War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State

Utah Series in Middle East Studies

by M. Hakan Yavuz (Editor), Feroz Ahmad (Editor)

War and Collapse is the third and final volume in a series that covers the last years of the Ottoman Empire. This book stems from a three-day international conference held in May 2012 at which scholars examined the causes and consequences of World War I, with a distinctive focus on how these events pertained to the Ottoman state and society. Fifty-three scholars—both new and established—contributed to this collection, with the goal of explaining what happened within the Ottoman Empire before and during WWI and how ethnic and national groups constructed these events to enhance their identities, promote their interests, and situate their collective selves in the international system. The chapters provide insight into the mindset and experiences of Ottoman peoples from the end of the Balkan Wars through the end of World War I, showing how earlier events set in motion the Ottoman response to the war and how continued engagement in conflict had devastating, irreversible effects on Ottoman society. The articles in this volume include a wide variety of ideas and points of view, thus presenting a comprehensive picture of the events. 

1532 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2015

Reviews

[Fahad Qazi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In the end the Ottoman Empire was defeated by armies with equipment and hardware far superior to their own. Ottoman soldiers had to wear summer uniforms in nightmarishly harsh winter conditions and wear scraps of cloth in Palestine and Syria. Like water eroding the surface of a rock, a chasm came to exist between the East and the West. The Young Turks, the Party of Union and Progress, and others who continued to fight to the very end during the final hours of the Ottoman Empire were unable to surmount that basic, all-encompassing dilemma. Perhaps this should have been apparent enough. In light of what ensued, it might well be said that whatever the attendant consequences of inaction might have been, the Young Turks should have stayed away from a war that was taking place primarily among the industrialized powers. But that is precisely the point. The Young Turks refused to surrender to a fate that was to be forced upon them. Trying to cling to an illusory neutral status would have been an impossibly passive stance, tantamount to waiting for the dreaded day when the final judgment would be handed down. Hearts in hand, they leapt into the darkness.
The Ottomans, like the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, and the Ro-manovs, had come to the very edge. A grand settling of accounts was im-pending, as old Europe was coming to a close. No pro-German group had hijacked the Ottoman government in August 1914, just as Germany was not doing everything in its power to win over the Ottoman Empire.
However paradoxical it may seem, the Turco-German alliance was the result of British intransigence and Entente politics. The Young Turks had met Perfidious Albion par excellence.”

“It should also be emphasized that the Balkan Wars caused the ideological defeat of Ottomanism, implemented ever since the nineteenth century as "a secular state ideology, promising equality for all the religious and ethnic minorities in the empire. Thus the Young Turk leadership began to flirt with Islamism. Religion was one of the important links between the Turks and Arabs, the two most populous peoples of the remaining empire.° Consequently "the CUP moved from secular Otto-manism to what can be described as 'Islamic Ottomanism.
In other words, belief in a secular Ottoman identity encompassing the Greeks and Bulgarians was no longer valid and the emphasis on Islamic solidarity increased. This also had some repercussions for policy making. As Erol Köroglu claims, the policies of pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism during World War I were based on the defeat in the Balkans. The aim of those irredentist policies was the material or psychological compensation for those losses 32 Therefore the effect of ideology cannot be offered as the overarching variable to explain Ottoman war aims. It should be stressed that the security needed to protect against Russian expansionism (partic-ularly in the Caucasus and the Balkans) was critical in the empire's grand strategy during World War I.”

“During his eventful political career, one of the most crucial challenges that Said Halim Pasa faced was Russia's meddling in the Armenian Ques-tion. In the end, with designs on eastern Anatolia, Russia took advantage of the fragile situation of the Ottoman Empire by inciting the Armenian population in the region to rebel against the Porte. Said Halim fought tenaciously against these Russian plans and thwarted St. Petersburg's schemes for Anatolia with skilled diplomacy. Moreover, he also opposed, though unsuccessfully, the draconian measures adopted by Talat Paça to solve the Armenian Question in eastern Anatolia in April 1915. Unfor-tunately, Said Halim was not strong enough in the cabinet to prevent the empire being dragged into the war by the pro-German Enver Paça.
Said Halim's failures to prevent the empire from entering the war demonstrated the demise of the last multiethnic and multiconfessional Muslim empire. It also demonstrated the failure of pan-Islamism, an ideology that he advocated in the face of the rising ethnic nationalism in the Muslim world, which led to the disasters that followed, including the painful and cruel tragedy of the Armenian massacres.”