The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1923

Alexander Lyon Macfie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317888642
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire is a key event in the shaping of our own times. From its ruins rose a whole map of new countries including Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the perennially troubled area of Palestine as well as the Balkan lands - states which were to remain flashpoints of international tension. This thoughtful and lucid volume considers the reasons for the end of the Ottoman Empire; explains the course of it; and examines the aftermath.

Chapter One
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908

Events

The course of events leading up to the so-called Young Turk Revolution of 1908 appears in retrospect clear enough; though several aspects remain obscure. On 28 June 1908 Ahmed Niyazi, an adjutant major serving with his unit in Resna, in Macedonia, fearing arrest as a result of the infiltration of his conspiratorial group by one of the sultan’s spies, and concerned regarding the possibility of Great Power intervention in Macedonia (at that very moment the British monarch, Edward VII, and the Russian tsar, Nicholas II, were meeting at Reval in the Baltic, supposedly to discuss the issue) called a meeting of his co-conspirators in Resna at which it was decided that action of some kind could no longer be postponed. As a result on 3 July, with the support and approval of the Monastir branch of the CUP, as the Ottoman Freedom Society had become known, Niyazi, accompanied by some 240 or so regular soldiers and a similar number of civilians, many of Albanian descent, liberally supplied with money, arms and ammunition seized from the local treasury and armoury, took to the hills above the town, calling in the meantime, in appeals addressed to the Palace Secretariat, the inspector general of Rumelia and the vali of Monastir, for immediate action to combat injustice and inequality and secure a restoration of the constitution. Niyazi’s example was soon followed by a number of other officers, for the most part members of the CUP, including Major Enver, an officer attached to the staff of the inspector general of Macedonia, and later leader of the CUP, while local troops, commanded by officers for the most part loyal to the Unionist cause, refused to fire on the mutineers, as did others later dispatched from Anatolia. Moreover, on 6 July, Hakki Pasha, a member of a commission appointed by the sultan to enquire into unrest in the Third Army Corps, stationed in Macedonia, was assassinated, as were other senior officers loyal to the sultan in the following weeks. On 7 July $emsi Pasha, the general dispatched by the sultan to put down the rebellion, was shot by an agent of the CUP in the main street of Monastir, as he was getting into his carriage outside the post office, where he had just telegraphed the Palace to inform them of his plans. On 12 July Sadik Pasha, the sultan’s aide-de-camp, was shot on board a ship, returning to Istanbul, and about the same time Osman Hidäyet Pasha, commandant of the Monastir garrison, was struck down. Further outbreaks and demonstrations followed, for the most part organised by agents of the CUP, including one in Firzovik in Albania, where Unionist agents succeeded in subverting a local demonstration against the presence of members of an Austro-Hungarian Railway school at a festival in the area. Then on 20 July the Muslim population of Monastir rose; and on 22 July Osman Pasha, who had replaced §emsi Pasha as the sultan’s special envoy, was kidnapped by the rebels. As a result of these and other developments, on 24 July Abdul Hamid, now convinced of the hopelessness of his position (he was informed that should he refuse to comply at once to demands for the restoration of the constitution, 100 000 men would march on the capital to secure his deposition) decided that discretion was the better part of valour and announced his intention of acceding to the wishes of the people. On the same day an irade was published, calling for preparations to be made for the holding of elections, so that a chamber of deputies might be convened, in accordance with the articles of the constitution, which as Abdul Hamid was quick to point out remained effective.¹

1. F. Ahmad, The Young Turks Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, Ch. 1; W. Miller, The Ottoman Empire, 1801–1913 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913, Ch. 14; H. Bayur, Türk Inkilābi Tarihi Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1940, Pt. 1, pp. 217–20; A. Mango, ‘The Young Turks’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1972). For a more detailed, and slightly different, account of the events leading up to the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, see A. Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey Leiden: E.J. Brill (1997), Ch. 3.

Origins and causation of the Young Turk Revolution

Contemporary observers generally assumed that the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was organised, or at least inspired, by the Young Turk emigres abroad, though they remained uncertain how so extraordinary an achievement was accomplished. As an anonymous writer in the Fortnightly Review of September 1908 put it:

At the moment of the interest excited throughout the world by the political struggle in Russia, the Young Turks transferred their operations from Paris to Salonica, which has remained the real headquarters. What happened for a long period afterwards is what no man has yet attempted to tell. When our partial knowledge of methods and results begins we find ramifying throughout Macedonia a vast conspiracy already almost complete.

