The Ottoman Endgame

Title: The Ottoman Endgame – War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Author: Sean McMeekin

Publisher: Penguin, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9780718199715

Pages: 550

 

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ushered in the concept of separation of religion from politics of kingdoms and their interaction with neighbours. The principle of ‘cuius regio, eius religio’ (whose realm, their religion) finally lost relevance and the first seeds of modernity was sown in Europe. A century and a half later, the French Revolution introduced the novel ideas of nation states and national self-determination. While these crucial transformations were materializing in Europe, the Islamic world stubbornly stuck to their political creed of a caliph guiding the faithful both in temporal and spiritual matters. Ever since Selim I hoisted the Ottoman flag in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in 1517 after defeating the Egyptian Mameluke dynasty, the House of Osman jealously guarded the title of caliph. By end-nineteenth century, the Ottomans ruled over a vast land that enveloped numerous communities distinct from each other in ethnicity, religion, language and nationality. Persecution of Christians, Jews and other religious minorities was rampant. However, Europe had considerably progressed in industrial and military strength by this time. Tacit European support encouraged the subject nations to resist Ottoman hegemony. The period also saw Turkey, which was the seat of the Ottomans, being designated the ‘Sick man of Europe’. Foreign powers manipulated them at their will and carved up the empire into many pieces. With Turkey’s defeat alongside Germany in the First World War, the process accelerated and the Ottoman Empire was liquidated. This book narrates the events with long-lasting implications that led to the dismemberment of the Turkish empire that spread its geographical outreach from Morocco in the west to Persia in the east in a historically instantaneous interval of just three decades. The core of the giant Ottoman tree was already eaten by religio-nationalist worms and it just needed a push to come crashing down to the ground. Sean McMeekin is a professor of history at Bard College, New York. For some years, he taught at Bilkent University, Istanbul. This earlier career has biased his outlook and analysis of events mentioned in this book.

 

The book may be broadly divided into four sections, the first being the period from the deposition of Sultan Murad V and coronation of Abdul Hamid II and the downfall of the latter. The second part describes the run up to World War I, followed by the third part dealing with the actual war. The final section narrates the post-war dismemberment of the empire. The first part is especially important as it exhibits the reluctant steps with which Ottomans granted basic civil liberties to its religious minorities. It is surprising that this ordinary act which is taken for granted in all pluralistic societies required the intervention of external European powers. In lieu of support in the Crimean War, European powers demanded civic reforms which made the sultan grant extremely basic rights to non-Muslims. As a tentative step, churches in Istanbul were allowed to toll their bells during religious service! Apart from the hardliners, even moderate Muslims resented the reforms claiming that they were not sure why they had fought and died in a war so as to forfeit their legal supremacy over the Christians and Jews. The Ottoman system was rife with murderous intrigue and the sultan was forever anxious for his safety. Abdul Hamid was so paranoid that army recruits were not allowed to train with live ammunition. Naval vessels were not permitted to be armed while in port. Turkey entered a new era when the Young Turks usurped power and installed Mehmet V as a puppet on the throne.

 

We see shocking descriptions of the religious minorities before, during and after the Great War. Italy forcefully annexed Ottoman provinces in North Africa such as Libya in 1912. Greek soldiers regularly skirmished with their Ottoman counterparts. After the Great War erupted, Russia began incursions in the northeast along the Armenian border. Whoever attacked the Ottomans, their co-religionists were made to suffer in Turkey as hostages. As a result, they clung to the coat tails of whoever came along and had the power to defeat the sultan. The Sublime Porte responded by mass transfer of minority populations inland to prevent them from joining up with the invaders. In May 1915, Armenians were transported to the far-off and largely inhospitable Syrian desert province of Der Zar, implying that the survival of the deportees was not the caliph’s first priority. They were also forced to hand over their homes and property left behind to local Muslims at fire-sale prices. Around 700,000 or half of the Armenian population perished. This disaster, known as the Armenian Genocide of 1915, is not given due importance in the narrative. This gives the first hint of the author’s visible bias towards the Ottoman cause.

 

The book provides a detailed review of the military activities involving Turkey in the War. An important point to note is the Indian involvement in combat operations. India was under colonial rule at that time and the Indian army was extensively used to fight Britain’s war. Britain wanted to control the Dardanelles in the north and Iraqi oil fields in the south. Tens of thousands of Indian soldiers died in the trenches and forts of Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. After initial successes, the invading forces were fiercely resisted by the Ottoman troops. Meanwhile Germany who was an ally of the caliph, unleashed a fierce propaganda campaign to characterize the war as a jihad by the caliph’s forces against infidels. Germans assumed the role of friends of the caliph. Kaiser Wilhelm made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saladin at Damascus and saluted him as a holy warrior. For his efforts, the German king was called ‘Hajji Wilhelm’ in some circles. The propaganda made some impact among Muslims in India and Afghanistan. This may have led to the germination of the Khilafat agitation in India. Not to be outdone, Britain responded with appeasement measures of its own. It docked four huge grain ships permanently on the Red Sea to feed the population of Hijaz which contained the two holy cities.

 

As we have seen earlier, this book is disappointingly partisan to the Ottoman side. The intervention of outside powers after the war redrew national boundaries in the middle east that do not reflect the people’s will who are fated to live inside these artificial constructs. The Kurds are the largest group that has not been accommodated in a proper homeland. Harping on this sense of injustice, the author whitewashes terrorist organisations as nationalists in statements like ‘pan-Islamic movements like Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda and Islamic State all strive to erase European-imposed state boundaries’. What is truly unbelievable is his cleverly crafted justification of massacres of Christians that have genocidal proportions. He provides a mitigating factor for Greek and Armenian massacres after the war ended in these words dripping with cold, spineless self-interest: “After a war lasting three years, each one more savage than the last, and with recent Greek atrocities nearby in mind, the forbearance of the Turkish occupiers was not fated to last” (p.473). And so, they plundered, burnt, raped and killed..? Disparagement of the Zionist movement provides a sideshow to the eventful history. It all ended with the Lausanne Convention which transferred wholesale populations between Turkey and Greece to make the partition effective and complete. The book shifts the focus quickly and too frequently from the micro to the macro perspectives, thereby confusing the readers. The book is somewhat large and a little tiresome with very small font size of the text.

 

The book is recommended.

 

Rating: 2 Star