The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War 9781618119599
This book provides an annotated translation of memoirs of Ottoman eye-witness actors of the Great War in the Arab lands...
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The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands

Ottoman and Turkish Studies Series Editor: Hakan T. Karateke (University of Chicago)

The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War

SELIM DERINGIL

Boston

2019

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Deringil, Selim, 1951- editor. Title: The Ottoman twilight in the Arab lands : Turkish memoirs and testimonies of the Great War / Selim Deringil. Description: Brighton, MA, USA : Academic Studies Press, 2018. | Series: Ottoman and Turkish studies | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018057561 (print) | LCCN 2019006179 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618119599 (ebook) | ISBN 9781618119575 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781618119582 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914-1918--Personal narratives, Turkish. | World War, 1914-1918--Turkey. | World War, 1914-1918--Middle East. Classification: LCC D640.A2 (ebook) | LCC D640.A2 O86 2018 (print) | DDC 940.30917/4927--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057561 ©Academic Studies Press, 2019 ISBN 978-1-618119-57-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-618119-59-9 (electronic) ISBN 978-1-618119-58-2 (paperback) Book design by Lapiz Digital Services On the cover: Yemeni Sheikhs visit the front as guests of Cemal Pasha. Library of Congress. American Colony of Jerusalem. Photo album “World War I: Palestine and Sinai.” Published by Academic Studies Press in 2019 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

For Carla

Contents

Acknowledgmentsviii Introduction. Aspects of the Ottoman Twilight

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Chapter 1. Falih Rıfkı Atay

1

Illustrations and Maps

58

Chapter 2. Hüseyin Kazım Kadri

72

Chapter 3. Ali Fuad Erden

93

Chapter 4. Münevver Ayaşlı

142

Chapter 5. Naci Kaşif Kıcıman

160

Conclusion. The Atrak and the Arabs

187

Bibliography195 Index202

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Dr. Ayhan Aktar, who gave me the idea of writing a book consisting of extended annotated translations of memoirs of late Ottoman individuals in the Arab lands in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. As we were approaching the centenary year of the final Ottoman withdrawal from these lands, it seemed to be an appropriate project. I would also like to thank Dr. Tariq Tell for his tremendously knowledgeable suggestions during our many conversations and for reading and commenting on the Introduction. Sinan Kuneralp was, as always, extremely generous in providing suggestions for source materials and, indeed, the source materials themselves. Dr. Talha Çiçek, whose pioneering work on the governorship of Cemal Pasha in Syria was an essential reference, was also kind enough to read previous versions of my text and make valuable suggestions. My long-suffering friend Dr. Edhem Eldem was also very helpful in responding to my queries about decorations and other matters. My thanks also to Dr. Salim Tamari, whose work on war diaries served in many ways as a template for the present work. Thanks are also due to İclal and Tunca Örses for allowing me to use photographs from their valuable collection. Mr. Ergun Kocabıyık of the Boğaziçi University Press was extremely kind in providing much-needed technical support with some of the visual materials used in the book. My thanks also to Dr. Issam Nassar for kindly sharing the photograph of the surrender of Jerusalem with itemized personae. Thanks are also due to Dr. John Winterburne for allowing me to use some of the photographs from the GARP project. I would also like to thank Dr. Kaukab Chebaro and Samar Mikati Kaissi of the AUB Archives for their kind support during my research. Dr. Cengiz Kırlı and Dr. Nadir Özbek also provided important insights during our numerous conversations. I would also like to thank my copyeditor Louis Parks for his dedication and professionalism. Thanks are also due to the anonymous

Acknowledgments

reviewers who provided very useful feedback. Above all, I would like to thank my wife and colleague, Dr. Carla Eddé, for her patience and support and for listening to what were no doubt, at times, less than consistent tirades about my work in progress. Needless to say, all mistakes, overstatements, omissions, and oversights are entirely my own.

Selim Deringil, Ras Beirut, March 15, 2018.

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Introduction Aspects of the Ottoman Twilight

In Turkey’s collective memory today, the Ottomans lost the First World War; the Turks won it. Mustafa Aksakal, “The Ottoman Empire”1

Remembering is a very private act. Yet there are certain watersheds in history when private remembrance and collective memory overlap. In my generation everybody remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For later generations it will be 9/11. For Eric Hobsbawm, it was when he and his sister were returning home from school in Berlin and they saw newspapers with banner headlines declaring that Adolf Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany, “I can see it still as in a dream,” Hobsbawm said.2 For most Arabs in the late Ottoman Empire the watershed moment was the hanging of Arab patriots by Cemal Pasha in 1915 and 1916. The collective “shudder that shook the country,” as memorably put by George Antonius, was transmitted across generations and has become the definitive moment in Arab-Turkish relations that shaped the collective memory of Arabs who saw the “days of the Turks” as a period of unmitigated catastrophe and destitution.3 As admirably expressed by Salim Tamari: 1 Mustafa Aksakal, “The Ottoman Empire,” in The Cambridge History of the First World War, ed. Jay Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), vol. 1, 464. 2 Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life (London: Allen and Unwin, 2002), 74. 3 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the National Arab Movement (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 2000), 190.

Introduction

The Great War brought about a radical break with the Ottoman past in the whole Arab East, not only in the established constitutional regime but also in the system of governance, local administration, and identity politics. In popular memory of peasants and city folk alike, 1915 was the Year of the Locust (‘am al Jarad). Even four generations later, the locust invasion continues to evoke the combined memory of natural disasters and the manmade devastation of war. These events erased four centuries of rich and complex Ottoman patrimony in which popular narratives of war and nationalist ideology colluded. An anti-Ottoman rewriting of history took place simultaneously, and in the same abrupt manner, both on the Turkish side (in the guise of the modernizing state and making it geographically manageable) and on the Arab side (in the sustained annals of nationalist historiography). The erasure replaced four centuries of relative peace and dynamic activity, the Ottoman era, with what was known in Arabic discourse as “the days of the Turks”: four miserable years of tyranny symbolized by the military dictatorship of Ahmad Cemal Pasha in Syria, seferberlik (forced conscription and exile), and the collective hanging of Arab patriots in Beirut’s Burj Square on August 15, 1916.4

The last few years of Ottoman rule in Lebanon and Syria are known as the “eyyam-atrak” the “days of the Turks.” This term usually carries dark connotations, being associated with famine, the hanging of the martyrs in Burj Square, and Cemal Pasha’s reign of terror. All these events are usually described from the perspective of the local population; as such they have a very important place in the formation of what has come to be recognized as the “collective memory” of a people. Leila Fawaz astutely points out that many Arab autobiographers who mostly wrote for their family circles, nonetheless “refer to shared experiences, myths, and recollections of the past” that were handed down over generations.5 But how did the “atrak” themselves see their position in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the Hijaz in the final years of the Great War? This book will attempt to address this question based on Ottoman memoirs written by eyewitnesses to the last years of Ottoman rule. It aims to be a critical annotated edition of the memoirs contained within 4 Salim Tamari, The Year of the Locust. A Soldier’s Diary and the Erasure of the Ottoman Past (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2011), 5. 5 Leila Fawaz, The Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War (Cambridge Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2014), 235.

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it, cross-referencing them and putting them in a historical context. The memoirs will be cited in extenso, given that the aim is to provide a reference work for readers who do not read Turkish, and given that most of these texts are only available in Turkish. In all five of the memoirs cited in this work, at the time of writing the authors had shared a similar recent past. In the late 1890s a secret society had formed among young Ottoman officers, doctors, lawyers, and intellectuals whose aim was to bring an end to the despotism of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876–1909) and restore the constitution of 1878. This secret society would ultimately be named The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and would eventually come to be dubbed the Young Turks.6 The CUP eventually spread to include a very broad spectrum of the late Ottoman elite and would lead the Revolution of 1908 which restored the constitution. A counter coup in April 1909 led to the deposition of Sultan Abdulhamid. The last free elections of 1912 were followed by a military coup in 1913, after which the empire was effectively ruled by the CUP. The leadership of 1913 would ultimately be winnowed down to the infamous ruling Triumvirate of Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Cemal Pasha. When the clouds of war started to gather in Europe, the leadership of the Young Turks saw the war as an opportunity to recover lost territory and build a strong state. As elegantly put by Mustafa Aksakal: “The new Ottoman leadership of the twentieth century viewed Great Power diplomacy as a fixed game: the Great Powers were the House, and you could not beat it by playing by the rules.”7 Diplomacy had had its day, the only solution was military. After shopping around for allies among the European powers, the Young Turks signed an alliance with Germany on October 29, 1914. The Ottoman Empire entered the war on November 2. The commonly accepted, official narrative in the early years of the Republic of Turkey was that the Young Turks dragged the Ottoman Empire into the war and thus to its destruction, or that they had been tricked by 6 There is an extensive literature on the Young Turks and the CUP. A few of the better known works are the following: Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 7 Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9. The CUP would also be referred to as the “Ittihadists” (Ittihatçılar).

Introduction

the Germans. A new generation of historians has now completely revised this position. Notably, Mustafa Aksakal and others have shown that the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war was the result of a conscious decision which was backed by almost all of the Ottoman elite rather than a small coterie of Young Turks.8 Many people within the Ottoman Empire in the years leading up to the war were obsessed with the loss of the Balkan Provinces (Rumeli) and the belief that they were besieged by enemies. The Balkan Wars (1911–1913) were a particularly traumatic memory as many of the Young Turk cadres were from the Balkans. They particularly resented the fact that the European powers were not at all concerned over the aggression meted out by the Balkan states toward Muslim populations. This feeling hovers like a shadow in all the memoirs cited in this book. Hüseyin Kazım, whom we will meet below, was one of the core group that founded the CUP. In a small pamphlet written in 1914 he condemned the Albanians for being responsible for the “Balkan Alliance” (Balkan İttifakı).9 Falih Rıfkı was a fiery young writer for the official CUP newspaper Tanin. Rıfkı would bemoan the loss of Rumeli, which he felt was the true home of the Turks, and lament over his belief that they would always be strangers in the Arab lands: “The air of Lebanon is a hundred times more foreign for us than the air of Dobruca.” Münevver Ayaşlı, who was from Salonica, would grieve over the loss of her beloved home town. Naci Kıcıman would agonize over the “Anatolian lads” who were being sacrificed to defend the Arabian desert. The official publication of the Turkish General Staff castigated the Arabs as cowardly and disloyal. All of our authors were writing and publishing in the intellectual milieu of the Kemalist republic, whose attitude to the loss of the Arab lands I will define below as the “good riddance syndrome.” The most important central actor in the creation of this negative image of the “atrak” was undoubtedly Cemal Pasha. One of the Young Turk triumvirate, together with Enver and Talat, Cemal Pasha had been appointed the Commander of the Fourth Army District (essentially Syria, Palestine and Lebanon) where he enjoyed almost dictatorial powers.10 One of his 8 Ibid., 57–92. 9 Ebru Boyar, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans. Empire Lost, Relations Altered (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), 40, 91. 10 The exact date of his appointment is unclear. On November 18, 1914 he sent Enver a telegram where he signs himself as “Commander of the Fourth Army.” On December 13, 1917 he left Damascus for good. My thanks to Talha Çiçek for this information.

