Efraim Karsh
A
century after the catastrophic blunder that led to the destruction of
the then longest-surviving empire on earth, culpability is still
ascribed to the European powers. Rather than view the Ottoman entry into
the First World War on the losing side for what it was – a failed
imperialist bid for territorial aggrandizement and reassertion of lost
glory – the Muslim empire has been portrayed as the hapless victim of
European machinations, driven into the world conflict by overbearing
powers eager to expedite its demise and gobble up its lands.
Emblematic
of the wider tendency to view Middle Easterners as mere objects, whose
history is but a function of their unhappy interaction with the West,
this conventional wisdom has proved remarkably resistant to the
overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and Eugene Rogan's The Fall of the Ottomans (2015) is no exception to this rule.
To
begin with, in an attempt to underscore the Ottoman Empire's untenable
position on the eve of the war, Rogan reproduces the standard depiction
of the protracted period preceding the empire's collapse, or the Eastern
Question as it is commonly known, as the steady European encroachment
on Ottoman territory. "The looming prospect of a European general war",
he writes, "raised the imminent threat of a Russian annexation of
Istanbul, the straits, and eastern Anatolia – and the ultimate
dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire among the Entente Powers. France was
known to covet Syria, Britain had interests in Mesopotamia, and Greece
wished to expand its grip over the Aegean."
Reality, however, was
quite different. Far from setting their sights on Ottoman lands, the
European powers had consistently shored up the ailing Muslim empire for
well over a century, saving it time and again from assured destruction –
from Muhammad Ali's imperialist bid of the 1830s, to the Balkan crises
of the 1870s, to the Balkan war of 1912–13. And it was none other than
Russia that acted as the Ottoman Empire's latest saviour, halting its
former Bulgarian subject at the gates of Istanbul, not once but twice:
in November 1912 and March 1913. Several months later, St. Petersburg
joined London and Berlin in underscoring "the necessity of preserving
the Turkish Realm in its present form".
All this means that by the
outbreak of the Great War, the Ottoman Empire was scarcely a spurned and
isolated power in danger of imminent destruction. Rather, it was in the
enviable position of being courted by the two warring camps: the
German-Austro-Hungarian Central Alliance wished its participation in the
war, while the Anglo-French-Russian Triple Entente desired its
neutrality. So much so that on August 18, 1914, less than a month after
the outbreak of hostilities, the Entente's ambassadors to Istanbul
assured the Grand Vizier of the empire's continued survival were it to
stay out of the war, while the British Foreign Secretary vowed the
preservation of Ottoman territorial integrity "in any conditions of
peace which affected the Near East, provided she preserved a real
neutrality during the war". Five days later, at Ottoman request, the
three powers put down this pledge in writing.
Had the Ottomans
accepted this guarantee and kept out of the war, their empire would have
readily weathered the storm. But then, by the time the Entente made its
far-reaching proposal, Istanbul had already concluded a secret alliance
with Germany that had effectively transformed it into a belligerent.
This, nevertheless, didn't prevent it from maintaining the false
pretence of neutrality vis-à-vis the Entente, or even feigning interest
in joining its ranks, while at the same time laying the groundwork for
war and exploiting Berlin's eagerness for the immediate initiation of
hostilities to extract substantial military and economic benefits.
Preserving
the myth of immaculate Turkish victimhood, Rogan claims that "the
Ottoman leadership had no wish to enter a general European conflict" and
was grudgingly driven to the German embrace by the Entente's
indifference, if not hostility, to its predicament. His proof is the
supposed French rebuff of an alliance proposal, allegedly made during a
visit to Paris in July 1914 by the military leader Djemal Pasha, as well
as the British requisition of two warships commissioned by the
Ottomans. "The British decision to requisition the ships was treated as a
national humiliation in Turkey and ruled out the possibility of any
accord between Britain and the Ottoman Empire", Rogan writes. "The very
next day, 2 August 1914, the Ottomans concluded a secret treaty of
alliance with Germany."
The problem with these well-worn stories is
that there is no shred of evidence of Djemal's alleged overture (its
only mention is in his memoirs, written after the war and the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire with the clear aim of exonerating himself from
responsibility for this calamity), while the requisition announcement
was made on August 3 – a day after the conclusion of the secret
Ottoman-German alliance.
