Past, Present & Future of the Cradle of Civilizations (8)
The Middle East is a region that spreads from Western Asia to North Africa, including Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula and the Levant up to Canaan Land of Palestine and Jordan.
The area is famous in being rich with large quantities of crude oil and gas, and it is also the historical origin of major religions such as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This perhaps explains why it remains a strategically, economically, politically and religiously sensitive region.
The Ottoman Empire was the one of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history. It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions.
The Ottomans established the strongest Islamic State in modern history, which was able to defeat the Crusaders and take control of all Canaan Land, the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa (practically all Middle East). They were also able to occupy most of Central Europe all the way to the Balkans, and their Armies invaded Southern Italy, took Cyprus and besieged Vienna the Capital of Austria.
Their Naval Fleet controlled all marine trade routes in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian/Arabia Gulf and Sea of India.
Western European states began to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly by establishing their own naval routes to Asia.
The strength of the Ottoman Empire reached its maximum weakness in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and that encouraged European States to conspire for defeating it politically and militarily.
Certain areas of the Empire, such as Egypt and Algeria, became independent in all but name, and later came under the influence of Britain and France.
Muhammad Ali of Egypt came into open conflict with the Ottoman Empire.
His first military campaign was an expedition into the Arabian Peninsula. The holy cities of Mecca, and Medina had been captured by the House of Saud, who had recently embraced a form of Islam called Wahhabism.
Armed with their newfound religious zeal, Muhammad bin Saud began conquering parts of Arabia. This Ottoman–Saudi War culminated in the capture of the Hejaz region from the Ottoman Empire in 1803.
In 1821 the First Hellenic Republic became the first Balkan country to achieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire. It was officially recognized by the Porte (The Sultan the Highest Gate or The Greatest Chest) in 1829, after the end of the Greek War of Independence.
With his own army proving ineffective, Sultan Mahmud II offered Muhammad Ali the island of Crete in exchange for his support in putting down the Greek revolt. Britain, France, and Russia intervened to protect the Greeks.
Ali desired to control Bilad al-Sham (the Levant), both for its strategic value, its natural resources; and its well developed markets throughout the Levant. In addition, it would be a captive market for the goods now being produced in Egypt. Most of all, Syria was desirable as a buffer state between Egypt and the Ottoman Sultan.
The Egyptians overran most of Syria and its hinterland with ease.
After the fall of Acre the Egyptian army marched north into Anatolia and defeated the Ottoman army. There were now no military obstacles between Ibrahim's forces and Constantinople itself.
Sensing that Muhammad Ali was not content with his gains, the sultan attempted to preempt further action against the Ottoman Empire by offering him hereditary rule in Egypt and Arabia if he withdrew from Syria and Crete and renounced any desire for full independence. Muhammad Ali rejected the offer, knowing that Mahmud could not force the Egyptian presence from Syria and Crete.
On 25 May 1838, Muhammad Ali informed Britain, and France that he intended to declare independence from the Ottoman Empire. The European powers, particularly Russia, attempted to moderate the situation and prevent conflict.
Within the Empire, however, both sides were gearing for war.
On 15 July 1840, the British Government, offered Muhammad Ali hereditary rule of Egypt as part of the Ottoman Empire if he withdrew from the Syrian hinterland and the coastal regions of Mount Lebanon. Muhammad Ali hesitated, believing he had support from France. His hesitation proved costly; when French support failed to materialize. British naval forces moved against Syria, and Alexandria. In the face of European military might, Muhammad Ali acquiesced.
After the British, and Austrian navies blockaded the Nile delta coastline, shelled Beirut (11 September 1840) and took Acre (3 November 1840), Muhammad Ali agreed to the terms of the Convention on 27 November 1840. These terms included renouncing his claims over Crete and Hejaz and downsizing his navy, provided that he and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan.
By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man". And the rise of nationalism swept through many countries and affected territories within the Ottoman Empire. The number of revolutionary political parties rose dramatically.