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close aids would ironically refer to him as “Viceroy of Syria” although the Ottoman high command had no such official rank.11 During the three years (1914–1917) in which he ruled Syria with an iron fist, Cemal set up a reign of terror and became infamous for the trial and execution of some forty Arab nationalists whom he accused of sedition. Recent scholarship has somewhat revised this negative image of Cemal but the image of the “iron fist” and the “reign of terror” still prevails. Thus Cemal Pasha came to symbolize much more than the executioner of the Arab patriots, he became a figure symbolizing the “four hundred years of decadence” of Turkish rule, “which was judged before the tribunal of nascent Arab nationalism.”12 Although there is a renewed interest in the Ottoman history of the Great War and much of the new historiography uses memoirs, there is hardly any writing on the memoir literature that can be called content analysis.13 On the Turkish side, until recently the prevalent discourse has been what I will refer to as the “stab in the back syndrome” whereby the Arabs are seen as seditious traitors who collaborated with the enemy to bring down the Empire. This resulted in an entire generation of political actors in the young Turkish Republic whose attitude to the loss of the Arab provinces can be summed up as “good riddance.” Particularly in the years after the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 the theme of “Arab treason” became the dominant narrative and was featured as such in school textbooks: . . . The descendant of the Prophet Sharif Husain . . . chose to accept the gold of the enemy. . . . and exchanged the honor of Islam for a Kingdom under the protection of the English. He actually entered into competition with the

11 Falih Rıfkı Atay, Zeytindağı (Istanbul: Pozitif Press, 1932), 91–92. The word he uses is “Visrua” which is actually not a Turkish word. A German officer was to refer to him as “Vizekönig,” see Talha Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria: Cemal Pasha’s Governorate During World War I 1914–1917 (London: Routledge, 2014), 3. This an excellent book that combines European and Ottoman sources and should be considered the most current work on this topic. As such it has been used extensively in this study. See also Ali Fuad Erden, Birinci Dünya Savaşında Suriye Hatıraları [Syrian Memoirs during the First World War] (Istanbul: Iş Bankası, 2003), 95: “Everyone feared Cemal Pasha. . . .” 12 Youssef Mouwad, “Jamal Pacha, en Une Version Libanaise: l’Usage Positif d’une Legende Noire.” In The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Olaf Farschid, Manfed Kropp, Stephan Dahne (Beirut: Orient Institut, 2006), 425–446. 13 For a recent useful overview of the historiography see, Ömer Turan, “Turkish Historiography of the First World War,” Middle East Critique 23, no. 2 (2014): 241–257.

Introduction

enemies of Islam for the shedding of the pure Turkish blood, with the desert and town Arabs in his train. . . .14

The early republican press frequently referred to Islam as “an Arab religion.” Mustafa Kemal endorsed the publication of a treatise entitled, There is no Religion, Just Nationality: My Turkishness is my Religion.15 Thus Arabs became in a very real sense the “essential other” for the nascent Turkish Republic: In order to fortify Turkishness as the basic historical consciousness of the new citizen, the “traitorous Arabs” who had “stabbed the Turks in the back” became the ideological cement for the new radical westernizing ideology.16

This mindset is reflected in four of the five memoirs used in this volume. Falih Rıfkı with his scathing irony about how “foreign” the Arab lands were for Turks, Ali Fuad with his firm conviction that the “Arab officers were planning to poison the Turks in their sleep,” Naci Kıcıman with his frequent references to “barelegged Arabs who were spilling the blood of Anatolian lads,” and finally Münevver Ayaşlı, who treats the population of Beirut very like a British memsahib would have treated Indian subjects of the British raj, are all imbued with some aspect or other of the mentality described above. The one exception is Hüseyin Kazım, who places the blame for the loss of Arab lands squarely on the shoulders of corrupt and incompetent Ottoman officials. The five memoirs used in this book were each chosen for a specific purpose. Falih Rıfkı was Cemal Pasha’s close aid and an eyewitness to his policies in the region. Moreover, he also represents a typical example of the post-imperial Turkish mindset regarding the Ottoman past. From his texts, I chose Zeytindağı in particular because it is beautifully written, and is therefore a pleasure to translate. Ali Fuad was Cemal’s “nuts and bolts man” who actually administered the Fourth Army zone. His memoir was chosen because Ali Fuad was an 14 Talha Çiçek, “Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Ders Kitapları Çerçevesinde Türk Ulus Kimliği Inşası ve ‘Arap Ihaneti’” [The Construction of Turkish National Identity in the Light of Early Republican School Textbooks and “Arab treason”], Divan 17 (2012): 169–188. Çiçek is quoting a school history textbook from 1931. 15 Şükrü Hanioğlu, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 63. The work in question is Ruşeni Barkın, Din Yok Milliyet Var: Benim Dinim, Benim Türklüğümdür. 16 Çiçek, “Erken Cumhuriyet,” 181

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atypical example of a Turkish officer of the time: he was a hard-headed realist and a dreamer who likened himself to the legendary figure of the French Revolution, Saint-Just. Hüseyin Kazım appears in these pages because he was an exceptional character. A member of the Ottoman elite, the son of a legendary long-term governor of Trabzon, and a founder member of the CUP who fell out with his erstwhile comrades. He was also exceptional in that he was the only one of the five who abstained from taking an active part in the politics of the republican era. Naci Kıcıman’s memoir was chosen because it is both a memoir and a biography. The memoir is as much about Naci Kıcıman himself as it is about his legendary commander, Fahreddin Pasha, the defender of Medina. It is also a typical example of the “stab in the back syndrome,” which will be explained below. I chose Münevver Ayaşlı because of the fact that her memoir is one of the very few eyewitness accounts of the last days of the Turks in Syria written by a woman. Furthermore, her memoirs were written decades after the events and yet represent a remarkable feat of memory judging by their impressive accuracy. The memoirs that I have used fall into the category of what Philipp Wirtz refers to in his insightful book as “post-Ottoman memoirs,” given the fact that they were all written and published in the context of Kemalist Turkey. As he points out, memoir writers often wrote as a result of the urge to “bear witness,” or “to set the record straight.”17

Some comments on the use of memoirs and the concept of “collective memory” There is an extensive literature on autobiography, describing its impact on the structure of collective memory and its contribution to the formation of collective identity.18 It would be beyond the scope of this study to attempt 17 Philipp Wirtz, Depicting the Ottoman Empire in Turkish Autobiographies. Images of Past World (New York: Routledge, 2017), 23, 33. 18 David Middleton and Derek Edwards, eds., Collective Remembering: Inquiries in Social Construction (London: Sage Publications, 1990); Dorthe Bernsten and David C. Rubin, eds., Understanding Autobiographical Memory. Theories and Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); James W. Pennebaker, Dario Paez, Bernard Rime, eds., Collective Memory of Political Events (New Jersey: Mahwah, 1997); Paul Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 59–71; Robin Ostle,

Introduction

an exhaustive theoretical treatment of the subject. I will limit myself to a few very brief observations that will have a direct bearing on the memoirs discussed here. In the words of the pioneering doyen of collective memory studies Maurice Halbwachs: Collective memory differs from history in at least two respects. It is a current of continuous thought whose continuity is not at all artificial for it retains from the past only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping the memory alive. . . . It provides the group a selfportrait that unfolds through time, since it is an image of the past, and allows the group to recognize itself through the total succession of images.19

The memoirs studied here are indeed a very good reflection of the “self-portrait” of the late Ottoman personages and their “images of the past.” Memoirs as a historical source for the last years of the “atrak” in the Arab lands are indeed indispensable, with the proviso that they be used without any illusions as to their “objectivity.” Memoirs are by their very nature subjective, and demand, in the words of one of major thinkers of the subject, some form of “autobiographical pact” between the author and the reader whereby the reader will be free to “look for differences (errors, deformations etc.)” with the historical record.20 Everyone thought they were making history or at the very least providing testimony for future generations. In a recent study on genocide denial in Turkey, Müge Göçek notes: “The main limitation of memoirs as a historical source is that it is hard to move beyond the personal idiosyncrasies of individuals in general and their political orientation in particular.”21 Yet it is precisely those “idiosyncrasies” and “political orientations” that are my concern here. As Philip Dwyer has pointed out, the actual act of writing down what is remembered can transform what was in fact a subjective impression into a “historical reality.” “In this manner, memoirists become mythmakers, Ed de Moor, and Stefan Wild, eds., Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1998). 19 Maurice Halbwachs, excerpt from “The Collective Memory,” in The Collective Memory Reader, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 139–155. 20 Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte Autobiographique, accessed January 12, 2017, www. edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/1896026/mod_resource/content/1/lejeune_pacte autobiographique-pacte_1.pdf. 21 Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence Against the Armenians 1789–2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 54.

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creating records that not only influence the manner in which readers see the past, but also how historians interpret the past.” All five of the memoirists in this volume were very self-consciously writing for posterity. All five texts to be cited here were, again to echo Dwyer, “remembered, restructured, and filtered by time.” As he points out, what the writers of the memoirs think is worth remembering shapes the “cultural memory” of the future. The writers of the memoirs used in the present volume are very much a product of the “cultural memory” of the Kemalist state.22 All five memoirs analyzed in this book have a political agenda. Some memoirs are indeed in self-conscious dialogue with one another. Hüseyin Kazım specifically states that he wrote in order to “expose the lies of Cemal Pasha.” It is important to know when the memoirs were written, and the historical context in which they were published. All memoirs also have a projected public, an audience for whom they are intended. Falih Rıfkı’s Zeytindağı was first published in 1932. Meanwhile, Falih Rıfkı had taken the surname Atay and gone on to write books and articles of a panegyric nature lauding Atatürk as a godlike leader. Zeytindağı, therefore, is very much a product of an early republican mindset which saw separation from the Arab lands as a blessing. Falih Rıfkı was very close to the Cemal Pasha and was an eyewitness to some of the period’s key events. Yet, Rıfkı is extremely cynical regarding what he calls “Ottoman Imperialism.” Rıfkı refers to Enver in extremely negative terms as an “empty head covered in pomaded skin” yet always refers to Cemal with the utmost (if sometimes somewhat grudging) respect, reflecting the various cliques and clientele networks that had evolved around the Enver–Talat–Cemal triumvirate. The Palestine front was the last stand of the Ottomans in the Arab lands. The critical battles waged between the Ottomans and the British in this area were to mark the collective memories of the last generation of Ottomans. The political climate at the time of the memoirs’ publication is also significant. For example, although Falih Rıfkı fitted in fine with the air de temps in the heyday or Kemalism, it is no wonder that Hüseyin Kazım’s memoirs were published only after his death in 1934, given the unabashed anti-Kemalism of the writer. Hüseyin Kazım is an exceptional figure in many ways. Firstly, unlike almost all the civilian and military officials on the Palestine–Syria front, he did not join the nationalists in Ankara, nor did he go on to hold prominent 22 Philip Dwyer, “Making Sense of the Muddle: War Memoirs and the Culture of Remembering,” in War Stories. The War Memoir in History and Literature, ed. Philip Dwyer (New York: Bergahn, 2017), 1–27.

