Beginning in 1910, the Ottoman Empire was engaged in suppressing serious rebellions in Albania, Yemen, and ‘Asir. In 1911, rebellion still raged in Albania, Yemen, and ‘Asir and war began with Italy. In 1912-13 the war continued with Italy and war began with the Balkan League. In 1913, the war continued with Bulgaria and war began with the Saudis. In 1914-1918, the Ottoman Empire was involved in the First World War with the Allies. In 1919-1922, war raged between the Ottoman/the nationalist governments and Greece, Britain, and the Republic of Armenia. Indeed, this continued conflict might be labeled a Long World War I as the Imperial and later Republican governments sought to incorporate obstreperous groups, while simultaneously fighting against foreign powers. As these numerous conflicts blurred into one another, local societies and the individuals involved in these conflicts were profoundly effected.
This panel will highlight the breakdown and transformation of Ottoman society due to prolonged warfare and ethnic conflict. The first paper will address the way in which Armenians sought to navigate prolonged warfare, genocide/ethnic cleansing, and post-imperial identities in the 1910’s and 1920’s, the second paper discusses the way in Greek and Ottoman soldiers transitioned from fighting the First World War to fighting the Greco-Turkish War and the way in which prolonged conflict effected politics and social life. The third paper looks at the emergence of the Special Organization (Te?kilât-? Mahsusa) in the closing days of the Balkan Wars and traces its operational life through World War I and into the Republican period, the final paper examines the Ottomans in South Arabia in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 until the Post-War struggle between the Saudis and other local powers in the early 1920’s.
This panel draws together Turkish, Armenian, and Greek sources into order to break down the barriers of previous historiography delineating between events of the First World War and Post-War conflicts, like the Greco-Turkish War of the Turkish-Armenian War. Memoirs of Ottoman officers and soldiers, Greek soldiers, and Armenian civilians will infuse the lived experience of war rather than an official historical overview of operations. This panel provides new approaches to the manner in which the First World War and Post-War conflicts can be conceptualized, it blends together a wide array of sources, and it seeks to bridge the boundary between the historiography of the First World War and the Ottoman Empire.
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This paper will investigate Ottoman operations in South Arabia with an emphasis on ‘Asir. This was an ongoing campaign that transitioned from an anti-insurrectionary operation to one that took place against other concerns in the Hijaz and Yemen. Utilizing memoirs of Ottoman officers and other contemporary sources this paper will provide the outlines of the Idrisid revolt in ‘Asir and Ottoman efforts to contain the revolt for eight years. These events will be linked to the Ottoman Hijaz campaign and operations in Yemen/South Arabia. Additionally, the paper will fit the ‘Asir front into the larger context of the First World War in the Middle East and its position in the post-war struggle for Arabia. This contest, a “Scramble for Arabia” had developed throughout the early 20th century as the Ottoman and British Empires asserted greater control on the peninsula and local actors used the imperial rivalry to improve their respective positions. The First World War ruptured this rivalry, with the departure of the Ottomans from the contest, however the power vacuum created resulted in a new struggle between Arab contenders themselves as well as with the British Empire began. The result was that the interior of the peninsula was dominated by the Saudis and coastal areas entered into alliance with the British.
The paper will fit this prolonged struggle into the larger context of the First World War in the Middle East as well as Post-War conflicts. Further, it will integrate the complex relations and interactions on the peninsula and link it with literature on the post-war Middle East. Furthermore, the three-way struggle between the Idrisids (‘Asir), the Mutwakkilites (Yemen), and the Saudis (Najd) will also discussed in the context of the prolonged Ottoman withdrawal from South Arabia as well as the Ottoman officers who remained in Yemen and fought with the Mutawakkilites. The post-war contest the Saudis and other regional powers will also be highlighted.
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Armen Manuk-Khaloyan
The First World War has come to be remembered differently in the collective historical consciousness of the successor states and former communities of the Ottoman Empire. For the Armenians of the Diaspora and the modern republic, in particular, the genocide of 1915 exercises an outsized influence on postwar space and memory. The metanarrative of the genocide looms so prominently that it has come at the expense of all but obscuring the political and social aspects of Ottoman Armenian life upon the eve of World War I. This paper proposes to reconceptualize the Armenians’ experience by examining how they initially responded to the outbreak of the cataclysmic event that was the First World War. As such, it treats Armenians not as a single monolithic unit, but as an active, engaged citizenry in the empire, as individuals and collectives that hailed from diverse political, socio-economic, class, and ethno-confessional backgrounds, and thus demonstrates the intracommunal cleavages and worldviews that distinguished, for example, Armenian Revolutionary Federation party members from unaffiliated Armenian newspaper editors. In other words, this proposition overcomes deterministic understandings of ethnicity to elaborate on a new dynamic of empire, identity, and the making of political communities.