But even if the announcement had been made a
few days earlier, it would have made no difference whatsoever for the
simple reason that the terms of the Ottoman-German alliance had already
been agreed on July 28. Moreover, it was the Ottomans rather than the
Germans who had opted for an alliance within days of the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 – weeks before the outbreak
of hostilities; who were the driving force in the ensuing secret
negotiations; and who largely prevailed over their German counterparts
in deciding the alliance's broad contours. As Kaiser Wilhelm ordered his
more sceptical negotiators: "A refusal or a snub would result in
Turkey's going over to Russo-Gallia, and our influence would be gone
forever . . . . Under no circumstances whatsoever can we afford to turn
them away".
The truth of the matter is that the Ottoman Empire was
neither forced into the First World War in a last-ditch attempt to
ensure its survival, nor manoeuvred into it by an overbearing German
ally and a hostile Entente, but rather plunged head on into the
whirlpool. War, for the Ottoman leaders, was not seen as a mortal danger
to be averted, but a unique opportunity to be seized. They did not seek
"an ally to protect the empire's vulnerable territory from the
consequences of such war" but a powerful underwriter of their
imperialist ambitions; and apart from their admiration for Germany and
their conviction that it would ultimately be victorious, the Entente had
less to offer by way of satisfying these ambitions, first and foremost
"the destruction of our Muscovite enemy to obtain a natural frontier to
our empire, which should include and unite all branches of our race" (in
the words of the Ottoman declaration of war).
Just as the fall of
the Ottoman Empire was not the result of external machinations but a
self-inflicted catastrophe, so the creation of the modern Middle East on
its ruins was not an imperialist imposition but the aggregate outcome
of intense pushing and shoving by a multitude of regional and
international bidders for the Ottoman war spoils in which the local
actors, despite their marked inferiority to the great powers, often had
the upper hand.
While Rogan occasionally alludes to this reality,
these allusions are far too sparse and timid to break from the standard
misrepresentation of the post-war regional order as an artificial
Western creation. He aptly notes that "the map drawn by Sykes and Picot
bears no resemblance to the Middle East today", yet reiterates the
standard depiction of the agreement as a colonial imposition rather than
a British effort "to reconcile the interests of France with the pledges
given to the [Arabs]" (to use Albert Hourani's words), or indeed – the
first-ever great power recognition of Arab right to self determination
(well before President Woodrow Wilson turned this principle into a
driving force of international politics). He similarly observes that
Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia (or the Hijaz, as it was then known)
"achieved independence within frontiers of their own devising", yet
parrots the conventional wisdom that the imperial powers outlandishly
"imposed the borders and systems of governments of most states in the
region".
In fact, most states in the region were established pretty
much as a result of local exertions. The modern state of Iraq, to give a
prominent example, was created in its present form (rather than divided
into three states in accordance with the existing realities of local
patriotism and religious affinities) on behalf of Emir Faisal of Mecca
and at his instigation, while Jordan was established to satisfy the
ambitions of Faisal's older brother Abdullah. Likewise, the nascent
Zionist movement exploited a unique convergence of factors to harness
British support to its national cause, to have this support endorsed by
the international community and incorporated into the League of Nations
Mandate for Palestine, and to cling tenaciously to these achievements
until their fruition in the establishment of the State of Israel in May
1948.
Eugene Rogan acknowledges that "the borders of the post-war
settlement have proven remarkably resilient". Yet he fails to draw the
self-evident conclusion that this state of affairs reflects their
congruity with local realities, instead echoing the common refrain that
ascribes the region's endemic volatility to the supposed dissatisfaction
with these boundaries. Had this actually been the case, Arab
leaders would have seized some of the numerous opportunities they had
over the past century to undo the post-Ottoman order and unify the
so-called Arab Nation; and they could have readily done this by peaceful
means rather than incessant fighting. But then, violence has hardly
been imported to the Middle East as a by-product of European
imperialism; it was a part of the political culture long before. And if
anything, it is the region's tortuous relationship with modernity, most
notably the stubborn adherence to its millenarian religiously based
imperialist legacy, which has left physical force as the main instrument
of political discourse to date.
But to acknowledge this would mean
abandoning the self-righteous victimization paradigm that has informed
Western scholarship for so long, and treating Middle Easterners as equal
free agents accountable for their actions, rather than giving them a
condescending free pass for political and moral modes of behaviour that
are not remotely acceptable in Western societies. Sadly, The Fall of the
Ottomans signals no such paradigm shift.
"Times Literary Supplement," May 13, 2015
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