The 1840 Lebanon conflict began in the north of Lebanon as a rebellion of Maronite peasants against their Druze overlords.
Representatives of the European powers proposed to the sultan that Lebanon be partitioned into Christian and Druze sections.
The sultan adopted the proposal and divided the region, then known as "State of Lebanon", into two districts: a northern district under a Christian deputy governor and a southern district under a Druze deputy governor. This arrangement came to be known as the Double Qaimaqamate (Two States and Two Governors in one country under the Ottoman rule).
Both officials were to be responsible to the governor of Sidon, who resided in Beirut. The Beirut-Damascus highway was the dividing line between the two districts.
The French supported the Christians, while the British supported the Druzes, and the Ottomans fomented strife to increase their control on the divided State.
Consequently, the European powers requested that the Ottoman sultan establish order in Lebanon, and he attempted to do so by establishing a new council in each of the districts. Each council was composed of members who represented the different religious communities and was intended to assist the deputy governor.
This system failed to keep order. In 1858 Tanyus Shahin, a Maronite peasant leader, demanded that the feudal class abolish its privileges. When this demand was refused, the poor peasants began to prepare for a revolt. In January 1859, an armed uprising headed by Shahin flared up.
The disturbances spread to Latakia and central Lebanon. Maronite peasants, actively supported by their clergies, began to prepare for an armed uprising against their Druze masters. The Druze lords in their turn began to arm the Druze irregulars.
In July 1860, fighting spilled over into Damascus.
The bloody events offered France the opportunity to intervene, claiming its ancient role as protector of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
Following the massacre and an international outcry, the Ottoman Empire agreed on 3 August 1860 to the dispatch of up to 12,000 European soldiers to reestablish order.
On October 5, 1860, an international commission composed of France, the UK, Austria, Prussia, and the Ottoman Empire met to investigate the causes of the events of 1860 and to recommend a new administrative and judicial system for Lebanon that would prevent the recurrence of such events.
The commission members agreed that the partition of Lebanon Emirate in 1842 between Druzes and Christians had been responsible for the massacre. Hence, in the Statute of 1861 Lebanon was separated from Syria and reunited under a non-Lebanese Christian Mutasarrif (governor) appointed by the Ottoman sultan, with the approval of the European powers. The Mutasarrif was to be assisted by an administrative council of twelve members from the various religious communities in Lebanon.
Although the troubles had already been quelled by the Ottoman Empire, the French expeditionary corps remained in Syria from August 1860 to June 1861. The French intervention has been described as one of the first humanitarian interventions.
In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar, but the Ottoman government contested this move and maintained its troops in both provinces.
The stalemate lasted for 30 years (Austrian and Ottoman forces coexisted in Bosnia and Novi Pazar for three decades) until 1908, when the Austrians took advantage of the political turmoil in the Ottoman Empire that stemmed from the Young Turk Revolution and annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, but pulled their troops out of Novi Pazar in order to reach a compromise and avoid a war with the Turks.
In 1882 British forces occupied Egypt on the pretext of bringing order. Egypt and Sudan remained as Ottoman provinces de jure until 1914, when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers of World War I.
Great Britain officially annexed these two provinces and Cyprus in response. Other Ottoman provinces in North Africa were lost between 1830 and 1912, starting with Algeria (occupied by France in 1830), Tunisia (occupied by France in 1881) and Libya (occupied by Italy in 1912).
Following pressure from the European powers and Armenians, Sultan Abdul Hamid II, in response, assigned the Hamidian regiments to eastern Anatolia (Ottoman Armenia). The regiments were formed mostly of irregular cavalry units of recruited Kurds.
Between 1894 and 1896, large numbers of Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as the Hamidian massacres.
Armenian militants seized the Ottoman Bank headquarters in Constantinople in 1896 to bring European attention to the massacres, but they failed to gain any help.
