscription of non-Muslim males into labor battalions continued after the war had ended. Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Greek Labor Battalions in Asia Minor”, in The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, ed. Richard Hovannisian (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990), pp. 275– 90; Leyla Neyzi (ed.), Amele Taburu: The Military Journal of a Jewish Soldier in Turkey during the War of Independence (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005). 60. Carl Mu¨hlmann, Das deutsch-tu¨rkische Waffenbu¨ndis im Weltkriege (Leipzig: Verlag Koehler & Amelang, 1940), p. 184.

CHAPTER 3 “REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE!” “AWAKENING A NATION” THROUGH PROPAGANDA IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912—13) Y. Dog˘an C¸etinkaya

The elimination of the non-Muslims from the Ottoman Empire is one of the most significant aspects of the late Ottoman history. Although this process has its roots in the decades before the dissolution of the empire, it took place in the very last years of its life span. The ethnic and religious clashes and the destruction of the non-Muslim communities have various causes that one should keep in mind in order to understand this era. In a recent introduction, Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher argues that “it is clear that monocausal explanations of ethnic violence, and particularly of the mobilization of social groups for ethnic violence, are insufficient and that we need to look at the problem simultaneously top-down and bottom up”.1 For a long time, nationalisms and ethnic and religious clashes were considered as if they were a result of intellectual and political projects or mere outcomes of daily and personal problems of local people. However, these were also social phenomena. Nationalism in particular was a social movement, which had social base in the society. However, this social

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aspect has long been ignored in the historiography on Turkey. The literature was too much preoccupied with the ideas, acts, and deeds of political leaders, organizations, and intellectuals. In recent studies, I tried to depict how different sections and social classes of the Muslim society in the Ottoman Empire played their role in the elimination of non-Muslims and nationalization of Muslim masses.2 For their part, the Turkish Muslim political elite and political organizations also played decisive roles in this process. Therefore, one should focus both on official nationalist policies from above and the mobilization of society from below. The relationship between these levels is crucial in understanding nationalisms. However, the mutual relationship between these two levels is not studied thoroughly in the literature on the Ottoman Empire. In two recent articles, I have focused on mobilization efforts of the political elite from above – namely, propaganda, and specifically “atrocity propaganda” at war – in order to tackle this problem.3 In the course of the nineteenth century, ethnic, religious, regional, and national problems did not remain a question for a few people or emerging intellectuals but became social problems that comprised more and more people. As the nationalization of the masses took place and started to deeply affect the daily life of the ordinary people, ethnic and religious conflicts began to turn into massive clashes. That is why different patterns of social mobilization came out in this process, and hundreds of thousands of people took action in these occasions. Public meetings, demonstrations, boycotts, picketing shops and stores, destroying property, and pogroms were among the collective-action repertoire of nationalist mobilizations utilized in the elimination of the non-Muslims. Various instruments from the universal toolbox of social movements, from demonstrations to direct actions such as picket lines, placards, posters, fliers, leaflets, and pamphlets, were widely used. The nationalist elite, official enterprises, state institutions, and nationalist organizations played significant roles. However, different sections of the society, such as merchants, workers, artisans, low-ranking officers, and notables, also played their part along with the ruling and nationalist elite. They were sometimes controlled and oriented by the latter but sometimes acted spontaneously and independently. That is why the endeavour of the elite to mobilize people and their interrelationship is crucial in understanding the destruction of non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire.

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This chapter also exhibits illustrations that came out within the context of war propaganda. The propaganda was an outcome of the relationship between the nationalist elite and the Muslim society, particularly the initiatives of the nationalist organizations to mobilize the masses. This link is crucial in understaning the two directions involved in the elimination of the non-Muslims. There were two significant turning points in this process in the early twentieth century: the 1908 Revolution and the Balkan wars. The emergence of a nationalist elite and the nationalization of the masses took place only gradually during the long nineteenth century, but the 1908 Revolution increased the pace of this development, since the general characteristics of mass politics radically changed and involved broader sections of Ottoman society. The political role played by journalism and civil organizations increased tremendously, contributing to the nationalization of Muslim society and deeply influencing the ethnic and religious tensions going on at the grassroots level between different communities of the empire.4 The mobilization of society for the nationalist cause became a fundamental feature of political life in the early twentieth century. Wars were effective in the construction of national identities,5 as distinct from imperial and local ones, and the Balkan wars were a significant example in this regard. Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria, which gained their independence from the Ottoman Empire in the course of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth and which formed the Balkan League, declared war against the Ottoman Empire in 1912. The heterogeneous ethnic and religious composition of the Balkans provoked a power struggle between the states of the Balkans and the Great Powers. Although the Ottoman army was soon defeated and the empire lost most of its territory in the Balkans, fierce competition among rival nationalisms and nation-states gave rise to a second round of conflict. The Ottoman Empire managed to regain its old capital, Edirne, in the Second Balkan War in 1913. During those movements of the armies back and forth, ethnic cleansing policies were implemented in the region by the belligerent states.6 Although the Ottoman Empire regained some areas of territory, it suffered a tremendous loss because the centres of the 1908 Revolution, Macedonia and especially Salonika, were left in the hands of the enemy. The victors were adversaries that had previously been subjects of the

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empire. It is for this reason that, as widely highlighted in the literature, the Balkan wars were a decisive turning point in the history of modern Turkey and were considered a catastrophe and a humiliation, particularly among the political elite.7 The structure of war altered drastically in the course of the nineteenth century, and the Balkan wars were a crucial step in this transformation. This was a “total war” in which combatants and civilians were no longer separate. States at war were trying to persuade the Great Powers and their own public that their cause was just and legitimate. The development of mass society and popular politics both in the Balkan countries and in the Ottoman Empire turned this endeavour into a necessity. That is why competing nationalisms fought not only on the battlefields but also in the diplomatic circles and public spheres in the Balkan wars and World War I. Mobilization was no longer restricted to the military field. The daily lives of citizens were affected deeply. The militarization of society came out thanks to the mobilization and propaganda campaigns of these long wars.8 During the Balkan wars, civilians in the belligerent countries were also dragged into the war.9 The civilian population thereafter was not only a target but also a resource to be mobilized.10 The combating sides sought both to demoralize the enemy population and to mobilize the active participation of their own people.11 This was a new front to fight at home, where a propaganda war had to be won.12 In this chapter I display the images and illustrations that were brought in during the Ottoman atrocities in the Balkan wars as propaganda material. Atrocity propaganda that was used effectively during the Balkan wars can be contexualized within the framework of the concept of “total war” and war propaganda and as a part of a universal phenomenon, which has counterparts in other countries. Twentieth-century atrocity propaganda became itself a battlefield, playing a vital role in the demonization of enemies. In the Balkan states, it was also efficiently used for the stigmatization and “otherization” of the “local” enemies. Moreover, with the hundredth anniversary of the Balkan wars, atrocities committed against Muslims during the wars are being reintroduced as an excuse or alibi for the destruction of the non-Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, within the framework of 1915 Armenian genocide debates. That is to say, the atrocity propaganda is still in use 100 years on.

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The misery that the Muslims suffered at the hands of Christians was the most recurrent theme during the Balkan wars. News reports and stories of Muslims who had been tortured by non-Muslims inflamed the passions of the Muslim public in the Ottoman Empire. The atrocities were also portrayed in images and illustrations disseminated through periodicals and pamphlets. These representations of Muslims suffering were intended to mobilize the home front for war politics in general. Because the perpetrators of the acts of violence depicted in the atrocity propaganda were the coreligionists of the Ottoman Empire’s native Christians, these images not only inspired mobilization of the Muslim population to rally war resources but also provoked hatred against local Christians, who became considered aliens and enemies in their own country. The political elite was well aware that such atrocity stories would probably provoke hatred and reactions against Christian citizens of the empire. As the distinction between combatants and noncombatants started to evaporate, brutality and violence directed at civilians reached an unprecedented scale.13 Herein I concentrate mainly on various propaganda material and publications on Greek and Bulgarian atrocities against Muslims left in the lost lands in the Balkan wars. My subject of inquiry is to investigate not the genuineness of the atrocities, massacres, and sufferings of people at war but their representation in the contemporary propaganda literature and nationalist discourse. During the Balkan wars, belligerents tried to bring the sufferings of their coreligionists onto the agenda of international and national public opinion. Between the two great wars of the twentieth century, this kind of war propaganda, as part of the fierce rivalry between belligerent countries, was termed “atrocity propaganda”.14 In the Second Constitutional Period, the ongoing influx of Muslims from the Balkans and Crete and their stories of immigration influenced the Muslim public deeply, thanks to the vibrant civil society and flourishing Ottoman press. Vivid journalism increased the effect of atrocity propaganda, as the studies on World War I highlight. References to the misery of Muslims in the lost lands therefore started before the Balkan wars, particularly during the boycott movements against Austria, Bulgaria, and Greece.15 The boycott movement undermined the Ottomanist political atmosphere of the 1908 Revolution and led to a more tense relationship between rival

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nationalisms. However, the Balkan wars exacerbated this trend. News, stories, rumours, photographs, and illustrations regarding the atrocities against Muslims were covered more often by the Ottoman periodicals. A new genre of pamphlets on Muslim afflictions emerged, which stirred up the national feelings of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. Mu¨slu¨manlara Mahsus begins by reminding its readers of the terrifying defeat of the Balkan wars. Although Edirne and the areas around Kırkkilise were taken back, the general loss of territory was tremendous. The Muslims in these towns and regions were abandoned and destitute. Even the wealthy became miserable. Children were begging on the streets, and some of them were serving rakı to enemy soldiers in the taverns.16 Mu¨slu¨man ve Tu¨rklere first refers to the “rotten skins” and “carved eyes” of Muslims in the lost lands, then goes on to talk about the enemies who killed their brothers with bayonets, raped mothers and sisters, and afterward drank wine.17 The Ottoman government sought to collect information regarding the Bulgarian and Greek atrocities against native Muslims and tried to publicize these phenomena by distributing information to the Ottoman press and foreign embassies.18 The Ottoman military officers tried to compile reports and files on non-Muslim atrocities against Muslims. For instance, the General Gendarmerie Inspector Boman (Baumann) Pasha recruited a Frenchman to prepare a report on atrocities committed by Bulgarians and Greeks in Dedeag˘ac
(today, Alexandroupolis) and Kavala. This report was distributed to different ministries and official departments.19 However, there were problems with its announcement. Although the Ministry of War banned the publication of the report in the Ottoman press, on 29 December 1912, Alem newspaper printed a version as if Boman Pasha himself had compiled it. The Ottoman bureaucracy was alarmed, as it was obvious that Pasha himself had not gone to either Dedeag˘ac
or Kavala. The Ministry of War, very sensitive to such details in the propaganda war, noted that it might undermine its authenticity and give the wrong idea that the report was fake.20 When the Sabah republished the report the following day, with the same false introduction used by Alem,21 the bureaucrats’ involvement increased: Since Boman Pasha’s personal warning in the Alem newspaper was not considered sufficient, special measures were requested to stop such unpermitted publishing of confidential official documents. In contrast, the correspondence between various ministries hints that the Ottoman

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government also had possession of a counterreport on Ottoman atrocities against the Bulgarian population and was worried about its public release by the Ottoman press. The government insisted that such a report should be sent to foreign embassies and ministries and should be published by well-respected European newspapers.22 As this official correspondence reveals, the Ottoman government was willing to pay close attention to propaganda warfare, and its way of conducting matters was quite different from civil initiatives in this arena.23 Apart from these official endeavours, civil organizations tried to compile evidence of atrocities and brought these kinds of information and images to the attention of the national and international public via their publications. The main civil society of the immigrants, which dealt with both the problems of immigrants in the Ottoman Empire and people who were left in the lost territories, was Rumeli Muhacirin-i I˙slamiye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi (Society for Muslim Immigrants from Roumelia). The society protested Bulgaria after the military mobilization started and the first news of atrocities began to be heard and published in the Ottoman press. In its press release, the organization condemned the “barbarity and savagery” of the Bulgarian “gangster government”, whom they held responsible for the atrocities. They also underlined the fact that European humanity and civilization should be ashamed of such acts in the twentieth century and referred to the “Bulgarian monsters”.24 Tanin also announced that the Society for Muslim Immigrants from Bulgaria (apparently either an alternative name for the Roumelia organization or a special commission that concentrated on the plight of Bulgarian Muslims) had lost its confidence in the Ottoman government and decided to bring the atrocities to the attention of foreign and national public opinion. The news noted that the society was preparing a memorandum on Bulgarian atrocities in French and Turkish.25 The society published Alam-ı I˙slam, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri I˙slamiyenin Enzar-ı Basiretine ve I˙nsaniyet ve Medeniyetin nazar-ı Dikkatine (The Pains of Muslims, Bulgarian Atrocities, to the Attention of Muslims, Humanity and Civilization) in 1912 and a second pamphlet with the same title in 1913.26 In 1916 the society published Tu¨rk Katilleri ve Yunanlılar (Murderers of Turks and Greeks) in Istanbul. It organized solidarity campaigns and sold tickets in order to collect money for the immigrants and also published a sheet of vengeance titled “Bulgar Mezalimi I˙ntikam

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Levhası” (“Bulgarian Atrocities, a Sheet of Vengeance”), which comprised a poem written by Tahir’u¨l Mevlevi, on 14 August 1913.27 At the end of 1912, Ahmet Cevad (Emre), Satı (el Husri), Bedii Nuri, I˙smail Hakkı (Baltacıog˘lu), and Ahmet Ferit (Tek) founded a society calling itself Balkan Mezalimi Nes¸r-i Vesaik Cemiyeti (Society for Publication of Documents on Balkan Atrocities).28 This was set up to publish booklets on the sufferings of Muslims and immigrants at the hands of Bulgarians.29 It also informed the Muslim public via its public releases, which appeared in the Ottoman press during the very first days of its establishment.30 Its first booklet, written in French, was organized in three parts. The information for the first part was based on the society’s own investigation about the atrocities and a report compiled by the former governor-general of Salonika, Nazım Pas¸a. As it was one of the first propaganda leaflets of this kind targeting the international public, it involved accounts based on European sources and the observations of European statesmen, consuls, and journalists. The Ottoman press also used information from foreign sources on atrocities against the Muslims in the Balkans; they must have thought that such references would enhance their arguments.31 In its struggle to influence international public opinion, the Society for the Publication of Documents required support from the Ottoman public and called on Ottomans to contribute to its activities either by donating money or by providing information regarding atrocities and gathering more documents, such as photographs and letters from the victims. The names of the people who donated to the charity of the society were published periodically in the Ottoman press.32 Ahmed Cevad published the Turkish version of the society’s booklet, under the title Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (Red-Black Book: The Disaster of 1912), in late May 1913.33 A short announcement of its publication in Tanin underlined its significance in the education and training of children; the booklet was full of material edited to provoke the emotions of the Muslims and was a guide that would lead the nation to the “path of progress, awakening, union, strengthening”.34 In the booklet, Ahmed Cevad asserted that Muslims were ordered to frequent churches whenever the bells tolled and that those who refused to do so would be executed immediately. He also quoted from a report of a French general (namely, Baumann – Boman Pasha) claiming that native Greeks guided Bulgarian gangs and comitadjis and pointed out Muslim

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houses. During the massacres, Christian houses were separated from the Muslim ones by white crosses on their doors, thus indicating which were to be attacked. Bulgarians not only shot Muslims with machine gun fire but also threw bombs into mosques.35 These kinds of publications had their first impact on intellectuals. A well-known Turkish nationalist of this period, Mehmed Ali Tevfik, who was one of the founders of the nationalist association Tu¨rk Ocag˘ı (Turkish Hearth), gave an account of his feelings on the first, French version of the Red-Black Book in a Turkish daily. After mentioning instances of the atrocities and crimes against Turks listed in the booklet, he described himself as having turned into a wild animal, seeking revenge. He condemned Europe as bearing the main responsibility for this ongoing “Turkish catastrophe”; yet he also underlined the benefits of these atrocities, since they had the potential to awaken the national soul of the Turks and give them a wolf’s nature (one of the early symbols of Turkish nationalism).36 Similarly, atrocity propaganda universally considers atrocity news beneficial for the awakening of “national” public opinion. A significant booklet in this vein was written by Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi. In his booklet Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Wake Up, Turkey), it is claimed that Bulgarian gangs burnt 39 men and women alive in a mosque in Debrencik, just as they slaughtered all Turks – men, women and children – in Kosova.37 The term awakening was a metaphor frequently employed in the rising discourse of the “national economy”. Another propaganda pamphlet of the time was written by Dr Cemil in 1914–15: Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Bulgarian Atrocities: Vengeance, a Memento for Children and Grandchildren).38 Dr Cemil wrote that Muslim women’s clothes were ripped off, and they were forced to dance naked before the Bulgarian military officers; afterward, they were all killed.39 In Kavala, Muslim children were killed with bayonets before their mothers’ eyes, and the eyes of Muslim women were gouged out and their breasts cut off after they had been raped.40 The three pamphlets mentioned also included vivid illustrations and photographs of the atrocities, which must have enhanced their impact on the Muslim public. Moreover, there were some published as postcards and in school textbooks. Images and illustrations played a significant role when the modern means of communication were still underdeveloped and the level of

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illiteracy in society was still high. It was therefore no coincidence that as the wars started to involve noncombatants, propaganda became an important means of warfare. Images appeared in such propaganda as support for written messages.41 In the course of the twentieth century, images of war and atrocity became as important as warfare itself. These representations were a further battlefield on which to fight.42 In this fight, stigmatizing Christians as the “others” of Muslim Turkish nationalism increased as the atrocity stories proliferated in the printed word. The Ottoman Turkish newspapers started to fill with reports on the sufferings and misery of coreligionists left in the lost lands. Of course, this kind of information during the wars was not a novelty. However, before the 1908 Revolution, any information concerning the grief and sorrow of Muslims was not allowed to appear in mass communication means, in order not to damage the relationship between the different communities of the empire.43 After the revolution, these atrocity stories were disseminated not only by the daily newspapers but also by magazines and pamphlets. During the Balkan wars, the worsening of the relationship between Muslims and Christians was not among the priorities of the political elite. For instance, the newspaper Tanin confessed that Turkish newspapers had abstained from reporting atrocities committed against Muslims in the belief that they might incite Muslims against Christians.44 Consequently, the political elite was well aware of the possible internal repercussions of atrocity news, although the perpetrators were external powers. These propaganda materials were also distributed in the countryside, and political elite gave speeches in the public spaces such as coffeehouses in the provinces. Within the context of the ongoing propaganda discourse, it was argued that non-Muslims were “sucking the blood of Muslims”. For instance, the medical students Behc
et Salih, Mahmut Halit, and Mustafa Muzaffer delivered public lectures on hygiene in the province of Aydın and repeated the arguments of this literature. The acting British consul-general in Smyrna, Heathcote Smith, quoted in his report a part of their lecture: We are broken hearted at finding you Muslims are still asleep. The Christians, profiting from our ignorance, have now for ages been taking our place and taking away our rights. These vipers whom we are nourishing have been sucking out all the life-blood of the

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nation. They are the parasitical worms eating into our flesh whom we must destroy and do away with. It is time we freed ourselves from these individuals, by all means lawful and unlawful.45 It is hard to assess the extent to which this material affected those who received it. However, it is quite likely that it provoked aggression and instigated revenge in some instances, and it likely played a role in the clashes between the different communities of the empire. Further studies are needed for full evaluation of the emotional impact of illustrated atrocity propaganda. Yet this, at least, was the intention of the creators of this literature. One of these writers, Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, wrote in the preface to his book that he had published his work in order to arouse a desire for revenge by keeping the sufferings of the Muslims alive in the hearts of Muslim Turkish youth.46 Similarly, Dr Cemil wrote, under various illustrations included in his book, “My dear children look at these pictures and sharpen your emotions of revenge.”47 Like both of these writers, Ahmed Cevad addressed all Muslim citizens and asserted that revenge for the atrocities described in his book was the duty of all Muslims.48 This chapter does not concentrate on the reception of these images but rather exhibits illustrations and what their creators envisaged. The illustrations and images used in the political endeavour of propaganda during the war years had reverberations at the social level.49 We have clues that these activities created problems for the non-Muslims. The Greek consul in Ayvalık reported to the Greek Foreign Ministry that government agents throughout the country had tried to sow discontent among Muslims by distributing booklets that provoked them against the Greek population.50 The Greek newspaper Embros, published in Athens, also reported leaflets that instigated Muslims to aggression against non-Muslims around Smyrna.51 The Balkan wars also represented a turning point in the history of early Turkish nationalism. The ultimate defeat and humiliation that the Ottoman Turks faced in the Balkan wars radicalized the political elite’s nationalist project, which paved the way for brutal clashes between different religious communities, whose already heightened tensions worsened after the wars. Atrocity propaganda contributed greatly to the stigmatization and demonization of non-Muslim populations. The stories of shocking acts of violence endured by Muslims at the hands of

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the Balkan states and the sorrow and misery experienced by the refugees heightened hatred toward the perpetrators’ coreligionists living in the Ottoman Empire. This radicalization was a secondary aim of the writers of atrocity propaganda. The ultimate purpose of the writers who compiled the illustrations analyzed here was to take revenge. Therefore, the call for revenge and vengeance was a continuation of a trend that the boycott movement had initiated. During the boycott movement before the Balkan wars, native non-Muslims were not targeted directly but suffered greatly from the actions of the anti-Greece movements. However, the call for revenge was a fundamental phase in the “othering” of Christians and in the creation of an “internal enemy” from native non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire.52 As a result of this social and political process, the non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire became aliens as a whole in the Balkan wars and World War I. Therefore, during and after the Balkan wars, the call for solidarity was no longer based on Ottoman identity but on Muslim identity. Thereafter, the rising tide of nationalism began to exclude non-Muslims openly.53 The most significant purpose of the atrocity propaganda in the Ottoman Empire was to mobilize sentiments on the home front. Illustrations and images enhanced the impact of atrocity reports. This endeavor was carried forward by various actors, such as civil organizations and official state institutions. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, officers of different ranks in the Ottoman army, and civil organizations such as the Society of Muslim Refugees from Rumelia and Society for Publication of Documents on Balkan Atrocities played significant roles in this propaganda. The illustrations assembled here are put in order according to various types of atrocities. First are illustrations of bloodshed, the stabbing of Muslims with bayonets, and photographs of dead bodies. These are followed by the torture of Muslims, particularly in public places, and atrocities in mosques. Attempts at the forced conversion of Muslims to Christianity and the atrocities committed against women and children constitute the third and final set of illustrations. The images and illustrations exhibited here were originally collected to galvanize the emotions of the Muslim public in the Ottoman Empire. The depictions that they contained incited the Muslims by showing the stabbing of Muslims with bayonets, the torture of coreligionists, desecration of mosques, atrocities in

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public places, forced conversions of Muslims to Christianity, and the atrocities committed against Muslim women. The most influential and frequently reported atrocity was the abuse of women. As the literature on the relationship between nationalism and the female body highlights, the motherland is regarded as a woman’s body in different nationalisms. That is why the woman’s body becomes a field of battle and an “arena of violent struggle”.54 As V. Spike Peterson argues, “motherland is a woman’s body and as such is ever danger of violation – by ‘foreign’ males. To defend her frontiers and her honour requires relentless vigilance and the sacrifice of countless citizen warriors.”55 Therefore, the abuse and rape of women and defence of the nation or motherland were directly linked to each other, and the nationalist political elite used these motifs in this manner in these illustrations. The mobilization of different sections of society during the Balkan wars left its imprint on the formation of modern Turkey. For this reason, the mobilization efforts of the political elite and the active mobilization of social groups at the grassroots level remain a significant research area to be explored.

The Massacres

Illustration I “Muslims who have been sent back to their villages from Kavala are attacked by a gang of irregulars.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul: 1329).

Illustration II “The Ottoman soldiers who liberate Thrace from the enemy find a terrible massacre of Muslims.” In Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1329).

Illustration III “A scene in which Muslims are stabbed with bayonets and thrown into the Vardar river.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 122.

Illustration IV “Photograph of Muslim corpses lying on the ground.” In Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve ¸Su¨rekası, 1329), p. 66 (the illustration also appeared in L’Illustration on 30 August 1913).

Atrocities in Public Places

Illustration V “A Muslim youth is tied to a stake behind his back in Kavala.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 66.

Illustrations VI and VII Mehmet O¨. Alkan.

Postcards from the personal collection of

Illustration VIII “Bulgarians rushing into a mosque with their boots still on, killing old people at prayer with their rifles and bayonets.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), illustration no. 16.

Forced Conversions to Christianity

Illustration IX “Forced ceremony of conversion.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 79.

Illustration X “Muslim women are shown nailed to crosses because of their refusal to convert to Christianity.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 85.

Illustration XI “Three Muslim girls have been taken to a church for conversion to Christianity.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

Gendered Atrocity

Illustration XII “A child in the arms of her father or grandfather, probably wounded by the soldiers in Dedeag˘ac
. Behind them, three soldiers are chasing a Muslim away, while another takes a Muslim woman out of her house.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

Illustration XIII “A soldier is cutting off the breasts of a Muslim woman, who is surrounded by an assaulting crowd of irregulars and soldiers in Kavala.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 81.

Illustration XIV “Boulevard of Gallows.” In Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (I˙stanbul, 1329).

Illustration XV “A soldier is taking the unborn child out of a woman’s body with his bayonet.” In Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330), p. 76.

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Notes 1. Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher, “Introduction: The Socio-Economic History of Ethnic Violence in the late Ottoman Empire”, Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 10, 4 (2013), p. 19. 2. Y. Dog˘an ¸Cetinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014); and, for an analysis of patterns of social mobilization in this process, see Y. Dog˘an ¸Cetinkaya, “Patterns of Social Mobilization in the Elimination of the Greek Orthodox Population 1908– 1914”, Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 10, 4 (2013), pp. 46– 65. 3. Y. Dog˘an ¸Cetinkaya, “Atrocity Propaganda and the Nationalization of the Masses in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars (1912– 1913)”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46, 4 (November 2014), pp. 759 – 78; and Y. Dog˘an C ¸ etinkaya, “Illustrated Atrocity: Stigmatization of NonMuslims through Images in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars”, Journal of Modern European History 12, 4 (December 2014), pp. 460–78. 4. For the significance of the 1908 Revolution in this regard, see Y. Dog˘an C ¸ etinkaya, “1908 Devrimi’nde Kamusal Alan ve Kitle Siyasetinde Do¨nu¨s¸u¨m”, Siyasal Bilgiler Faku¨ltesi Dergisi, no. 38 (March 2008), pp. 125– 40; and Y. Dog˘an C ¸ etinkaya, “1908 Devrimi ve Toplumsal Seferberlik”, in Ferdan Ergut (ed.), II. Mes¸rutiyet’i Yeniden Du¨s¸u¨nmek (I˙stanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2010). 5. There are many studies on the effect of wars on the construction of national identities and citizenship. Among them, see Craig J. Calhoun, Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 78; Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Sonya O. Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939– 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Roberta L. Coles, “War and the Contest over National Identity”, Sociological Review, no. 11 (2002), p. 586. 6. Fuat Du¨ndar, Modern Tu¨rkiye’nin S¸ifresi: I˙ttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mu¨hendislig˘i (1913– 1918) (I˙stanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2008). 7. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasal Partiler I˙ttihat ve Terakki, Bir C¸ag˘ın, Bir Kus¸ag˘ın, Bir Partinin Tarihi (I˙stanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2000), vol. 3, p. 583; Erik J. Zu¨rcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004), pp. 108 – 9; Zafer Toprak, Milli I˙ktisat-Milli Burjuvazi (I˙stanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1995), pp. 107– 8; Erol Ko¨rog˘lu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007), p. 30; Sanem Yamak Ates¸, Asker Evlatlar Yetis¸tirmek: II. Mes¸rutiyet Do¨nemi’nde Beden Terbiyesi, Askeri Talim ve Paramiliter Genc
lik O¨rgu¨tleri (I˙stanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2012), pp. 173– 8. 8. Tammy M. Proctor, Civilians in a World at War 1914– 1918 (New York: New York University Press, 2010), p. 23. See also Mehmet O¨. Alkan, “II. Mes¸rutiyet’te Eg˘itim, I˙ttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, Milliyetc
ilik, Militarizm veya Militer Tu¨rk-I˙slam Sentezi”, in Ferdan Ergut (ed.), II. Mes¸rutiyet’i Yeniden

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9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

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Du¨s¸u¨nmek (I˙stanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2010), for the militarization of the Ottoman society. For a recent analysis of the “total war” concept in the Ottoman context, see Mehmet Bes¸ikc
i, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Eyal Ginio, “Mobilizing the Ottoman Nation during the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913): Awakening from the Ottoman Dream”, War in History 12, 2 (2005), pp. 156 – 77. In the historiography of the Balkan wars, there are very few studies on Ottoman society. Most works are limited to military history, as Eren’s bibliography of Turkish studies on the Balkan wars revealed in 1973: I˙smail Eren, “Balkan Savas¸larına Ait Tu¨rkc
e Eserler U¨zerine Bibliyografya Denemesi”, I˙stanbul U¨niversitesi Edebiyat Faku¨ltesi Tarih Dergisi 22, 27 (1973), pp. 111– 23. The situation has unfortunately not improved since then, as demonstrated by a recent and detailed bibliography on the Balkan wars that restricts itself to the literature in Turkish: Hakan Bacanlı, “Balkan Savas¸ları Kaynakc
ası”, Tu¨rk Du¨nyası I˙ncelemeleri Dergisi 12, 2 (winter 2012), pp. 265– 307. A rare exception is Oya Dag˘lar Macar, Balkan Savas¸ları’nda Salgın Hastalıklar ve Sag˘lık Hizmetleri (I˙stanbul: Libra Yayıncılık, 2008), which to a large extent also concentrates on military history rather than focusing on the society. The other exception, of course, is the article by Eyal Ginio mentioned in n. 10, above. For the concept of total war and the significance of the home front in modern wars, see Roger Chickering and Stig Fo¨rster, Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914 – 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). James E. Kitchen, Alisa Miller, and Laura Rowe, “Introduction”, in James E. Kitchen, Alisa Miller, and Laura Rowe (eds), Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), pp. xxiv, xxviii. James Morgan Reed, Atrocity Propaganda 1914– 1919 (New York: Arno Press, 1972[1941]); James Morgan Reed, “Atrocity Propaganda and Irish Rebellion”, Public Opinion Quarterly 2, 2 (1938), pp. 229 – 44. For the details of these boycott movements, see Y. Dog˘an ¸Cetinkaya, 1908 Osmanlı Boykotu (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2004); and, for the anti-Greek boycotts after 1910, ¸Cetinkaya, Young Turks and the Boycott Movement. Mu¨slu¨manlara Mahsus (n. p., 1329 ([1913/1914]), pp. 3 – 4; Mu¨slu¨manlara Mahsus Kurtulmak Yolu (n. p., 1329 [1913/1914]), p. 4. Mu¨slu¨man ve Tu¨rklere (n. p., 1329 [1913/1914]), pp. 2– 4. BOA (Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi/Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives), BEO, 4199/314867, 1331.S¸.20 and BOA, BEO, 4130/309707, 1331.M.24. BOA, BEO, 4124/309292, 1331.M.07. BOA, BEO, 4130/309709, 1331.M.25. This particular issue of Alem newspaper is not available in the libraries of Turkey, but the probably identical republishing of it in Sabah is, as referenced in the next footnote.

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21. “Boman Pas¸a’nın Raporu”, Sabah, no. 8363 (30 December 1912), p. 2. 22. BOA, BEO, 4130/309709, 1331.M.25. 23. At this point, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was not in power, and newspapers and organizations that were close to the CUP were harshly criticizing the government. Thus an internal power struggle was going on in the Ottoman capital, and this affected the way the government handled the issue. The CUP was to take power as an outcome of the famous coup of 13 January 1913, known as the Babıali Baskını. 24. “Rumeli Muhacirin-i I˙slamiye Cemiyeti’nden”, Tanin, no. 1462 (6 October 1912), p. 3. 25. “Bulgaristan I˙slam Muhacirinin Muhtırası”, Tanin, no. 1470 (14 October 1912), p. 4. 26. Alam-ı I˙slam, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri I˙slamiyenin Enzar-ı Basiretine ve I˙nsaniyet ve Medeniyetin nazar-ı Dikkatine (Istanbul, 1328 [1912/1913]); Alam-ı I˙slam, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri I˙slamiyenin Enzar-ı Basiretine ve I˙nsaniyet ve Medeniyetin nazar-ı Dikkatine (Istanbul, 1329 [1913/1914]). 27. H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Go¨
c (Istanbul: Kum Saati Yayınları, 2001). 28. “Kırmızı Siyah Kitab”, Tanin, no. 1498 (1 February 1913), p. 5. According to this article, it seems that the society was established at the outset of 1913. However, the report of the society, which was published in I˙kdam on 26 December 1912, confirms that it was constituted in the last days of 1912. Nes¸r-i Vesaik Cemiyeti, “Balkan Mu¨ttefiklerinin Mezalimi”, I˙kdam, no. 5694 (26 December 1912), p. 3. 29. Le Comite´ de Publication D.A.C.B., Les atrocite´s des coalise´s balkaniques, nos 1 and 2, (Constantinople: Journal Ifham, 1913). For a similar publication by Bulgarians against Greeks, see Liubomir Miletich, Atrocite´s grecques en Mace´doine pendant la guerre grecobulgare (Sofia: Imprimerie de L’E´tat, 1913). 30. Nes¸r-i Vesaik Cemiyeti, “Balkan Mu¨ttefiklerinin Mezalimi”, I˙kdam, no. 5694 (26 December 1912), p. 3. 31. I˙kdam published numerous articles from foreign writers or sources: Fossiche Zeitung, “Balkan Hu¨ku¨mat-ı Mu¨ttefikasının Mezalimi”, I˙kdam, no. 5674 (6 December 1912), p. 3; Anetid Otto, “Balkan I˙tisafatı, Sırpların Mezalimi Hakkında”, I˙kdam, no. 5711 (12 January 1913), pp. 3 – 4; Piyer Loti, “Bulgar Mezalimi Hakkında Piyer Loti’nin Telgrafı”, I˙kdam, no. 5937 (31 August 1913), p. 3. 32. “Kırmızı Siyah Kitab”, Tanin, no. 1498 (1 February 1913), p. 5. 33. For basic information on this pamphlet, see Yavuz Selim Karakıs¸la, “Balkan Savas¸ı’nda Yayımlanmıs ¸ Osmanlı Propaganda Kitabı”, Toplumsal Tarih, no. 104, (2002), pp. 60 –3. 34. “Kırmızı Siyah Kitab”, Tanin, no. 1606 (20 May 1913), p. 5. The announcement informs the readers that the Turkish version is to be published on 23 May 1913. Another announcement appeared in I˙kdam on 18 March: “Balkan Mezalimi: Kırmızı-Siyah Kitab”, I˙kdam, no. 5772 (18 March 1913), p. 3.

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35. Ahmed Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab: 1328 Fecayii (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve S¸u¨rekası, 1329), p. 120. 36. Mehmed Ali Tevfik [Yu¨kselen], “Rumeli Mezalimi”, Tanin, no. 1499 (2 February 1913), p. 3. For introductory information on Mehmed Ali Tevfik and his poems about the notion of “revenge”, see Ali Birinci, “Portre: Mehmed Ali Tevfik Yu¨kselen”, Tu¨rk Yurdu, no. 243 (November 2007). 37. Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Dersaadet: Ku¨tu¨bhane-i I˙slam ve Askeri, 1329 [1913/1914]), p. 19. 38. Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Dersaadet, 1330 [1914/1915]). 39. Ibid., 216. 40. Ibid., 81. 41. See Thomas Row, “Mobilizing the Nation: Italian Propaganda in the Great War”, Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 24 (2002), pp. 140– 69. 42. See Wayne Morrison, “Atrocity and the Power of the Image”, Social Justice 36, 3 (117), (2009/10), p. 67. 43. It was strictly controlled. See Ays¸e Nu¨khet Adıyeke, Osmanlı I˙mparatorlug˘u ve Girit Bunalımı (1896 – 1908) (Ankara: Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu, 2000), pp. 244 – 50, for an example. 44. “Bulgaristan Mezalimi”, Tanin, no. 1464 (8 October 1912). 45. FO, 195/2458, no. 84 (11 July 1914), p. 470. 46. Hilmi, Tu¨rkiye Uyan, p. 5. 47. Dr Cemil, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri. 48. Cevad, Kırmızı Siyah Kitab, p. 4. 49. For a long analysis of this literature, see ¸Cetinkaya, “Atrocity Propaganda”, and C ¸ etinkaya, “Illustrated Atrocity”. 50. AYE (Arheio Ypourgeiou Exoterikon/Greek Foreign Ministry Archives), A21a, 1914, Ayvalık, no. 6251 (23 February 1914). 51. “Anthellinikos Diogmon eis tin Mikran Asian”, Embros (14 March 1914). 52. For an introduction to the revenge discourse during the Balkan wars, see Zafer Toprak, “Balkan Harbi, I˙ntikam ve O¨tekiles¸tirme Su¨reci”, Toplumsal Tarih, no. 228 (Aralık, 2012), pp. 42 – 53. 53. For a social history of the process, see ¸Cetinkaya, Young Turks and the Boycott Movement. 54. Rubina Saigol, “Militarization, Nation and Gender: Women’s Bodies as Arenas of Violent Conflict”, in Pınar I˙lkkaracan (ed.), Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008), p. 165. 55. V. Spike Peterson, “Gendered Nationalism: Reproducing ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’”, in Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (eds), The Woman and War Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 44.

CHAPTER 4 “MACEDONIAN QUESTION” IN WESTERN ANATOLIA: THE OUSTING OF THE OTTOMAN GREEKS BEFORE WORLD WAR I Emre Erol

Vilaˆyat-ı Selaˆse (the Ottoman provinces of Kosova, Manastır, and Selanik), or Macedonia – that is the Ottoman Balkans, or Roumelia – had continuously been a boiling pot in since the late nineteenth century. The last 25 years of the Ottoman “longest century” in the Balkans was marked by constant economic and political crises. Ottoman imperial rule was challenged and insecurity was an everyday life phenomenon. The turmoil in the region was perceived as a great danger to the European balance of power. Ottoman Macedonia was destabilized by ineffective imperial rule, nationalisms, and imperialist rivalry. Was the Ottoman Empire capable of governing an ethnically and religiously diverse region with its imperial framework and despite strong rival claims to its rule? Or would Macedonia be more stable with recognition of its nation-state ambitions? This, in essence, was the Macedonian Question. It was resolved, in the wink of an eye, when the Ottoman army collapsed under the offensive of the Balkan alliance (Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia) within weeks in 1912. The nation-state solution was internationally recognized with the treaties at

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the end of the Second Balkan War in 1913. The prospect of an imperial framework in Macedonia was sealed off. The Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended, except for a small territory east of Edirne in Thrace. The Balkan wars exposed the Ottoman weakness. This, in turn, fuelled irredentist ambitions of the kingdom of Greece. Another set of crises in the image of the ones in Macedonia, this time in western Anatolia, soon ignited in 1913, immediately after the Balkan wars. The sizable and economically strong Orthodox Greek community in western Anatolia became a concern for the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, or the Unionists), which single-handedly ruled the Ottoman Empire after a coup in 1913. For them, the end of the Macedonian Question marked the beginning of the Aegean Question, or “the national question of Izmir”,1 as the Unionist Young Turks referred to it. The Unionists, many of whom lost their homelands and became refugees with the Balkan wars, thought that the reason behind the Ottoman collapse was the lack of national consciousness and the activity of Christian communities who collaborated with Balkan nationalists. Izmir and the western Anatolian coast, they thought, would share the same destiny as Macedonia if the nation were not awakened. They saw “enemies within” in cosmopolitan Izmir and the port towns of the Aegean Sea. The Unionists regarded the Ottoman Greek communities of western Anatolia as potential supporters of Greek irredentism. The Muslim Turkish nation had to be awakened, they argued, so that it could “cleanse the tumors” that enfeebled it. Otherwise, they feared, “these Turkish lands” would be lost like Selanik (Salonika) and Macedonia. Thus, “reasserting the weakened Turkishness of western Anatolia” was considered the solution to the national question of Izmir. In the year immediately after the end of the Balkan wars (1912–13), in 1914 before World War I, some 160,0002 Ottoman Greeks, or Romioi (Pomioı´, pl.), were ousted or fled3 by what seems to have been a combination of intercommunal and interethnic tensions of the postBalkan war climate and the systematic ousting operations of the Unionists. Almost the entire western Anatolian seaboard was ousted of its native Ottoman Greek population, with the exception of the internationally known port city of the eastern Mediterranean, Izmir (Smyrna), and some renowned towns such as Ayvalık. Foc
ateyn, C¸es¸me, Edremit, Burhaniye, Kemer, Kınık, Balıkesir, Bergama, Karaburun, ¨ demis¸, Uluabad, Eskice, as well as towns and villages on or Menemen, O

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near the Kasaba-Aydın railway, around Bursa, and around Ayvalık (but not the towns themselves), were all subjected to the violence by Muslim bandits (chettes) who ousted native Christian populations. Most of the Ottoman Greeks left their houses and property in such a rush that they did not have any time to pack. Most of their belongings and valuables were left behind. Some of those who resisted the ousting or those who were too old to flee were subjected to violence by the bandits. The houses and property of the Ottoman Greeks were soon filled by muhacirs: the Muslim refugees from the lost Ottoman territories in the Balkans. Western Anatolia, with a reinforced Muslim majority, was now “safe” from the dangers of Greek irredentism from the CUP leaders’ nationalist point of view. This chapter argues that the ousting of the Ottoman Greeks in western Anatolia in 1914 was a result of the “transfer of the Macedonian Question” to western Anatolia. The medium of this transfer was simply the way the Balkan wars ended. The Ottoman defeat in the Balkan wars undermined its already questioned prestige and sustainability. Western Anatolia turned into the next contested zone of the empire after the loss of the Ottoman Balkans. The end of the Balkan wars started a new period of turmoil because it created a refugee crisis (that is, the influx of Muslim refugees from the Balkans, mostly to the west of the empire), set the stage for the radicalization and empowerment of the Unionists, and created the imminent possibility of another war (between the kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire, due to the postwar treaties’ failure to establish a new status quo by awarding Greek nationalist aspirations in the Aegean,4 at the risk of sustainable peace).

The Effects of the Balkan Wars and Tracing the “Macedonian Symptoms” The instability in the Ottoman Balkans and the uncertainty of the region’s future became a concern for the Concert of Europe, of which the Ottoman Empire had been a member since the Treaty of Paris in 1856.5 Members of the Concert feared the disruption of the balance of power in the case of a power vacuum that might follow the sudden collapse of Ottomans in the Balkans. Balkan nationalists perceived what concerned the Concert as an opportunity. The Ottoman defeat in the Ottoman – Russian war of 1877– 8 enabled swift expansion of Russian power in the

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Balkans. This was an exposure of Ottoman weakness. Long lasting dreams of Bulgarian, Montenegrin, Serbian, and Romanian nationalists became attainable realities in the wake of Ottoman collapse. However, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 had the aim of preservation of the status quo in the Balkans through maintenance of the Ottoman framework. It was a product of Ottoman diplomacy, the Concert’s fear of Russian expansion, and the fear of potential instability that irredentism of Balkan nationalisms might bring. The treaty had a short life span. Soon enough, with subsequent crises,6 the remapping of the Ottoman Europe was perceived as inevitability. European powers wanted to make sure that if the Ottoman system collapsed, the new system would still serve their respective interests. In contrast, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, and Macedonian nationalists wanted to make sure that they seized the historic opportunity to break apart from the Ottoman rule or realized their irredentist visions by playing to the right political camp at the right time. Ottomans hoped to ease and appease the pressures with reforms that would rejuvenate the Muslim rulers of the empire. In the aftermath of the Treaty of Berlin, the legitimization of the national aspirations through use of asymmetric warfare (banditry), boycott,7 Great Power diplomacy, and demographic warfare became everyday realities of the Ottoman Balkans. Coexistence of Muslims and Christians, and of different ethnicities within these larger religious identities, appeared as a slim possibility, if not outright undesirable. However, throughout the interethnic and intercommunal crises of the Macedonian Question, Muslims and Christians of an adjacent region of the same empire lived in relative peace and harmony. This region was western Anatolia, or Aegean, as it came to be. Western Anatolia had seen little trouble when Macedonia was engulfed with violence and crisis. For instance the port town of Eski Foc
a, a central stage of post-Balkan war atrocities in 1914, had only one minor instance of intercommunal violence throughout the nineteenth century, while there were many in the Balkans. The instance was related to piracy, and potential tension between the Muslims and the Orthodox Christians of the county of Foc
ateyn was avoided by the finesse of the Ottoman Sublime Porte.8 Subjects of the sultan in this part of the empire also enjoyed good economic prospects in the nineteenth century. The hegemony of the middle classes of the incorporated eastern Mediterranean ruled the day in western Anatolia with values of

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cosmopolitanism, self-governance, and connectedness.9 Problems brought by rapid urbanization, class antagonisms, economic competition due to the discontents of the incorporation into world markets, and nationalisms loomed in the background of this rather fragile cosmopolitan habitat. Fragile though it might have been, hegemony of the middle classes on the Ottoman coast maintained coexistence on the eve of the “Ottoman cataclysm”. The coming of the Balkan wars dramatically damaged the peace, stability, and economic prospects of western Anatolia. Naval blockades of the war interrupted international trade and affected prices. Mobilization for war uprooted necessary labour for production and distribution of goods and services. This caused a general stress on the economy. The “Christian crusade of the Balkan nations” against the Ottoman Empire and the refugee Muslims of the Balkans fueled feelings of retaliation and nationalism even in cosmopolitan areas such as Izmir. The already envied economic success of Ottoman non-Muslims and the nationalist sentiments and actions of some of them10 provided perfect excuses for creating scapegoats. Economic nationalism appeared as a prescription for survival of what seemed to be the downfall of the fortunes of the Ottoman Muslims. Shop picketing and boycotts damaged the businesses of the Ottoman non-Muslims in western Anatolia throughout the Balkan wars.11 Direct experience of war and violence also took its toll. Thrace and some parts of northwestern Anatolia (or Marmara) were immediately dragged into intercommunal and interethnic violence with the coming of the Balkan wars. The aftermath of the war witnessed the further spread of boycotts and violence against Ottoman Christians. The war itself and the way it ended for Ottomans exported conflict from the Balkans to the western Anatolian coast. The change of the human landscape in western Anatolia with the influx of refugees, emergence of nationalist competition and nationalist warfare between the Unionists and the Greek nationalists, and the Great Power diplomacy that prioritized the interests of the global actors in western Anatolia created an environment akin to that the Ottoman Balkans of the Macedonian Question. Western Anatolia, a region of development, cosmopolitanism, and relative peace, was engulfed by violence and instability. Dynamics of the Macedonian Question swiftly replaced the fragile cosmopolitanism with nationalism. The biggest port city of the region, Izmir, where the international gaze provided immunity, stayed a

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safe zone to some extent until World War I. The rest of the region became a “ground zero” for the demographic engineering policies of the Unionists, who had seen the use of demographic warfare in the brutal homogenization policies of the Balkan nation-states that defeated the Ottomans in the Balkan wars. The struggle of rival Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian nationalisms and Ottomanism, a form of more inclusive imperial nationalism, characterized the nature of the political contestation in the Ottoman Balkans. The competition of these nationalist schemes fuelled each other and caused major political crises and instability. This time it was the Greek nationalism of Venizelos and the Muslim nationalism of the Unionists that struggled over western Anatolia. Bandit (chette or
ete) c violence, forced migration, oustings, and massacres were the means of this competition, just as in the Balkans.

Refugee Crisis The issue of the migration of Muslim refugees from the Balkans (muhacirs) was a central problem in the Ottoman Empire before, throughout, and after the Balkan wars.12 Muslims’ emigration included both flight and expulsion, and the boundaries between the two cannot always be clearly distinguished. The flight and expulsion of Muslims in and after the Balkan wars constituted the most important chapter of refugee migration from the lost Ottoman territories by influence. It also represented a peak of violence and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans as a whole. The Balkan wars caused the displacement of some 410,000 Muslims from the Balkans,13 and, among these, only approximately 297,73714 made it safely to the Ottoman territories between 1912 and 1915. In the end, a mere 38 per cent of the Muslim population living in the Balkans in 1911 remained in 1923. The rest had been expelled, fled, died in flight, or been killed.15 A very large number of these Muslim refugees were settled in the parts of the Ottoman Empire where the nonMuslims were a dominant group or had sizable populations. Western Anatolia was hit hardest by the coming of the muhacirs. For instance, some 145,32016 muhacirs were settled within the boundaries of the province of Aydın. There were already some refugees from the past wars in the province,17 but their numbers started to become much greater only after the First Balkan War in 1912.

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Some dispossessed refugees directed their anger against the Christians, and some others were propagandized to do so. Most struggled to survive in their new lives. Such large-scale displacement was a new phenomenon for western Anatolia. The arrival of refugees facilitated the transfer of their resentment. Muhacir experiences of maltreatment at the hands of Christians in the Balkans started to be circulated within the larger Ottoman Muslim public. This polarized the already problematic relationship between the Ottoman Muslims and Christians. The fragile cosmopolitanism of western Anatolian coast was being replaced with tension and the conflict-ridden atmosphere of Macedonia. This was partly a natural result of the influx of muhacirs. However, it was also a result of the CUP’s mobilization of the resentment of the Muslim refugees. The Unionists were predominantly Muslim refugees from the Balkans themselves.18 They thought the Balkan wars proved the “success” of the Balkan nationalisms over the reform-minded policy of Ottomanism. They abandoned the Ottomanist policy of the union of elements (I˙ttihad-ı Anaˆsır), which they arguably followed “halfheartedly”, after the loss of the Ottoman Balkans. The CUP was now a predominantly Muslim nationalist party with great emphasis on the central role of Turks. An ethnocentric Muslim nationalism was seen as the only feasible way to save the Ottoman state. That is why they used muhacirs as demographic and political assets. The Muslim refugees from the Balkans were mostly settled in the western parts of the empire where there were sizable Christian communities. This was a calculated attempt to achieve an overwhelming Muslim majority, something the Unionists thought would delegitimize the irredentist claims of the kingdom of Greece. The Unionists also pointed out the injustices committed against the muhacirs in order to legitimize the expulsion of Christians. The ousting and flight of the Ottoman Greeks in western Anatolia was thus framed as a “natural inconvenience” caused by muhacir resentment. Muslim refugees who were settled in the houses of ousted Christians in towns such as C¸es¸me, Seyrek, Eski Foc
a, or Yeni Foc
a;19 the members of the CUP with a refugee background; and some of the opportunists, resentment seekers, and chette members who took part in the ousting of the Christians had been victims of similar (if not worse) violence themselves in the Balkans. This, however, does not automatically legitimize or explain the ousting and flight of the Christians as a “natural

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inconvenience”. It also does not mean that all muhacirs were necessarily attacking native Christians in western Anatolia in 1914. The reality was far from that. When we look at the relationship between pre-1914 muhacirs and the local Christians, we do not see interethnic or intercommunal tensions in western Anatolia. It is only roughly around the spring of 1914 that violence against and ousting of the Christians erupt. Even then, the muhacir masses were not the initiators of this violence and ousting; bandits were. This was simply because most of the muhacirs were still waiting in ports of the province of Aydın to be settled somewhere. The case of the county of Foc
ateyn, which experienced the most violent phase of ousting and flight in the province of Aydın in 1914, demonstrates this clearly. Judging from the unnatural increase of its Muslim population from 1908 to 1914 (from 3,617 to 7,427), Foc
ateyn was one of the destinations for Balkan Muslim migration20 in the province of Aydın. The timing of their arrival is crucial. According to the eyewitness testimony of Felix Sartiaux, a French archaeologist who happens to be undertaking excavations at the time of the expulsions, the first major wave of muhacirs started to arrive to Foc
ateyn by 30 June 1914.21 This was days after the ousting of Foc
ateyn’s predominantly Ottoman Greek population by Muslim bandits. However, then Ottoman Minister of Internal Affairs Talaˆt Pas¸a, a muhacir himself and one of the three most prominent Unionists of his time, described the event as an intercommunal tension between Muslims and the local Christians. Armed bandits who looted houses are not mentioned in his account of the events, and one gets the impression that this was one of those spontaneous tensions resulting from the polarization brought by the Balkan wars. This, however, was not the case. It was an organized event that unleashed an unpredictable chaos upon the Ottoman Greek residents.22 The refugees undoubtedly created major economic and political challenges for the Ottoman state and society. Most had resentment against Christians. Some clearly saw opportunities in the Muslim nationalism of the CUP. However, there is no deterministic relationship between the resentment of the muhacirs toward Christians or the economic or social burden brought by them, on the one hand, and the ousting operations of 1914, on the other. In other words, the ousting of Ottoman Greeks was not inevitable. It was a result of conscious policy.

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The Unionists used muhacirs as political assets for the nationalist mobilization of the Ottoman Muslims. Talaˆt Pas¸a’s discussion of the flight of Ottoman Christians (including the violent case of Foc
ateyn) with an Ottoman parliamentarian, Emmanouil Emmanouilidis (or Emmanuelidi Efendi), in a parliamentary session is particularly revealing. On 18 June 1330 (1 July 1914), a group of Ottoman Greek members of the Ottoman parliament,23 headed by Emmanouilidis, the member from Aydın, made a motion to have a discussion session after Talaˆt Pas¸a’s return from the province, which was affected by boycott movements and the expulsion of Christians. Ottoman Greek members of the parliament wanted to know the reasons behind the ousting and flight, and they wanted to learn about the measures taken. Their request was fulfilled on 6 July 1914. Emmanouilidis started his speech by stating that their purpose was not to blame anyone but to draw attention to and address the tragic events that would be considered as acts of great dishonour and shame in the history of the mankind. He stated that those who thought of these events as insignificant had not seen or heard about the disgraceful acts that befell the residents of Izmir but especially of Foc
a (the county of Foc
ateyn), whose town was in ruins. He stressed that it was the duty of the house to discuss these matters that affected the citizens of the country, who were protected by the law. He stressed that they brought these issues to the floor not because they mattered for the Ottoman Greeks but because they mattered for the Ottomans as a whole; after all, he said, his job was to defend Ottoman interests. Emmanouilidis implied that the source of the flight of the Ottoman Greeks was the propaganda of the idea of Milli I˙ktisat and the boycott movement against the non-Muslims. He argued that if it were stopped from the beginning, things would not have got to where they were. He stated that some sopacılar (gangs, bandits) had emerged and forced some Muslims and non-Muslims alike to engage in economic activities as they saw fit. He argued that these gangs who wanted to wage a war of economy were not punished in a country where martial law was practised precisely because there was another agenda behind their actions. He claimed that what started as an economic pursuit turned into a political one and initiated the mass flight. He also underlined that there was a tendency to see these actions as reciprocal acts (mukabele bilmisil) in response to the suffering of the Balkan Muslims. He added that there

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were people who regarded all Ottoman Greeks as Greek nationalists (Yunan kafalı), and that was no solution to the present problems. Emmanouilidis’s speech was interrupted a few times, and once he was asked to address the rumours about Ottoman Greeks fleeing as a result of propaganda by the kingdom of Greece. He replied that although there might have been some Greeks writing letters that urged their relatives in the empire to migrate, these would not account for the flight of some 150,000 Ottoman Greeks.24 Talaˆt Pas¸a addressed Emmanouilidis’s questions and comments. Initially, Talaˆt Pas¸a underlined the atrocities conducted by the Balkan nations against Muslims, and he stressed that these atrocities, just like what Emmanouilidis claimed for the flight of Christians, were a disgrace in the history of mankind. He argued that once muhacirs flooded these (western Anatolian) parts of the country, it was impossible to stop conflicts and rivalry. Talaˆt Pas¸a said that there were no other options but to place those muhacirs in populated areas (initially in Muslim and later in Christian settlements too), since to do otherwise and establish new settlements for them, as Emmanouilidis suggested, would put a substantial burden on the state budget (which had already shrunk under the pressure of wars). If, Talaˆt said, they were to send those muhacirs to ¨ sku¨dar and Basra”, as the less inhabited parts of the empire “between U Emmanouilidis suggested, they would have perished in the desert.25 Ottoman Armenians were to be “perished” in the same desert a year later. In Talaˆt Pas¸a’s reasoning, the boycott movements were also a result of the muhacir propaganda, and the government took many measures to stop them, all to no avail. Furthermore, he underlined that the initial stages of the flight of the Christians had started in Edirne, which stayed under Bulgarian control for some time. This period and the collaboration of some Christians with the invaders, he argued, was the principal reason behind the Muslim retaliation that started the flight. Talaˆt Pas¸a also stated that he had visited places where news of misconduct and violence came, and he took all necessary measures to stop the flight of Christians. One such place, he said, was the town of Foc
a (meaning Eski Foc
a, the boomtown of the county of Foc
ateyn). He confirmed Emmanouilidis that some houses were looted and some people were killed in Foc
a. He added that he had visited Foc
a and ordered the removal of the governor-general of the county (Kaymakam), due to his inability to act.26 He said that some hundred people had

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already been punished by the Divan-ı Harp (wartime court) for the events of Foc
a alone. He also said that the inspections were still under way and more measures were to come.27 Finally, he said that the return of the Christians was a matter now discussed between the kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire. He implied that a population exchange was on its way. When considered as a whole, it can be seen that the “demographic wars” of the Macedonian Question became the realities of western Anatolia after the Balkan wars. This was clearly caused by the refugee crisis of the post-Balkan war period and the political design of the Unionists. The Balkan wars did not only create a refugee crisis but also empowered and radicalized the Unionists, who used that crisis as a political asset for their nationalist designs.

