Review: The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War, Selim Deringil
By Mohammed Alrmizan
Have you ever wondered how and why the Ottomans left the Arab lands, how they critically viewed themselves, their policies toward the Arab lands, and Arabs role in the Ottoman military, and what was it like for a central character like Jamal Pasha to be the leader during this era? The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War, by Selim Deringil goes into all these questions and more in an event portrait of the times and the people who were involved in them.
This book explores the history of the last years of the Ottoman presence and then twilight in the Arab lands – Syria, Lebanon, Palestine (The Levante) and the Hijaz, western side of today’s Saudi Arabia, through annotated translations of memoirs and testimonies of five Ottoman personalities between 1914 and 1917. Deringil seeks to explain through these translations of different narratives that happened to come across each other in time, places, and events, of how the Ottoman/Turkish view their positions during the final years of the Great War or World War I. The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War lays out the events witnessed by the owners of the memoirs, which before this work only existed in Turkish, during the reign of Jamal Pasha, the Commander of the Fourth Army District, who had limitless power in ruling the Ottoman Army stationed in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Hijaz, governing the area until the Ottoman Empire lost the WWI.
Deringil’s work has chosen five memoirs of five different people: Falih Rıfkı, Ali Fuad, and Naci Kıcıman, who were Ottoman military officers, Munevver Aysali, who was a daughter of a retired Ottoman soldier and trader, and Hüseyin Kâzım, an independent Ottoman, scholar and intellectual. Bringing up the discourses and ideas of each of the memoirs, Deringil explore their discussions from two angles that were to share the collective memories of later generations in the beginning years of the Turkish Republic and particularly, the then national leader and President of the country, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. From two angles that help structure the collective memories of the readers of these memoirs, Deringil refers to “stab in the back syndrome”, and “good riddance syndrome”, which were both contributing to make up the feeling of those who witnessed the events and also academic, historical military, Ottoman, and Turkish-Arab relation studies.
Discussing the important aspects and issues of the Ottoman twilight in the Arab lands, Deringil seeks to contextualize the historical events of the Arab lands, using memoirs and collective memory, Turks and Arabs perception of each other, Arab soldiers in the Ottoman army, Ottoman-German alliance, rule of Jamal Pasha and his reign of terror and executions of Arab nationalists and intellectuals in Beirut and Damascus in 1915-16, end of Lebanon's autonomy, the great famine and the last days of the Ottomans before leaving the Arab lands. In addition to helping explain the personal context of each writer of the memoirs, which is significant for the reader in order to understand the hints, feelings and meaning of the translated texts.
Falih Rıfkı (Atay), whose memoir was featured in the first and longest chapter, was a journalist in Tanin newspaper, the official newspaper of the Committee of the Union and Progress (CUP), after serving as secretary to Talat Pasha, he then was ordered by Jamal Pasha to be his head of intelligence office in Jerusalem during Jamal’s governance of Syria (1914-1917). Rıfkı who wrote Ateş ve Güneş memoir, then added it into and combined it with his Zeytindağ memoir, and finally published as one longer memoir in 1932. Deringil has chosen Rıfkı because he was a close aide to Jamal Pasha, who was a central character during the Ottoman presence in the Levantine, and referred to in Zeytindağ due to its beautiful writing and the details it provides about its writer and his thoughts of himself and the events he witnessed. Zeytindağ explains the state of mind of Rıfkı during his service and his feeling of his Turkishness, homelessness and foreignness, and critical views and satirical, sometimes offensive views of the Arabs either those serving in the Ottoman Army or those who are being governed or considered to be enemies. “The air of Lebanon is a hundred times more foreign for us than the air of Dobruca”, a statement by Rıfkı in his Zeytindağ, which shows how foreign he felt toward being in the Levantine (p. Xiii).
In the second chapter, Deringil has chosen Hüseyin Kâzım (Kadri), who is one of the founders of CUP and Tanin newspaper and considered to be an exceptional character who ignored politics and focused on scholarship. His Meşrutiyetten Cumhuriyete Hatırlarım memoir was chosen due to its stories about the last days of the Ottomans in Aleppo, Beirut, and the issues of the planned famine of the Christians and the leaving of the Ottoman families to Anadolu for ever to build their then new Republic. In his memoir, Kâzım exceptionally is seen a critical toward the Ottoman military officers and not blaming the Arabs as most memoirs have noted, and even not afraid of expressing his criticism toward the Republic’s nationalist rhetoric and secular politics. Deringil has noted that it was not a surprise that Kâzım’s work only became published after his death in 1934.