The Second Constitutional Era began after the Young Turk Revolution (July 3, 1908) with the sultan's announcement of the restoration of the 1876 constitution and the reconvening of the Ottoman Parliament. It marks the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. This era was dominated by the politics of the Committee of Union and Progress, and the movement that would become known as the Young Turks.
During the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) in which the Ottoman Empire lost Libya, the Balkan League declared war against the Ottoman Empire, which lost its Balkan territories except East Thrace and the historic Ottoman capital city of Edirne (Adrianople) during the Balkan Wars (1912–13).
Many Muslims, out of fear for Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian atrocities, left with the retreating Ottoman army.
The Young Turk government had signed a secret treaty with Germany and established the Ottoman-German Alliance in August 1914, aimed against the common Russian enemy but aligning the Empire with the German side.This Alliance threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal.
The Ottoman Empire entered World War I after the Goeben and Breslau incident, in which it gave safe harbor to two German ships that were fleeing British ships. These ships then attacked the Russian port of Sevastopol, thus dragging the Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers, in which it took part in the Middle Eastern theatre.
There were several important Ottoman victories in the early years of the war, such as the Battle of Gallipoli and the Siege of Kut, but there were setbacks as well, like the disastrous Caucasus Campaign against the Russians.
The United States never declared war against the Ottoman Empire
The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns.
In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganized and captured Baghdad in March 1917.
Further to the west, in Sinai and Palestine Campaign, initial British setbacks were overcome when they captured Jerusalem in December 1917. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.
The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I had five main campaigns: the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, the Mesopotamian Campaign, the Caucasus Campaign, the Persian Campaign and the Gallipoli Campaign.
There were the minor North African Campaign (World War I), the Arab Campaign and South Arabia Campaign.
Besides their regular forces, the Allies used asymmetrical forces in the region. Participating on the Allied side were Arabs who participated in the Arab Revolt, and Armenian militia who participated in the Armenian Resistance. The Armenian volunteer units and Armenian militia formed the Armenian Corps of the Democratic Republic of Armenia in 1918. This theatre encompassed the largest territory of all the theatres of the war.
The Ottomans accepted the Armistice of Mudros with the Allies on 30 October 1918, and signed the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920 and later the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923.
In 1914, The British established the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, British Dardanelles Army and Egyptian Expeditionary Forces to oppose Ottoman and German forces in the Caucasus.
In 1916, an Arab Revolt began in Hejaz (Arabia) under the direction of Emir Feisal and British advisers, of whom T.E. Lawrence is the best known.
France sent the French Armenian Legion to this theatre as part of its larger French Foreign Legion. Foreign Minister Aristide Briand needed to provide troops for French commitment made in Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was still secret.
The Armenian Legion fought in Palestine and Syria. Many of the volunteers in Foreign Legion who managed to survive the first years of the war were generally released from the Legion to join their respective national armies.
During World War I, Hussein initially remained allied with the Ottomans but began secret negotiations with the British on the advice of his son, Abdullah, who had served in the Ottoman parliament up to 1914 and was convinced that it was necessary to separate from the increasingly nationalistic Ottoman administration.
Further, evidence that the Ottoman government was planning to depose him at the end of the war helped sour this alliance.
The British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, appealed to him for assistance in the conflict on the side of the Triple Entente. Hussein seized the opportunity and demanded recognition of an Arab nation that included the Hejaz and other adjacent territories as well as approval for the proclamation of an Arab Caliphate of Islam.
Britain accepted and assured him that his assistance would be rewarded by an Arab empire encompassing the entire span between Egypt and Persia, with the exception of imperial possessions and interests in Kuwait, Aden, and the Syrian coast.
But after protracted negotiations, with neither side committing to clear terms, including on key matters such as the fate of Palestine, Hussein became impatient and commenced with what would become known as The Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman control in 1916.
