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1 | Elimination of the “Arabist barrier” |
| Cemal Pasha and the Arabist movement |
“To maintain peace and order” in Syria was among Cemal Pasha’s primary aims. In Cemal’s mind that meant the elimination of all “barriers” between the state and the different peoples of Syria so as to free them to become “ideal citizens.” To that end, immediately after his arrival in Syria, Cemal took action to eliminate such “barriers.” In terms of their social impact, undoubtedly the most drastic “measures” were taken against the Arabist movement, which was demanding a certain degree of autonomy for the Arab provinces.1 A short while after his arrival in Syria, Cemal launched a process of prosecution against the members of the Arabist party – all the groups defending Arab decentralization – using documents seized from the French consulates in Beirut and Damascus that revealed negotiations between the reformist Arabs and the French consuls, mainly over the use of French influence on the Ottoman government to implement decentralizing reforms in Syria. Using those documents as evidence, Cemal tried the party members as traitors against the Ottoman Empire and punished them severely. Some of them were hanged in the squares of Damascus and Beirut, while others were sent into exile in the cities of inner Anatolia, whose population was overwhelmingly Turkish speaking. Understandably, as a result of these actions, Cemal came to be seen as one of the most “black-hearted” figures in the history of the Arabist movement.
Today it is well known that the adherents of the Arabist movements, to a large extent, supported the continuation of Ottoman rule in the Arab lands. Rather than demanding independence from the Ottoman Empire, they demanded proportional participation of the Arabs in the government and insisted that more space be given to Arabic culture in government policies implemented in the Arab provinces. In spite of the abundance of academic studies on Arab nationalism and its history,2 academic studies devoted to understanding the intentions of the CUP regarding the Arabist movement and the perception of the political actions of the leading Arabs by the Unionists are very limited in number.3 This chapter mainly concentrates on Ottoman policies regarding the Arabist movement in Greater Syria, taking Cemal Pasha’s governorate in Syria as a case study. Before proceeding to an analysis of his draconian actions to suppress the movement, it will be best to examine the Young Turk mindset and policies regarding the Arabist movement in the years preceding the war to better understand the origins of Cemal’s actions and see the continuity and change in the CUP’s policies.
The Young Turks and the Arabist parties before the war
Hasan Kayalı asserts in his acclaimed book that “in the Unionist view of Ottomanism, ethnic, religious and linguistic differences were of no import.”4 From this point of view, he concludes that the principal aim of the Unionists was to centralize the empire. It is true that the CUP did not ascribe importance to the empire’s various ethnies in its policies. However, the Unionists also reacted against the usage of ethnie as a means of opposition, if not against the existence of opposition as such. The point that Kayalı left unexamined is that the Unionist attitude toward the different ethnies did not only lead the CUP to regard these as insignificant variables in their policies, but also resulted in projects to eliminate the opposition movements that ascribed importance to the ethnies of the empire. Their firm belief in the centrality of the state for re-forming the empire did not provide any space for ethnic or non-ethnic opposition. The decentralist opposition offered an alternative set of behaviors to shape the newly emerging modern Ottoman citizens based on the cultural differentiation of the nations of the empire. Therefore, as assessed earlier in detail, the CUP’s members saw all kinds of opposition as tantamount to “treason to the Ottoman fatherland” and, in Cemal’s words, wanted “to do away with” it.5
In this context, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that, from the beginning of its accession to power in 1913, the CUP tried to eliminate the Arabist movement using various methods. They wanted to make the Arabists abandon their demands for reforms by giving them government posts and persuading or punishing them, instead of taking their demands into consideration. They thought that giving privileges to these figures would save the empire from a “separatist” movement. In this sense, they largely followed the empire’s classical methods for eliminating movements of opposition within the imperial realm. However, in their first years in power, the Unionists had to give some promises of reforms to members of the reformist Arabist Parties, such as al-Fatat, al-Lamarkaziyya, and al-Muntadi al-Adabi, probably because they were afraid of any foreign intervention in favor of the demands of the Arab reformists. The Arab Congress held with the participation of all the reformist Arab parties in Paris between June 18 and 23, 19136 constituted a turning point in this regard. Following their meeting, the prominent Arabist participants of the Arab Congress visited the Ottoman Embassy in Paris and the French Foreign Ministry to declare these resolutions. Via the ambassador, they requested that