The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire

Ryan Gingeras’s The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire is one of the most comprehensive recently published studies on the dissolution of the Ottoman state. In this study, Gingeras focuses on that critical period from the signing of the Mudros Armistice to the departure of the last Ottoman sultan from Istanbul and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in October 1923, which is frequently referred to in the historiography as the Armistice period. He explores the diplomatic, social, political, and demographic processes that led to the collapse of the Empire. Published in 2022, as we approach the centenary of the Republic, this comprehensive study provides insights into the important aspects of the transition from empire to nation-state drawing on a rich collection of archival sources.The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire consists of an introduction and six chapters. The introduction sets out the main themes and concerns of the book, where Gingeras also presents a brief discussion of the historiography and sources on the Empire’s demise. He argues that the end of the Great War “marked the beginning of an exceedingly complex period of warfare and negotiation over the empire’s uncertain future” (5). A struggle was waged in the name of saving the empire; ironically, however, this struggle for independence, the National Struggle (Millî Mücadele), resulted in the end of Ottoman sovereignty. For Gingeras, his work is “first and foremost, an attempt to re-center the story of the Ottoman Empire’s last years” (5). To that end, he avoids evaluating the Empire’s dissolution “through the prism of Turkey’s birth” (19), that is, deterministically, as if all that happened in the Armistice period should have necessarily led to the Republic. Gingeras reminds his readers that the Ottoman dissolution was a process that unfolded in an imperial context. The leaders of the National Struggle turned away from the sultanate only when it became clear in the last stages of the National Struggle that the multinational empire had broken apart.In chapter 1, entitled “Our Policies Have Failed. The Ottoman Empire by 1918,” Gingeras provides a background for his main discussion on the Empire’s demise with an overview of the Ottoman history from the reform movements of the nineteenth century to the end of the Great War. This chapter is key to understanding the character of the nation-state that replaced the Empire by the end of the Armistice period. In this part of the book, Gingeras discusses the historical constitution of the concept of the nation that underpinned “the notion of Turkey as a nation-state.” The idea of nation progressively took shape in the context of an ambiguous relationship between the concepts of Ottoman citizenship and of Turkishness. Although the role of non-Muslims was initially left unaddressed in the framework of nationalists’ discussions over Ottoman and Turkish identity, shows Gingeras, first the expulsion of Bulgarian Orthodox Christians, then the deportation of Greek Orthodox communities, and finally the Armenian genocide left no ambiguity in this respect in the Young Turks’ nationality policies.Despite all the calamities and the military defeat, suggests Gingeras, the Ottoman Empire did not look to be on the verge of a total collapse when the Great War ended and even after the Armistice was signed. There was still hope that the Empire would survive and “for the bulk of the population, other concerns, such as starvation, crime and displacement, outranked more abstract questions regarding the country’s future” (78). In chapter 2, “‘A Comedy of Mutual Mistrust.’ The Politics of Surrender and Occupation,” Gingeras examines the aftermath and consequences of the Ottoman surrender during the period of 1918–19, looking at the peace negotiations in Paris, Allied policies concerning the Ottoman state, and initial reactions against the occupation of Ottoman territory. One of the important points he makes in this part of the book is that the flight of the senior Young Turk leaders at the end of the war created a power vacuum in Istanbul. Afterwards, the new sultan Mehmet VI put together “a fragile coalition” (78). While the occupation of Antep, Maraş, and Adana was underway and the Empire was faced with many other challenges threatening its future, this coalition sought to eliminate the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the Young Turk organization that had been in power during the Great War. In a sense, the trial of the CUP cadres (Unionists) for their war crimes, including but not limited to the mass killings of Armenians, served this goal.At the beginning of the Armistice period, the possibility of a mandate regime was seriously discussed by Ottoman intellectuals and public figures. Gingeras argues, however, that “abstract acceptance of foreign rule faded as the realities of an Allied occupation came into view” starting in Istanbul in November 1919 (111). In chapter 3, “The War Resumes. The Origins and Implications of a Resurgent Ottoman Empire,” Gingeras deals with how the national movement developed in the shadows of the Greek occupation of İzmir (Smyrna) in May 1919 and the rise of various anti-national opposition movements. While discussing the origins of the resistance movement, he points out the significance of the former members of the CUP and the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa). He emphasizes the role of the Karakol organization, which derived many of its activists from Unionists, in the formation of the resistance. Established in Istanbul, Karakol’s agents drew on the CUP’s local branches in their efforts to organize the resistance in the provinces, where “they found willing supporters among a large cast of local figures: policemen, mayors, bureaucrats, educators, journalists, merchants, landowners and, in many cases, bandits” (127).Gingeras distinguishes his narrative from the previous histories that treat the Ottoman collapse only “as the backdrop to Atatürk’s spectacular rise to power” (20). Here the target of his critique is, clearly, the national (or official) historiography that views Mustafa Kemal as the undisputable leader/hero of the National Struggle. From this perspective, the Empire came apart because of Mustafa Kemal’s final victory in the struggle for independence. This means, by implication, that Mustafa Kemal and his friends aimed to terminate the old regime and replace it with a new one, whereas their enemies “sought to preserve the old order” (20). Gingeras rejects this distinction. What happened, according to him, was the split of the imperial elite into two rival camps both