In the aftermath of the war, the Arabs found themselves freed from centuries of Ottoman Sultanate rule, but under the mandate colonial rule of France and the United Kingdom. As these mandates ended, the sons of Husain were made the kings of Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria and Iraq.
However, the monarchy in Syria was short-lived, and consequently Hussein’s son (Faisal) instead presided over the newly-established Iraq as King of Hejaz.
When Hussein declared himself King of the Hejaz, he also declared himself King of all Arabs (malik bilad-al-Arab).
This aggravated his conflict with Ibn Saud, with whom he had fought before WWI on the side of the Ottomans in 1910.
Two days after the Turkish Caliphate was abolished by the Turkish Grand National Assembly on March 3, 1924, Hussein declared himself Caliph.
The claim to the title had a mixed reception, and he was soon ousted and driven out of Arabia by the Saudis, a rival clan that had no interest in the Caliphate. Saud defeated Hussein in 1924.
Hussein continued to use the title of Caliph when living in Transjordan.
The Committee of Union and Progress was an umbrella name for different underground factions, some of which were generally referred to as the "Young Turks".
It built an extensive organization, having presence in towns, in the capital, and throughout Europe. Under this umbrella name one could find ethnic Albanians, Bulgarians, Arabs, Serbians, Jews, Greeks, Turks, Kurds and Armenians united by the common goal of changing the régime.
After the 1908 revolution, in the absence of this goal the revolution began to fracture and different allegiances began to emerge.
Abdul Hamid II was quite successful in suppressing the organization, and even approached the French and German governments to assist in the suppression of this political movement.
The Young Turk Revolution played a significant role in the evolution of Committee of Union and Progress from a revolutionary organization to a political party.
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk a young Ottoman Army Officer, led the Turkish national movement in the Turkish War of Independence.
Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns gained Turkey independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, westernized and secular nation-state. The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
On 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.
During this time another important incident was building up in the region. When in1897 Theodore Herzl established the Zionist Movement, he was actually encouraging Jews around the world, to re-establish their national state, within Palestine.
He called on all Jews to immigrate to the territory. Turkey banded the Jewish Immigration but later eased its rule under enormous pressure from Europe.
By the end of the First World War, Great Britain had the British Mandate for Palestine. The issuance of the Balfour Declaration greatly increased the immigration of Jews to Palestine. In 1947, Great Britain decided to turn its Mandate over to the United Nations, which, in the same year, adopted Resolution 181, partitioning the land into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.
The Jewish community agreed to the partition, but Arab countries and Palestinian Arabs did not, resulting in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the first in a series of wars fought between Israel and the Arab world.
On October 30, 1918, The Armistice of Mudros, signed on aboard the HMS Agamemnon in Mudros port on the island of Lemnos between the Ottoman Empire and the Triple Entente. Ottoman operations in the active combat theaters ceased.
The occupation of Istanbul along with the occupation of İzmir, mobilized the establishment of the Turkish national movement and led to the Turkish War of Independence.
On 18 January 1919, peace negotiations began, however it took definite shape only after the premiers' meeting at the San Remo conference in April 1920. France, Italy, and Great Britain, on the other hand, had been secretly partitioning of the Ottoman Empire as early as 1915.
The Ottoman Government representatives signed the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920, however, treaty was not sent to Ottoman Parliament for ratification, as Parliament was abolished on March 18, 1920 by the British, during the occupation of Istanbul.
The Treaty of Sèvres was annulled in the course of the Turkish War of Independence and the parties signed and ratified the superseding Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
On March 3, 1924, the Caliphate was abolished when Mustafa Kamal Ataturk deposed the last Ottoman caliph, Abdul Mejid II.
The Lausanne Treaty formally acknowledged the new League of Nations mandates in the Middle East, the cession of their territories on the Arabian Peninsula, and British sovereignty over Cyprus.
The League of Nations granted Class A mandates for the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon and British Mandate of Mesopotamia and Palestine, the later comprising two autonomous regions: Mandate Palestine and Transjordan.