Introduction

positions in the new Turkish state. After returning from Beirut, he became a member of the penultimate Ottoman parliament when he was an MP for the province of Aydın. In 1920, he was elected to the post of Deputy Speaker. In 1921 he was part of the Istanbul government’s official delegation in the Bilecik negotiations that attempted to find some middle ground between Istanbul and the nationalists in Ankara. The negotiations failed and the Istanbul delegation was “invited” to come to Ankara. Hüseyin Kazım recounts feeling that he was treated as a hostage. In fact, he was very critical of Mustafa Kemal and the new regime, going so far as to state in his memoirs that Kemal created “a new form of oppression and despotism called the republic.”23 He wrote two versions of his memoirs, one that ends in 1929 and another, ending in 1930. The second text was written specifically to answer accusations against its author. He openly refers to Mustafa Kemal’s epic speech, the Nutuk, where Kazım was, as he states, falsely accused of being a defender of the sultanate. His self-defense is scathing, going so far as to refer to the iconic text as “a masterpiece of lies and distortion” (şah-eser-i kezb-u tahrif). It is therefore no wonder that his memoirs were only published after his death in 1934.24 Ali Fuad [Erden] states in the introduction to his memoirs that he “waited forty years which is two generations” before publishing his writing. He was clearly concerned about protecting the name of Cemal and others who were involved in the last days of Ottoman rule in Syria. He clearly states that “Cemal Pasha was my Commander and will always be my Commander.”25 Münevver Ayaşlı was writing some forty years after 23 Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, Meşrutiyettden Cumhuriyete Hatıralarım [My Memoirs from the Constitutional Period to the Republic], ed. Ismail Kara. (Istanbul: Dergah, 2000), 123. 24 Ibid., 190, 223. In 1927, Mustafa Kemal delivered a mammoth five-day parliament speech, the Nutuk (October 15–20), which amounted to an apologia of everything dealing with the founding of the republic. In this speech there are three negative references to Hüseyin Kazım. See footnote 35 by the editor, Ismail Kara. For one of the rare critical evaluations of Nutuk see Hülya Adak, “National Myths and Self Narrations: Mustafa Kemal’s Nutuk and Halide Edib’s memories and the Turkish Ordeal,” South Atlantic Monthly 102, nos. 2/3 (2003): 509–528. The memoirs of Kazim Karabekir, one the leading commanders of the Anatolian resistance and an opponent of what he saw as Kemal’s dictatorial inclinations, were in large part a rebuttal of the Nutuk, to the point where one prominent late-Ottomanist called it the “anti-Nutuk.” See Erik Jan Zürcher, “Young Turk Memoirs as a Historical Source: Kazim Karabekir’s ‘Istiklal Harbimiz,’” Middle Eastern Studies 22, no. 4 (1986): 562–570. 25 Philipp Wirtz, Depicting the Late Ottoman Empire in Turkish Autobiographies, 22–34. Wirtz rightly points out the importance of “forewords” or “introductions” as key to understanding the context of a late Ottoman memoirs.

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the events she described and thus her text is very much imbued with the conservative world view of a first-generation republican woman. Her somewhat facile snobbery is interesting as she makes her judgments less along ethnic lines but focuses more on class. Thus, the Lebanese merchants are “unctuous and toadying” while the Sursocks are very “convenable” (kibar) and it is a sign of her family’s social standing that Linda Sursock “would come for coffee” at Ayaşlı’s home. I have used the memoirs as sources for a study of intellectual, not military, history. In this regard (particularly in relation to the memoirs of Kıcıman and Erden), I have not translated large tracts of detailed military operations. I am more interested in passages that illustrate the mindset of the actors involved. Also, there is much repetition which I have chosen to omit. Another point that needs clarification is the manner in which I have handled the actual process of translation itself. Jay Winter refers to the ways in which Henri Barbusse’s novel Le Feu (1916) was “sanitized” in its English translation in 1917, where references to soldiers as “victims and executioners” was softened because “language codes precluded direct translation and silenced the difficult moral judgement. . . .”26 I have tried to avoid euphemistic censorship and sensationalism while striving to give the actual “flavor” of the Turkish original.

Turks and Arabs: an uncomfortable symbiosis In the memoirs covered for this book, I came across a contradictory worldview regarding the Arabs and Arab lands in the memoirs of Ottoman individuals who were in the Arab region during the last years of the Empire. The contradiction lies in the constant reference to the “loss” of the Arab lands, yet they all express a deep sense of alienation and an ever present feeling of “them” and “us.” Yet the “us,” although essentially meaning Turks, remains ambivalent, sometimes including the Muslim Arabs and even the Christians. Halil Halid Bey was one of the staunchest defenders of Turkish-Arab brotherhood, waxing lyrical about the special relationship between the two races and declaring that

26 Jay Winter, “War Memoirs, Witnessing and Silence,” in Dwyer, War Stories, 27–47.

Introduction

. . . the Arab and the Turk cannot live without each other. . . . The Arab race was a like a diamond that had been broken and scattered into a thousand pieces. It was the Turks who first realized how valuable they would be if united. After they became united as brothers in religion they came to the Arab lands and helped unite all the pieces. Verily, the crown of the Turkish sultanate was emblazoned and glowed with the brilliance of all these pieces of the diamond that was united.27

There is a very clear idea of the “otherness” of the Arabs, which is sometimes expressed in downright racist stereotyping. For example, Falih Rıfkı uses the phrase “hair of the Arab” (Arap saçı) meaning “to make something tangled and confused.”28 Rıfkı’s disparaging references to the Arabs of Medina who had made a vocation out of exploiting pilgrims, and his conviction that Istanbul was the true Muslim city that had made worship into an art form, are very similar to the language one hears today from Turkish hajis returning from pilgrimage. When Zeytindağı was written, Turkey was firmly looking west and the “Orient” was a thing of the past. In subsequent editions of Zeytindağı, Rıfkı’s attitude would become even more severe: “Ottoman history has been a world of lies. Lying is not shameful in the Orient.”29 Evidently, by the time he wrote and published Zeytindağı, Falih Rıfkı had moved much closer to the official line of Turkish Kemalist nationalism. Yet, some Ottoman officials had a very self-critical view of the Turkish presence in Arab lands. Hüseyin Kazım was a very distinguished example. While he served as the Vali (Governor) of Aleppo, Kazım observed that the Ottoman officials collaborated with the local notables to create an alliance of “mutual interest” in order to exploit the local population. In Aleppo Kazım became something of a local celebrity. Appointed as Vali in 1910, he became the nexus of what can be called the “Hüseyin Kazım Affair.” Seen by the emerging liberal middle class of Aleppo as the new reformist Vali

27 Çerkesşeyhi Zade Halil Halid, Türk ve Arap [The Turk and the Arab] (Cairo: n.p., 1912, reprinted edition, Istanbul: Melissa Press, 2016), 61–62. Halil Halid was an interesting figure. After teaching Turkish to British diplomats at Cambridge for over ten years, he became a devoted propagandist for the Young Turk regime. He later served as the Ottoman Consul in Bombay. 28 See below, p. 12. 29 Falih Rıfkı Atay, Zeytindağı, online edition, accessed March 11, 2017, www.kitapsevenler. com, 7–8.

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replacing Fahreddin Pasha, an Ottoman military man of the old school, Kazım came to be known as “our Vali / Walina.” Unusually for an Ottoman official, he spoke fluent Arabic. On the occasion of his triumphant return from Istanbul, where he had gone to defend his reformist policies, A large crowd greeted him at the train station. Troops in formation and a band made up of the students from the College de La Terre Sainte serenaded his arrival. Refusing to board a carriage, Hüseyin Kazım walked to the governorate building with the procession stopping to deliver two speeches on the way.30

There followed a flurry of telegrams to and fro between Aleppo and Istanbul, with which the traditional notables of the city did their best to assure his downfall. They ultimately succeeded and he has recalled in 1911. In a letter to a friend shortly before his recall Kazım stated the following: . . . As far as I can see the government made two big mistakes here. Firstly it did nothing to confirm its existence, and secondly it did not even think about pleasing the people. . . . Since I have been here I have tried to win over the people. . . . I think that to a certain extent I have succeeded in making them more hopeful towards the state. Now everyone has understood that there is a government that defends the weak, is in favor of justice, and is trying to heal old wounds.31

Yet, even with Hüseyin Kazım there is an undertone of a belief in his entitlement to rule. With reference to Cemal Pasha’s oppressive rule in Syria, Kazım states on at least two occasions in his memoirs that it was because of Cemal Pasha’s cruelty that Syria was “lost.”32 It is difficult to know what to make of the episode in his memoirs where he recounts how he was approached by some Beirutis who declared that they were prepared to go to Jerusalem to tell General Allenby that “they wanted to remain under Ottoman rule.” There is no mention in any literary source

30 Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 110. We will meet Fahreddin Pasha below in the section on the siege of Medina. 31 Ismail Kara, “Halep’den Mektup Var” [There is a letter from Aleppo], Derin Tarih (January 2017): 3–6. 32 Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, Meşrutiyettden Cumhuriyete Hatıralarım, 139, 143.

