State-Building

1
State-Building

• Nationalism, secularism, and great power politics
  at the turn of the 20th century

2
Some questions to consider

• Islamists are in power in both Iran and Turkey.
  Why is Turkey so different from Iran?
• Why is the government in Egypt so different from
  the government in Saudi Arabia?
• Why has the military played an important role in
  the politics of Turkey?

3
1914

• Two (major) political entities in the region
• The Ottoman Empire (Egypt, Tunisia)
• Iran

4
Ten years later

• Turkey
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Transjordan (later Jordan)
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Saudi Arabia
• Iran

5
The Ottoman Empire

• the balance among linguistic, regional, and
  religious groupings was disturbed by European
  interventions and the internal political changes.
  

6
The Ottoman decline

• By the turn of the 20th century the Ottoman state
  became unstable.

7
Keep in mind

• The religious foundations of Ottoman rule.

8
Legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire

• As long as loyalty to the empire appeared
  consistent with loyalty to the best interests of
  Islam (the ties of the ummah were paramount) most
  Arab Muslims accepted the legitimacy of the
  Ottoman rule.

9
Modernism, Humanism, political liberalism, and
the Enlightenment.

• A transition from communities of faith to
  national communities
• Secular (universal) citizenship
• Loyalty to the state and its institutions rather
  than to communal (mostly tribal) identities.
• Constitutional government
• Anti-monarchism
• Religious pluralism, freedom, individualism
• Unified legal, judicial, educational system
• The expansion of the state instituions
  (bureaucracy, surveillance).

10
The Ottoman swings in opposite direction

• Constitutionalism
• Religious restoration.

11
Young Ottomans (bureaucracy)

• Secularization (legal, judicial, educational
  systems)
• Universal citizenship
• The 1876 Constitution.

12
Religious restoration (sultan Abdul Hamid II)

• Technological and administrative modernization,
  railways, post offices, warships but
• Refurbished the long neglected title of caliph,
• Broadcasting pan-Islamic appeals, and
• Topped up the ranks of his administration with
  Arabs.

13
Religious restoration and identity

• Pan-Islamisms
• Rather than
• Ottomanism

14
1908

• Widespread opposition to the sultans tyranny.
• A military rising in Monastir and Salonika
  (Rumelia)
• The sultan forced to call elections
• The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) won a
  majority across the empire.

15
The 1908 Young Turk revolution

• Officers demand that Abdul Hamid II restore the
  constitution.
• On July 24, 1908, the constitution was declared
  once again in effect.

16
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)
government

• Overriding aim was the preservation of the
  empire, at whatever cost.
• They werent liberals but nor were they purely
  anti-colonial.

17
The threats to the Ottoman Empire

• came from European powers or their regional
  allies,
• but the Young Turks did not reject the West
  culturally or politically.

18
The 1909 counterrevolution

• Led by common soldiers and theological students
  in Istanbul who voiced their resentments against
  the influence of the Europeanized army officers
• Calling for the restoration of the shariah.
• Silenced by the Young Turks.
• Deposition of sultan Abdul Hamid II (succeeded by
  Mehmed V).

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A transformation of the Ottoman state was
required

• To give it a modern mass base (unifying
  patriotism).
• What ideological appeal could hold the
  populations divided by language, religion and
  ethnic origin of the Ottoman Empire together?

20
The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)
government

• Abolished the millet system (stressing its
  commitment to Ottomanism and to the ideal of
  preserving all Ottoman territory).
• But could not abandon the Islamic foundation on
  which imperial legitimacy had rested.
• Continued to stress the role of the sultan as
  caliph and to use Islamic symbols to buttress its
  own claims to legitimacy.

21
Italian invasion (Libya)

• Of the North African province of Tripoli (October
  1911)
• Ceding Tripoli, some Dodecanese Islands,
  including Rhodes

22
National separatist movements (Ottoman European
provinces)

• Bulgaria proclaimed its final independence,
  Austria annexed the province of Bosnia, Crete
  declared union with the Greek mainland (1908)
• Albania proclaimed independence (1912)
• Ousted out of the Balkans (almost entirely) in
  1912.

23
During the Balkan wars

• about 100,000 Turks fled before the armies of
  Greece and Serbia
• 15,000 Bulgars fled before the Greek army
• 10,000 Greeks left Serbian and Bulgarian
  Macedonia
• 70,000 Greeks left Western Bulgaria
• 48,750 Muslims left western parts of the Greek
  peninsula,
• and 46,764 Bulgars lefts eastern parts of the
  Greek peninsula.
• In 1914, 265,000 Greeks were expelled from
  Turkey,
• and 85,000 deported to the interior.
• 115,000 Muslims left Greece, and 134,000 left
  other Balkan states for Turkey.

24
The Arab cultural awakening (al nahdah)

• Syria the source of the first expressions of
  pre-war Arabism.
• No organized political movement for national
  independence.