Empowerment of the Unionists The Unionists were able to homogenize the population of the western Anatolian seaboard only because they were in full control of the government and crushed possible opposition by 1914. Their seizure of power was a result of the Baˆb-ı Aˆli coup in 1913, which took place at the end of the First Balkan War that brought the loss of old Ottoman capital Edirne. The coup empowered them, and the war affected their rationale and actions for the survival of the empire. The turmoil and trauma presented by the Balkan wars were both a concern and an opportunity for the CUP. The committee longed to dominate the political realm and had wanted to implement its reform and centralization policies since the Constitutional Revolution of 1908, but it was never able to seize full power. According to Feroz Ahmad, the CUP constantly struggled for political power in the first five years of the constitutional government, and the Unionist victory in the end was far from being predetermined. Ahmad argues that the CUP might well have been eliminated from the political scene if had it not been for the catastrophe of the First Balkan War.28 A closer look at the period before Unionist ascension to full power proves this point. The first major challenge to the Unionists after 1908 came 13 March 1325 (13 April 1909),29 and it was predominantly due to the timely intervention of the Hareket Ordusu, a section of the Ottoman army mobilized by the Unionists, that they were able survive it. After the

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incident of 31 March/13 April, a counterrevolution against the Unionists, the army initially established itself as a powerhouse under Mahmut S¸evket Pas¸a’s control, whose aim was to make the army immune to the influence of the CUP and its rivals. However, on a closer look, one might see that this immunity was never fully established, since many young officers in the army were members of the CUP, as were some of the parliament.30 As a matter of fact, CUP and its rivals struggled for the control or the support of the army, and this struggle remained unresolved. Starting from 1910, the opposition against the CUP tried to counter its rising power by gaining influence in the army. Some members of the opposition were convinced to follow nonparliamentarian ways to struggle with the CUP following the infamous and much-disputed elections of spring 1912 (also known as the Sopalı Sec
im, “big stick elections”), as a result of which the CUP dominated the parliament. Subsequently, Miralay Sadık Bey31 and his friends threatened the newly established government with their resignation and declared that they would begin an armed struggle against the dominance of the CUP through a group in the army named Halaskar Zabitan (saviour officers). The opposition gave much trouble to the CUP. By mid-1912, Sadrazam Mahmud Said Pas¸a, who was supported by CUP, resigned together with Mahmud S¸evket Pas¸a, who had been tolerating activities of the CUP. Furthermore, a new cabinet (Bu¨yu¨k Kabine) was established, and it was very much in line with the ideas of the famous opposition figure Miralay Sadık. The CUP lost its power base, and, right before the Balkan wars, a Unionist hunt took place, forcing many members of the CUP to flee the country or to go underground.32 Around this time, Ismail Enver and Talaˆt Pas¸a had probably already decided to force the government out.33 When the CUP installed its dictatorship on 23 January 1913, with a successful coup d’e´tat, the kingdom of Bulgaria had already reached the Midye-Enez Line,34 and the threat of further losses was imminent for the Ottomans. The First Balkan War was concluded for the Ottomans with the Treaty of London on 30 May 1913, and the Ottoman Balkans were lost entirely. Ensuing negotiations failed to create a new status quo in the Balkans, and the conflicting claims of the Balkan states on the spoils of the war brought the Second Balkan War almost 16 days after the Treaty of London. As soon as the Second Balkan War started, the leadership of the CUP pressured the government and the chief of staff to

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recapture Edirne. Despite the government’s hesitation and urging caution, Ismail Enver Pas¸a, one of the prominent leaders of CUP, wanted to seize the opportunity presented by the Balkan states’ rivalry with each other. After a successful coup d’e´tat attempt on 23 January, Enver and some senior officers took initiative and launched an attack on Edirne. The security of Istanbul, the significance of the loss of the old capital Edirne, and the atrocities to which Muslims were subjected by the Bulgarian authorities were put forward as reasons for an offensive against Bulgaria. Edirne was finally recaptured on 22 July, 1913, when Bulgarian army was busy fighting on other battle fronts of the Balkan wars, and Bulgaria was forced to sign the peace agreement of Constantinople that restored Edirne to the Ottoman Empire. In the end, the domestic political instability that had lasted since the declaration of the constitution in 1908 ended in favour of the CUP. The Balkan wars and the recapturing of Edirne gave the CUP the circumstances, legitimacy, and power it required to introduce the political agenda of its ruling core.35 Since the community (consisting of the ruling core) dominated the party itself, crucial political decisions about the fate of the empire were in the hands of a bunch of Unionists. Furthermore, after 1913, members of the CUP were appointed to many key bureaucratic positions. The CUP had full power by the time the Christians of western Anatolia were being ousted. The most komitadji (bandit- or chette-like) government of the Ottoman Empire, as its contemporaries often described it, was brought to power in the vacuum created by the Balkan wars.

Radicalization of the Unionist Agenda and the National Question of Izmir The loss of the Balkan wars and the resulting chaos and trauma signified the beginning of a new period – one in which what were once called the “heartlands of the empire” were either lost within weeks or became border areas contested by various nationalisms and imperialisms. Most of the Unionists themselves became refugees after the Balkan wars. They lost their own homelands at the hands of the Balkan nation-states. The Unionists resented and also admired the success of these states. They learned the hard way that ethno-religious nationalisms were the norm. Following these developments, reconsolidation of the contested

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Ottoman sovereignty and the restoration of the power of the Ottoman centre became matters of survival for the empire, which was the last noncolonized Muslim state. Politics was brutalized, and sheer survival by all means necessary became the norm. The limits of this brutalization were drawn by the need to gain Great Power support. This, however, was not contradictory to the use of all means necessary, since “the Great Power diplomacy was a fixed game: the Great Powers were the House, and you could not beat it by playing by the rules.”36 Thus the more existentially threatened the Unionists felt, the more violent their policies became. The Unionists and like-minded Muslim and/or Turkish nationalists felt the need to take the matters into hand and act on behalf of the empire before it was too late. The most important drive for these intellectuals, activists, and decision-makers was the trauma of the Ottoman Balkans’ instantaneous loss in the wars. They all asked what was next for the empire’s fate. A group of nationalist intellectuals associated with the journal of Tu¨rk Yurdu37 embarked on a journey to Izmir in June 191338 to find an answer to that question. They wanted to make observations about Izmir, then the contested centre of the province of Aydın, and to meet enthusiasts of Turkish nationalism in the region. They aimed at the awakening of the nationalist consciousness, making assessments about the situation in the region and struggling for the “removal of the fake label of Hellenism”39 on Izmir. The excursion was “a major success” for the Tu¨rk Yurdu journal,40 and it was surely a timely delivered “wake-up call” for the Unionists, who then initiated fact-finding missions in western Anatolia. The “facts” they found frightened them further, and they saw the Macedonian scenario wherever they looked. The radicalization in the policies of the CUP is especially visible in their resentment of the Balkan nations who conquered Ottoman homelands; their resentment of the Ottoman Christians, whom they saw as “fifth-column” or “backstabbers”; and the realization of the nationstate’s internationally recognized superiority as a form of statehood and legitimacy. These three aspects brought the “brutalization of politics”41 that legitimized use of violence for demographic engineering and the conceptualization of Ottoman Christians as unreliable, if not outright undesirable. All three aspects are visible in the fact-finding missions of the Unionists in western Anatolia in the aftermath of the Balkan wars.

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These missions were undertaken to make assessments of the possible dangers awaiting Izmir (or the province of Aydın or western Anatolia in general), the next contested zone. One particular example, the factfinding mission of Mehmet S¸ahingiray, is particularly striking. On 29 July 1913, Dr Mehmed Res¸id (S¸ahingiray) embarked on a tour of inspection to some of the counties of Balıkesir (the provincial capital of the province of Hu¨davendigar). Later, he published a compilation of his notes from this inspection, Karesi Mutasarrıflıg˘ı Tahriraˆt Kalemi, in his memoir. During his inspection, S¸ahingiray visited Havran, Edremid, Akc
ay, Ilıca, Burhaniye, Ayvalık, Yunda (Cunda), and Go¨mec
. These were the areas in western Anatolia where sizable Christian communities lived. His reports included detailed characteristic qualities of native elites, tradesmen, or party members who might be potential threats or assets for the Unionist agenda. They also included information about the logistics and possible strategic value of those places. In general, the compilation of notes urged some measures be taken to consolidate Ottoman rule in the region. On his arrival at Ayvalık, one of the prominent towns on the Aegean coast, just across from the island of Midilli (Lesbos), S¸ahingiray was greatly disappointed and described the town as “unfortunately Greek” (Ayvalık ma’tteessu¨f bir Yunan kasabasıdır). According to him, Ayvalık had a lot of olive orchards; it was rich, well built, and beautiful; “but it almost only consisted of Ottoman Greeks” ( fakat ahaˆli umumiyle Rum). He noticed that almost all buildings that belonged to the Ottoman state, except that of the Adliye (courthouse), were in ruins, and by contrast, all buildings that belonged to the Medropolid (Orthodox Metropolia) were incredibly glorious and splendid. The mayor was from Yanya (Ioannina), and he was clever. However, according to S¸ahingiray, the level of his Ottomanness (raˆbıta-i Osmaˆniye’nin derecesi tain olunmaz) was unclear. Besides, his mother tongue was Greek, and he was on good terms with the Greeks. Later, S¸ahingiray became concerned that most of the town was pro-Greek, and he urged taking action against this. He suggested changing municipal borders and including some Muslim villages in the county and settling rich and able Muslim merchants and peasants in the town.42 S¸ahingiray crossed the island of Yunda (Cunda) from Ayvalık. His impressions were very similar to those about Ayvalık. He suggested the settlement of wealthy and able Muslims muhacirs in order to control Ottoman Greeks

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(muhacirlere tevzii ma’kul. Bu sayede tu¨ccaˆr ve zeytuncu ve oldukc
a zengin ahaˆli-i I˙slaˆmiyenin iskaˆnı Rumlug˘u tarassuda yarar).43 As is evident in S¸ahingiray’s account, the non-Muslims of western Anatolia were considered the enemies within. In 1914, the Unionists employed boycott44 and ousting operations as means to homogenize the contested region of western Anatolia, based on the “urgency” of the situation described in the reports like that of S¸ahingiray. They acted on behalf of the empire, which they thought was paralyzed. They acted in order to solve what they perceived as the “national question of Izmir”, a potential Macedonian scenario.

Imminence of Another War between the Kingdom of Greece and the Ottoman Empire The Treaty of London in 1913 failed to establish a status quo that would appease the demands of the participants in the Balkan wars. One of the central discussions in the meetings revolved around the fate of the Aegean Islands. After much debate, it was agreed that the Aegean Islands be ceded directly to the Great Powers, and the Ottoman Empire would abandon all claims to Crete.45 Although the war was over in 1913, the situation of these three strategically (and also symbolically) important Aegean Islands – Lesbos (Midilli), Chios (Sakız), Samos (Sisam) – was uncertain until 14 February 1914. When the islands were given to the kingdom of Greece,46 with the condition of not using them as military bases,47 the Ottomans became deeply disappointed and worried. The Unionists knew the importance of the islands, and they were not willing to accept the rule of the kingdom of Greece.48 According to the memorandum of His Britannic Majesty’s charge´ d’affaires for Constantinople, H. D. Beaumont, about the anti-Greek feelings in 1914: Rightly or wrongly, educated Turks were convinced that the cession to Greece of the Islands of Mytilene, Soio [meaning Chios] and Samos would ultimately lead to the disintegration of the Turkish possessions in Asia. The Turkish press accused Europe of committing a great injustice and of forgetting her assurances that she would assist Turkey to consolidate her position in Asia. The provision that Greece should pledge herself not to fortify these islands or use them as naval bases was regarded as of no value. Will Europe, asked the Press, guarantee that Greece will not use these islands as centres of agitation from which

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bands of comitajis will be let loose upon Asia Minor to turn it into a second Macedonia?49 Beaumont’s assessment of the situation was most accurate. Many newspapers voiced concerns about the future of the province of Aydın. In fact, they already started to give reports of the Bulgarian and Greek komitadjis (bandits) who allegedly crossed the border and started to terrorize people and disturb the peace and order.50 In April 1914, soon after the loss of the islands, the newspapers Tasvir-i Efkar, Ahenk, and Tanin published several articles about the activities of Greece in the province of Aydın. All warned the readership about the reported activities of Greek bandits in Edremit and Karaburun (both just across the islands). They also discussed the negative effects of such banditry on the railroad network of the region and on general security.51 These were indeed very “Macedonian” stories. Any interested individual would knew that in Macedonia, bandits (komitadjis or chettes) were used as means to undermine the legitimacy of the Ottoman rule in the Balkans by spreading nationalism or by disturbing order and presenting the Ottoman rule as inadequate under the eyes of the Great Powers.52 “To use brigands for ‘national causes’, turning a number of enterprising marauders from despised outlaws to ‘national’ figures was something that the Greeks, like all Balkan nations, frequently availed themselves of, whenever irredentism reached a boiling point and a supply of seasoned men of arms was needed to spark off revolutions in Thessaly or Macedonia.”53 Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Ottomans all used bandits as a means to oppress and terrorize people into supporting their causes. The Ottomans were now concerned that such a “boiling point” would be achieved in the province of Aydın. The first months of 1914, especially the spring, brought increasing amounts of pressure on the Ottoman Greek community of western Anatolia. The boycott movement became fierce and gained a clear antiChristian, anti-Greek stance. In late spring, the news of bandits ousting Ottoman Greeks spread. The aggressive ultimatum of the kingdom of Greece in June 1914 was not surprising, since ousting and flight of the Ottoman Greeks had already started on a small scales and various pressures on the community had been growing since the beginning of 1914. The last wave of boycotts in the empire made life nothing but unbearable for many Ottoman Greeks, whose existence in Asia Minor became a political asset for irredentist Greek nationalism.

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Since the end of the Second Balkan War, the Ottoman public had asked for more war, since many issues remained unresolved. That is why the Ottomans tried their best, from September 1913 to August 1914, to attract Great Power support54 before a potential war erupted. However, the kingdom of Greece was more successful in the same pursuit, and in addition, it still enjoyed supremacy in naval power. That is why the kingdom of Greece even considered blockading Izmir before the Ottoman dreadnoughts would arrive in late July 1914, so that they could have the upper hand in case of war.55 According to “E.P. Demidov, the chief Russian diplomat in Athens, the Greek government was playing an obvious game: it was trumping up charges of Ottoman misconduct in order to create an international uproar that would prevent the scheduled delivery of the two powerful dreadnoughts.”56 Greece acted as an aggressive protector for the Ottoman Greeks, and this appeared like a confirmation of the Unionists’ fears. They tried to formulate their “preemptive” measures without losing the Great Power support they longed for and without provoking an untimely war, in which the Greeks would have the naval upper hand. As probably is obvious to the reader by now, the ousting of the Orthodox Christians in western Anatolia was one of such preemptive measures by the Unionists. Those who know the history of the Macedonian Question would have immediately recognized the Balkan imprint in the perception and treatment of the Ottoman Greeks. Regardless of what historians might think, the Unionists and their contemporaries saw those imprints all around them, and as the decisionmakers, it was their perception that mattered.

Conclusion The ousting of the Ottoman Greeks in western Anatolia in 1914 was a harbinger of the Ottoman cataclysm that was to befall the peoples of the empire in the Great War. The years of war witnessed the forceful displacements of both Muslim and non-Muslim peoples of Anatolia en masse. Nationalists on all sides uprooted and killed communities for legitimizing their causes. The Anatolian Armenians faced a different and deeper tragedy in the war years. The year 1915 witnessed the systematic massacre and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the hands of the Unionists. The Armenian genocide represents the most

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radical phase of demographic engineering in the late Ottoman Empire. The expulsions of 1914 in western Anatolia constitute an early example of the Unionist demographic engineering policies that radically reconstructed Anatolia as a Muslim Turkish homeland by the end of “Turkish War of Independence” in 1922. From another point of view, they are late examples of the homogenization policies that were adopted in the Balkans with the establishment of nation-states. This is where the argument presented in this chapter comes into the picture. The ousting operations in western Anatolia present the transfer of the Eastern Question from Macedonia to the Ottoman Anatolia and the crystallization of a Muslim Turkish nationalist counterreaction to it. Arguably, each crisis after the loss of Balkans in 1913 caused the further radicalization of responses by the Unionists. Accurately or inaccurately, the more threatened the Unionists felt, the more radical their actions became. The mentality behind this radicalization was a drive to prove “worthy of survival” as a sovereign Muslim nation, at all costs, in what they perceived as a Social Darwinist struggle. The Unionists were convinced that the only legitimate norm of statehood was the nationstate. Their brutal realism, vulgar materialism, and Social Darwinist worldview; their own refugee experience; and the Ottoman losses in the Great War coupled with the Great Power support that they got from Germany during the war seem to have removed any hesitation to use more and more radical measures to homogenize Anatolia. The expulsions of 1914 in western Anatolia present the first case where the constellation of these elements set the stage for a Unionist policy of demographic engineering. In that sense, this phase of expulsions connects the history of ethnic violence in Ottoman Macedonia to that in the Ottoman Anatolia.

Notes 1. “National question of Izmir” is my translation of a phrase I often encounter in the Ottoman nationalist literature of the period following Balkan wars. It is basically used to define the discussions surrounding the topic of the faith of Izmir and western Anatolia (especially the province of Aydın) after the Balkan wars. When these discussions are put into context together with the discussions of the irredentist Greek nationalism’s policies of expansion in Asia Minor, it is clear that two nationalisms were in a collision course right after the Balkan wars. A good example of such discussions in the nationalist literature can be

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seen in Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazdım/Milli Mu¨cadeleye Giris¸ (I˙stanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1967), vol. 5, 1578. Bayar quotes Es¸ref Kus¸
cubas¸ı’s phrase “Milli Dikkat I˙zmir’e C¸evriliyor”. There is no consensus on the number of Ottoman Greeks who emigrated as a result of the ousting operations and the boycott movement. This is understandable, given the nature of the events and all the different estimates. Erik Jan Zu¨rcher estimates the number of ousted Ottoman Greeks could have been as high as 200,000. See his “Greek and Turkish Refugees and Deportees 1912 – 1924” at http://www.transanatolie.com/english/turkey/turks/ottom ans/ejz18.pdf. Hasan Taner Kerimog˘lu, in his book I˙ttihat-Terakki ve Rumlar 1908 – 1914 (Istanbul: Liberte Yayinlari, 2009), discusses the different sources of numbers provided. We see numbers as high as 200,000 from the area of Izmir alone, in contrast with a low of 98,552 (473 – 4). Engin Berber argues that according to the official numbers of the Greek Ministry of Social Help of the time (Yunanistan Sosyal Yardımlar Bakanlıg˘ı), some 98,552 Ottoman Greeks were forced to leave the empire. According to the same statistical data, 8,817 of these were from Yeni Foc
a and 9,250 were from Eski Foc
a. See Engin Berber, Sancılı Yıllar: I˙zmir 1918 – 1922 (Ankara: Ayrac
Yayınevi, 1997), p. 58. In his personal notes (Black Book) Talaˆt Pas¸a provides a detailed table about the number of the Ottoman Greeks who fled ( firar) and migrated to Greece, citing a figure of 163,975. See Murat Bardakc
ı, Talat Pas¸a’nın Evrak-ı Metrukesi (Istanbul: Everest Yayinlari, 2008), p. 79. In the Foreign Office archives, British observers gave an estimated total of 136,000 as the number of Ottoman Greeks who emigrated from the district of Smyrna (Izmir). See FO 195/2458, p. 552. I employ the number provided by Talaˆt Pas¸a, assuming that his calculations would be most accurate. This number became available to researchers only in 2008, which is one reason many researchers were not aware of it. The difference between expulsion and flight is never clearly distinguishable. People do not feel the need to escape unless the conditions force them. In the case of western Anatolian exodus of 1914, most of the Ottoman Greeks were forced to leave by bandits, and some fled because of fear and tension. I do not argue that the treaties of the Balkan wars awarded all Greek aspirations. In fact, some Greek aspirations in the Balkans were not awarded. I argue only that they were awarded in the Aegean. The Ottoman Empire “was treated (at least de facto) as an actor that observed fully the norms of the European public law ( jus publicum Europeum)” since the beginning of the eighteenth century. The empire was always an important element in the European balance of power, even before it was a member of the Concert of Europe. However, the Ottomans were never allowed to play an active role in Europe, other than the role of an element of the European equilibrium. European governments also did not show “the same consideration for Ottoman susceptibilities as regards independence and territorial integrity [fundamentals of the European balance], which they demanded for themselves”. See Fikret

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7.

8. 9.

10.

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12.

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Adanır, “Turkey’s Entry into the Concert of Europe”, European Review 13, 3 (2005), pp. 395– 417. Such as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization’s 1902 uprisings (Cuma I˙syanı), the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, annexation of Bosnia by AustriaHungary in 1908, Bulgaria’s proclamation of independence in 1908, and the Tripolitanian War of 1911. Mark Mazower states that the successful boycott attempts of Ottoman Greeks against Exarchists and Bulgarian businesses of Macedonia in 1907 constituted an example of “ethnic boycotts”, and they spread among Muslims and Jews. See Mark Mazower, Salonika, City of Ghosts (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), p. 254. BOA, HAT, 872/37758 (Hicrıˆ 29/Z/1241). For a seminal study on the different trajectories of modernity in the Ottoman Empire, and for the coastal trajectory in particular, see Cem Emrence, Remapping the Ottoman Middle East: Modernity, Imperial Bureaucracy and the Islamic State (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2012). The case of the famous Greek cruiser Georgios Averoff is a perfect example of this. George M. Averoff (1815 – 99) was a wealthy Ottoman Greek merchant who donated a large sum of money to the kingdom of Greece before the Balkan wars. The money was used to purchase a state-of-the-art armoured cruiser that gave Greece dominance over the Aegean in the Balkan wars. The ship was named after Averoff, and it single-handedly defeated the Ottoman navy in the naval battle of the First Balkan War. For a seminal study on the boycott movement in the Ottoman Empire, see Y. Dog˘an C¸etinkaya, “Muslim Merchants and Working Class in Action: Nationalism, Social Mobilisation and Boycott Movement in the Ottoman Empire 1908– 1914” (Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2010). For different chapters of the refugee migration from lost Ottoman territories, see Ahmet Akgu¨ndu¨z, “Migration to and from Turkey, 1783– 1960: Types, Numbers and Ethno-Religious Dimensions”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24, 1 (1998), p. 103. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821– 1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995), pp. 184, 339. Yusuf Og˘uzog˘lu, “Balkanlardaki Tu¨rk Varlıg˘ının Tarih I˙
cindeki Gelis¸mesi”, in Balkanlardaki Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨nu¨n Du¨nu¨, Bugu¨nu¨, Yarını (Bursa: Uludag˘ U¨niversitesi Yayınları, 2002), p. 18. Berna Pekesen, “Expulsion and Emigration of Muslims from the Balkans”, EGO j European History Online, published by the Leibniz Institute of European History (EIG), Mainz, 3 July 2012; retrieved from http://www.iegego.eu/pekesenb-2011-en [2013 – 01 – 04] Bardakc
ı, Talaˆt Pas¸a’nın Evrak-ı Metruˆkesi, p. 39. Right before the Balkan wars, on 22 February 1912, an article titled “I˙zmir’den: I˙zmir ve Tu¨rkler” was published in the journal of Tu¨rk Yurdu about I˙zmir. In this article, Westernized, modern, and developed parts of the city where mostly

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20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

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Christians lived were compared and contrasted with the parts where Muslims lived. The neighbourhoods of the Cretan, Tatar, and Tripolitanian muhacirs were described as the least developed and dirtiest and almost like a village. These were the refugees who had fled from the recently lost Ottoman territories. See “I˙zmir’den: I˙zmir ve Tu¨rkler”, in Tu¨rk Yurdu 1, 7 (9 February 1327), pp. 209– 11. Prominent Unionist leader Talaˆt Pas¸a recorded the presence of some 89,603 Muslim refugees in the province of Aydın before the Balkan wars. See Bardakc
ı, Talaˆt Pas¸a’nın Evrak-ı Metruˆkesi, p. 35. Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, “How Europeans Adopted Anatolia and Created Turkey”, European Review 13, 3 (2005), pp. 379– 94. For the events in Eski Foc
a and Yeni Foc
a, see Emre Erol, “Organized Chaos as Diplomatic Ruse and Demographic Weapon: The Expulsion of the Ottoman Greeks (Rum) from Foc
a, 1914”, Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 4 (2013), pp. 66– 96. For events in Seyrek, see Fuat Du¨ndar, “1914’te Rumlar’ın su¨ru¨lmesi, Yabancı inceleme heyeti go¨zlemleri ve Seyrek ko¨yu¨nu¨n foto hikayesi”, Toplumsal Tarih, 189 (2010), pp. 82 – 6. For the numbers, see Erkan Serc
e, “Aydın Vilayeti Salname ve I˙statistiklerinde Foc
ateyn Kazası”, in Foc
a U¨zerine Yazılar/Cumhuriyetin 75 Yılı Anısına (I˙zmir: Ati Matbaa, 1998). See also Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830– 1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 174. This date is provided by Fe´lix Sartiaux, “Le sac de phoce´e et l’expulsion des grecs ottomans d’Asie-Mineure en juin 1914”, Revue des Deux Mondes (1 November 1914), pp. 654– 86. For a detailed discussion, see Erol, “Organized Chaos”. This group of parliamentarians consisted of members from Istanbul Viktor and Haralambidi (no surnames mentioned); members from of I˙zmir Simonaki Simonog˘lu and Vangel (no surname mentioned); member from Gelibolu, Dimitraki Fitu; member from Trabzon Yorgo Yuvanidis; member from Aydın Emmanouil Emmanouilidis; and member from Karesi Savapulos (no surname mentioned). See: MMZC, I˙nikad: 26, Celse: 2, 23 Haziran 1330 (6 July 1914), p. 606. MMZC, I˙nikad: 26, Celse: 2, 23 Haziran 1330 (6 July 1914), pp. 606– 11. MMZC, I˙nikad: 26, Celse: 2, 23 Haziran 1330 (6 July 1914), p. 611. The governor-general of the county of Foc
ateyn, Ferit Ali Bey (or Ferid Bey), was removed from his office together with the governor-general of the county of Biga on 22 June 1914 (see BOA, BEO, 4293/321973 [Hicrıˆ: 12/B/1332]), due to his failure in protecting the citizens of the county of Foc
ateyn. However, the same Ferit Bey was reemployed as a Kaymakam to the county of Karamu¨rsel in the Marmara region, yet another area with sizable number of Christian Ottomans, on 9 January 1915 (BOA, I˙.DH., 1512/1333/S-31 [Hicrıˆ: 22/S/1333]). MMZC, I˙nikad: 26, Celse: 2, 23 Haziran 1330 (6 July 1914), pp. 611– 13. Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 37.

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29. The anti-Unionist events of this date, also known as the Counter-Revolution of 1909, were a major trauma for the Unionists. At the beginning of 1909, antiUnionist social actors such as the Ahrar Fırkası in the opposition and the conservative sections of Ottoman society increased their tone of criticism against the CUP. On the night of 30 March 1325, an insurgence against the CUP started in the capital and successfully seized the control of the city. Rebels declared their demands in the leadership of a Naks¸ibendi sheikh Dervis¸ Vahdeti. Although the events got out of control when the insurgence started, it was probably the Liberal opposition of the Ahrar Fırkası that originally instigated the insurgence. See Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, Modernles¸en Tu¨rkiye’nin Tarihi, (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2012), pp. 151– 4. 30. Actually, this was against the Ottoman constitution, but it was tolerated. 31. Miralay Sadık Bey, or Miralay Sadık (Colonel Sadık), was a senior officer in the Ottoman army who protected the Young Turks and the members of the CUP in its early stages. He was the head of Manastır branch of the Committee of Union and Progress between 1907 and 1908. He played a critical role in the Second Constitutional Revolution. Later he had disagreements with leading Unionists, and he became a fierce member of the opposition groups Hu¨rriyet ve I˙tilaf and Halaskar Zabitan. See Zu¨rcher, Modernles¸en, p. 544. 32. Zu¨rcher, Modernles¸en, pp. 156– 9. 33. Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908– 1914 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), p. 120. 34. Midye and Enez were two port cities, one on the Black Sea and one on the Aegean. The Midye-Enez Line was a straight line passing between these two cities. It was designed to cut across Ottoman Thrace as a borderline. 35. The Committee of Union and Progress (I˙ttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti) was the core group behind the rather visible and larger body of the Party of Union and Progress (I˙ttihat ve Terakki Fırkası), and even among the CUP, the influence of the core ruling cadre, that is the members of the merkez-i umuˆmi, was much greater. They were the ones formulating policy and ordering decisions. Even after the Constitutional Revolution of 1908, most members of the CUP and all members of the merkez-i umuˆmi kept their memberships secret for some time. 36. Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 9. 37. The journal Tu¨rk Yurdu was a successor to Genc
Kalemler. Genc
Kalemler was established in Selanik, and it is considered among the earliest intellectual enterprises that contributed to the formation of Muslim Turkish nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. Its end came with the loss of Balkans and the city of Selanik. According to Masami Arai, similar groups of intellectuals with particular interests in nationalism established Genc
Kalemler, Tu¨rk Yurdu, and later the successor of the latter, I˙slam Mecmuası. Nevertheless, the majority of the contributors to Tu¨rk Yurdu were refugees and non-Ottoman Muslims, most of whom were from the territories lost to the Russians and some from the recently lost Balkans, and thus the ideological layout of its nationalism was more Turkist

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38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

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than Islamist. All these journals also had some sort of an organic connection to the CUP, since most of their contributors were important members of the CUP, such as Dr Nazım, Nesimıˆ Sarım, O¨mer Seyfettin, and Ziya Go¨kalp. Tu¨rk Yurdu was dominated by muhacirs both in terms of the number of contributions to the journal and in its leading figure, Yusuf Akc
ura, who was a Russian e´migre´. For a detailed discussion of these journals and the role of the refugee elite, see Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 24 – 68. When they embarked upon their journey, the Second Balkan War was still going on. Cemal Kutay, Etniki Eterya’dan Gu¨nu¨mu¨ze Ege’nin Tu¨rk Kalma Savas¸ı (I˙stanbul: Bog˘azic
i Yayınları, 1980), p. 194. “I˙zmir Seyahati”, in Tu¨rk Yurdu 4, 9 (3 July 1329), pp. 730– 3. George Gawrych, “The Culture and Politics of Violence in Turkish Society, 1903– 1914”, Middle Eastern Studies 22, 3 (1986), pp. 307– 30. Nejdet Bilgi, Dr. Mehmed Res¸id S¸ahingiray, Hayatı ve Haˆtıraları (I˙zmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1997), pp. 68 – 9. Bilgi, Dr. Mehmed Res¸id, pp. 69 – 70. Although boycott movements started as a political and popular reaction against foreign states, they gained a new anti-Greek (Hellenic or Yunani) dimension in 1910 with the Cretan crisis and an almost total anti-Christian dimension after the Balkan wars. This shift started between 1910 and 1911, and the boycotts evolved into political and popular movements aiming for the economic empowerment of the Ottoman Muslims at the expense of the Ottoman Christians under the influence of the principals of the Milli I˙ktisat (national economy). After 1910, these movements increasingly injected more and more Muslim-versus-non-Muslim rivalry into the society. See C¸etinkaya, “Muslim Merchants”, pp. 113– 27. Frank Maloy Anderson and Amos Shartle Hershey, Handbook for the Diplomatic History of Europe, Asia, and Africa 1870–1914, Prepared for the National Board for Historical Service (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 429– 31. It must be noted that as a part of the same decision process, Imroz, Bozcaada, and Meis were left to Ottomans, due to their fundamental importance in the defense of straits. Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Tu¨rk I˙nkilabı Tarihi (Ankara: TTK Yayınları, 1991), vol. 2, pt. 3, pp. 247– 8. Cemal Pas¸a, Hatırat (I˙stanbul: Arma Yayınları, 1996), p. 60. FO 195/2458, p. 537 (21 July 1914). Banditry was already present in the province of Aydın before the Balkan wars. However, state-sponsored use of bandit groups for political purposes became much more widespread with the wars. When the wars were concluded, the frequency of the reports concerning presence of the bandits in the region increased enormously.

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51. See “Yunanlılar Mu¨slu¨man Fabrikalarını mı Yakıyor?”, Tasvir-i Efkar, no. 1037 (3 April 1914), p. 3; “Edremid’te Yunan Kundag˘ı?”, Tanin, no. 1895 (3 April 1914), p. 1; “Yunanlıların Kac
akc
ılıg˘ı”, Ahenk, no. 1901 (15 April 1914), p. 2; “Adaların Kars¸ısında Karaburun Havalisi”, Tanin, no. 1901 (9 April 1914), p. 3; “Anadolu Sevahili”, Tanin, no. 1902 (10 April 1914), p. 3. I would like to thank Hasan Taner Kemrimog˘lu, whose work brought these articles to my attention. See Hasan Taner Kerimog˘lu, I˙ttihat Terakki ve Rumlar 1908– 1914 (I˙stanbul: Libra Yayınevi, 2009), pp. 364– 5. 52. For the discussion of this pattern and a detailed analysis of the popular Macedonian uprisings between 1880 and 1902, see Fikret Adanır, Makedonya Sorunu (I˙stanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2001), pp. 108– 49. 53. Dimitris Livanios, “Conquering the Souls: Nationalism and Greek Guerilla Warfare in Ottoman Macedonia, 1904– 1908”, Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 23 (1999), p. 210. 54. Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War, p. 42. 55. Ibid., p. 43. In the telegram sent from the British consul general of Istanbul, Sir L. Mallet, to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir E. Grey, on 21 May 1914, Mallet, who recently had visited Athens, argued that the Greeks were planning to attack Ottoman dreadnought Sultan Osman before it reached Turkey, or they were planning to provoke war. See Bilal N. S¸ims¸ir, Ege Sorunu Belgeler Cilt II (1913 –1914) (Ankara: Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu Basım Evi, 1989), p. 490. 56. Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War, p. 49.

CHAPTER 5 “THE OTTOMAN SICKNESS AND ITS DOCTORS”: IMPERIAL LOYALTY IN PALESTINE ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR I Michelle U. Campos

In early September 1912, several lead articles in the Haifa-based newspaper al-Karmil decried the grave “sickness” facing Ottomanism. Only four years after the 1908 Ottoman Revolution, which millions of Ottomans had hoped was the dawn of a new era, instead they were confronted with domestic and international crises, failed policies, new threats, and, above all, a deep sense of disappointment. “With everything going on today”, wrote the paper’s editor, Nejuib Nassar, “with wars in the Yemen, attacks in Kerak and the Hawran, massacres of the Armenians and rebellions of the Albanians, tensions in Macedonia and the lack of general improvement in the form of government and in the financial picture, and the attack of Italy on Tripoli . . . the treatment given [by the government] was the policy of Turkification and no consultation with the Albanians and no equality for the Arabs, and they threw away the quest for justice and equality.”1 In this as in countless other articles he had written in the preceding months, Nassar pinned responsibility squarely on the heads of the ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Joining the chorus

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of critics in the Arabic press, Nassar declared, “The country has gotten worse under their rule”, blaming the CUP for the chaos, disorder, abuse, corruption, and divisions that plagued the empire.2 Given such sharp criticisms voiced in the pages of Nassar’s newspaper, it is no wonder that much of the historical scholarship has long accepted the view that Arabs were firmly anti-Ottoman by this point, if not long before.3 At the same time, al-Karmil, along with the Jaffa-based newspaper Falastin, has been memorialized for ˙ playing a key role in promoting a local Palestinian nationalism.4 A closer reading of the papers and a reassessment of their historical and political context, however, give us a markedly different picture. Within weeks of his strong denunciation of the policies of the government, Nassar vigorously began rallying public support for the Ottoman state in its pending war in Macedonia. “This is when man shows his true patriotism”, Nassar wrote, “when the armies of the Balkan states are at our borders.”5 Over the coming months, as war raged in the northwestern corner of the empire, Nassar used his public platform to increase support for the country. In the process, Nassar also proved that political criticism and patriotic loyalty could, and did, go hand in hand. The case of the Palestinian press underscores the assertion made in revisionist scholarship that the process of constructing and maintaining collective identities – imperial, regional, ethno-cultural, confessional – was far more complex and multidimensional than previously assumed.6 Both Nassar and Yusuf al-’Issa, editor of Falastin, ˙ were proud Palestinian Arab Ottomans, without the sense that this term was in any way an oxymoron. At the same time, the presence of Zionist activities and ambitions in Palestine presented Palestinians and the Arabic press with an additional lens through which to evaluate Ottoman rule. As al-Karmil and Falastin ˙ became outspoken critics of Zionism, they were brought into conflict with local and imperial officials as well as Jews residing in Palestine. For their part, Hebrew-language newspapers in Palestine viewed Arab attacks on Zionism as either anti-Semitism or political rivalry and argued that Zionism was a legitimate expression of loyal Jews in the Ottoman state. Many Jews in Palestine clung to a view of multicultural politics as the answer to Ottoman demographic heterogeneity and the political contest that emerged in the revolutionary period.

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The Press as Watchdog and Critic The kind of criticism voiced by Nejuib Nassar against the Ottoman government in the summer of 1912, unthinkable only a few years prior, was made possible by one of the most important changes in the revolutionary era: relative freedom of the press to publish in the various languages of the empire. Before the July 1908 Ottoman Revolution, press censorship was high, and readership in certain provinces and languages was severely truncated. Within months after the revolution, however, over a dozen independent Arabic newspapers were published regularly in Palestine, along with half a dozen Hebrew and Ladino newspapers and at least one in Greek; by the eve of World War I, another 18 Arabic newspapers had appeared in Palestine.7 Al-Karmil and Falastin were the longest running and arguably most influential of these ˙ local Arabic newspapers in this period. The importance of this revolutionary press in creating and giving voice to an imperial public cannot be overstated, despite our lack of precise data about its consumption.8 From its first days, the revolutionary press explicitly took it upon itself to be the mouthpiece of the revolution, educating and informing its readers of their duties and privileges as constitutional Ottomans. In addition, the press took seriously its role of ensuring the transparency and accountability of local and imperial governments. When needed, journalists would “speak truth to power”, taking on state officials in editorials, “open letters”, and letters to the editor, real or fabricated. Furthermore, the imperial Ottoman press shed light on distant and near corners of the empire, holding other provinces up as models to emulate or warnings from which to take caution.9 Thus, with a knowledge and conceptual map of the empire encompassing events in the Balkans, Istanbul, and greater Syria, as well as his own region of northern Palestine, what emerged in Nassar’s writing was a critical approach that saw the local and imperial, the lived and the legislated, in the same spatial and temporal frame. By the summer of 1912, when Nassar diagnosed the Ottoman Empire’s “sicknesses” for his readers, four years of complaints had built up alongside the empire’s changing fortunes, foremost among them the fact that the substantive political reform promised in the revolution had proven short-lived and elusive. The notorious “big stick” parliamentary

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elections of 1912 were a blatant lesson in this regard: Nassar, an ardent supporter of the Liberal Party, voiced sharp criticism against the corrupt methods of the CUP, which effectively shut down its political opposition.10 Whereas Nassar regularly expressed deep antipathy toward the CUP, Yusuf al-’Issa, editor of Falastin in Jaffa, was one of its local leaders. ˙ In 1908–9, al-’Issa had helped to spearhead the local boycott against Austro-Hungarian goods and ships on the heels of the Hapsburg annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and on the pages of his newspaper he regularly invited his readers to attend upcoming CUP branch meetings. Although he was very critical of the Liberals’ platform, al-’Issa, too, had become weary of the challenges facing the empire, especially incomplete political reform. In one potent expression, al-’Issa published a front-page “constitutional prayer” upon the arrival of the new governor to Jerusalem (the fifth since the declaration of the constitution), asking his fellow citizens to recite it daily during the first two weeks of the governor’s tenure. Al-’Issa’s “prayer” was both a list of complaints about previous governors and a reflection of the demands of the urban population: “May he be far from the influence of the Zionist agents and Greek priests and foreign consuls . . . and may we see in his days [running] water in Jerusalem, a port for Jaffa, a train for Bi’r al-Saba’, a reduction in crime in Hebron.”11 In other words, despite their differing political viewpoints, for both Nassar and al-’Issa the global and the domestic, the economic and the political, were a deeply intertwined system in desperate need of true reform.

Ethnic Politics in a Multiethnic State If in the early years of the revolution the “Ottoman nation” (al-umma al’Uthmaniyya) had taken centre stage as the first-person plural (“we Ottomans”), ethnic language soon after began to modify and moderate this. Newspaper reports in Palestine and greater Syria began to talk of the “two peoples” (al-sha’bein) – the “Turks” and the “Arabs” – and speeches and qasidas were written, recited, and published in this vein. This ethnic politics was most apparent first in the debate over language reform and then in the struggle over a broader package of political and administrative reforms and the question of provincial self-rule.

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After the revolution, the Ottoman press had conveyed the message that true citizenship required literacy in the language of the state, Ottoman Turkish. Advertisements for language classes, editorials promoting the acquisition of the language, and notices from the Turkish-language press and literature sought to convey the idea that bilingualism – at least a functional one – was one of the duties of the new citizen.12 By 1910–11, however, defence of the status of the Arabic language became a cause ce´le`bre in the Arab provinces. Some intellectuals blamed the CUP and the competition with Ottoman Turkish in state schools, but the language threat did not come from the state alone. Falastin, for example, was deeply ˙ concerned with the threat from the missionary and parochial schools. “A people cannot forget its language”, the paper warned.13 However, cultural pride is not the same thing as political nationalism, and the Palestinian press at the time was very clear that the Arab sha’b was a constituent part of the Ottoman umma, not its replacement or successor. This Arabist movement and Arabist culturalist sentiments by and large operated within a broader imperial politics of multiculturalism, as well as within a growing critique of Ottomanism. The liberal vision of Ottoman citizenship enacted in the late Tanzimat, one that created an “attribute-less” Ottoman citizen, had required the suspension of ethnic, religious, and cultural identities in the public arena. By 1912, in contrast, we see that the performance of these other identities, stemming from communitarian citizenship discourses, had become a fought-for right of being a “hyphenated Ottoman”. As I have argued elsewhere, we need to pay attention to these competing citizenship discourses at the end of the Ottoman Empire as a struggle over the contours of imperial citizenship, rather than an attack against it.14 We also should remember that this demand for a multicultural imperial politics did not take place in a vacuum but was very much a dynamic response to events and developments within and outside the empire. Leading Arab and Jewish intellectuals, for example, had taken note when Greek and Armenian community leaders requested that their languages be recognized as official languages alongside Ottoman Turkish.15 Likewise, others in the empire followed closely the course of events relating to local uprisings, strikes, and demands for reform. Local press coverage of the events taking place in the far-off western Balkan (Albanian) provinces is a useful illustration in this regard.

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From 1909 to 1912, a series of local protests escalated to armed uprisings in the Albanian provinces. In part, this was a reaction to the attempts by the CUP to cancel some of the long-standing privileges of the provinces, but the region also was characterized by a longer, steady level of intertribal conflict and political instability.16 High on the list of the Albanians’ demands were the establishment of Albanian-language schools, the appointment of Albanian-speaking government officials, and peacetime military service in the Kosovo region. Not coincidentally, all three of these demands later were adopted in the Arab reform movement platform.17 As early as 1910, the Hebrew-language Sephardi Jewish newspaper ha-Herut had written in support of the Albanians, arguing that only by ˙ preserving the individual characteristics of each Ottoman people would their tie to the central state be stronger.18 Two years later, the journalist Eli’ezer Ben-Yehuda, a Russian immigrant to Palestine who had taken on Ottoman citizenship, viewed these developments in a broader light. For him, the Albanian uprisings were an understandable response to the centralizing, homogenizing “French model” that the CUP had tried to implement in the empire. “You cannot stretch a string from one end of the empire to another without noticing the deep differences among its peoples”, Ben-Yehuda noted. Clearly, the Albanians wanted imperial reforms but while keeping their “Albanianness” intact, something the CUP had foolishly failed to allow.19 At the same time, Ben-Yehuda criticized the Albanians for launching their public meeting and issuing demands while the empire was in a state of war with Italy over Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. While the empire was at war, Ben-Yehuda argued, it was the duty of its citizens to set aside domestic demands so that it could successfully confront international pressures, at the end of which it could devote its full attention to domestic reform once again. As he urged, “Now there is one duty upon all Ottomans, from all the nations as Muslims, Christians, and Jews, to unite together and to stand alongside the empire with one spirit, to help her get out of this great embarrassment as quickly as possible with honor to the empire and under as good of terms as possible.” A few weeks later, even stronger sympathy for the Albanians was voiced by al-Karmil in the north. When relaying to his readers a recent exchange between the Ottoman Foreign Minister Gabriel Nouradinjian

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and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold on the looming Balkan crisis, Nassar informed them that decentralization signified equality between the Ottoman ethnic groups (’anasir), making the Albanian demands “natural”. “Yes, due to its political rule and military majority the Turkish ethnic group [’unsur ] is a pillar of the empire and its support”, Nassar acknowledged. “But the other ethnic groups have a place in the empire and [must] have complete freedom to fulfill their national customs [taqalidha al-qawmiyya ].”20 Nassar repeated his support for the reasonable demands of the Albanians, denouncing the “lies”, “exaggeration”, and “suspicion” expressed by the CUP and the pro-CUP press that disparaged the Albanians as traitors to the empire. “When will these newspapers recognize that the other ethnic groups have the same rights as the Turkish one, and at the very least when will they learn that if the shepherd does not give water to the sheep it will not get fat and he will not [be able to] eat his meat, and that the tree that is not planted properly will not bear fruit?”21 At other times, however, the metaphors that Nassar used sharply departed from those of shepherd and gardener to colonizer. In an editorial bluntly titled “The Corrupting Colonization”, he declared, We have gone from the Ottoman nation [al-umma al-’Uthmaniyya ] to its erasure because they [the CUP] chose the path of the customary politics of colonization on the one hand, and on the other hand they pursued a policy of lying nationalism. And between both policies they crushed Yemen and the Hawran and Adana and the Albanians’ lands, and what did we accomplish in [the loss of] Tripoli [Libya] but the fruits of these policies?22

The Beginning of War in the Balkans With the start of hostilities in the Balkans in the fall of 1912, however, even Nassar took a clear stand on the limits of ethnic politics. On 28 September, al-Karmil relayed for its readers a brief account of the public gathering that was held in Haifa to announce the outbreak of war. The imperial irade was read by the deputy governor of the city, in which those gathered were reminded that they should “respect the rights of all the groups”; the mufti also spoke about the duty of the patriot; and a patriotic qasida was recited to excite those gathered. Audience

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members were told of a patriotic demonstration being held simultaneously in ’Akka, less than 20 kilometres to the north.23 In Jaffa, 100 kilometres to the south, Falastin also reported on the local ˙ demonstrations and mobilizations taking place there, taking care to note the active participation of Christian and Jewish Ottomans alongside their “Muslim brothers”.24 Within days, both Falastin and al-Karmil began publishing ˙ laudatory reports of donations to the Ottoman military and Red Crescent society,25 volunteers heading to the front,26 and local aid for the families of reservists. Jewish newspapers in Palestine published reports on Jewish battalions and soldiers sent to the front,27 special prayer services held in synagogues on behalf of the empire,28 a philanthropic fund established to collect money for the Ottoman war effort,29 and a local women’s organization formed by the wife of a Jewish doctor to help injured soldiers.30 To a certain extent, the wartime press served as a magnifying glass drawing attention to various communities, and, in these conditions, no one wanted to be caught unprepared or perceived as unpatriotic. Falastin’s publication of the names and amounts of Jaffa’s donors to the ˙ military fund was both recognition of their patriotism and a silent shaming of those absent from the donor rolls. At a time when Ottoman Christians in the Balkans were viewed as a “fifth column”, the strategies of the press also surely boosted Jaffa Christians’ confidence that their neighbors would know the depth of their sacrifice for the nation: Christian merchants made disproportionately sizable donations to the Ottoman military and served in prominent fund-raising roles. Likewise, the question of military conscription provided an opportunity for members of the various communities to perform their patriotism and monitor that of other communities. In this context, despite weeks earlier having opposed the call-up to the army of nonMuslim men between the ages of 29 and 45, citing the economic and familial hardships this would pose, by late October Jewish newspapers urged Jews to participate in the war for the good of the “homeland, whose love is deep in their hearts!”31 Rather than a backpedaling of earlier criticisms, this wartime patriotic support reflected a shifting line between the perception of legitimate political engagement, on the one hand, and illegitimate betrayal, on the other. Nassar made this explicit when he sharply

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criticized an article that had appeared in the Daily Telegraph suggesting that the Macedonian governments had been pushed to war because of the failure of the Ottoman government to improve the situation of the Christians there. For Nassar, an Arab Christian loudly supportive of reform demands, this was too much. “If the Macedonians were really Ottomans”, he countered, “they would have done like the Albanians, but instead they insisted on the involvement of foreign governments [rather than] waiting for reforms from this just and straight government. Bulgaria should have waited for reforms that did not engender the break-up of the Ottoman union.”32 Precisely against the backdrop of a growing Arab movement for reform based in Beirut and among Ottoman Syrian exiles in Egypt, which Nassar heavily reported on and supported, he made a point of reminding his readers that “this [war] is an opportunity for the Arabs to demonstrate their devotion and patriotism”.33

Sectarianism, Zionism, and Palestine as the Southern Front of the Balkan War Just as the Balkan war provided a new key opportunity for Palestinians and Arabs to recommit themselves discursively to Ottoman unity on provincial and ethnic terms, it also opened up the door for religion and sect to emerge as elements chipping away at Ottomanism. The fact that largely Christian provinces had sided with their irredentist coreligionists in the Balkans was not lost on Palestinian journalists who struggled to emphasize Christian loyalty to the empire. On the occasion of ’Eid al-Adha, for example, both al-Karmil and Falastin, ˙ Christian owned and run, made sure to wish their “Muslim brothers” a blessed holiday and the Ottoman army victory on the battlefield.34 This seemingly formulaic message served several important functions. First, in relating back to the language of revolutionary imperial brotherhood, it underscored Christian demands for political equality. Second, by uniting Muslims and Christians under one monotheistic God, it sought to defuse Muslim – Christian religious tensions precipitated by the war. Third, by reminding Palestinian readers that Palestinian Christians were loyal to the Ottoman state and to the Ottoman nation, it drew attention to the perceived disloyal Ottomans in their midst: Jews and Zionists.

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Since their earliest published issues, al-Karmil and Falastin had been ˙ leading platforms for anti-Zionist criticism, opposing Zionist land purchases, which resulted in the establishment of Jewish colonies and the dispossession of Palestinian peasants, and opposing Zionist immigration, which brought a foreign population into the country and led to a dramatic rise in the cost of living in Palestine’s cities.35 In addition, the decades of Zionist immigration coincided with a wave of emigration from Bilad al-Sham, and, since Christians were disproportionately represented among the e´migre´s, the link between departing Christians and arriving Jews was drawn clearly, if uncomfortably.36 Against this backdrop, the battle for Ottoman territory and autonomy in the Balkans became a new metaphor, proxy, and warning for the struggle over land in Palestine. In late summer, before the start of hostilities, Falastin had published a report about Jerusalem governor ˙ Muhdi Bey’s visit to the Zionist colonies. The CUP member al-’Issa’s warning to his readers that the governor had promised the Zionists “complete administrative autonomy” resonated clearly in the aftermath of the Albanian uprisings, at a time when domestic and international attention was being paid to the uncertain future of “Ottoman unity”.37 This was followed within days by a report about a telegram (unsubstantiated) from the governor of Beirut warning the deputy governor in Jaffa of the imminent arrival of 200 Russian Zionist soldiers.38 A few weeks later, Falastin published a report from the meeting of the ˙ Tenth Zionist Congress in Berlin, drawing attention to the Zionists’ policy of active separation from locals as well as their strategy to abuse their Ottoman citizenship to further their political goals.39 Taken together, these articles alerted Falastin’s readers that Zionism was a multipronged ˙ threat that was being fuelled by outside forces and interests, a danger all the more threatening given events brewing in Europe. With the outbreak of war, al-Karmil explicitly linked the twin dangers the empire faced in Europe and Palestine, and this was a theme that resonated in the country for months to come.40 In mid-November, Greek forces captured Salonika, the capital of Ottoman Europe, birthplace of the CUP revolution, and a heavily Jewish city. Falastin ˙ reprinted news reports from other papers that first suggested that Salonika’s Jews welcomed Greek occupation, followed by a reprinted reader’s letter arguing that this kind of step drove a wedge between Jews and their Ottoman brothers.41 Thus the paper was able to use the words

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of others to cast doubt on the loyalty of Ottoman Jews, while formally distancing itself from such doubts. In contrast, al-Karmil was far more direct, citing news reports that Jews wanted to make Salonika a free port as evidence of the Jews’ “world-wide ambitions”.42 Two weeks later, the paper published an article on Salonika that was subtitled “the Jewish colonization of Macedonia”.43 Ongoing coverage of the proposed internationalization of Salonika provided Nassar with further opportunity to keep Zionism framed within a broader Ottoman context, at the same time that he urged his fellow Palestinians to use the Zionist example to organize and “show that the Ottoman lion is still capable of preventing the fox from entering his lair”.44 Nassar also linked Zionism with opposition to the demands of the Arab reform movement, arguing that the Zionist movement was using press subsidies and bribery to stop reform by keeping the people ignorant and the officials corrupt.45 In another article, Nassar despaired of Palestine ever gaining the attention and defence of the government, complaining, “Zionism is certainly the ruler of the country, and the Ottomans are leaving it just like they left Tripoli [Libya] and Macedonia.”46 Just as Ottoman Palestinians were coming to grips with news of the loss of territories in southeast Europe, revelations of a new, large Zionist land purchase of the properties of the villages of Karkur and Beidas surfaced.47 Aharon Eisenberg, the official purchaser, was a Jewish colonist whose Ottoman naturalization enabled him to mask purchases made with foreign money and intended for Zionist colonization. Both al-Karmil and Falastin covered the affair extensively and critically.48 ˙ In one article on the affair, Falastin referred to Palestine as a future ˙ “second Macedonia”, decrying the fact that the Zionists were “buying village after village”. “How long will the vulture eat the body of the homeland?” Falastin asked.49 Stepping into the fray, however, the Jewish ˙ paper ha-Herut responded that one of Eisenberg’s sons was a decorated ˙ Ottoman officer on the battlefield at C¸atalca at that very moment. As haHerut angrily asked, “if this gentleman and his father are not considered ˙ Ottomans, who then, are the Ottomans?”50 Furthermore, as Balkan refugees flooded into the rest of the empire in December, their support became an additional measure of Ottomanness and source of rivalry. In one issue, Falastin published a brief ˙ announcement that the youth of Jaffa would perform a play to raise

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funds for the Ottoman (Muslim) refugees. A few columns later, in the same issue, the paper published a longer account about a letter written by Zionists to the Cairene newspaper al-Muqattam complaining about the hundreds of Muslim Macedonian refugees in Beirut who reportedly would be sent soon to Palestine. According to Falastin, the Zionists were ˙ attempting to stir up antagonism between the refugees and their Syrian brothers.51 On another occasion, al-’Issa argued that the successful absorption of refugees actually would help stem the spread of Zionism in Palestine and “ensure the Ottoman future”.52 For its part, ha-Herut blamed “Christian jealousies” for these reports ˙ and at the same time cast aspersions on their role in the Ottoman body politic. The Jewish newspaper also accused the Christian newspapers of deliberately poisoning the relationship between Jews and Muslims, “who always lived in complete brotherhood and traditional friendship”, as a way to divert attention from the fact that the enemies of the state were Christians, much as they had during the previous war in Libya.53 “Our Muslims here should think about the aim of these lies”, ha-Herut warned.54 ˙ Ha-Herut’s accusation did not come out of a vacuum, and Falastin ˙ ˙ itself had accused one of the most prolific Zionist journalists in Arabic, Nissim Malul, of deliberately trying to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians. According to al-’Issa, Malul published inflammatory articles in the Arabic press. In one instance, Malul wrote that the Arab Christian Orthodox uprising against the Greek clergy in Palestine was sponsored by Russia and that they were therefore traitors to the empire; in another, Malul allegedly deceived a newspaper editor into thinking he was a fellow Muslim in order to publish his anti-Christian piece.55 Over the next year, local press wars in Palestine erupted with mutual recriminations, complaints to the governor, lawsuits filed, newspapers shut down, and editors imprisoned.56 Some of these trials involved the governor’s concerns over censoring the content of the papers, such as translations of reports from the European wires that were perceived as offending the Ottoman state. But in another case, after intense lobbying by the Jewish ambassador of the United States in Istanbul as well as the chief rabbi Haim Nahum, Falastin was charged with disturbing “the ˙ unity of the ethnic groups [ittihad al-’anasir ]”.57 Al-Karmil came to its defence, accusing the Jewish newspaper ha-Herut (the instigator of the ˙ campaign) of itself being a foreign agent while feigning imperial

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loyalty.58 By this time, the press had become another important front in the war over Ottomanness.