Introduction

of such a proposal. On the other hand, Kazım is not given to invention; if anything, his memoirs are somewhat given to understatement.33 Hüseyin Kazım’s most remarkable achievement was his idea to compile an encyclopedic work, Lubnan: Mubahis Ilmiyya wa Ijtimaiyya (Lebanon: Scientific and Social Research), published in August 1918 and prepared under the protection of the Mutasarrıf Ismail Hakkı Bey, probably at the instigation of Hüseyin Kazım who had very close relations with him.34 This multi-authored work, comprising articles by Arab, American, and Turkish authors, stands as an enigmatic piece of scientific compilation of knowledge concerning a very broad spectrum of subjects. People, geography, religions, agriculture, and monuments are all covered in twenty chapters. The editor and author of two of the articles was Father Louis Sheikho, a Jesuit priest with no reason to love the Turks, as he and his order had been the target of systematic harassment by Cemal Pasha and Azmi Bey, the Vali of Beirut, who deeply distrusted the Jesuits as a result of their well-known pro-French leanings.35 The enigma that surrounds the work lies in its timing. The volume was approved by Cemal at the end of 1917 when Baghdad and Jerusalem had already fallen (March 11 and December 9) and published in August 1918, literally weeks before the Allied occupation of Beirut. What was the aim of such a work? Carla Eddé’s hypothesis regarding this issue is as follows: This body of knowledge was nothing other than a continuation of the war by other means, even if these means had to be adapted to the changing conjectures of war for the main protagonists. [They] were the Ottoman officials, and the local actors’ ideologies of the Town [Beirut] and the Mountain with all their permeability and nuances.36 33 Ibid., 142–143. 34 Carla Eddé, “Le Savoir Encyclopedique ou la Continuation de la Guerre par d’Autres Moyens,” paper presented at the symposium La Première Guerre Mondiale au Proche Orient: Experiences, Saviors, Memoires, Université St. Joseph, Beirut, November 3–4, 2014. Quoted with the permission of the author. The work was in Arabic and Turkish. 35 Christian Tautel and Pierre Wittouck S. J., eds., Le Peuple Libanais dans La Tourmente de la Grande Guerre 1914–1918 d’après les Archives des Peres Jésuites au Liban (Beirut: Presses Universitaire St. Joseph, 2015), 63. A diary entry by Father Shiekho for February 2, 1917 reads: “The Turks, if they are victorious, are determined to crush the Christians in their empire. They are prepared to use any means necessary to re-establish their wounded authority in Syria and Arabia. Cemal Pasha is travelling the country and striving to revive Muslim fanaticism.” 36 Eddé, “Le savoir encyclopedique.”

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It is likely that Hüseyin Kazım served as the go-between in linking Sheiko and Father Antoine Salhani, another Jesuit, with Azmi Bey and Ismail Hakkı Bey.37 Kazım, apart from writing the Preface, contributed two articles to this gargantuan task by writing both “Islam” and (as he was a trained agronomist) “A scientific overview of agriculture.” Were the Ottomans hoping that they would be able to keep Lebanon as part of the Empire after the peace treaty? Was the volume intended as a document for posterity? Was it intended to serve as a blueprint for a future independent state of Lebanon? Eddé’s hypothesis regarding the issue is that “[t]his encyclopedic work turned out to be a work of propaganda for both the Ottoman Empire and the specific identity of Lebanon.”38 It is also a very important document that is very evocative of what I have referred to above as the “uncomfortable symbiosis”: an Ottoman Turkish former governor, who has chosen a life of contemplation and retreat in Lebanon, befriends a circle of Jesuit fathers, who have been harshly victimized by his own government, and convinces them to contribute to an encyclopedic work on a land that will soon be “lost” to the Turks. Hüseyin Kazım stated in the Preface to the volume: The government of Lebanon, in publishing this work, brings Lebanon to the attention of the world and exposes to the world the magnificent scenery that is typical of this Mountain, blessed with beautiful flora and fauna. The aim [of the government] can be summed up briefly as twofold, to know itself and to make itself known. This was a plan that was neglected until now. The government of Lebanon wanted to see with its own eyes the regions of this 37 Eddé, “Le savoir encyclopedique”; Henri Jalabert S. J., Jesuites au Proche-Orient Notices biographiques (Beirut: Université de Saint Joseph, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 1987), 168–69, 210–211. As Jalabert describes, “Pere Louis Sheikho (1859–1927): When the war of 1914 led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the University [St. Joseph], his services to the entire culture of the Orient earned him, with the friendship of an important member of the Young Turk Party, former Vali of Aleppo, Hüseyin Kazım Bey, the right to work in the Bibliotheque Orientale which was thus saved from pillage and ruin, together with the famous remark [about him] by Cemal Pasha during the bloody trials of the military tribunal, ‘He is the Sultan of the Arabic language.’” Antoine Salhani (1847–1941) was also an accomplished Arabist. The articles contributed by Sheikho were entitled, “Lebanese People and their Religious Affiliations. A Brief Account of Lebanese History from antiquity to the Arab Period.” He also contributed an article on Beirut. Both Sheikho and Salhani rejected a draft article on foreign schools because it contained anti-French remarks, see Eddé, “Le savoir encyclopedique.” 38 Eddé, “Le Savoir Encyclopedique.”

Introduction

land, splendid and historic, and then to care for them with all of its heart. That is what caused it to prepare this book. . . . Generally speaking, this book comprises all the studies which will find favor with all the Lebanese of all walks of life.39

With these words Hüseyin Kazım was elegantly summarizing the symbiotic feeling of not really belonging, yet belonging very much. Why would a government that was about to abandon Lebanon publish a multi-authored volume, prepared in record time? Perhaps, as put by Kazım himself, “to know itself and to make itself known.”40 The alternative explanation may have been that even in the last months of the war they expected to be at Germany’s side during the peace negotiations. This will be discussed in the last section of this introduction.

Turkish attitudes towards Arab soldiers in the Ottoman armed forces as reflected in the memoirs According to Mehmet Beşikçi, whose book remains a leading reference point on the issue of Ottoman military mobilization in the Great War, statistics regarding the proportion of Arab troops in the Ottoman forces are“fragmentary.” In the Yıldırım Army Group, formed in the last year of the war, the deputy chief of staff noted in a report that 66% of the troops were Turkish and 26% were Arab. In his evaluation of the proportion of Arabs in the Ottoman forces, Beşikçi extrapolates from the general proportion of the population of each ethnic group in the Empire to their proportions in the armed forces: “out of about totally 23 million people in 1914, the approximate ratios of major groups would be as follows: 47 percent Turks and Anatolian Muslims, 37 percent Arabs, 8 percent Ottoman Greeks, 7 percent Armenians and 1 percent Jews.”41 Arab troops were sent to distant fronts such as Gallipoli and Eastern Anatolia. Yet, the attitude of the Ottoman high command toward Arab 39 Lubnan, Preface (Dibaje). Yet it is interesting that there is no mention of the volume in his memoirs. 40 Ibid. Ismail Kara, who edited his memoirs, claims that “[after] the armistice in 1918 when the Ottoman state lost Syria, he refused the position of Vali of Beirut which was offered to him by the locals and returned to Istanbul.” Meşrutiyettden Cumhuriyete Hatıralarım, 24. This is not mentioned in the memoirs. 41 Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 253.

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troops was often disparaging. A recent official publication from the Turkish General Staff Military History Department declares: The Turk who by nature possesses many of the military virtues, is perfect, brave, undemanding, dauntless, obedient, submissive and genuinely loyal. As for the Arab, he is far from being this valuable. Arab troops never carried out, were unable to carry out, the duty expected of them. . . . From the point of view of purity, loyalty, determination, readiness to sacrifice their lives, resilience and courage they were inferior to the Turks. The nucleus of the Turkish army was made up of heroic children of the Anatolian plateau. . . . The Muslim Arab units were not suited to the needs of warfare, either defensive or offensive. For this reason, all Arab units needed to be reinforced by Turkish units in a proportion of 1/3.42

General Liman von Sanders, commander in chief of the Palestine front, had a more moderate view as to the relative capacities of Turkish and Arab soldiers: The Turkish soldier, particularly the Anatolian, is excellent fighting material. Well looked after and sufficiently nourished, properly trained and calmly led these men will accomplish the highest aims. A large part of the Arabs may be made into good usable soldiers, if from the very beginning of their service they are treated with strictness and justice.43

Thus, even in the German general’s estimation, the difference between Turkish and Arab soldiers was patent. Regarding the military units in the Fourth Army district, the official military record notes that in January 1917, the Fourth Army Command had asked for “10,000 reinforcement troops of Turkish blood” (Türk soylu ikmal eri). In Mount Lebanon, it was stated, “[i]n the 43rd Division in Mount Lebanon the battalions were made up of 670 soldiers. They were all Arabs from the zone of Beirut.”44 These records amount to an official account of 42 Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi, IV. Cilt., 1. Kısım., Sina Filistin Cephesi, Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüt Başkanlığı [The Turkish War in the First World War, vol. IV, part 1: The Sinai and Palestine Fronts, Directorate of Military History and Strategic Studies] (Ankara: Genelkurmay Başkanlığı Harp Tarihi Dairesi, 1979), 336. 43 Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1927), 191. “Liman Pasha” served for five years as the head of the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire. 44 Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi, 483–484. The official military history gives the proportion of Arab troops in all units.

Introduction

the military collective memory of World War I. All statements about the Arab troops, such as the above, are anonymous, but they are footnoted with references to the documents in the official archives of the Directorate of Military History and Strategic Studies (ATASE). Another curious feature of these volumes is their similarity to the memoirs of Ali Fuad cited below. Regarding the situation of the Fourth Army, the records state: The GHQ was in a very critical situation, it was like a buoy floating in a sea of rebellion. . . . In the summer of 1915 nearly all its effectives had been sent to other fronts. All that was left in Syria was the 23rd Division and the coast guard. All of them were Arabs. Most of their officers were Arabs. . . . Propaganda was rife among the Arab officers and it was heard that the Turkish officers were to be killed one by one in the night and the revolutionary committees would take over, declare the independence of Syria, and join with the French.45

The image of a “buoy floating in a sea of rebellion,” and the Turkish officers murdered in their sleep is an almost verbatim repetition of Ali Fuad’s memoirs.46 It is highly likely that the anonymous retired officers who compiled these volumes used contemporary memoirs like those of Ali Fuad and Cemal Pasha in their work. While the surrender of the British forces under General Townsend was being negotiated in Kut in Mesopotamia in April 1916, the Ottoman General Halil Pasha stated that in the matter of the exchange of prisoners, “he would insist on exchanging Britons for Turks, Indians for Arabs.”47 Evidently the Turkish commander had the same racial sliding scale in mind as the British. Many of the soldiers of the famed 19th Division in Gallipoli who were “ordered to die” by Mustafa Kemal were Arabs. Together with their Turkish counterparts, they stemmed the critical Anzac offensive on April 25, 1915. Most of them did die. It is interesting that in the preface of Edward J. Erikson’s famous book, we meet the same mindset seen above:

45 Ibid., 692. 46 See below, p. 98. 47 Neil Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War. The Arabs, The British, and the Remaking of the Middle East in WWI (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 93.