Such an easy assumption of expatriate organisation can no longer be sustained. According to Nicolae Batzaria, an Ottoman Vlach, who joined the Ottoman Freedom Society, possibly at Enver’s invitation, in 1907, and who was acquainted with virtually all of the CUP leaders, including Enver, Talaat, Djavid, Hafiz Hakki and Djemal (he was later made minister of public works in the CUP cabinet appointed following the coup d’etat of January 1913) the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was exclusively the work of branches of the CUP, locally established in Salonica and Monastir.² It should not, however, be assumed that no connection existed between the emigre organisation established in Europe and the Ottoman Freedom Society. On the contrary, in 1907 Talaat, wishing to establish an outlet for his society’s propaganda abroad, had made contact with the Young Turk organisations in Europe, in particular with Ahmed Riza’s group in Geneva; and to this end he had dispatched two agents, Omer Naci and Hüsrev Sami, to establish a publication there. Shortly thereafter Ahmed Riza dispatched one of his followers, Selanikli Dr Nazim, to Salonica (disguised it is said as a Dervish Hodja), to negotiate a merger between the two organisations, an arrangement completed in September 1907. It was as a result of this agreement that the Ottoman Freedom Society became known as the CUP. Nevertheless, according to Batzaria, contact between the two organisations remained minimal, as the emigre groups were generally distrusted by the Salonica and Monastir branches, who were inclined to believe that they had for the most part either been infiltrated by the sultan’s spies or simply bought off.³

2. K. Karpat, ‘The Memoirs of N. Batzaria: The Young Turks and Nationalism’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Affairs, Vol. 6 (1975). Recent researches, carried out by Aykut Kansu, would suggest that contact between the CUP organisation in Europe and the branches of the organisation in Macedonia and Anatolia was somewhat more extensive than Nicolae Batzaria supposed. See A. Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey, Chs 2 and 3.

3. E.J. Zūrcher, The Unionist Factor Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984, pp. 41–2.

Contemporary observers were generally agreed that the immediate causes of the Young Turk Revolution lay in the fear of the conspirators of the CUP that they were about to be discovered and their concern regarding the possibility of Great Power intervention in Macedonia, daily expected. But with regard to the underlying causes, it was agreed that they lay elsewhere, in the rottenness of the Hamidian regime, generally despised, the disaffection of the army, frequently observed, the discontent of the Ottoman bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, noted by among others Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, a close observer of Balkan affairs,⁴ and the atmosphere of revolutionary change prevalent at the time, not only in Europe but also in Asia.⁵ The following extract from an article by E.J. Dillon, entitled ‘The Reforming Turk’, published in the Quarterly Review of 1909, may be taken as typical:

But worse than all that was the intolerable system of military espionage which tended to foster jealousy, to crash out initiative, and to kill all esprit de corps. Officers might not have dealings or cultivate acquaintance with foreigners, commanders could not win battles or attain popularity in any way, without running the risk of being entered on the spies’ black list and persecuted or made away with. Promotion for military merit and active service was falling into desuetude; and no one, however deserving, was raised to higher rank if the report of a spy declared him unworthy. … It was this crime against the nation in the person of its heroic defenders that contributed most to turn the scale in favour of reform. Officers and men were profoundly disaffected towards the Government, and began to show their feelings openly. During the past three years several cases of ‘spontaneous combustion’ had been recorded, explained, and forgotten. In 1907 there was a mutiny of the reserves at Adrianople, and a strike of reserves in Monastir. Last June, in Adrianople, forty artillery officers seized the telegraph office and communicated with the Sultan, complaining of not having received their well-earned pay and of not being promoted according to merit. The Padishah kept them four days waiting for a reply, and then promised to redress their grievances if they would return to duty.