The Eve of World War As we have seen, the Balkan crises of 1912–13 contributed to both the centrifugal and centripetal tendencies already apparent in the empire as a whole. On the one hand, the war provided a moment of patriotic expression and performance, and “Ottoman unity” in the face of the enemy was prioritized. On the other hand, once the dust settled at the end of the war, further loss of land, demographic homogenization, and the perceived success of ethno-nationalist movements in breaking off from the empire all contributed to weakening an already frail Ottomanist project. In Palestine, the Balkan wars exacerbated existing local tensions while affording a new image to try to ward off the Zionist threat: Palestine as a second Edirne. The local Palestinian press eloquently captured the sheer alarm felt by many during the uncertain months of war. Reports of French ambitions in Syria, English plans in Iraq, and Russian intervention in Kurdish and Armenian affairs all put Nassar on guard. “We have been dreading victory in Thrace, and we still have strong fears and worries about what destruction the policies of the allies will bring to us.”59 Both al-Karmil and Falastin regularly published telegrams from the Ottoman news ˙ agency and Reuters but also paid close attention to what was being written in the European press. As 1913 wore on, Nassar became more convinced that some form of administrative autonomy was vital to the survival and revitalization of the Arabs. While he had earlier been agnostic about the degree of decentralization necessary for political reform, in June he attended the Paris Congress and joined the delegates in demanding “internal administration” within the empire, a demand he continued to make until the outbreak of World War I.60 Falastin’s editorial line remained ˙ firmly opposed to decentralization, although ’Issa al-’Issa, the paper’s publisher and cousin of Yusuf, was himself personally sympathetic to the Liberals.61 Jewish newspapers in Palestine closely followed the decentralist movement and debates over administrative autonomy, and many argued that it was incumbent upon Jews to claim their part in a fragmenting body politic.

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Unfortunately, no copies of Falastin or al-Karmil from 1914 have ˙ been preserved, and so historians must turn to other sources to cover the march into world war. Among the more interesting aspects, the memoirs of Avraham Elmaliach, one-time editor of ha-Herut and a prolific ˙ journalist, discuss the initially unifying effect of the outbreak of war on the Jerusalem population, as well as the failed efforts within the Jewish community to encourage foreign Jews to adopt Ottoman citizenship, both to avoid deportation and to strengthen the numbers and power of Ottoman Jews.62 In addition, the diary of Ihsan Turjeman, a Palestinian soldier stationed in his hometown of Jerusalem, adds a great deal to our understanding of the impact of wartime privations on the local population, growing ethnic tensions between Arab civilians and soldiers and Turkish officers and officials, and the sectarian impact of the war on life in the city.63 It is the four years of World War I, as the sociologist Salim Tamari has written, that succeeded in erasing four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Arab Levant, and the “days of the Turks” (ayyam al-Atrak) came to be written about in the historical literature and remembered in the popular imagination in extremely negative terms.64 Perhaps now, as the ghosts of Ottoman history are being exhumed due to changing political climates, increasing archival access, and oral and digital history projects, other ghosts can be laid to rest.

Notes Author’s note: I would like to thank the editors of this volume and the participants in the Basel workshop for their helpful and probing comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Thanks are also due to Evelin Dierauff for her generosity in sharing copies of al-Karmil’s 1913 run, some of which are referenced in this chapter. 1. “Illnesses and Avoidances”, al-Karmil, 28 September 1912. See also lead article on 17 September 1912. 2. Al-Karmil, 3 October 1912. 3. The relationship between Arabs and Turks has slowly undergone reevaluation since the hegemonic narrative offered in George Antonious’s famous The Arab Awakening, including the early work of Hassan Saab, The Arab Federalists of the Ottoman Empire (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958); William L. Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati’ al-Husri (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971); C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism

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4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

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(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973); Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908– 18 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (eds), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). See, e.g., Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Al-Karmil, 9 October 1912. For this new literature within the Ottoman Empire but outside the Arab provinces, see Christine M. Philliou, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Vangelis Constantinos Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire: A Non-Muslim Ottoman Community between Autonomy and Patriotism” (Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 2005); Masayuki Ueno, “‘For the Fatherland and the State’: Armenians Negotiate the Tanzimat Reforms”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013): 93 –109. Similar revisionist analysis has been made for the Russian, Hapsburg, and Qing empires. While most of these newspapers seem to have been ephemeral, appearing for weeks or months before running out of money, ideas, or readers, up to a dozen papers in Arabic and Hebrew endured publishing runs of several years or more. Unfortunately, only isolated, scattered issues of the Palestinian Arabic press survived for the 1908– 11 period, but long runs of three papers survived from 1911 to 1913. For a history of the Palestinian press, see Yusuf Khoury, al-Sihafa al-’Arabiyya fi Falastin, 1876– 1948 (2nd ed.; Beirut: Institute for Palestine ˙ Studies, 1986); Ya’kov Yehoshu’a, Tarikh al-sihafa al-’Arabiyya fi Falastin fil˙ ’ahd al-’Uthmani, 1908– 1918 (Jerusalem: Matb’a al-ma’arif, 1978). On the Palestinian press and readership, see Ami Ayalon, Reading Palestine: Printing and Literacy, 1900– 1948 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004). According to consular and other reports, the more popular Palestinian newspapers had up to 2,000 subscribers, but smaller newspapers had only 300– 500 subscribers. These subscription figures included locals as well as subscribers in other parts of the empire, Europe, and America. Israel State Archives (ISA) 67, peh/457:482 and ISA 67, peh/533:1493. See also Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 56. From the pages of al-Karmil, we get a clear picture of just how precarious the journalistic enterprise was for Nejuib Nassar and other editorpublishers. Nassar repeatedly pleaded with, cajoled, and threatened his subscribers who failed to pay their subscription fees in a timely manner. AlKarmil, 21 September 1912; 25 September 1912; and 12 October 1912. For more on the role of the press, see Michelle U. Campos, “The ‘Voice of the People’ (Lisan al-Sha’b): The Press and the Public Sphere in Revolutionary Palestine,” in Publics, Politics and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Seteney Shami (New York: SSRC Books,

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11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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2010), 237– 62; idem, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). See Al-Karmil, 11 September 1912, and 31 October 1912. On the 1912 elections in general, see Rashid Khalidi, “The 1912 Election Campaign in the Cities of Bilad al-Sham,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16 (1984): 461– 74. Falastin, 25 July 1912. ˙ See, e.g., al-Ittihad al-’Uthmani, 18 October 1908. In fact, literacy in Ottoman Turkish was a requirement for election to political office. When covering a school assembly held by the Fre`res Catholic School in Jaffa, for example, the paper’s reporter expressed great unease that not a single word had been uttered in Arabic, despite the program lasting for over five hours; nor, for that matter, was the Ottoman state ever mentioned. Falastin, 23 July 1911. ˙ Michelle U. Campos, “Making Citizens and Contesting Citizenship in Late Ottoman Palestine,” in Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, ed. Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011). George Gawrych also argued for the salience of an Ottoman “cultural pluralism” for understanding late-nineteenth-century Albanian consciousness. George W. Gawrych, “Tolerant Dimensions of Cultural Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire: The Albanian Community, 1800– 1912,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15, 4 (1983): 519– 36. Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, 79. At least one newspaper argued that the Jews of the empire should demand official status for Hebrew as well. Ha-Po’el haTza’ir [The Young Worker], July – August 1908. However, the CUP was officially opposed to language multiculturalism on an official or state level. In the words of the editor of the pro-CUP newspaper Tanin, Hu¨seyin Cahid, “to allow different languages in government would be setting up a Tower of Babel and would lead to decentralization.” (Tanin, 19 April 1910; quoted in Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, 88). For arguments that qualify the historiography of Albanian nationalism, albeit from different directions, see Gawrych, “Tolerant Dimensions of Cultural Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire”; Isa Blumi, “Contesting the Edges of the Ottoman Empire: Rethinking Ethnic and Sectarian Boundaries in the Male¨sore, 1878– 1912”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 35 (2003), pp. 237– 56; and Ryan Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912– 1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For a useful chronology of events in the Albanian provinces in this period, see James N. Tallon, “The Failure of Ottomanism: The Albanian Rebellions of 1909– 1912” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2012). Ha-Herut, 22 April 1910. ˙ Ha-Or, 19 July 1912. Ha-Or had covered the Albanians’ demands as early as 1909, although without as much editorializing. Al-Karmil, 7 September 1912. Al-Karmil, 11 September 1912.

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22. Al-Karmil, 11 September 1912. In contrast, Falastin was decidedly ˙ unsympathetic toward the Albanians and republished many articles from Tanin echoing the CUP party line that the Albanians were “rebels” (thuwwar) who threatened the unity of the empire. 23. Al-Karmil, 12 October 1912. For more on how the Ottoman nation was mobilized for the war, see Eyal Ginio, “Mobilizing the Ottoman Nation during the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913): Awakening from the Ottoman Dream”, War in History 12, 2 (2005), pp. 156– 77. 24. Falastin, 13 October 1912. ˙ 25. Al-Karmil, 31 October 1912; 13 November 1912; Falastin, 3 November 1912; ˙ 7 November 1912; 10 November 1912; 14 November 1912; 17 November 1912; 21 November 1912; 24 November 1912. 26. Al-Karmil, 19 October 1912; 23 October 1912. 27. Ha-Herut, 15 and 28 October 1912; Ha-Or, 27 October 1912. Falastin praised ˙ ˙ the women’s loyalty on 7 November 1912. 28. Ha-Herut, 23 October 1912. Al-Mounadi gratefully acknowledged this on ˙ 29 October 1912. 29. Ha-Or, 28 October 1912. 30. Ha-Herut, 28 October 1912; Ha-Or, 25 October 1912. ˙ 31. Ha-Herut, 29 October 1912. On 11 October, the paper had called military ˙ service a “real catastrophe” for this age group. The attitude of non-Muslims to military conscription was complicated and is discussed further in Campos, Ottoman Brothers. 32. Al-Karmil, 19 October 1912. 33. Al-Karmil, 22 February 1913. 34. Al-Karmil, 20 November 1912. 35. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss fully the criticisms in the Palestinian press and among Palestinians of the Zionist project in general or of land sales in particular. For more, see Neville Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Khalidi, Palestinian Identity; Campos, Ottoman Brothers; and Yuval Ben-Bassat, “In Search of Justice: Petitions Sent from Palestine to Istanbul from the 1870s Onwards”, Turcica 41 (2009), pp. 89 – 114. Khalidi notes that between 1908 and 1914, at least 600 articles against Zionism were published in the ten leading Arabic newspapers. 36. Al-Karmil, 12 October 1912. For more on the centrality of emigration in Palestinian nationalist discourse, see Louis Fishman, “Palestine Revisited: Reassessing the Jewish and Arab National Movements, 1908– 14” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2007). 37. Falastin, 11 September 1912. ˙ 38. Falastin, 15 September 1912. ˙ 39. Falastin, 10 October 1912. ˙ 40. Al-Karmil, 19 October 1912. 41. Falastin, 28 November 1912. ˙

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42. Al-Karmil, 30 November 1912. 43. Al-Karmil, 14 December 1912. Both were reprints of articles that had appeared in other newspapers, but al-Karmil noted that it had been attacked for its coverage on Salonika by the Zionists. 44. Al-Karmil, 13 February 1913. 45. Al-Karmil, 22 January 1913. 46. Al-Karmil, 29 January 1913. 47. Al-Karmil noted the approval of the majlis idara for the sale on 11 December 1913. It was further discussed on 21 December 1913. 48. For more on Eisenberg and this land purchase, see Campos, Ottoman Brothers, pp. 222– 3; and Yuval Ben-Bassat, “A Zionist Torn between Two Worlds: Aharon Eisenberg’s Correspondence after the Young Turk Revolution”, Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture 33, 1 (2014), pp. 25 – 39. See also alKarmil, 8 January 1913. 49. Ha-Herut, 24 December 1912. I have not been able to find the original article in ˙ Falastin. ˙ 50. Ha-Herut, 26 December 1912. ˙ 51. Falastin, 26 December 1912. Al-Karmil also wrote about the refugees, arguing ˙ that the Syrians would welcome them with open arms (21 December 1912). See also al-Karmil, 11 December 1912. 52. Falastin, 19 December 1912. ˙ 53. Ha-Herut, 1 January 1913; 17 December 1912; 16 December 1912. ˙ 54. Ha-Herut, 31 December 1912. ˙ 55. Falastin, 8 December 1912; 19 December 1912. ˙ 56. In early 1913, ha-Herut noted that its editor, Haim Ben-’Atar, was in court for ˙ the fourth time that month. 57. Falastin, 19 December 1912. See also Khalidi, Palestinian Identity; and Noha ˙ Tadros Khalaf, Les me´moires de ’Issa al-’Issa: Journaliste et intellectuel palestinien (1878 – 1950) (Paris: Editions Karthala, 2009). 58. Al-Karmil, 25 December 1912; Falastin, 29 December 1912. ˙ 59. Al-Karmil, 19 February 1913. 60. Al-Karmil, 4 May 1913; 7 May 1913. 61. Khalaf, Les me´moires de ’Issa al-’Issa. 62. Avraham Elmaliach, Eretz Yisrael ve-Suriya be-milhemet ha-’olam ha-rishona, ˙ 2 vols (Jerusalem, 1927). 63. Salim Tamari, Year of the Locust: A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 64. Salim Tamari, “The Great War and the Erasure of Palestine’s Ottoman Past”, in Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East in Honor of Walid Khalidi, ed. Camille Mansour and Leila Fawaz (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2009).

CHAPTER 6 PALESTINE'S POPULATION AND THE QUESTION OF OTTOMANISM DURING THE LAST DECADE OF OTTOMAN RULE Yuval Ben-Bassat

Background This chapter explores the range of reactions among Palestine’s diversified population to events during the period of Young Turk rule, in particular with regard to the question of Ottomanism (the development of a shared national common identity among the empire’s subjects under the Ottoman umbrella, which would substitute for particular identities), as well as the question of the empire’s viability as a political entity. The article’s three parts examine (1) petitions submitted by the Arab rural population against Zionist activity in the years preceding World War I, (2) the debate on Ottomanism within the ranks of the Jewish yishuv, and (3) correspondence between Istanbul and its officials in the provinces of Greater Syria during the war concerning the situation there. I argue that the situation in Palestine contrasted with other provinces of the empire that were manifesting growing signs of dissatisfaction during this decade, especially after the Balkan wars, and the feasibility of Ottomanism was questioned and contested. Palestine was not the theatre

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of tragic events such as those in western Anatolia, for example, where on the eve of the war there was a massive expulsion of the Greek Orthodox communities, apparently in silent support of the empire’s leadership at the time. Rather, in Palestine there was surprising support for the empire, its legitimacy, and its continuation, both among the Arab population and among some segments in the Jewish yishuv. Nevertheless, there were growing tensions between Jews and Arabs and manifestations of discontent among the latter concerning the empire’s handling of Zionist activity on the ground.

Petitions Dealing with Jewish –Arab Relationships Several striking features of the Ottoman Empire’s politics and its relationships to its subjects emerge in petitions sent from Palestine to Istanbul during the era of the Young Turks, particularly in comparison to petitions submitted in the years prior to this period. I discuss petitions (arzuhal, ¸sikayet, or at times simply telegrams) sent to Istanbul between 1908 and 1918 from the regions that later became Mandatory Palestine, as well as the bureaucratic correspondence on these petitions. The corpus of petitions from Palestine to Istanbul provides no inkling of the imminent collapse of the empire, signs of doubt regarding its vitality, or manifestations of loyalty to other entities. Nevertheless, there is clearly a greater awareness of Zionist activity, fears about its consequences, and, most important, disappointment with the government’s inability to deal with this issue, which is often framed as a warning that the Zionists are “creating a little state of their own within the state”.1 In this regard, the case of Palestine appears to be unique in comparison to other provinces discussed in this volume, given the prevailing circumstances and the ensuing conflict between Jews and Arabs. Most of the petitions to Istanbul in the decade between 1908 and 1918 still dealt with ordinary issues historically typical of petitions, such as corruption and misdeeds by local officials and bureaucrats, maladministration, and allegations that certain rights had been impinged upon, rather than with political issues. Nevertheless, several changes are striking in comparison to earlier petitions: 1. The gradual politicization of petitioning after the revolution is clearly noticeable. In the decade between the Young Turk Revolution

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and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which was rife with seminal political and societal transformations, petitions evolved very rapidly from a traditionally private or confidential mode of communication between subjects and ruler into a public vehicle for political messages. The reinstatement of parliamentary life, the enactment of the postponed constitution of 1876, and the lifting of the ban on free press and political activity all brought about changes that were also reflected in petitions. In other words, as the political reality changed, so did the petitions. Interestingly, some of the petitions during the decade of Young Turk rule were even published in the press, which blossomed after the abolishment of Abdu¨lhamid’s censorship – a development that was unthinkable previously.2 2. Petitions were often sent to bodies that had seldom been addressed in the past, rather than to the sultan or his top representative, the grand vizier. By now, the sultans ruled only nominally and had no actual power. Whereas in the past petitions were referred to the sultan and were seen as a tool to obtain his benevolence and mercy while granting him much-needed legitimacy, by now they were mainly addressed to the Council of State, the parliament, and the different ministries to obtain political rights, preserve privileges vis-a`-vis other groups in society and within groups, and ensure civil equity and constitutional rights. 3. The newly reintroduced constitution and the new era were often used as a source of reference when demanding justice. The discourse in the petitions shifted to focus on constitutional and civil rights, the rule of law, and the defects of the former system. It was only natural that the familiar institution of petitioning would serve as a medium through which new discourses were negotiated. The petitions make an unusual reference to constitutional rights, equity, the new age in the empire’s history, and the subjects’ right to be protected by the rule of law.3 As pointed out by Michelle Campos in her analysis of the changing discourse among the empire’s subjects in the period after the revolution, “Ottoman citizens studied and cited the constitution and other revolutionary ‘sacred texts’ that endowed them with political power, and they utilized a variety of tools to exercise and preserve that power.”4 The petitions reflect the zeitgeist of the new era of constitutional rights in the empire. The petitioners often do not simply beg for mercy but rather demand what they

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perceive as their constitutional rights. In other words, they use positivist arguments and justifications instead of anchoring their demands in traditional rights and customs. (Sometimes, however, they still demand rights based on customary law, as they used to do before the revolution.) 4. There was a growing number of intracommunal petitions submitted by members of certain communities against other members (particularly in the Greek Orthodox community), a development that is supported by findings from recent research on growing intracommunal tensions after 1908.5 Some of these tensions had to do with the generation gap and others with tensions between the clergy and laypeople, which in the Orthodox case were ethnically and linguistically different (Greek and Arab, respectively). The ability freely to express opinions and ideas and to take political action motivated these growing intracommunal tensions. In this regard, it is worth recalling the words of Hasan Kayalı that “the introduction of mass politics, a liberal press, and greater educational opportunities enhanced ethnic communal consciousness among certain groups, whereas they were promoted by the government with the purpose of achieving greater societal integration and administrative amalgamation”.6 5. There was a growing number of petitions against Jewish settlement activity and purchase of land and warnings about the dire consequences of Jewish activity. There were even warnings about the political implications of Jewish activity for the empire’s integrity. With regard to the last point, which is of utmost importance, the series of clashes between Jews and Arabs in the rural areas of Palestine, which greatly intensified after the revolution when waves of attacks on Jewish colonies took place especially in northern Palestine and prompted Jewish responses, attracted growing attention among the educated Arab elite. The latter manifested growing political awareness of the aims of the Zionist movement. Jewish –Arab clashes in the rural areas of Palestine were closely followed by the flourishing Arab press and even discussed in the Ottoman parliament, where representatives from Palestine raised the issue of Jewish immigration and colonization activity. Several violent Jewish – Arab clashes in Palestine also led to the

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submission of strongly-worded petitions to Istanbul against Jewish activity. The petitioners did not express disillusionment with the empire per se but rather disappointment that the empire had turned a blind eye to Jewish activity, which they thought was undermining the empire’s integrity and creating a state within a state. Petitions against Jewish activity by the rural population were apparently submitted with encouragement from different urban circles. Below, I present two such petitions in detail, which were sent after two heavy Jewish –Arab clashes at this time: the al-Fula incident in 1911 in northern Palestine and the Zarnuqa incident in 1913 in central Palestine.

The al-Fula Incident, 1911 The well-known al-Fula incident took place in northern Palestine three years after the revolution and symbolized the initial politicization of the Jewish – Arab conflict and the involvement of the Arab urban circles. Al-Fula was a village located in Marj Ibn ‘Amer (the Jezreel Valley) at the foot of the Nazareth Mountains. The Sursuk family from Beirut bought large segments of the valley from the Ottoman government in 1872, during the reign of Sultan Abdu¨laziz (reigned 1861 – 76). In 1910, Ilias Sursuk sold the land of al-Fula, some 3,500 dunams (one metric dunam equals 1,000 square metres; an Ottoman dunam was a little smaller), to a Zionist organization called the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which was established at the beginning of the century to purchase land and facilitate Jewish colonization activity.7 The JNF’s attempt to exercise its ownership rights and settle colonists there led to tensions and eventually to a clash between the villagers of al-Fula, who had been tenants on Sursuk’s land, and the Jews who settled there. The former were encouraged by the kaymakam of the subdistrict of Nazareth, Shukri al-‘Asali,8 who refused to complete the transaction, as well as by the generally negative attitude toward Zionist activity that had spread in the empire and in Palestine after the revolution, including in the press.9 As far as the villagers were concerned, they farmed and possessed the land, had the right of usufruct over it, and did not care whether the owners were from Beirut or elsewhere, as long as the situation on the ground remained the same. The Jews, by contrast, wanted to implement their full ownership rights as they saw fit and in accordance with Ottoman law.

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The villagers of al-Fula submitted a petition to the grand vizier against Sursuk Efendi (Ilyas Sursuk), claiming that together with another person, an Ottoman middleman who helped facilitate the transaction, they had sold the lands of their village to Zionists who were not Ottoman subjects. Interestingly, their use of terms such as “Zionist”, “sons of the religion of Moses” (siyonist musevi), and “non-Ottoman” (yabancı ecnebi) in the petition contrasts with older petitions from the 1890s, where Jews were simply called “Israelites” (isra’iliyyun) or musevi. The villagers expressed concern for their livelihood and lands and added that there were about a thousand people living there who had no other land or sources of livelihood.10 Moreover, they added that they rejected the oppression of foreigners, and they made an uneasy comparison with the Ottoman state that had ruled them for many years, using the same vocabulary (tahakkum, i.e., oppression, arbitrary power). Thus, on top of what we know and what was published about the incident of al-Fula, which deteriorated into a bloody fight and was widely reported in the Arabic press in Palestine and in the Levant, the villagers’ petition (written with the help of a professional petition writer) provides information about their own perception of the event. The land transfer was perhaps legal by the book, but it affected their daily lives and deprived them of their sources of livelihood. This helps account for their resistance to the establishment of the cooperative settlement of Merhavia on land purchased from Sursuk by the JNF.11 Evidently, the transformation from customary to positive law was not fully acknowledged by the Ottoman subjects, who claimed their rights based on both constitutional and customary laws.

The Zarnuqa Incident, 1913 The second case concerning petitions dealing with Jewish– Arab relationships took place about two years after the al-Fula incident in the region southeast of Jaffa in Palestine’s central coast, where several Jewish colonies had been established since the early 1880s (the Judean colonies). After a violent clash between the Jewish colony of Rehovot and the Arab village of Zarnuqa in 1913, representatives of dozens of villagers in the kaza of Gaza sent a collective petition, together with a tribal group located in the kaza of Jaffa near al-‘Awja (ha-Yarkon) River, against the activities of the two large Jewish colonies of Rishon le-Zion

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and Rehovot in their vicinity. The villagers wrote to the grand vizier that the Jewish colonies had treated them harshly, attacked travellers who passed near the colonies, hired Jewish and foreign guards who behaved very aggressively toward the rural population, and possessed illegal weapons. They argued, moreover, that the local court had issued summons to several Jews but the colonies had replied that these individuals were out of the country:12 It is well known that the exalted state works continuously for the welfare of the people and the numerous decrees it issues clearly testify to this. The state does not discriminate when applying justice and conferring mercy between poor and rich, peasant and townsman, Muslim, Christian and Jew. However, the above mentioned Jews attacked the people of our village, robbed and looted our belongings, killed, and even violated our families’ honor, all this in a way which we cannot find words to describe. If this oppression will continue, we will have to emigrate from our land despite our love and loyalty to it. One example of their attacks is that they appointed Jewish and foreign C¸erkes [Circassian] guards and put them on duty armed with various weapons, including illegal ones such as Martins [guns], Mausers [pistols] and knives, to patrol with their horses on the public roads. They catch every villager who travels along the public road, beat him, and take his clothes and money. They kill whoever opposes them. They also shoot passerbys on the public road, and murder them. . . . . . . Each time that we approach the local government with a request to summon them [the Jewish colonists] to court according to the law, the Jews reply to the court official that the wanted persons are not present since they have travelled to Russia or to Europe. With the help of money, they do whatever they want as though they have a little government of their own inside the country. Jewish sources indicate that the immediate cause of the petition was a violent clash between the colony of Rehovot and the adjacent Arab village of Zarnuqa, which took place a few days prior to the submission of the petition, on 23 July 1913. The clash started as an argument over

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accusations of theft by Arab passers-by from vineyards owned by Jewish farmers located between the colonies of Rishon le-Zion and Nes-Ziona, some 15 and 20 kilometers, respectively, southeast of Jaffa, and quickly deteriorated into fights between Rehovot and the nearby village of Zarnuqa, where the presumed thieves fled and found refuge. The incident left an Arab and a Jew dead and several people injured and resulted in tremendous enmity between the two sides, even though eventually reconciliation (sulh) was officially organized by an Arab mediator.13 The fact that a Jewish guard in Rehovot was found dead a few days later in dubious circumstances, possibly as an act of revenge, contributed to the turmoil.14 Tension was also high in the colony of Rehovot itself between the first-‘aliya farmers and the young, hotheaded second-‘aliya Jewish guards of ha-Shomer, who demanded a stern response to the village of Zarnuqa.15 The Zarnuqa affair, which is considered by many historians as a watershed in the Jewish – Arab relationship in late Ottoman Palestine, raises a number of important points.16 The fact that dozens of villages signed a petition against the Jewish colonies very rapidly after the events took place (the petition was sent to Istanbul within a few days of the event) is indicative of the event’s wide-scale influence. The mass petition accused the Jewish colonies of illegal usage of weapons and unprecedented aggressiveness toward their neighbours. On the ground, the involvement of hundreds of people in the brawl between the two sides was fairly rare in the history of the two people’s relationships up to then. Moreover, the clash in 1913 was the culmination of a series of other daily confrontations and the tense relationship between the Arab rural population in the region and the Jewish guards of Rehovot, a claim that is strengthened in a recent study by Gur Alroey on the ha-Shomer organization in this colony and its confrontational tactics vis-a`-vis the Arab rural population in the vicinity.17

The Yishuv and the Question of Ottomanism before World War I Prior to the war, the yishuv constituted only some 10 per cent of Palestine’s population, although there is still no consensus among researchers about the exact figures and the number of Jews in the general population. The yishuv was divided along several lines, including

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language, nationality, ethnicity, and culture, and at least half of its members remained foreign nationals and did not accept Ottoman citizenship. In this regard, and given its demographic inferiority vis-a`vis the Arab majority population, it is worth examining how the yishuv reacted to the challenge of Ottomanism during the Young Turk era. Following the 1908 Revolution, the Ottoman framework, despite its overt disadvantages and the genuine fears it elicited,18 was accepted by considerable numbers in the national circles in the yishuv, which is often described in the literature by the somewhat misleading term “the new yishuv”. Due to realpolitik considerations, they perceived it as the best setting to preserve the yishuv’s interests and further pursue the Jewish national project, given the rapid political changes taking place in the empire, in particular the introduction of a parliamentary representative regime. The revolution was thus a critical factor in the attitude of the national circles in the yishuv toward the question of future activity within the Ottoman Empire. This new stance was much more than merely a tactical manoeuvre or an effort temporarily to conceal the true objectives of the Jewish national movement in order to appease the Ottoman government. Rather, it reflected a genuine shift from prerevolutionary positions advocated during the rule of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II (1876–1909). Given the prevalent notion among many national activists that the postrevolutionary Ottoman Empire was about to revive and strengthen, many in the national circles, including a considerable number of first-‘aliya colonists and their affiliates, as well as some circles of second-‘aliya immigrants, came to accept the idea of Ottomanization despite the great challenges it posed. What encouraged their support of Ottomanization may have been the fluidity of this ill-defined term, which was interpreted by different groups in the empire in ways that differed from the Ottoman “official” interpretation.19 (Moreover, the Young Turk movement itself, it should be recalled, was not a monolithic group, and various ideas existed among its members with regard to the issue of Ottomanization.) This fluidity enabled many in the national circles to believe there was not necessarily an inherent contradiction between support for Ottomanism and the aims of the Jewish national project. Thus, in a clear shift from the Herzlian period, many factions in the diversified yishuv at the time supported Ottomanism and accepted the empire as a future framework in which the yishuv could continue to

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develop. Consider, for example, the move by the second-‘aliya party of Po‘ale Zion leaders such as David Ben-Gurion (1886– 1973), Yizhak Ben-Zvi (1884– 1963), Israel Shochat (1886– 1961), and others, who traveled to Istanbul and Salonika in the years after the revolution to study law in order to be able better to represent the yishuv and its interests in Ottoman institutions.20 After 1908 they all envisioned a revival of the Ottoman Empire, opposed European plans for its partition, and foresaw the yishuv’s future within the Ottoman framework.21 Interestingly, the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan wars did not discourage them. On the contrary, Ben-Gurion, for example, thought that the empire would now be more homogeneous and stable, in that it would be restricted mainly to its Asian territories.22 He even thought that the empire’s continuing dominance over the region was a safeguard for the yishuv at that particular time from the possibility of an Arab takeover of Palestine, given the demography of this region, which was still predominantly Arab, and his opinion that the yishuv’s potential rivals were the Arabs and not the Ottomans. This interpretation conflicts with the assumption that Ottoman cataclysm was a foregone conclusion obvious to all at that time. Not until rather late into the war, when the tide had clearly turned against the Ottoman Empire and against the backdrop of the strict Ottoman policy vis-a`-vis the yishuv’s members in Palestine – led by the notorious Cemal Pasha (1872– 1922), whose activities put the yishuv in a very dire situation – did many of the second-‘aliya leaders abandon their policy of support for the Ottoman Empire. Many of them did so while in exile from the empire after being deported during the war.

The Yishuv and the Empire during the War Period, 1914 –18 What can be learned from Istanbul’s correspondence with the Levant during World War I, regarding the extent of support and legitimacy the empire had at the time among the Jewish population of Palestine, and was the cataclysm in any way a foregone conclusion? Ottomandeciphered telegrams from the war period indicate that European consuls frequently approached the capital on the question of the Jewish situation in Palestine, in addition to complaints by local Jews who witnessed the events themselves. (We do not have the original petitions

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today.)23 What is very conspicuous in the Ottoman correspondence during the war, particularly with regard to the fate of the yishuv, is the difference of opinion between the commander of the region, Cemal Pasha, and the views expressed by the centre in Istanbul, particularly Talaat Pasha himself (1874– 1921), the minister of the interior and, as of 1917, also the prime minister. Time and again, in coded telegram messages, Istanbul requested clarifications regarding the situation of the Jews and wanted to know about the accommodation, food, and medicine provided for those who were expelled and whether they were treated justly. It even emphasized that Jews should not be treated categorically as collaborators of the enemy and that every effort should be made to preserve their support and to encourage them to adhere to the general public opinion.24 Moreover, Istanbul was very concerned about European public opinion with regard to the Jews and suggested conciliatory measures, such as asking a neutral consul to write a report after touring the region (Istanbul even suggested the name of the Spanish consul).25 By contrast, the commander of the Fourth Army in Syria, Cemal Pasha, continued stressing the threats of Zionist activity, proposed a six-point plan to fight the Zionist threat, and expressed growing impatience with regard to the Jewish issue and Istanbul’s inquiries.26 It is unclear what motivated this approach, in particular whether this was his personal agenda or a policy based on his impressions on the ground while serving as the region’s general governor. This, however, did not prevent Cemal Pasha from having close working relationships with adamant Zionists such as Aharon Aaronsohn (1876 – 1919) from Zikhron Ya‘aqov, a well-known agronomist whom he chose to be the head of the campaign to fight the locust plague in the region. The latter, it should be recalled, was the head of the Nili underground, whose aim was to assist the British to take over Palestine. Aaronsohn took advantage of his official position to collect information and deliver it to the British. Approaching Istanbul and asking for its intervention could, at face value, be interpreted as an indication of trust in the imperial centre and the conviction that it would indeed take measures to prevent injustices and act to ameliorate the situation of the petitioners and their peers. Nevertheless, it should be recalled that the situation of the yishuv and its people during the war was so dire that all alternatives were taken into

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consideration, including approaching foreign consuls and alerting public opinion in Europe and the United States, two steps that were apparently even more common than direct petitioning. As I have said, there were also cases of direct petitions to the imperial centre, despite the severe loss of trust in the empire on the part of large segments of the population. At a certain stage during the war, even the most adamant Ottomanists such as Ben-Gurion, who himself was exiled by the empire, lost their trust in Istanbul and stopped believing that the aims of the Zionist movement could be accommodated within the Ottoman framework. Some of the Zionist activists still, however, refrained from expressing overt opposition to the empire, due to their fears of Ottoman revenge against the yishuv and a wait-and-see attitude concerning the war, until they knew how it would end and where the new borders would be located. In this regard, the fate of the Armenians was often mentioned. For similar reasons, some of the soldiers from the yishuv who volunteered to serve in the Ottoman army during the war refrained from deserting its ranks even when the tide was clearly turning against the Ottomans.27 On the Ottoman side, the differentiation between legitimate Jewish activity and illegitimate Zionist activity is noticeable, as is the declared desire to preserve the support of the Jewish population of Palestine for the empire in a way similar to that of the general population. This largely correlates with the Ottoman effort to expel all the Jews holding foreign citizenship from Palestine during the early stages of the war and to ban overt Zionist activity. Cemal Pasha himself expressed vehement opposition to Zionist activity in Palestine and to the Zionist national project, which by then had lasted for more than three decades despite continuous strong official Ottoman opposition. In a situation of war with the Entente powers, the foreign nationality of most of the Jews worried the Ottoman government, particularly given the precedent of Armenian ties with Russia, which the Ottomans perceived as a threat to the integrity of the empire that might repeat itself. They thus ascribed great importance to minimizing Jewish national activity in Palestine.28

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Conclusion: The Larger Ottoman Context How does the case of Ottoman Palestine fit into the larger Ottoman framework in the decade between 1908 and 1918? Was civic Ottomanism still feasible at all at that stage, beyond lip service by both the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) leadership and the subjects of the shrinking empire? During the Balkan Wars in 1912 –13, there was disillusionment with the “Ottoman brotherhood”, to borrow a term Michelle Campos has used to define the euphoria prevailing after the Revolution of 1908 among Ottoman elite groups of various backgrounds, who for a short while envisioned a better, shared future under the Ottoman umbrella. Ottomanism at the time, as ill defined and flexible a concept as it was, was still the official state ideology, even though, as some researchers have argued, the CUP leadership paid it only lip service. In Palestine, the empire-wide disillusionment with Ottomanism had additional unique characteristics given the ensuing conflict there, as seen in the two case studies from 1911 and 1913. Hence, in Palestine, the end of civic Ottomanism encompassing all the empire’s subjects, which, as shown by Eyal Ginio, affected the entire empire during the Balkan wars, had specific characteristics.29 There, disillusionment was accompanied by deteriorating Jewish – Arab relationships and growing anger among the Arab elite over Zionist activity. As shown by Neville Mandel and others, the foundations of this conflict were all in place before 1914, even though the full Jewish –Arab binational conflict emerged only later on.30 Nevertheless this disillusionment did not manifest itself in open or active opposition to the empire until very late in World War I. With regard to the tiny yishuv, this is perhaps not surprising given the fears of its people and the fact that Ottomanism with all its disadvantages was still better than the other possible options under Ottoman rule. With regard to the Arab population, the empire was still regarded as a legitimate sovereign, with a very long tradition of ruling over the region, despite all its defects and problems. Moreover, as seen during the war itself with regard to Cemal Pasha’s policies in Syria vis-a`-vis Arab nationalists, it still had considerable clout in the region and the ability brutally to suppress its opponents and deter them. Nevertheless, it should be recalled that, compared to other

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locations such as the Balkans, western Anatolia, and eastern Anatolia, Palestine was a very peaceful region, and the unraveling of the Ottoman bonds after the Balkan wars was not very traumatic, violent, or rapid.

Notes 1. Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi (henceforth BOA) EUM. EMN., 30/5, 16 Temmuz 1329 (29 July 1913) (a petition by dozens of muhtars in the region of Jaffa to the grand vizier, protesting the activities of the Jewish colonies in the region). 2. On the rise of the press in Greater Syria in the aftermath of the Revolution, see Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 53–9, 120–1. 3. BOA. DH. MUI., 77 – 1/24, 9 S¸ubat 1325 (22 February 1910) (the villagers of al-Masmiyya to the parliament). 4. Michelle U. Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 6. 5. See Bedros Der-Matossian, “Administrating the Non-Muslims and the ‘Question of Jerusalem’ after the Young Turk Revolution”, in Yuval Ben-Bassat and Eyal Ginio (eds), Rethinking Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, 1908–1918 (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011), pp. 211–39. 6. Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 13. 7. On the al-Fula incident and its importance, see Rashid Khalidi, “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War I”, in Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (London and New York: Verso, 2001), pp. 219– 24; Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of a Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 100–1, 106– 10; Neville Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 106–7. 8. Al-‘Asali came from a noble family in Damascus; later, he became a member of the Ottoman parliament as a representative of his hometown. He was known to be a very vocal opponent of Zionist activity and used this card in his campaign and later in parliament. 9. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, pp. 107 – 9; Khalidi, “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism”, pp. 219– 24. 10. BOA. DH. MUI., 93/41, 24 Nisan 1326 (7 May 1910); see also DH. MUI., 98– 2/1, 26 Mayıs 1326 (8 June 1910) (from the Ministry the Interior to the Ministry of Finance, regarding an investigation about illegal sales of lands in northern Palestine by Sursuk and Twayni to foreigners. The Ministry of the Interior transferred letters that were received from Beirut and Jerusalem about the matter.

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12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

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Beirut said the registration of the land transaction was a deliberate falsification by foreign consuls and the official in charge of the registration of contracts). The petition by the villagers of al-Fula may have been initiated by al-‘Asali himself, whom we know forced them to remain on their land despite its sale and literally did everything he could, almost to the point of insubordination, to prevent the transaction from being completed. BOA. DH. EUM. EMN., 30/5. Moshe Smilansky, Rehovot: Shishim Shenot Hayeha (Rehovot: Municipality of Rehovot, 1949/1950), pp. 75 – 6. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., pp. 73–5; Gur Alroey, “The Servants of the Settlement or Vulgar Tyrants? A Hundred Years of the Hashomer Association: A Historical Perspective”, Cathedra 133 (2009), pp. 84–94 (in Hebrew). Alroey writes about the conduct of ha-Shomer in the Zarnuqa affair that “the rhetoric of blood, betrayal, murder and national pride transferred the Jewish–Arab conflict from a local dispute between Jewish and Arab farmers to national and even nationalistic realms” (p. 93). For the effects of the Zarnuqa affair, see Mandel, Arabs and Zionism, p. 174, and for the broader context, chap. 8. Mandel writes that “the incident provided antiZionists with a pretext to step up their activities”. Interestingly, Mandel cites secondhand reports on petitions by the local rural population in the region of Rehovot to the governor of Jerusalem against the activity of the Jewish colonies, but he is not aware of their appeal to Istanbul. Alroey, “Servants of the Settlement or Vulgar Tyrants?”, pp. 84–94; see also Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 141 (examples of contemporary critics in the colonies of ha-Shomer’s harsh attitude toward the Arab rural population). The traditional circles in the yishuv viewed compulsory conscription and social developments that might encourage secularization with apprehension. Nationalist circles were concerned that enthusiasm for the new constitutional regime would eventually turn into support for Ottoman nationalism at the expense of Zionism. Some leaders of the yishuv feared that under a constitutional parliamentary regime, the future of Jewish activity in Palestine and the yishuv’s ability to influence Ottoman Palestine policy depended on obtaining Ottoman consent. Thus far, the Jews had been able to buy their way in Palestine by bribing Ottoman officials (the notorious bakshish) and finding loopholes in the ineffective Ottoman administration, which did not go out of its way to implement the government’s decision to block Jewish immigration to Palestine and the purchase of land. There were fears that the new situation would change considerably with the establishment of a representative parliamentary regime that was expected to reflect the Arab demographic majority in Palestine. For more on these fears, see Israel Kolatt, “The Organization of the Jewish Population of Palestine and the Development of Its Political Consciousness before World War I”, in Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975),

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21. 22. 23.

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25.

26. 27.

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pp. 212, 229; Hannah Winer, “Ha-Medinyut ha-Tsiyonit be-Turkia ‘ad 1914” (“The Zionist Policy in Turkey before 1914”), in Israel Kolatt (ed.), The History of the Jewish Community in Eretz-Israel since 1882: The Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1989), pp. 273–4 (in Hebrew). For more on this, see Yuval Ben-Bassat, “Rethinking the Concept of Ottomanization: The Yishuv in the Aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908”, Middle Eastern Studies 45, 3 (2009), pp. 461– 75. See Nathan Brun, Judges and Lawyers in Eretz-Israel (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2008), part 2 (in Hebrew); Yossi Goldstein, “Turkey above All: Ben-Gurion’s Belief in the Ottoman Empire”, Jama‘a (2013) 20, pp. 51 – 71 (in Hebrew). Jacob Markovizky, Conflicts and Loyalties: The Enlistment of Palestinian Jews in the Turkish Army (Ramat Efal: Yad Tabenkin, 1995), p. 21 (in Hebrew). Goldstein, “Turkey above All”, p. 56. For instance, see BOA. DH. S¸FR, 81/145, 15 Tes¸rinisani 1333 (15 November 1917) (from Istanbul to Jerusalem to investigate a claim about speeches contesting Jewish loyalty in a gathering of Jewish and Bedouin leaders with Ottoman officials in Ramle); DH. S¸FR 81/233, 23 Tes¸rinisani 1333 (23 November 1917) (a request from Talaat Pasha to Beirut to investigate complaints about the Ottoman attitude to the colonists of Zikhron Ya‘aqov during a search for spies in this colony. Allegedly, the kaymakam of Haifa threatened the inhabitants of this colony by proclaiming that their fate would be similar to the Armenian one and subjected some of them to torture and beating, which led to the suicide of Sarah Aaronsohn, a member of an underground Jewish organization called NILI that passed on information to the British). BOA. DH. S¸FR 81/233; DH. S¸FR, 81/145 (Talaat Pasha asks Jerusalem to look into a complaint by a Jew who attended a gathering of Jewish and Bedouin leaders in a mosque in Ramle, called by the authorities, in which harsh words were expressed against the Jews and their loyalty to the empire. Talaat stresses that every effort should be made not to categorically blame the Jews and not to alienate them, as the enemy attempts to do). BOA. DH. S¸FR, 78/77, 9 Temmuz 1333 (9 July 1917) (from the Foreign Ministry to Cemal Pasha about the need to counteract the enemy’s propaganda and to pacify public opinion in Europe with regard to the Jews; a report is being prepared by the neutral Spanish consul, and collaboration is needed for the preparation of this important report). BOA. DH. S¸FR., 465/19, 2 Mart 1331 (15 March 1916) (a coded telegram from Cemal Pasha to Talaat Pasha with a six-point plan to fight Zionist activity in Palestine). For instance, see the letters from the front of Moshe Sharett, who was an officer in the Ottoman army and later became the second prime minister of Israel. Moshe Sharett, Shall We Ever Meet Again: Letters of an Ottoman Soldier, 1916– 1918 (Tel-Aviv: Moshe Sharett Society, 1999), p. 20 (in Hebrew).

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28. For instance, see BOA. DH. S¸FR., 51/236, 26 Mart 1331 (8 April 1915) (the Ministry of the Interior orders Beirut and Jerusalem to take measures to prevent further Jewish activity in those districts). 29. Eyal Ginio, “Mobilizing the Ottoman Nation during the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913): Awakening from the Ottoman Dream”, War in History 12, 2 (2005), pp. 156– 77. 30. Mandel, Arabs and Zionism before World War I, pp. 223– 31.

CHAPTER 7 LAND DISPUTES AND REFORM DEBATES IN THE EASTERN PROVINCES Mehmet Polatel

The eve of World War I was an episode of uncertainty and ambiguity for the prospects of the Ottoman Empire. Following the reinstatement of the constitution in 1908, a new chapter, which promised equality and legal protection for all Ottoman subjects, seemed to open. This brief episode of optimism, however, would fade away with the Balkan wars, the radicalization of the Committee of Union and Progress’s (CUP’s) understanding of the nation, and the CUP shift from Ottomanism to Turkish nationalism. It was in this period that reform in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire became part of the international agenda. One main aspect of the discussions on the reform plans in the eastern provinces was the land question: the restitution to their original owners of seized Armenian properties that were usurped by state agents and the Muslim population, mainly Kurdish tribes and local notables. The land question was not new. Rather, it was a thorn in the side of the empire’s eastern territories that was left unaddressed as the empire expanded, and the wound deepened through time. When the reform discussions reemerged at the end of 1912, however, the land question had become unavoidable. Armenians in the region and members of the Armenian political elite as well as revolutionary organizations were pressing for a resolution. At the same time, the land issue was the main reason for

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Kurdish leaders in the region to oppose the reform plans. As reform debates proceeded, it became clear that the conflict was not simply between individual claimants anymore but also between competing nationalist claims by Armenian and Kurdish political elites.

Land Disputes in the Eastern Provinces Armenian subjects of the empire had good reason to welcome the Second Constitutional period, which opened with optimism. The conditions seemed right for the establishment of a more inclusive political and administrative regime that would discontinue the oppressive rule of the Hamidian period. The number of land disputes had increased considerably since the failure of the 1895 reform plan,1 and the door for the resolution of land disputes seemed finally to be opening. Yet not all actors in the eastern provinces welcomed the new regime. Many Kurdish chiefs and sheiks rebelled against the constitutional regime. Kurdish elites in particular were wary of the prospect of losing power and influence over Kurdish and Armenian populations. Many of these rebellions were sparked by a mix of political, social, economic, and religious motivations targeting the new regime and the reform programme that would occupy internal and international public opinion during the Second Constitutional period.2 In contradistinction, Armenians supported the reform process, as Dikran Kaligian suggests: “The ARF [Armenian Revolutionary Federation] and the Armenian community’s most critical demand from the CUP was land reform and restitution.”3 In this chapter, I first analyze the content and complexity of land disputes and then analyze the details of central government policy regarding land disputes and the regulations issued in the first years of the constitutional period. The issue of land disputes in the eastern provinces may have been predominantly an Armenian problem, at least in international reception, but it was in no way confined to the seizure of Armenian lands. Many Kurdish peasants suffered at the hands of Kurdish tribes whose power and influence had grown considerably since the establishment of the Kurdish military units under the rule of Abdu¨lhamid, the Hamidian regiments.4 The situation was more complicated in the case of Armenians, however, since a process of dispossession of Armenians in the region was interwoven with permanent and massive violence, reflected in

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a series of massacres in the 1890s that sparked the emigration of thousands of Armenians, mostly to Russia and Persia. What, then, were the main characteristics of the land issue? First, there was the question of what would happen to the lands of Armenians who had fled during the Hamidian period. According to the Armenian patriarchate in Istanbul, more than 40,000 had fled to Russia before 1908.5 When we add to this figure those who fled to other countries, such as Persia, and those who emigrated after 1908, we can conclude that the number of cases was significant. The issue of their return after 1908 further complicated the debates on the resolution of land disputes. Second, the demographic policies of the centre complicated the issue of land further. Some Armenian properties and lands were used for the settlement of Muslim refugees (muhacirs) who fled their towns and villages in the Balkans and the Caucasus for the Ottoman Empire. When the debate on the restitution of seized lands began, the question emerged of how resolve disputes between refugees settled in Armenian properties and Armenians who demanded the return of their lands and properties. Instead of seeking to settle disputes involving muhacirs, however, the central government exacerbated the situation by settling refugees in disputed lands.6 A third complication involved the cases of seizure of Armenian lands by local, mostly Kurdish inhabitants of the region. The restitution of Armenian properties to their original (Armenian) owners without generous compensations for Kurdish notables who had seized them in the first place severed the relations between Kurdish tribes and the central government. Most of the usurpers were members of the Hamidian regiments and had considerable influence in the border zone, which had strategic importance for the empire. The alienation of Kurdish tribes and notables was not a price worth paying from the perspective of imperial politics. The efforts of Russia to establish friendly relations with Kurds – a policy that would bear fruit very soon7 – would further increase the cost for alienating Kurdish leaders, especially after 1910.

Central Government Policy Regarding Land Disputes In the first years of the constitutional period, negotiations between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsuthiun) and the

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Committee of Union and Progress led to an agreement that included the return of seized Armenian properties.8 It foresaw the introduction of an arbitration procedure for the resolution of land disputes. Usurpers would be compensated by committees of inquiry.9 In the first months of 1909, the cabinet decided to establish such a committee of inquiry. According to Cemal Pasha, one of the two members of this committee, the CUP suggested this initiative to the cabinet.10 It was met with harsh objections from the deputies of the eastern provinces.11 For example, Mehmet Efendi, the deputy of Genc
, stated that several peoples in the region had moved beyond historical conflicts, had “kissed and made up” after 1908, and were looking up to the parliament in hope. According to Mehmet Efendi, “the establishment of such a committee would not only impair the Treasury” but also drive “people to revolt against each other” (“bir taraftan Hazineyi ızrar, dig˘er taraftan ahaliyi yekdig˘eri aleyhine kıyam edeceg˘inden”).12 In his memoirs, Cemal Pasha states that “after the 31 March Incident, this idea [of resolving land disputes through a commission of inquiry] was completely forgotten”.13 This was not, however, the end of government initiatives for the resolution of land disputes in the eastern provinces. The constitutional government’s most noteworthy initiative was an order issued on 7 August 1909 [25 July 1325].14 It opened the way for the resolution of land disputes through arbitration by local commissions and made stipulation for cases where both disputing parties possessed title deeds. If the deed of the alleged usurper revealed that the land was bought or appropriated (satıs¸ ya da ferag˘), the claimed property would be returned to the former owner. In cases where the deeds did not contain such information, the dispute went to the courts. A few months later, a meeting was held between Armenian leaders, especially Dashnakists, and Kurdish chiefs in Van.15 The central government had made clear its determination to realize the restitution of seized lands while safeguarding that the usurpers would not be left without compensation. Hence, for most Kurdish chiefs, an agreement with the Armenians did not pose a threat. Participants in this meeting, which was held in October 1909, decided that the Kurdish chiefs would return properties for which Armenian claimants produced title deeds.16 Some Armenian properties were indeed returned in this period, but it soon emerged that the compensation procedures failed to satisfy the expectations of Kurdish chiefs. Haydaranlı Hu¨seyin Pasha from the

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Hamidian regiments, for instance, had found himself under the obligation to return the lands he seized from Armenians in a village of Patnoz. He claimed to have had spent 500 liras for establishing an irrigation system in the usurped lands, while he received a compensation of only 400 liras after restitution.17 According to a report of the Armenian patriarchate, Hu¨seyin Pasha had turned one of the churches he had seized in Van into a palace, besides appropriating several other properties.18 His stake in the land reform clearly exceeded the 100 liras loss in the compensation for the lands in Patnoz. There was so much to lose on part of Kurdish chiefs who had seized Armenian properties that many joined Hu¨seyin Pasha in his flight to Persia in the last days of 1909. In the following years, many Kurdish chiefs also aligned with movements that opposed reform in the eastern provinces.19 The procedure of arbitration, introduced with the order of 7 August, was soon followed by another: The government decided to introduce a temporal limitation for the arbitration procedure. With this second order, only those disputes that had occurred in 1909 would be resolved through arbitration in the commissions, while all other disputes would have to be resolved in the courts. This was a major setback for the restitution of Armenians’ properties and hence created significant resentment among the Armenian populations. According to Sir Gerard Lowther, who prepared the annual consular report on Turkey for the British Foreign Office, the actions of the government were indicating that the CUP promise for the return of Armenian lands had “now resolved itself into the sentiment that it would be wrong to dispossess the Kurdish usurpers”.20 In addition, Kurdish notables who went to Persia with Hu¨seyin Pasha were soon invited to come back by Bekir Sami, the governor of Van in the first months of 1910. They took up the offer and received an official welcome upon their return to Van.21 This episode also deepened the resentment of the Armenians. In the last month of 1911, Armenian deputies presented a memorandum emphasizing the need for reform in the eastern provinces. It reflects the depth of their disappointment.22 Replete with references to the optimism in the beginning of the constitutional period, it lists several criticisms with regard to the lack of order and security in the region. In the memorandum, the deputies compare the Hamidian and constitutional periods and argue that the constitutional regime failed to

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cause any substantial improvement for the Armenians in the eastern provinces. The memorandum included a list of demands for the establishment of a just and lawful regime. Along with the dismissal of corrupt officials, the empowerment of governors and military forces for the establishment of order in the region, and the punishment of those who committed crimes against Armenians, the deputies demanded yet again the resolution of land disputes. The authors emphasized that the beginning of the Second Constitutional period had not led to a resolution of the land question, which “had vital importance” (ehemmiyeti hayatiyeye haiz). According to the Armenian deputies, the government had issued the second order merely to annul the first one. Thus, they demanded the abolition of the temporal limitation in the order dated 7 August 1909. Along with this joint memorandum, Istanbul deputy Krikor Zohrab presented another memorandum that also touched on the land issue.23 The joint memorandum was limited to the demands of faster implementation of court decisions and the abolition of the temporal limitation related to the order of 7 August 1909. According to Zohrab, however, “the policy of ruining the Armenians on economic terms” (Ermenileri iktisaden peris¸an bırakmak suretindeki siyaset) was revealed in several actions of the government. To resolve the land question in the eastern provinces, said Zohrab, the government should have sent a commission of inquiry to the region and implemented a wide range of policies, ranging from employing Armenian officials in land registry offices in order to prevent abuses to recognizing those who pay taxes for a particular land as de facto owners, returning the lands of those who had fled in the previous period, paying compensations or giving other lands to the current owners of these lands, returning the communal properties that were escheated, and implementing for landless Armenian returnees the settlement laws that had been issued for Muslim immigrants.24 The joint memorandum of Armenian deputies and Krikor Zohrab’s memorandum were evaluated by the government in a cabinet meeting.25 With regard to the land disputes, the government found the suggestions presented in the joint memorandum considerable. The government decided that a notification would be sent to the Ministry of Justice for the faster implementation of court orders concerning land disputes and that the temporal limitations of the 7 August 1909 order would be abolished. Regarding Krikor Zohrab’s individual memorandum, the

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cabinet stated that a regulation on land disputes was being prepared for Armenian immigrants who had fled during the Hamidian period, claims regarding escheated communal properties would be investigated, and the minister of foundations would be consulted. Zohrab’s other suggestions were disregarded. On 15 May 1912, the Ottoman cabinet decided to establish a reform commission for the eastern provinces. In the respective draft bill, the commission was primarily authorized to inquire into land disputes. The amount of 100,000 liras was to be allocated for the payment of compensation. The commission, the cabinet argued, would finalize any disputes on absolute terms. Moreover, the commission was authorized to suspend or dismiss local officials.26 While this was an important plan, the commission was not to be. With tensions in the Balkans rising, the formation of the commission was massively delayed. In June, the empire’s ambassador in London, Tevfik Bey, sent a warning to Istanbul regarding this delay, stating that “if the claims that establishment of the reform commission for Anatolia was renounced were true, this would cause wrong impacts and misinterpretations”. Pointing out that the situation in the eastern provinces would probably become more threatening in the near future, he argued that the failure to establish the reform commission would eventually lead “to the escalation of current troubles, which were born by the developments in Rumelia, into violence” in a way that would invite foreign intervention.27 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied to Tevfik Pasha with a note rejecting his claims as groundless and argued that the commission could not be established because of the reservations of the Minister of Foundations, who was supposed to supervise it.28 It seems that this was another tactic to win time, as the commission was not established at all.