25
Arabism

• Also a means through which some members of the
  Arab notable families protested against the CUPs
  attacks on their political and economic status
• A desire for Arab identity to receive greater
  recognition by the government.
• Political decentralization cultural autonomy.

26
Arab nationalism

• Example a Syrian reformer, Abd al-Rahman al
  Kawakibi (1854-1902), suggested that the Ottomans
  were responsible for the corruption of Islam.
• A glorification of the Arab role in the
  development of Islamic civilization.

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Kawakibis Arab nationalism

• The virtues of Islam its language, its Prophet,
  its early moral and political order were Arab
  achievements.
• The decadence of Islam was caused by practices
  the Turks and other non-Arab peoples had
  introduced into the ummah.

28
Arab nationalism

• called for the Ottomans to relinquish their
  unjustified claim to the caliphate
• and to restore the office to its rightful
  possessors, the Arabs.

29
The regeneration of Islam

• would begin with the establishment of an Arab
  caliph in Mecca whose responsibilities would be
  confined to purely religious matters.

30
Egyptian nationalism

• Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963)
• Did not privilege Islam as the basis of national
  regeneration
• One of the very first nation-state nationalists
  in the Arab world.

31
The early (Arab) nationalists

• Grappled with conflicting notions of what an Arab
  state might look like.
• Some imagined a kingdom centered in the Arabian
  peninsula.
• Others aspired to statehood in discrete parts of
  the Arab world.

32
The CUP two-track policy

• For public consumption, it proclaimed a civic
  nationalism, open to any citizen of the state, no
  matter what their creed or descent.
• On the other hand, it prepared for a more
  confessional or ethnic nationalism, restricted to
  Muslims or Turks.

33
Turkish cultural movement - departure from
Ottomanism (two main currents)

• Pan-Turkism (unifying bonds among all speakers of
  Turkish)

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Turkism

• stressed the crucial Turkish contribution to the
  success of the Ottoman Empire
• there was a pre-Islamic culture that
  distinguished the Turks from the other
  inhabitants of the empire.

36
Prior to the First World War

• Turkism did not develop into a coherent ideology
  defining specifically Turkish national state.
• But the discussion of a Turkish cultural heritage
  as distinct from the Ottoman one sowed the seeds
  for a Turkish nationalist movement in the postwar
  era.

37
The Iranian constitutional revolution (1905-1911)
and the Young Turk revolt

• Similarity a way to limit royal autocracy
  (absolutist monarchy).
• Difference the Ottoman constitutional movement
  had been founded on a transformed bureaucratic
  elite and a reform-oriented officer corps. The
  Iranian movement was led by a coalition
  (merchants, ulama, European-oriented reformers).

38
The Iranian constitutional revolution (1905-1911)
and the Young Turk revolt

• Another important difference The Iranian
  movement was not secularizing constitutional
  movement.
• Constitutional clauses stated that Islam was the
  official religion of the state.

39
The Iranian counterrevolution

• Internal forces The royalist used ulama loyal to
  the shah to denounce the constitutionalists as
  atheists and to arouse popular sentiment in favor
  of the monarchy.
• External forces Effective division of Iran
  (Britain, Russia)

40
World War 1

• The Ottomans side with Germany, Austria

41
Secret agreements

• Italy,
• Tsarist Russia,
• France,
• Arabs

42
The Constantinople Agreement (1915)

• Britain, France, Russia.
• Awarded Russia the right to annex Istanbul and
  the Turkish straights.

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The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)

• Recognized long-standing French claims to Syria
  by awarding France a large zone of direct
  control.
• Guaranteed the British position in Iraq.

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The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916)

• The independent Arab state lying in the two zones
  of British and French indirect influence.
• Palestine was to be placed under international
  administration.

47
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali (the emir of Mecca) and the
British

• British officials sought out a Muslim dignitary
  who might be persuaded to ally with the Entente
  powers (as a counterweight to the prestige of the
  Ottoman sultan-caliph).

48
The emir of Mecca

• was selected from among those families claiming
  direct descent from the Prophet and thus bore the
  honorific title of sharif.

49
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali (the emir of Mecca)
50
Sharif Husayn ibn Ali

• Claimed to represent all the Arab people.
• Distrusted the (Ottoman) CUP on both political
  and religious grounds.
• The CUP regime is atheistic it ignores the Quran
  and the sharia.

51
Husayn-McMahon correspondence

• July 1915 - March 1916
• An exchange of ten letters that lie at the root
  of a controversy over whether Britain pledged to
  support an independent Arab state.

52
Husayn

• Requested British recognition of an independent
  Arab state embracing the Arabian peninsula, the
  provinces of greater Syria (including Lebanon and
  Palestine), and the provinces of Iraq--
  essentially the Arabic-speaking world east of
  Egypt -- in exchange for his commitment to lead
  an armed rebellion against the Ottomans.