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This book is about the Turkish Army, although it carries the title A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War. . . . Although it is true that . . . many of the subject peoples, such as Kurds and Arabs, served in the army, the essence of the Army was Turkish. . . . That is why, in this book, the term Turkish Army is used instead of the more proper term Ottoman Army. . . .48

On February 25 Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal telephoned divisional headquarters and declared: Please Sir, we must ask [a favor] from the Commander Pasha [The Minister of War, Enver Pasha]: The regiments numbered 72 and 77 that were given under my command are all Arabs. . . . Some of them are Yezidi and Nusayri, who are against the war. Their [military] training is also limited. Let them take these [regiments] back and return my two previous regiments that were composed of genuinely Turkish boys (halis Türk delikanlıları).49

The request was refused and the 77th Regiment lost 700 men (nearly its entire force) in the first day of battle. In October 1915, Cemal Pasha, partly to combat the ill will engendered by the executions of the Arab patriots in Beirut, arranged for a goodwill tour for some thirty prominent Arab intellectuals from Syria. The aim was to show Arab-Turkish solidarity in the war effort. Mustafa Kemal took impish pleasure in exposing this delegation of Syrian literati to enemy fire during a visit to their Arab brethren in the trenches. His aide wrote with glee how [the] dignitaries in the group became alarmed and panicked as a result of violent explosions, followed by the whistling sound of shrapnel flying through the air. Immediately they turned pale. Instinctively they looked to their horses. . . . When they pronounced the word yallah [let’s go!], the second wave of bombardment had already started, and this time the shrapnel was coming pretty close. It was looking for the man whose number was up. . . . After our guests left, my commander [Mustafa Kemal] had a good laugh

48 Edward J. Erikson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001), xvi. 49 Ayhan Aktar, “A propaganda tour organized by Djemal Pasha: The Arab literati’s visit to the Gallipoli Front, 18–23 October 1915,” in Syria in World War I: Politics, Economy, and Society, ed. Talha Çiçek (New York: Routledge, 2016), 61–86.

Introduction

when I described to him how the code-word yallah had an accelerating effect on them.50

It is remarkable that the same disparaging superiority is seen in the memoirs of Falih Rıfkı, Naci Kıcıman, and Ali Fuad, which will be discussed below. There is at least one memoir written by an Arab officer in the Ottoman army that gives the lie to the image of “Arab unreliability” or “Arab cowardice.” Abdallah Dabbous was from a well-to-do Beiruti family and fought as an NCO in a machine gun unit in the Ottoman forces.51 In the battles for Amman in March–April 1918 he took part in a critical fight in the village of Shunet Nimrin. He would have been part of the Ottoman 48th Division under the command of Colonel Iskender Bey who defended the village from April 30 to May 4.52 Dabbous gives a very cool headed account of the engagement, where the hill of Nimrine changed hands several times: We received the order to go back to our initial position the hill of Nimrine. During the afternoon our enemies started to show up, one thousand men on their horses. Here we recognized that we are not more than victims and that our end had come. When the troops approached we opened fire. This situation continued until sunset. The commander ordered us to retreat and stop firing.53

Dabbous’s unit then took part in the final days of the retreat towards Deraa during which they camped at a village called Ramla, some two hours from Deraa, where they were surrounded by the enemy: The luckiest troops made their way to Deraa but our troop met with the Australian army on the way. We made for the sand hills above the village and began to open fire. The enemy successfully surrounded us and we became like a point in a circle. We were out of bullets and 40 men were killed, so it was useless to stay and continue the fight. I gave the order to pull back and we regrouped in the square of the village. We were almost 200 soldiers. I told 50 Ibid. 51 Abdallah Dabbous, Muzakkerat Abdallah Dabbous [The Memoirs of Abdallah Dabbous] (Beirut: n.p., 1993). My thanks to his great-granddaughter, Sara Itani, for bringing this source to my attention. My thanks also to Sara Itani and Theresa Mikhael for the translation of the passages cited here. 52 Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, 396. 53 Dabbous, Muzakkerat Abdallah Dabbous, 135. This would have been the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. See also Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, 395.

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the officers to come and told them that we faced a danger worse than the foreigners. Those Bedouin look at you with hatred and they are waiting for you to show weakness so they can start their extermination.54

As most of his superior officers were either killed or wounded, Dabbous was put in charge of what was left of his unit. When they were surrounded by Bedouin, Dabbous ordered his troops to mount the machine gun and fire over the enemy’s heads. He then called out to them, “You the Arabs! I am going to give you one minute to leave and go back to your homes.” Here I ordered the soldiers to start firing over their heads. The Bedouin were so afraid that they ran to their homes. The soldiers started celebrating.55

Nonetheless, Dabbous and his superiors eventually decided to surrender and met up with the British cavalry: Two horsemen began to approach us slowly, and when they were fifty meters from us they signaled us to put our guns down. As they came up I told them I could speak English so they felt safe and we continued on our way.56

Eventually, after Dabbous and his men were taken prisoner, he was summoned to the tent of the commanding officer: I entered a luxurious tent where you can find newspapers, a radio, a telephone. . . . The officer [asked me], “Are you the officer of these nonunified troops?” I replied, “No, I am not, I am the leader of a machine gun company, and the commander of these troops is in the building beside us and we do not know if he is going to live or if he is going to die. He said, “What brought you here so you have caused the death of 40 of your soldiers and 40 of ours? If you had surrendered, you would have saved them.” I said, “I am an Arab and a soldier in the Ottoman army, and as an Ottoman I am doing my duty like the Turks and the rest of the population.” He said, “Would this prevent you from joining the Arab Army? I think they need a man like you who is fluent in English and also an experienced machine gunner.”

54 Dabbous, Muzakkerat Abdallah Dabbous, 136–137. His account is accurate as the Turks definitely preferred to surrender to the British rather than Arabs. See also Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, 446. 55 Dabbous, Muzakkerat Abdallah Dabbous, 138. 56 Ibid., 139.

Introduction

I said, “No Sir, I cannot fight against the Ottomans after a long and harsh time fighting for them.”57

In fact, very few Arab officers defected to the British or the Sharifian forces. The majority remained loyal to the end, serving with distinction on various fronts. This was due to “a mix of professionalism, camaraderie, suspicion of British and French intentions, lack of confidence in the opportunistic leadership of the Arab Revolt, and antipathy towards its feudal-tribal social base and reactionary program.”58 The initial British effort, soon after the outbreak of the Arab Revolt, to “turn” Arab Ottoman prisoners of war, officers and enlisted men, was a complete failure. On August 1, 1916 the first group of prisoners brought from India arrived in Jeddah. Upon their arrival they refused to get off the ship stating that they would not fight against the Turks. They were sent back to Egypt. Reginald Wingate, the Governor General of the Sudan referred to the episode as a “fiasco.” A few months later, in November, the British had to force Ottoman prisoners on board ship at Bombay at bayonet point. However, later in the war a core of ex-Ottoman Arabs would join the Arab Army.59 Some, like the key commander Jafar Al Askari, would have a critical role in training Arabs as regular troops.60 Al Askari was taken prisoner by the British in 1916 and after he decided to join the Sharifian cause, he was set the task of “turning” Arab prisoners of war to the Arab side. In his memoirs he recorded that he did not have much success. Arab officers were not inclined to change sides as many feared for their families, or they were in camps where they were mixed in with Turks, “[whose] presence acted as something of an antidote to my exhortations-my eloquence was of no avail.”61 In fact, the great majority of the Arab officers in the Ottoman army stayed loyal right to the end. Recent research has shown that the received wisdom of mass treason is simply incorrect. “The Ottoman Arab officers

57 Ibid., 140. The officer who spoke to Dabbous was, most likely, Major General Chayton, the New Zealander in command of the Anzac troops. See Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, 439. 58 Faulkner, Lawrence of Arabia’s War, 186. 59 Eliezer Tauber, The Arab Movements in World War I (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 104–105. 60 Jafar Al Askari, A Soldier’s Story. From Ottoman Rule to Independent Iraq: The Memoirs of Jafar Al Askari (London: Arabian Publishing, 2003). 61 Ibid., 111.

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did not desert en masse. Instead, most of them fought until the very end.”62 This was due to a mix of professionalism, a feeling of shared destiny with Turkish officers, and a long period of training in Ottoman military academies. In fact, some Arab officers actually volunteered to fight in Mustafa Kemal’s forces against the Greeks in the war of 1919–1922.63 Among the other ranks, given the brutality of Cemal’s regime, the rate of Arab desertion from the Ottoman armed forces remained low. The massive desertions predicted by the British Arab Bureau in Cairo never materialized. According to British sources, out of a total of 7,233 Ottoman deserters and prisoners in 1917, 64 percent were Turks, 27 percent were Arabs.64 The Harb Mecmuası (The War Gazette) was a heavily illustrated propaganda magazine that was published with the aim of garnering support for the war effort among the Turks on the home front.65 Eyal Ginio has shown that the photographs of Arab soldiers contained within the magazine portrayed them as loyal, courageous, and ready to follow the lead of their Turkish officers. Moreover, units like the camel corps (hecinsuvar alayı) received special emphasis as they preserved the traditional Bedouin way of life, that of riding camels, and yet had been taught to combine this traditional skill with the use of sophisticated weaponry while facing the British. “This was clearly presented as an accomplishment by their Ottoman officers and instructors.”66 Thus, for the home front (or whoever else who could read Turkish), the Arab soldiers were presented in a way that was the very opposite of the way they were actually seen by their Turkish officers at the front. Some officers did, however, develop a feeling of genuine respect for their Bedouin fighters. In Ateş ve Güneş, the book that Falih Rıfkı wrote immediately after his return from Syria and which served as the first draft of Zeytindağı, we see a much more moderate tone regarding Arabs. In the section taken from the notebooks of an unnamed officer, the Bedouin are

62 Mesut Uyar, “Ottoman Arab Officers between Nationalism and Loyalty During the First World War,” War in History 20, no. 2 (2013): 527–544. 63 Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, 256. 64 Ibid. 65 Eyal Ginio, “Presenting the Desert to the Ottomans during WWI; The Pespective of the Harb Mecmuası,” New Perspectives on Turkey 33 (2005): 43–63. 66 Ibid., 59. See Plate 9 in this volume depicting the officers of the Ottoman Camel Corps.