The Internationalization of the Reform Debates By 1912, it was becoming clear that the power of the Ottoman Empire to control the developments in its periphery was in decline. After the Balkan wars, all international actors were alarmed by the prospects of the Ottoman Empire, the collapse of which might have created an opening for their competitors. The main international actors in reform debates were Russia and Germany, which had competing interests. While Russia

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was anxious that German influence might deepen with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, Germany was trying to prevent the expansion of Russian influence in the eastern provinces and to hinder the separation of these provinces from the Ottoman Empire. After 1905, there was a radical change in the Russian approach to the Armenian Question. Russia began to see its Armenian population in the Caucasus as an asset: A conciliatory policy with regard to the Armenians would produce better results than oppression.29 This policy shift brought with it the return of confiscated Armenian communal properties in Russia. While the Russian policy toward Armenians in Russia’s borders and in the Ottoman Empire became more supportive, the Russian Foreign Office continued its efforts to establish good relations with Kurdish chiefs. Thus, Russia was promoting reform in eastern provinces and the improvement of the conditions of Armenians, on the one hand, and, on the other, supporting Kurdish political and religious leaders such as Abdu¨rrezzak or Sheik Selim, who objected the reform plans and in some cases openly advocated Kurdish autonomy in the region. The Balkan wars highlighted the fact that the Ottoman Empire was in decline in a striking manner. This was alarming for Russia, because an Armenian revolt in Ottoman lands threatened to disturb the fragile order in Caucasus.30 Another concern for Russia was that a fall of the Ottoman Empire would create a power vacuum in the region, which Germany was enthusiastic to fill.31 Thus, the main motivation for Russia in playing an increasingly active role in the reform discussions was to ensure a sphere of influence in the Ottoman East while keeping German influence out of the region.32 Another worried actor was Germany. As it seemed increasingly likely that the Ottoman Empire might not survive, Germany grew more alarmed. As suggested by Davison, the main object of Germany was to prevent the partition of Ottoman lands, especially with regard to the Ottoman East. As her recent investments in Ottoman lands were too scattered, securing the territorial integrity of the empire was to Germany’s interest.33 As the tension in Rumelia escalated into war in the fall of 1912, the need for reform in the eastern provinces became even more pressing. The Ottoman government was well aware of international pressures and attempted to prevent the intervention of international actors in reform

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debates by playing them against each other.34 A few weeks after the outbreak of the First Balkan War, Tevfik Bey started informal negotiations with the British Foreign Office and suggested the assignment of British inspectors to the eastern provinces.35 British authorities welcomed this initiative but insisted that the Ottoman government should make the necessary legal arrangements for the assignment of British inspectors first.36 Soon a draft bill was prepared by the Ottoman government for the assignment of British inspectors as advisers.37 It was in this context that the government prepared a reform plan for Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, and Mamu¨retu¨laziz on 18 December 1912.38 According to this reform plan, designated to be enacted as a decree law (kanun-ı muvakkat), a general inspectorate would be established and foreign inspectors would work as advisers to the inspector-general. This was a broad reform scheme that authorized the inspector-general on several matters, including the establishment of order and resolution of land disputes. The plan stipulated that all public officials in the region would be obliged to carry out the orders of the inspector-general. A special commission was to be established, which would consist of three Muslim members, two Armenian members, and one Chaldean member. Resolving land disputes was at the top of the list, and the commission was tasked to resolve land disputes between Kurdish and Armenian subjects in a way that would address the complaints of both parties. Even though this comprehensive plan for the four provinces was promising indeed, it was shelved after a coup in 1913, the Raid on the Sublime Porte (Bab-ı Aˆli Baskını). Still, the Ottoman government would try this strategy of resolving the matter with the assistance of Britain to minimize Russian interference again by the spring of 1913. Armenian leaders both in the Ottoman Empire and in Russia, frustrated with unfulfilled Ottoman promises, actively sought the internationalization of the debate. In the beginning of 1913, the Holy See of Echmiadzin applied to Russia – specifically, to Illarion VorontsovDashkov, the viceroy of the Caucasus – demanding Russian help for the provision of the interference of European powers. After this initiative, a commission under the presidency of Boghos Nubar Pasha39 was sent to Europe to lobby on behalf of reform.40 In this process, Armenian political parties in the Ottoman Empire managed to act together for the first time.41 The telegram sent by three Armenian political parties in

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Van – the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsuthiun), the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party, and the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar) – to the grand vizier and the Armenian patriarchate is an example of this political alliance for the reforms. Their demand was clear: The “reform guarantees for the honor, lives and property of the Armenian population against the small number of Dere-Bey [feudal] Kurds who” were “the blood-suckers also of the Kurdish population, and against the incapable and corrupt officials who protect and encourage them”.42 The Eastern reform issue entered the international diplomatic agenda when Britain decided not to antagonize Russia by responding positively to the request of the Ottoman government for British inspectors in May 1913. The way was thus paved for a conference of ambassadors in Austria’s summer embassy at Yeniko¨y, Istanbul, in July. Before this meeting, both Russia and the Ottoman Empire had prepared draft plans, yet the Ottoman plan was not discussed at all due to Russia’s diplomatic efforts.43 The Yeniko¨y Conference failed to produce any results, as the parties could not reach any agreement due to their conflicting interests. Soon after the conference, Germany and Russia agreed that the reform in the eastern provinces would be negotiated between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. After six months of negotiation, Russia and Turkey signed an accord on 8 February 1914.44 The plans for reform in the eastern provinces differed significantly with regard to land disputes, and the goals of these plans were in line with the imperial agendas of the involved actors. Table 1 shows the entries on the land issue in different reform projects. Recognizing the importance of the land issue, the Mandelstam plan was the only document that referred to the matter as “the return of seized Armenian properties”.45 While secretly supporting the idea of Kurdish autonomy in the region, Russia was pushing for a detailed reform plan that would receive strong support from Armenians. The Ottoman approach had changed in the meantime, with the coup of 1913 as a turning point. According to the draft bill for the reform in four provinces presented on 18 December, the reform commission would have clear authority to resolve land disputes. In subsequent Ottoman reform plans, however, this core instrument for a resolution disappeared. The Ottoman position at the Yeniko¨y conference did not include any clauses on the resolution of land disputes. While the 18 December plan

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Land Clauses in Reform Plans

Draft bill for the reform in four provinces46

Mandelstam plan47 (discussed at the Yeniko¨y conference)

Ottoman proposal prepared for the Yeniko¨y conference48 Final text of the RussianOttoman accord

“[The commission of inquiry is authorized to] resolve land disputes between Kurdish and Armenian elements in a way that absolutely put an end to the complaints of both parties in line with the law, state order, justice and equity.” “(XVII) A special commission which will be established under the supervision of the inspector general will determine the circumstances under which seized lands of Armenians would be returned or compensate them by lands or cash.” “(XIX) Immigrants will not be settled within the province.” No clause on land issue “Land dispute(s) will be resolved under the direct supervision of general inspectorates.”49

indicated Kurdish and Armenian subjects as parties in the land disputes, the parties were not named in the final agreement. Finally, in the agreement that was reached between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in February 1914, the land clause was vague in comparison to both the 18 December plan and the Mandelstam plan.

Kurdish Reactions to Reform Debates Implementing a reform programme that would alienate the Kurdish population in the region was impossible; this much was clear to the Ottoman government as well as to international players. By 1910, the government was trying to play a double game in the region. The government draft bills on the return of lands suggest that the government was continuously promising amelioration to Armenians without following up on them. Several plans and initiatives for the establishment of a land commission remained inconclusive. The time never seemed right for their implementation. It appears that the central

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government was seeking to placate Kurds at the expense of Armenians. However, Kurds themselves were suspicious of the new regime. Many Kurdish chiefs had doubts whether cooperating with the new regime would be in their long-term interest. The government of the Committee of Union and Progress, which promised the return of the seized lands, after all lacked the symbolic authority of Sultan Abdulhamid II. In addition to these concerns regarding legitimacy, confrontations between the brigands of Kurdish chiefs and the Ottoman army during the rebellions produced antagonism on part of Kurds. This sense of antagonism drove Kurds toward the realization of their commonalities in terms of sensitivities, interests, and opponents.50 As Hamit Bozarslan argues, it was through this emergence of a shared Kurdish awareness that the land issue ceased to be an exclusively Armenian Question and turned into the Armenian–Kurdish Question.51 It became clear that the CUP government lacked either the strength or the will – or both – to keep its promises, such as guaranteeing equality before law, just punishment for crimes committed against Armenians, and the return of the seized lands. Kurdish chiefs responded with more daring action. In September 1912, for instance, a brigand named Mir Muhi committed acts of violence in Van, Bitlis, and Mus¸ against Armenians,52 causing concern in the empire as well as among the international public.53 The government received intelligence that conspirators in the region were instigating people to revolt and commit massacres (s¸uris¸ ve katle sevk olundukları).54 According to Ambassador Sir Gerard Lowther, there were two factors behind the eruption of this new wave of violence. First was the fact that Russian propaganda was getting more influential. Second, the government used a policy of calculated ignorance of the situation in the eastern provinces, “unwilling to take measures against” Kurds “for fear of throwing them into the arms of Russia”.55 The internationalization of the reform issue further deepened the concerns of Kurdish chiefs and sheiks, who were religious leaders. As the Ottoman government failed to implement reform, the whole debate turned into an Armenian dream of hope, before it became a nightmare. In the final analysis, the debate had posed no immediate threat to the existing regional and international power relations by 1911. With the involvement of Great Powers, however, the implementation of reform soon took on a more immediate quality for the Kurds, as can be seen in a

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telegram sent by the governor of Van, Tahsin Bey, on 18 December 1913. The governor complained that he was not informed about developments regarding reforms, obviously the hottest topic of debate in the city he governed. Tahsin Bey was warning that the newspaper coverage regarding reforms “stirred up the hearts of Muslims” (“Mu¨slu¨manların go¨nlu¨nu¨ bulandırıyor”).56 One of the main Kurdish worries regarding the reforms was the prospect of being subjected to Armenian rule. As the territories of what was considered Kurdistan and Armenia overlapped significantly, a conflict of interests appeared unavoidable. Abdu¨rrezzak Bedirxan’s57 efforts to instigate a Kurdish nationalist movement in the region with Russian assistance was inextricably linked to the issue of Armenian reforms. In the Autumn of 1913, he published a manifesto lamenting the fact that Kurds were not consulted in reform discussions. According to Bedirxan, the rights and interests of Kurds should have come first because “the population of the vilayets placed under the name Armenia, and those of other places”, were “four fifths Kurdish, and the Kurds” owned “most of the lands”.58 Bedirxan referred to the issue of land ownership, along with demographic majority, to substantiate his claim that Kurdish interests in the region were primary to those of the Armenians. Land disputes continued to be a vital source of concern for the Kurdish population in the region during the reform debates. By 1912, when Abdu¨rrezzak was actively instigating a Kurdish uprising in the region, the governor of Erzurum warned the central government that hostility of Kurdish tribes against Armenians inflamed by land disputes could result in violence, and Kurds might ally with Abdu¨rrezzak or Russia.59 After the Russian – Ottoman accord on reforms was signed, tension in the region and worries about the future of seized properties accelerated. In a telegram sent to the central government on 26 January 1914, Diyarbekir governor Hakkı Bey was complaining to the central government about worried locals who frequented his office in order to gain information about the details of the reform plan. He emphasized that publications claiming that land disputes would be resolved by inspectors-general were driving Muslims into worry and panic (bais-i ye’s ve telas¸).60 In March 1914, Kurdish concerns over the new regime and reforms erupted. An uprising headed by Sheik Selim was reported from Bitlis.61 Tahsin Bey, governor of Van, informed the central government that

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rebels protested reforms, demanded the reinstatement of religious law (sharia), and considered an alliance with Russia. Tahsin warned the government that the course of events might lead to the emergence of a Kurdish Question.62 While Ottoman forces quickly gained control in the region and suppressed the rebels, the subsequent execution of religious leaders who had given their support to the rebellion further fuelled the grievances of the Kurdish population.

Conclusion The restitution of seized Armenian properties was at the heart of the reform discussions for the eastern provinces. An examination of the draft bills prepared by the Ottoman government shows that there was a shift in the approach of the government in early 1913. Until the coup of 1913, the government’s strategy was to buy time by preparing several draft bills for the resolution of land disputes and finding excuses for not enacting them. In contrast, the post-coup governments of the CUP abstained from making any commitment regarding land disputes. It was evident that the resolution of land disputes and the restitution of Armenian property would affect the lives of thousands of Armenians and Kurds in the eastern provinces and disrupt the social and economic balances of power in the region. Ottoman governments were clearly not willing to take the risk of disrupting the post-1910 order, which reestablished the alliance between the central government and Kurdish chiefs in the region. The plan of December 1912, rapidly shelved after the 1913 coup, was the only exception. While the idea of establishing a “national economy”63 was becoming dominant among the ranks of the CUP – especially after the Balkan wars, which radicalized the CUP’s understanding of the nation – the party seemed to have lost interest in facilitating the return of seized Armenian properties. In the aftermath of the Yeniko¨y conference, Gerald Fitzmaurice, chief dragoman of the British ambassador to the Ottoman court, reported his observations about the land question: Despite the fact that the Armenians have loyally assisted the “Young Turks,” the latter, during the last five years, could not spare, out of some £40,000,000 which they have practically squandered on military armaments, the £250,000 which would

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have amply sufficed to indemnify the Armenians or Kurds, as the case might be. This failure to settle the usurped land question has been interpreted by the Armenians as evidence of bad faith on the part of the Committee, and of their secret intention to persist in the old methods of breaking up the peasantry.64 What Fitzmaurice missed here is that the resolution of the land issue could have become possible only with a combination of intent and capacity on the side of the Ottoman government. It is certainly true that intent was lacking, but capacity was also a problem. The issue had clearly become more complex and required policies that had to be more radical than the dispensation of 250,000 liras. Kurdish reaction to the CUP regime and the reform debates had introduced a new element to the equation: Kurdish nationalism in its formation phase. The disagreement was no longer limited to disputes among individual claimants but extended to conflict among two projections of distinct territories: Armenia and Kurdistan.

Notes 1. For detailed information about the 1895 reform plan, see Ali Karaca, Anadolu Islahaˆtı ve Ahmet S¸akir Pas¸a (1838– 1899) (Istanbul: Eren Yayınları, 1993); and Musa S¸as¸maz, British Policy and the Applications of Reforms for the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia 1877– 1897 (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society Printing, 2000). 2. Hamit Bozarslan, “Remarques sur l’histoire des relations kurdo-arme´niennes”, Journal of Kurdish Studies, no. 1 (1995), pp. 55 – 76. 3. Dikran Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule 1908– 1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009), p. 53. 4. For detailed information about the Hamidian regiments, see Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). 5. Anadolu Vilayaˆt-ı Osmaˆniyesi’ndeki Araˆzıˆ Meselesine daˆir Ermeni Patrikhanesinden 7 Temmuz sene 327 Taˆrihiyle Makam-ı Saˆmıˆ-i Sadaˆret-i Uzmaˆ ile Daˆhiliye ve Adliye ve Mezaˆhib Nezaˆret-i Celıˆlelerine Arz ve Takdıˆm Kılınan Takrıˆrin Suˆretidir (Dersaadet: Dikran Dog˘ramacıyan Publication, 1328). 6. For example, in the spring of 1911, in the vilayet of Bitlis, “additional lands were granted to a new influx of immigrants”. Twenty-one new pieces of land were given to Muslim immigrants in Mush plain (Dikran Kaligian, “Agrarian Land Reform and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire”, Armenian Review 48, nos. 3 – 4 [2003], p. 39).

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7. Russia tried to develop relations with Kurdish notables, especially after 1878 Berlin Congress. Russian efforts began to bear fruit after the establishment of the Second Constitutional period, about which many Kurdish leaders were suspicious. For a detailed analysis of Russian–Kurdish relations and their consequences, see Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 8. For detailed analysis on the relations between the CUP and the Armenian political organizations, see Arsen Avagyan and Gaidz F. Minassian, Ermeniler ve I˙ttihat Terakki: I˙¸sbirlig˘inden C¸atıs¸maya (Istanbul: Aras Yayınları, 2005); and Kaligian, Armenian Organization. 9. Kaligian, Armenian Organization, pp. 49 – 50. 10. Cemal Pas¸a, Hatıralar (Istanbul: Tu¨rkiye I˙s¸ Bankası Ku¨ltu¨r Yayınları, 2012), p. 377. 11. Meclis-i Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, period 1, vol. 1, sess. 1, 26 Kaˆnun-ı saˆni 1324/8 (February 1909), pp. 494– 508. 12. Ibid., pp. 504– 5. 13. Cemal Pas¸a, Hatıralar, p. 378. 14. Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi (Prime Ministry, Ottoman Archives, Istanbul), BOA.MV 130/20, 29 Temmuz 1909. The decision of the cabinet regarding the order on land disputes. 15. FO 424/250, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, Annual Report on Turkey for the Year 1909, 31 January 1910, p. 42. 16. Ibid. 17. FO 195/2458, M. Smith to Sir Louis Mallet, 14 February 1914. 18. Teghekagir Hoghayin Grawmants Handznazhoghovoy (The Report of the Commission on Seizured Lands), vol. 1 (Istanbul: Dog˘ramacıyan Publishing, 1910), p. 6. 19. Reynolds, Shattering Empires, pp. 55 –6. 20. FO 424/250, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, Annual Report on Turkey for the Year 1910, 31 January 1911, pp. 38 – 9. 21. Klein, Margins of Empire, pp. 159– 60. 22. BOA.BEO 3997/299747, 26 Tes¸rin-i Saˆni 1327/9 (December 1911), “Anadolunun Vilayaˆt-ı S¸arkıˆyesinde Te’min-i Asayis¸ ve Adalet Vesaitine Dair Muhtıra”. This memorandum was signed by I˙stanbul deputy Krikor Zohrab, Erzurum deputy Vartkes Seringiulian, Van deputy Vahan Papazian, Sivas deputy Dr. Nazareth Daghavarian, Mus¸ deputy Kegham der Garabedian, Kozan deputy Hampartsum Boyajian, Tekfurdag˘ı deputy Agob Boyajian, I˙stanbul deputy Bedros Halacian, Halep deputy Artin Boshgezenian, and Erzurum deputy Karekin Pastermajian. 23. BOA.BEO 3997/299747, 28 Tes¸rin-i Saˆni 1327/11 (December 1911), Krikor Zohrab to the Sublime Porte. 24. Ibid. 25. BOA.BEO 3997/299747, Kanun-ı evvel 1327 (December 1911), copy of the decision of the cabinet (Meclis-i Vu¨kela).

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26. BOA.MV 164/72, 2 Mayıs 1328 (15 May 1912). 27. BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 11 May 1912, Ottoman Embassy in London to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 28. BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 20 June 1912, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Grand Vizier’s Office. 29. Roderic H. Davison, “The Armenian Crisis, 1912 –1914”, American Historical Review 53, no. 3 (1948), p. 486. 30. This concern was clearly voiced by the minister of foreign affairs of Russia, Serge Sazonov, in one of his meetings with Turhan Pasha. BOA.BEO 4192/314360, 2 July 1913, Turhan Pasha, Ottoman Ambassador in Petersburg to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 31. Serge Dmitrievich Sazonov, Fateful Years 1909– 1916 (New York: F.A. Stokes, 1928), p. 141. 32. Davison, “Armenian Crisis”, p. 489. 33. W. J. van der Dussen, “The Question of Armenian Reforms in 1913– 1914”, Armenian Review 39, no. 1 (1953), p. 15; Davison, “Armenian Crisis”, p. 482. 34. For example, Rıfat Pasha suggested that the government should negotiate with the Armenian patriarchate and resolve the matter internally before the issue got out of control with the intervention of Great Powers (BOA.BEO 3980/298468, 5 Kanun-ı Evvel 1328/18 Aralık 1912, the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Grand Vizier’s Office). 35. BOA.BEO 4107/308022, 23 October 1912, Tevfik Pasha, Ottoman Ambassador in London to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 36. BOA.BEO 4107/308022, 31 October 1912, Tevfik Pasha, Ottoman Ambassador in London to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 37. BOA.BEO 4107/308022, November 1912, Nezaretlere mu¨¸savirler tayinine ve anların vezaifine mu¨teallik kanun layihası mu¨sveddesi (draft bill on the appointment of advisers in ministries and their duties). 38. BOA.BEO 3980/298468, 18 Aralık 1912, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir ve ¨ zere Kaleme Alınan Kanun-ı Mamu¨ratu¨laziz Vilayetlerinde Tatbik Olunmak U Muvakat Lahiyası. 39. Boghos Nubar Pasha was an important political actor who played a great role in the emergence of an international public interest about massacres committed against Armenians between 1894 and 1896. He had prepared several reports on this matter. He also paved the way for the establishment of Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) in 1906. 40. Rober Koptas¸, “Zohrap, Papazyan ve Pastırmacıyan’ın Kalemlerinden 1914 Ermeni Reformu ve I˙ttihatc
ı- Tas¸nak Mu¨zakereleri”, Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklas¸ımlar 5 (2007), pp. 166– 7. 41. Arsen Avagyan and Gaidz F. Minassian, Ermeniler ve I˙ttihat Terakki: I˙¸sbirlig˘inden C¸atıs¸maya (Istanbul: Aras Yayınları, 2005), p. 124. 42. FO 195/2449 M. Smith to Sir Gerard A. Lowther, 8 May 1913. 43. Davison, “Armenian Crisis”, pp. 495– 6. 44. Ibid., pp. 498– 504; Dussen, “Question of Armenian Reforms”, pp. 20 – 4.

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45. G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley (eds), British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898– 1914, vol. 10, pt. 1, (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1967), p. 459. 46. BOA.BEO 3980/298468, 18 Aralık 1912. 47. For the full text of the Mandelstam plan, see Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, 17 June 1913, in Gooch and Temperley (eds), British Documents, pp. 455– 60. 48. Mr. Marling to Sir Edward Grey, 3 July 1913, in Gooch and Temperley (eds), British Documents, pp. 475–9. 49. Sir L. Mallet to Sir Edward Grey, 28 January 1914, in Gooch and Temperley (eds), British Documents, pp. 542– 5. 50. Gu¨lseren Duman, “The Formation of the Kurdish Movement(s) 1908– 1914: Exploring the Footprints of Kurdish Nationalism” (M.A. thesis, Atatu¨rk Institute for the Modern Turkish History, Bog˘azic
i University, I˙stanbul, 2010). 51. Hamit Bozarslan, “Remarques sur l’histoire des relations kurdo-arme´niennes”, Journal of Kurdish Studies, no. 1 (1995), pp. 55 – 76. 52. BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 30 Ag˘ustos 1328 (12 September 1912), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Justice and Sects and the Ministry of Interior; BOA.HR.SYS 2817/1, 3 Tes¸rin-i Sani 1328 (16 November 1912), the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs. 53. BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 30 Ag˘ustos 1328 (12 September 1912), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Governor of Bitlis and the Ministry of Justice and Sects; BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 6 Eylu¨l 1328 (19 September 1912), Grand Vizier to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. 54. BOA.HR.SYS 2818/1, 4 Eylu¨l 1328 (17 September 1912), the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Grand Vizier’s Office. 55. FO 424/250, Sir Gerard Lowther to Sir Edward Grey, Annual Report on Turkey for the Year 1912, 17 April 1913, p. 52. 56. BOA.DH.KMS 2 – 2/5, 5 Kanun-ı Evvel 1329 (18 December 1913), the Governor of Van to the Ministry of Interior, in Zekeriya Tu¨rkmen, Vilayaˆt-ı S¸arkiye (Dog˘u Anadolu Vilayetleri) Islahat Mu¨fettis¸lig˘i 1913– 1914, (Ankara: Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu, 2006), p. 121. 57. Abdu¨rrezzak Bedirxan was a grandson of Bedirxan Bey, the emir of Bhotan who had revolted against the Ottoman government after the proclamation of Tanzimat. Due to his background, Abdu¨rrezzak Bedirxan had a considerable network and affiliations. He is generally accepted as one of the first political actors to advocate for Kurdish nationalism. 58. FO 195/2450, Consul Monahan to Sir Gerard Lowther 31 October 1913. It was the summary translation of the pamphlet of Abdurrezzak from the Armenian newspaper Haratch. 59. Yener Koc
, “Bedirxan Pashazades: Power Relations and Nationalism (1876 – 1914)” (M.A. thesis, Department of History, Bog˘azic
i University, Istanbul, 2012), pp. 141– 2. 60. BOA.DH.KMS 2–2/5, 13 Kanun-ı Sani 1329 (26 January 1914), the Governor of Diyarbekir to the Ministry of Interior, in Tu¨rkmen, Vilayaˆt-ı S¸arkiye, pp. 143–5.

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61. Reynolds, Shattering Empires, pp. 78 – 81; Law Res¸id, “Bir Hikaye-i Tarih”, Jıˆn, 10 Nisan 1335, and Law Res¸id, “Bir Hikaye-i Tarih-Gec
en Nu¨shadan Mabad ve Hitam”, Jıˆn, 26 Nisan 1335 in M. Emin Bozarslan, Jıˆn 1918– 1919 (Uppsala: Deng Yayınevi, 1987), pp. 719– 21, 752– 7. 62. BOA.DH.KMS 16/30, 6 Mart 1330 (19 March 1914), Tahsin, the Governor of Van to the Ministry of Interior. 63. For a detailed analysis of the emergence and development of the national economy policy, see Zafer Toprak, Tu¨rkiye’de “Millıˆ I˙ktisat”, 1908– 1918 (Ankara: Yurt Yayınları, 1982). 64. Memorandum by Mr. Fitzmaurice, 10 August 1913 in Gooch and Temperley (eds), British Documents, p. 514.

CHAPTER 8 THE GERMAN ROLE IN THE REFORM DISCUSSION OF 1913—14 Thomas Schmutz

This chapter examines the German role in the discussion of 1913 and 1914 concerning reforms in eastern Anatolia in order to ameliorate the Armenian situation.1 The Great Powers and the Sublime Porte negotiated a Russian proposal for reforms in eastern Anatolia from June 1913 to February 1914. The negotiations touched the traditional problems of the Eastern Question and showed the complexity of the international relations at the time of European rivalry inside the Ottoman Empire. Germany played a crucial role and was for the first time engaged in the Armenian Question. On 8 February 1914, the Ottoman government signed an agreement after six months of intense negotiations between the European powers and the Sublime Porte. Predominantly due to German intervention as well as counterproposals respecting Ottoman sovereignty wishes, this agreement differed substantially from the initial Russian proposal. After the agreement, another round of negotiations took place in order to name two inspectors-generals who should implement and monitor the reforms in eastern Anatolia. The reforms took place in early summer when Europe was already on its way toward war. In the ensuing war, Germany became the Ottoman ally, and the reforms were thus rendered obsolete in December 1914.

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From Berlin to Baghdad To understand the German role in this issue of diplomatic history, the special relationship between Berlin and Istanbul has to be outlined. Imperial Germany was a newcomer in the global history of colonialism and imperialism. Germany being not a traditional imperial power, as were England and France, Sultan Abdu¨lhamid demanded administrative, financial, and military help from Germany in 1880. A cautious Otto von Bismarck first sent civil specialists and, subsequently, German officers. After these first steps, the entanglement increased with the Wilhelminian era. German foreign policy became imperialistic, and the famous search for the place in the sun (Platz an der Sonne) began. In contrast to England or France, Germany did not oppose the sultan during the Crete crisis and the Armenian massacres in 1895–6. The kaiser distinctly pointed out to the other Great Powers that Germany was willing to expand its influence in the Ottoman Empire and to have a place among the big players in the Orient. The second Orient travel of Wilhelm II in 1898 had a symbolic impact, when the kaiser not only approved of the prestige project of the Baghdad railway but also told the world, in his famous Damascus speech, that all 300 million Muslims were his friends. German banks and arms manufacturers such as Krupp and Mauser strengthened their ties to the Sublime Porte and Anatolia under Abdul Hamid II. The German presence increased every year. Its imperial means were warships, officers, and railroads. Part of the pe´ne´tration pacifique was, in addition, the establishment of German schools or hospitals – always in concurrence with the rival French or English way of life.2 The Young Turk Revolution in 1908 changed the conditions of German– Ottoman relations, since the sultan began to be replaced by the Young Turks. Many Young Turk officers knew the German military system due to the exchange program and were in favour of a rising German influence. German military advisers tried to reform the army, and especially Colmar von Goltz gained much admiration for his involvement. But not all the Young Turks welcomed the ties to Berlin; some were more orientated toward Paris or London. This proved important in the search of an ally in the crucial moment of the July crisis in 1914. International relations between 1908 and 1914 were dominated by the two main alliances: the Triple Entente on the one side and the Triple Alliance on the other.3

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From the Eastern to the Armenian Question The improvement of the Armenian situation through reforms was demanded by the European community through articles 61 and 62 of the Berlin Treaty in 1878. To the Ottoman Empire, it was rather unrealistic to implement such reforms, as the whole system needed reforms and the state went bankrupt. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II did as little as possible to help the Armenians. Likewise, the foundation of the irregular Kurdish cavalry forces – the Hamidiye regiments – worsened the situation for the Christians. Minor riots were used to destroy entire villages, and, between 1894 and 1896, several massacres took place. European powers threatened the “Bloody Sultan”, as European papers called him, with intervention and reforms, but nothing happened. The Armenians were in desperate isolation.4 New hope arose with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, where the heterogenity of the Ottoman Empire was celebrated. Yet the initial cooperation between Armenian organizations and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) lost its glamour after the Adana massacre in 1909. European vessels were close, but no intervention followed. The incident led to internal discussions among the Armenian community and new tensions between them and the government. Apart from the traditional spokesmen of the church, the Armenian revolutionary parties became more and more important. These were also active outside the Ottoman territory, especially in Russian-controlled Caucasus. It was in this period, after 1908, when Russia, being the greater oppressor of the Armenian revolutionary movement than the Ottoman Empire, changed its relationship toward Armenians and began to strengthen Armenian demands. While in 1895 Russia had blocked the possibility of an intervention on behalf of the Ottoman Armenians, in 1912 those Christians were seen as a new imperial tool for Russian expansion into Ottoman sphere. The Balkan wars (1912– 13) and their outcome, revealing the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, made Russian rhetoric rather belligerent. Russia openly threatened the Sublime Porte with military intervention if there occurred a massacre against Ottoman Christians. The strategy was to undermine Ottoman stability and gain influence in the territory beyond their common border. One way to do so was to arm and radicalize both Kurds and Armenians against the central government.5

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In January 1913, the situation was about to change. The destiny of Edirne led to a state coup on 23 January. A handful of CUP members were involved in the assassination of the war minister and declared a new policy of resistance in the ongoing Balkan war. Not to surrender but to fight until the end was the new philosophy. In these days began what would become known as the triumvirate of Ismail Enver, Mehmed Talaat, and Ahmed Cemal. After half a year of opposition, the Committee of Union and Progress dominated again in Istanbul and declared Anatolia as the true Turkish homeland. European powers were already watching the Balkans with great attention, and some voices saw the beginning of the scramble of the Ottoman Empire in the nationalistic uprisings against the former occupying force. At the same time, German diplomacy was alarmed due to Russian-Armenian negotiations in December 1912 and rumors concerning a new reform plan for the eastern provinces in Anatolia, led by Russia. Such a Russian move would render the unclear situation in the European part of the Ottoman Empire even more dramatic, and Russian geopolitical thinking about the straits was well known. Germany even had had a secret arrangement with Russia concerning those very straits 30 years earlier. The German – Russian relations were frozen, and with the German – French foe, the hopes in Berlin lay in a German – English understanding.6 During the months before World War I, Russia was perceived by Berlin as a great military machine with uncountable numbers of foot soldiers. With the changing and unstable German – English relationship, Russia became an increasing threat to German Oriental policy. When German ambassador Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim learned about Russian activities inside the Ottoman Armenian community and the possibility of Russian unilateral policy in the eastern provinces, he was alarmed and demanded more German presence.7 The German military mission was centered in and around Istanbul, and the German warships could only exhibit German force in the harbour cities such as Mersina or Alexandretta, which were the main concerns for Berlin. One German goal was to establish their own facilities in the port cities and to link them to the ongoing railway construction sites in and around the Tarsus mountain area. In a not-so-distant future, these ports would then connect the German “working zone” to the global trade.8

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Unknown Territory and the German Mind-Set Eastern Anatolia was an unknown territory to Germany. German reports during the spring of 1913 show a rather chaotic and unstable region. Kurdish tribes and their internal disputes were without any understanding for the Foreign Department. The region north of Erzerum was rather a “wild east”, with Kurdish – Armenian clashes and where the Ottoman government was not able to rule with an iron hand. The Ottoman army seemed to fail in their attempt to bring peace and stability to the border region, with Russia on the other side. Turkish and German voices even indicated that Russia was trying to destabilize the region in order to provoke the Ottoman sovereignty. Berlin saw no reason to become involved in a region with no economic future. The future of a German-dominated zone would lay in Cilicia.9 The news about a Russian initiative to change the Armenian situation changed the perception of the importance of the eastern provinces. The highly sensitive security architecture consisting of rival European Great Powers throughout and beyond the Ottoman Empire could crumble if only one of them changed its policy unilaterally. The majority of the powers feared a fast scramble of the Ottoman Empire, such as the Italian attack had provoked in North Africa. In February 1913, Wangenheim demanded more consulates for eastern Anatolia in order to gain more knowledge about the region, since Russia and France were much more involved with representatives in the area. At the same time, the German ambassador claimed a more pro-Armenian policy. Moreover, he intended to find a “middle way” (Mittelweg) between the traditional pro-Turkish German Orient policy and a new attempt to improve the Armenian situation. Not only were Armenians important participants in the German railway projects, they were also known to be successful business merchants. Altogether, a more peaceful situation in the east of Anatolia would prevent Russian entanglement and any possible start of the scramble of the empire.10 An important geopolitical aspect for all powers as well as the central government was the limitation of communication and transportation within the eastern provinces. During wintertime, the roads – if there were any – were closed, and some parts were isolated from the rest of the country.11

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German diplomacy hardly knew anything about the local realities and problems in the Anatolian communities. Their image of the Armenians was very simple. There were two types of Armenians: One group, living in rural areas, were those brave in fighting and working in agriculture, while the second group encompassed the Armenians in the cities, consisting of rich merchants and intellectuals. The German reports only scratched the surface and were thus not able to reveal the underlying complexity of the different Armenian groups, their respective objectives, and their options. It was easier to speak about “the Armenians” as a homogeneous group, characterized as Christians living inside the Ottoman Empire and being, as such, a minority group and, in the years of 1912– 14, a potential partner for Russia.12 For the German diplomatic service, there was no need to report “details” to Berlin, since the Armenians seemed to be some sort of a chess figure. Domestic Ottoman affairs were reported when there was a direct connection to the German position at the Sublime Porte. The reports from the German fleet indicated that the dispatch of warships was intended merely to receive information and to show German presence at crucial port cities like Alexandretta or Mersina, which were important for the prestige project of the Baghdad railway. The reports between the diplomats and the German Foreign Office (Auswa¨rtige Amt) in general display a focus on the activities of the other Great Powers inside and near the Ottoman Empire. They focus especially on Istanbul, on the border region in eastern Anatolia, and on the local German projects. Kurds and Armenians were mentioned in order to describe possible uprisings, the question of security inside Anatolia, and, finally, law and order in relation to the Ottoman government. The German diplomats were in favour of a status quo with moderate reforms, no partition, and ongoing German business and military projects inside the Ottoman Empire.13 During the spring of 1913, German diplomacy was engaged in exploring the general view of the European diplomats on the question of the eastern provinces. On the one hand, a Russian initiative seemed to be unknown in the European capitals, but, on the other hand, rumours about Russian activities in the border region turned into truthful facts. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Sazonov, even threatened the Ottoman government that in case of another Armenian massacre, there would be a Russian intervention. During a time of major changes in the Balkans, Russia made it clear to every actor that St Petersburg was

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willing to defend its interests with military power. This became also a fact when Bulgarian forces came dangerously close to Istanbul and the strategic straits. German representatives were not only sensitive to any change in the Russian– Ottoman borders but watched out for possible new tensions between the Armenian and Muslim communities. To prevent clashes or uprisings, German fleet commanders met with Armenian and government representatives, the vali. Rumors and false information did not provide any help for the clearification of the situation. Sometimes German and French diplomats even spoke unanimously against Russian dramatization of local events. Foreign newspapers or telegrams reported new massacres or the risk thereof. To be better informed, German consuls were deployed for reconnaissance missions to poorly known territory. Berlin had to work with the information and maps they received from their outposts in the Ottoman Empire in order to formulate further proceedings of German Oriental policy. Wangenheim protested again in June that the German side knew almost nothing about eastern Anatolia and would have to send a consul there first. Arthur Zimmermann and Gottlieb von Jagow agreed in their reports that they were troubled with an unclear image of the general situation in Anatolia. The diplomats in Berlin were more concerned with the possible reaction of the other Great Powers to a Russian move in the East. A helpful exception were the reports from the two proArmenian lobbyists Johannes Lepsius and Boghos Nubar, who were able to report to Berlin accurate information from inside the eastern provinces and had good relations to local Armenian representatives.14 In April and May 1913, a Russian initiative was only a matter of time. In May, there even arose the short-term German idea that Berlin could act first and declare a new reform project in order to prevent Russian terms. Istanbul preferred a Russian initiative because they could declare this as a hostile act and argue that Russia was not willing to protect the Armenians and was only concerned with its own interests.15

From Proposal to Deadlock: The Mandelstam Project In the beginning of June 1913, the Russian dragoman Andre´ Mandelstam presented a project for a reorganization of Anatolia. The project consisted of 22 articles concerning the political administration

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and security of the six eastern provinces. Two aspects were important: The Russian proposal intended to create one big Armenian region, and the administrative power over it would come from one Christian Ottoman governor.16 German sources suspected Russia of exploiting the Armenian Question as a new strategy of power politics. In the view of the German Foreign Office, the implementation of the Russian proposal would start the partition of the Ottoman Empire and create a Russiandominated eastern Anatolia. The six eastern provinces as one political unity under Russian influence were too dangerous for Berlin. The German strategy aimed at counterbalancing any Russian threat and at keeping it out of Anatolia. German diplomacy was not entirely against the Russian proposal, since reforms were urgent for the Ottoman Empire. Reforming only the eastern provinces did not make much sense for German priorities: It was uncertain if a reform plan for eastern Anatolian Armenians would not foster separatism and protest from other Ottoman regions and strengthen Arab and Syrian demands. The Armenians in Cilicia were supposed to benefit from reforms as well, since Cilicia was situated within the German interest zone. It was particularly interesting for them because the Baghdad railway went through there. But to Wangenheim, it seemed impossible to prevent a Russian influence zone and simultaneously create Germany’s own territory of influence.17 Since the Russian proposal officially put the Armenian Question back on the international agenda just after the end of the First Balkan War, a commission was to be formed to discuss it. The subject was treated carefully, and the dragomans were to handle the topic in Istanbul. Furthermore, they were obliged to conduct negotiations without having the authority to make any final decisions. Eight meetings were held from 3 July to 23 July. The main reference point during the discussion in summer 1913 was the Berlin Treaty, article 61 in particular. However, in 1895, England was the greatest supporter of the implementation of the agreed reforms, not Russia. The reference made by Mandelstam and his Russian partners should underscore that the demand was not exclusively Russian but a problem for all the signatories of the Berlin Treaty.18 The German side attempted to agree with their Triple Alliance partners before every session and to challenge Russian demands with a common voice. German dragoman Scho¨nberg argued about every point of the Russian programme. He criticized, for example, the articles in

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favour of non-Muslims. He demanded proportionality and opposed the Russian notion of making it mandatory for councils and representatives to consist of up to one-half Christians. German diplomacy sought to protect Turkish sovereignty not only due to the friendly German – Ottoman relations and Germany’s own interests in Cilicia but also due to the German understanding of the Armenian situation. Wangenheim in many telegrams described his view that privileges for the Armenians could lead to social envy and, subsequently, to massacres, as had been the case – in the German view – in Adana 1909. According to the German perception, the Mandelstam project was too radical and would not bring peace to the eastern provinces.19 Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France were rather passive. In the view of the German sources, England tried to find its position between Germany and Russia. The negotiations about the First Balkan War were still under way in London, as was the war itself. Additionally, the question of the islands between Greece and Turkey was still in the background. The Russian proposal did not suit the political agenda of everyone. As for the Sublime Porte, the proposal was seen an infringement on Turkish sovereignty and a Russian interference with internal affairs.20 The discussions were dominated by the antagonism between the Russian and the German perspective. France and England positioned themselves on the Russian side, as the alliance systems of the time dictated. Because of Turkey’s supposed unwillingness to implement reforms, Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov advocated diplomatic or military pressure to achieve their goal. German diplomats, however, believed in the Turkish willingness to implement reforms. June and July 1913 showed that a solution to the new reform concept presented by Mandelstam could lead to an international agreement only if Germany and Russia found a common denominator. Germany rose to a key position in the new diplomatic bargaining thanks to its good relations with the Porte.21 After all eight meetings failed to produce a common solution, the negotiations were conducted on a bilateral level between the two main protagonists of the diplomatic crisis. German Ambassador Wangenheim and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Nikolayevich von Giers were ordered to find a solution and present it to the other powers. Consensus was achieved in October when German diplomacy was ready to accept the principle of proportionality in the political assemblies while Russia

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accepted a two-sector solution. On 27 October, Undersecretary of State Zimmermann congratulated Wangenheim on the good cooperation with Ambassador Giers. Together they agreed on six points. Jagow and Wangenheim both wrote that a peaceful agreement with Russia would be more important than the whole Armenian programme. It would be no loss of prestige even in the view of the Armenians, as long as there was a German –Russian agreement. Not only did this statement show the German priorities of finding a compromise in the reform question and its status as an influential member of the Great Powers, but it also demonstrated that negotiations between St Petersburg and Berlin were possible.22

Resistance, Crisis, and Delay Negotiations could have stopped at the end of October had it not been for Turkish opposition. The resistance came from inside the Ottoman cabinet. The grand vizier attempted to appease the German – Russian proposal and explained that the Turkish people would never accept foreign inspectors in Anatolia. He would not be able to give such proposals to his ministers. Wangenheim explained the reason for the new difficulties with the political system in Turkey: It was not a sultan in power but a group of men with different power statuses and different ideas. Cemal Pasha seemed to be some sort of dictator in the German view. But the Turkish protest was not against Germany. The key word for the Turkish resistance was sovereignty. The Turkish press increasingly attacked the Russian position and mostly wrote pro-German articles. The influential paper Tanin wrote against Armenian privileges and argued that they were against the constitution.23 The reform plan was not the only issue regarding European diplomacy. The rivalry between different railway projects went on, and so did the bargaining about arms deals. Germany had to deter England and France from influencing the Ottoman policies on many different levels. For example, there was a permanent confrontation between the cultural influences. Germany wanted as many or more schools than France had established. Local people were supposed to learn the German language, adapt to German thinking, and admire German industrial achievements. The Ottoman Empire tried to use this rivalry in order to survive politically. Istanbul was in a position to choose between the

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different proposals, and Germany was sometimes a second choice. By the end of October, the German industrial giant Krupp was in trouble on account of new agreements between Turkey and England that stipulated military help, especially as to the construction of the naval base Ismid and new warships. The French used their financial position to persuade the Sublime Porte to buy three-quarters of their military equipment from the French arms manufacturers. This rivalry had been going on for years.24 A challenge for the Armenian reform negotiations came with a new crisis concerning the German military mission. The so-called Liman von Sanders crisis almost triggered hostile actions on the part of Russia, and a European war was once again a risk. One reason for the long interval between the Mandelstam proposal and the agreement in February 1914 was the new German military mission, which was sent to Istanbul in November 1913. After the terrible defeat in the First Balkan War, the Ottoman government had asked the German kaiser for more officers. Germany tried to keep this secret and prepared a new mission with 40 officers under the command of Otto Viktor Karl Liman von Sanders. Since Britain obtained a naval mission and French experts trained the Ottoman gendarmerie, the German mission aimed only at the continuation of the traditional German help to reform the Ottoman army. But when Russia noticed the new mission, crisis broke out in November 1913. Once again, the Russian threat was a reaction to the presence of a foreign power near the important straits. The disturbing detail for the Russians consisted of the geographic positioning of Liman von Sanders. Russia made it clear through their diplomatic channels that it would not accept such an important German command over land forces near Istanbul. The question was whether or not St Petersburg was willing to risk a war. German consuls were sent to the Ottoman – Russian border and reported their impressions back to Wangenheim.25 In the German perception, Russian military commanders in the Caucasus tended more toward hostile actions than did Sazonov. The Russian foreign minister used bellicose rhetoric successfully for his diplomacy toward the Ottoman Empire. While Russian officers in the field seemed ready to invade Ottoman territory, the German political analysts saw no real danger, since Russia was still in a process of internal reforms and was modernizing its forces nine years after the dramatic defeat against Japan. While the war threat may have been only part of an attempt to use diplomatic pressure and show of force, the situation still

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impeded the closure of the reform discussion. Sazonov and Giers asked the German diplomats whether the friendship with Russia would mean nothing to Berlin and emphasized that this was not a question of prestige. The Germans would only have to send Liman to Edirne and keep him away from the straits. Finally, Germany gave in and changed the position of Liman from a leading commanding officer to a more passive role as an inspector.26 Even though the Russian –German dispute resolved itself by January 1914, it brought about irreversible friction between St Petersburg and Berlin, lasting until the crisis in July 1914. The Russian side used its position of strength in the slow-going negotiations about the reform plan for the eastern provinces. At Christmas, Berlin and St Petersburg ultimately agreed for the second time and sent the draft to Istanbul. When Giers still was not satisfied in January and tried to achieve more demands, the Entente partners signaled their unwillingness to risk a war over this question. To Germany and the grand vizier Said Halim, the latest Russian demand was intolerable, and they were at the end of all compromises. For the Ottoman side, the permanent Russian threat generated a mistrust that influenced the negotiations. The grand vizier thought that Russia wanted everyone to believe that it was an innocent “sheep”, but after being established in Anatolia, it would be revealed that Russia was nothing but a wolf.27

The Second Round On 8 February, more than half a year after the Mandelstam proposal, the Russian diplomat Konstantin Gul’kevich and the grand vizier finally signed an agreement. For the most part due to German intervention as well as counterproposals respecting Ottoman sovereignty wishes, the treaty differed substantially from the initial Russian proposal. Instead of 22 articles there were only 14, and most had a rather provisional character. One of the main differences, and the most important for European diplomacy, was that there were to be two sectors and two inspectors-general rather than one in each instance. For most regions there would be proportional representation between Christians and Muslims, but first there had to be a census of the population, through which they would be able to adapt the theoretical idea to the real circumstances. The inspectors-general were to be Christians from

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Europe, and they had to be chosen after the treaty was signed, but there was no further explanation. The Kurds lost political influence and the Hamidiye regiments were put into reserve, which was a reason for the major riot in Bitlis by the end of March 1914.28 After 8 February, the Armenians and even some Russian policy makers were optimistic. The German diplomats thought that the final result of the treaty owed much credit to the strong German diplomacy that was able to counter the Russian threat. The difference between the Mandelstam project and the actual treaty was seen by German diplomats as their achievement. Germany – and Wangenheim, in his key position – played the crucial role. First consul Gerhard von Mutius wrote to Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg that even for Turkey it was a political and moral success and that the Armenians would benefit in the German “working area” (Arbeitszone). The major success would be the possibility of Germany working together with Russia in the Oriental policies. As for the treaty itself, Jagow and Wangenheim were not sure if the promises would work out in reality. The agreement was a relief to German diplomacy since the “middle way” between a pro-Armenian and a pro-Turkish policy seemed possible to continue. Those “moderate reforms” would help the Ottoman Empire in its weak position.29 The implementation of the treaty, however, took the whole spring of 1914. The question of the two inspectors had to be answered, since the agreement defined only the power and functions of the two positions. The only thing that was clear was that two European Christian inspectors from a small and “neutral” country would be appointed. Their job, experience, and – most of all – their nationality set in motion another bargaining round of Russian demands. The Great Powers, the Sublime Porte, and the Armenians each had their own choice of the two inspectors-general in mind. The German reports do not show a great deal of interest in the question. They proposed Swiss and Belgian personnel, but the issue was mainly decided by Russia and the Ottoman government. On 2 April, Mr Westenenk (Dutch) and Mr Hoff (Norwegian) were chosen by the Porte. One month later they were in Istanbul, where their mission was halted from the beginning. They found themselves in a dispute with Talaat Pasha and other members of the government concerning the exact formulation of their contract with the Ottoman side. Wangenheim was on the Turkish side and attempted to influence Hoff and Westenenk to accept all Turkish demands. Their

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departure into the heartland of Anatolia was delayed several times due to bureaucratic obstructions and the excuse of the starting war and critical political situation in Europe.30 Meanwhile, the joy among the Ottoman Armenians was long gone. On 29 May 1914, German consul Edgar Anders reported from Erzerum that there was a dispute over electoral questions inside the Armenian community. The harmony felt in February seemed to have passed, and the Armenian patriarchate, the local Armenian bishop, and the Taschnaksutiun party had differing opinions. On 22 June, Armenian lobbyist Boghos Nubar drew the same conclusion in a statement to Berlin: There would be a contradiction between the reality and the agreement from 8 February, the Porte being responsible. But the German diplomats did not see a problem in the Turkish method of implementation, and the reform question lost its importance. The German side was concerned with other issues of European rivalry.31

Farewell to Diplomacy: Rivalry and the Road to War During the spring of 1914, a new conflict arose with French demands on Turkey to buy French war material. Negotiations about archaeological findings and the position of Germany as a reformer of the Ottoman school system were made in favour of France, since France had the money and funds that Istanbul urgently needed. In Wangenheim’s view, this was blackmail, and thus he thought that Turkey should complain. Wangenheim remarked that the grand vizier could be firmer and stand by Germany. It was relevant to protect the Krupp business interests (with regard to field artillery), since the German military mission in Turkey would benefit from it. The Turkish steps were observed with great caution and sensitivity. At one point, when Enver Pasha was not deemed to be very polite to German industrialists, it was immediately reported back to Germany and reasons for his sentiments as well as other possible anti-German politicians were sought inside the Ottoman government. The frustration on the German side was considerable, and these tensions were much more important in the German correspondence than the search for suitable inspectors-general.32 German reports concentrated increasingly on the question of alliance and partnership with the Ottoman Empire. Surprisingly, by the end of June 1914, both the opinion of Wangenheim and the German military mission had

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changed. Prior to that, reports always indicated that the Ottoman Empire would be too weak as an ally and would be a burden. Then, suitable for the July crisis, things changed and Berlin received positive reports concerning the ability of Istanbul to be a German war ally. However, Istanbul searched for allies in every political direction. In spring 1914, Talaat even proposed an alliance to Sazonov, which the Russian foreign minister found very confusing. Paris and London gave negative responses, so on 22 July the CUP authorized Enver to approach Berlin. The German –Ottoman relationship was very close in 1914, but it was not absolute. For instance, both partners were pursuing the goal to forge an alliance with England, and it was the lack of an alternative and the outcome of international relations that made them war partners.33 On 2 August 1914, Germany and the Ottoman Empire signed a secret agreement. War broke out in Europe, and it was only a matter of time before it would involve the Ottoman Empire. From August until the end of October 1914, Germany tried to push the Ottoman Empire into war with Russia. Grand Vizier Said Halim explained the conditions for Ottoman entry into war to Wangenheim on 6 August. They consisted of six points, one of which was the demand to abolish all capitulations and thus all foreign influence inside the Ottoman Empire. This was a sign of the end for civil reforms in eastern Anatolia. From the perspective of the Young Turks, the whole reform question in this time of tensions and war was treason committed by the Armenians. War was seen as a chance to accelerate the homogenization process that had already started with the Greek Ottomans in the coastal areas and meant nothing but expulsion.34

The New German Role and the End of the Reforms With the beginning of the world war came the end of the rivalry of the European Powers in and around the Ottoman Empire. The relations between the principal actors concerning the reform question could not changed more radically: Germany and Russia turned diplomatic cooperation to war enmity. The Russian threat became obsolete. France and England lost their influence in the Armenian Question as well; they were at war with Germany and followed the Ottoman demands for leaving their posts inside Turkey. Germany and, to a lesser extent, the

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Austro-Hungarian Empire were the only two influential actors left from the reform discussion. Mobilization was in effect, and the press became subject to full censorship. Armenian voices ceased to be heard when the international community was occupied with a modernized global war and the propaganda strengthened the image of the disloyal Armenian who was betraying the Ottoman Empire and helping Russia.35 After one month at war, the Ottoman government declared the Armenian reform agreement invalid on 16 December 1914. Therefore, the Armenians were isolated, and the last hope of reforms was abolished. The destiny of the Ottoman Armenians now fully dependent on the war and the conduct of the Ottoman state. (Dikran Mesrob Kaligian sees the end of the reform question in August, when the two inspectorsgeneral had to leave for Europe.)36 It is unclear what the Germans thought of the abolition of the reforms. It is clear, however, that it was not as important as before summer 1914. Also, war in Europe meant that the first priority for Berlin was a Russian– Ottoman front. Mobilization was essential for Germany. Wangenheim was still in contact with the Armenians. He told the patriarchate that reforms would be on the agenda after the war.37 It is not evident how serious Wangenheim was about his proposal. The alliance with the Ottomans meant that, after a victory, there would be no other European competition for the German sphere of influence or for German projects in Cilicia. The Armenians would not be that relevant any longer. Their window of opportunity for peaceful and internationally recognized reforms was closed. Despite this, it was clear for the Ottoman Armenians that it was time to prove their loyalty toward the Sublime Porte. Mistrust on the Turkish side grew, and even some German consuls, such as Heinrich Bergfeld, started to believe in the conspiracy theory of a pro-Russian Armenian uprising. News about illegal weapons and bombs found in Armenian houses or churches were spread by Turkish media and official voices.38 From January to April 1915, Wangenheim and the Deutsche Bank wrote for the last time in a few telegrams about the conclusion of the reforms. These related only to the matter of money transfers to the two inspectors-general, who had to be compensated according to the treaty. Wangenheim described the mistrust against the Armenian community and the hostile state actions, such as imprisonments and deportations. He considered these new treatments normal in a state of war. One could argue that the words of the German ambassador in his

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report from 15 April indicated that the “middle way” between a proArmenian and a pro-Turkish German policy was over, as were any thoughts concerning the reforms. The report also made it clear that from the Armenian side there was still hope for German help, which was seen as some sort of duty – a nobile officium – since Germany was a Christian European power. Wangenheim clarified the German role: Germany could not play the protector of the Ottoman Armenians. One reason was that the Sublime Porte would see German help for the Armenians as an injustified involvement in internal affairs, and that in the end such a German role would bring only escalation.39 In the view of the German diplomats, no unprecedented level of cruelty or injustice was occurring. It took German diplomats some time to recognize that the procedure of the state was annihilation rather than oppression.40 When, in April and May 1915, the consulates reported more and more atrocities concerning the Armenians, the Foreign Office began to complain to the Sublime Porte. For Wangenheim, the reality took a little big longer to recognize. He could not believe that Talaat Pasha and other members of the political elite would lie about their intentions to their war ally and implement all necessary means to undertake things beyond imagination. It was not only a betrayal of trust, but in retrospect it gave also a new insight on the reform question. There was never the intention to fulfill the agreement of 8 February. The German role in the prewar diplomacy was in some way reduced to having saved the Ottoman Empire from becoming a Russian-dominated zone. The question of the German role in the Armenian genocide is a different one. The war changed everything.41

Conclusion The Armenian reform discussion, its agreement on 8 February 1914, and the end of the attempt to implement the treaty all took place between the Balkan wars and the Armenian genocide. It was a radical time. The Ottoman Empire lost almost all European territories in a war against minor Christian states, had to withdraw in North Africa because of Italy, was involved in disputes over islands with Greece, and shared a hostile border area with expansionist Russia. These changes alarmed European diplomacy, and while the outcome of the First Balkan War was discussed in London, Russia put the Armenian Question on the

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priority list of international diplomacy. The events of the Balkan wars accelerated the Russian approach toward Ottoman Armenians and changed the strategy of St Petersburg. Russia was a greater oppressor of the revolutionary movement in 1908 than was the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian condition made Russia demand reforms in the six eastern provinces with the threat of military intervention. The Balkan wars did not only trigger the new reform discussion. The events and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire were seen by many diplomats as the possible beginning of a partition among the Great Powers. Germany, among other powers, tried to prevent Russia from taking the first step in this direction via the Mandelstam project in Berlin. Apart from the Russian danger, the reform plan was seen by Berlin as an opportunity to formulate a pro-Armenian Oriental policy for the first time. German diplomacy did not focus on the Armenian Question before 1913. Therefore, many Armenian representatives saw hope in the new German activity, especially because of the good German– Ottoman relations.42 Wangenheim and his consuls managed for one year – from the summer of 1913 until the summer of 1914 – to find a middle way between the old pro-Turkish policy and a new proArmenian one. Germany was able both to influence the Turkish position in the Armenian reform discussion and to defend Turkish views in the diplomatic arena. The agreement from 8 February 1914 was seen as a major success of German diplomacy. Berlin would gain the loyalty of the Armenians, and the eastern provinces, much-needed stability. Another important element was the possibility of a consensus between St Petersburg and Berlin, which was necessary for peace in Europe. July 1914 offered a paradigm shift. Due to war preparations and international tensions, the international pressure on the Ottoman Empire to comply with the terms of the agreement suddenly decreased, and, in early August, when war broke out, the Sublime Porte dictated among their conditions for entry into war the abolishment of the capitulations and all international agreements. It was now only Germany and Austria-Hungary that could have influenced the future of the reform plans. But with the mobilization of the Ottoman Empire, and thus the Armenian communities in eastern Anatolia, pressure was not used for reforms or other long-term issues any longer. Berlin saw the reforms in the eastern provinces as an “internal issue” of the Ottoman government, and thus the German diplomats did not protest against the abolition of

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the agreement in time of war. In the same way as the Armenians would have been partners for peace and part of a long-term German strategy for their “working zone” in Cilicia, the partners for war were the Young Turks. One could argue that the German role in the Armenian reform discussion – with all its related issues and entanglements – during the time from June 1913 until spring 1914 was not only a success for German diplomacy but its highest achievement in terms of influence in the Eastern Question before the war. The complexity and interdependencies of the diplomatic problems in November 1913 almost triggered war in Europe. It was the time between the First Balkan War and World War I. The Baghdad railway was not finished yet, but its tracks and the German ships and officers made it clear to every spectator: An Ottoman Empire without German presence was not possible in the wake of all these events. In the end, the destiny of the Ottoman Empire became dependent on Germany and its war on the Western Front.