At last the army would brook these things no longer. The officers, many of them young men educated abroad, sent special messengers to their comrades in other parts of the country to concert means of redress. A widespread organisation was thus created without the use of paper and ink. But in time the spies got wind of the Young Turkish conspiracy. The court party rigged out a punitive expedition and despatched it to Monastir under the command of Shemzy Pasha. There was no time to lose. The plot, although not yet quite mature, had to be executed at all risks. Niazy Bey, one of the most accomplished officers of the army, deserted at Monastir, leading 200 men with him, and took to the woods. Thereupon the movement began. A few murders, mutinies, proclamations of constitutional government, and the first act of the drama was over. The Sultan could devise no expedient; his stalwarts, at their wits’ ends, did nothing; activity was confined to the revolutionists, who scored a decisive victory. The Hamidian regime might be likened to a vast tree of which the inside is eaten away and the bark alone lives. Suddenly it receives a slight impact and falls for ever.

4. For Leon Trotsky’s views on the Young Turk Revolution see The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars, 1912–13 London: Pathfinder, 1991, pp. 9–15.

5. Viator, ‘Turkey: the Problems of the Near East’, Pt. 1, Fortnightly Review, (1908), pp. 364–5.

Recent research, carried out mainly in the French archives, has confirmed the validity of Dillon’s observations, particularly those concerning the part played in the outbreak by discontent in the army, which in the decade or so preceding the revolution had reached unprecedented levels. Two factors, in particular, it would seem, loomed large in the catalogue of grievances which gave rise to this discontent: the non-payment of the troops and unwarranted delays in their demobilisation. In August 1896 eight officers protested at the ministry of war in Istanbul that they and their families were dying of starvation, for want of pay. In January 1904 soldiers returning from the Yemen mutinied in Beirut, again demanding pay. In March 1905 400 soldiers, stationed in Tripoli, gathered in the Jaama-el Bacha mosque, demanding that they be sent home, as their period of active service (normally three years, followed by six years in the active army reserve, and nine years in the reserve) was completed. In August 1906 conscripts serving in the Yemen, conscripted in 1898, mutinied, pillaging towns and villages. In February 1907, 280 soldiers serving in Benghazi, who had completed seven years’ service, retired to a mosque, demanding that they be sent home. In May some 100 serving in Üsküb mutinied when informed that they were to serve longer without pay; and in June-August troops serving in the Yemen, joined by new recruits and by their officers, mutinied, complaining that the money allocated for their pay was being used to buy off the Arab chiefs involved in the Seyed Yahya revolt. Some of the conscripts, it is said, had served in the Yemen for 25 years.

In the period immediately preceding the Young Turk Revolution discontent if anything increased. In March 1908 two regiments of cavalry stationed in the Edirne area (the class of 1903), complained of not being paid and of delays in their demobilisation. Shortly thereafter 70 artillery officers organised a demonstration, protesting against the lack of promotion and the elevation of unqualified colleagues; while similar outbreaks occurred in Denizli, Salihli and Kula. In April 1908 1,500 reservists from the province of Ankara assembled at Úsküb, demanding to be sent home. In May 1908, in Scutari, 300 soldiers handed in their arms and occupied the telegraph office, complaining to the serasker of their problems; while in June two regiments of infantry, joined by members of an artillery regiment, and their officers, occupied the telegraph office, complaining to the sultan that they had not been paid. Meanwhile similar outbreaks occurred in Monastir, Manisa, Izmir (including soldiers returning from Yemen), Nazilli, Akhisar and Alashehir. On the eve of the Young Turk Revolution, therefore, not only were acts of indiscipline and mutiny commonplace, but the essential bond of loyalty, on which the sultan depended for the exercise of his authority, had to a large extent been destroyed.⁶

6. M.-§. Güzel, ‘Prélude à la Revolution’, Varia Turcica, Vol. 13 (1991).

Not that unrest in the period preceding the outbreak of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was confined to the army. In the period 1906–7, as ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Note on Population
• Introduction
• 1. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908
• 2. Counter-revolution
• 3. Politics, Constitution, Rebellion and War
• 4. The Balkan Wars
• 5. The Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire
• 6. Entry of the Ottoman Empire into the First World War
• 7. The Ottoman Empire in the First World War, 1914–1918
• 8. The Secret Treaties
• 9. The Armistice of Mudros
• 10. The End of the Ottoman Empire
• 11. The Peace Settlement and the Minorities
• 12. The End of the Committee of Union and Progress
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• Glossary
• Maps
• Index