For Turkey, Armistice Day marked the start of another war … one that defined its national identity
Few people in Turkey will mark the centenary of the end of the First World War today despite the impact it has had on the Turkish national consciousness.
Observing Armistice Day is an annual duty for most countries touched by the conflict, but in Turkey it is absorbed among events that led to the fall of the 600-year Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Turkish Republic, including the four-year independence struggle after the war.
“For most Turks the First World War was an Ottoman war but the War of Independence was the first war we fought as Turks,” political analyst Murat Yildiz told The National.
The lack of ceremonies, however, belies the way that the defeat shaped Turkish attitudes towards the West and the Middle East. It is known as “Sevres syndrome”, after the post-war treaty to carve up Anatolia that never came into being.
“It boiled up through the 19th century and culminated with the question of who were the culprits who forced the dissolution of the empire,” said Prof Ahmet Evin, a senior scholar at Sabanci University’s Istanbul Policy Centre.
“The whole narrative was based on the idea that the glorious empire was lost because of the animosity, political machinations and power projection of the outsiders – the West.”
At the end of the First World War, the Ottomans were stripped of their possessions outside Anatolia as Britain and France divided up Arab lands to the south under the secret Sykes-Picot deal.
The allies occupied Istanbul and planned to carve up western and southern Anatolia into spheres of influence for France, Greece, Italy and Britain.
But the War of Independence defeated these plans and modern Turkey came into existence.
A study by the British Council says Turkey’s “collective memory of this period is coloured by these events”.
In a 2014 survey, the council found nine in 10 Turks felt the country was still affected by the consequences of the First World War and nearly half said the war “contributes strongly to my country’s identity”.
More than half said the conflict and its results “have a lasting impact on my country’s international relations and how it is viewed by other countries today”.
These sentiments are often presented through conspiratorial opinions in Turkish newspapers or by politicians when they refer to plots by “imperialists” to undermine Turkey. They are encapsulated in the popular adage: “The Turk has no friend but the Turk.”
In a televised address two weeks after a failed 2016 military coup, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the attempt on “foreign powers” and said the “scenario was written outside of Turkey”.
A few months later, as Turk-
ish forces were engaged in a military incursion in Syria, Mr Erdogan raised the spectre of efforts to divide the country a century earlier.
“At this critical time when there are attempts to restructure the world and our region, if we stop we will find ourselves facing Sevres conditions,” he said.
This summer, when the lira suffered a drastic fall, leading politicians accused unidentified foreigners of waging “economic war” on Turkey.
The dredging up of century-old enmities is not confined to the West. The Arab Revolt of 1916, often described as a “stab in the back” for the Ottomans, has given Turkey ammunition to chastise its southern neighbours when the situation suits.
Perhaps the most sensitive issue arising from the war for Turks is the mass killing of Ottoman Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1915. Some historians claim up to 1.5 million Armenians died in the forced march to Syria, and have called their deaths genocide.
Turkey disputes the description of events and the number of deaths, and has reacted angrily to any foreign recognition of genocide.
When Pope Francis and German politicians spoke of the Armenian genocide, Ankara recalled its ambassadors to the Vatican and Berlin.
“Having committed the largest genocide in modern history, Germany resorts to lies about Ottoman Armenians to relieve itself of guilt,” Mr Erdogan said.