Notes 1. The main sources are from the Political Archive of the German Foreign Department. All the files are mentioned below with AA (Auswa¨rtiges Amt). The material is either on mircofilm (M) or on a file (F) with the archival number (R/Kon). 2. Sebastian Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006), pp. 49 – 55; Konrad Canis, “Internationale Stellung und Aussenpolitik Deutschlands vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg”, in Bernd Heidenreich and So¨nke Neitzel (eds), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1890– 1914 (Paderborn and Zurich: Scho¨ningh, 2011), pp. 177– 99; Friedrich Scherer, Adler und Halbmond: Bismarck und der Orient 1878– 1890 (Paderborn and Zurich: Scho¨ningh, 2001), pp. 396– 404. 3. M. Su¨kru¨ Hanioglu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 175; Carl Alexander Krethlow, Generalfeldmarschall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz Pascha – eine Biographie (Paderborn: Scho¨ningh, 2012), pp. 446–9; Gregor Scho¨llgen, Imperialismus und Gleichgewicht. Deutschland, England und die orientalische Frage 1871– 1914 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2000), p. 50. 4. Taner Akc
am, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2006), pp. 39– 40; Klaus Kreiser, Der Osmanische Staat 1300– 1922 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2008), p. 44; Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908– 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 53 – 4.

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5. Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815– 1914 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 194– 204; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, pp. 46 – 72. 6. Rodogno, Against Massacre, pp. 194– 6; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, pp. 36 – 73; Roderic H. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774– 1923: The Impact of the West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 186; AA (M) R 14076– 14077; AA (M) R 14077: 7085, p. 5, Wangenheim to Bethmann Hollweg, Pera 02.01.1913. 7. AA (M) R 14078: 7086. Wangenheim to AA, Constantinople 08.02.1913. 8. AA (M) R 14079 –14080; AA (M) R 14078: 7089, p. 34; R 14079: 7092, pp. 88 – 9. 9. AA (M) Kon 165; AA (M) R 14082: 7105, p. 15; AA (M) R 14078: 7089, p. 34; R 14079: 7092, pp. 88 – 9. 10. AA (M) R 14078: 7086. 11. AA (M) Kon 165: 7232, pp. 24 – 5, as an example. 12. Rodogno, Against Massacre, pp. 187 and 210. 13. AA (M) R 13749; R 14079: 7093, 28.05.1913 (fleet); Kon 165: 7231, 06.05.1913. 14. AA (M) R 14078: 7086, p. 79; 7087, p. 18; 7089, p. 36; AA (M) R 14079, p. 79, Wangenheim to Jagow. 15. AA (M) Kon 165; AA (M) R 14079: 7092. Wangenheim to AA, Therapia 05.06.1913. 16. Andre´ Mandelstam, Le sort de l’Empire Ottoman (Lausanne and Paris: Librairie Payot et Cie, 1917), pp. 217– 27. 17. AA (M) R 14079: 7092. Therapia, 07.06.1913, from unknown (probably Wangenheim) to Jagow; AA (M) R 14079: 7093. Therapia, 23 June 1913, Wangenheim to AA. 18. Akc
am, Shameful Act, pp. 45 – 6. 19. AA (M) R 14079: 7092, pp. 21 – 2 (Wangenheim to AA, Therapia 05.06.1913); AA (M) R 14080: 7095, pp. 31 – 2; AA (M) R 14080: 7096, pp. 43 – 4. 20. AA (M) R 14079. 21. Davison, Essays, pp. 197– 8; Reynolds, Shattering Empires,, p. 75; Raymond H. Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des arme´niens (Paris: O. Jacob, 2006), pp. 198– 200. 22. AA (M) R 14082: 7103; AA (M) R 14082: 7103, p. 45. Zimmermann to Wangenheim, 27.10.1913. 23. AA (M) R 14082: 7103, pp. 35 – 6. Wangenheim to AA, Constantinople 23.10.1913; AA (M) R 14082: 7103. 24. Scho¨llgen, Imperialismus und Gleichgewicht, p. 370; AA (M) R 13749. Constantinople, 28.10.1913, Wangenheim to AA. 25. Davison, Essays, pp. 180– 205; Jost Du¨lffer, Martin Kro¨ger, and Rolf-Harald Wippich, Vermiedene Kriege. Deeskalation von Konflikten der Grossma¨chte zwischen Krimkrieg und Erstem Weltkrieg 1865 –1914 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1997), pp. 657– 71; AA (F) R 13318.

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26. AA (M) R 14082: 7105, pp. 44 – 5. Lucius to AA, St. Petersburg 28.11.1913; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, p. 40. 27. AA (M) R 14082: 7103, pp. 24 – 5. Wangenheim to AA, Constantinople 14.10.1913. 28. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Der verpasste Friede. Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu¨rkei 1839– 1938 (Zurich: Chronos, 2000), p. 330; Peter Holquist, “The Politics and Practice of the Russian Occupation of Armenia, 1915– February 1917”, in Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Mu¨ge Go¨
cek, and Norman M. Naimark (eds), A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 151– 74, esp. p. 153; Reynolds, Shattering Empires, pp. 79 – 80. 29. AA (M) R 14083: 7110; AA (M) R 14083: 7110, S. 13 – 15. Mutius to Bethmann-Hollweg, Pera 09.02.1914. 30. AA (M) R 13749; Theresa A. Holtschlag, “The Proposed Armenian Reforms of 1913– 1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1940), pp. 96 – 97; Akc
am, Shameful Act, p. 119; AA (M) R 14084: 7114, p. 32. Wangenheim to AA, Constantinople 25.05.1914. 31. AA (M) Kon 168: 7243. Boghos Nubar to Zimmermann, Berlin 22.06.1914; AA (M) R 14084: 7115, pp. 6 – 7. Mutius to Bethmann-Hollweg, Therapia 07.07.1914. 32. AA (M) R 13749: telegrams from Wangenheim to AA, 27.02.1914; 02.03.1914; 04.03.1914. 33. AA (M) R 14084; Krethlow, Generalfeldmarschall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz Pascha, pp. 446– 49; Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule 1908– 1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 2011), p. 201; Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 82 – 118, esp. p. 192; Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914– 1918 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 18 – 43. 34. Christian Gerlach, “Nationsbildung im Krieg: Wirtschaftliche Faktoren bei der Vernichtung der Armenier und beim Mord an den ungarischen Juden”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah (Zurich: Chronos, 2002), pp. 359– 60; Aksakal, Ottoman Road to War, pp. 82 – 118; Akc
am, Shameful Act, p. 112. 35. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Writing Genocide: The Fate of the Ottoman Armenians”, in: Suny, Go¨
cek, and Naimark (eds), Question of Genocide, pp. 33 – 5. 36. Akc
am, Shameful Act, p. 119; Kaligian, Armenian Organization, p. 209. 37. AA (M) R 14085: 7116, p. 33. Wangenheim to Bethmann-Hollweg, Pera 29.12.1914. 38. AA (M) R 14085: 7116, pp. 30 – 1. Bergfeld to Bethmann-Hollweg, Trapezunt 18.11.1914; AA (M) R 14085: 7116, pp. 21 – 2. Ro¨ssleur to BethmannHollweg, Aleppo 16.10.1914.

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39. AA (M) R 14085: 7116/7117; AA (M) R 14085: 7118, pp. 19 – 22. Wangenheim to Bethmann-Hollweg, Pera 15.04.1915. 40. AA (M) R 14085; Sigurd Sverre Stangeland, “Die Rolle Deutschlands im Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern 1915– 1916” (Ph.D. diss., NTNU-Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology/Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, 2013), pp. 103– 7. 41. Eric D. Weitz, “Germany and the Young Turks: Revolutionaries into Statesmen”, in: Suny Go¨
cek, and Naimark (eds), Question of Genocide, pp. 175–98. 42. AA (M) R 14079; Kon 165.

CHAPTER 9 BUILDING THE “MODEL OTTOMAN CITIZEN”: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE REGION OF HARPUT-MAMÜRETÜLAZIZ (1908—15) 1 Vahe´ Tachjian

The Armenian Question and Ottoman problem is an enigma for me and I wouldn’t deem it wisdom on your part if, given this situation, you returned to the homeland. Everyone living here, at every minute, is ready for meaningless death. These words are taken from a letter written by Hovhannes Bujicanian2 in Harput (Kharpert) on 9 January 1913, to his friend Mesrob Jamgochian, who was living in the United States at the time. Hovhannes Bujicanian (born in C¸u¨ngu¨s¸, or Chnkoush, in 1873 and killed in 1915) was one of the luminaries of the town of Harput. He was a high-ranking authority at the local Euphrates College,3 a prominent representative of the Protestant community, and a tireless defender of the restored constitutional regime of 1908. He welcomed the Young Turk Revolution with great hope and expectations. In the years that followed, in the pages of newspapers and in public forums, he continued to stress the importance of this event and the need to support the new regime. In the letter he wrote in 1913,

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however, we can already note his disillusionment. How are we to explain such an evolution of opinion, this journey from enthusiasm to evident disenchantment? This chapter sets out to present Armenian daily life in the Harput region and the series of developments that took place there, based on Armenian primary sources. The road leading from the 1908 Revolution to the 1915 genocide, in historical terms, has never been unfamiliar. There are numerous academic studies in a variety of languages that shed ample light on these decisive years for the Ottoman Empire. The aim of this chapter, however, is to focus attention on just one place in this extensive empire. That place is the Harput plain, with the towns of Harput and Mamu¨retu¨laziz (Mezire, present-day Elazıg˘), their surrounding Armenian villages, and the areas of Charsanjak and C¸emis¸gezek a bit farther north. While the last areas represent a separate administrative unit, as we shall see, they were the natural continuation of the Harput plain in social, cultural, economic, and political terms. The region of Harput is important because it was one of the major Armenian population centres in the Ottoman Empire where Armenians, Kurds, Turks, and a minority Assyrian presence lived side by side. To reconstruct a local history – in this case, that of a rural population – has never been an easy task. Locating primary sources constitutes the biggest challenge. Often their scarcity and inadequacies limit their explanatory power. Unlike many other cities and regions of the Ottoman Empire, however, there is an abundance of primary sources for the Harput-Mamu¨retu¨laziz region. There are about 40 houshamadyan (memory book) genre books4 that serve as basic sources regarding the history of this region. In addition, there are more than a dozen published memoirs as well as multiple correspondences, Armenian political party records, and newspaper articles all written in or about Harput.5 These sources open up a wide vista on the cultural, economic, political, social, and even personal events in the region. Rich and diverse in their reach, the sources serve as highly insightful reference points for the writing of a differentiated microhistory. Moreover, we are far from exhaustively utilizing Armenian primary sources in this chapter. There are numerous letters of correspondence, bulletins, memoirs, and memory books that are unpublished and are kept in the archives of various state institutions in the Republic of Armenia. Such material is also to be found in family collections scattered

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across the globe and in the archives of Armenian institutions. This chapter, then, is also an attempt to bring together scattered material written in Armenian about Harput. At the same time, I seek to show the inestimable value of Armenian primary sources to studying the history of Ottoman Armenians and the Ottoman Empire in general. We need to reflect on the use of primary sources in Armenian, or, more correctly, their nonuse. The use and study of Armenian primary sources has, for a long time, been the missing link in Ottoman studies. Despite the wealth of material written in Armenian, the perspective of Armenian authors on their own issues and daily life is not represented. This little-known but crucial dimension of the Ottoman world and particularly the descriptions of rural life are important sources for Ottoman studies. Their inclusion in the study of the Ottoman Empire can enrich attempts to achieve a more complete understanding of Ottoman history. The aforementioned sources are not well known even in the field of Armenian studies, which tends to adopt a selective approach when studying the history of Ottoman Armenians. I believe that this is a consequence of the genocide that severed the link between the Ottoman Armenian history and the Ottoman Turkish reality in the period after 1915. The history of Ottoman Armenians was also subject to this process – a history rewritten under the influence of the factors of the time. At its core, it was focused on the Great Calamity (Medz Yeghern). This influence still operates today. The genocide dominates Armenian historiography regarding Ottoman Armenians. Whenever there is an attempt to break through these parameters and study the pre-genocide Ottoman Armenian period, the tendency is to focus on tragic events such as the 1895– 6 mass murder of Armenians or the 1909 Adana massacres. There is also an opposite tendency that portrays the heroic episodes of Ottoman Armenians and discusses Armenian rebellions against the Ottoman state. This problem of historiography becomes apparent with the two men on whom this chapter focuses: Hovhannes Bujicanian and Donabed Lulejian (born in 1875 in Harput; died in 1917 in Garin (Erzurum)). It is sufficient to glance at their works to see that we are dealing with two exceptional intellectuals and brilliant minds that lived and worked in the town of Harput, a provincial centre that had already become one of the most important places for Armenian education and enlightenment in the Ottoman Empire by the late nineteenth century. Many of their writings

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impress through their depth, linguistic richness, and wealth of ideas; they are the fruit of critical minds. Bujicanian and Lulejian were not members of any Armenian political party.6 Rather, they were believers in liberal thought. They were supporters of law and order, democratic institutions, and strengthening of the role of the church in Armenian society. After 1908, especially Bujicanian would not shirk from espousing their ideological views in the press or directly in debates in Harput with representatives putting forth the socialist views of the Henchag Party or the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF). Bujicanian was one of the first Armenians arrested in Harput during the genocide. He was killed afterward. Lulejian was also arrested but later escaped. In the decades that followed, in the annals of postgenocide Armenian historiography, Bujicanian and Lulejian would be remembered more as educational pioneers of Euphrates College. They were not revolutionaries, and their views differed from those ideological –political currents in the Armenian diaspora that left their mark on the local communities and had a fundamental impact on the reconstructed Armenian historiography. The works of Lulejian and Bujicanian were published in single volumes in 1955 (Fresno, California) and 1974 (Beirut, Lebanon), respectively. These were at the initiative of the descendants of both families, which saved hundreds of pages from oblivion. Many of these pages shed new light on Harput local life, the emotions and experiences of these two Harput residents regarding the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, and how the ideas of these two Ottoman citizens developed during the years that followed. Reading Lulejian and Bujicanian, we encounter a different reading of the history of relations between the Armenian and Turkish populations, particularly in dealing with bilateral relations subsequent to 1908. The conventional approach in historiography is to study the positions, policies, and relations of the I˙ttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP) on the Turkish side and those of the Hay Heghapokhagan Tashnagtsutyun (ARF) and, to a lesser extent, the Henchag Party on the Armenian side. Bujicanian and Lulejian, as chroniclers from a provincial town, open a new vista for the study of Turkish and Armenian relations. This chapter reveals the impact of the establishment of the Ottoman constitutional regime on daily life in the Harput region. Focusing mainly on the writings of Bujicanian and Lulejian, we try to see the

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hopes that these two intellectuals placed on the Ottoman state with its constitutional regime and the importance they placed on strengthening democracy and freedom within Ottoman society. Then we examine the land issue in Harput, the nonresolution of which served as a major source of disillusionment for local Armenians. Finally, we present the overall situation that reigned in the region preceding the destruction of Armenian life: the flaming of anti-Armenian sentiments that would culminate in the eviction and massacre of the Armenians.

The Establishment of Constitutional Order (1908): “In the evenings, we can find our way back home without worries. Isn’t this enough?”7 These simple words were written in a letter dated 17 December 1908, by Telgadintsi (Hovhannes Haroutyunian)8 to encapsulate the days following the Ottoman constitution in Harput. Naturally, he is comparing the period to the repression, betrayals, and arrests that took place during the reign of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II. Telgadintsi, who served as principal of the Getronagan Varjaran (Central School) in the Upper St Hagop district in the town of Harput, surely had bitter memories of that period. The collapse of the old dictatorial regime was an unexpected and marvellous surprise for the local Armenians. The situation is best explained in the following words of Hovhannes Bujicanian: “The magnificent constitution, with its magic wand, raised us from enslaved subjects to free citizens. July 11, 1908, not only has opened a wide horizon of privileges and incomparable opportunities, but an enchanting vista of things to come within our sights.”9 The removal of the Hamidian regime was truly a political and psychological life-changing event for a people who for decades had lived in despotic conditions. In the months that followed, one could observe signs of this change in Harput’s everyday life. Armenians started to feel relatively more secure, which inspired self-confidence and prompted people to take steps they had avoided in preceding decades. Thus of symbolic importance are more windows being installed in village homes and an increase in two-storey homes being built, in contrast to the proliferation of subterranean houses previously.10 In the past, generally only Kurdish or Turkish aghas and beys had such houses, while Armenian

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peasants were cramped in their one-storey windowless homes dug underground. The change is especially evident in the educational field. Life in the schools built adjacent to village churches became more active. Even during the Hamidian period, Harput stood out for its extensive network of Armenian schools. If the schools in Harput and Mamu¨retu¨laziz however, represented developed institutions according to concepts of the time, village schools in general still operated along premodern, traditional lines. The enthusiasm ushered in by the Ottoman constitution immediately changed this situation, and the old schools functioning in the villages of the Harput plain were renovated or built anew.11 Schools for girls were opened in many villages. Both male and female teachers graduating from the colleges in the towns were invited to take up positions in the villages.12 The Ottoman constitution allowed for formerly banned initiatives in town schools as well. In 1909 an Armenian printing press started operating in Euphrates College, which printed the college official newspaper Yeprad (Euphrates). Prior to this, starting in 1891, the college had published a handwritten and collotype periodical called Asbarez that did not withstand the prohibitions of the Hamidian regime and shut down soon afterward. Yeprad is considered its natural continuation, and the first issue was printed on 1 November 1909. The editor of this semimonthly periodical was Garabed M. Soghigian (born in Harput in 1868, killed in 1916). The staff included Donabed Lulejian and Hovhannes Bujicanian. In addition to the paper, the college press produced circulars, bulletins, religious and grammar books, and novels translated into Armenian. Every day, on average, 3,000 pages in Armenian were printed.13 New school subjects, corresponding to the new openness ushered in by the constitution, also became a part of the curriculum at Euphrates College. Turkish law and parliamentary law were two such subjects, taught by Nigoghos Tenekejian.14 Donabed Lulejian, who was both an Armenian luminary in the town of Harput and a teacher at Euphrates College, also experienced jubilation at this newfound freedom. In 1910 he was studying in the United States, first at Yale and later at Cornell, and sent his congratulations to the college graduates back home. In his letter he already envisioned new opportunities for the missionary institution to play in the region.

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In 1912 he left the United States and returned to his native Harput. “In constitutional Turkey, the Euphrates [College] now has a wider field of activity and a more glorious rank.”15 He saw this new role mainly in the agricultural sector, as the people living on the Harput plain were mostly farmers. He saw the necessity of supplementing the college structure with farming and animal husbandry divisions: “The farmer will change his plough handles and ploughshare and will adopt new methods, to make the earth more bountiful.”16 The forming of Armenian theatre companies was also considered a development of the new times. Instead of the limited number of theatre groups, new companies were formed in the towns and many villages in the postconstitutional period. They often operated in a school setting, but their audiences attracted society in general: mostly Armenians but also members of the non-Armenian elite. Armenian patriotic plays were performed. Such performances could have led to outright arrest under the former regime. For example, The Wound of Armenia (Khachadur Apovian) and Black Earth (Bedros Tourian) were performed in the hall of the Hussenig School.17 European classical plays were performed in Memu¨retu¨laziz, such as Friedrich Schillers’s The Robbers and William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.18 Furthermore, the Armenian religious holiday of Vartanank was imbued with a new spirit and turned into popular gatherings, during which a play19 on the same subject was performed.20 The slogans of the constitution were echoed as far away as the United States, where thousands of emigrants from Harput had relocated in the nineteenth century. They were mostly labourers working in factories along America’s east coast. Many of them considered the time appropriate to return to the homeland and start a new life with their families and relatives with the money they had earned abroad. One of these emigrants was Manoug Parigian (b. 1857), the youngest of three brothers who owned a famous iron factory in Harput’s Sinamoud neighbourhood. His life story before the Ottoman constitution is instructive. The Parigian factory produced watermill machines, guns, mechanical drillers, agricultural equipment, and machines separating wheat from the chaff. Manoug had left for the United States in 1880 to obtain new skills and knowledge for the family business. He had settled down in Worcester, Massachusetts, where there already existed a community of

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Ottoman Armenian emigrants. He had immediately begun by sending new equipment and an Armenian specialist back to Harput, where his two brothers continued to operate the factory. Production in Harput had thereby been given a new impetus, and the factory had become a real boon for the villagers of the surrounding farming region. Sewing machines had been repaired, as well as meat grinders and state army guns. But the Hamidian authorities looked at the progress of the Parigian factory with suspicion. Apraham Parigian (the eldest brother) was both an Armenian and a former arms maker – two aspects of his identity that could only have intensified the authorities’ anti-Armenian fervour. In the end, the police closed the factory on the charge of secretly manufacturing arms. After some well-placed bribes and influential intervention, the factory was reopened, and the brothers were able to get its output back to former levels. At around the same time, Manoug had returned from the United States with new technical knowledge. The factory was experiencing its best days. In 1893 the Ottoman authorities again launched proceedings against the factory, alleging the manufacture of arms and explosives. The factory was closed yet again. During the 1895 massacres of Armenians, the large Armenian population in the town of Harput was also targeted. The Parigian brothers were injured during the mass killings and persecutions. After these incidents, the iron foundry was permitted to reopen, but constant state restrictions prevented it from operating successfully. Given these conditions, Manoug decided to emigrate to the United States in 1905. Encouraged by the prospects of freedom after the 1908 Revolution, this iron worker once again returned to Harput with the aim of restoring the factory to its former success, together with his brother.21 There are many examples of people like Manoug who returned from the United States to the Harput plain. The new atmosphere of freedom also impacted on the political – organizational life in Harput. Armenian political parties that formerly were persecuted and had operated underground opened their offices in Armenian-populated towns and villages. By the end of 1908, the ARF and the Henchag Party had clubs in Mamu¨retu¨laziz. The same parties opened clubs in the town of Harput and the village of Pazmashen.22 In addition to clubs, political groups were formed in villages and towns. Political activists travelled freely and gave lectures about current political issues.23

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Strengthening the Ottoman Democratic State against the Days of Fear and Uncertainty to Come As for all Armenians living throughout the Ottoman Empire, the 1909 massacre of thousands of Armenians in the Adana region dealt a heavy blow to Armenian jubilation in the Harput region. A feeling of collective confusion and distrust about the future became palpable. This mentality was expressed in the memoirs of Harput Armenians and in other writings (press articles, letters) of the time. This is not to say that the constitution had been welcomed with equal excitement by all Armenians. Many regarded the new freedoms with suspicion. Doubtless this mistrust was directed at the leaders of Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), who took over the reins of power in the empire and at the nondemocratic modus operandi they adopted. The CUP conception of Ottomanism and the slogans of freedom, equality, and brotherhood it espoused differed from the interpretations of many Armenian activists. As Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher writes, for the leaders of the CUP the salvation of the empire first meant “strengthening the position of the only really dependable part of its population, the Ottoman Muslims and, increasingly, the Turks, and the claim to be acting to save the state ultimately legitimized every kind of measure”.24 In Harput, there were many reasons for uncertainty regarding the unfolding situation. While some responded by emigrating, others among the Armenian intellectuals of Harput sought a solution to the insecurity and instability issue by improving local conditions. In this context, when we examine the discussions that took place at the time on the Armenian stage, we note the following dominant line of thought: the strengthening and solidification of the Ottoman state. The jubilation created by the Ottoman constitution had not completely waned. Many Armenians, including prominent figures from Harput, were convinced that the best guarantor for improving their daily living conditions and their human and cultural rights was the forging of a strong state. But from their perspective, the emphasis placed on the role of the state did not mean the development of a centralized state authority that, in the name of country’s welfare and security, would be ready to intervene to the detriment of democracy and in opposition to individual liberties. Such a “law and order” state was the CUP’s much-desired one-party rule,

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and this dictatorial tendency gradually became the reality throughout the empire’s domain.25 From the vantage point of Harput intellectuals, the guarantor of a powerful state should be respect for the law and defence of constitutional rights. The influential presence of state institutions should be extended to villages, preventing all types of anarchy and violations of the law. “Without these freedoms and rights, the constitution is a joke; freedom a dead element and the truth a lie”,26 Bujicanian wrote in 1912. Naturally, one could find differences among the various Armenian ideological currents at the time. Nevertheless, the majority of the voices expressed in Harput pointed to the strengthening of state institutions as the key to the solution. Another important viewpoint expressed directly or indirectly during these discussions saw the future of Ottoman Armenians within the boundaries of the empire. In the majority, the concept held sway that, given the conditions of the day, there was no solution to the Armenian issue outside the Ottoman Empire. The freedom of 1908 had unchained their voices. They boldly expressed themselves on national (Armenian) issues and the future of the nation. The words nation and national were not used with their modernist meaning; rather, we must understand them to mean “proto-nation” and “proto-national”. In other words, they should be understood as reflecting the Armenian community and its cultural values within the hybrid Ottoman environment. We must take this into account in this chapter because we encounter such use of these words by Bujicanian and Lulejian. But when the discussion turned to matters of the “homeland”, often a dual meaning was evident. Sometimes reference was made to the Armenian homeland, that is those historic lands on which Armenians lived at the time. Elsewhere, it was clear that the concept of homeland referred to the Ottoman homeland: the ideal brought about due to the new constitutional order. Donabed Lulejian provides a good example of this situation. This teacher at Euphrates College escaped in 1915 and took refuge in the Dersim Mountains. There, on slips of paper, he began to write down his memoirs, which he never completed or published. In 1917, in Garin (Erzurum) – at the time, under the control of Tsarist Russia – he contracted typhus and died. The following lines are taken from the chapter “Prison Memoirs”, where he presented the general sentiments in Harput before the genocide. These sentences were written in Dersim when the mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman

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authorities had not yet finished and the wounds Lulejian received while tortured in jail had not yet healed. It was not the demand of an independent Armenia that inspired Armenians. Each Armenian desired this but all reasonable individuals knew that such wasn’t possible given the circumstances at the time. The term independence was [only] a concept for them. They were resigned to and convinced of the idea that the Armenian will live with the Turk and that the interests of the Armenian and Turk must be reconciled. Not every Armenian desired foreign rule. Turkey was the only and best homeland for them and if the Turk gave the Armenian that position to which the Armenian aspired, then the Armenian would have stopped loitering around foreign doors. He demanded equality, citizen rights, and wanted an end to religious intolerance, the lifting of darkness, for Turks and Armenians to collaborate for the economic and political development of the country. This was the dream of the Armenian; this is what he strove for.27 Donabed Lulejian also had written in Harput in 1910 about the importance of Turkish – Armenian understanding: “The groans of the dreamt Freedom, Fraternity and Equality will continue for as long as that desired understanding is lacking.”28 The lack of understanding was a serious concern for him, since “these circumstances will cause continued economic crises and storms, and will be the reason for the destruction of the two races”.29 It is clear that, from an Armenian perspective, the strengthening of such understanding would first and foremost derive from the creation of mutual confidence. During the postconstitutional years, when Lulejian wrote the above, it would be a mistake to view the Armenian demands for cultural, economic, and political autonomy as a threat to the empire. These demands derived from the collective consciousness of one primary group that constituted the empire, and their implementation, on a variety of levels, would have made the collective participation of this element much more practical in terms of strengthening and enriching the empire. Here, it is instructive to recount one episode of life in Harput to portray the dichotomy that existed between the Armenian elite and the CUP regarding the conceptualization of the constitution and its interpretation.

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In 1913, all larger Armenian communities celebrated the 1,500th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet in grand style. The Harput region, with its rich educational institutions, would participate as well. On 13 October (25 October according to the Gregorian calendar), a grand procession of precollege pupils and college students took place, accompanied by the sound of the church bells. At the head of the procession were the college students, one of whom carried a banner emblazoned with the Armenian alphabet. Another student held the purple–red flag of Euphrates College and a third the Ottoman flag. Other students held aloft pictures of Mesrob Mashdots and Sahag Bartev.30 The procession wound its way through the streets of the town. Especially visible was the brass band of the Capuchin School. The 1,500strong procession marched past the municipal building and the governor’s office and then entered the market, all the while singing songs in Armenian. When they reached the Turkish Sultaniye School (state-run secondary school), the marchers shouted out in unison: “Long live the Sultan, long live St Sahag and St Mesrob.” The procession then headed toward the neighbouring town of Hussenig, where pupils from the Armenian schools there joined in, returning to Harput town together. Celebrations continued the next day. Armenian schoolteachers from the villages arrived. The Armenian primate from Mamu¨retu¨laziz and many prominent persons travelled to Harput. Speeches were made, and the Tarkmanchats religious hymns31 and Armenian patriotic songs were sung.32 The celebration was essentially an Armenian occasion to mark one of the most significant dates of Armenian culture. The words of Hovhannes Bujicanian, spoken before the crowd of celebrants, capture the spirit of the day: Great jubilees give life to a fresh national spirit grown drowsy, numb and extinguished. A people without national spirit are a living corpse. It neither has a national life or progress. A national history and literature, songs and traditions, morals and customs, a national Church and school, are truly the temples that keep this spirit alive.33 Other speakers were Father Vartan Arslanian34 and Telgadintsi, who delivered similar speeches. When it was Donabed Lulejian’s time to speak, he noted:

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October 26, 1913 will mark the era of the Armenian renaissance. This jubilee’s grand gala marks the reawakening of our selfconsciousness, true patriotism, freedom of conscience, and intellectual progress. The treasures of the past are now ours. We are the inheritors of the written word and the press; the intellectual works and experiences of our Armenians belong to us. Like wondrous beams of light they enlighten our surroundings, they inspire us, encourage us and push us forward to carry out our duties expediently.35 In fact, the Ottoman constitution opened new horizons for Armenian collective life, the most important being cultural freedom and its unhindered progress. The magnificent celebration marking the Armenian alphabet was a clear expression of the new times. Armenian organizers spared no effort in imbuing this celebration with decorum. In the streets of Harput they made the celebration an expression of cultural pride. A public gathering on such a scale had not been seen in the town in the postconstitution years. However, we clearly see that Ottoman symbols had been preserved. The organizers of this public celebrations fully understood that CUP circles could unleash collective condemnation against the Armenians at any moment, arguing that such celebrations were clear manifestations of Armenian separatist tendencies. However, these calculations on the part of the Armenian organizers proved to be incorrect, as we will see later. For the intellectual circles of Harput, the main issue was the strengthening of the constitutional democratic order in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, for Hovhannes Bujicanian, the constitution was first a historic occasion to work for the prosperity of the empire. “The constitution isn’t verbiage, and verbiage isn’t the constitution. The constitution is an opportunity that will ascertain whether the Ottoman state and the nationalities that comprise it have the virtue and right to live, or whether they are doomed to die”,36 Bujicanian wrote. With this aim in mind, it was imperative for people to be politically vigilant so as not to lose this historic opportunity. Bujicanian pointed out that the people must be provided cultural, religious, literary, and artistic nourishment, and that a civic consciousness and spirit must be awakened in them in order to create a healthy public life in the country. “We need civic halls in order for public life to grow strong. We need

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civic spirit in order for the nation to grow strong. We need public opinion in order for the constitution to take root”,37 wrote Bujicanian in 1909. He believed that education and progress played a huge role in forming a model Ottoman citizen: “First light, then freedom. First education, then the constitution.”38 His friend Donabed Lulejian thought quite similarly on the topic: The present century searches for [the well-being of society] in intellectual development. It is this desire to reach that dreamt about well-being that spurs individuals, communities and governments to exert every effort to universalize and popularize intellectual education. Village primary schools, town schools and higher institutions are the result of these efforts aimed at spreading the sciences, trades, art and learning, and to cultivate understanding and knowledge.39 The freedom to express one’s opinion was a fundamental necessity for Bujicanian. The problems of the country had to be discussed freely and publicly, without constraints. The same held true regarding political life, where the parliament should become the platform for political give and take and thus prevent any manifestation of violence. Bujicanian had studied philosophy and psychology at Edinburgh University between 1906 and 1908 and had become a supporter of the democratic institutions of Great Britain. He believed that there was a need for “conservative and liberal parties” in the development of Ottoman political life, given that their existence was an important incentive “for correcting each other’s errors and finding truth”.40 “These two parties need to defend their views freely and in fact. The constitution stands on the anchor of free debate. From the clash of opinions, light will be born in the assembly of deputies.”41 For Bujicanian, the constitution was a synonym for democracy. In essence, he believed in a political life developing under democratic conditions where diversity of opinion was respected. At first glance, these can be viewed as conventional ideas, but Bujicanian and countless other Armenians like him realized that they lived in tumultuous times and that their much-cherished state of law and rights had not been fully formed. They were concerned that democracy, and with it the future of Ottoman Armenians, was in a

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downward spiral. In Bujicanian’s opinion, the constitution was at risk: “Reactionary sharp thorns are in position, threatening to suffocate it. Fanaticism is so entrenched in the hearts and minds of the dominant elements that the ideals of equality and fraternity are unrealizable and remain incomprehensible.”42 And after all this, a pessimistic prospect for the future opened before him: “Old problems demand new blood. Old hatreds mandate a new sacrifice. New blood stirs up memories of old problems and the notion of settling problems and justice are stressed even more in the bloodied hearts. Hope and the political chaos meet and hope starts to fade.”43 Clearly, here Bujicanian was alluding to the killings and massacres, of which the 1909 Adana massacre was the major one. Fear and uncertainty about the future feature more in his thoughts: There is a volcano on the bottom of our country, and thunder roars in the sky. Chaos reigns over the surface. Flashes of light are to be found merely here and there. It is still night in [the] Orient and the scarce rays of dawn, the beams of freedom and civilization, shine on the political horizon. Only God reads the fate and future of this country.44

The Land Issue: Mirror of the CUP’s Policy How to halt this precipitous course of events? Every diversion from constitutional principles placed the Ottoman Armenians before a new set of tragedies. Our Harput Armenian memoirists realized this, but at the same time they had become passive observers. The elite of the CUP made their positions more severe day by day. The prospect of Armenians, Turks, and others living and developing side by side throughout the empire was essentially torn asunder. Gradually, Armenians were portrayed as a disruptive element preventing the development of the empire. Their cultural, economic, and educational abilities were no longer seen as enriching impulses. On the contrary, they had become threats for the CUP’s vision of Turkishness and Turkification. For the CUP leaders, the entire issue had become a struggle between Armenian and Turk. In his memoirs,45 Donabed Lulejian called the CUP approach a “Struggle for Life”, and we get the impression that when he wrote these lines he had already fully grasped the CUP ideology and its underlying ideas that paved the way for the implementation of the Armenian

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genocide. Moreover, we get the impression that Lulejian was already familiar with the works of CUP ideologues such as Yusuf Akcura and Ziya Go¨kalp and their ideas influenced by Social Darwinism and the inevitability of natural selection among peoples. There was fertile ground in the Harput region for the spread of this line of thinking. Local Muslims could not match the Armenians’ economic and educational strength. This inflamed the suspicions and jealousy of the CUP administrators. The silk and cotton factories owned by Armenians in Mamu¨retu¨laziz and Harput, the iron foundry, the presence of Armenian merchants, Armenian tradesmen everywhere in the towns and villages, the development of a rich and unprecedented Armenian educational network within the region, and the inflow of money and economic skills from the United States had all become thorns in the side of the local CUP administrators. The national bourgeoisie,46 a Muslim middle class, which the CUP ideologues were seeking to support hardly existed in the region. Instead, as Hamit Bozarslan noted, quoting CUP thinkers, there was a Christian “aristocracy” that was seen as suppressing the Turkish (or Muslim) “Third Estate” (tiers ´etats).47 Even though Armenian – Turkish harmony continued on a “formal” basis, all it would take was a radical change in conditions for the nuances of CUP understanding of the Ottoman state to appear explicitly. Prior to this, as viewed from Harput, the reforms brought by the constitution were only skin deep. A number of fundamental problems remained unresolved. The land issue, or “Agrarian Question”, was one of the most important of these. It was also a primary issue taken up during CUP–ARF negotiations, with the Armenian side always stressing the need for a quick and radical solution. A decision adopted regarding the land issue at the Sixth World Congress of the ARF, held in Istanbul in 1911 (17 August – 17 September), noted: “If these unparalleled deprivations resulting from exceptional Hamidian pressures are not healed by extraordinary means, the benefits promised by the Constitution will remain a dead letter for the Armenian people.”48 The Ottoman state system was weak in the village regions of Harput, and the absence of the central authorities was the major source of general insecurity. What ruled instead was the power of the local beys and aghas (Turks and Kurds). They owned the majority of the region’s fields, gardens, and orchards. Most of the Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish

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villagers were tied to them by the status of maraba.49 Only a tiny portion of the harvest was the property of the villager. The greatest benefit expected in the villages of Harput from the constitution was the successful solution of the land issue. Deep down, it was not merely the Armenian peasant who had expectations from this new political regime. Disenfranchised Turk and Kurdish villagers found themselves in the same situation: “It should not be forgotten that there were others, nonArmenians, who had lost their lands in a similar manner, and who also agitated for their return after the proclamation of the constitution in 1908”, as Janet Klein puts it.50 The establishment of the new order naturally caused serious concerns in the feudal circles – mainly among some Kurdish tribal chiefs – that had reached privileged positions during the reign of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II.51 In many Armenian villages, the authority of the beys and aghas was challenged. They ruled over just one portion of the lands and suffered due to economic crises. After 1908, Armenian villagers began to take collective steps to struggle against their beys and aghas. Legal means usually proved futile, especially if the bey or agha in question continued to maintain his authority. The beys and aghas had the full backing of the local authorities and courts through bonds of friendship and family. Given such conditions, individual and collective claims by Armenian villagers achieved little.52 The constitution, however, had given Harput Armenians the chance to engage freely with their compatriots (hayrenagits in Armenian, hems¸eri in Turkish) and relatives who had emigrated to the United States. They hence received financial assistance. Compatriotic unions representing the villages of Harput had been established in many American cities. From 1908 onward, they became much more engaged in improving conditions in their native villages. Most financial assistance was allocated to the village church or school, but assistance also went into the overall efforts to regain lands taken over by the agha or bey.53 After 1908, for instance, the villagers of Pazmashen regained their fields in such a manner.54 In exchange for money, the aghas of Dzovk (Go¨lcu¨k) gradually returned Armenian lands.55 Such radical changes occurred in many villages, including Tadem (Tadım)56 and Parchanj (present-day Akcakiraz).57 This approach was not always successful, however. In Charsanjak, to the north of Harput, the land issue remained unsettled. Community efforts to free some 25,000 Armenians from the status of maraba were met with insurmountable hindrances effected by local state bodies.

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In essence, the socioeconomic structure that had existed in the past was maintained intact by the new regime. From the perspective of the Armenians as well as common Kurdish and Turkish villagers, this structure was the main source of injustice and exploitation. The new development after 1908 was that the Armenian community organizations of Harput and Charsanjak directly took the responsibility of settling this issue on behalf of the villagers. These bodies frequently petitioned local and central authorities for resolution of the land issue. There was a widespread belief that the CUP leadership was ready to resolve the land issue in the first few months after the establishment of constitutional rule. Later, however, forging friendly relations with the Kurdish aghas and powerful tribal chieftains and not antagonizing them became the CUP’s primary task, to the consternation of the peasants made landless by them. Clearly, the CUP leaders were playing a double game. One the one hand, they negotiated with Armenian political leaders, while, on the other, they placated the Kurdish aghas and beys.58 The passive stance of the local authorities in Charsanjak simply allowed the beys and aghas to increase the exploitation of their maraba Armenians. They could no longer tolerate the fact that their former subjects were now openly and boldly talking about their rights. Thus, in the postconstitutional period, the Armenian villagers of Charsanjak were subject to an intensified round of attacks, killings, and thefts. The state authorities took no measures in response, and these transgressions went unpunished. The Armenians of Harput, at the time, were following events unfolding in the region. From 1911 onward, the land issue became a hot topic in the Armenian press. The situation faced by the Armenian villagers of Charsanjak was unsettling for Armenians in Harput. In fact, on a political level, Harput community leaders did their best to defend their compatriots to the north.59 The land issue in Charsanjak reached a dead end, and the state withdrew from its responsibilities toward the Armenian requests. The story of Aleksan (Elo) Gopoyan, from the town of Peri (present-day Karakocan) in the Charsanjak region, is relevant in this context. In the postconstitution period, Gopoyan was an exceptional figure. Due to his skills and connections, he was able to amass a sizable fortune in the years after 1908. He became a land owner, an agha, whose wealth was on par with the local traditional aghas. His power reached such a degree that he

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was appointed a tithe buyer, a position that was the monopoly of the local feudal lords. Gopoyan built a three-story house for himself in Peri, which became a meeting place for state officials and guests. The appearance of Elo agha, an Armenian who became a feudal lord, was intolerable for the other local feudal lords. He was killed in 1912, probably at the hands of Hu¨sni Bek, the primary suspect who was charged but never convicted. The Gopoyan family persisted, and the court case continued until 1915.60 Up until the start of World War I, the Armenian community organizations were not able to achieve any progress in resolving the land issue in Charsanjak. Those Armenians engaged in the matter felt that the local feudal lords enjoyed not only the support of the local administrative apparatus but also that of the central authorities in Istanbul, especially of the dominant CUP leadership.61 In this context, various sources and memoirs of the day recount the following incident that shook Armenian political circles in Harput. In 1911, Abdul Ghani Bey, a local CUP leader, declared at a meeting of the party’s local chapter that the land issue in Charsanjak could be resolved only by means of a massacre. While the CUP leader did not use the word massacre outright, he portrayed what he meant by moving his hand across his neck in a cutting motion. News of the incident was later spread by others attending the meeting.62 The unresolved land issue soon aggravated the already tense situation in the eastern regions of the Ottoman Empire, where Armenian villagers were at the mercy of Kurdish feudal chieftains. In 1908, Kurdish tribes in the Dersim region north of Harput rebelled. The first victims were the local Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish residents.63 Thefts against Armenians in the villages of Harput increased. Individual Kurds would frequently rob Armenian homes, fields, and gardens.64 Against this general backdrop, we must also note that the 1909 Adana massacres had propelled Armenians to be vigilant and had strengthened the view that personal security was not guaranteed under the new order. Given these conditions, the Armenian political parties ARF and the Henchag Party launched a drive to arm Armenians in these regions. As in many Armenian-populated towns and villages, the arming of Harput Armenians began. Bringing weapons to these regions was a violation of the law but was often done openly and with the knowledge of the local authorities. It is recounted that trunks of weapons filled the

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Harput market for many days.65 Armenians in the villages carried their weapons around brazenly. They often visited state institutions while carrying a gun. Guns were fired during festivities and weddings out in the gardens. In the fields, weapons-training classes were organized.66 The weapons were brought from Istanbul or secretly purchased from the Ottoman garrison in Hussenig. The rifles were mostly of Greek manufacture (Gras) or the German Mauser type.67 In the town of Peri, to the north, Turkish and Armenian residents armed themselves with the aim of collectively stopping an expected Kurdish assault.68 A similar event is recorded in the mixed Armenian– Turkish village of ToumaMezire in the C¸emis¸gezek region.69

We progressed to suffer and to the extent that we strove for the highest level of education and integrity, the worse our torments became It is impossible to write about events and daily existence in Harput without some reflections on the genocide, which terminated all local Armenian life. While I do not seek to provide a detailed description of those final affairs,70 I raise some points that relate to a few aspects broached in this chapter. First, the issue of Armenians being armed would serve as one of the main reasons for arresting and killing Armenians in May –June 1915. It would also lead to the intensification of regional anti-Armenian sentiment in preparation for the final act: mass eviction and massacre. Thus, after the declaration of general conscription, thousands of soldiers were assembled in the Harput plain, preparing to join the Ottoman Third Army on the Russian– Turkish front. The Hussenig garrison could not adequately house these soldiers, so they were given tents to be set up on the adjacent hills or in village homes. In the town of Harput, the buildings of Euphrates College were requisitioned by the government, and 4,0000 Ottoman soldiers were barracked there.71 After war broke out on the Russian –Turkish front, wounded Ottoman soldiers were taken to the Harput area. In a short time, daily life in Harput, as elsewhere throughout the empire, was torn asunder by these military dislocations and government requisitions for the war effort. But the devastating defeat of the Ottoman Army at Sarıkamıs¸ only fanned existing anti-Armenian sentiment. The main reason for the defeat was

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soon credited to the “treason of the Armenian soldier”. In his memoirs, Donabed Lulejian wrote: For a Turk from Harput, the enemy was far away and unnoticeable. But there was an enemy right by their side. . . . It was the Armenian, with his cross, with his belfry, with his schools, with his prosperous economic progress. When the enemy seized land from his country, the Armenian also seized rights from them. He snatched freedom and rose from the level of slave to that of a citizen. It was necessary to bring him down; he had to fall to the status of a slave. . . . The Jihad had inflamed the Turk’s hatred against the Christian World. The Turk of Harput manifested that hatred against the Armenian of Harput. He strove to triumph over him.72 A few weeks after war was declared, the Capuchin missionaries of the Lower District of Harput left the town. Local Turks immediately broke down the door of the Capuchin church and threw the church bell down to the ground, trampling it underfoot. The same local Turks attempt to remove the cross atop the church. Mayor Asaf Bey personally removed the wooden cross from the altar, broke it, and stood on it.73 Such symbolic acts increased. Local Armenians, however, remained passive, silent observers of events happening around them. When Armenians took to rebellion in Van, persecutions intensified also in Harput. Word spread that the Armenians in Harput were preparing for an armed rebellion. On this issue, Lulejian wrote in his memoirs that CUP inspectors reached Harput in April and held a secret meeting in the CUP club attended by Turkish officials, prominent individuals, Kurdish aghas, and tribal chieftains.74 It was at this meeting that Armenians were declared enemies of the Ottoman homeland. A terrible process soon followed: the local authorities, in response, unleashed mass arrests of Armenian notables, intellectuals, and community activists. Were Armenians aware that this was the final stage, to be followed by total extermination? If there was such awareness, should they have rebelled? We know that the matter was debated by Harput’s leading citizens and that a majority were opposed to rebellion. They believed that to rebel was foolhardy when 4,000 soldiers were camped in the Euphrates College. By remaining passive, they believed in the concept

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“sacrifice a few for the sake of all”. They especially believed that this was the final crisis of the Turkish army and that empire would soon collapse at the hand of the victorious Allies.75 In the meantime, one of the priorities of the local authorities was to find the hidden caches of Armenian weapons. CUP inspectors arrived in Harput. Demands were made on arrested Armenians to hand over their arms, the procurement of which during the preceding years had not been a secret. The local CUP leaders were well aware of what was going on. They knew which local ARF leader was involved in the arms trade. The arming of Armenians had reached its peak when the CUP and the ARF were allies and, in essence, was a defence mechanism against reactionary circles in the empire. In other words, though it ironic in hindsight, the weapons in Armenian hands were envisaged as a means to defend the constitutional order, and thus the state, from reactionary forces opposed to the 1908 Revolution. Conditions had changed, however. Arms caches were discovered, one after the other. As was the case in other Armenian-populated towns, the uncovered firearms were transferred to the courtyard of the municipality – Harput, in this case. With the objective of making the “Armenian threat” more real, Ottoman army rifles and bombs were added to the pile. The collection was put on display for the Turks of Harput and, later, for those of Mamu¨retu¨laziz. Furthermore, under the supervision of the police, Mihran Tiutiunjian and Askanaz Soursourian, two of the Harput region’s Armenian photographers, were escorted in to photograph this collection – the best evidence of treason.76 It was during this time that Hovhannes Bujicanian and Donabed Lulejian were also arrested; the first on May 1 and the second in the beginning of June. Like countless other Armenians in the town of Harput, these two men were subjected to terrible acts of torture while jailed. The two friends then found themselves in the same prison cell. In a trembling voice, Bujicanian asked his friend, “Of course you were beaten for the Armenian letters procession.” Lulejian answered in the affirmative. It turned out that local Turks, especially members of the CUP, had harboured a three-year hatred for the celebrations marking the creation of the Armenian alphabet and for its organizers. This pent-up malice, jealousy, and enmity would explode in 1915. Lulejian mentioned an episode of his torture while in jail that reveals the mentality of the local CUP. He was paraded, bloodied and tortured, before a group of

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local Turks in the government building. Abuse and words of defamation rained down upon him. The municipality’s bas¸katip (chief secretary) approached Lulejian and said, “Teacher, how do you feel? Um? You’re good, very good. It’s the ABC celebration. Yeah! Don’t you remember?” Soon after, the acts of torture continued. The police pulled his hair and plucked out his moustache. The same bas¸katip and Antebliog˘lu, ultimately one of his executioners, told him, “It’s the ABC celebration. Make merry, teacher!”77 Despondent, disillusioned, and unable to withstand further mistreatment, Lulejian and Bujicanian attempted suicide in their prison cell, but they were physically incapable of this final act of desperation. Even assisting one another, suicide was beyond their abilities.78 Later on, Bujicanian was transferred to the Kırmızı konak (Red Mansion) in Mamu¨retu¨laziz, which had been converted into a prison. He would then be killed on the road of exile. Lulejian was able to escape to Dersim, where he wrote down his experiences. In the chapter describing the tortures he experience in jail, Lulejian, a pacifist and rational man who until the end believed in the possibility for harmony between the various populations constituting the empire and the reforming power of education and upbringing, struggled to explain in words the final fall and destruction of his world in Harput – a world he had helped build: “We progressed to suffer and to the extent that we strove for the highest level of education and integrity, the worse our torments became. The Turk exacerbated his disrespect towards us and focused his hatred against us.”79

Conclusion By focusing on what happened in Harput, we see that the Armenian genocide was not limited to irrevocable human loss or the destruction of cultural institutions such as churches, monasteries, and schools. Just as I placed an emphasis on the wealth of Armenian original sources at the beginning of this chapter, here I attempt to examine a littleknown aspect linked to this topic: the disappearance of numerous written materials regarding the overall inheritance of Harput, lost as a consequence of the genocide. In the atmosphere of terror and fear, Harput Armenian families secretly begin to destroy or hide books, manuscripts, and photos located in their libraries and drawers. We do not have much information about

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these lost materials, but we believe that most households took such measures. Levon Lulejian recounted that his brothers helped the Bujicanian, Soghigian, Nahigian, and Tenekejian families to conceal numerous written materials. Donabed Lulejian wrote of how the wife of Garabed Soghigian burned numerous personal writings after her husband was arrested. Donabed Lulejian did the same to many of his manuscripts. These events took place in the days when possessing a weapon would result in the most serious of charges and when owning even cigars with the image of Armenia would result in arrest.80 And it was not only the families of the intelligentsia who destroyed their papers. Average families began to burn photos of relatives living in the United States and their correspondence.81 Others would hide their books and manuscripts in dung pits outside the house. This was the fate of the works of Donabed’s father, Garabed Lulejian (1834– 1914), which included his opus The History of Harput. Donabed Lulejian’s geography and map of Mamu¨retu¨laziz were also probably buried in a hole, as well as his work on Harput’s flora.82 These are just a few examples of the works lost that we know about. There were unpublished and priceless works in numerous Harput homes, given that it was a centre of Armenian intellectualism. Furthermore, we know that the local authorities confiscated many manuscripts – for example, from the homes of Father Vartan Arslanian and Nigoghos Tenekejian. The fate of these papers remains unknown. This chapter has attempted to reconstruct, based on Armenian primary sources, a segment of Harput Armenian life. While the sources used are interesting and informative, they are far from complete. We know that numerous Harput Armenian intellectuals killed in 1915 had published their works in various newspapers: for instance, Gochnag (Boston), Avedaper (Istanbul), Yeprad (Harput), Manzume-i Efkar (Istanbul), Pyuzantion (Istanbul), and Pyuragn (Istanbul). At the beginning of this chapter, I made mention of the unpublished works found in institutions and family archives. I am convinced that by utilizing these sources it is possible to expand the scope of this chapter. The existence of other sources not examined by this article allows me to conclude on an optimistic note. It is true that much has been lost from the Harput Armenian legacy. Nevertheless, serious research can reveal heretofore hidden gems that can serve as valuable tools to shed new light on the unknown passages of Harput’s past.