Parts of the Ottoman Empire on the Arabian Peninsula became part of what is today Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire became a pivotal milestone in the creation of the modern Middle East, the result of which bore witness to the creation of new conflicts and hostilities in the region.
By the first discoveries of petroleum in 1914, the Middle East turned suddenly from a strategic region only, to a rich and strategic region.
The major fields were found in southwestern Persia, in the river valleys of Iraq, and along the Persian Gulf. These new-found riches heightened the interest of the European powers, and in the 1930s, America entered the area to compete with the well-established French and British interests.
After World War I, Arab territories of the old Ottoman Empire were administered as Western mandates, not annexed as Western colonies. The French had received the mandates for Syria and for Syria’s half-Christian neighbor, Lebanon.
The British, who already held a protectorate over Egypt, were given the mandates for Palestine and Iraq. The only major Arab state enjoying anything like full independence was Saudi Arabia.
Arab nationalism was already focused on the special problem of Palestine, for by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 the British had promised to open this largely Arab-populated territory as a “national home for the Jewish people.”
The immigration of Jews into Palestine (especially after the Nazis took power in Germany), raised their proportion of the population from about 10 percent to about 30 percent and caused repeated clashes between Arabs and Jews.
The French made few concessions to Arab nationalism, infuriating the Syrians by bombarding their capital of Damascus while quelling an insurrection in 1925 and 1926. A decade later the expectations aroused by the Popular Front’s willingness to grant at least some independence to Syria and Lebanon were nullified when the French parliament rejected the draft treaties, intensifying the Arab sense of betrayal.
In Egypt nationalist agitation after World War I led Britain to proclaim that country an independent monarchy under King Fuad I (1868-1936). The British, however, still retained the right to station troops there.
The Iranian revolution began in 1905-1906 in response to imperialist encroachments by Britain and Russia. The political structure inherited from the Middle Ages was changed into a limited monarchy with an elected parliament.
However, the country did not adapt itself readily to modern Western political institutions. The shah was unwilling to give up his traditional powers, and the British and Russians were unwilling to give up their spheres of influence. During World War I, therefore, they both stationed troops in an ostensibly neutral Persia.
The Russian Revolution eased the czarist threat to Persian sovereignty, and at the end of the war Persian nationalists forced their government to reject a British attempt to negotiate a treaty that would have made the country a virtual British protectorate. The leader of the nationalists was Reza Khan (1878-1944), an able army officer of little education who deeply distrusted the Russians.
He used his military successes to become, first, minister of war and then, in 1923, prime minister. Thereafter he tried to manipulate the Majles, or parliament, to his purposes, and he won the support of the army and the cabinet. After conferring with the clergy in the holy city of Qum, the forces of Islam also fell into line behind him. In 1925 the Majles deposed the Qajar dynasty and proclaimed Reza to be Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Reza Shah lacked familiarity with the West, and his erratic attempts to modernize his isolated country often failed. He ruled in increasingly arbitrary fashion, also demonstrating mounting sympathy for the Nazis. In 1941, after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the British and Soviets sent troops into Iran and forced Reza Shah’s abdication in order to secure the important trans-Iranian supply route to the Soviet Union.
The fate of Reza Shah was a reminder that some of the seemingly sovereign states of the non-Western world were not yet strong enough to maintain their independence against great powers. By World War II imperial ties had been loosened but by no means severed or dissolved; the full revolution against imperialism was yet to come.
At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern Vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state.
During the mandate, British colonial administrators ruled the country, and through the use of British armed forces, suppressed Arab and Kurdish rebellions against the occupation. They established the Hashemite king, Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler.
Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.
Britain granted independence to Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his under age son, Faisal II. Abdullah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.
On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of Abdullah.
During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom invaded Iraq for fear that Rashid Ali’s government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May and an armistice was signed 31 May.
A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947.