of which “expressed a desire to preserve the Ottoman state (at least in some form)” (20). Chapter 3 relates the rise of the Young Turk party under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, while chapter 2 focuses on the other side of the conflict, which consisted of the Young Turks’ opponents unified by Sultan Mehmed VI.Titled “Towards a Sovereign State. The Politics of Reconsolidation in the Ottoman Lands,” Chapter 4 discusses how Mustafa Kemal gained the upper hand in this struggle. Gingeras highlights that a crucial turning point in this respect is the withdrawal of the French occupation forces from Cilicia after intense fights in Maraş and Antep (also known as Gaziantep). The military campaign in the south went with many Muslim casualties, the killing of hundreds of Armenian fighters and civilians in addition to French troops. Nationalists’ control over Cilicia was formally established by the Treaty of Ankara signed in October 1921. In the meantime, there was another military campaign against Armenia. Commanded by Kazım Karabekir, this campaign determined the frontiers of the region that came under control of nationalists in eastern Anatolia. Gingeras is of the opinion that the Nationalist forces led by Mustafa Kemal became the “arbiters of the empire’s future” after these victories in the south and east: the borders of the Empire would be shaped by “his movement’s successes on the battlefield” (163).When did the national forces give up on the Empire? This question is partly addressed in chapter 5, “‘Beyond the Reach of the Scorn.’ A Fateful Year of Protests, Atrocities and Combat.” Although Gingeras states in the book’s introduction that it is not clear “exactly when the Ottoman state ceased to exist” (9), he takes the Treaty of Sevres as the beginning of the Empire’s end in this section. Signed in August 1920, this treaty brought huge territorial losses and placed heavy restrictions on the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Its approval by the imperial government in Istanbul tilted the balance of power toward the national government in Ankara, which unequivocally rejected it. There was no mention of the prerogatives of the Sultan or the Caliph in the new constitution adopted in Ankara in January 1921 and “from 1921 onward, the National Assembly spoke for the government of Turkey, not the Ottoman Empire” (216). However, pushing for the Sultan’s deposition was risky at that moment. This would have not only triggered popular reaction in the country but also weakened international support from “Muslim activists in the wider colonial world” (216). Chapter 5 explores the global repercussions of the national movement with particular attention to India, where there was a strong movement of solidarity in support of the Ottoman Caliphate. Also discussed in this part is a new wave of fighting in 1921, when Anatolia became a scene for conflicts between the Turkish national forces and the Greek occupation army, atrocities committed by warring factions, and defections from and rebellions against the nationalists.According to Gingeras, after the Battle of Sakarya in August—September 1921, which resulted in a defeat of the Greek army, the term “new Turkey” figured increasingly more in the parlance of foreign observers as well as nationalist activists. For many, Ankara, where the headquarters of the national movement was located, embodied the spirit of new Turkey and its future. Yet it was later, “when an Allied defeat seemed all but certain, that the empire’s dissolution was openly contemplated” (20). This is when “the empire’s most esteemed servants, its generals and soldiers . . . decided that the time had come for the Ottoman state to pass into history” (5). In chapter 6, “‘A New Kind of Turk.’ The Ottoman Empire’s Final Days,” Gingeras points to the counteroffensive of August–September 1922 as the time when that decision was made. The fire of İzmir that followed the withdrawal of the Greek army and the violence against local Christians that erupted in this process were emblematic signs of rupture with the past. While thousands of Greek Orthodox Christians were fleeing from Asia Minor, the Ankara government dispatched a military contingent to Istanbul, which arrived on October 19, 1922. On November 1, 1922, the Turkish Grand National Assembly declared the sultanate annulled and on November 17, Mehmed VI, the last Ottoman sultan, departed from Istanbul.Gingeras is concerned with the Empire’s dissolution more than the political regime that replaced it. He does not deal in detail with how a republican regime was established at the end of the Armistice period. Of more interest to Gingeras is the process at the end of which the Ottoman state could no longer be characterized as a multinational state. Much of Ottoman territory in Europe had been lost in the Balkan Wars and the Great War had ended with the separation of the Levantine and Arab provinces from the Empire. Although the violence that devastated what had remained of the Empire affected all communities between 1918 and 1922, the National Struggle accelerated the ethnoreligious homogenization of Anatolia with the elimination of the Armenian and Greek Orthodox elements. At the end of the National Struggle, “an empire representing many faiths and languages no longer seemed viable” for the founders of new Turkey (6).The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire is a comprehensive study touching upon the most striking and controversial issues of late Ottoman history. Many of the existing studies on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire focus on the rise of the Turkish national movement in the Armistice period, leadership struggles within this movement, or the diplomatic and military aspects of the National Struggle. Gingeras, however, attempts to write this history from the perspective of the Empire’s Christian and Muslim communities living in different localities. In his narrative, he places emphasis on how these communities experienced the breakdown of the Ottoman order and what this process meant for them. This effort brings fresh insights into the historiography of the Ottoman Empire’s dismemberment and the National Struggle. The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire is a must-read for students of late Ottoman and early republican Turkish history. I believe historians of the modern Middle East will also find this book useful and inspiring

Ancient history · Art · Empire · Ottoman empire · Political science · Politics · History · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society

• Forced marriages and unintentional divorces

  Open Access•Riccardo Mario Cucciolla•Philosophy & Social Criticism•2024

  Add to list