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The Times (London)
February 21, 2015 Saturday
Last days of the great caliphate
Was the Ottoman Empire really so bad after all, asks Lawrence James
by Lawrence James
On November 13, 1918, the dreadnought HMS Agamemnon (they knew how to
name ships in those days) led an armada of Allied warships into the
harbour at Constantinople. A dismayed Turkish boatman watched and
lamented: "Who would have believed that a foreign fleet would enter
Constantinople so illustriously and that we Muslims would be simple
spectators." His passenger consoled him: "These black days will pass
too." But they did not pass.
As in Europe, the end of one war prepared the way for another. The
surrender of the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of what has been
called "The War of the Ottoman Succession", an intermittent struggle
for mastery of the Middle Eastern lands once ruled by the Sultan.
First Britain and France attempted to dominate the region and were
evicted, now the US, Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia contend for
supremacy, and, lately, they have been joined by the ferocious
fanatics of Isis who want a caliphate and the restoration of a Dark
Age Islamic state. Slavery, reluctantly abolished by theTurkish
sultans in the 19th century, has returned to the Middle East. So too
has another Ottoman vice, the systematic massacre of Christians. A
hundred years of turmoil and bloodshed raises the question whether the
Ottononfiction man Empire, for all its faults, was not a bad thing.
After all, as Eugene Rogan reminds us, in the years just before the
outbreak of war, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress ("The
Young Turks") were endeavouring to modernise the empire.
They were too late: Turkey lacked the industrial base, communications
systems and administrative structure to fight a modern war on several
fronts. German credit and weaponry kept the show going, but only just.
"What kind of war are we fighting?" asked one soldier in the trenches
during the first battle of Gaza in 1917. "Our army has no working
artillery, no functioning machineguns, no aircraft, no commanding
officers, no defensive lines, no reserves, no telephone."
Material deficiencies were, however, offset by the pluck and tenacity
of theTurkish soldier and a handful of good generals, most famously
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the future Kemal Atatürk. During 1915 and 1916,
the Turks defeated the Allies at Gallipoli and in Iraq, where an
Anglo-Indian army surrendered at Kut Al Amara. An Oxford historian,
Rogan's account of these campaigns fits well into a comprehensive,
lucid and revealing history of a war, which has always been seen
though British eyes focused on Gallipoli and TE Lawrence rallying the
Bedouin and posing for photographers. This book will surely become the
definitive history of the war, for there is much that is new. Rogan
has used Turkish and Arab sources and recent research in the Ottoman
archives. Rooting out the truth is, however, a fraught business, since
theTurkish government is cagey about access to wartime military
papers. Official furtiveness is understandable given how prickly
modern Turkey is about the Armenian genocide. At least 850,000
Armenians and Assyrian Christians were murdered between 1915 and 1918,
but successive Turkish governments have denied any complicity by the
Ottoman government and its servants. Anyone who challenges official
orthodoxy is liable to be charged with "insulting Turkishness" and
faces prison. Visit the otherwise impressive military museum in
Istanbul and all you will find are grisly photos of Turks allegedly
slain by Armenian terrorists at the behest of Russia. This repeats
baseless contemporary propaganda that the Armenians were a vast fifth
column, ready to assist invaders.
Rogan blows away the fog of obfuscation and denials. Talaat Pasha, the
Young Turk Minister of the Interior, the Ottoman Intelligence Service,
sundry provincial governors and policemen were actively engaged in
what was intended to be an extermination of the entire Armenian
population of the Near East. "The orders came from the Central
Committee and the Interior Ministry," one officer told an Armenian.
They were conveyed orally and one governor who sought written
instructions was sacked and later murdered. Rogan's evidence about the
official origins and enforcement of the massacres augments and
confirms that from German sources.
Killing the Armenians achieved nothing for Turkey's war effort. The
successes of the first half of the war were not repeated during the
second, when Allied forces pushed steadily through Iraq, Palestine and
Syria. Numerical and technical superiority had tipped the balance in
favour of the Allies, although the Turkish soldier fought doggedly on.
During the fighting at Gaza, Turkish infantrymen stood their ground,
firing their rifles in a futile attempt to repel tanks at close range.
There are some surprises for those who take their history from
Lawrence of Arabia. The repeated demolition of the Damascus to Medina
railway by Lawrence and his Bedouin irregulars had a limited effect,
since the Turks quickly relaid the track and the line stayed open
until the spring of 1918, when it was permanently severed by Allied
forces. The Arab Revolt was also an Arab civil war: some tribes chose
Turkish gold and arms rather than British.
One of the trains that reached Medina from Damascus in November 1917
contained Turkish newspapers with details of the secret Sykes-Picot
Agreement by which Britain, France and Tsarist Russia had agreed the
future partition of the Ottoman Empire. The documents had just been
released by Trotsky to remind the Arab world that it was being duped
by Allied promises of postwar liberation.
This may not have been too much of shock, for French and British
imperial ambitions were in character and over the past 80 years, the
two powers had stripped the Ottomans of Egypt, Algeria, Tunis and
www.Morocco.Be that as it may, the alleged duplicity of Britain and
France continues to have political resonances today in the Middle East
where state boundaries follow lines first sketched on a map by greedy
foreigners. The repercussions of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire will
not go away. Lawrence James's latest book is Churchill and Empire:
Portrait of an Imperialist The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in
the Middle East, 1914-1920 by Eugene Rogan Allen Lane, 445pp £25 * £20
February 21, 2015 Saturday
Last days of the great caliphate
Was the Ottoman Empire really so bad after all, asks Lawrence James
by Lawrence James
On November 13, 1918, the dreadnought HMS Agamemnon (they knew how to
name ships in those days) led an armada of Allied warships into the
harbour at Constantinople. A dismayed Turkish boatman watched and
lamented: "Who would have believed that a foreign fleet would enter
Constantinople so illustriously and that we Muslims would be simple
spectators." His passenger consoled him: "These black days will pass
too." But they did not pass.