As an associate and a critic of Jamal Pasha at the same time, the third chapter presents the work of Ali Fuad Erden, who was a professional soldier, favoured by Jamal Pasha and military chief of staff in the Fourth Army. Fuad’s memoir, Birinci Dünya Savaşında Suriye Hatırları, presents his critical thoughts on the two Suze Canal campaigns in 1915-16, the German influence, and the executions of the Arab nationalists. “This book is not intended to be a history of the Fourth Army.” Fuad continues on explaining his work, “Nor is it a ‘memoir’ that has nothing to do with what happened in the war. It is a collection of events, anecdotes, and stories; it is a few pages of our recent history …” (p. 93-4). Deringil has corrected some facts in the work of Fuad, such as the mistake of thinking Rida Bey al-Sulh was hanged, but in fact, he was exiled (p. 106). In addition to Rıfkı, Fuad has presented critical views about the Arabs, such as his firm conviction that the “Arab officers were planning to poison the Turks in their sleep” (p. xv).
Münevver Ayaşlı, who is a daughter of the director of the Tobacco Regie, Caferi Tayyar Bey, a retired major and trader, lived very young in Beirut before leaving it at the age of eight years old. Ayşalı’s works, Geniş Ufuklara ve Yabancı İklimlere Doğru and İşittiklerim Gördüklerim Bildiklerim, are presented in the fourth chapter, as a memoir detailing her views and memories of Aleppo, declaration of the way, Falih Rıfkı, Armenians, Halide Edib who is Jamal Pasha’s sister, and her dislike of Jamal, and the defeat of the Ottoman and leave of the Turks.
In the fifth and last chapter, Deringil has chosen Naci Kaşif (Kıcıman), because he was a chief military officer and his work is his own memoir and also a biography of his commander, Fahreddin Pasha, governor of Medina during the war. Another reason was because the memoir representing a typical example of the ‘stab in the back syndrome’ beside the other memoirs. This chapter although focused on military details and emotional reporting during the siege of Medina by the Sharif Hussein during the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, Deringil has omitted unnecessary details of the military stories, but focused on memoirs that shows the mindset Kaşif regarding himself as a chief military officer who was close to his commander during crucial events. In addition to Rıfkı and Fuad, Kaşif presented another critical view of the Arabs, as he lamented the Ottoman loss of the war for the Arab treason of the Ottomans (p.160). The sources for critical views in the Ottoman writers presented in this book come from racial competition, trust, rumors, and administration style in the Ottoman Empire and its policies toward the Arab lands and its people.
The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands presents five interesting memoirs of exceptional characters and comes in a perfect time where academia and research has been interested more often in the contemporary of Arab-Turkish relation and history. The chosen memoirs represent the post-Ottoman history which was published during the early stages of the Kemalist Republic of Turkey. Although the personality of Jamal Pasha has been central to all pages of all memoirs, they covered other issues, most importantly, the Ottoman military and rule in the Arab lands, executions of the Arab nationalists, politics of governing the Arabs, minorities, and military. The work of Deringil would have been richer if it has included some relevant memoirs like Aziz Bey (Hüseyin Aziz Akyürek), who was head of the intelligence office in Damsacus, and also Halide Edib (Adivar), who was the director of education in Syria. In addition, it would have been better if there was an indication to additional information like dates of birth and death of the names mentioned in the book, and the list of books and other memoires of the five authors. However, The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands remains a good source for researchers of the history of the Ottomans in the Arab peninsula, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, history of Turkish-Arab relation and studies of collective memories and literature, and the personality of the owners of memories as well as Jamal and Fahreddin Pashas.
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Mohammed Alrmizan is a Research Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS). He obtained his MA in Journalism from the Istanbul University in Turkey and his BA in Media Studies from the University of Wisconsin in the US. Alrmizan’s research interests focus on Turkey’s internal politics and foreign policy, Turkish media, Arab diaspora and diasporic media in Turkey, and Saudi foreign policy in the Caucasus.
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