Introduction

portrayed as loyal and courageous fighters. The unnamed officer recounts how he came to make the acquaintance of a Bedouin sheikh: At first I was not much impressed by his appearance. But when he spoke he was so brave, so frank, and inspired such confidence, I did not hesitate to share my plan [of action] with him.

The same officer also recounted how he had the Sheikh read a passage from the Qur’an to fortify the morale of his troops before they went into action. The Bedouin fighters went on to acquit themselves very well during the attack on the Suez Canal, inflating animal skins to support them as they could not swim.67 In the final months of the war, and as the Arab Revolt gathered momentum, the discord between Arab and Turkish troops became discernible. Liman von Sanders noted in his memoirs: The [Turkish] troops disliked to receive Arab soldiers though they might be well trained, because they no longer trusted them, since the Arab movement in favor of the British was progressing.68

The Holy War “Made in Germany”69 On November 14, 1914, The Shaikh ul Islam of the Ottoman Empire officially declared a Holy War (jihad).70 As the Sultan was also officially the Caliph of Islam and at least nominally the leader of the (Sunni) Muslim world, the Ottoman state had a pivotal role in the world of Islam. The declaration was made largely at the instigation of Germany, where many decision makers believed that a declaration of Holy War on the part of their Ottoman ally would lead to mass uprisings of Muslims in the empires of Britain, France, and Russia. Yet, it soon became evident that the mass upheavals would not occur and that even among Arab Ottoman troops Muslim solidarity was thin on the ground. A leading German who participated in the Suez Canal Campaign commented that the performance of the Arab troops was “a squalid fiasco.” Yet, the same observer later stated, 67 Falih Rıfkı Atay, Ateş ve Güneş [Sun and Fire] (Istanbul: Pozitif Press, 2009), 69, 72, 73. 68 Sanders, Five Years in Turkey, 218. 69 This term was coined by the famous Dutch orientalist Snouck Hurgronje in his book The Holy War “Made in Germany” (New York: Putnams and Sons, 1915). 70 Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 52.

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“we did not have any Muslim deserters.”71 In the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, it was felt that shared religion would cement the already existing ties between Turks and Arabs. Cemal Pasha himself, although a totally secular individual, felt that “[t]he majority of Arabs would not hesitate to make any sacrifice in this great war for the liberation of the Muslim Caliphate.”72 In one of his numerous speeches before his reign of terror in Syria, Cemal called on the Syrian youth to support the holy war: “Together with the allies that we acquired almost by [accidental] good fortune we have not hesitated to declare jihad against those who have been the enemies of our religion for centuries.”73 The reference here to allies “acquired almost by good fortune” (adeta tesadüfün bize verdiği müttefikler) is very significant, because the Ottoman jihad was in fact a “selective jihad.” As humorously put by Sean McMeekin, “Death to Infidels Everywhere! (Unless they be Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Americans or—possibly—Italians).”74 In fact, the jihad seems to have had not much effect in the Arab lands. Quite to the contrary, the call to arms and military conscription (seferberlik or safarbarlik) came to be synonymous to ruin in much of the Arab lands, and the term became an integral part of the negative stigma of the eyyam atrak.75 The Arab troops that were taken into the Ottoman armies were there because they had no choice, not necessarily out of a feeling of Muslim brotherhood.

The execution of the martyrs and Cemal Pasha’s reign of terror Together with the famine and the safarbarlik, the other key marker of the eyyam atrak was the execution of the martyrs by Cemal Pasha in Beirut and Damascus in 1915 and 1916. In Beirut on August 21, 1915, and in Damascus and Beirut on May 6, 1916, Cemal ordered the hanging of thirty-two Arab patriots. The notorious courts martial at Aley were nothing more than show trials, with few acquittals and death sentences in absentia. Some death sentences were reduced to imprisonment, and some of 71 Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 172, 177. 72 Jamal Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1922), 144. 73 Cemal Pasha, Hatıralar (Istanbul: Iş Bankasi Yayınları, 2008), 245. 74 McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express, 123. 75 Laila Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts (Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press, 2014), 161–204.

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the accused were released after being subjected to torture: “the aged and venerable Shukri Pasha al-Ayyubi was flogged day after day within inches of his life.”76 All of the victims were prominent men, intellectuals, journalists, poets, or politicians. Among the executed there were Christians as well as Muslims. The wide spectrum of victims meant that the event would become part of the unifying foundational legend of the Lebanese state, as the hatred of Cemal would prove ecumenical. Youssef Mouawad has shown that the commemoration of Martyrs Day (May 6), beginning in 1934, was initially a bid to unite Muslims and Christians in Lebanon.77 This event was to become a watershed in Arab-Turkish relations as it became clear to most of the Arabs of the empire that the end of the road had been reached as far as loyalty to the Turks was concerned. In the memorable words of George Antonius, “Jamal’s savagery burned all bridges between Turks and Arabs.”78 Tarif Khalidi sums the situation up wonderfully: Perhaps no single political event of the war could compare with the impact of the public hangings of prominent nationalists in 1915–1916. The shock waves were felt throughout Greater Syria. . . . Anger, horror, sullen resentment were directed at Jamal Pasha. . . . This widespread anger would soon be transformed into the realization that the days of the empire were numbered.79

Jafar Al Askari, whom we have met above, declared that when he heard of the execution of many of his friends he immediately decided to join the Arab Revolt: “I made up my mind there and then to seek revenge, and to make every effort to join the Sharif of Makkah at the earliest possible opportunity.”80 A contemporary Arab notable, Salim Salaam, was to make the following statement to a high Ottoman official immediately after the war: You know what Cemal Pasha did to us in Syria. It was not enough for him to inflict persecutions, imprisonment and torture on us, but beyond this he 76 Antonius, The Arab Awakening, 202. 77 Youssef Mouawad, “1915–1918: La Grande Famine du Mont Liban,” Historia: Une Histoire du Liban des Phéniciens a Nos Jours (December 2016–January 2017): 444–445. 78 Antonius, The Arab Awakening, 190, 192. 79 Tarif Khalidi, “The Arab World,” in The Great World War, 1914–1945, vol. 2: The Peoples’ Experience, eds. J. Bourne, P. Liddle, I. Whitehead et al. (London: HarperCollins, 2001), 298. See also Fawaz, The Land of Aching Hearts, 242. 80 Al Askari, A Soldier’s Story, 30.

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had sent a great part of our men and women and children into unknown Anatolia. Therefore we hate him, and we want to take revenge by any possible opportunity.81

One of the leading figures who was arrested, Mohammad Jafar El Safa’, a prominent alim (scholar) from Jabal Amel, wrote extensively about the persecutions of Cemal Pasha. As to the reason for Cemal’s acts, he writes: [O]ne was that Jamal felt that the Free Arabs were inclined to revolution because of their traditional hatred for the Turks, and because of the great misery of the country because of the civilian and military misadministration before and during the war. Another version was that Jamal Al Saffah, because of his nature was inclined to murder and repression and was looking for an opportunity to terrorize the Secret Arab Association.82

First and foremost, in the memoirs of Cemal Pasha, it is clear that the perpetrator of the executions was entirely unrepentant and attempted to justify his actions. Cemal maintained that he was convinced that a largescale uprising was being planned in Syria and Lebanon. The French Consul in Beirut, Georges Picot (of Sykes–Picot fame) had neglected to destroy incriminating documents before he left at the beginning of the war. A member of the embassy staff informed the Ottoman authorities of the hidden compartment in the embassy which was broken into and the documents confiscated. These documents formed the basis for the prosecution of the Arab patriots for “treason.”83 One of the leading figures in this somewhat scandalous breech of diplomatic protocol, as the consulates were under the protection of the neutral American consul, was the notorious CUP hitman (fedai) Kuşcubaşı Eşref Bey. In his personal papers Eşref recounts proudly how he and his staff were responsible for finding the “evidence” to convict the accused men. The documents seized amounted to some thirty-one boxes.84 Cemal maintained in his memoirs that he refrained from using the 81 Christoph Schuman, “Individual and Collective Memories of the First World War” In The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Olaf Farschid et al. (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2006), 246–263. This statement is all the more remarkable as Salim Salaam was one of the few Lebanese notables who was actually seen as above suspicion by Cemal. 82 Mohammad Jaber El Safa, Tarikh Jabal Amel (Beirut: Dar el Nahar, 1918), 213. 83 See Fawaz, The Land of Aching Hearts, 243–249, and Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, 292–296. 84 Benjamin Fortna, The Circassian. A Life of Eşref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent (London: Hurst, 2016), 49, 172–173. This is a fascinating account

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evidence, the documents seized from the French Consulates in Beirut and Damascus, because he hoped that the nationalists could be won over to the Ottoman cause: “The policy I desired to see pursued in Syria was a policy of clemency and tolerance. I left no stone unturned to create unity of views and sentiments in all the Arab countries.” Cemal went on to state that although he had ample evidence against the suspects he refrained from pursuing them, hoping that they would see the light and rally to the banner of Islam.85 In 1913 an Arab Congress had met in Paris to discuss the future of the Arab provinces. The Ottoman government had sent official observers to the meeting. During private meetings with French officials, when Turkish officials were not present, some of the Arab delegates had made compromising declarations regarding willingness to come under French rule. These were among the documents later seized by Cemal during the war and used as evidence against the Arab patriots. “Yet a unified opposition to Istanbul did not exist and did not materialize before the Great War.”86 Yet suspicion of just such an opposition was rife even well before the war. Mahmud Nedim Bey, one of the leading Young Turks recounts a conversation in 1909 with Talat where Talat told him that he had grave suspicions about the activities of the Arab intellectuals in Istanbul: “We are not so foolish as not to see what they are after. What gets on my nerves the most is that they show us a smiling countenance, seemingly sincere and loyal, they take us for fools and laugh at us behind our backs. . . . No matter how much they smile at us, they are our opponents. . . .”87 Mahmud Nedim Bey also mentions a conversation with Abdul Hamid al Zahrawi in Istanbul before the war where he stressed that he saw the need for reform in the Arab provinces, but counseled patience and moderation. I told him, “you must not threaten us. When you want something from the government you seem to be threatening us, your attitude is almost military. You seem to be relying on the Syrians.” based largely on the personal papers of this highly controversial figure. Eşref Bey was a founding member of the Special Organization (Teşkilatı Mahsusa) that was the Ottoman intelligence service. It was also infamous for its role in the perpetuation of the Armenian Genocide. Fortna pithily refers to Eşref as having “transferable skills.” 85 Jamal Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman, 201. 86 Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts, 24–25. 87 Mahmud Nedim Bey, Arabistan’da bir Ömür: Son Yemen Valisinin Hatıraları [A Lifetime in Arabia: The Memoirs of the Last Vali of Yemen] (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 2001), 177–178.