Map Plain of Harput/Kharpert with its Armenian towns and villages. The Aradzani River (Eastern Euphrates, Murat River) appears as it flows today, after a number of dams altered its original course. Map prepared by George Aghjayan and reworked by Houshamadyan. Present-day names: 1) Kavakpınar; 2) Kavakaltı; 3) Elmapınarı; 4) Saraybas¸ı; 5) Kus¸luyazı; 6) Alpag˘ut; 7) Ayıbag˘ Koy; 8) Obuz; 9) Sarıc¸ubuk; 10) C¸o¨teli; 11) Harmantepe; 12) Hazar; 13) Gu¨zelyalı; 14) Uzuntarla; 15) Korucu; 16) Yedigo¨ze; ¨ renc¸ay; 20) Yurtbas¸ı; 21) Ulukent; 22) I˙c¸me; 23) 17) Ikizdemir; 18) Yolu¨stu¨; 19) O Kars¸ıbag˘; 24) Gu¨ntas¸ı; 25) Kızılay; 26) Harput; 27) Dedeyolu; 28) Kavaktepe; 29) S¸ahinkaya; 30) Kırac¸; 31) Gurbet Mezre; 32) Gu¨mu¨s¸kavak; 33) Kuyulu; 34) Yenikapı; 35) Konakalmaz; 36) Ko¨rpe; 37) Elazig; 38) Mollakendi; 39) C¸atalc¸es¸me; 40) Munzurog˘lu; 41) Yu¨nlu¨ce; 42) Bag˘larca; 43) Akc¸akiraz; 44) Saray; 45) Sarıkamıs¸; 46) C¸ag˘lar; 47) Gu¨ngo¨ren; 48) Bahc¸ekapı; 49) As¸ag˘ı Bag˘; 50) Yukarı Bag˘; 51) Olgunlar; 52) Tadım; 53) Dog˘ankus¸; 54) Yazıkonak; 55) Kus¸hane; 56) Sinan; 57) Virane Mezre; 58) Aksaray; 59) Yeneci; 60) Altınc¸evre; 61) Deg˘irmeno¨nu¨; 62) Muratcık; 63) C¸akıl; 64) Kaplıkaya; 65) Erbildi; 66) Salkaya; 67) Igopkoy; 68) C¸akmako¨zu¨; 69) Dallıca.

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Notes 1. I would like to thank Sevag Yaralian, Marc Mamigonian, Vera Sahakyan, and David Hedison for their support and cooperation during this work. 2. Concerning the orthography of this family name, we will adopt the transliteration that was used by Bujicanian himself. 3. An educational institution created by American Protestant missionaries in the second half of the nineteenth century. The overwhelming majority of teachers and students were Armenian. 4. Starting in the 1920s, these houshamadyan books were published by Armenians in exile and genocide survivors. They describe their former Armenian life, in various aspects, in their native villages or towns. 5. In this chapter I mainly use the place names Harput (Kharpert) or Harput (Kharpert) region, since these are the names dominantly used in Armenian primary sources, rather than Mamu¨retu¨laziz, which is the accepted form to designate this region in Ottoman studies. 6. Lulejian was a member of the Euphrates freemason lodge in Harput. 7. A letter from H. Haroutyunian to Aram Andonian, 17 December 1908, Harput, in Երկեր (Works of Telgadintsi) (Antelias: Cilician Catholicosate Press, 1992), p. 293; K. H. Aznavourian, Արեւմտահայ գրողների նամականի (Letters of Western Armenian Writers), vol. 6, edition 1 (Yerevan: Yerevan University Publishers, 1972), p. 28. 8. Born in Telgadin (Khuylu/Kuyulu) in 1860 and killed in 1915. 9. Hovhannes Bujicanian, “Տիպար քաղաքացին” (“Model Citizen”), Ամբողջական գործեր (Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works) (Beirut: Doniguian Press, 1974), p. 355. 10. Hagop Gharib Shahbazian, Թանգարան գիւղը մեր եւ սիրոյ արիւնոտ ածուներ (Tadem Village and Bloody Love Gardens) (Beirut: Sevan Press, 1967), p. 126. 11. This was the case in the villages of Habousi (present-day Ikizdemir), Pazmashen/Bizmis¸in (present-day Sarıcubuk), Ko¨rpe, Hogheh (present-day Yurtbas¸ı), Chorkegh (present-day Harmantepe), Morenig (present-day C¸atalc¸es¸me), and Komk (present-day Yenikapı). 12. See http://www.houshamadyan.org/en/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmam uratulazizharput/harput-kaza/education-and-sport/schools-part-ii.html. 13. Vahe´ Haig, Խարբերդ եւ անոր ոսկեղէն դաշտը (Kharpert and Its Golden Plain) (New York: n.p., 1959), pp. 346– 47, 358– 60, 365; Hapet Pilibosian, ed., Յիշատակարան Եփրատ գոլէճի, 1878– 1915 (Memoranda of Euphrates College, 1878– 1915) (Boston: n.p., 1942), p. 124. 14. Born in Harput in1864; killed in 1915. Pilibosian, Memoranda of Euphrates College, pp. 132, 147–9; Nazaret Piranian, Խարբերդի եղեռնը (The Holocaust of Kharpert) (Boston: Baykar Printers, 1937), pp. 46–8. Levon Lulejian recounts in his memoirs that in 1911 an Ottoman educational inspector was present at the year-end exams at Euphrates College and expressed his amazement at the students’ excellent knowledge of Turkish language and grammatical laws. The inspector paid particular praise to Nigoghos Tenekejian, who was also a Turkish-

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15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

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language teacher. Levon G. Lulejian, Days of Terror in Kharpert (1914–1915), trans. Sevag Yaralian (unpublished manuscript, Los Angeles), p. 19. “Եփրատի սաներուն” (“To the Pupils of Euphrates”), April 1910, in Հասկաքաղ Բրօֆ. Տ.Կ. Լիւլէճեանի (Բագրատ). գրական վաստակը եւ 1915-ի բանտի յուշերը (Anthology of Prof. D. G. Lulejian Works and Prison Memoirs of 1915) (Fresno, Calif.: Crown Printing, 1955), p. 115. Ibid. p. 117. G. H. Aharonian (ed.), Husenig (Boston: Hairenik Printers, 1965), p. 74. Յուշարձան ուսուցչապետ Բենիամին Ժամկոչեանի (Memorial to Head Teacher Peniamin Zhamgochian) (Yerevan: VMV Print, 2010), pp. 151, 162. A work of the Armenian writer Smpad Pyurad (born in Zeytun in 1862, killed in 1915). Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, p. 688; Հապուսի գիւղին պատմութիւնը (The History of the Habousi Village) (Boston: Baykar Printers, 1963), p. 26. Vartanank commemorates a battle that took place in 451 A .D . between the Armenian and Persian Sassanid armies. The battle had great significance for Armenians, as the main reason they entered the battlefield was their stated aim to reject Zoroastrianism and maintain their Christian faith. The Armenians lost the battle, and their general, Vartan Mamigonian, was killed. By this time his older brother had died. See Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, pp. 644– 48; Manoug K. Jizmejian, Խարբերդ եւ իր զաւակները (Kharpert and Its Children) (Fresno, Calif.: n.p., 1955), p. 90. Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, p. 624; Jizmedjian, Kharpert and Its Children, p. 391; Abdal Kolej Boghosian, Բազմաշէնի ընդարձակ պատմութիւնը (Comprehensive History of Pazmashen) (Boston: Baykar Printers, 1930), p. 189; Arsen Gidour (ed.), Պատմութիւն Ս.Դ. Հնչակեան Կուսակցութեան, 1887– 1963 (History of the Social Democrat Henchag Party, 1887– 1963), vol. 2 (Beirut: Shirag Printers, 1963), p. 383. Prominent Henchag Party activist Paramaz (Mateos Sarkisian, 1863– 1915) settled in the town of Harput for a short time in 1911. As for ARF activists, the names of Vartan Shahbaz (1864– 1959), Khachadour Bonapartian, Parsegh Shahbaz (1883– 1915), and Sepasdatsi Mourad (1874– 1918) are mentioned. Erik J. Zu¨rcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Ataturk’s Turkey (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2010), p. 117. To read about the creation of one-party rule in the context of this chapter, see S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 150– 67. “Կարծիքի ազատութիւն” (“Freedom of Opinion”), 10 May 1912, in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 219. “Prison Memoirs, 1915” in Anthology of Prof. D. G. Lulejian Works, p. 361. “Ամերիկահայ ուսանողի պարտականութիւնը” (“The Obligation of an AmericanArmenian Student”), [in Armenian], 1910, in Anthology of Prof. D. G. Lulejian Works, p. 122. Ibid.

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30. Respectively, the creator of the Armenian alphabet and the fifth-century Armenian Catholicosate. 31. Translation canticles. 32. Jizmejian, Kharpert and Its Children, pp. 413– 15; “Prison Memoirs, 1915”, in Anthology of Prof. D.G. Lulejian Works, p. 363. 33. “Մեծ Յոբելեանին սիրտը” (“Heart of the Great Jubilee”), in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 182. 34. Born in Agn (Eg˘in) in 1863, killed in 1915. 35. “Մամուլին ոյժը” (“Strength of the Press”), in Anthology of Prof. D. G. Lulejian Works, p. 52. 36. “Սահմանադրութիւն եւ շատախօսութիւն” (“The Constitution and Verbiage”), 15 March 1912, Harput, in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 207. 37. “Հանրային գումարումներ” (“Public Convocations”), 1 December 1909, in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 212. 38. “Model Citizen”, p. 361. 39. D. G. Lulejian, Ուսանողին գաղափարականը (Բանախօսութիւն մը, 1912-ին) (A Student Ideology [1912 lecture]) (Harput: Yeprad Printers, 1913), p. 6 (the booklet is attached to another work: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Իվանճելին, Աքատեան սիրավէպ մը (Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie), trans. D. G. Lulejian (Harput: Yeprad Printers, 1913). 40. “Կարծիքի ազատութիւն” (“Freedom of Opinion”), 10 May 1912, in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 218. 41. Ibid., pp. 218– 19. 42. “Արեւելք ու Արեւմուտք” (“East and West”), in Hovhannes Bujicanian, Complete Works, p. 230. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., p. 231. 45. “Prison Memoirs, 1915”, in Anthology of Prof. D. G. Lulejian Works, p. 374. 46. Hamit Bozarslan, Histoire de la Turquie: De l’empire a` nos jours (Paris: Tallandier, 2013), pp. 273– 8; Raymond Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des arme´niens (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), pp. 241– 59. 47. Bozarslan, Histoire de la Turquie, p. 276. 48. “Հ. Յ. Դաշնակցութեան վեցերորդ Ընդհանուր Ժողովին որոշումները” (“Decisions of the ARF Sixth World Congress”), document 1542–37, in Yervant Pamboukian, ed., Նիւթեր Հ. Յ. Դաշնակցութեան պատմութեան համար (Materials on the History of the ARF), vol. 9 (Beirut: Hamazkayin Press, 2011), p. 126. 49. A maraba is a landless and destitute peasant. The land they farmed belonged to the aghas and beys. The villagers received only a tiny fraction of the harvest. The maraba was quite burdensome. During the Tanzimat period, many Armenians were able to free themselves from the status, but in successive years the beys and aghas gradually regained control of their former lands. 50. Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 151.

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51. David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 1996), pp. 95 – 100. 52. Dikran Mesrob Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule, 1908– 1914 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2011), p. 109. 53. Gidour (ed.), History of the Social Democrat Henchag Party, p. 393. 54. Boghosian, Comprehensive History of Pazmashen, p. 173. 55. Gyuregh Khrayan, Ծովք-Կէօլճիւկ (Dzovk-Go¨lcu¨k) (Marseille: Arara Printers, 1927), p. 117. 56. Kourken Mkhitarian, Մեր գիւղը Դատեմ (Our Village Tadem) (Boston: Hairenik Printers, 1958), p. 65. 57. Manoog B. Dzeron, Բարջանճ գիւղ, համայնապատում (1600 – 1937) (Parchanj Village. Encyclopedia (1600– 1937)) (Boston: Baykar Press, 1938), p. 188. 58. Klein, The Margins of Empire, pp. 152– 169; Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Re´formes ottomanes et cohabitation entre chre´tiens et kurdes (1839– 1915)”, in Etudes rurales, no. 186 (July– December 2010), p. 54; Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology, p. 60. 59. See Kevork S. Yerevanian, Պատմութիւն Չարսանճագի հայոց (History of Charsanjak Armenians) (Beirut: G. Doniguian Printers, 1956), pp. 416– 40. 60. Ibid., pp. 394– 6. 61. “Ազգային երեսփոխանական ժողովի ատենագրութիւններ, 21 Յուլիս 1911, Պոլիս” (“Transcripts of the National Parliamentary Assembly, 21 July 1911, Istanbul”), in ibid., p. 424; “Յիշատակագիր Հ. Յ. Դաշնակցութեան եւ ‘Իթթիհատ վէ Թերագգը’ կուսակցութիւններու փոխադարձ յարաբերութիւններու մասին” (“Memorandum on the ARF and Ittihat ve Terakki Parties’ Mutual Relations”), prepared according to the decision of the Sixth World Congress, document 78a-2, in Pamboukian, ed., Materials on the History of the ARF, p. 152; Haygazn K. Ghazarian, Պատմագիրք Չմշկածագի (History Book of C¸emis¸gezek) (Beirut: Hamazkayin Press, 1971), pp. 232–45; Kaligian, Armenian Organization and Ideology, p. 64. 62. “Memorandum on the ARF”, in Pamboukian (ed.), Materials on the History of the ARF, p. 155; “Տեղեկագիր Լեռնասարի Կ. Կոմիտէին” (“Bulletin to the Lernasar Central Committee”), sent to the ARF Sixth World Congress, document 1534– 11, in Pamboukian (ed.), Materials on the History of the ARF, p. 331. 63. This Kurdish tribal rebellion intensified in April 1908, before the Young Turk Revolution. The main reasons were state taxes and military conscription. Those who rebelled attacked area Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish villages. The tense situation and attacks continued even after the proclamation of the Ottoman constitution. This is why local villagers took self-defensive measures. (I thank Cihangir Gu¨ndog˘du for this information.) 64. Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, p. 628. 65. Jizmejian, Kharpert and Its Children, p. 393. 66. Boghosian, Comprehensive History of Pazmashen, pp. 190– 2; Yerevanian, History of Charsanjak Armenians, p. 394; Mkhitarian, Our Village Tadem, p. 71; “Bulletin to the Lernasar Central Committee”, p. 329; Shahbazian, Tadem Village and Bloody Love Gardens, pp. 140– 1.

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67. Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, p. 628. 68. Yerevanian, History of Charsanjak Armenians, p. 393. 69. H. Ajemian (ed.), Ուրոյն տեղագրութիւն Չմշկածագ գաւառի – Թումայ Մեզիրէ (Unique Report of C¸emis¸gezek district – Touma Mezireh), no. 5 (unpublished; Boston, 1951), p. 7. 70. See Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des arme´niens, pp. 469– 92. 71. “Prison Memoirs, 1915”, p. 446. 72. Ibid., p. 403. 73. Ibid., p. 405. 74. It is not known whether this secret meeting was held in the town of Harput or in Mamu¨retu¨laziz. 75. Ibid., p. 450. Also see Haig, Kharpert and Its Golden Plain, pp. 1417– 18. 76. Lulejian, Days of Terror in Kharpert, pp. 118–20. 77. “Prison Memoirs, 1915”, pp. 486, 488. 78. Ibid., pp. 492, 504, 513. 79. Ibid., p. 405. 80. Ibid., p. 454. 81. Lulejian, Days of Terror in Kharpert. 82. “Prison Memoirs, 1915”, pp. 2, 27 – 8.

CHAPTER 10 EXPLAINING REGIONAL VARIATIONS IN THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE Ug˘ur U¨mit U¨ngo¨r

Genocide between Center and Periphery In the past decade, studies of the Armenian genocide have proliferated in a way that has significantly expanded our knowledge. Although it may be premature to compare this development to the post-Soviet “archival revolution”, which cleared several important bottlenecks in the scholarship on Stalinism, the gains are not to be underestimated. They have rendered the Armenian genocide less “controversial”, depoliticized its study, and established a rough consensus among scholars. There are, however, still outstanding issues in the scholarship on the genocide, one of which is regional variation in the process of ethnic cleansing. Regionalism is an important theme in recent genocide research. Genocide scholars have examined the relationship between central decision-making processes and the implementation of mass murder at the local level. In-depth research on how genocidal processes evolve at the provincial, district, city, and even village level has proven most fruitful. It can teach us a great deal about how local power shifts influence the course and intensity of genocidal processes, since we know that some genocides are more regionally varied than others. For example, why did the eastern Drina valley (roughly along the Bijeljina-Zvornik-

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Visˇegrad-Focˇa line) see much higher levels of violence than the centralnorthern Tuzla region during the genocide in Bosnia? Why did the genocide in Rwanda’s southern and western provinces develop at quite different speeds? Why did violence develop so quickly on Bali compared to Sumatra during the 1965– 6 Indonesian genocide? These questions must be addressed comparatively in order to aggregate theoretical debates; and so, too, the Armenian genocide, the development of which demonstrates similarities but also disparities from province to province. How can we best explain these differences? This chapter attempts to develop a systematic examination of regional differences in the Armenian genocide, by focusing on the course of the genocide in two provinces. The Armenian genocide can be studied at two levels: regional and provincial. The regional approach examines rough territorial divisions beyond the provincial level but still within state borders. Here, the genocide presents us with three differing scenarios: the eastern provinces, the Arab south, and Anatolia. First is the geopolitical aspect in which the six eastern provinces are seen as a classically contested “shatter zone” or imperial borderland. This territory had no natural borders with the surrounding states, as well as lower levels of state formation. In 1914 it became the object of a comprehensive project of intervention and reorganization by the Great Powers, the so-called Armenian Reform Project. During the genocide, it witnessed higher levels of violence.1 Second, Syria under Cemal Pasha can be examined as another region in which the course of the genocide depended on friction within the regime, in particular diverging political agendas and personal ambitions. Owing to his competition with and animosity toward Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha increasingly became a nearindependent ruler of his portion of the empire. Under his jurisdiction, many Armenians survived in Damascus, Beirut, and Jordanian towns such as Jeresh.2 Third, the Committee of Union and Progress’s (CUP’s) plans for the future of Anatolia were vital for the direction of its antiArmenian policy. To the Young Turks, Anatolia was the last bastion of “Turkishness”, which should never be “Balkanized”, that is dismembered by subaltern groups like Armenians or occupied by the Western powers. Recent studies have illustrated how, to that end, the CUP instituted so-called Turkification zones where ethnic homogenization was carried to the fullest, according to an ideological vision of

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ethnic hierarchy.3 Rough as they are, these territorial delineations deserve attention for the real disparities they exhibit. The second form of regionalization, the provincial level, lies below the regional level but above the urban level. In a provincial context, the Armenian genocide demonstrates isomorphism but also disparities in initiation, execution, and development of the persecutions.4 The source of these differences and changes is the official Ottoman administrative unit of the province. Ara Sarafian’s mapping of Talaat Pasha’s “black book” lucidly systematized how dissimilarly the genocide developed in different provinces. The statistics make it possible for the period 1915–17 to distinguish between three categories of people: (A) Armenians who disappeared from their native province (i.e. were dead); (B) Armenians who were deported from their native province but were alive in another province; and (C) Armenians who were not deported from their native province at all. For example, whereas in Bitlis and Trabzon provinces the destruction of the Armenian population in category A reached 99 per cent, this category reached “only” around 60 per cent in Kastamonu and Ankara provinces, where 38 and 29 per cent, respectively, were surviving in category C. In Adana, 38 per cent had been destroyed, but 38 per cent were alive in another province, and 24 per cent had not been deported at all.5 Stark differences such as these exist between the dozen Ottoman provinces where Armenians were persecuted during World War I. What explains these differences? Any discussion of regional differentiation must be based on intensive comparative research on two or more provinces, focusing on relevant aspects and juxtaposing similar dimensions. Possible explanatory factors include the personal whims of the local power holders (governors, district governors, mayors, municipal authorities); the geographic conditions; the conduct of local social elites; and structural factors such as proximity to the front, social stratification, settlement patterns, poverty and unemployment, population density of victim group, opportunity structures, and preexisting conditions of state power.6 But which combination of factors accounts for what kind of variation in genocidal processes? In this subfield of research, the Armenian genocide lags behind. The few notable case studies have used different approaches, developed different interpretations, and drawn different conclusions.7 We need more detailed studies on specific areas – provinces, cities, and, if possible, villages – employing the full range of source materials.8

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While case studies in themselves are very useful as they expand our horizon, only a structured and focused comparative investigation can adequately generate conceptual sophistication. Comparative studies have proven useful in providing a deeper understanding of issues that are of central concern, identifying factors that can explain shared or contrasting patterns, and developing larger generalizations gradually by incorporating additional cases and patterns. By carefully choosing the political entities to be compared, it is possible to control for their different sociocultural and geographic environments.9 This method of “congruence testing” uses the fruits of profound historical research to improve our understanding of cases that exhibit a particular causal sequence or pattern. The advantage is that it remains respectful of each region’s historical context, advances generalizations gradually, discovers novel explanations, and refines preexisting theoretical explanations in light of new evidence, thereby achieving more conceptual validity.10 Comparison will also elucidate each case study, for we cannot fully understand the genocide in one province unless we have some appreciation of how it functioned in other cases. One comparative study that can be conducted is of provincial governors. From other genocides we know that local political or social elites can anticipate, expedite, intensify, or delay and resist processes of genocidal destruction directed from above. A regional focus can also follow the deterioration and ultimate disintegration of intercommunal relations in the face of external pressures, amid drastically worsening security and life conditions for the victims.11 Whereas some Ottoman governors, such as Celal Bey in Konya, Hasan Mazhar Bey in Ankara, and Rahmi Bey in I˙zmir (Smyrna), delayed and obstructed the destruction of Armenians, others – including Mustafa Abdu¨lhalik Renda in Bitlis, Cemal Azmi Bey in Trabzon, and Dr Mehmed Reshid in Diyarbekir – accelerated and intensified it. In the former provinces, Armenians were treated less violently and found more possibilities for escape. In the latter ones, comprehensive in situ mass murder was the rule. It would be relevant to understand better how the governors’ social backgrounds, personalities, political convictions, career ambitions, and positions in the party and regime bureaucracy contributed to their decision-making and behaviour in the genocide. Collating and comparing these variables would allow a certain collective biography to emerge.12

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Regionalization is not simply a matter of territorial differentiation. It is closely related to the morphology of the organization, coordination, and implementation of the crime. Recent studies have challenged the convention that the genocide had a unipolar pyramidal structure. On the contrary, the genocide was a multipolar process: Radicalization came from within and without and emanated from different perpetrating clusters, such as civil and military organizations, the ruling triumvirate, and local elites.13 Competition and conflict among these sectors shaped the genocide. For example, the confiscation of Armenian property and its allocation to Turks became a bone of contention between the Ottoman army and the Interior Ministry. The army attempted to acquire movable and immovable Armenian property for its military ends, but the ministry followed its ideological prescription of forging a “national economy”, adamantly assigning confiscated property to the upstart Turkish middle class.14 Another example is those local elites who shaped the Armenian genocide at the provincial level as a reflection of competition among Turkish families. The competition between urban elites for political and economic power was a structural factor easily manipulated by the CUP dictatorship for its own ends. Local Turkish notables emerged victorious in this competition by volunteering for the death squads and actively collaborating in the campaign that the CUP regime deemed most salient: the murder of their Armenian neighbors.15

Adana: Corruption and Torpidity The destruction of the Armenians of Adana during World War I was carried out for the same reasons as elsewhere. According to the decrees that were sent by the Interior Ministry to various provinces, including Adana, it can be argued that the CUP regime removed Armenians, settled Muslim immigrants in Adana to replace them, and used Armenian property to realize their ideology of national economy to meet the needs of the state and the Muslim populace. When the war broke out, Adana was not at an immediate risk of being occupied or becoming a war zone. There were, however, rumours about possible Allied landings on the Cilician coast. But rumours were sufficient to strike fear and paranoia into the hearts of people. The CUP regime’s Turkification project for Adana foresaw a rapid deArmenianization of the cities of Adana, Mersin, Sis, and Tarsus, as well

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as the plain of Adana. The empty spaces left by the Armenians would be filled by Turkish settlers from the Balkans. The genocide struck Adana in the summer of 1915, when the first deportations were carried out. On 25 May 1915, the government ordered the deportation of all Armenian villages in Adana province. The names of the villages and the number of deportees were also requested.16 In the city, notices were posted in the various quarters that any trying to escape deportation would be summarily executed.17 After this order, the German consul in Adana, Eugen Bu¨ge, wrote to Ambassador Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim to report on local conditions. Bu¨ge denounced the measures as “draconian”, rejected the Young Turk argument of “military necessity”, denied that there were Armenian revolutionary committees of any significance, and predicted, “There can be little doubt that the Young Turk government is fully aware of the whole extent of the decreed measures, which, if carried out, will mean no less than the violent downfall [gewaltsamen Niedergang ] of the province.”18 After the decree emptying the countryside, the provincial towns were targeted. On 17 June 1915, the complete deportation of the Armenians of Sis was ordered.19 Other towns followed one by one. In October 1915, it was the turn of the 9,000 Armenians of Do¨rtyol. Apart from Baghdad Railway employees and military staff, Armenians were to be “deported without exception” (“bilaˆ-istisna teb’id”).20 The Abandoned Properties Commission of Do¨rtyol was authorized to proceed with the liquidation of Armenian immovable property and its transfer to the Muslim population.21 Next was Kars-Bazaar (Kadirli), a trading centre famous for its sesame and cotton production. Manouk Chakalian, a survivor from that town, remembered that the deportations struck like a bolt out of the blue: “On a Sunday morning when we returned from Church we found our house surrounded by gendarmes. We were told to leave and were not permitted to enter the house to pick up any belongings.” His father, Arakel Chakalian, a legal scholar who had been working for the local authorities, was taken away at gunpoint to be executed, but his Turkish colleague Necib Bey managed to free Chakalian and smuggle him away from certain death.22 The disruption on the ground was immediate and thorough. Peasants were caught in the middle of harvest season, as a German witness observed: “The people in the country had begun to harvest, they, who had tilled their fields with diligence, had to leave everything at the start, the gardens were tilled

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and the fruit trees bore rich fruit.”23 The disruption in the industry and service sectors was so severe that the city risked coming to an economic – administrative standstill, with full consequences. Frantic requests for exemptions were sent to Istanbul, to no avail. For example, the CUP deported German consular official Simon Agabalian, as well as Professor Sinanian of the German school. A request to spare them was rejected, and they were deported in August 1915.24 Local conditions interacted with top-down national directives when, in August, the Interior Ministry sent its envoy S¸u¨kru¨ Kaya (1883 – 1959) to Adana to coordinate the deportation process. After his arrival, German officials reported the commencement of “the deportation without considering denomination or creed”. Some of the radicalization had come from below: The local CUP leaders had threatened “a general massacre if the Armenians were not deported”.25 More details on this bottom-up initiative are provided by Ali Mu¨nif Yeg˘enag˘a (1874 – 1951), a highly placed Interior Ministry official who was sent to serve in Lebanon. Passing through his hometown, ¨ zler (1885 – Adana, he encountered local CUP members I˙smail Safa O 1940) and Muhtar Fikri Gu¨cu¨m. They provided a prepared list of Armenians and urged him to sanction their deportation. Ali Mu¨nif then forwarded the list to the Interior Ministry with the admonition that the Adana Armenians should be evacuated immediately.26 Subsequently, the deportations accelerated, as the government ordered on 16 September that relevant immovable property be prioritized to the Anatolian Cotton Company (Anadolu Pamuk S¸irketi).27 This was a front company belonging to the CUP, since there are no records for it in the industry statistics of 1913 – 15.28 The expropriation of Armenians was an unmistakable harbinger of irreversible destruction, and government representatives conspired with local officials in relative unison toward an escalation of the violence. But the expropriation process also opened the gates of corruption in Adana and thereby an opportunity for survival. Private individuals, government officials, CUP activists, police offices, and gendarmes all competed to secure their piece of the booty. German officials noted in January 1916 that Turkish military and administrative staff in Adana had received “high bribes” (“hohe Bestechung”), in particular Governor Hakkı Bey and police captain Cemal Bey.29 The American consul in Mersin, Edward Nathan, wrote:

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The new law concerning the real estate and personal property of deported persons is being carried out in a manner which, I fear, will leave little if anything for the Armenians. Their houses are being inhabited by mouhadjirs, officials, etc., at ridiculously low rents. The goods of deported merchants are being taken possession of by commissions designated for this purpose, and abuses of all kinds are reported. The President of the Commission, Ali Seidi Bey, was recently removed – some say because he opposed the manner in which these measures were being applied.30 In fact, Ali Seydi Bey was sacked because he had misappropriated properties and embezzled goods, and he was not the only corrupt official to be removed from office. The district governor of Islahiye was fired too, and only with the personal involvement of Talaat he was reappointed.31 The Shalvarjian flour mill became the object of corruption too. CUP activists approached the superintendent of the mill, Mr Aram Bagdikian, and demanded he present a false inventory, showing a million pounds of flour less than was actually in stock. The conspirators pressed, threatened, and ultimately kidnapped Bagdikian, blindfolded him, and placed him in a barn. Bagdikian escaped in a nighttime chase and barely got away with his life.32 CUP officials in Adana extorted Mateos Nalbandian, parliamentarian for Sis (Kozan), as follows: He signed a two-year contract with the brother of the local Vali, Hamdi Bey, reaching an agreement with him that the Vali’s brother would have the right to half of this year’s harvest in exchange for Nalbandian’s enjoying complete freedom. It is said that, roughly, Nalbandian has 15,000 acres at his disposal and that he is the only large-scale Armenian landowner in Kosan, so it can be assumed that the Vali’s brother has assured himself of at least 1500– 2000 Turkish Liras worth of pure profit for this year. The Vali’s brother’s share also has the advantage that cheap, yes, even unpaid workers from the ranks of the workers’ corps will be available for the harvest and the work in the autumn.33 An exceptional form of extortion was organized by Hagop Ohanian, who had reportedly amassed enormous debts due to his “loose way of life”.

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Ohanian assisted Cemal Bey, who had married Ohanian’s sister, in squeezing Armenians for their money in exchange for delays in their deportation. Armenians received “temporary permissions” to remain in Adana if they delivered hefty sums of “protection money” to Ohanian and Cemal. The bribes began at ten lira. Adana businessman Vahan Vartabedian was squeezed for 20 lira. The three firms of Topalian, Ipranosian, and Mindikian had each paid at least 100 lira. A group of the richest Armenians had collectively paid a sum of 7,000 lira, ostensibly for “municipal taxes”, but in reality these were personal bribes for Cemal Bey and Hakkı Bey. These practices were meant to stave off deportations, the power for which the governor and police chief kept in their own hands – contrary to the official regulations circulated by Talaat Pasha. Once the extortion victims ran out of money to deliver, they were deported anyway.34 German consular staff had rightly analyzed the rub-off effect of highlevel corruption: As the more senior officials attempt to enrich themselves in this manner, consider bribery and extortion to be a harmless and permissible act, and compromise the law and the state’s dignity, naturally they have no moral strength and authority to keep their subordinate officials, judges, doctors, officers, yes even the gendarmes and ordinary soldiers in check. Every public official looks for a way to get money at his own discretion. Thus, the gendarmes of Ulukıs¸la simply acted as an organized crime gang, racketeering and extorting every passing deportation convoy. The convoy from Nig˘de gathered 200 lira, but when those from I˙zmit refused to pay, seven of their notables were killed. The district governor of Osmaniye, Fethi Bey, and his gendarme aide Colonel Su¨leyman Bey made money by granting “extensions” through their intermediary Khacher Karayakupian. For a two-day extension, Garabed Jinanian paid 25 lira; Minas Karayakupian, 40 lira; and Hagop Boyajian, 30 lira.35 When the victims ran out of money, they were no longer of use and were deported. Very few Armenians could afford to pay their entire way through the war. Those who did ended up in the 24 per cent category that was never deported from Adana. None of this should detract from the enormous destruction done to the Armenian community of Adana, which was robbed of eight churches

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and schools that covered a territory of 14,400 square metres, with an estimated value of 46,400 Turkish gold lira. In addition, the community owned 56 buildings and plots of 16,488 square metres, worth 43,785 Turkish gold lira. Furthermore, there were four vineyards and fields of 117,000 square metres estimated at 22,110 Turkish gold lira. The immovable property constituted 36,650 square metres and amounted to 105,300 Turkish gold lira.36 In 1921, this property was insured by the Adana Armenian community for 2 million francs at four insurance companies: Union de Paris, London Corporation, L’Assicurazione Generale, and the Socie´te´ d’Assurances Ge´ne´rales Osmanli Milli. Other companies had insured property up to 2,065,000 francs. There was also immovable property of shops of three floors on a terrain of 1,127 pics carre´s estimated at 20,000 Turkish gold lira. All this totals to 185,038 square metres and 1,127 pics carre´s, worth 237,595 Turkish gold lira (equaling 1,475 kilograms of gold). According to Talaat Pasha’s notebook, the number of buildings confiscated in Adana province was 699. These buildings included anything from individual houses to large farms and estates. The losses in the town of Sis (Kozan) are particularly striking: They add up to one-third of all buildings confiscated in the entire province of Adana. The material losses were astronomic by any standard, but the human losses were limited, relative to the composite picture of the genocide. The case of Adana also poses the problem of unequal modernization, or, put more precisely, differential development. Whereas some Armenians were reaping the benefits of the lucrative cotton trade, many Turks had the feeling they were being sidetracked. Nobody planned or intended these economic differences to grow, but the consequences were real, breeding resentment among Turkish lower (middle) classes. When the 1909 Adana massacre was organized by the instigators, Turkish frustration, jealousy, and resentment proved a fertile breeding ground for violence against Armenians. Adana was in some aspects different from other provinces: There was a formidable prehistory of violence, an old Armenian-nationalist claim on the region, and a visible and present Allied occupation. The conduct of Adana’s Turkish local elites shaped the Armenian genocide at the provincial level. The corruption within the perpetrator group – that is, among local political elites – was a structural factor that provided possibilities for survival. Some Armenians managed to survive by

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profiting from these chances and bribing their way through the genocide, resulting in lower overall death rates.

Diyarbekir: Escalation and Local Initiative On 25 March 1915, the governor of Diyarbekir, Hamid Bey, was relieved of his duties and replaced by the Circassian (Adyge) military doctor Mehmed Reshid (S¸ahingiray).37 When Reshid acceded to the governorship of Diyarbekir province, he brought with him 30 mainly Circassian Special Organization operatives, such as C¸erkez Harun, C¸erkez S¸akir, and C¸erkez Aziz.38 They were joined in Diyarbekir by more troops released from the local prison.39 This way, Reshid absorbed more effective power than the average Ottoman governor. In his case, it was certainly true that “in the provinces party bosses of one kind or another often exercised substantial control, amounting in some cases, . . . to virtual autonomy”.40 Upon arrival in Diyarbekir, Reshid and his men faced a poor rule of law, a serious desertion problem, and an anxious population. The bazaar, for example, was buzzing with rumours that the Russians had invaded Istanbul.41 The Muslims feared an invasion of Diyarbekir by the Russian army, whose reputation as a valiant fighting corps had preceded its offensive into the south. The Christians were torn between fear and hope: Whereas one moderate group (such as the clergy) was terrified that a Russian incursion might trigger reprisals, another, discordant group (such as nationalists) expressed audacious beliefs that it was possible to defend themselves against the brutal policies of the CUP dictatorship.42 In power, Reshid quickly organized a committee for the “solution of the Armenian question”. This council was named the Committee of Inquiry and had a “militia unit” at its disposal.43 According to a German charity worker, the committee, drawn up of a dozen CUP loyalists, was “a sham committee for the solution of the Armenian question” and served only one purpose: to eliminate the Armenian political parties.44 It was headed by Colonel Cemilpas¸azaˆde Mustafa Nu¨zhet Bey and consisted of deputy Pirinccizaˆde Aziz Feyzi; postal clerk I˙brahim Bedreddin; Majors Ru¨s¸du¨ Bey and Yasinzaˆde S¸evki (Ekinci); S¸evki’s brother Yasinzaˆde Yahya (Ekinci); representative of the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (I˙skaˆn-ı As¸aˆir ve Muhacirıˆn Mu¨du¨riyeti, henceforth I˙AMM) and chairman of the Diyarbekir branch of the Society for National Defense

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Veli Necdet; police chief Memduh Bey; militia commander S¸evki Bey; and Mu¨ftu¨zaˆde S¸eref Ulug˘, son of the mufti. On orders of Reshid, they selected a number of civilians, including a few professional butchers, and appointed them in the militia.45 The Russian breakthrough in the south Caucasus and the Allied landings on Gallipoli were the final impulse for action by the Young Turk elite. At this stage, moral thresholds were crossed both on the national and provincial level. Talaat Pasha had assumed supervision of and therefore responsibility for the deportation of an entire population. The murderous initiations by Reshid in Diyarbekir, too, had violated taboos, as entire village populations could now be targeted for destruction. The relationship between these two developments remains a chicken-and-egg enigma. However, it is possible to reconstruct at least some elements of the momentum of the destruction. Rafael de Nogales Mendez was a Venezuelan officer in German service, operating in the Ottoman army as a mercenary. In the spring of 1915, he had witnessed the massacres of Christians in Van and Bitlis.46 He visited Diyarbekir in late June and had the opportunity to speak to Reshid in private. According to Nogales, Talaat had personally ordered Dr Reshid to unleash hell on Diyarbekir province with a telegram containing a mere three words: “Burn – Destroy – Kill” (“Yak – Vur – O¨ldu¨r”). Although this order was most probably destroyed (assuming it existed at all), there was clearly no instruction for Reshid to desist. Moreover, Reshid admitted himself that he had merely obeyed Talaat’s order, who allegedly had confided to him, “J’assume la responsibilite´ morale et mate´rielle.”47 Reshid interpreted the order as approval of his policy, characterized by American consul Jesse Jackson as a “reign of terror”.48 By the end of May, Reshid had imprisoned Diyarbekir’s entire Christian elite in the provincial fortress, where some had already died under torture. Dr Reshid administered the coup de graˆce to the elite in the last week of that month. On Sunday, 25 May 1915, Major Ru¨s¸du¨ Bey handcuffed 807 notables, including Bishop Tchilgadian, and led them through the Tigris Gate. On the shores of the Tigris, the men were loaded on 17 large rafts under the pretext that they would be deported to Mosul. Philibos Arpiarian was provincial director of the Ottoman Agricultural Bank, who had worked in Kharpert, Trabzon, and was stationed in Diyarbekir when he was arrested in May 1915. When the deportation was announced, he sent the following letter to his family:

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My Dears, What is going to become of us is now clear. I will probably be sent toward Mosul, together with all my compatriots. Now it is left for you to be brave and endure every difficulty. What can we do? Fate brought us to this. Only continue to pray for us. As for my journey, bring me one of the boy’s sheets, a small rug, pillow, and two or three underclothes. My blue jacket and vest. In addition to this, my summer jacket, trousers, and whatever else is suitable to wear. I must not forget, also, a lot of cheese, choerag, and prepare a box of halvah. Use your judgment and put all this together in the best way you can. Give these to Haji Garabed so he can bring to me. He is our servant. Bring a cognac bottle filled with oghi (raki) with you so you can pass it secretly to me. Do not be too late. All of you come so that I can see you for the last time. Kisses to you, your father. . . Philibos Arpiarian49 The goods never reached Arpiarian but were stolen by the militia. Arpiarian was placed on a raft and taken away with the other notables. Militiamen accompanied the notables on the rafts as they sailed one hour downstream to the “intersection of two rivers” (sereˆ du aveˆn), a violent torrent where the Batman Creek joins the Tigris. This area was the home of the Reman tribe, south of Bes¸iri. At this gorge, Major Ru¨s¸du¨ had all rafts moored by the left bank of the river and ordered the Christians to compose reassuring letters to their families, in which they were compelled to write that they were safely under way to Mosul. The men were then stripped of their clothes and valuables and massacred by Ru¨s¸du¨’s men. In carrying out the hands-on killing, the militia was ¨ mer, who had assisted by Kurdish tribesmen loyal to Reman chieftain O been induced by Aziz Feyzi. All men were slaughtered and dumped in the river, with the exception of Bishop Tchilgadian, who was forced to witness the bloodbath as a form of psychological torture before being ¨ mer and Mustafa Nu¨zhet led back to Diyarbekir.50 After the massacre, O Bey were invited to Aziz Feyzi’s house, where they celebrated their accomplishment. The men were later received at the governorship, where Reshid congratulated them for their bravery and patriotism.51 Reshid also appealed to the Interior Ministry to have his militia rewarded and awarded medals for their outstanding performances. His

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wish was granted by the Directorate for General Security, and the militia members received financial benefits and were decorated with medals.52 On 30 May, the process was repeated with 674 Christians and 13 rafts. This time, the murder was supervised by Veli Necdet and 50 militiamen. On arrival at the Reman gorge, the victims were robbed of a total of 6,000 Turkish lira and stripped of their clothes. They were ¨ mer’s tribesmen and the militia lined killed and thrown in the river as O up on both banks with their guns. Those who managed to swim and rise to the surface were shot dead. Back in Diyarbekir city, the militiamen sold the expensive clothing they had taken from the victims at the market.53 Among those killed were wholesalers, consular staff, bankers, Dashnak Party members, interpreters, secondary-school teachers, a member of the municipal council, company representatives, and Armenakan Party members.54 To the dismay of Walter Holstein, the German vice-consul at Mosul, a week later the rafts arrived empty. Holstein later found out that the Christian convoys had been “completely slaughtered” (“sa¨mtlich abgeschlachtet”), and he witnessed their corpses floating downstream: “For several days, corpses and human limbs have been floating down the river here.”55 After the elimination of the Armenian elite of Diyarbekir, Reshid quickly expanded the violence to genocidal proportions. Having massacred the bulk of the male elite, the rest of the Diyarbekir Armenians and Assyrians were now targeted categorically. On 1 June, he had his militia evacuate 1,060 Armenian men and women of the Armenian neighborhood Khanchepek and escort them to the Diyarbekir plain through the Mardin Gate. The people were gathered and a proclamation was read out loud, offering the Armenians their lives in exchange for conversion to Islam. Although the decision was not unanimous, the victims refused, whereupon they were stripped of their clothes and belongings. The militia and local Kurdish villagers then massacred them with rifles, axes, swords, and daggers. Many women were raped; some were sold as slaves to the highest bidders. The corpses were either thrown in wells or trenches or left on the plain to rot, “the men on their stomachs, the women on their backs”.56 It did not take long for Talaat to issue the following deportation order for the Diyarbekir Armenians: “All Armenians living in villages and towns of the province, will be resettled to Mosul, Urfa and Zor, with no exceptions. Necessary measures will be taken to secure their

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lives and property during the deportation.”57 At the same time, the I˙AMM ordered the “documentation of the names and places of the Armenian villages, the number of deportees, and the abandoned property and ploughland”.58 The massacres and deportations then quickly spread throughout the province, and, by the end of the war, Armenian life in Diyarbekir had effectively been destroyed. Reshid’s main accomplishments were twofold: He escalated the persecutions way before the government authorized it, and he expanded the victim category from Armenians to include Assyrians as well. His rule is the clearest possible indicator of how the behaviour of governors mattered greatly, so much so that it could even overcome the central government’s directives and orders.59 The competition between urban elites was a major factor that contributed to the intensity of the violence in Diyarbekir. Before the war, the main families in the city were engaged in a fierce struggle for political and economic power. Such a structural factor could easily be manipulated by the CUP dictatorship for its own ends, as collaboration would be rewarded. The war put even more pressure on this field of competition as resources became scarcer and passivity posed a threat to one’s livelihood. Families such as the Pirinccizaˆde emerged victorious from this competition by volunteering in the militias, being more ruthless in their competitive efforts, and actively collaborating with the campaign the CUP regime deemed most salient: the murder of their Armenian neighbours. The genocide then emerged as an opportunity for perpetrators to solidify kin ties. When, during the genocide, a man like Pirinccizaˆde Aziz Feyzi proved to be a most ruthless tormentor of Armenians, it is likely that in his eyes he was only pursuing the interests of his family amid the difficult conditions of war. From this subjective perspective, the genocide evolved not as a clear evil but rather as the shadow of virtue. All in all, Governor Mehmed Reshid’s personal conduct and local initiatives of influential urban families can largely explain the ferocity of the Armenian persecutions in Diyarbekir.

Conclusion These insights at the national and regional levels of analysis illustrate how dynamics within the perpetrator group account significantly, even decisively, for regional variations during the genocide. They also remind

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us that even if the Armenian genocide unfolded on a twisted course, the result was nevertheless generalized destruction. Several conclusions can be drawn from the current discussion. First and foremost, regional variation in the genocide was never monocausal but depended on a fatal combination of factors. In Adana, Armenians were more affluent than elsewhere; differential development between Armenians and Turks was significant; the local CUP elite was rather corrupt; there was no real presence of Kurdish tribes; the governor was pragmatic in his commitment to the genocide; French military intervention loomed; and there was a prehistory of violence in 1909. In Diyarbekir, the state was historically weak; the governor was ruthless; there was less preceding violence; the conduct of powerful Kurdish tribes mattered; the risk of military intervention and occupation was low; and the presence of other ethnic groups interfered with the genocide. What these cases had in common was that their distance to Aleppo and Deir ezZor was limited and “survivable”, albeit that Diyarbekir received deportation instructions later than Adana. Corruption played a role in both provinces, but whereas in Adana, Armenians could redirect this to their benefit, in Diyarbekir, this turned out to be impossible. These factors interacted in varied and complex ways, and no simple formula for the course of the genocide emerges from this evidence. Rather, different, perhaps unique combinations of factors shaped the impact of each case. Second, understanding the regional differences contributes to a broader research agenda on genocide: that of intrastate developments relevant to the genesis of genocides. These include the ideological selfhypnosis of political elites, complex decision-making processes, the necessity and logic of a division of labour, the emergence of paramilitary troops, and any mass mobilization for the segregation and destruction of the victim group. How do otherwise neutral and technocratic institutions, organizations, and agencies in a given state and society collaborate in genocide? How do otherwise apolitical families and tribes make decisions, conduct business, and comport themselves in a genocidal process? How do coexisting villages and neighbourhoods turn on each other? How are municipal administrations taken over and steered towards genocidal destruction of some of their fellow citizens? Disaggregating these questions into fundamental empirical research and then aggregating their results into painting a composite picture remains the task at hand.

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Contemporary debates on the Armenian genocide in Turkey have focused on disproving that the genocide was government policy. Regional differences are used in this debate primarily to revive the old chestnut that some Armenians were treated differently, were not deported, or survived.60 Often, the (factually wrong) notion that the Istanbul and I˙zmir Armenians were not affected by the deportation orders is dragged out to illustrate this point. Guenter Lewy has even gone as far as arguing, “These exemptions are analogous to Hitler exempting the Jews of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Cologne from the final solution.”61 These denialist pseudoarguments rest on the utterly naı¨ve assumption that genocides are homogeneous, isomorphic events whose characteristics are annulled by minor differences in form. When a genocidal regime “misses a spot”, it is most often a function of the concatenation of the factors discussed in this chapter, and rarely an intended consequence of central policy making. Interestingly, the unweaving of this official narrative seems to develop in a regionally disparate manner. Since 2008, Turkey’s democratic transitions have changed the political landscape regionally, especially in the Kurdish southeast. For example, in Diyarbekir, Mayor Osman Baydemir and his city administration have acknowledged the destruction of the Diyarbekir Armenians. Together with Armenian civil society organizations, the city authorities reconstructed and consecrated the Surp Giragos Church and revived Armenian cultural life.62 The city has witnessed an unprecedented atmosphere of freedom of expression, open debate, and commemoration of the genocide. Much like the genocide itself, the transition process may well turn out be regionally disparate.

Notes 1. Mark Levene, ‘“Creating a Modern ‘Zone of Genocide’: The Impact of Nationand State-Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878– 1923”, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, 3 (1998), pp. 393– 433. 2. Hilmar Kaiser, “Regional Resistance to Central Government Policies: Ahmed Djemal Pasha, the Governors of Aleppo, and Armenian Deportees in the Spring and Summer of 1915”, Journal of Genocide Research 12, 3 – 4 (2010), pp. 173– 218. 3. Fikret Adanır and Hilmar Kaiser, “Migration, Deportation, and NationBuilding: The Case of the Ottoman Empire”, in Rene´ Leboutte (ed.), Migrations et migrants dans une perspective historique: permanences et innovations (Florence:

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5. 6. 7.

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9. 10.

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European University Institute, 2000), pp. 273– 92; Fuat Du¨ndar, Modern Tu¨rkiye’nin S¸ifresi: I˙ttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mu¨hendislig˘i (1913 – 1918) (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2008). For a thorough narrative study with a provincial approach, see Raymond H. Kévorkian, Le génocide des Arméniens (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), translated as The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B.Tauris, 2010). See also the chapters in Richard Hovannisian’s series on historic Armenian communities in Ottoman cities and provinces. Hilmar Kaiser reminds us that the very first studies of the genocide, i.e., those of Krieger (pseudonym of Krikor Gergerian), Haigaz Kazarian, and Aram Andonian, were all structured by region. Ara Sarafian (ed.), Talaat Pasha’s Report on the Armenian Genocide (London: Gomidas Institute, 2011), pp. 37, 46. One of the most sophisticated arguments so far is by Omar McDoom, “Predicting Violence within Genocide: A Model of Elite Contestation and Ethnic Segregation from Rwanda”, Political Geography 42 (2014), pp. 34 –45. ¨ ktem, “Incorporating the Time and Space of the Ethnic On Urfa, see Kerem O ‘Other’: Nationalism and Space in Southeast Turkey in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”, Nations and Nationalism 10, 4 (2004), pp. 559–78; on Trabzon, see Kevork Yeghia Suakjian, Genocide in Trebizond: A Case Study of Armeno-Turkish Relations during the First World War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981); on Cilicia, see Raymond H. Ke´vorkian, La Cilicie (1909– 1921): Des massacres d’Adana au mandat francais (Paris: RHAC III, 1999); on the south Marmara region, see Ryan Gingeras, Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire, 1912–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); on Erzurum, see Hilmar Kaiser, “‘A Scene from the Inferno’: The Armenians of Erzerum and the Genocide, 1915–1916”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah (Zurich: Chronos, 2001), pp. 129–86; on Aleppo, see Hilmar Kaiser, At the Crossroads of Der Zor: Death, Survival, and Humanitarian Resistance in Aleppo, 1915–1917 (London: Gomidas, 2002); on Izmir, see Herve´ Georgelin, La fin de Smyrne: du cosmopolitisme aux nationalismes (Paris: CNRS, 2005); on Diyarbekir, see Ug˘ur U¨mit U¨ngo¨r, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The lack of provincial studies is closely tied to sources: major Ottoman provincial capitals such as Sivas, Diyarbekir, Erzurum, Van, Konya, Bitlis, and Trabzon hold no provincial archives on the war. This seriously cripples regional studies, as scholars become dependent on the central Ottoman archives in Istanbul. Chris Lorenz, “Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives”, History and Theory 38, 1 (1999), pp. 25 – 39; Ju¨rgen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond”, History and Theory 42, 1 (2003), pp. 39 – 44. See the lucid set of articles in Dietrich Rueschemeyer and James Mahoney (eds), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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11. Recent examples of innovative local studies of genocide include Tomislav Dulic´, Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1941– 42 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2005); Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009); Francois-Xavier Ne´rard, “The Levashovo Cemetery and the Great Terror in the Leningrad Region”, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence (27 February 2009), at http://www.massviolence.org/TheLevashovo-cemetery-and-the-Great-Terror-in-the-Leningrad-region. 12. The French Armenian independent researcher Fre´de´ric Solakian designed a website where he listed some of the main organizers of the genocide and charted how their careers developed: http://www.imprescriptible.fr/turquie-memoire/ recyclage.html. 13. Mark Levene, The Crisis of Genocide, vol. 1: Devastation: The European Rimlands, 1912– 1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 140ff. 14. For an introduction to the plunder of Armenian property, see Ug˘ur U¨mit U¨ngo¨r and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Continuum, 2011). 15. Ug˘ur U¨mit U¨ngo¨r, “Family Matters: Local Elites and the Structures of Genocide”, Armenian Weekly, 25 April 2009, pp. 32 –5. 16. Bas¸bakanlık Osmanlı Ars¸ivi (BOA, Ottoman Archives, Istanbul), DH.S¸FR 53/113, Interior Ministry to Adana, Bitlis, Aleppo, Erzurum, 25 May 1915. 17. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, Washington, D.C.), RG256/Special Reports and Studies/Inquiry Document 819, by Elizabeth S. Webb, “The Exiling of the Armenians; Adana District”. 18. Politisches Archiv Auswa¨rtiges Amt (PAAA, Berlin), Botschaft Konstantinopel 96, Adana Consul Eugen Bu¨ge to Ambassador Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, 24 July 1915. 19. BOA, DH.S¸FR 54/51, Interior Ministry to Adana, 25 May 1915. 20. BOA, DH.EUM 68/89, 2. S¸ube, Fethi to Interior Ministry, 11 October 1915. 21. BOA, DH.S¸FR 54/346, Interior Ministry to Adana, 6 July 1915. 22. Manouk Chakalian, Journey for Freedom (New York: Carlton Press, 1976), p. 34. 23. PAAA, Botschaft Konstantinopel 96, Adana Consul Bu¨ge to Ambassador Wangenheim, 24 July 1915. 24. PAAA, Botschaft Konstatinopel 96/Bl.92 and 129– 31. 25. PAAA, Botschaft Konstantinopel 170, Eugen Bu¨ge to Embassy, 10 September 1915. 26. Taha Toros (ed.), Ali Mu¨nif Bey’in Hatıraları (Istanbul: Isis, 1996), pp. 78 – 9. 27. BOA, DH.S¸FR 56/50, Interior Ministry to Adana, 16 September 1915. 28. Taner Akcam, ‘Ermeni Meselesi Hallolunmus¸tur’: Osmanlı Belgelerine Go¨re Savas¸ Yıllarında Ermenilere Yo¨nelik Politikalar (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2008), p. 229. 29. PAAA, Botschaft Konstantinopel 99, Ambassador Paul Graf Wolff-Metternich to Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg, 31 January 1916.

