Aslice of Turkish history: ‘The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East’
Given the critical role Turkey plays and will play in the strategic Middle East, where the United States appears to be inextricably stuck in the mire of war, Americans’ understanding of it and its history is relatively weak to nonexistent.
“The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East” by Eugene Rogan fills many of the gaps in our understanding. Rogan’s presentation of a crucial part of that history, Turkey’s role in World War I, is a painless, colorful and pleasurable means of getting a decent hold on it.
Among other aspects of the book that make it accessible, Rogan includes photographs of the sites and, most importantly, the people who were the principal actors in the drama. These include Capt. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia as played by Peter O’Toole).
Turkey as a country — then still the Ottoman Empire — on the eve of World War I, was the equivalent of a patient undergoing heart bypass surgery who also suffered from crippling athlete’s foot and poison ivy all over. After six centuries of Ottoman imperial rule, starting at the end of the 13th century, it found itself sprawled out across Europe and the Middle East, with no money, having suffered bankruptcy in 1875, with lands coveted by large, neighboring and more modern Great Britain, France and Russia, and in terms of morale greatly conscious of how far it had fallen.
In 1453, it had seized Constantinople, now Istanbul, as its capital. In 1529, it had come within a whisker of having taken Vienna. Now it was about to be cleaned. From 1908 to 1923, Turkey went from being ruled by a hereditary sultan, Abdulhamid II, to a republic headed by a successful World War I general, the legendary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
In the meantime, its holdings in the region had shrunk horribly and its armies had been, for the most part, whipped across the board, not without having also severely bloodied the British, Australians and New Zealanders in the famous Gallipoli campaign. An estimated 500,000 died in that 259-day conflict.
Rogan deals skillfully with the still steaming controversy about Turkish genocide against the Armenians, which started in 1894. The word “genocide” had not yet been coined, but as he sees it, it is clear the Turks saw the Armenians as an existential threat and sought to exterminate them to preclude the threat. The way the Turks saw it, the Armenians as Christians were siding with their enemies, the Christian Russians, against them, the Turks, and so had to be “cleansed,” as did the also victimized Assyrian Christians.
The Middle East in that period was as plagued by religious warfare as it is now. The Ottoman sultan sought to launch Muslim holy war against the Christian invaders. The British in Egypt and India were afraid he would succeed. The Sunnis and Shiites were scrapping in Iraq, then called Mesopotamia. Lawrence was instrumental in launching the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Turks, although Rogan notes, not without irony, echoing U.S. advisers in the 21st century, that “as ever, Arab tribesmen made fickle soldiers.”
Without detailing too much, Rogan also signals the roots of the present, ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over the division of the territory of Palestine, referring to the disputable agreements involved — the Husayn-McMahon Correspondence, the SykesPicot Agreement, and the Balfour Declaration.
This book sets out history that is definitely worth mastering to help understand the present.