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Zahrawi told him that they had lost patience with the government and that they “were running out of time.”88

Hasan Kayalı, in his classic book on Turkish Arab relations during the Great War stated that by ordering the executions Cemal was not overreacting to “sensational revelations” and that he was “convinced that a nationalist movement in Syria was a real, if not an imminent threat.”89 As such it had to be nipped in the bud. Recent research in the Ottoman archives has shown that Cemal wrote to Talat as early as the beginning of May 1915 informing him that he was planning to do away with Abdul Hamid al Zahrawi and the other Arab nationalists well before the courts martial at Aley even began. Zahrawi, who was a member of the Ottoman Senate, was in Istanbul at the time that Cemal decided to go after him. He wrote to Talat, asking him to send Zahrawi to Syria, but Talat hesitated, fearing that Zahrawi’s arrest would cause an uprising. However Cemal insisted that he wanted to take this opportunity to “finish him off.” Talat relented and Zahrawi was sent to Syria. Cemal used a supposed uprising that was being prepared in Sur and Sayda by Abd Al Karim al Khalil and Rida al Sulh as an excuse to persecute the Arabists. He referred to them using insulting language, telling Talat that he would prevent any uprising by, “breaking the heads of these accursed (mel’un) people.” In his letter, Cemal declared to Talat that Finally, during the Entente’s campaign in Gallipoli, they [the Arabists] assumed that the collapse of [the Ottoman] government was imminent and they began to propagandize in the vicinity of Sur, Sayda and Merc Uyun. So I put my hands on their shoulders (işte o zaman onların omuzlarına ellerimi yapıştırdım).90

Talat was right to fear an uprising over the arrest of Zahrawi. In a book published before the war, Khairallah Khairallah, a prominent Christian intellectual, lauded Zahrawi to the skies stating that he was a fine example of an Arab leader who was always ready to oppose the government. As for his

88 Ibid., 182. 89 Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire 1908–1918 (Los Angeles: University of California Press), 194. 90 Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria, 44–45.

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popularity, Khairallah stated, “For the people it was more than sympathy and esteem, for them [Zahrawi] was a cult figure.”91 How real was the danger of the conspiracy in Sur? One of the movement’s early participants was Mohammad Jafar El Safa’ who stated in his memoirs: “The ahrar, the free people among the Arabs, took the opportunity of anger against the government and the fact that it was occupied with the war and set about working for the awakening of the Arab Movement in Syria.” From his account it appears that such a movement did indeed exist, On 18 October 1914 the ahrar designated as delegate for Sayda and Sur and Jabal Amel, the martyr Abd el Karim Qasim Al-Khalil. . . . He was among the best of the young Arabs in education and merit and national zeal. He enjoyed a distinguished reputation in the Jabal Amel. He had little experience and great temerity. He was not completely aware of the traditional conditions of the country and the situation of the zuama (local feudal lords) of Jabal Amel. He was over hasty and out of dedication created a cell of the Association [of the Arab Revolt] in Saida, composed of a category of persons who were uninformed and unreliable. Some disclosed his secret and turned against him from one day to the next. Some out of ignorance and stupidity and others out of malice and yet others out of treason and pro-Turkish sympathies.”92

In fact, Al Khalil was betrayed to Cemal by several informants, including members of his close circle. It is doubtful that the Arabists in Syria had enough mass support or a definite plan. According to “celebrated German orientalist” Martin Hartmann, who was attached to the German army, “the Arabist movement was not strong enough to drag its members into a revolt against the Ottoman government.”93 George Antonius’s view is that there was in fact a plan, largely prepared by the secret society Al Ahd, to stage a rising but fact and rumor merged to such an extent that uncertainty prevailed: Military intelligence is seldom at its best in following up political clues; and the General Staff of the Fourth Army was no exception; while it had an ear for rumors, its nose failed to pick up their scent. The information was substantially true, but it could not be traced home to any of the plotters, 91 K.T. Khairallah, La Syrie, Territoire, Origines Ethniques et Politiques, Evolution, Esquisses: La Vie Sociale et Littéraire, la Vie Politique en Syrie at au Liban (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1912), 128. 92 Jaber El Safa’, Tarikh Jabal Amel, 212. 93 Ibid. See also Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria, 47.

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and Jemal was disturbed and it made him anxious and vindictive but bewildered.94

As a result, Cemal cast his net far and wide, pursuing the innocent as well as the “guilty.” He justified his acts by claiming that the only troops he had at his disposal were Arab and if these had mutinied he would not have been able to save Syria: I decided to take ruthless action against the traitors. . . . [As the courts martial proceeded,] the wide range of their plotting simply astounded me. At this time the only troops in Syria were Arab regiments, and if these had mutinied I should have nothing with which to quell the revolt. The battle at the Dardanelles was raging in all its fury, and it was out of the question to take a battalion let alone a division from that front.95

He defended his decision to order the executions without reference to Istanbul by the extensive powers granted to him by wartime conditions: After reading the proceedings of the courts martial and obtaining the views of the Judge Advocate General, I confirmed the sentence of death, and it was carried out the following day at Beirut.96

It is remarkable that the Turkish official military history of the First World War echoes Cemal’s words: Because most of the troops in the region were Arabs, if these were to mutiny the army would be left with nothing. That is why the Fourth Army, in order to save the future of Turkism and Arabism, did not hesitate to punish them in exemplary fashion by carrying out their sentences in Beirut. Some local and foreign sources who have been deceived, link the Arab Mutiny to the hanging of the Syrian and Lebanese traitors. This is wrong. Sharif Husain’s mutiny had nothing to do with the hanging of the traitors.97

Thus in an official publication which appeared in the 1970s the Arab patriots are seen as “traitors.” A better example of the longevity of the “stab in the back syndrome” could not be wished for.

94 Antonius, The Arab Awakening, 186. 95 Jamal Pasha, Memoirs of a Turkish Statesman, 213. 96 Ibid. 97 Birinci Dünya Harbinde Türk Harbi, 336, 338.

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In his memoirs Ali Fuad Erden gives a detailed account of how Colonel Şükrü Efendi, the chief judge on the tribunal in Damascus, came to him with the result of their deliberations and the suggested sentences. He asked Ali Fuad to intercede with Cemal in order to approve the sentences. Out of the twenty accused only four had received the death penalty. Cemal personally changed all the sentences to death by hanging, brutally overriding the decision of the court.98 Yet, Ali Fuad also stated, “A few days later Cemal Pasha would approve these convictions in the name of the Turkish nation and he would order their carrying out, again in the name of the Turkish nation.”99 Thus, it was “the Turkish nation” that hanged the Arabs. Indeed, it seems that Cemal actively cultivated his image as the source of terror. Falih Rıfkı was to witness how Cemal seemed to take pleasure in flaunting the evidence in the face of the accused. One of the few instances in Zeytindağı where Rıfkı comes close to criticizing his commander is found in his description of how Cemal took pleasure in humiliating his victims.100 It is clear that Cemal was determined above all else to make an example of the hanged men. He repeatedly turned down pleas for clemency, even from Talat who interceded for Zahrawi, and from Sharif Husain who warned that the death penalty would lead to a situation where “blood will cry out for blood.”101 There is little doubt that the execution of a whole generation of Arab intellectuals by Cemal Pasha was what earned him his title of “The Blood Shedder” (Jamal al-Saffah). Yet this was not his only title. Aziz Bek, Cemal’s head of intelligence in the Fourth Army district, compiled a whole string of flattering epitaphs that the people of Syria used for him: “Jamal al Zalim! (The oppressor!), Jamal al Taghiya! (The tyrant!), Jamal Mutawi’ al bilad! (He who starved the people!), Jamal Hatik al-a’rad! (Violator of women’s honor!)”102 The people of Syria felt humiliated because they saw the hangings as “collective punishment.” It has been estimated that Cemal sent thousands of Syrians into exile; indeed, he bragged about this, telling Falih Rıfkı, “everywhere there are those who I sent there.”103

98 Ali Fuad Erden, Birinci Dünya Savaşında Suriye Hatıraları, 325; see below, p. 129. 99 Ibid., 275. 100 Falih Rıfkı Atay, Zeytindağı, 37. 101 Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, 295. 102 Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts, 241. 103 Ibid., 245.

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Among the close observers of Cemal Pasha’s iron rule in Syria and Lebanon was the President of Syrian Protestant College (today the American University of Beirut), Dr. Howard Bliss. The United States did not join the war until 1917 and the position of the college was delicate. Cemal deeply mistrusted the American staff of the college and suspected that it was a hotbed of Arab nationalism. Howard Bliss was to admit that, “Among the people of Syria there has always been a strong feeling of opposition to the Turkish regime, and Constantinople has always suspected the loyalty of this province. It now believes that Syria is a hot bed of sedition.” Bliss admitted that some of the graduates and students of the college were associated with the “Arab movement” but insisted that it was unfair on the part of the Turks to make this a basis for a general charge of seditious activity against the college. Soon after the first executions Bliss was to pen one of the most accurate assessments of the Young Turks’ state of mind: . . . The group of men in control of the Empire are determined, able, unscrupulous, and violent men. They are flushed with unexpected success. They will go just as far as in the direction of desperate measures as they dare. They are playing for high stakes. They must win or lose everything.104

The martyrs became a foundation legend in Syria and Lebanon in the years after the war and came to epitomize the idea of the “dark days of the Turks.” As shown in the seminal work of James Gelvin, “The initial attempts to create meaning from the executions ordered by Jamal Pasha were made by those who participated in the Arab Revolt and their supporters who worked with the Arab government.” Memorial ceremonies were carried out and patriotic plays were produced featuring “Jamal Pasha the Butcher.”105 Nicolas Z. Ajay, somewhat exaggeratedly, compares, “[T]he feelings of the Lebanese toward the Turks, [which are] somewhat akin to that of the Armenians and Greeks toward the Turks.”106 Yet Gelvin is critical of the “myth of the executions” as “a critical boundary in the history of the evolution of the Arab movement” which has 104 American University of Beirut Archives, Howard Bliss Collection, Box 16 AA 2-23-2 16-6, “The Syrian Protestant College and the Ottoman Government: A forecast of some of the more or less remote contingencies in the course of the war’s progress,” a seventeen-page report dated February 1916. 105 James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 256. 106 Nicolas Z. Ajay, “Political Intrigue and Suppression in Lebanon during World War I,” IJMES 5 (1974): 140–160.