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30. NARA, RG 59/867.4016/238, Consul Edward Nathan to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, 30 October 1915. 31. BOA, DH.S¸FR 58/196, Talaat to Adana province, 4 December 1915. 32. Lydia Bagdikian, The Memoir of Lydia Bagdikian (Berkeley, Calif.: Ben H. Bagdikian, 1997), pp. 59ff. 33. PAAA, R14088, Adana consul Bu¨ge to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, 1 October 1915. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ke´vork K. Baghdjian, La confiscation, par le gouvernement turc, des biens arme´niens – dits “abandonne´s” (Montre´al: K. K. Baghdjian, 1987), p. 73. 37. Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Dr. Mehmed Reshid (1873– 1919): A Political Doctor”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah: The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah (Zurich: Chronos, 2002), pp. 245– 80. 38. Mehmed Reshid, Mu¨laˆhazaˆt (Istanbul, 1919), transliterated in Nejdet Bilgi, Dr Mehmed Reshid S¸ahingiray’ın hayatı ve haˆtıraları (I˙zmir: Akademi, 1997), p. 89, n. 28. According to Abidin Nesimıˆ, son of the then-mayor of Lice, Hu¨seyin Nesimıˆ, the number of volunteers Reshid employed was 20. Abidin Nesimıˆ, Yılların I˙cinden (Istanbul: Go¨zlem, 1977), p. 39. 39. Vartkes Yeghiayan (ed.), British Foreign Office Dossiers on Turkish War Criminals (La Verne, Calif.: American Armenian International College, 1991), p. 151. 40. Alexander L. Macfie, The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908– 1923 (London: Longman, 1998), p. 128. 41. Ishaq Armalto, Al-Qousara fi Nakabat an-Nasara (2nd ed.; Beirut: Al-Sharfe Monastery, 1970). This detailed chronicle was written in 1919 in Arabic by the Syriac priest Ishaq Armalto and provides a very valuable account of Diyarbekir province before and during the war. The book has recently been translated into Swedish: De Kristnas Hemska Katastrofer: Osmanernas och Ung-turkarnas Folkmord i norra Mesopotamien 1895/1914– 1918 (Stockholm: Beth Froso Nsibin, 2005), translated by Ingvar Rydberg. This author has used an unofficial Turkish translation by Turan Karatas¸ (Sweden, 1993), p. 28. 42. Ibid., p. 28. 43. Su¨leyman Nazif, “Doktor Reshid”, Hadisat, 8 February 1919. 44. PAAA, R14087, director of the Deutscher Hu¨lfsbund fu¨r christliches Liebeswerk im Orient (Frankfurt am Main) Friedrich Schuchardt to the Auswa¨rtiges Amt, 21 August 1915, enclosure no. 6. 45. S¸evket Beysanog˘lu, Anıtları ve Kitabeleri ile Diyarbakır Tarihi (Diyarbakır: Diyarbakır Belediyesi, 1996), vol. 2, pp. 793– 4; Bilgi, Dr Mehmed Reshid, pp. 26 – 7. See also Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921), pp. 182– 3. The Reverend Joseph Naayem was a Chaldean priest of Urfa, where he witnessed the killing of his father and the persecution of the Christians. Disguised as a Bedouin Arab, he narrowly escaped with his life.

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46. Halil (Enver Pasha’s uncle) and Cevdet (Enver’s brother-in-law) swept through Van and Bitlis after their defeats on Persian territory and in Van. During their retreat, they massacred the Armenian inhabitants of Bitlis, Van, and the plain of Mus¸. For an eyewitness account, see Grace Knapp, The Tragedy of Bitlis (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1919). 47. Rafael de Nogales, Four Years beneath the Crescent (London: Sterndale Classics, 2003), p. 125. This book was first published in Spanish as Cuatro an˜os bajo la media luna (Madrid: Editora Internacional, 1924) and later in German as Vier Jahre unter dem Halbmond: Erinnerungen aus dem Weltkriege (Berlin: Verlag von Reimar Hobbing, 1925). See also Rafael de Nogales, Memorias del General Rafael de Nogales Me´ndez (Caracas: Ediciones Abril, 1974). 48. NARA, RG 59, 867.4016/77, Jesse Benjamin Jackson to Henry Morgenthau, 5 June 1915. 49. Marion Tashjian-Quiroga, The Tragic Years Remembered 1915– 1920 (Troy, N.Y.: The Printing Outlet, 2002), p. 67. 50. Abed Mshiho Na’man Qarabashi, Vergoten Bloed: Verhalen over de Gruweldaden Jegens Christenen in Turkije en over het Leed dat hun in 1895 en in 1914– 1918 is Aangedaan, trans. George Toro and Amill Gorgis (Glanerbrug, The Netherlands: Bar Hebraeus, 2002), p. 128. This important diary was originally written in Aramaic under the title Dmo Zliho (Shed Blood) by Na’man Qarabashi, a native of the village of Qarabash. During the war, Qarabashi was a theology student at the Syriac monastery Deyr-ul Zaferan. Along with Armalto’s account, it is one of the very few survivor memoirs. However, his account suffers from victim bias in at least two ways: the myth of extreme cruelty on the part of the perpetrators and the myth of resistance by the victims. Nevertheless, his account is factually correct and will be utilized, albeit with caution. 51. E´pisodes des massacres arme`niens de Diarbekir: Faits et Documents (Constantinople: Ke´chichian Fr., 1920), pp. 28 – 30. 52. BOA, DH.EUM.MEM 67/31, 27 July 1915. Deputies Aziz Feyzi and Zu¨lfu¨ Bey and militia major S¸evki were decorated with honorary medals for their “great achievements”. BOA, DH.KMS 43/10, 11 January 1917. According to a British intelligence report, “Deputy Feyzi was received by the Kaiser and decorated with the Iron Cross”. Public Record Office, Foreign Office 371/4172/24597, no. 63490, folio 304. 53. PAAA, R14087, director of the Deutschen Hu¨lfsbundes fu¨r christliches Liebeswerk im Orient (Frankfurt am Main) Friedrich Schuchardt to the Auswa¨rtiges Amt, 21 August 1915, enclosure no. 6. 54. Report of M. Guys to the French embassy, Istanbul, 24 July 1915, in Arthur Beylerian (ed.), Les grandes puissances, l’empire ottoman et les arme´niens dans les archives francaises (1914– 1918): recueil de documents (Paris: Universite´ de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1983), p. 48, document no. 58; Yeghiayan, British Foreign Office Dossiers, p. 48; E´pisodes des massacres, pp. 22 – 3. 55. PAAA, Botschaft Konstantinopel 169, Walter Holstein to Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim, 10 June 1915.

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56. Edward W. C. Noel, Diary of Major E. Noel on Special Duty in Kurdistan (Basra: n.p., 1919), pt. 1, pp. 10 – 11. 57. BOA, DH.S¸FR 54/87, Talaat to the provinces of Trabzon, Mamuret-ul Aziz, Sivas, Canik, and Diyarbekir, 21 June 1915. 58. BOA, DH.S¸FR 54/15, I˙AMM to the provinces of Adana, Haleb, Erzurum, Bitlis, Van, and Diyarbekir, 14 June 1915. 59. Hilmar Kaiser, The Extermination of Armenians in the Diarbekir Region (Istanbul: Bilgi U¨niversitesi Yayınları, 2014), p. 268. 60. Yusuf Halacog˘lu, Ermeni Tehciri ve Gercekler (Ankara: TTK, 2001). 61. Lewy’s spurious argument suggests that the hypothetical exemption of the Jews of Berlin (160,000), Frankfurt am Main (26,000), and Cologne (15,000), which would add up to 201,000 exemptions, would void the genocide of the remaining 6 million victims. See Guenter Lewy, “Correspondence”, in Middle East Quarterly (winter 2006), pp. 76 – 81. 62. “Surp Giragos’un canı 98 yıl sonra yine caldı”, Agos, 4 November 2012.

AFTERWORD Hamit Bozarslan

This timely book is about the final years, or one could even say the final century, of the Ottoman Empire. Given the collapse of some Arab societies, which occurs before our eyes only 20 years after the violent breakdown of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the Balkans, one might well think that dissolution of the Ottoman Empire still has not reached its final stage yet.

Defining the Empire on the Eve of World War I Historians and political sociologists will probably never reach a common definition of the concept of empire. Still, one can agree that an empire is a unity of contradictions, the name of a specific act of political engineering that consists of fulfilling contradictory imperatives. An empire is a centralized entity and diffuses a largely unified administrative culture across its lands, yet it rules through the de jure or de facto delegatory status that it allocates to its local components. It is territorialized and “bordered”, yet it contains dissident territories that one can define as the land of the siba1 and has to accept the fluidity of its frontiers. It aims at the establishment of security and “harmony”, yet it needs a conflictual society that it can manage through its role as the ultimate arbiter. The force of an empire resides in its capacity to rule through a set of “tacit contracts”,2 which seldom gain a codified form and evolve in accordance with a broad set

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of power relations. Tacit contracts do not necessarily exclude the possibility of rebellion or massive state coercion, but they always allow new negotiations between particular groups and the imperial centre or its representatives. Some chapters in this volume show that the Unionist state of 1914 still had this capacity of negotiating “tacit contracts”; it could indeed manage the Ottoman heterogeneity and was effectively considered as ultimate instance of arbitration. Vahe´ Tachjian’s contribution, for instance, indicates that in spite of the structural discrimination targeting them, local Armenian communities tried, in the turn of 1910s, to restrain their pleas of 1894–6 and developed new strategies of “accommodation” with the power holders. In Palestine, analyzed here by Yuval Ben-Bassat, the “subjects” continued to address their entreaties directly to the “ruler” through the classical channel of the arzuhals and were even able to adopt the post-1908 political vocabulary to describe their local conflicts. The old patterns of expressing claims and negotiating status and privileges were still functional in the beginning of the 1910s or were even reinforced by the incorporation of the Unionist zeitgeist by the local actors. It is true that the Unionist power had replaced almost entirely the former Hamidian civil and military authorities with its own men.3 Still, it also had to take into account local balances of power and negotiate with the notables and ¨ mit U¨ngo¨r shows in his in some cases with the tribes. As Ug˘ur U comparative chapter, these local dynamics, which cannot be isolated from “nationwide” power relations, would also play a decisive role in the future process of extermination of the Armenians, slowing or hastening it, easing or aggravating its effects. Thus, there is no doubt that in 1914 the empire, understood as the everyday framework, functionality, and efficiency of the overall region, still had some applicability. At the same time, however, the 1914 Ottoman state was no longer solely an “empire” in the etymological sense of this concept.4 Obviously, it continued to have a multiethnic and multireligious texture and controlled vast territories in the Arab world. There was no doubt that some Arab cities, such as Beirut and Baghdad, were intellectually and even economically much more dynamic than I˙zmir, Bursa, or Adana,5 equipping the empire with a real heterogeneity and dynamism. But the country’s overall dynamics were henceforth determined by Turkishness and not by any kind of pan-Ottomanism. Not only did the new rulers of the empire sign some of their official

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acts in their capacity of Genc Tu¨rk Hu¨ku¨meti (“Young Turk government”), but as both Hans-Lukas Kieser and Eyal Ginio suggest in this volume, they also questioned the loyalty of their subjects on the criterion of a “national belonging”, as the jealous nation-states do. This “test of allegiance” put the non-Turkish, non-Islamic communities under pressure, obliging them constantly to renew their loyalty to the state and therefore to the millet-i haˆkime, i.e. the dominant (Muslim-Turkish) nation. The loyalty of the Arabs or even the Kurds to the state would also gradually be put in doubt. This “loyalty test” created a malaise not only among the non-Muslims but also among non-Turkish Muslims and even Muslim “Ottomanist” politicians such Prince Sabahaddin.6 As Michelle U. Campos shows in her chapter, the Unionist “ethnic politics” provoked some reactions among the Arab intellectuals who judged them as contradictory with the very spirit of the constitutional order. These intellectuals also paid specific attention to other parts of the Ottoman world, namely Albania, where the Unionist politics provoked massive discontent. ¨ ktem, and Maurus Reinowski rightly As Hans-Lukas Kieser, Kerem O remind us in their Introduction, the Ottoman “imperial routine” had ceased to function already by 1912. One can even say that this process of “becoming something other than an empire” had actually started under the heavily procedural and bureaucratic rule of Abdu¨lhamid. It is true that the Hamidian regime imagined itself as the restoration of the Ottoman state, bureaucracy, court traditions, and political culture. In reality, it had “imported” the European model of ancien re´gime, as Russia did,7 and in a way quite similar to tsarist rule, it combined this model with the autocratic zeitgeist prevailing in some parts of post-1848 Europe. “Hamidianism” was, indeed, a truly new experience in the Ottoman Empire and shared very little with the pre– Nizam-ı Cedid models. It was marked by the dual existence of a rational – bureaucratic state depending on Abdu¨lhamid in his capacity as head of the state and yet another, patrimonial power emanating from and depending on him alone in his capacity as sultan.8 None of these powers was submitted to the control of checks and balances, offering thus a large degree of autonomous action to the sultan. But the radicalism of this self-claimed restorative state was not limited to this engineering. Abdu¨lhamid II classified his subjects in three – respectively inclusive, semi-inclusive, and exclusive – categories: Turkish; Islamic (mainly Albanian, Arab,

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and Kurdish); and non-Muslim subjects. The first, which also integrated many Caucasian refugees (muhacirs) whom the sultan privileged more than any other group, were considered the founding element of the state and the nation; the second were conceived (and partially armed) as a periphery in charge of the protection of this hard core; the last were defined, at least in the internal correspondences of the authorities, as the state’s or the millet-i hakime’s potential or real enemies.9 One should also add that Abdu¨lhamid was well aware that his rule, which started with a disastrous war with Russia before becoming a rather stable one, would be an exception in the Ottoman history, and that the Balkans, where he still was able to maintain his authority with some brutality, could ultimately be lost. His insistence on Asia Minor as the very heart of the empire10 was probably linked to this premonition and explains, at least partly, the massacres of Armenians between 1894 and 1896. The Unionists were the generation that would mourn the effective loss of the Balkan territories and undertake systematic “homogenization” of the “last” piece of “Turkish land”, namely, Asia Minor, already redefined as Anatolia. They were the children of the “borderlands” of this Asia minor nucleus;11 of Abdu¨lhamid, under whose rule they were born; and, of course, of their time. The well-known Russian French philosopher Alexandre Koyre´ suggested, in his seminal book on national philosophy in Russia, that Russian intellectuals were both Westernized and anti-Western nationalists.12 A similar remark can be made concerning the Unionist leaders, cadres, and intellectuals: As the editors of this volume rightly put it, they were “Westernized despite the West”. More important, they were also part of Western history. It is true that they received Western ideas and models “passively” (but in huge quantities); however, they used what they received in a quite “active”,13 axiological way and were perfectly able to transform their own reality and, thus, to hasten both the Ottoman and Europe-wide historical process. One should also underline that what they received from Europe was rather radical and disruptive: In contrast with the period of Tanzimat, the post –1870– 1 “Westernization” was marked not by the initiation of young Ottoman officers, bureaucrats, and hommes de lettres into liberal thinking but rather by their participation in the process of the “brutalization of the societies”14 that was then going on in Europe. The standard library of the perfect Unionist contained only a couple of authors, such as Ernst Haeckel and Ludwig Bu¨chner, two important

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references for biological materialism, and Gustave Le Bon, in whom they were celebrating the “greatest thinker of history”.15 The Unionist circles conceived the nation as an organic body engaged in a Social Darwinist war with other “species” and apprehended the war as a total war among the nations, as it was thought by Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz Pasha, their commander and maıˆtre a` penser.16 Their axiology, in turn, had unavoidable side effects elsewhere in Europe. After all, it was Vladimir I. Lenin who defined his generation of militants as “the Young Turks of the Revolution”,17 and the Unionist party-state model preceded by almost a whole decade the Bolshevik and fascist ones in Europe. The Ottoman entity of 1914 was not yet a national state, but it was already much more than a classical multiethnic and multireligious empire. Officially, it was still Ottoman, and the Ottomanist discourse was not totally abandoned. But the very term millet-i haˆkime (“dominant community” or “dominant nation”) was henceforth overtly defined as Turkish and not exclusively as Islamic. As Hu¨seyin Cahid (Yalcın), editor of Unionist journal Tanin, put it bluntly: No! This country will be a Turkish country. We will always be united under the Ottoman label, but the form of the state will never be subject to any modification [that could be] alien to the particular interests of the Turks and against the vital interests of Muslims. The Turks have conquered this country. The sacrifices that they have accepted in order to reach this goal are among the most fascinating and most proud pages of the history. . . . In the country which is under their administration, the Turks have today a historical right, a right of the conquerors going back to a few centuries. This country will not become a toy at the service of the particular interests of the non-Turkish components. Whatever one might say, the Turks will be the dominant nation of this country.18 This hybrid historical situation between the postimperial and prenational realities, these sharp contrasts between the official terms of identity and hegemonic nationalist projects, could not but radicalize the process of dissolution of the empire and give an extremely violent birth to the national states – and to start with, the future Turkish republic.

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Unionism and the Radicalization of the Hamidian Legacy Since the Treaty of Paris of 30 March 1856, the Ottoman Empire had been a part of the European international system,19 but it was obvious that it had a subordinated position within this system as well as narrowed margins of action. Not only could it not have colonial territories outside its own frontiers, as France and Great Britain (and, to a lesser extent, Germany) did,20 but large parts of its provinces were also subject to the interventions of the Great Powers. The empire could not resist the imperialist pressure of the powers not because it was militarily weak but because it did not have the support of its population. Its inability to take into account the demands of its provinces, and more broadly speaking, of its Christian populations, through a real policy of decentralization, a system of local autonomies, and a genuine reform programme was pushing it almost in a systemic manner to compensate for each of its territorial losses with reinforced rigidity and further repression. The failure of this policy, attested dramatically during the 1876–7 war, could only create more despair, which developed, in turn, into a source of internal radicalization leading to more contestation and more external pressures. This specific configuration does not only explain the differences between the outcomes of the external pressures exerted by the European powers on the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere, on countries such China. It also allows us to understand the sharp contrasts between the Young Turk Revolution, on the one hand, and the Russian (1905), Persian (1906), and Chinese (1911) revolutions, on the other hand. The Young Turk (or, more precisely, Unionist) Revolution was in fact a military pronunciamiento taking place in Macedonia, whose news could reach Istanbul only one day later.21 Similar to a coup d’e´tat, this pronunciamiento was not “a rupture with the Raison d’Etat, but the self-manifestation of the State, the affirmation that the State has to be saved, no matter the forms [of action] that one uses to realize this objective”.22 It was, indeed, the act of one part of the state, namely, the so-called National Battalions of the Second and Third Armies, based in the Balkans, and not a genuine popular movement. It is true that the Unionist pronunciamiento was marked by radicalism, generational discontinuities, eruption of the youth as political and military actors, and the emergence of new subjectivities. Nevertheless, these subjectivities were shaped by Social Darwinism and biological materialism, which constituted their axiological philosophy,

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and not by libertarian utopias. Although the term “fraternity” (uhuvvet) was one of the mottos of 1908, and although the Young Turk Revolution was indeed warmly welcomed by non-Muslim populations both in the Balkans and in Asia Minor, the Committee of Union and Progress’s internal documentation, which S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu has studied, leaves no doubt that its “secret subjectivity” and “grammar of alterity” were dominated by Social Darwinism and a profound hostility vis-a`-vis the Christian “components” (anasır) of the empire. Moreover, the Unionist leaders and intellectuals were conceiving themselves as simple actors on a mission from history or destiny, not as revolutionary actors undertaking the building of a new society or a new order. That was the destiny that had chosen them as a revolutionary junkertum in order to revitalize the Turkish empire and ensure its salvation and its future victories. This widely interiorized mystic belief, which coexisted with their faith in science, filled them with an incredible energy that did not disappear even after the fall of the empire in 1918, but ultimately, it also obliged them to accept the legacy and the raison d’eˆtat that Abdu¨lhamid II handed over to them. Bahaeddin S¸akir (1874–1922), the infamous leading figure of the Special Organization (Tes¸kilat-ı Mahsusa), once defined Abdu¨lhamid as the only Turk with an u¨bermenschlich status.23 It is not a coincidence that Unionism ended up by “retotalizing” the recent Ottoman Turkish history, supporting, for instance, exactly the same reading of the Armenian revolutionary activities as had Abdu¨lhamid II24 and rehabilitating the “Red Sultan”.25 It is true that the Unionists conceived of themselves as the aristocracy of a “race of masters”,26 a belief that led them to uproot the former, prudent Hamidian bureaucracy in a very short period. But they were also the heirs of the sultan and had no other legacy to radicalize than what they had inherited from him. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II conceived his rule as that of “restoration” of the pre-Tanzimat Ottoman state; the Young Turks’ regime, dominated by men barely of age 30 in 1914, was conceiving itself as a radical opposition to the Hamidian ancien re´gime but also as the ruh-i devlet27 (the soul of the state), as a counterorder but also as a system of rapt-u zapt (order and discipline).

The Balkan Wars and the Armenian Issue During the first months after the Proclamation of Liberty, the Ottoman Empire had fallen into a “drunkenness of liberty”28 and became the

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theater of numerous manifestations of a revolutionary “lyric art”.29 During the same period, however, it became clear that Unionism could not offer a satisfactory answer to the crisis it was facing. On the contrary, the steps it was taking were in total contradiction to the very idea of Ottomanism and fraternity that it was officially advocating. For instance, Bulgaria’s proclamation of independence and the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 8 October 1908, which did not change the empire’s real political map, had been used by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) as a pretext to launch a boycott campaign against Austrian products that rapidly took on an anti-Christian shape. Similarly, the extremely brutal Italian occupation of Libya in 1911 did not have a major geopolitical impact on the empire, since the Ottomans had not for decades controlled either Egypt or Tunisia and Algeria, and since their presence in this last land in North Africa was rather superficial; but the Unionists’ answer to the occupation took on an extremely aggressive form: not so much in Libya, where their resistance was a desperate one, but in the Balkans. Although the Unionists were not in power on the eve of the First Balkan War (8 October 1912–30 March 1913), their pro-war demonstrations aggravated the existing tensions and contributed to the debacle of 1912.30 The editors of this book are absolutely right in their argument that the First Balkan War (1912) constituted the beginning of the Ottoman cataclysm. For years to come, this war, which exerted enormous transformative effects on the Ottoman Empire and each one of the Balkan societies, perpetuated many enigmatic aspects.31 This armed conflict and the second, which started on 16 June 1913, and ended on 18 July 1913, were certainly not more brutal than the Crimean War of 1853–6 or the 1877–8 war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. But in contrast with these two previous conflicts, the Balkan wars were not imperial wars; they opposed nations to each other and constituted a pattern for a Social Darwinist war in which space and species were conceived as synonymous: For the political and military protagonists, controlling space also meant homogenizing the population through fear and displacement, if not massacre. Militarily speaking, the nations engaged in these wars were rather small and weak powers. Still, the violence of their war produced some 300,000 victims (dead or wounded). As Dog˘an C¸etinkaya rightly indicates in his chapter, the theme of atrocities, which was previously also

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used during the 1870–1 Franco-Prussian War, became an element of war propaganda in 1912–13. The atrocity, as he argues, was the clearest outcome of the end of any distinction between combatants and noncombatants and by no means an unintended consequence of the armed conflict itself: The war was, in fact, perceived henceforth in terms of a vital combat engaging “nations” in their entirety, and not as a simple military activity aiming at the imposition of one party’s will on the (external) “enemy” or at the conquest of new territories. Thus, one understands easily that the Balkan wars, which destroyed any intra-Ottoman internationalism and any suprastate internationalism, left the socialist movements of the Balkan countries on their knees. One can even say that 4 August 1914, the tragic, infamous day during which the French and German socialist deputies approved the war credits, took place two years earlier in the Balkans. More dramatically, the First Balkan War changed radically the political map of the empire, which, as S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu puts it, could henceforth justify its official name only thanks to its Arab provinces.32 The Balkans, homeland of the evlad-ı fatihan (children of conquerors), who considered themselves masters and aristocracy of the empire,33 became a long-lasting source of nostalgia, which has been expressed in the extremely violent poetry of Ziya Go¨kalp, sociologist and thinker, who was promoted ide´ologue en chef by the CUP in 1909.34 As Emre Erol shows convincingly in his chapter, through their transfer to the western Anatolian coast, the empire’s Balkan “conflicts” were kept alive after these wars, leading thus to a second phase of “demographic engineering” and to a new ethnic cleansing after that which took place in the Balkans in 1912–13. As Taner Akcam underlines, the 1914 expulsion of the Greeks from parts of the Aegean coast became a matrix for the future Armenian genocide.35 This anti-Greek hostility notwithstanding, after 1913 the Eastern Question was widely redefined as the Armenian Question. As Thomas Schmutz details in his chapter, the Unionist “anti-Western” resistance focused during this period almost exclusively on this issue and legitimized itself by one single keyword: sovereignty. It is true that this Westphalian concept, which had no equivalent in the classical Islamic or Ottoman doctrine of state, allowed the Unionists to denounce the hypocrisy of the European powers, which legitimized their brutality elsewhere in the name of their sovereign rights. Like the other Young

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Turks (and the young Ottomans before them), the Unionists felt a genuine solidarity with the colonialized peoples and “enslaved populations” throughout the world and criticized the injustices committed by the European powers against them. Nevertheless, this “anti-imperialist” discourse led them systematically to more brutality vis-a`-vis their own Christian populations in the name of the unlimited national sovereignty. In the eastern provinces, the Armenians constituted the main obstacle for demographic homogenization. Unionist cadres knew, in fact, very little about the Armenian issue, in which they saw simply a replica of the Macedonian issue. The process of the Armenian (or rather, eastern provinces’) reform project, discussed by Mehmet Polatel in this volume, shows clearly that the Unionist reflexes were determined mainly by their Balkan experiences. Commenting on the Armenian issue under Abdu¨lhamid II, Anahide Ter Minassian once suggested that the Armenian militants failed to understand the major differences between Bulgaria and Armenia.36 In reality, neither did the Unionists see these differences. But they were confident that the “wheel of fortune” was on their side. Before the beginning of the Great War in 1914, Talaat was expressing his predictions about the future of this “second Macedonian Issue”: How come that the Armenians do not understand that the realization of the reforms depends on us? We will not answer to the propositions of the [two European] Inspectors [nominated to conduct reforms] . . . . The Armenians want to create a new Bulgaria. It seems that they have not studied their lessons enough. Their efforts, that we will oppose, will be vain. Let the Armenians wait and see. Fortune will smile on us. Turkey belongs to the Turks.37

From the Balkan Wars to World War I Although World War I was not a direct outcome of the Balkan Wars, it was a moment during which the scale of the military conflict took on absolutely unprecedented dimensions and the dynamics of the “brutalization of the societies” came to their acme in large parts of Europe. This was also true on the Oriental front. As Hans-Lukas Kieser emphasizes in this volume, for the first time in the history of the empire,

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the war affected all the empire’s frontiers and produced at once external and internal episodes of violence. More than the European powers, the CUP brutalized its society in both its “hard core”, that is, in Asia Minor, and, by choosing the Syrian deserts and even the vilayet of Mosul as scene of the second stage of its genocidal campaign against Armenians,38 in its “near periphery”. There is no undisputed proof establishing that the Unionist power deliberately used the famine as a strong-arm tactic in Syria and Lebanon, but the repression in the Arab provinces, which reached its paroxysm during the execution of 21 leading Arab political and intellectual figures on 6 May 1916, took the form of a “massive rule of terror”.39 Palestine, which already hosted occasional communal conflicts, was not spared either: In 1917, under the pressure of Cemal Pasha and upon the order of Talaat, the authorities proceeded to deport many Jewish inhabitants or settlers.40 To some extent, World War I was the extreme and perverse consequence of the Westphalian Treaties, which in 1648 allowed Europe to leave its 30-year-long conflicts behind her. The warmly celebrated Westphalian Peace recognized indeed the sovereignty of any ruler over his territories and his right to make war outside his frontiers. As Heinrich Sharp and Bertrand Badie41 show, however, these treaties also put an end to suprastate or imperial dreams in Europe. More important, they agreed on not qualifying the war – the most brutal violence that one can imagine – as violence but presented it as the legitimate right of any sovereign ruler. To some extent, the right to “make war” outside one’s own territory allowed the pacification of divided European principalities. But with the Ottoman example of World War I and, more than two decades later, with World War II, humankind had to learn that external wars could also be articulated with internal violence and could take the form of massive exterminations of civil populations. World War I, which took place in an entirely new European context, was unprecedented in its form, its length, and its disruptive effects. As Francois Furet has shown, it also constituted a serious blow both to the ideal of a “bourgeois democracy”, in Europe and to “internationalist democracy”, the only alternative that could challenge it.42 After such violence, which destroyed the very sense of civility, and after such a price paid by every citizen, no one could expect any longer that the societies would respect the prewar “bourgeois legality”. World War I constituted,

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in fact, the beginning of a European cataclysm that came to an end only in 1945, if not as late as 1989. The Unionists were aware of this new global picture. Still, they conceived World War I basically as a third round of the Balkan wars, or, more precisely, as the historical moment of revenge, allowing them to erase the “blackness” and the shame of the first two rounds. While reading the postwar memoirs of Talaat Pasha, one even gets the feeling that he simply could not understand that European societies also had histories and that the war was also a war between European states. Talaat, who uses an extremely narcissistic style to comment on this period, explains that the Ottoman Empire could not stay outside the war because “we were at the stake” and the “war was about us”.43 As is well known, the CUP presented its decision to enter the world war without any provocation from Russia,44 and with even less from France and Great Britain, as a fait accompli to the sultan as well as to the prime minister and an absolutely subordinated National Assembly. It is impressive to see that, apart from Ismail Enver Pasha, who did not leave any (known) memoirs on this episode, no major Unionist leader has ever claimed the responsibility for this decision, which was contested by Grand Vizier Said Halim Pasha and some ministers, such as Cavid Bey. In his already mentioned memoirs, Talaat attributed responsibility to Enver alone, and on the pretext of absence from Istanbul at the time, Cemal simply “washed his hands”.45 Beyond this opacity, which tells much about the iron collars of the Committee, one should admit that the Ottoman entry into the war had some rational basis: The Unionist officers, who were former pupils and disciples of the German marshals and generals, believed in the absolute superiority of the German military. They were also convinced that the Armenian reform programme, which they had been obliged to accept at the beginning of the war, would be suspended, and without – yet – having a genocidal project, the Armenians would be “punished” for their “betrayal”. (Talaat would tell Armenian politicians: “With the question of reforms, you grabbed us by the throat when we were weak. That’s why we will use the advantages of the [present] situation and disperse your people in such a manner that you will forget the very idea of reforms during fifty years.”)46 Finally, the war was also welcomed as a propitious moment to abolish the infamous capitulations that gave huge economic privileges to European powers and to create a

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“national bourgeoisie” and a “national economy” that Unionist (and pro-Unionist) intellectuals were advocating. Naı¨ve, realistic, or cynical, these calculations could have been considered as at least partly rational. But here again, Unionist rationality and Unionist mysticism went hand in hand. One example: The belief that the loss of the Balkans would be compensated by the conquest of the Ergenekon, the mythical “homeland of 10.800.000 km2 and 43 million souls”,47 awaiting the return of its departed children, led Enver to launch his disastrous winter campaign of Sarıkamıs¸ on the Caucasian front (27 December 1914– 17 January 1915). On his way to the “promised land”, Enver was welcomed by the slogan “the way to Turan passes through here”. (“The land of the enemy will fall into ruins, and Turkey will grow to become Turan”, Ziya Go¨kalp used to say.)48 As a consequence, almost his entire army of 100,00 men, wearing summer clothes, perished before the beginning of the battle. This defeat, in turn, constituted the unleashing factor of the Armenian genocide, which combined extreme rationality in its organization, Social Darwinism in its most destructive forms, and a brutality that meant not only to exterminate the Armenian community but also to destroy the very meaning of being human beings among the survivors. The link between the Balkan wars and the Great War becomes clear also when one looks at the trajectories of the Unionist leaders. Before coming to power, most of the Unionists were involved in violence in socalled Ottoman Macedonia, where they fought against the famous Balkan comitadjis. Under the influence of these guerilla groups, they became themselves comitadjis who at once represented the state and acted against it. This past legacy enabled them to transfer their knowledge from Macedonia to Asia Minor and from the military field to the society. The First Balkan War, and particularly the fall of Salonika without the slightest resistance, constituted a source of shame for these young officers. As Akin Yig˘it shows in his chapter, the Unionists explained this defeat by the lack of a nationwide mobilization, and, after their coup d’e´tat (25 January 1913), they took a series of measures to imply the doctrine of millet-i mu¨sellaha (people in arms) of von der Goltz in a country that had extremely scare resources and needed everything from shoes for men to shoes for horses.49 Moreover, public opinion did not welcome the 1914 process of mobilization, which was instinctively (and rightly) apprehended as much more destructive than any previous one.50

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Unlike in France and in Germany, in fact, the Ottoman war was not a “democratic war”, that is, a war defended by the entire collectivity, and could not be stopped until total victory or total collapse, as Arnold Toynbee, Elie Halevy, and Francois Furet have analyzed.51 Still, the Unionist prewar mobilization, which required an unprecedented degree of militarization of the society, was efficient as a technique of state making, regime making, and nation making. It served as a tool of state making in the sense that it enabled Istanbul to mobilize almost the entire potential of violence of the “nation”, as well as its material resources to finance the war.52 As Daniel Thom, quoted by Yig˘it in his chapter, put it in 1914: “The government has robbed the city [of Mardin] and the country around, of its men, of its animals, of its money.” This robbery necessitated an unmatched level of bureaucratic centralization of the country. The war was also an instrument of regime making in the sense that it allowed the Unionist power to reinforce itself in spite of its wide unpopularity, its lack of legitimacy due to its coming back by a military putsch, and its unveiled dictatorship. It was, finally, a means of nation making – or rather, “segregated nation making” – in the sense that the non-Muslim soldiers were, from the very beginning, enrolled in the infamous amele taburları (labour battalions) studied by Erik Jan Zu¨rcher.53 Here one can see yet another major difference with the European cases: World War I led to an extremely accelerated internal integration of French and German societies; in contrast, in the Ottoman Empire, while it did integrate the bureaucracy, the local notables, and a high number of dignitaries, it amputated the nation from almost all of its non-Muslim components.

Culpability and Responsibility The war decimated the Turkish and Kurdish (and partly also Arab) male population54 and ended up with the dissolution of the empire. It is, however, remarkable to see that in their immediate postwar memoirs, neither Cemal nor Talaat – not to mention other Unionist figures – expressed the slightest regret or an ad minima sense of responsibility. In their eyes, destiny propelled their generation to the forefront of the historical stage, and destiny decided, in its total liberty, the outcome of the war. In spite of this fatalism, they were proud of their past and convinced not only that they were right in what they had done but also that their

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moment of revenge over history would come. And indeed, it came: Immediately after his assassination, Talaat was celebrated as “a giant of history and a genius whose immense personality will take his place in the posterity” by the Kemalist press of Ankara.55 The 1919–22 War of Independence, which started as an answer to the Greek and Allied occupation of Anatolia, achieved what the Committee had undertaken: It started as a war in the Caucasus against the Republic of Armenia, which regrouped Russian as well as surviving Ottoman Armenians, and was accompanied thereafter by pogroms against the Pontic Greeks. The end of the war was followed by a quasi-total eradication of the Greek community in Turkey, which had become subject to a compulsory policy of population exchange. The new power, which rapidly took the form of a single-party regime, was ideologically and organically a continuation of the Committee of Union and Progress. It is true that “Enver’s men” were widely excluded from decision-making circles in 1925, but “Talaat’s men” were largely integrated into the Kemalist ruling elite and basically remained in power until the end of the 1950s. The irresponsibility of the CUP, whose main leaders fled immediately after the debacle of 1918, is certainly not unique in world history,56 but it is sadly remarkable that it was reproduced throughout the twentieth century as a pattern in Turkey and, broadly speaking, in the Middle East. Neither in the aftermath of World War I nor after the Ba’ath brutalities in Iraq and Syria, the Iran– Iraq War (1980–8), the Anfal campaigns of 1988 in Iraqi Kurdistan (during which chemical weapons were widely used against the civil population), the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), the occupation of Kuwait (1990), the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s, or the 9/11 suicide operations did any leader in the Middle East accept the slightest responsibility for his own acts, and no strong current claimed a Middle Eastern version of “never again”. Even the dissolution of societies before our eyes in Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria constitutes an episode “without responsibility” and without an examination of conscience. This absence explains partly why violence has remained so heavily dominant for so long and in so many spaces in the Middle East. Even without exerting a direct influence on what happened throughout the decades that followed, the Unionist pattern reproduced itself in time: A revolutionary takeover by a “patriotic” committee or group is conceived as the key condition of social and political change, as well as of

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“collective salvation”; the society, or rather the “nation”, is apprehended as a homogeneous and organic community, united against its internal and external enemies; and the relations between religious and confessional communities and ethnic groups are interpreted as a Social Darwinist war between species. This framework has been more or less dominant from the nationalist discourses of the 1920s to 1940s, through “left-wing” agendas of the 1950s to 1970s, up to Islamist mobilizations of the 1980s through the 2010s. The outcome of this political culture, which has been reinforced by the influence of fascist, Nazi, and Bolshevik ideologies and experiences between the two world wars, is either the bureaucratization of revolutionary (or rather, “progressivist-putschist”) regimes or the monopolization of the power by a tribal or sectarian group, as is the case in Iraq and in Syria. And this pattern produces huge amounts of internal violence, which potentially can lead not only to the extreme militarization of different communities and extreme fragmentation of national territories but also to the very destruction of the societies themselves. Since the Unionist experience, these radically disruptive situations have been constantly explained either by the “will of destiny” – that is the caprices of the semantic family of maniya/manan-qadar-dahr-zaman (“inner meaning”, “secret meaning”, “destiny”)57 – or by the necessity of “saving the country (and/or revolution)” or “destroying internal enemies”.58 Fatalism imposes cruelty as the only history possible, and necessity leaves no room for any kind of personal decision or choice. Together, they produce an individual and collective, political and juridical irresponsibility that is much more complex to conceptualize than the notion of Kriegsschuld problematized in this volume.

Notes 1. In Morocco, and more generally in the North African countries, the term makhzen defines, at once, the monarchy, the state, and the effectively submissive territories that pay taxes. In contrast, the bled as-siba can be defined as the territory of dissidence, where the state’s authority is contested and taxes related to it are not paid. 2. For this concept, cf. S¸erif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics”, Daedalus 102, 1 (1973), pp. 169– 90. 3. M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 287.

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4. In the Roman Empire, the term imperator designated, in the first place, highranking military commanders; later on, this title came to be used to name the head of the state, who had not only the right to command but also the right to govern through dictatorship. The imperator could decide to impose exceptional extrajudiciary measures, including executions. 5. For instance, Istanbul excepted, there were only three newspapers in Turkish, five in Greek, and 14 in Armenian in the entire empire. In contrast, there were 115 newspapers in Arabic (19 published in Baghdad, 26 in the current Syria, and 41 in Beirut). Cf. Ahmed Emin, The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by Its Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1914), p. 118. 6. Cf. Hamit Bozarslan, “Le Prince Sabahaddin (1879– 1948)”, Revue suisse d’histoire53d’histoire 53, 3 (2002), pp. 287– 301. 7. Martin Malia, Comprendre la re´volution russe (Paris: Seuil, 1980). 8. Cf. Francois Georgeon, Abdu¨lhamid II. Le Sultan-Calife (1876 – 1909) (Paris: Fayard, 2003). 9. Cf. Selim Deringil, “Belgenin Bog˘azına Sarılmak”, in I˙mparatorlug˘un C¸o¨ku¨¸s Do¨neminde Osmanlı Ermenileri. Bilimsel Sorumluluk ve Demokrasi Sorunları, 23 –25 Eylu¨l 2005 (Istanbul: Bilgi U¨niversitesi Yayınları, 2011), p. 9; cf., for hundreds of other documents, Bilaˆl N. Sims¸ir, Documents diplomatiques ottomans. Affaires arme´niennes (1886 – 1893) (Ankara: Socie´te´ Turque d’Histoire, 1985). 10. David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, 1876– 1908 (London: Frank Cass, 1977). 11. Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher, Savas¸, Devrim ve Uluslas¸ma: Tu¨rkiye Tarihinde Gecis¸ Do¨nemi ¨ niversitesi, 2005), pp. 147– 8. (Istanbul: Bilgi U 12. Alexandre Koyre´, La philosophie et le proble`me national en Russie au de´but du XIXe`me sie`cle (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 15. 13. Kenneth Thompson, Beliefs and Ideology (London: Open Press, 1986), p. 29. 14. Cf., for this notion, George L. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1961). 15. Haniog˘lu, Preparation for a Revolution, p. 314. 16. Colmar von der Goltz, Das Volk in Waffen, ein Buch u¨ber Heerwesen und Kriegfu¨hrung unserer Zeit (Berlin: R. V. Decker, 1883). 17. Quoted in Albert Camus, L’Homme re´volte´ (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), p. 281. 18. Quoted in Sina Aks¸in, Jo¨n Tu¨rkler ve I˙ttihat ve Terakki (Istanbul: Gercek Yayınları, 1980), p. 169. 19. Robert Mantran, “Les de´buts de la question d’Orient (1774– 1839)”, in Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l’Empire ottoman (Paris: Fayard, 1989), p. 508. 20. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II had clearly formulated some colonial ambitions (cf. Edhem Eldem [ed.], Un Ottoman en Orient. Osman Hamdi Bey en Irak, 1869– 1871 [Arles: Actes-Sud, 2010]). But his “colonial project” was rather an odd one, not least because its realization required the transformation into colonies of the empire’s own near or remote territories, such as Kurdistan, the present-day Iraq, and Yemen. Cf. Selim Deringil, Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998);

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Janet Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Thomas Ku¨hn, “Ordering the Past of Ottoman Yemen (1877–1914)”, Turcica, no. 34 (2004), pp. 189–220 M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, “The Second Constitutional Period, 1908– 1918”, in Res¸at Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 4: Turkey in Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 65. Michel Foucault, Se´curite´, territoire, population. Cours au Colle`ge de France, 1977– 1978 (Paris: Hautes Etudes –Gallimard –Seuil, 2004), pp. 267– 8. Quoted in Raymond Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des arme´niens (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), p. 244. Cf. the Committee of Union and Progress’s 1917 book on the Armenian issue, Ermeni Komitelerinin Emelleri ve I˙htilal Hareketleri/Mes¸rutiyetten O¨nce ve Sonra (Istanbul: Der, 2001). Cemal Kutay, S¸ehit Sadrazam Talat Pas¸a’nın Gurbet Hatıraları (Istanbul: n.p., 1983), pp. 16 and 847. Hannah Arendt, Les origines du totalitarisme Le syste`me totalitaire (Paris: Seuil, 1972), pp. 102– 3. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Partiler (Istanbul: n.p., 1952), p. 24. Cf. Francois Georgeon (ed.), “L’ivresse de la liberte´”. La re´volution de 1908 dans l’Empire ottoman (Leuven: Peeters, 2012). Halide Edip Adıvar, Conflict of East and West in Turkey (Lahore: n.p., 1935), p. 84. Fuat Du¨ndar, Modern Tu¨rkiye’nin S¸ifresi. I˙ttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mu¨hendislig˘i (1913 – 1918) (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2008), p. 58. Cf. Catherine Durandin and Ce´cile Folshweiller (eds), Alerte en Europe: la guerre dans les Balkans (1912 – 1913) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014). M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 173. M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk. An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, N.J., and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 24. Cf. Hamit Bozarslan, “Vocabulaire politique de la violence: l’exemple jeune turc”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser (ed.), Aspects of the Political Language in Turkey, 19th –20th Centuries (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2002), pp. 91 – 104. Taner Akcam, “Ermeni Meselesi Hallolunmus¸tur”. Osmanlı Belgelerine Go¨re Savas¸ Yıllarında Ermenilere Yo¨nelik Politikalar (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2008), p. 83. Anahide Ter Minassian, Histoires croise´es. Diaspora, Arme´nie, Transcaucasie 1880– 1990 (Marseille: Editions Paranthe`ses, 1997), pp. 130– 1. Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akcam, “Tehcir ve Taktil”. Divan-ı Harb-i O¨rfi Zabıtları. I˙ttihad ve Terakki’nin Yargılanması, 1919– 1922 (Istanbul: Bilgi U¨niversitesi Yayınları, 2010), p. 122. For the documents, cf. Ke´vorkian, Le ge´nocide des arme´niens.

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39. Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908– 1918 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), p. 193. 40. Du¨ndar, Modern Tu¨rkiye’nin, pp. 385– 6. 41. Heinrich Scharp, Abschied von Europa? (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht Verlag, 1953); Bertrand Badie, Quand l’histoire commence (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2012). 42. Francois Furet, Penser le XXe` Sie`cle (Paris: Robert Lafont, 2007), pp. 570– 602. 43. Kutay, S¸ehit Sadrazam Talat, pp. 876 and 895. 44. The available documentation shows clearly that Russia was interested mainly in reinforcing its continental front in Europe. Cf. Evgenii Aleksandrovich Adamov, Constantinople et les de´troits. Documents secrets de l’ancien Ministe`re des Affaires e´trange`res de Russie (Paris: Editions Internationales, 1930); Donald Bloxham, “The Beginning of the Armenian Catastrophe: Comparisons and Contextual Considerations”, in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Dominik J. Schaller (eds), Der Vo¨lkermo¨rder an der Armeniers und die Shoah (Zurich: Chronos, 2002), pp. 101 – 28. 45. Cf. his memoirs: Cemal Pas¸a, Hatıralar. I˙ttihat ve Terakki, I. Du¨nya Savas¸ı Anıları (Istanbul: Cag˘das¸ Yayınları, 1977). ¨ nso¨z”, in U¨mit Kurt, “Tu¨rk’u¨n Bu¨yu¨k Bicare Irkı” (Istanbul: 46. Taner Akcam, “O Iletis¸im Yayınları, 2013), p. 21. 47. Ahmed Ferid (Tek) (1877 – 1971), quoted in Erol Ko¨rog˘lu, Tu¨rk Edebiyatı ve Birinci Du¨nya Savas¸ı (1914 – 1918). Propagandadan Millıˆ Kimlik I˙ns¸asına (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im, 2004), p. 152. 48. See http://www.meshursozler.com/oku/10956-dusmanin-ulkesi-viran-olacakturkiye-buyuyup-turan-olacak.html. 49. Klaus Kreiser, Atatu¨rk. Bir Biyografi (Istanbul: I˙leti?im Yayınları, 2010), p. 95. 50. Cf. Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman War in 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Mehmet Bes¸ikci, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). 51. Arnold J. Toynbee, L’Histoire. Un essai d’interpre´tation (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), p. 313; cf. Elie Hale´vy (with a preface by Francois Furet), Correspondance, 1891– 1937 (Paris, Fallois, 1996). 52. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169– 91. 53. Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I”, at http:// forum.hyeclub.com/showthread.php/13602-Ottoman-Labour-Battalions-inWorld-War-I. 54. On the battlefields, 325,000 men died, and 385,000 others were lost to various diseases. Between 400,000 and 700,000 soldiers were wounded, and at least 500,000 others deserted. See Zu¨rcher, Savas¸, p. 198. 55. Yeni Gu¨n on 11 April 1921, quoted in Bulletin pe´riodique de la presse turque, no. 14 (1921), p. 9.

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56. For instance, in 1944, Adolf Hitler wrote: “If the German people were to be defeated in the [war], it must have been too weak, it would have failed to pass the test of history and would therefore only be destined for destruction.” See Gordon A. Craig, “Hitler’s Pal”, New York Review of Books (24 October 2002), p. 33. 57. Reuven Firestone, Jihad: The Origins of the Holy War in Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 28. 58. Cf. Michel Seurat, L’e´tat de barbarie (Paris: Seuil, 1989).

CHRONOLOGY

1908

1909

1911 1912

Young Turk Revolution (July 23). Constitutional parliamentarian regime restored. Cooperation of CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) and ARF (Armenian Revolutionary Federation). October: Bulgaria declares independence. Austria annexes Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ottoman Crete declares union with Greece. First Ottoman boycott movement against foreign powers. April: Anti-Armenian massacres in Adana after attempts at counter-revolution in Istanbul. Government orders the resolution of land disputes through arbitration (August 7). The problem of usurped Christian land in the eastern provinces determines the Armenian Question and the relation between CUP and ARF. Italy invades Ottoman Libya July: Coup against CUP-led government after fraudulent elections. Official CUP-ARF cooperation ends.

Balkan Wars Ottoman mobilization on October 1. Attack of Montenegro on October 8 starts First Balkan War between a Balkan coalition and the Ottoman Empire. Fall of Salonica on November 9, independence of Albania declared on November 28.

CHRONOLOGY

1913

1914

283

Armenian lobbying re-activates the Armenian Question and the reform postulates of the 1878 Berlin Treaty in international diplomacy. The liberal government prepares a reform plan for four eastern provinces where the land disputes are still unresolved. Arabs in Palestine express their fear that Palestine “will be a second Macedonia” because of Zionist land purchase. CUP putsch against the liberal government on January 23. Fall of Edirne (March 26). Turkist Congress vows to make Anatolia a Turkish national home, Tu¨rk Yurdu (Geneva, March 30). Treaty of London ends the First Balkan War (May 30) that uproots c. 250,000 Muslim refugees (muhacir). Murder of Grand Vezier Mahmut S¸evket Pasha (June 11). The Arab congress held in Paris upholds the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and identifies with decentralizing demands of Ottoman Armenians (June). Start of Second Balkan War (June 29); recapture of Edirne by the Ottoman forces (July 22). End of the Second Balkan War with the Treaty of Bucharest (August 10). Violent clashs in Zarnuqa, Palestine, represent a watershed in the Jewish-Arab relationship (July). Armenians celebrate the 1500th anniversary of their alphabet (October). CUP leader Enver, promoted to the ranks of Pasha and Minister of War on January 6, purges the army and extends significantly the scope of conscription by a new Law of Military Obligation. Agreement for internationally monitored reforms, including the resolution of land problems, in seven eastern provinces (February 8). It results from negotiations between Istanbul, St Petersburg and Berlin since July 1913, in accordance with a new German Orient policy inclusive of the Armenians. Kurdish uprising against reforms, for the reinstatement of religious law (Shari’a), and considering an alliance with Russia (beginning in March). Boycotts against Ottoman Christians in Western Anatolia since February 1914. Overseen by Talat, Minister of Interior,

284

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

OTTOMANS

150,000 Ruˆm (Greek-Orthodox Ottoman Christians) are expelled from the Aegean coast in June and Muslim refugees from the Balkans settled instead. During the July Crisis after the assassination in Sarajevo, Enver and Talat persuade German diplomacy to conclude a secret war alliance (August 2). World War I Total Ottoman mobilization starts in early August. The German Military Mission under Liman von Sanders in Istanbul is agreed to be de facto the Ottoman high command, except of the Third Army in the eastern provinces. The general inspectors for the February 8 Reform Agreement have to return to Europe (mid-August). The Capitulations – privileges for foreign nationals – are abolished (September). After a joint Ottoman-German bombardment of Russian Ports of the Black Sea, Russia (November 2) as well as France and Britain (November 5) declare war on the Ottoman Empire. ¨ rgu¨plu¨ Hayrı Efendi reads his CUP member S¸eyhu¨lislam U jihad fetwa (November 14) and sends it to all provinces. In December, the Ottoman government abolishes the February 8 Reform Agreement, while the Third Army led by Enver Pasha attacks the Russian army on the North-Eastern front, West of Kars. 1915 The Ottoman army of the Caucasus campaign is defeated under heavy losses (January). An Ottoman campaign supported by tribal troops into Northern Persia fails as well as does the Fourth Army’s attempt at re-conquering the Suez canal and Egypt (February and March). A Russian invasion of parts of the eastern provinces looms, endangering the CUP’s minimal goal of a sovereign Tu¨rk Yurdu in Asia Minor. A first important Ottoman victory against a naval attempt by the Entente to break through the Dardanelles boosts the CUP’s moral (March 18). Commanded by General Liman von Sanders, the newly composed Fifth Army succeeds in defending the Ottoman capital against ongoing efforts of invasion (until December).

CHRONOLOGY

285

Armenian Genocide Starting in February and in the eastern provinces, Armenian soldiers are disarmed, regrouped in labor batallions and killed. Dr. Mehmed Res¸id, a CUP hardliner already involved in the anti-Christian (Ruˆm) policy in Western Anatolia of 1914, arrives as the new governor of Diyarbekir in late March and begins with his onslaught against all Armenians and Christians of the province. Henceforth, the hardliner approach prevails also in the capital. Talat declares on April 24 that Anatolia’s Armenians foster a general rebellion and orders their leaders to be arrested. In the city of Van, Armenians defend their quarter since April 20 against the military governor Cevdet, a hardliner and brother-in-law of Enver; they hope for Russian relief. On May 23, Talat orders the removal of Eastern Asia Minor’s Armenians to the Mesopotamian desert. Cemal Pasha, military governor of Syria informs the central government on May 28 of his plan to extirpate the Zionist problem by expelling all Jews with Zionist affiliations, but Talat stops him. In the eastern provinces, the Armenian men are separated and murdered before removal of women, the elderly and children. In Diyarbekir all Christians, Armenians and Syriacs are targeted and most of the men, women and children are killed before leaving the province. The removal scheme continues in the other parts of Asia Minor and Thrace from July onwards and includes here also the men not serving in the army. About a half of c. 1.2 million removed Armenians survive this first phase of genocide and arrive in the Syrian camps. The second phase in Syria ends when c. 100,000 starved, but still surviving Armenians are driven east of Der ez-Zor and massacred in late summer 1916.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Akc
am, Taner, ‘Ermeni Meselesi Hallolunmus¸tur.’ Osmanlı Belgelerine Go¨re Savas¸ Yıllarında Ermenilere Yo¨nelik Politikalar (Istanbul: I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2008). Akın, Yig˘it, “War, Women, and the State: The Politics of Sacrifice in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War,” Journal of Women’s History 26, 3 (2014): 12 –35. Aksakal, Mustafa, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 2008). ———, “Holy War Made in Germany? Ottoman Origins of the 1914 Jihad Declaration,” War in History 18, 2 (2011): 184– 199. Bes¸ikc
i, Mehmet, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden et al.: Brill, 2012). Ben-Bassat, Yuval, “Rethinking the Concept of Ottomanization: The Yishuv in the Aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, 3 (2009): 461– 475. Bloxham, Donald / Kieser, Hans-Lukas, “Genocide,” in: The Cambridge History of the First World War, ed. Jay Winter / Charles J. Stille (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014): vol. 1, 585– 614. Bujicanian, Hovhannes, Complete Works [in Armenian] (Beirut: Doniguian Press, 1974). Campos, Michelle U., Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). C¸etinkaya, Y. Dog˘an, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey (London: I.B.Tauris, 2014). ———, “Atrocity Propaganda and the Nationalization of the Masses in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars (1912– 1913),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, 4 (2014): 759– 778. ———, “Illustrated Atrocity: Stigmatization of Non-Muslims through Images in the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars,” Journal of Modern European History 12, 4 (2014): 460– 478. Conrad, Sebastian, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Mu¨nchen: Beck, 2006).

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Davison, Roderic H., Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774– 1923. The Impact of the West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). Der-Matossian, Bedros, “Administrating the Non-Muslims and the ‘Question of Jerusalem’ after the Young Turk Revolution,” in: Rethinking Late Ottoman Palestine: The Period of Young Turk Rule, 1908– 1918, ed. Yuval Ben-Bassat / Eyal Ginio (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011): 211–239. Durandin, Catherine / Ce´cile, Folshweiller (ed.), Alerte en Europe: la guerre dans les Balkans (1912-1913) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014). Erickson, Edward J., Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001). Ginio, Eyal, “Mobilizing the Ottoman Nation during the Balkan Wars (1912 – 1913): Awakening from the Ottoman Dream,” War in History, 12, 2 (2005): 156– 177. Gu¨lsoy, Ufuk, Osmanlı Gayrimu¨slimlerinin Askerlik Seru¨veni (Istanbul: Simurg, 2000). Haniog˘lu, M. S¸u¨kru¨, Preparation for a Revolution. The Young Turks 1902– 1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Kaiser, Hilmar, The Extermination of Armenians in the Diarbekir Region (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2014). Kaligian, Dikran, Armenian Organization and Ideology under Ottoman Rule 1908– 1914 (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 2009). Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1997). Ke´vorkian, Raymond, Le ge´nocide des Arme´niens (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006); translated into English as: The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B.Tauris, 2010). Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Kieser, Hans-Lukas, Der verpasste Friede. Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Tu¨rkei 1839– 1938 (Zu¨rich: Chronos, 2000). Klein, Janet, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman Tribal Zone (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). Kolatt, Israel, “The Organization of the Jewish Population of Palestine and the Development of its Political Consciousness before World War I,” in: Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Period, ed. Moshe Ma’oz (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975): 211– 245. Lulejian, Donabed G., Anthology of Prof. D.G. Lulejian Works and Prison Memoirs of 1915 [in Armenian] (Fresno: Crown Printing, 1955). Mandel, Neville, The Arabs and Zionism before World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). Mandelstam, Andre´, Le sort de l‘Empire Ottoman (Lausanne et al.: Payot, 1917). Read, James Morgan, Atrocity Propaganda 1914– 1919 (New York: Arno Press, 1972 [1941]). Davison, Roderic H., “The Armenian Crisis, 1912–1914”, American Historical Review 53, no. 3 (1948). Reynolds, Michael A., Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908– 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Rodogno, Davide, Against Massacre. Humanitarian Interventions in The Ottoman Empire 1815– 1914. The Emergence of a European Concept and International Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

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Shafir, Gershon, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882– 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Stangeland, Sigurd Sverre, Die Rolle Deutschlands im Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern 1915– 1916 (Trondheim: Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet, 2013). ¨ ngo¨r, Ug˘ur U¨mit, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern U Anatolia, 1913– 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Weitz, Eric D., “Germany and the Young Turks: Revolutionaries into Statesmen,” in: A Question of Genocide. Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny / Fatma Mu¨ge Go¨
cek / Norman M. Naimark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 175–198. Yurdcular Yasası. I˙svic
re’de Cenevre ¸sehrine yakın Petit-Lancy Ko¨yu¨nde Pension Racine’de kurulan I˙kinci Yurdcular Derneg˘i’nin muzakerat ve mukerreratı (Istanbul: Yeni Turan Matbaası, n.d. [1913]). Tu¨rkmen, Zekeriya, Vilayaˆt-ı S¸arkiye (Dog˘u Anadolu Vilayetleri) Islahat Mu¨fettis¸lig˘i 1913– 1914, (Ankara: Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu, 2006). Zu¨rcher, Erik Jan, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I,” in: Der Vo¨lkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah / The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah, ed. HansLukas Kieser / Dominik J. Schaller (Zu¨rich: Chronos Verlag, 2002): 187– 195. ———, Savas¸, Devrim ve Uluslas¸ma: Tu¨rkiye Tarihinde Gec
is¸ Do¨nemi (Istanbul: Bilgi ¨ niversitesi, 2005). U ———, “Introduction: The Socio-Economic History of Ethnic Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire,” The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 10, 4 (2013): 3 – 19.