the Ottoman Empire implement the decisions of the congress. From the French government, the Arabists demanded support for these reform requests and pressure on the Ottoman government to this end. They also emphasized to the French officials that they were loyal to the empire. The CUP sent the prominent Unionist Midhat Şükrü to inform them that their demands for reforms had been accepted by the government and that they would be implemented shortly.7 Their demands, as agreed by the CUP leaders, were principally to make the government more decentralized, to redesign the curriculum of primary and secondary schools to include the Arabic language, to issue court decisions in Arabic in addition to Turkish, and to allow the submission of petitions to the authorities in Arabic.8 According to the memoirs of Shakib Arslan, the CUP made similar promises to a “pro-CUP” Arab delegation in a meeting held in Istanbul in the same period.9
The most important of the Arabists’ demands was the change of the language of instruction to Arabic in the Arab provinces. In this regard, on August 11, 1913 (Temmuz 29, 1329) the Sadaret (Grand Vizerate) instructed the Ministry of Education to begin preparations for teaching in Arabic in the state schools of the Arab provinces.10 A “Commission for Arabic Education” (Arabca Tedrisat Komisyonu) was established within the body of the University of Istanbul (Darülfünun). The main task of the commission was to prepare schoolbooks in Arabic for the Ottoman Arabs. The commission requested schoolbooks in Arabic as examples from Egypt11 and Beirut.12 While some of the books from Egypt were approved, others were refused on the grounds that they were written for Egypt and not suitable for the Ottoman country. This was particularly true of history and geography books. By mid-December 1913, most of the books had been determined by the commission.13 In the same regard, a sultani school that would teach in Arabic was established in Beirut on October 7, 1913 (Eylül 24, 1329).14 Also in response to the demands of the Arabists, the government started to replace state officials in the Arab provinces who could not speak Arabic with those who could.15 For example, the secretary of the Jaffa Custom House was dismissed because he did not know Arabic.16 Similarly, upon a complaint, the central government requested the dismissal of the judge of Nablus if he could not speak Arabic sufficiently.17
While the CUP gave promises to the reformist Arabs, on the one hand, they considered methods for eradicating the Arabism movement, on the other. This is mainly because the CUP’s mindset was intolerant of opposition and, therefore, did not see the Arabists as well intentioned. The Unionist leaders thought the Arabists were selfish profit seekers and self-aggrandizers who wanted to separate the Arab lands from the empire. A conversation between Talat and Mahmud Nedim, the last Ottoman governor in Yemen and also a CUP member, clearly reveals the Unionists’ opinions and intentions regarding the Arabists:
One day, Talat Bey took me aside and asked:
“I don’t like those Arabists [Arap iftirakçıları in the original text]. Yet, we are not so blind that we can’t see the aims that they seek … What do you say? Have you learnt their real aims thoroughly, in detail? In particular, is there full agreement among them?”
I replied:
“I don’t think that there is an agreement among them regarding ideals and intentions, as affairs stand. Almost all the prominent Arabs have gathered here [in the Arabist parties] … In my opinion, since the selfseekers constitute the majority [of them], first of all, they should be satisfied. By saying they should be satisfied, I should add that I think it is not appropriate to silence them by means of violence [cebrü şiddet] in these days.”
Talat Bey:
“… When you dissect their demands, you see that the demands and claims they voice are the product of their intolerance of our rule.”
Here was the opinion of the CUP. However, they [the CUP] could not hold that against them [the Arabists]. It was appropriate, then, not to hold that against them.18
Reading between the lines of the conversation it can be seen that, as was the case with the other opposition movements, there was a desire among the CUP leaders to eliminate the Arabist movement by various means. Talat, in particular, saw them as “separatists” who were “intolerant” of Ottoman rule and were, therefore, “collaborators” with the Great Powers in Syria. An unsigned report sent from Beirut on March 26, 1914 regarding the methods of struggle against Arabism, presumably written by an influential CUP member who was probably sent there to investigate the current state of Arabism and find ways to eliminate it, is another example of the Unionist approach to the Arabs. Similar to the discussion quoted above, the beginning of this report reveals the Unionists’ suspicions about the Arabist movement. The author describes Arabism as a movement with connections to foreign powers and which, therefore, aimed at separating the Arab provinces from Ottoman rule. Because of its foreign origins, the movement was harmful to the country. Therefore, the movement should be eliminated by way of winning over its members through various methods. In this regard, the writer offers some advice to the central government on how to eliminate the decentralist parties in Beirut that bears some similarities to the polici...