Introduction

become “commonplace among historians of ‘Arab nationalism.’” He points out that even after the executions, “Jamal Pasha was frequently feted and celebrated by Damascenes, many of whom would later figure prominently in nationalist activities.”107 Gelvin’s analysis tallies with Rıfkı’s and Fuad’s accounts of base flattery even after the executions. However Gelvin tends to minimize the collective horror and terror that the executions did create. Self-seeking flattery or compliance as a means of self-preservation can be easily combined with a secret loathing toward the cause of the suffering. As we see in the memoirs of Anbara Salaam, she refers to Cemal Pasha as “a monster” because he had hanged her fiancée. Nonetheless, at the behest of her father Salim Ali Salaam, she is made to be present at a social function where she is obliged to make a speech in Cemal Pasha’s presence, even receiving his compliments. Salaam notes in her memoir, “the words of congratulations I heard for my speech felt like a series of stabs at my heart.”108 There were also prominent locals who out of self-interest or genuine Ottoman patriotism supported Cemal Pasha. One of the most prominent was Emir Shakib Arslan, a Lebanese Druze aristocrat who remained a committed Ottoman loyalist to his dying day. He established himself as Cemal’s right hand man and, “an intermediary between Jamal Pasha and the Arab populace.” Arslan came to be hated as a collaborator and this stigma followed him to the end of his days.109 Another prominent supporter was Shaikh As’ad al Shukairi, who became infamous for issuing fatwas in support of the executions. He was later to be roundly condemned as a collaborator. Salim Al Ya’qubi was another important personage who backed Cemal, a leading religious scholar and poet, in 1916 Al Ya’qubi, issued a fatwa condemning Sharif Hussein. He retained his pro-Ottoman sympathies even after the Allied entry into Syria.110 107 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 176. 108 Anbara Salaam Khalidi, Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist: The Life and Activism of Anbara Salaam Khalidi, trans. Tarif Khalidi (London: Pluto Press, 2013), 70 109 William L. Cleveland, Islam Against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas, 1985), 31: “Arslan quickly established himself as an intermediary between Jamal Pasha and the Arab populace.” As Cemal did not speak Arabic, his speeches would be translated by Shakib Arlan or As’ad Shukairi. 110 Salim Tamari, “Muhammad Kurd Ali and the Syrian-Palestinian intelligentsia in the Ottoman campaign against Arab separatism,” in Çiçek, Syria in World War I, 37–60.

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In order to justify and legitimize his policy of terror, Cemal Pasha published a book giving the official line on the courts martial at Aley and the subsequent executions. Published in Arabic, Turkish and French, the “Red Book,” as it came to be called, remains a masterpiece of propaganda.111 The point that is adamantly hammered home in the introduction and several times in the text is that “[o]ne cannot insist enough on the essential point: the trial carried out by the court of Aley was in no way a matter of nationalism; it was a simple matter of high treason.” Cemal very ably played on the Arab sense of honour by declaring: . . . those individuals who have received the just punishment for their acts have soiled the good name of the Arabs in the eyes of statesmen of the enemy countries and have made them believe that this race has no morals or character and would yield themselves up to the first invader to occupy their lands.112

The introduction took pains to point out that the plotters were only a small group who “abused the good faith of the Arab nation, the great mass of whom, proletarians, bourgeois and aristocrats remained outside their movement.” The Red Book stressed that the courts martial “only tried and condemned some two hundred individuals, as many Muslims as Christians” ostensibly proving that the movement was a very restricted one.113 Another important aspect of the Red Book was its justification for the policy of exile.114 In describing the various categories of individuals who were exiled, the “second category” after the actual families of the condemned, are the “feudal class” who had oppressed the population, exploited their servitude, and had moreover, always opposed the efforts of the government which was trying to assure an equitable partition of the land and to defend the right of the population to enjoy the fruits of their labour. They always tried to oppose all the efforts of the government to uplift the working man.115 111 La Vérité sur la Question Syrienne. Publié par le Commandement de la IV ème Armée (Stamboul: Imprimerie Tanine, 1916). Although Cemal does not clearly appear as its author, the publication clearly reflects his views as seen in the Turkish and English versions of his memoirs. 112 Ibid., 7–8. 113 Ibid., 9. 114 Cemal Pasha exiled some 5,000 Syrians to Anatolia. See Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria, 51; Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans, 291. Rogan gives the number of deported at 50,000 this is probably and exaggeration. 115 La Vérité, 154.

Introduction

Even more brazen than Cemal the friend of the working man was Cemal who “did not deport but simply transported these families. . . . Nothing changed, a compatriot who was Syrian became a compatriot who was from Bursa.”116

The end of Lebanon’s autonomy The country which is today Lebanon was divided into two administrative units during Cemal Pasha’s rule of the Fourth Army district: The Vilayet (Province) of Beirut, established in 1888, and the Mutasarifiyya (autonomous province) of Mount Lebanon. The Mutasarrıfiyya had an autonomous status regulated by the Réglement Organique of 1861 which had come into force following its signature by the Sublime Porte and the ambassadors of the Great Powers. Although it was officially part of the Ottoman Empire, it was overseen by a Christian governor called the Mutasarrıf, who was appointed by the Ottoman Sultan, but with the approval of the signatory Great Powers. He had to be an Ottoman Christian. The special status of the Mutasarifiyya did indeed allow for considerable autonomy from direct Ottoman rule. Cemal Pasha never officially abrogated the Mutasarifiyya but in 1915, after the last Christian Mutasarrıf Ohannes Pasha Kouyoumdjian was forced to resign, a Muslim Mutasarrıf was appointed, de facto ending Lebanese autonomy.117 The first Muslim Mutasarrıf was Ali Münif Bey, a close associate of Talat Pasha. He wrote his memoirs in the late 1940s.118 Although he dedicated only a short chapter to his period as Mutasarrıf, it is a remarkable source. The most striking statement Münif makes is his assessment of his relations with Cemal Pasha: The only difficulty I experienced during my duties in Lebanon was Cemal Pasha. As he was alienating the population with his ruthless measures, I was seeking to mend the damage and win back their affection. In fact this was one of the reasons why I had been sent to Lebanon as governor.119 116 Ibid., 156–157. 117 Engin Akarlı, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon 1860–1920 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). See also the memoirs of Ohannes Pasha Kouyoumdjian, Le Liban. A la Veille et au Début de la Guerre: Mémoires d’un Gouverneur 1913–1915 (Paris: Centre d’histoire arménienne contemporaine, 2003). 118 Taha Toros, ed., Ali Münif Bey’in Hatıraları [The Memoirs of Ali Münif Bey] (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 1996). The memoir was first published as a serial in the Akşam newspaper in 1955. 119 Ibid., 71.

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Münif stated that the main source of conflict between the two men arose over the issue of the military intervention in the Mountain and the fact that the Pasha was not sensitized to “the traditions and legal practices of Lebanon.” Yet he maintained that over time they developed a friendly relationship. The official ferman (Imperial order) declaring Münif as Mutasarrıf began by announcing, “The privileges of Jabal Lubnan have been abrogated!” It went on to declare that the autonomous status of the Mutasarıfıyya and the appointment of a Christian Mutasarrıf with the approval of the foreign powers was to end forthwith. Yet, the new governor attempted to soften the blow by declaring in a speech that the previous practices would be continued and that the Mountain would not be subjected to conscription. Münif stated in his memoirs that “because I was aware of the sensitivities of the local population,” he had prepared his speech with great care. He confidently declared that “[t]he people of the Jabal were content, they became even more affectionately attached to their Muslim Mutasarrıf [than the Christian ones].”120 Indeed, a contemporary Lebanese writer, Lahad Khater, gives a very balanced view of the short tenure of Ali Münif Bey (September 25, 1915– May 15, 1916).121 On the positive side, it is stated that he administered “with wisdom and rigor,” that he prevented military intervention in the affairs of the Mountain, and that he shut out the old coteries of opportunists that clustered around previous Mutasarrıfs.122 However, on the negative side he was implicated in a company formed by a leading Beiruti that monopolized the wheat market, “The wheat was sold on the black market at exorbitant prices, which greatly aggravated the famine and enriched [Ali Münif] enormously. This was the price that was paid by the souls who perished.”123 In mid-May 1916 Münif was appointed the Vali of Beirut and held the position until mid-1918.124 The position of the last Christian Mutasarrıf of Lebanon, Ohannes Pasha Kouyoumdjian, a highly sophisticated Ottoman diplomat, who was an Armenian Catholic, became more and more difficult. 120 Ibid. See below Falih Rıfkı’s account of Cemal Pasha’s speech on the new status of Lebanon. 121 Lahad Khater, Ahd al Mutasarrıfin fi Lubnan [The Period of the Mutasarrıfs in Lebanon] (Beirut: Editions Lahad Khater, 1982). 122 Ibid., 203. 123 Ibid. The Beiruti in question was Alfred Sursock, a close associate of Cemal Pasha. 124 Ibid., 204.

Introduction

The Administrative Council of the Mutasarıfıyya was abolished on May 15 and its legally elected members were replaced by men who were chosen by Cemal and Münif. This was the last straw for Kouyoumdjian, who presented his resignation to Cemal.125 Thus ended the fifty five years of the “Long Peace” of the Mutasarrıfıyya period.126 Kouyoumdjian had become convinced that Cemal had indeed singled out Lebanon for special treatment. At his first meeting with the Mutasarrıf, Cemal made a point of enumerating a long list of grievances against the Lebanese. As proof he brandished a book by a Syrian author, declaring vehemently: I will use their own testimony against them. In nearly all the pages of this book, there is clear evidence that the Lebanese, more particularly the Maronites, are traitors and criminals acting against their sovereign. . . . It is high time that we clamped down on these unfaithful infidel subjects and make them realize that there is no other salvation other than sincere submission to Ottoman rule.127

The book in question, written by Khairallah Khairallah, a prominent Christian intellectual, did indeed make open references to France as the “traditional protector of the Maronites” since the time of the medieval kings of France. Cemal may well have objected to statements such as, “The Turkish intellect lacks prestige and assimilative power. Its misfortune is the fact that it is faced by an intellect [the Arab] that is superior to it socially and morally. This means that the Turkish element can never prevail without tyranny.”128 The message of the book was clear, Syria and Lebanon were to come under French protection.129 There is little doubt that in Cemal’s risk analysis for Lebanon, the greatest danger he saw were the Maronites. It was well kno