Transcript WWI lecture 1

The Ottoman Empire: A Timeline
• WWI marks a dramatic division between the
19th century and the contemporary age
• losses in the Ottoman Empire were among the
highest of all nations affected by the war: 4
out of 5 Ottoman citizens who died were
noncombatants and many of the casualties
were a result of famine
• WWI brought about a new political order in the
region that has lasted to this very day.
– the creation of the current state system in the region
• On December 18, 1914, Great Britain unilaterally declared
the establishment of a protectorate over Egypt
• By the early 1920s, Turkey was an independent republic
• North African provinces had all been occupied
• Asiatic Arab provinces had been divided into what would
become separate states
• a large part of the Arabian peninsula had been united under
the control of the Saudi dynasty
• A variety of nationalisms --Turkish, Arab, Syrian, Egyptian-spread throughout the region
Background
• The Ottoman Empire, a modernizing state in
the 19th century, sought to establish a
sovereign state and to enjoy full membership
in the international state system
• A member of the Concert of Europe since
1856 and the end of the Crimean War
• Diplomatic, political and political losses since
1878  country in financial ruin and
demoralized
• In the face of those losses, a radical leadership
emerged, organizing itself as the Committee
of Union and Progress
• Belief that only military power could preserve
the Empire
• In the context of the Balkan Wars in 1911-13,
the CUP seized control in 1913
• The Ottoman government first thought of the War as a
European affair
• The Entente Powers promised the protection of the Ottoman
Empire’s territorial integrity
• Promise rejected by the Ottomans: privy to exchanges that
indicated otherwise
• Russian ambassador’s note of August 6, 1914: “the Ottoman Empire
be kept neutral until that point in time when circumstances permit our
own firm entrance into the Straits.”
• Biggest Ottoman fear: the European war might precipitate
Russian seizure of Istanbul and the Straights
• A minority within the CUP hoped for closer ties to
France and Russia
• Majority favored the Triple Alliance
• CUP proposed alliance with the Central Powers or
the Empire would side with the Entente
• Germans feared loss of investments and of a chance
to gain a sphere of dominance in the Near East
• A German-Ottoman alliance was signed on August 2,
1914
• The Ottomans thought of it more as a defensive
alliance
• A naval attack on Russia, October 27-31, 1914
• Precipitation of the Empire’s entry into the
war
• Russian retaliation at the Ottoman-Russian
borders
• British and French warships opened fire at
Ottoman troops in Çanakkale south of the
Dardanelles and in Aqaba in Jordan
• The Battle of Gallipoli: an attempt by the Allied
Powers to control the sea route from Europe to
Russia
• A naval attack followed by land invasion on April
1925
• Participation of French and British troops and
divisions of ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand
Army Corps)
• Fierce Ottoman resistance
• Lack of Allies’ knowledge of the terrain of the battle
• Evacuation in December 1915
Calamities of the War
• The war known also as The Famine war
• Devastation in the region
• 4 out of every 5 Ottoman citizens died as noncombatant
• In Mount Lebanon: famine killed about half
the population
• Causes: Entente’s blockade, snowy winters,
locusts, conscription, war requisition, currency
devaluation, official inefficiency
Calamities
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Armenians
• Between 800-000 and a million and a half
Armenians perished
• The debate over the genocidal aspects
surrounding the death of Armenians
• In the meantime, the Entente powers began
to maneuver to claim the spoils of war in the
event of a victory
• Starting in 1915: negotiations of secret
treaties
• 1915: the Arab revolt
• The British promised the Emir of Mecca, Sharif
Husayn, gold, guns and an independent Arab
state in Ottoman territories in return for a
revolt against the Ottoman government
• Sykes-Picot agreement: secret agreement
between France and Britain to divide up most
of the Arab Middle East between them
– the treaty awarded France a large zone of direct
control stretching along the Syrian coast from
southern Lebanon into Anatolia and a sphere of
exclusive indirect influence in the Syrian interior.
Britain gained Iraq and a zone from Gaza to Kirkuk
• In another treaty, Russia was promised the
Turkish straits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes–
Picot_Agreement#mediaviewer/File:Sykes-Picot.svg
• Another pledge but made openly: the Balfour declaration
of November 1917 for a ‘national home’ in Palestine for
Jews around the world
• the Palestinian mandate: was not a distinctive
administrative entity during the Ottoman era but was
regarded as part of southern Syria and was divided by the
late 19th century between the provinces of Beirut and
Damascus with the special administrative unit of Jerusalem
– The British capture of Jerusalem in December 1917 detached
Palestine from Ottoman rule and led to its being placed under
British military occupation from 1917 to 1920
– In 1920: Britain was awarded the mandate for Palestine and the
military government was replaced by a civilian administration
• Paris meeting: creation of the League of Nations
with its charter sanctioning French and British
designs for the Levant and Mesopotamia =>
France got the mandate for the territory that now
includes Syria and Lebanon while Britain got the
mandate for the territory that now includes
Israel, the Palestinian Occupied Territories,
Jordan and Iraq
• the inhabitants of the region were never seriously
consulted about their future
• the mandate system: a thinly disguised imperialism
• absolute rights of France and Britain over the internal
affairs of their mandates, both economically and
politically
• the creation of Iraq by joining three Ottoman
provinces: Baghdad, Mosul and Basra
• creation of Lebanon, what the French thought would
be a permanent Christian enclave
• the Palestine mandate divided Palestine into separate
regions, one that would be Israel/Occupied Territories
and another that would become Jordan
• In the wake of the Arab revolt: troops under the command of Amir
Faysal had occupied Damascus
– The French opposed Faysal and sent an army to Damascus to depose
him
– The British reacted passively to the dismissal of their client
– another son of Sharif Husayn, ‘Abd allah, marched north from his
home in Mecca to avenge his brother’s humiliation
– persuaded by the British to remain in the town of Amman
– the Cairo Conference in 1921: Palestine mandate divided into 2 parts:
one, east of the Jordan River, called trans-Jordan and given to Abd
Allah and closed to Zionist immigration
– After independence in 1946, trans-Jordan became the Hashemite
kingdom of Jordan
– Faysal granted the throne of Iraq. His descendants ruled Iraq until
1958.
Modern Turkey
• Entente power’s occupation of Istanbul
• 1920: Treaty of Sevres
– formally severed Turkish connections between
Turkish and non-Turkish regions
– Divided Western Anatolia among Greece, Italy,
and France
• Expansive Greek ambitions
• Resistance in unoccupied Anatolia by the
“Committees for the Defense of Rights”
• Mustafa Kemal dispateched from Istanbul to
suppress the Committees
• Instead, he took charge of the rebellion
• Foreign troops ousted
• Mustafa Kemal adopted the name “Ataturk”,
father of the Turks
• Guided the establishment of a Turkish republic
in Anatolia
• Ataturk abolished the caliphate, established a
secular state and latinized the Turkish
alphabet
• He granted women the right to vote in 1934
(11 years before France did)
• Unabashed westernization
• Expanded the role of the state and spread one
official ideology
• Relatively free elections
• The dark side of nationalism:
• “Population transfer”:under guidelines set by
the League of Nations, about a million and a
half Christian Turks forced out of the country
• About half a million Greek Muslims went to
Turkey
• Suppression of Kurdish separatism
• “Turkification” of Kurds and Arabs
• Growing opposition to uncompromising
secularism since the 1950s