 "Modern Turkey from death throes to rebirth")
THE OTTOMAN ENDGAME: WAR, REVOLUTION AND THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST 1908-1923
Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books
Pages: 550
Price: Rs 1,799
The Ottoman Empire lasted for six centuries. At its height in the 17th century, it included Southeast Europe, most of West Asia and North Africa and the Caucasus region. It played a major role in the politics of Europe, with its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) the centre of diplomacy and war. Its sultan, as the caliph, was for 600 years the spiritual leader of the world's Muslim community.
The empire went into decline in its last century as a result of poor leadership and intellectual and institutional stagnation, which reduced its military capabilities and eroded its capacity to hold its diverse population within the imperial realm. In this period of decline, the separatist aspirations of its various religious and ethnic minorities were actively encouraged by western powers.
This book is the narrative of that last painful period when this empire was in its death throes and, finally, was eased out of history. The story is one of complex intrigues, byzantine politics, vile chicanery, extraordinary cruelty and occasional flashes of heroism and even greatness, as an old empire died and a new nation took its place.
As early as 1853, Czar Nicholas I had described the Ottoman Empire as a "Sick Man" as he proposed its partition among the major European powers. In the second half of the 19th century, most of the Balkans broke free, costing the Ottomans 40 per cent of their territory. At this time, Germany emerged as their principal European partner and so, as Europe went into the Great War, the Ottomans, facing an immediate threat from Russia and its Balkan allies, had no choice but to ally themselves with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Though the main action in the war was on the Western Front, the empire was the locale of several major battles that ultimately not just decided the fate of the Ottomans and shaped a new Turkey, but also gave birth to new nations all across West Asia. The latter resulted not so much from the bloody battles that were fought in different West Asian theatres - Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Suez Canal and Palestine - but from the behind-the-scenes diplomatic shenanigans involving Britain, France and Russia, who together decided on the distribution of the Ottoman territories amongst themselves.
McMeekin rightly stresses that the final territorial distribution did not follow this plan: in the final settlement, many more powers were involved; the Russians did not assert their claims since they opted out of the conflict and the later territorial settlement after their revolution; the final shape of Turkey was quite different from what had been envisaged in the agreement, and the borders finally drawn in West Asia were also different from what the Anglo-French diplomats had planned. All true, but the fact remains that the principle of territorial distribution between Britain and France, broadly agreed to by Sykes and Picot, (with the exception of the "Jewish homeland", pursued a little later by the British), were actually implemented on the ground.
Before this, of course, the empire's demise was marked by defeat, extreme cruelty and widespread tragedy. In the period 1911-23, the Ottomans lost about half a million soldiers, while their population went from 21 million to 17 million. Over half a million Armenians paid the price for their support of Russia in the war. A few million Greeks and Turks were forcibly "exchanged" after the war as part of a "collective population transfer", so that their new nations were denuded of other communities that for centuries had lived side by side.
Turkey, in fact, was at its best after the Great War, when its defeated and demoralised forces were re-organised by Mustafa Kemal and, in a series of hard-fought battles across Asia Minor, were able to re-claim their homeland from the Greeks backed by Western powers, re-establish themselves along the Black Sea, and above all retain their hold over the Bosphorus and their traditional capital, Constantinople, across the straits in Europe.
This book is primarily a military history, covering in considerable detail the various battles involving the Ottoman forces in different theatres, which are embellished with excellent maps. But, contrary to its title, there is very little about the "making of the modern Middle East" in the book. The last chapter, titled "Lausanne and the Ottoman Legacy", devotes only five pages to West Asia and just does not do justice to the emergence of the Arab states (initially under Anglo-French tutelage), whose present-day confrontations and conflicts suggest a possible unravelling of the regional state system.
The few comments McMeekin does make about contemporary West Asia are superficial, even inane: he suggests that Iraq's multi-ethnic and multi-faith order had been sustained only by the harsh authoritarian system, but fails to mention that the present-day sectarian divide is largely the result of deliberate divide-and-rule policies of the US occupation from 2003. His remarks relating to Palestine are particularly shallow: he says that the last Western troops left this territory well before the first major war started, but does not note the US's consistent backing of Israel's violence and its maximalist agenda at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
In West Asia, with continued Western interventions and depredations, the legacy of Sykes-Picot is still a palpable reality a hundred years later.
Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books
Pages: 550
Price: Rs 1,799
The Ottoman Empire lasted for six centuries. At its height in the 17th century, it included Southeast Europe, most of West Asia and North Africa and the Caucasus region. It played a major role in the politics of Europe, with its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) the centre of diplomacy and war. Its sultan, as the caliph, was for 600 years the spiritual leader of the world's Muslim community.
The empire went into decline in its last century as a result of poor leadership and intellectual and institutional stagnation, which reduced its military capabilities and eroded its capacity to hold its diverse population within the imperial realm. In this period of decline, the separatist aspirations of its various religious and ethnic minorities were actively encouraged by western powers.
This book is the narrative of that last painful period when this empire was in its death throes and, finally, was eased out of history. The story is one of complex intrigues, byzantine politics, vile chicanery, extraordinary cruelty and occasional flashes of heroism and even greatness, as an old empire died and a new nation took its place.
As early as 1853, Czar Nicholas I had described the Ottoman Empire as a "Sick Man" as he proposed its partition among the major European powers. In the second half of the 19th century, most of the Balkans broke free, costing the Ottomans 40 per cent of their territory. At this time, Germany emerged as their principal European partner and so, as Europe went into the Great War, the Ottomans, facing an immediate threat from Russia and its Balkan allies, had no choice but to ally themselves with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Though the main action in the war was on the Western Front, the empire was the locale of several major battles that ultimately not just decided the fate of the Ottomans and shaped a new Turkey, but also gave birth to new nations all across West Asia. The latter resulted not so much from the bloody battles that were fought in different West Asian theatres - Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Suez Canal and Palestine - but from the behind-the-scenes diplomatic shenanigans involving Britain, France and Russia, who together decided on the distribution of the Ottoman territories amongst themselves.
McMeekin rightly stresses that the final territorial distribution did not follow this plan: in the final settlement, many more powers were involved; the Russians did not assert their claims since they opted out of the conflict and the later territorial settlement after their revolution; the final shape of Turkey was quite different from what had been envisaged in the agreement, and the borders finally drawn in West Asia were also different from what the Anglo-French diplomats had planned. All true, but the fact remains that the principle of territorial distribution between Britain and France, broadly agreed to by Sykes and Picot, (with the exception of the "Jewish homeland", pursued a little later by the British), were actually implemented on the ground.
Before this, of course, the empire's demise was marked by defeat, extreme cruelty and widespread tragedy. In the period 1911-23, the Ottomans lost about half a million soldiers, while their population went from 21 million to 17 million. Over half a million Armenians paid the price for their support of Russia in the war. A few million Greeks and Turks were forcibly "exchanged" after the war as part of a "collective population transfer", so that their new nations were denuded of other communities that for centuries had lived side by side.
Turkey, in fact, was at its best after the Great War, when its defeated and demoralised forces were re-organised by Mustafa Kemal and, in a series of hard-fought battles across Asia Minor, were able to re-claim their homeland from the Greeks backed by Western powers, re-establish themselves along the Black Sea, and above all retain their hold over the Bosphorus and their traditional capital, Constantinople, across the straits in Europe.
This book is primarily a military history, covering in considerable detail the various battles involving the Ottoman forces in different theatres, which are embellished with excellent maps. But, contrary to its title, there is very little about the "making of the modern Middle East" in the book. The last chapter, titled "Lausanne and the Ottoman Legacy", devotes only five pages to West Asia and just does not do justice to the emergence of the Arab states (initially under Anglo-French tutelage), whose present-day confrontations and conflicts suggest a possible unravelling of the regional state system.
The few comments McMeekin does make about contemporary West Asia are superficial, even inane: he suggests that Iraq's multi-ethnic and multi-faith order had been sustained only by the harsh authoritarian system, but fails to mention that the present-day sectarian divide is largely the result of deliberate divide-and-rule policies of the US occupation from 2003. His remarks relating to Palestine are particularly shallow: he says that the last Western troops left this territory well before the first major war started, but does not note the US's consistent backing of Israel's violence and its maximalist agenda at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
In West Asia, with continued Western interventions and depredations, the legacy of Sykes-Picot is still a palpable reality a hundred years later.
The author is a former diplomat