'Food for Liberty, Tolerance for Loyalty': The Ottomans and the Druze of Syria during World War I
M. Talha ÇİÇEK M. Talha Çiçek medeniyet.academia.edu
'Food for Liberty, Tolerance for Loyalty': The Ottomans and the Druze of Syria during World War I
This article examines an important attempt at the political engineering undertaken in Syria during the Great War. It focuses on the experience of the Arabs exiled to Anatolia by Cemal Pasha to redesign Syrian society in line with the Committee of Union and Progress' idea of empire, which imagined an authoritarian regime. The members of the Arabist parties were removed from Syria to eliminate their contemporaneous and future resistance to the emerging despotic regime. The article sets out to analyze what the exiles experienced in Anatolia using their memoirs in Arabic and the Ottoman documents describing their conditions in Anatolia, and to what extent the aims could be realized. It argues that the purpose was to put a politics of "normalization" into practice by depoliticizing the Arab notable families through "relocation" to Anatolia, although the resistance of the exiles and varying attitudes in Ottoman bureaucracy significantly differentiated outcomes. It also uncovers many untold stories with regard to the daily life of the exiles and adds much to our knowledge on the experience of Arab exiles in Anatolia. It is the first serious examination of the experiences of the Arab exiles using their own texts and narrative.

There is little doubt that the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was the single most influential political organization of the Second Constitutional Period (1908–23). As the party played a leading role in the significant events of that period, scholars have generally viewed it as a united political organization that tackled reform within the Ottoman Empire. This view underestimates factional struggles within the organization. A closer look at the writings of contemporary political leaders and the extant archival record, however, shows how the party's multi-leadership structure created conflicts and divisions that shaped government policies. The shared goal of the CUP leaders was to arrest the empire's loss of territory and to restore its heyday. While at times the CUP allied itself with politicians who advocated decentralist policies, it had embraced an ideology that strongly advocated a centralist government. But this did not mean that the party was a mono-lithic organization or that there were no struggles among its members regarding the political direction it should take. During its period of dominance, the multi-leadership structure of the CUP redefined the nature of Ottoman politics. This brought about two interrelated results. Firstly, the party's idiosyncratic structure brought about interventions in government by prominent Unionists who were not part of the bureaucracy. This created conflict between committee members and bureaucrats. Secondly, once in official positions, CUP leaders acted as if they were independent rulers rather than subordinate to the central government. The Unionists' failure to maintain a distinction between party and government dismantled the Ottoman Empire's bureaucratic traditions. It also gave rise to factional struggles among followers of prominent Unionist leaders who entertained opposing views about the realization of their ideals. Scholars have regularly presented Enver, Talat, and Djemal Pasha as a " tri-umvirate " position within the CUP. In doing so, they imply that they formed a harmonious team. Although the three party leaders had some shared political goals, such as the centralization of the empire and the end of foreign interference in internal affairs, this did not prevent the emergence of different factions, each of which followed its own agenda. As opposition to its own ideology and policies was viewed—and also treated—as " treason, " opposing political views could

This article is about an aspect of the Ottoman-Rashidi partnership in the late Ottoman Empire that deeply influenced the order of things in Arabia and resulted in both the Ottomans and the Rashidis becoming more significant actors in regional politics. The main argument is that this partnership made a great contribution to the visibly increasing Ottoman influence in Najd (i.e., central Arabia) and the Persian Gulf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time, the Rashidi family's alliance with the Ottoman Empire paved the way for their emergence as a regional power. Since scholarship on the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century history of Najd and the Arab lands has tended to neglect the importance of this collaboration, the article sets out to analyze it from its inception until its end, drawing on documents from Ottoman, British, German, and Austrian archives.

Known for his rigid policies towards Arab nationalists and Zionists during his posting in Greater Syria, Cemal Pasha and his role in the Armenian genocide has always remained an issue of contention. There are important accounts of Cemal’s activity, particularly during the First World War, which have found him to have had no active role in the deportation and extermination of Armenians – here differing from the other two pillars of the CUP, Enver and Talaat. On the contrary, such accounts argue that he extended a helping hand to Armenians in so far as his authority and power would allow, and that he even faced off against members of the central government in Istanbul and the CUP head office to do so. This chapter will question that argument, examining the politics of Cemal Pasha during the war, while concentrating on his approach to the Armenian matter. I will also explore his own responsibility for the genocide and discuss the context and contingencies of the way in which his role as a genocide perpetrator manifested itself

This study aims to expose the ways in which leading officials of the Committee of Union and Progress (the CUP) interpreted, internalized, and questioned the conditions of their mission in Arab lands during World War I (WWI). It builds on the memoirs of Falih Rıfkı, aide-de-camp of Commander-in-Chief Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip, an ardent supporter of the social and educational reforms of the CUP government. Both written after the war, these memoirs reflect not only nostalgia and regret but also the complicated relationship between Turkish officials and Arabs on the eve of their breakup from one another as citizens of the Ottoman State. The study also questions the orthodox argument that the Turkist and anti-Arabic ideology of the CUP government in general and Cemal Pasha's wartime crusade against Arab nationalists in particular triggered the emergence of Arab nationalism. By contemplating the memoirs of CUP members in Arab lands, this study argues that Falih Rıfkı, Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip tried to understand the region and its people in order to create a mutual future for Turks and Arabs within the Ottoman Empire.