INDEX

9/11 suicide operations, 276 ’Akka (Acre), 138 ‘aliya first, 156-8 second, 156-7 Aaronsohn, Aharon, 159 Aaronsohn, Alexander, 66 Abdul Ghani Bey, 228 Abdu¨laziz, Sultan, 153 Abdu¨lhamid II, Sultan, 7, 10, 31, 33, 35, 48, 58, 64, 151,157, 170, 180, 189 – 90, 214, 226, 264 – 5, 268, 271 Abdu¨rrezzak Bedirhan, 12, 176, 181 Adliye (courthouse), 117 Adana, 137, 218, 245, 242, 244 – 9, 255, 263 Adrianopel, see Edirne Aegean, 2, 12, 18, 35 –6, 41, 104 –6, 117, 270 Islands, 118 Question, 104 Afghanistan, 30 Africa, 8, 54 North, 36– 7, 192, 204, 269 Agabalian, Simon, 246 Ag˘aog˘lu, Ahmed, 40 agha, 214, 225 – 8, 230 Agrarian Question, 11– 3, 35, 47, 225 Ahenk (newspaper), 119 Ahmad, Feroz, 113

Ahmed Cevad (Emre), 84, 87 Akcay (nearby Edremit), 117 Akcam, Taner, 270 Akcura, Yusuf, 40, 225 Aksakal, Mustafa, 19 Alam-ı I˙slam, Bulgar Vahs¸etleri I˙slamiyenin Enzar-ı Basiretine ve I˙nsaniyet ve Medeniyetin nazar-ı Dikkatine (The Pains of Civilization, Bulgarian Atrocities, to the Attention of Muslims, Humanity and Civilization) (1912 and 1913), 83 Albania, 3, 54, 131, 135 – 7, 264 Albanians, 119, 131, 136 – 7, 139 Alem (newspaper), 82 Aleppo, 43, 66, 255 Alexandretta (I˙skenderun), 191, 193 Ali Seydi Bey, 247 Algeria, 269 alliance Balkan alliance, 103 CUP-ARF alliance, 9, 11, 47 intra-Armenian alliance, 178 Kurdish alliance with central government, 182 Ottoman-German alliance (2 August 1914), 14, 19– 20, 32, 39– 41, 46, 58– 9, 201, 203 Triple Alliance, 189, 195 Alroey, Gur, 156 amele taburları (labour battalions), 275 anasır (ethnic groups), 137, 143, 268

290

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Anatolia, 1, 4, 7, 11 –2, 14 –6, 18– 22, 30, 37, 43– 9, 59, 65, 104 – 10, 112 – 3, 115 –21, 150, 162, 175, 188 – 9, 191 –5, 197, 199, 201 –2, 205, 241, 265, 270, 276 Greek and Allied occupation of, 276 Anatolian(s), 37 Cotton Company (Anadolu Pamuk S¸irketi), 246 ancien regime, 264, 268 Anders, Edgar, 201 anfal campaign(s) of 1988, 16, 276 Ankara, 242 –3, 276 apartheid regime, 16 Arabia, 44 Arabs, 29, 66, 131 – 2, 134, 139, 143, 150, 152, 158, 264 Arab leaders, 30 Arab provinces, 58, 66, 135, 270, 272 Arab south, 241 Ardahan, occupation of, 37 aristocracy, 268, 270 Christian, 225 Armenakan Party, 253 Armenia, 181, 183, 271 Republic of, 211, 276 Armenian(s), 4, 6, 7 –9, 11– 5, 17– 9, 21– 3, 30, 33– 5, 41 –8, 65– 6, 112, 120, 135, 143, 160, 169 – 83, 188, 190 – 7, 200 –6, 211 – 33, 241 – 50, 253 – 6, 263, 265, 268, 271 – 4, 276 camps (destruction of), 9, 33– 4, 43, 45, 48, 214, 242 – 4, 246, 248, 255 –6, 259 Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar), 178 deportation of / deportees, 21, 44– 5, 47, 66, 203, 242, 245 – 8, 251, 253 –6 education, 213, 215, 221, 223 – 5, 229, 232 emigration, 171, 216 – 8, 226 Genocide, see genocide issue, 219, 268, 271 language, 6, 23 National Bureau, 41– 2 participation in the state, 13, 35 patriarchate, 171, 173, 178, 201, 203 peasants, 35

OTTOMANS

policy pro-Armenian, 192, 194, 200, 204 – 5 anti-Armenian, 43, 241 political parties, 177, 211, 213, 217, 228, 250 properties, 169, 171 – 3, 178, 182, 244 – 7, 259, 254 Question, 11 –2, 23, 35– 6, 47, 176, 180, 188, 195, 202, 204 – 5, 210, 250, 270 Reform Agreement, 36, 47, 203 removal of, 15, 23, 43– 8, 244 revolt, 15, 42– 3, 47, 176, see also uprising(s) Revolutionary Federation (ARF) (Dashnaktsuthiun) (Hay Heghapokhagan Tashnagtsutyun), 9 –11, 13– 4, 23, 30, 41, 47 –8, 58, 170 –1, 178, 201, 213, 217, 225, 228, 231 World Congress of the, 58, 225 schools, see schools soldiers, 44, 65 volunteer brigade, 42 theatre companies, 216 violence against, 15, 249, see also massacres Armenian-Kurdish Question, 12, 180 Armenian-Turkish understanding, 213, 220, 225 army, see military Arpiarian, Philibos, 251 –2 Arslanian, Father Vartan, 221, 233 arzuhal (petitions), 150, 263 Asaf Bey, 230 al-Asali, Shukri, 153 Asbarez, 215 Asia, 33, 118 Asia Minor, 32– 3, 41, 43 –4, 46, 48, 119, 265, 268, 272, 274 Assyrians, see Syriac Christians Athens, 87, 120 atrocity, 20, 33, 37, 80– 9, 106, 112, 115, 204, 269 – 70 Austria-Hungary, 30, 33, 81, 134, 137, 178, 196, 203, 205, 269 Avedaper (newspaper), 233 Aydın, 86, 105, 108, 110 – 1, 116 – 7, 119

INDEX Ayvalık, 87, 104 – 5, 117 ayyam al-atrak (days of the Turks), 144 Ba’ath party, 276 Baˆb-ı Aˆli baskını, see coup d’e´tat, of 23 January 1913 Badie, Bertrant, 272 Bagdikian, Aram, 247 Baghdad, 39, 61– 3, 263 Railway, 189, 193, 195, 206, 245 Bahaeddin S¸akir, 268 Bait Jala, 66 Baku, 40 Balfour, Declaration of 1917, 18 Bali, 241 Balıkesir, 104, 117 Balkan / Balkans, 1, 6, 11, 16– 7, 20– 3, 32, 34– 5, 41, 54, 56 –7, 79 –81, 84, 88, 103 –12, 114 –6, 119 – 21, 132 – 3, 135, 137 –40, 162, 171, 191, 193, 245, 262, 265, 267 – 71, 274 armies, 55, 59 southern, 2, 18 territories, 7, 35, 265 Wars, 1 – 2, 8– 10, 12, 18, 20– 1, 31, 35, 38, 54– 6, 59, 64– 5, 67, 79 –82, 86– 9, 104 –5, 107 – 10, 113, 115 –6, 118, 143, 149, 158, 161 – 2, 169, 175 – 6, 182, 190, 204 – 5, 269 –71, 273 – 4 First, 3, 7, 10– 2, 19– 20, 29, 31, 37– 8, 40, 46, 59, 108, 113 –4, 177, 195 – 6, 198, 204, 206, 269 –70, 274 Second, 22, 79, 104, 114, 120 Balkan Mezalimi Nes¸r-i Vesaik Cemiyeti (Society for Publication of Documents on Balkan Atrocities), 84 League, 36, 79 Baltacıog˘lu, I˙smail Hakkı, 84 Bartev, Sahag, 221 Basra, 32, 112 Batman Creek, 252 Batum, 7 occupation of, 37 Baydemir, Osman, 256 Beaumont, H. D., 118 – 9 Bedii Nuri, 84

291

Bedirhan / Bedirxan, Abdu¨rrezzak, see Abdu¨rrezzak Bedreddin, I˙brahim, 250 Behic Bey, 57 Beidas, 141 Beirut, 30, 32, 66, 139 –40, 142, 153, 241, 263 Bekir Sami, 173 Ben-Bassat, Yuval, 13, 21– 2, 263 Ben-Gurion, David, 158, 160 Ben-Yehuda, Eli’ezer, 136 Ben-Zvi, Yizhak, 158 Bergama, 104 Bergfeld, Heinrich, 203 Berlin, 39, 46, 139, 189, 191 –5, 197, 199, 201 –3, 205, 256 Treaty of, 11, 35, 48, 106, 190, 195 Congress of 1878, 12, 34, 37 Berchtold, Leopold, 137 Bes¸iri, 252 Bethlehem, 66 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, 200 bey, 214, 225 – 7 Bijeljina, 240 bilad al-sham, see Syria, Greater Bi’r al-Saba’ (Beersheva), 134 Bismarck, Otto von, 38, 189 Bitlis, 44, 177, 180 – 1, 200, 242 – 3, 251 Black Sea, 34, 36 Bolshevism, 266 Bolshevik ideologies, 277 Boman (Baumann) Pasha, 82, 84 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 16– 7, 241 annexation by Austria-Hungary, 30, 37, 134, 269 bourgeoisie, 12, 225, 272, 274 Bozarslan, Hamit, 24, 180, 225 Boyajian, Hagop, 248 boycott(s), 10, 30, 37, 47, 78, 106 – 7, 118 –9, 134, 269 movement(s), 20– 1, 30, 81, 88, 111 – 2, 119 bribery, 141, 248 Britain, 6, 16, 39, 143, 145, 177 – 8, 189, 191, 195 – 8, 202, 223, 267, 273 allies of, 29 British, 32, 86, 159, 178, 182 imperial forces, 40

292

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

rule, 30, 37 Foreign Office, 173, 177 brutalization, 15, 18, 34, 42– 3, 47, 116 Bu¨ge, Eugen, 245 Bujicanian, Hovhannes, 210, 212 – 5, 219, 221 – 4, 231 –3 Bulgar Vahs¸etleri, I˙ntikam, Evlad ve Ahfada Yadigar (Bulgarian Atrocities: Vengeance, a Memento for Children and Grandchildren) [1914/15]), 85 Bulgaria, 36, 79, 81, 83, 103, 114 – 5, 139, 269, 271 Bulgarian(s), 22, 30, 40, 55, 58, 81 –5, 106, 108, 112, 115, 119 independence, declaration of, 30, 269 forces, 194 Bureau of Intelligence, 62 Burhaniye, 104, 117 Bursa, 105, 263 Bu¨chner, Ludwig, 265 bu¨yu¨k kabine, 114 Campos, Michelle U., 13, 22, 151, 161, 264 capitulations, 38– 9, 202, 205, 273 Capuchin church, 230 missionaries, 230 school, see schools cataclysm, 54 –5, 67 European, 273 Ottoman, 1– 2, 5– 6, 13– 4, 20, 22, 29, 32 –3, 38, 40, 107, 120, 158, 269 Caucasus, 7, 14– 5, 23, 30, 32– 3, 40– 2, 46– 7, 65, 171, 176 –7, 190, 198, 251, 279 Russian, see Russian(s) Cavid Bey, 35, 273 Celal Bey, 47, 243 Cemal Azmi Bey, 243 Cemal Bey, 246, 248 Cemal Pasha, 3, 39 –40, 43, 45 –6, 66, 158 – 61, 172, 191, 197, 241, 272 – 3, 275 Cemil, Dr, 85, 87 C¸emis¸gezek, 211, 229

OTTOMANS

Cemilpas¸azaˆde Mustafa Nu¨zhet Bey, 250, 252 Central Asia, 30, 33 censorship, see press Cevdet Bey, 42 Chakalian, Arakel, 245 Chakalian, Manouk, 245 Charsanjak, 211, 226 –8 China, 267 Chios, see Sakiz Christian(s), 16, 30, 32, 34, 36 –7, 41–2, 44 –5, 47– 8, 58, 66, 81, 85–6, 88 –9, 104 – 7, 109 –13, 115 –7, 119, 136, 138 –40, 142, 155, 190, 193, 195 –6, 199 –200, 204, 225, 230, 250 – 3, 267 –9, 271 Orthodox (in the Ottoman Empire), 12, 18, 29, 41, 104, 106, 117, 120, 142, 150, 152 expulsion of the Orthodox, see expulsion(s) Arab Orthodox, 66 Cilicia, 192, 195 – 6, 203, 206, 244 Cilician Zeytun, 44 Circassians, 250 citizenship, Ottoman, 13, 23, 46, 54, 56, 135 – 6, 140, 144, 151, 157, 213, 223 clashes, 20, 77– 8, 87, 194 Jewish-Arab, 150, 152 – 6, 161 Kurdish-Armenian, 192 cleansing, ethnic, 2, 4, 9, 11– 2, 14, 16, 19, 79, 108, 240, 270 colonialism, 189 colonies, Jewish, 140, 152, 154 –6 colonization, 6, 137, 141, 152 – 3 comitadjis, see komitadji Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 9– 12, 14, 17– 21, 23 –4, 30 –3, 35–8, 40 –3, 45– 8, 54– 8, 61, 63, 67, 104 – 5, 107 –11, 113 –8, 120 –1, 131 – 2, 134 –7, 140, 161, 169 –70, 172 –3, 180, 182 –3, 190 –1, 202, 213, 218, 220, 222, 224 –5, 227 – 8, 230 –1, 241, 244, 246 –7, 250, 255, 263 –77 dictatorship, 11, 114, 197, 214, 219, 244, 250, 254, 275

INDEX putsch of 1913, see coup d’e´tat, of 23 January 1913 (Bab-i Ali baskını) relations to Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) (Dashnaktsuthiun), 9, 13–4, 23, 213, 218, 220, 222, 224 –5, 227 – 8, 230 –1 Committee of Inquiry, 250 compatriots (hayrenagits in Armenian, hems¸eri in Turkish), 226 – 7, 252 compatriotic unions, 226 compensation, 5, 12, 171 – 5, 179, 203, 267, 274 conscription, 20, 36, 55 –9, 61– 7, 138, 229 conspiracy, 35, 43, 203 Constantinople, see Istanbul constitution of 1876, 10, 30, 151 of 1908, 38 –9, 115, 169, 226 constitutional regime, 10, 47, 170, 173, 210, 213 – 4 constitutional rights, 151 –2, 219 constitutional state, Ottoman, 9, 19, 47, 49 Ottoman, 10, 214 – 6, 218, 222 restoration of, 38 –9 Second Constitutional Period, 54, 81, 170, 174 constitutionalism, Ottoman, 13 contracts, tacit, 262 – 3 conversion, 45 to Christianity, 88– 9 to Islam, 34, 45, 253 Cornell University, 215 corruption, 19, 48, 132, 134, 141, 150, 174, 178, 246 –9, 255 coup d’e´tat of 23 January 1913 (Bab-i Ali baskını), 3, 10, 31, 38, 104, 114 – 5, 177, 191, 274 countercoup of April 1909, 10 Crete, 30, 83, 118 crisis refugee, 105, 113 of July 1914, 4, 23, 41, 189, 199, 202 of Crete, 189 culpability, 2 – 5, 15, 17, 275 Cyprus, 37 C¸atalca, 141

293

C¸emis¸gezek, 211, 229 C¸erkez Aziz, 250 C¸erkez Harun, 250 C¸erkez S¸akir, 250 C¸es¸me, 104, 109 cete / chette(s) (Muslim bandits), 105, 108 – 9, 115, 119 C¸etinkaya, Dog˘an Y., 10, 20– 1, 269 C¸u¨ngu¨s¸ (Chnkoush), 210 Daily Telegraph (newspaper), 139 Damascus, 45, 66, 189, 241 Dardanelles, 29, 44 Darwaza, Muhammad Izzat, 61 Darwinism, social, 121, 225, 266 – 9, 274, 277 Davison, Roderic H., 176 Debrencik, 85 decentralization, 137, 143, 267 Dedeag˘ac (Alexandropoulis), 82 Deir ez-Zor, 253, 255 Demidov, E.P., 120 democracy, 214, 218, 223, 272 demonstration, 78, 138, 269 depo alaylari (depot regiments), 64 Dersim, 219, 228, 232 desertion, 36, 43, 55, 60– 1, 64, 66– 7, 160, 250 Deutsche Bank, 203 Dilman, battle of, 42 Directorate for General Security, 253 dispossession, 16 of Armenians, 12, 170 of Palestinian peasants, 140 divan-ı harp (wartime court), 113 Diyarbekir, 11, 35 –6, 43 –4, 177, 181, 243, 250 –6 province of, 44, 250 –1 Dodecanese Islands, 36, 136 Donanma (journal), 39 Do¨rtyol, 245 Abandoned Properties Commission of, 245 Drina valley, 240 Druze, 40 Dzovk (Go¨lcu¨k), 226 eastern provinces (in the Ottoman Empire) 2, 11, 13– 5, 18, 22 –4,

294

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

33– 5, 45, 47 –8, 169 – 70, 172 – 8, 180, 182, 191 –6, 199, 205, 241, 271 Eastern Question, 5, 121, 188, 206, 270 Echmiadzin, Holy See of, 177 economy, national, 33, 85, 182, 244, 274 Edinburgh University, 223 Edirne, 22, 37, 44, 79, 82, 104, 112 – 3, 115, 143, 191, 199 Edremit/Edremid, 104, 117, 119 Egypt, 32, 37, 40, 139, 269 Egyptians, 30 Einkreisung (encirclement), 37 Eisenberg, Aharon, 141 Elazıg˘, see Mamu¨retu¨laziz (Mezire) elections of 1912, 10– 1, 114, 134 elimination, of non-Muslims, 77 –9 Elmaliach, Avraham, 144 Embros, 87 Emmanoulidis (Efendi), Emmanouil, 111 – 2 Emre, Ahmet Cevad, see Ahmed Cevad engineering demographic, 3, 12, 22, 33, 40, 108, 116, 121, 143, 202, 241, 265, 270 –1 anti-Christian, 41 political, 24, 262 England, see Britain entanglement, imperial, 2, 6, 9 entente cordiale / entente triple, 32, 34, 39, 44, 160, 189, 199 Enver Pasha, 3, 31– 2, 37– 40, 42, 58– 9, 64, 114 – 5, 191, 201 – 2, 241, 273 – 4, 276 Ergenekon, 274 Erol, Emre, 21, 270 Erzurum, 47, 58, 181, 192, 201, 212, 219 Eskice, 104 Eski Foca, 106, 109, 112 Euphrates College, 210, 213, 215, 219, 221, 229 – 30 Europe, 1– 9, 11– 2, 14– 9, 22, 29 –33, 35– 7, 43, 46, 54, 58, 83– 5, 103, 105 – 6, 118, 140 –3, 155, 158 –60, 177, 188, 190 –3, 197 – 206, 216, 264 – 7, 270 –3, 275 Concert of, 37, 105

OTTOMANS

European diplomacy, 11, 197, 199, 204 powers, 9, 22, 35, 106, 177, 188, 190 – 1, 202, 267, 270 – 3 Union, 16 southeastern, 18, 36 evlad-ı fatihan (children of conquerors), 270 exchange of population, 40, 113, 276 exemption fee (bedel), 56 from military service, 56– 8, 61– 2, 65, 246, 256 expulsion(s), 3, 13, 29, 35, 41, 108 – 11, 121, 150, 202, 270 extortion, 247 –8 Falastin (newspaper), 13, 132 – 5, 138 – 44 ˙ Fascism, 266, 277 fascist ideologies, 277 fatalism, 275, 277 fatwa, 33, 38 Fethi Bey, 248 Fatih Mosque, 62 Filastin (newspaper), see Falastin (newspaper) Fitzmaurice, Gerald, 182 – 3 France, 6, 16, 29, 37, 82– 5, 110, 136, 143, 189, 191 – 2, 194, 196 –8, 201 –2, 255, 265, 267, 270, 273, 275 allies of, 29 French, see France Foca, 111 – 3, 241 Focateyn, 104, 106, 110 – 2 fraternity (uhuvvet), 268 al-Fula incident, 153 – 4 Furet, Francois, 272, 275 Gallipoli, landing of, 251 Garin (Erzurum), 212, 219 Gaza, 16, 154 Genc, 172 Genc Tu¨rk hu¨ku¨meti (Young Turk government), 264 genocide, 19, 31, 33, 45, 47– 48, 211 –3, 219, 225, 229, 240 – 1, 243 –5, 249, 254 –6

INDEX Armenian, 1– 5, 9, 23, 24, 80, 120, 204, 232, 240 – 4, 249, 255 – 6, 270, 274, 285 in Bosnia, 241 of Herero, 8 Indonesian, 241 in Rwanda, 241 Georgians, 7, 30 German(s), 4, 8, 14, 22, 36– 7, 39– 42, 44, 176, 189 –206, 245 –6, 248, 250 – 1, 270, 273, 283 – 4 diplomacy, 191, 193, 195 – 6, 200, 205 –6, 284 language, 197 Oriental policy, 191, 194 Russian agreement, 197 Germany, 14, 19–20, 22, 32–3, 39, 41, 44, 46, 58–9, 121, 175–8, 188–9, 191–2, 195–206, 267, 275 relations to Ottoman Empire, 189, 196, 202, 205 relations to Russia, 191 Giers, Mikhail Nikolayevich von Giers, 196 – 7, 199 Ginio, Eyal, 161 Gochnag, 233 Goeben (battle cruiser), 36 Gopoyan, Aleksan (Elo), 227 – 8 Gopoyan family, 228 Goltz, Colmar von der, 39, 189, 266, 274 Go¨kalp, Ziya, 11, 35– 6, 225, 270, 274 Go¨mec, 117 Great Powers, 35, 79 –80, 116, 118 – 9, 180, 188 – 9, 192 – 4, 197, 200, 205, 241, 267 Greece, 3, 14, 30, 36, 4, 48, 79, 81, 88, 103 – 5, 109, 112 –3, 118 – 120, 196, 204 Greek(s) 82, 84, 135 – 6, 270 clergy 142 Foreign Ministry, 87 Pontic, 276 Gu¨cu¨m, Muhtar Fikri, 246 Gul’kevich, Konstantin, 199 Habsburg / Hapsburg, 37, 40, 134 Haeckel, Ernst, 265 Hafız Hakkı Bey, 56– 7, 181, 246, 248 Haifa, 66, 131, 137

295

Haji Garabed, 252 Hakkaˆri, 42, 44, 45 halaskar zabitan (saviour officers), 114 Halevy, Elie, 275 Halil Pasha, 42 Hamdi Bey, 247, 250 Hamidian, 225, 263, 287 –8 period, 170 – 1, 175, 215 regime, 214 –5, 264 regiments, 170 – 1, 173, 190, 200 Hamidianism, 264 hamidiye, see Hamidian regiments Haniog˘lu, M. S¸u¨kru¨, 268, 270 Harb Mecmuası (publication), 39 hareket ordusu, 113 Harput (Kharpert), 23, 210 – 22, 224 – 34, 251 Lower District of, 230 Sinamoud neighbourhood, 216 Upper St Hagop district, 214 Haroutyunian, Hovhannes (Telgadintsi), 214, 221 Hasan Mazhar Bey, 243 hatred against Muslims, 34 against Christians, 81, 230 Hawran/Havran, 117, 131, 137 hayrenagits, see compatriots Hebron, 134 hems¸eri, see compatriots Henchag Party, see Hunchakian Revolutionary Party heritage, Ottoman, 4 ha-Herut (newspaper), 136, 141 – 2, 144 Hijaz (publication), 39 historiography, 2 Armenian, 212 – 3 Kemalist, 33 Ottoman, 4 Turkish, 4, 78 Hitler, Adolf, 256 Hoff, Nicolai, 200 Holocaust, 14 Holstein, Walter, 253 homeland, 34, 104, 117, 138, 141, 219, 270, 274 Armenian, 219, 220, 223 Jewish (Eretz Israel), 13 Muslim Turkish, 121, 191

296

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Ottoman, 116, 219, 230 Turkish (tu¨rk yurdu), 12, 14, 19, 32, 48, 116 homogenization, see engineering houshamadyan (memory books), 23, 211 Hu¨davendigar, 117 Hunchakian Revolutionary Party, 178, 213, 217, 228 Hu¨rriyet ve I˙tilaˆf Fırkası (Liberal Entente), 38 Husayn, Sharif of Mecca, 29, 32 Hu¨seyin Pasha, 172 – 3 Hu¨sni Bek, 228 al-Husri, Satı, 84 Hussenig, 216, 221, 229 identities collective, 132 inclusive Ottoman identity (Osmanlılık), see Ottomanism Ottoman, 9, 19– 21, 46, 88 Muslim, 21, 88 Turkish national identity, 4 Ihsan Turjeman (Palestinian soldier), 144 ihtiyat (active army’s reserve), 60 Ilica, 117 immigration, Jewish, 12, 152 Zionist, 140 immigrants Muslim, 83, 174, 244 Armenian, 175 imperialism, 2, 6 – 8, 35, 115, 189 anti-, 271 European, 2, 6 –8 new, 2, 6– 8 injustice, 37, 39, 109, 118, 159, 204, 227, 271 institutions Armenian, 212 democratic, 213, 223 state, 6, 20, 78, 88, 211, 219, 229 internationalism intra-Ottoman, 270 suprastate, 270 Ipranosian firm, 248 Iran, 30, 34, 38, 47 Iranian Christian militia, 42 Iraq, 2, 16 –7, 143, 276 –7

OTTOMANS

I˙rs¸ad, committee of, 13 al-’Issa, Yusuf, 132, 134, 140, 142 – 3 I˙skaˆn-ı As¸aˆir ve Muhacirıˆn Mu¨du¨riyeti, I˙AMM (Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants), 250, 254 islahiye, 247 Islam, 36, 45, 60, 264, 266 conversion to, see conversion Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, 16– 7 Islamism, 16– 7, 19, 30, 47, 277 Ismail Enver Pasa, 32, 58, 114 –5, 191, 273 Ismid, see I˙zmit Israel, 16– 17 Istanbul, 2, 11, 21, 32, 36, 38, 43, 61, 85, 115, 118, 133, 142, 149 – 150, 153, 156, 158 –160, 175, 189, 191, 193 –5, 197 – 202, 225, 228 – 9, 233, 246, 250, 256, 267, 273, 275 al-ittihad al-uthmani, 60 ittihad-ı anaˆsır, 142 Italy, 36, 131, 136, 196, 204 Italian forces, 38 language, 6 usurpation, 31 I˙zmir (Smyrna), 38, 86– 7, 104, 107, 115 –8, 120, 243 I˙zmit, 198, 248 Jackson, Jesse, 251 Jaffa, 66, 132, 134, 138, 140 – 3, 154, 156 Jagow, Gottlieb von, 194, 197, 200 jail, see prison Jamgochian, Mesrob, 210 Japan, 198 Jeresh, 241 Jerusalem, 134, 140, 144 Jewish / Jews, 13, 29, 34, 46, 66, 132, 136 –144, 150 – 156, 158 – 60, 256 activity, 152 –3, 160 colonies, see colonies immigration, see immigration Ottoman, 141, 144 population, see Palestine press, see press in Salonika, 140 Yishuv, see Palestinian(s)

INDEX Jewish-Arab conflict, see clashes Jewish National Fund (JNF), 153 jihad, 15, 29, 33– 4, 38, 40, 42, 230 Jinanian, Garabed, 248 Jordan, 17, 241 junkertum, 268 Kaligian, Dikran, 170, 203 Kaˆmil Pasha, 38 Karabekir, Kazım, 62 Karaburun, 104, 119 Karayakupian, Khacher, 248 Karayakupian, Minas, 248 Karesi mutasarrıflıg˘ı tahriraˆt kalemi, 117 Karkur, 141 al-Karmil (newspaper), 131–4, 136–44 Kars, 7, 42 occupation of, 37 Kars-Bazaar (Kadirli), 245 Kasaba, 105 Kastamonu, 242 Kavala, 82, 85 Kaya, S¸u¨kru¨, 246 Kayalı, Hasan, 152 kaymakam, 112, 157 Kemalists, 19, 48 Kemer, 104 Kerak, 131 Khanchepek, 253 Kharpert, see Harput Kieser, Hans-Lukas, 14, 19, 264, 271 Kınık, 104 Kırkkilise, 82 Kırmızı Siyah Kitab (Red-Black Book), 84– 5 Klein, Janet, 226 komitadji, 84, 115, 119, 274 Konya, 44, 243 Kosan, 247 Kosovo/Kosova, 3, 16– 7, 85, 103, 136 Koyre´, Alexander, 265 Kurdistan, 13, 181, 183, 276 Kurdish / Kurds, 2, 11– 3, 16– 8, 23, 30, 40, 42, 44, 170 –3, 177 – 8, 180 – 3, 190, 193, 200, 211, 225 – 30, 252 – 5, 264 –5, 275 autonomy, 5, 17, 35, 176, 178 military, 170 population, 178 – 9, 181 – 2

297

Question, 180, 182 tribal forces, 42 tribes, 13, 169 – 71, 192, 228, 252, 255 Kuwait occupation of, 276 Kriegsschuldfrage, 4 Krupp, 189, 198, 201 labor battalions, 66 Ladino language of, 6 land Code of 1858, 12 disputes, 23, 170 – 5, 177 –9, 181 – 2 issue, 169, 171, 174, 178 – 80, 183, 214, 224 – 8 question, 23, 169, 174, 182 –3 L’Assicurazione Generale (insurance company), 249 law of Conscription, 57 Islamic (sharia), 10, 182 of Military Obligation in May 1914 (Mu¨kellefiyet-i Askeriyye Kanuˆn-ı Muvakkatı), 20, 55– 8, 67 Military Penal (Askeri Ceza Kanunname-i Hu¨mayunu), 60 Lebanon, 17, 246, 272 Le Bon, Gustave, 266 Lenin, Vladimir I., 266 Lepsius, Johannes, 194 Lesbos, see Midilli Levant, 16 –7, 144, 154, 168 Lewy, Guenter, 256 Libya, 19– 20, 136 –7, 142, 269, 276 Italian invasion of, 19– 20, 46 Ottoman, 31 London, 39, 175, 189, 196, 202, 204 London Corporation (insurance company), 249 Lowther, Sir Gerard, 173, 180 Lulejian, Donabed, 212 – 3, 215, 219, 220 –1, 223 – 5, 230 –3 Lulejian, Garabed, 233 Lulejian, Levon, 233 Macedonia, 3, 10, 13– 4, 17– 9, 36, 48, 79, 103 – 6, 109, 116, 118 – 9, 121, 131 –2, 139, 141, 267, 271, 274

298

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Macedonian issue, 271 Question, 12, 21, 35, 103 –7, 113, 120 Mahmut Halit, 86 Mahmud Said Pasha (Grand Vizier), 114 Mahmud S¸evket Pasha, 114 Malatya, 65 Malul, Nissim, 142 Mamu¨retu¨laziz (Mezire), 23, 177, 181, 210 – 1, 215, 217, 221, 225, 231 –3 Manastır, 103 Mandel, Neville, 161 Mandelstam, Andre´ N., 194 – 6 Mandelstam plan, 178 – 9 Manzume-i Efkar (newspaper), 233 maraba, status of, 226 – 7 Mardin, 63, 275 Gate, 253 Marj Ibn Amer (Jezreel Valley), 153 Marmara, 107 Maronite Christians, 29 Mashdots, Mesrob, 221 massacres, 3, 15– 6, 81, 108, 122, 171, 180, 190, 194, 196, 224, 251, 254 of 1895 – 6, 34, 189, 212, 217 of Adana, 1909, 190, 212, 224, 228, 249 of the Armenians, 5, 34, 36, 42, 45, 131, 189, 217, 265 materialism, biological, 266 – 7 Mauser, 155, 189, 229 Mazhar Commission, 45 McCarthy, Justin, 17 media, see press Medropolid (Orthodox Metropolia), 117 Medz Yeghern (Great Calamity), 212 Mehmed Ali Tevfik, 85 Mehmed Reshid (S¸ahingiray), Dr., 44, 117, 243, 250, 254 Mehmet Efendi, 172 Memduh Bey, 251 Mendez, Rafael de Nogales, 251 Menemen, 104 Mersin, 191, 193, 244, 246 Mersina, see Mersin Mesopotamia, 4 Middle East, 1– 2, 4– 6, 16– 7, 24, 276 middle way (Mittelweg), 192, 200, 204–5 Midilli, 117 – 8

OTTOMANS

millet-i hakime, 264 – 6 millet-i mu¨sellaha, 57, 274 milli iktisat, 111 military, 8, 10, 14, 16, 19, 29 –30, 36–7, 40, 42– 3, 47, 54 –62, 64, 66, 118, 136 –7, 174, 182, 190 194, 196, 205, 209, 229, 244 – 6, 250, 255, 263, 267, 269 – 1, 273 –5 Bulgarian, 85, 115 desertion, 43, 64, 250 German, 189, 191, 198, 201, 273 Greek, 140 help, 189, 198 Ottoman, 43 –4, 55– 6, 66, 79, 82, 88, 103, 113, 138 –9, 160, 180, 192, 198, 229, 231, 244, 251 Russian, 42, 198, 250 militarization, 80 militias, 15, 34, 42, 47, 250 – 4 Armenian, 34 Assyrian, 34 Mindikian firm, 248 Ministry of Interior, 45, 47, 65, 244, 246, 252 of War, 82 of Internal Affairs, 88 Mir Muhi, 180 Miralay Sadik Bey, 114 mission civilisatrice, Ottoman, 6 mobilization, 4, 11, 13– 4, 19 –21, 29, 31, 36, 43, 47, 56, 58 –63, 65, 67, 77–81, 83, 89, 107, 109, 111, 138, 203, 205, 255, 274 – 7 general mobilization, 60 of religion, 33 Mosul, 251 – 3, 272 vilayet of, 272 motherland, 89 Montenegro, 3, 36, 79, 103 Mount Carmel, 66 Mount Lebanon, 29, 32 movement(s), national, 2, 13, 157 socialist, 270 muhacir, see refugees Muhdi Bey, 140 muin (sole breadwinner), 56– 7 mukabele bilmisil (reciprocal acts), 111 al-Muqattam (newspaper), 142

INDEX murder, 45, 83, 155 mass, 24, 212, 240, 243 of Armenians, 21, 42– 3, 212, 244, 253 –4 mu¨sellah bitaraflık (armed neutrality), 58 Muslim(s), 30, 40, 43 –4, 61, 78, 81, 85– 7, 89, 106, 110 –2, 115, 117, 218, 225, 250 Armenian, 45 Balkan, 3, 57, 110 –1 Bulgarian, 40, 83 Caucasian, 7, 17 Circassian, 40 communities, 3, 12 –3, 194 dominance, 35 Druze, 40 e´migre´s, 40 Kurdish, 40 Libyan, 40 Russian, 40, 46 society, see society Mu¨ftu¨zaˆde S¸eref Ulug˘, 251 Mu¨slu¨man ve Tu¨rklere (pamphlet), 82 Mu¨slu¨manlara Mahsus (pamphlet), 82 Mustafa Hayri Efendi, sheikh u¨l-Islam, 33 Mustafa Muzaffer, 86 mu¨stahfiz (territorial guards), 60 Mus¸, 180 Mutius, Gerhard von, 200 Nablus, 61 Nahum, Haim, 142 Nalbandian, Mateos, 247 Nassar, Nejuib, 131 – 134, 137 – 9, 141, 143 Nathan, Edward, 246 nation(s), 7, 14, 17, 39, 57, 84, 87, 89, 112, 116, 119, 121, 136 – 8, 149, 169, 181, 219, 223, 264 – 6, 269 – 70, 275, 277 Muslim Turkish, 104, 264 Ottoman (al-umma al-uthmaniyya), 65, 134, 137, 139 nation-state(s), 3, 6, 79, 108, 116, 121, 264 Balkan, 108, 115 Christian, 3, 8, 17 Turkish, 4 –5 imperial, 6

299

National Battalions of the Second and Third Armies, 267 nationalism(s), 2, 9, 18, 21, 36, 77 –80, 82, 88, 103, 106 – 10, 115, 119, 132, 135, 137 Arab, 161 Kurdish, 12, 183 Palestinian, 132 Turkish, 11, 14, 85–7, 116, 169 nationalization, 78– 9 Nazareth, 153 Nazis, see Fascism Nazım Pas¸a, 84 Necib Bey, 245 Nes-Ziona, 156 newspaper, see press Nig˘de, 248 Nili (Jewish Underground), 159 nizaˆmnaˆme of 1863, 45 nizam-ı cedid (New Order), 264 Nouradinjian, Gabriel, 136 Nubar Pasha, Boghos, 177, 194, 201 O¨demis¸, 104 Ohanian, Hagop, 247 –8 Osmaniye, 248 Ottoman(s), 7, 20, 30, 37, 39 –41, 54–9, 65, 67, 84, 105 – 8, 111, 114, 118 –20, 131 – 4, 136, 138 –9, 141, 158, 160, 202 –3, 269, 271 Agricultural Bank, 151 Empire, passim Fourth Army, 45, 159 Navy Society, 39 Third Army, 56, 229, 284 Turkish language, 6, 135 Greek, 21, 104 – 5, 109 – 12, 117, 119 – 20, 202, see also Christian(s) Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık), 9– 10, 21, 36, 47– 9, 108 – 9, 131, 135, 139, 149, 156 –7, 161, 169, 218, 264, 269 Ottomanity, 2, 9 –10, 19– 20 Ottomanization, 13, 157 Ozanian, Andranik, 42 O¨ktem, Kerem, 264 O¨mer, Reman chieftain, 252 – 3 O¨zler, I˙smail Safa, 246

300

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Paris, 189, 202 Congress of, 143 Palestine, 1 –2, 6, 12, 13– 4, 16, 18, 21– 2, 46, 48, 132 – 4, 138, 140 – 4, 149 –50, 154, 156, 158 – 9, 160 –3, 272 Palestinian(s), 22, 132,139, 141 Arab population, 22, 150, 161 demography, 158 Jewish population, 21, 34, 158, 160 Jewish yishuv, 21, 46, 149 – 50, 156 –61 Question, 18 pamphlet, 39, 78, 81– 3, 85 –6 panideologies, 31 Turkism, 11, 14, 30, 33, 36, 42, 47, 48 Islamism, 30, 33– 4, 48 Parchanj (Akcakiraz), 226 Parigian, Apraham, 217 Parigian factory, 216 –7 Parigian, Manoug, 216 –7 parliament, Ottoman, 30, 152 Patnoz, 173 patriotism, 10, 47, 132, 138 – 9, 222, 251 Pazmashen, 217, 226 Peri (Karakocan), 227 persecution(s), 217, 230, 242, 254 of 1915, 36 Persia, 15, 42, 171 173 Peterson, V. Spike, 89 petitions (see also arzuhal; s¸ikayet), 13, 21, 149 – 56, 158, 160 Pirinccizaˆde Arif Bey, 35 Pirinccizaˆde Aziz Feyzi, 35 –6, 250, 252, 254 Pirinccizaˆde family, 254 Po‘ale Zion, 158 pogroms, 78, 276 Polatel, Mehmet, 11, 23, 271 press, 10, 23, 37, 59, 86, 118 –9, 132 – 5, 137 – 8, 141 –3, 151 – 3, 181, 194, 203, 210 – 1, 213, 218, 222, 233 Arab, 22, 132 – 3, 142, 152, 154 Armenian, 23, 215, 227 Cairene, 142 censorship, 31, 133, 151, 203 Christian, 142 European, 83, 143

OTTOMANS

freedom of, 10 Greek, 87 Hebrew, 132 – 3 Jewish, 22, 136, 138, 142 –3 Kemalist, 276 Ladino, 133 Ottoman, 81 –4, 86, 133, 135 Palestinian, 22, 132, 135, 142 –3 Turkish, 86, 118 135, 197, 203 Zionist, 22 Princip, Gavrilo, 37 prison, 60, 203, 219, 231 – 2, 220, 231 –2, 250 prisoners-of-war, 36, 62 pronunciamiento, 267 propaganda, 12, 15, 20, 31, 33 –4, 42–3, 46 –7, 78, 80– 6, 109, 111 –2, 180, 203 atrocity, 20, 78, 80 –1, 85, 87– 8 war(fare), 47, 79– 81, 83, 270 Protestant community, 210 Pyuragn, 233 Pyuzantion, 233 radicalization, 4, 7, 11, 15, 17– 8, 88, 105, 116, 121, 169, 244, 246, 267 Rahmi Bey, 243 rapt-u zapt (oder and discipline), 268 rebellion(s), 8, 43, 54, 58, 131, 170, 180, 182, 212, 228, 230, 263, 285 Red-Black Book, see Kırmızı Siyah Kitab Red Crescent Society, 138 reform(s), 5, 11, 13, 19, 22 –3, 30, 35, 48–9, 56, 106, 113, 133, 135 –6, 143, 170, 173, 175 – 6, 178 –80, 188 –91, 193 –200, 203, 225, 267, 271 Arab movement for, 136, 139, 141 Armenian, 11, 189, 203, 205 – 6 Armenian Reform Project, 241, 271, 273 Armenian Reform question, 23, 201 – 2, 204 language, 136 plan(s), 170, 177, 205 Russian-Ottoman Reform Agreement of 8 February 1914, 13, 15, 35– 6, 44, 47, 181, 188 –206

INDEX refugees, 23, 41, 88, 104, 107 – 10, 113, 115, 121, 141 Ottoman Muslim (muhacirs), 11, 19, 32, 35, 37– 8, 40– 1, 48 –9, 105, 107 –12, 117, 142, 171, 265 regionalism, 240, 242, 244 regionalization, see regionalism Rehovot, 154 – 6 Reinkowski, Maurus, 264 Reman gorge, 253 tribe, 252 Renda, Mustafa Abdu¨lhalik, 243 Republic, Turkish, see Turkey, Republic of responsibility, 5, 85, 131, 251, 273, 275 – 6 restitution, 5, 11, 169 – 73, 182 Reuters (news agency), 143 revolt(s), 15, 54 Armenian, see Armenian Revolution of 1908, see Young Turks Chinese (1911), 267 counterrevolution against Unionists (31 March/13 April Incident), 114, 172 CUP, see Young Turks constitutional, see Young Turks Persian (1906), 267 Russian, 48, 267 Rishon le-Zion, 154, 156 routine, imperial, 3, 7, 264 ruh-i devlet (soul of the state), 268 Ruˆm, see Christian(s) Rumelia, 88, 175 – 6 Rumeli Muhacirin-i I˙slamiye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi (Society for Muslim Immigrants from Roumelia), 83, 88, see also its publications Alam-i Islam (. . .) and Tu¨rk Katilleri (. . .) Russia, 7, 14, 22, 30, 33– 4, 37, 39– 42, 45– 6, 59, 88, 142, 155, 160, 171, 175 – 82, 190 – 205, 219, 264 – 5, 269, 273 allies of, 30 Tsarist, 219 Russian(s), 198, 250 Armenia, 42 Caucasus, 15, 40, 42, 46– 7, 190

301

Empire, 7, 41 Foreign Office, 176 propaganda, 180 Revolution, see revolution threat, 200, 202 Russian-Armenian negotiations of December 1912, 191 Russian-Ottoman Reform Agreement, see reform(s) Ru¨s¸du¨ Bey, Major, 251 –2 Rwanda, 241 Sabah, 82 Sabahaddin, Prince, 31, 264 Said Halim Pasha, 199, 202, 273 Sakakini, Khalil, 66 Sakiz (Chios), 118 Salih, Behcet, 86 Salonika (Selanik), 10, 14, 36, 48, 79, 84, 103 –4, 140 – 1, 158, 274 Action Army from, 10 Samos see Sisam Sanders, Otto Viktor Karl Liman von, 22, 198 – 9 crisis, 198 Sarafian, Ara, 242 Sarıkamıs¸, 42, 229 campaign of, 274 Sartiaux, Felix, 110 Savior Islamic Army of Egypt, 40 Sazonov, Sergei Dmitrievich, 41, 193, 196, 198 –9, 202 Schellendorf, Bronsart von, 67 Schmutz, Thomas, 11, 13, 22, 270 schools Albanian-language, 136 Armenian, 215, 221, 232 Capuchin School, 221 Gentronagan Varjaran (Central School), 214 Hussenig, 216 Turkish Sultaniye School, 221 Scho¨nberg, Andre´, 195 seferberlik (mobilisation), see mobilisation Seyrek, 109 Selaheddin, Ahmed, 38 Selanik, see Salonika Serbia, 3, 35, 79, 103

302

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Shalvarjian flour mill, 247 sharia, see law Sharp, Heinrich, 272 al-Sharq (publication), 39 Sheik Selim, 176, 181 Sheik Ubeydullah, 12 Shi’a, 16 Shochat, Israel, 158 ha-Shomer organization, 156 siba, land of the, 262 s¸ikayet (petitions), 150 Sinai, 40 Sinanian, Professor, 246 Sis (Kozan), 244 – 5, 247, 249 Sisam, 118 Smith, Heathcote, 86 Smyrna, see Izmir Socie´te´ d’Assurances Ge´ne´rales Osmanli Milli (insurance company), 249 society, 8, 18, 30, 67, 77, 80– 1, 83, 86, 151, 216, 223, 250, 255 – 6, 262, 268, 272, 274, 277 Armenian, see Armenian civil, 81, 83, 256 German, 8 militarization of, 80, 275 mobilization of, see mobilization Muslim, 78– 9 Ottoman, 54, 79, 110, 214 Ottoman Navy, 39 Society for Muslim Immigrants from Bulgaria, 83 Society for Muslim Immigrants from Roumelia, see Rumeli Muhacirin-i I˙slamiye Cemiyet-i Hayriyesi Society for National Defense Veli Necdet, 250 – 1, 253 Society for Publication of Documents on Balkan Atrocities, 84, 88 Soghigian, Garabed M., 215, 233 sopacılar (gangs, bandits), 111 sopali secim (big stick elections), 114 Soursourian, Askanaz, 231 sovereignty, 19, 30, 32, 35, 46, 197, 270 – 2 Ottoman, 116, 188, 192, 199 Turkish, 4, 196 St Mesrob, 221 St Petersburg, 193, 197 – 9, 205

OTTOMANS

St Sahag, 221 strikes, 10, 47, 135 Sublime Porte, 22, 106, 177, 188 – 90, 193, 196, 198, 200, 203 –5 Suez Canal, 40 Sumatra, 241 Surp Giragos Church, 256 Sursuk family, 153 Ilias 153 – 4 Su¨leyman Bey, Colonel, 248 Syria, 2, 15, 17, 21, 30, 32, 43– 4, 47, 54, 62, 133 – 4, 143, 159, 161, 241, 272, 276 –7 Greater, 21, 133 –4, 140, 149 – 50 Syrian famine, 32 Syriac Christians, 42, 44 –5, 211, 253 – 4 Syrians, 45 S¸evki Bey, 251 Tachjian, Vahe´, 23, 263 Tadem (Tadım), 226 Tahir’u¨l Mevlevi, 84 Tahsin Bey, 181 – 2 Talaat Pasha, 3, 31– 3, 41, 43 –5 159, 191, 200, 202, 204, 242, 247, 248 –9, 251, 253, 271 –3, 275 – 6 Black Book of, 242 Tamari, Salim, 66, 144 Tenekejian, Nigoghos, 215, 233 Tanin (newspaper), 83– 4, 86, 119, 197, 266 tanzimat, 35, 45, 47, 135, 265, 268 tarkmanchats (religious hymns), 221 Tarsus, 191, 244 Tasvir-i Efkar (newspaper), 119 Tchilgadian, Bishop, 251 – 2 tecemmu¨ bo¨lgeleri (gathering locations), 64 Tek, Ahmet Ferit, 84 Ter Minassian, Anahide, 271 tes¸kilaˆt-ı mahsusa (Special Organization), 41, 250, 268 Tevfik Bey, 175, 177 Tevfik, Mehmed Ali, 85 Tevfik Pasha, see Tevfik Bey Thessaly, 119 Third Estate (tiers e´tat), 225 Thom, Daniel Dr., 63, 275

INDEX Thrace, 4, 32, 44, 104, 107, 143 Tiflis, 41 Tigris, 251 – 2 Gate, 251 Tiutiunjian, Mihran, 231 Topalian firm, 248 torture, 43, 81, 88, 220, 231 – 2, 251 –2 Touma-Mezire, 229 Toynbee, Arnold, 275 Trablusgarb (Libya), 36 Trabzon, 30, 45, 242 – 3, 251 Treaty of August 2 1914, 14, 41– 2 of Berlin 1878, 11, 35, 48, 106, 190, 195 of Lausanne 1923, 4 of London, May 30 1913, 114, 118 of Paris 1856, 105, 267 of Se`vres 1920, 4 Triple Alliance, see alliance Tripoli, 38, 131, 137, 141 Tu¨ccarzade I˙brahim Hilmi, 85, 87 Tunisia, 269 Turan, 274 Turkey, Republic of, 1, 4 –6, 9, 11, 14, 16– 7, 39, 41 –3, 78, 80, 89, 118, 173, 178, 196 – 8, 200 – 2, 216, 220, 256, 271, 274, 276 Turks, 23, 39, 44, 85, 109, 118, 134, 144, 211, 218, 220, 224 – 5, 230 – 2, 244, 249, 255, 266 Muslim, 12, 14, 33, 46, 89 Ottoman, 20, 87 Young, see Young Turks Tu¨rk Katilleri ve Yunanlılar (Murderers of Turks and Greeks) (pamphlet), 83 Tu¨rk Ocag˘ı (Turkish Hearth), 11, 32, 85 Turkification, 131, 224, 241, 244 Turkishness, 46, 104, 224, 241, 263 Turkish Home association, 11 Tu¨rkiye Uyan (Wake Up, Turkey), 85 Tuzla, region of, 241 Ubeydullah, Sheik, see Sheik Ubeydullah Uluabad, 104 Ulukıs¸la, 248 Union de Paris (insurance company), 249 Unionists, see Committee of Union and Progress

303

Unionism, see Committee of Union and Progress United Nations, 16 United States (of America), 7, 16, 46, 142, 160, 210, 215 – 6, 217, 225 –6, 233 uprising(s), 45, 135, 191, 193 –4 Albanian, 136, 140 Arab Christian Orthodox, 142 Armenian, 203 Maji Maji, 8 Kurdish, 12, 181 Serbian, 8 Urfa, 253 Urmia, 42 Ussher, Clarence Douglas, 63 U¨ngo¨r, Ug˘ur U¨mit, 23 –4, 263 U¨sku¨dar, 112 vali, 194, 247 Van, 42 –5, 59, 63, 173, 177 – 8, 180 –1, 230, 251 Vartabedian, Vahan, 248 Vartanank, 216 Venizelos, 108 viability, 2 –3, 9, 15, 17, 19 –21, 46, 149 Vienna, 37 vilayat-i sitte (Six Provinces), 12 –3, 195, 205, 241, see also eastern provinces (in the Ottoman Empire) Vilaˆyat-ı selaˆse, 103 violence, 2 – 3, 7 –8, 12, 15 –7, 34, 41, 77, 81, 87, 105 –10, 116, 121, 170, 175, 180, 181, 223, 241, 246, 249, 253 –5, 269, 272, 274 –7 Visˇegrad, 241 Vorontsov-Dashkov, Illarion Ivanovich, 41–2, 177 Wangenheim, Hans Freiherr von, 41, 44, 191 –2, 194 – 8, 200 –5, 245 war Balkan, see Balkan civil Lebanese, 276 Algerian, 276 Crimean War, 269 Franco-Prussian War, 1870 – 1, 270 Great War, see World War I guerrilla, anti-Russian, 41

304

WORLD WAR I AND

THE END OF THE

Kurdish, 16 Italian-Ottoman, 30, 54 Iran-Iraq, 276 Ottoman-Russian War of 1877 –8, 7, 105 Turkish War of Independence 1919–22, 2, 32, 38, 121, 276 World War I (Great War), 1– 3, 11, 13– 4, 19 –23, 29, 31 –6, 38, 41, 43, 46, 54 –5, 58, 65, 80 –1, 88, 104, 108, 133, 143 – 4, 149, 156, 158, 161, 169, 191, 202, 206, 228, 242, 244, 262, 271 – 3, 275 –7 European, 31 Ottoman, 31– 3 World War II, 81, 277 total war, 2, 9, 15, 19 –20, 29, 31 –3, 36, 45 –6, 48– 9, 80, 266 Ottoman, 19– 20, 29, 31, 35 Westernism, 9 Westernization, 265 Westenenk, Louis, 200 Westphalian concept, 270 Peace, 272 Treaties, 272 Wilhelm II., Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert von Preussen, 189 Worcester, Massachusetts, 216 Yale University, 215 Yalcın, Hu¨seyin Cahid, 266 Yanya (Ioannina), 117 Yasinzaˆde S¸evki (Ekinci), Major, 250 Yasinzaˆde Yahya (Ekinci), 250 Yeg˘enag˘a, Ali Mu¨nif, 246 Yemen, 7, 32, 36, 54, 131, 137, 276 Yeni Foca, 109

OTTOMANS

Yeniko¨y, conference of, 178 –9, 182 Yeprad (newspaper), 215, 233 Yezidis, 16 Yig˘it, Akın, 14, 20, 274 Young Turks, 3 – 5, 7, 9 – 10, 16, 19, 29, 32, 41, 46, 48, 104, 149 – 51, 157, 182, 189, 202, 206, 241, 245, 251, 264, 266 –8 Revolution of 1908, 9, 10– 1, 16, 30, 47– 8, 79, 81, 86, 113, 131, 133 –5, 140, 150 – 3, 157 – 8, 161 –2, 169, 189 – 90, 205, 210 –1, 213, 217, 231, 266 – 8 Yugoslavia, Socialist Federal Republic of, 262 yunan kafali (Greek nationalists), 112 Yunda (Cunda), 117 Zarnuqa incident, 153 – 6 Zaven Der Yghiayan, 45 Zeitgeist, 151, 263 – 4 Zikhron Ya’aqov (Zicron-Jacob), 66, 159 Zimmermann, Arthur, 194, 197 zimmi (member of a protected non-Muslim community), 33 Zionism, 132, 139 – 142 Zionist(s), 6, 13– 4, 16, 22, 46, 48, 134, 139 –43, 150, 152 – 4, 159 –60 activity in Palestine, 21– 2, 149 –50, 153, 160 – 1 emigration, 12, 18 land purchases, 12, 18, 140 –1, 152 – 4 Zionist Congress, Tenth, 140 Zohrab, Krikor, 174 –5 Zonguldak, 34 Zu¨rcher, Erik-Jan, 77, 218, 275 Zvornik, 240