As in Europe, the end of one war prepared the way for another. The
surrender of the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of what has been
called "The War of the Ottoman Succession", an intermittent struggle
for mastery of the Middle Eastern lands once ruled by the Sultan.
First Britain and France attempted to dominate the region and were
evicted, now the US, Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia contend for
supremacy, and, lately, they have been joined by the ferocious
fanatics of Isis who want a caliphate and the restoration of a Dark
Age Islamic state. Slavery, reluctantly abolished by theTurkish
sultans in the 19th century, has returned to the Middle East. So too
has another Ottoman vice, the systematic massacre of Christians. A
hundred years of turmoil and bloodshed raises the question whether the
Ottononfiction man Empire, for all its faults, was not a bad thing.
After all, as Eugene Rogan reminds us, in the years just before the
outbreak of war, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress ("The
Young Turks") were endeavouring to modernise the empire.
They were too late: Turkey lacked the industrial base, communications
systems and administrative structure to fight a modern war on several
fronts. German credit and weaponry kept the show going, but only just.
"What kind of war are we fighting?" asked one soldier in the trenches
during the first battle of Gaza in 1917. "Our army has no working
artillery, no functioning machineguns, no aircraft, no commanding
officers, no defensive lines, no reserves, no telephone."
Material deficiencies were, however, offset by the pluck and tenacity
of theTurkish soldier and a handful of good generals, most famously
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the future Kemal Atatürk. During 1915 and 1916,
the Turks defeated the Allies at Gallipoli and in Iraq, where an
Anglo-Indian army surrendered at Kut Al Amara. An Oxford historian,
Rogan's account of these campaigns fits well into a comprehensive,
lucid and revealing history of a war, which has always been seen
though British eyes focused on Gallipoli and TE Lawrence rallying the
Bedouin and posing for photographers. This book will surely become the
definitive history of the war, for there is much that is new. Rogan
has used Turkish and Arab sources and recent research in the Ottoman
archives. Rooting out the truth is, however, a fraught business, since
theTurkish government is cagey about access to wartime military
papers. Official furtiveness is understandable given how prickly
modern Turkey is about the Armenian genocide. At least 850,000
Armenians and Assyrian Christians were murdered between 1915 and 1918,
but successive Turkish governments have denied any complicity by the
Ottoman government and its servants. Anyone who challenges official
orthodoxy is liable to be charged with "insulting Turkishness" and
faces prison. Visit the otherwise impressive military museum in
Istanbul and all you will find are grisly photos of Turks allegedly
slain by Armenian terrorists at the behest of Russia. This repeats
baseless contemporary propaganda that the Armenians were a vast fifth
column, ready to assist invaders.
Rogan blows away the fog of obfuscation and denials. Talaat Pasha, the
Young Turk Minister of the Interior, the Ottoman Intelligence Service,
sundry provincial governors and policemen were actively engaged in
what was intended to be an extermination of the entire Armenian
population of the Near East. "The orders came from the Central
Committee and the Interior Ministry," one officer told an Armenian.
They were conveyed orally and one governor who sought written
instructions was sacked and later murdered. Rogan's evidence about the
official origins and enforcement of the massacres augments and
confirms that from German sources.
Killing the Armenians achieved nothing for Turkey's war effort. The
successes of the first half of the war were not repeated during the
second, when Allied forces pushed steadily through Iraq, Palestine and
Syria. Numerical and technical superiority had tipped the balance in
favour of the Allies, although the Turkish soldier fought doggedly on.
During the fighting at Gaza, Turkish infantrymen stood their ground,
firing their rifles in a futile attempt to repel tanks at close range.
There are some surprises for those who take their history from
Lawrence of Arabia. The repeated demolition of the Damascus to Medina
railway by Lawrence and his Bedouin irregulars had a limited effect,
since the Turks quickly relaid the track and the line stayed open
until the spring of 1918, when it was permanently severed by Allied
forces. The Arab Revolt was also an Arab civil war: some tribes chose
Turkish gold and arms rather than British.
One of the trains that reached Medina from Damascus in November 1917
contained Turkish newspapers with details of the secret Sykes-Picot
Agreement by which Britain, France and Tsarist Russia had agreed the
future partition of the Ottoman Empire. The documents had just been
released by Trotsky to remind the Arab world that it was being duped
by Allied promises of postwar liberation.
This may not have been too much of shock, for French and British
imperial ambitions were in character and over the past 80 years, the
two powers had stripped the Ottomans of Egypt, Algeria, Tunis and
www.Morocco.Be that as it may, the alleged duplicity of Britain and
France continues to have political resonances today in the Middle East
where state boundaries follow lines first sketched on a map by greedy
foreigners. The repercussions of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire will
not go away. Lawrence James's latest book is Churchill and Empire:
Portrait of an Imperialist The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in
the Middle East, 1914-1920 by Eugene Rogan Allen Lane, 445pp £25 * £20