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Britain informed Husayn that

• The areas west of a line from Damascus, Homs,
  Hama, and Alepo could not be included in the
  proposed Arab state (because its inhabitants were
  not purely Arab!!!)
• The real reason France claimed control over the
  Syrian coast.

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Britain promised to provide Husayn with

• supplies,
• weapons, and
• funds for his revolt against the Ottomans.
• To recognize an Arab caliphate should one be
  proclaimed.

57
Husayn committed himself to

• an all-out armed uprising,
• a denunciation of the Ottoman regime as an enemy
  of Islam and
• abandoning the Arab claim to coastal Syria.

58
Husayn and Islamic solidarity

• Tried to portray his action as a duty to Islam.
• Called on all Muslims of the empire to join him.
• Careful not to attack the caliph, Husayn urged
  Muslims to rise up and liberate their caliph from
  the clutches of the CUP.

59
Palestine

• McMahons language was so ambiguous and so vague
  that it gave rise to widely conflicting
  interpretations.
• Was Palestine included as part of the future
  independent Arab state?

60
British officials later claimed

• that the region was part of the coastal Syrian
  territory that had been reserved for France and
  was thus excluded from the Arab state.

61
The Balfour Declaration (1917)

• Britain agreed to favor the establishment of a
  Jewish national home in Palestine.
• In an effort to
• secure control over the territory adjacent to the
  Suez canal
• appeal to US, Russian, and German Jewry.

62
The Versailles Peace Agreements 1919-1923

• Self-determination (selectively, as it turns
  out)
• Secret diplomacy, treaties and
• The League of Nations.

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The Treaty of Sevres (August 1920)

• Anatolia a partition of the original core of the
  Ottoman Empire (Italy and France were to divide
  southwestern Anatolia between them)
• The (Bosphorus) straits placed under the
  jurisdiction of an international commission.

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The Treaty of Sevres (August 1920) cont.

• Granted Thrace to Greece.
• Recognized an independent Armenian state in
  eastern Anatolia and Russian Caucasia (with no
  aid).
• The Kurdish regions of eastern Anatolia would
  have a semiautonomous status (but with no aid).

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The San Remo Conference (April 1920)

• Detached the Arab provinces from Ottoman
  authority and apportioned them between Britain
  and France.
• The former provinces were divided into entities
  called mandates.
• Britain received the mandates for Iraq and
  Palestine, France the mandate for Syria.

68
Sharif Husayn

• Emerged from the war as king of Hijaz.

69
The Syrian Kingdom (1918-1920) and the creation
of Transjordan

• Amir Faysal formed an Arab government in
  Damascus
• The government was staffed by young Arab
  activists with dreams of a united Syria and
  Palestine, by ex-Ottoman officials and military
  officers who converged on Damascus, and by
  prominent local Syrian notables.

70
In March 1920, a general Syrian congress

• proclaimed Syria an independent state with Faysal
  as its king.
• The rebirth of an Arab kingdom on the site of the
  former Umayyad imperial capital.

71
The declaration of Syrian independence

• A usurpation of French claims to the region and a
  violation of the Franco-British agreement to
  divide the Arab areas.
• Britain had to renounce any support, it may have
  been prepared to give Faysal and his Syrian
  kingdom.

72
On July 24, 1920

• the French forces defeated Faysals army,
  occupied Damascus, and forced the king of Syria
  into exile in Europe.

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Transjordan

• Faysals brother, Amir Abdallah, led a tribal
  contingent from Mecca to Maan (a desert town
  east of the Jordan river).
• His presence in Maan had the potential to rally
  dissident tribes in the region.

74
Transjordan

• Abdallah was offered the opportunity to set up an
  administration in Amman under British
  administrative guidance
• His territory would be part of the Palestine
  mandate, but it would be exempted from the
  stipulation of the Balfour Declaration.
• The emirate of Transjordan came into existence.

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From the Arab perspective

• Britain had made a pledge it did not honor
• the Arabs had been misled and then betrayed.
• The British pledges to Husayn had been sacrificed
  to the requirements of Allied harmony and
  imperial self-interest.

77
Pushes for independent Arab states (1919-1920)

• The Syrian delegation to the Paris Peace
  Conference
• The Egyptian demand to participate at te
  conference (Egypts Revolution of 1919).

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Egypt (1919)

• The ancient mosque university of al-Azhar became
  one of the centers of the uprising
• A religious shaykh inside the mosque haranguing
  an audience of many hundred from the top of a
  pile of stones, telling them that hey must scorn
  death itself in their efforts to destroy the
  tyrant, and throw off his yoke, and promising
  Paradise to Martyrs in the holy cause

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The Ottoman Empire

• Embodied the achievements of the Islamic past,
• Also offered hope, that a distinctly Islamic
  state could survive in a world of expansionist
  European powers (the religious foundations of
  Ottoman rule).

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By 1920

• Neither that state nor its Islamic institutions
  held sway in the Middle East.
• Its former Arab and Turkish subjects were left
  adrift.