By evaluating a wide range of memoirs, diaries, letters, periodicals, and archival documents, it focuses on the string events following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in June 1914 and concluding with the Ottoman bombardment of Russian naval installations that October. It traces the sites of interaction and lived experiences of Ottoman Armenian journalists, conscripts, school instructors, writers, and deputies of parliament to explore their hopes, fears, and expectations and what anxieties and ambitions they underlay. A careful study of these various mediums expressed in both the public and private spheres reveal competing, though not always mutually exclusive, visions of the future imperial realm. And what the Armenians foresaw in the event of their empire’s eventual entry into the war produced multiple conceptions and articulations of belonging.
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Mr. Gevorg Petrosyan
In my paper I will discuss the emergence of the Turkish intelligence services in the period between the Armistice of Mudros in 1918 till the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and their impact on the Turkish War of Independence (Kemalist Movement) in 1919-1922.
I argue that the Secret Organization (Te?kilât-? Mahsusa) of the Ottoman Empire which was very active during the World War I and was officially abolished after the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, was both the structural and staff base for many small secret intelligence organizations and groups which were in action during the following years when Turkish War of Independence took place and the Republic of Turkey was established.
In my paper, the focus is on the main activities of these post-war intelligence/ secret organizations, their structural and staff nuances, other features and characteristics. I will discuss the importance of these organizations in the Turkish War of Independence, their relations with Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and other leaders, international relations (especially with Bolsheviks) and intersections with non-Turkish Intelligence services, mainly with British intelligence service.
This period is very important for understanding the whole security system of Turkey not only in the first half of 20th century, but following decades as well entering a long period of transformations and changes. The experience of these organizations, as a legacy of World War I, became crucial for the work of Turkish Intelligence during the early decades of Republican era.
In my paper, I use archival documents and newly published books related to the topic, I analyze Turkish official historiography which is very important; I also use speeches and memoires of state officials in Turkey as an additional source for more complete picture. The sources I will use in my conference paper are in Ottoman, Turkish, English, Russian and Armenian.
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Mr. Charalampos Minasidis
The armistice of 1918 did not bring the promised peace and demobilization that Greek and Ottoman conscripts and their families expected since the beginning of the Great War. Both Greek and Ottoman citizen soldiers found themselves still fighting for four more years. New war fronts emerged, while both home fronts had to sustain new military engagements. The devastation and the political divides of the Great War meant that the prolongation of the war should be justified and propagandized. This did not prove an easy task although the initial Greek euphoria and Ottoman numbness.
As this new phase of the war deepened the political divides for both groups, official and unofficial pro-war and anti-war campaigns started. Such an unofficial anti-war campaign led to the electoral defeat of the Liberal Party by the Greek royalists. However, contrary to their promises, the latter did not terminate the Greek campaign into Asia Minor. At the same time, in the Ottoman case, the collaboration of both the monarchy and, initially, of the liberal Freedom and Accord Party, with the Entente occupying powers gradually alienated the Ottoman royalists and strengthened the parliamentarists.
Using diaries, memoirs, letters, songs, newspapers and petitions the paper explores the responses of the Greek and Ottoman citizen soldiers and their families to the prolongation of their mobilization. At the end, the failed royalist policies during the new phase of the war turned vast numbers in both groups against the monarchy. The monarchical Greek and Ottoman state had intervened in such an unprecedented way in ordinary people’s life without securing their survival and well-being or any final military and political success. These people’s radicalization was formed as a denial to the monarchical past. Following the spiral of their wartime radicalization the paper reconstructs the nuances of political participation. It follows their active and passive resistance to the war and examines their mutinies, desertions, and construction of their loyalties and allegiances. It focuses on desertions from royalist regiments to side with the antimonarchists challenging the assumption that conscripts and veterans just followed orders and did not act on their own.
