Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (7 page)

The Italian victory emboldened the neighboring Balkan
states, which had been waiting for an opportunity to invade and occupy the
remaining Ottoman provinces in Europe. After a series of negotiations, Serbia
and Bulgaria formed an alliance in March 1912. Shortly after, in May, Bulgaria
signed a similar agreement with Greece. Finally, in October, Serbia and
Montenegro formed an alliance. Shortly after, the Balkan states declared war on
the Ottoman Empire. The Bulgarians soon defeated the Ottomans at the battles of
Kirklareli/Kirkkilise (22–24 October) and Lüleburgaz (22 October–2 November),
followed by a Serbian victory at the battle of Kumanovo (23–24 October). Meanwhile,
the Greeks captured Salonika on 8 November.

Without a coordinated plan and in the absence of a unified
command, the Ottomans were forced either to retreat or to take defensive
positions. The major urban centers of the empire in Europe were surrounded by
the invading Balkan armies. In December, the Ottoman government sued for peace.
As the discussions dragged on in London, Bulgaria demanded the city of Edirne.
This was too much for a group of young officers in Istanbul, who staged a
military coup on 23 January 1913, killing the minister of war and forcing the
government to resign. When the news of the coup in Istanbul reached London, the
Balkan states resumed their military campaigns. Despite a promise to take the
offensive, the new government in Istanbul failed to repulse the Bulgarian
forces, who captured Edirne on 28 March, and the Serbs, who seized Shkodër on
22 April. On 30 May, the Ottoman government was forced to sign the Treaty of
London, which resulted in the loss of much of its territory in Europe,
including the city of Edirne.

Fortunately for the Ottomans, intense rivalries and
jealousies among the Balkan states erupted shortly after the signing of the
Treaty of London. Romania, which had not participated in the war, demanded
territory from Bulgaria. The Greeks and Serbs also expressed dissatisfaction
with the division of territory in Macedonia. As the negotiations for the
creation of an anti-Bulgarian alliance began, Bulgaria attacked Serbia,
igniting a new Balkan war between the victors of the first. The Ottomans used
the opportunity to recapture Edirne and forced Bulgaria to sign the Treaty of
Istanbul in September 1913.

DEFEAT IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE FALL
OF THE EMPIRE

The military coup of January 1913 brought the Ottoman
government under the control of the CUP. As the CUP began to consolidate its
power over the organs of the state, a triumvirate of army officers comprised of
Cemal Paşa, Enver Paşa, and Talat Paşa began to rule the empire
with the support of an inner circle that represented the various factions
within the CUP. With the clouds of war gathering over Europe, the beleaguered
Ottoman government appraised its various options, none of which looked very
promising given the predatory nature of the European powers. The decision to
enter the war on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire brought
the Ottoman state into open military confrontation with France, Russia, and
Great Britain. In the Constantinople Agreement of 1915, these three Entente powers
agreed to the complete partition of the Ottoman Empire after the end of the
war.

The Allied expectation that the empire they had dubbed the “sick
man of Europe” would be destroyed with one single military blow proved to be
wishful thinking. The British attempt to force the Ottoman Empire out of the
war called for a massive landing of Allied troops at the foothills of Gallipoli
on the European shores of the Dardanelles. After establishing a beachhead in
April 1915, the troops planned to climb the hills and destroy the Ottoman
forces that defended the heights. To the dismay of the British, the Ottomans,
supported by German officers, fought back heroically, inflicting an impressive
defeat on the enemy, who retreated with heavy casualties in January 1916.
Another advancing British force in southern Iraq also met unexpected resistance
and suffered heavy losses. With their military efforts coming to a sudden halt,
the British resorted to the strategy of fomenting an internal rebellion among
the sultan’s Arab subjects. They cast their lot with Sharif Husayn of Mecca and
his sons, who were promised an independent and united Arab kingdom if they
organized a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

Unknown to Sharif Husayn, the British were also negotiating
about the fate of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire with their principal
ally in Europe, the French. In negotiations between Mark Sykes, who represented
the British government, and his French counterpart, Georges Picot, the two
European powers carved the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into British
and French zones of influence. According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement (16 May
1916), the British promised Greater Syria, which included the present-day
country of Lebanon, and the Ottoman province of Mosul in present-day northern
Iraq, to France. In return, the British gained control over the provinces of
Baghdad and Basra, with an adjacent territory that stretched to the
Mediterranean towns of Acre and Jaffa, including the imprecisely defined Holy
Land, or Palestine.

In November 1917, the British government made a third
critical promise that would have a long lasting impact on the Middle East. In a
letter addressed to Lord Rothschild, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement
in Europe, Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, expressed the
support of his government for the Zionist movement’s aim to establish a Jewish
National Home in Palestine. This declaration would prove to be one of the most
significant stepping-stones toward the establishment of the state of Israel.
The map of the Middle East would be redrawn as the British government attempted
to fulfill the conflicting promises it had made to the Arabs, the French, and
the Zionist movement in the aftermath of the First World War.

For the Ottomans, the First World War came to an end when
British troops, supported by Arab fighters under the leadership of Prince
Faisal, the son of Sharif Husayn of Mecca, entered Damascus in August 1918. The
Ottoman Empire sued for peace in October 1918. With Russia out of the picture,
the British were the only power with troops in the Middle East who could
dictate the terms of an armistice to the Ottomans. On 31 October 1918, after a
week of negotiations, the terms of the Armistice of Mudros were presented to
the Ottoman government. They included Allied occupation of Istanbul and the
forts on the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Two days later, the three Young Turk
leaders, Enver Paşa, Talat Paşa, and Cemal Paşa, fled the
country for Berlin. On 15 May 1919, with support from the British, the French,
and the Americans, the Greek government, which had joined the Allies at the end
of the First World War, landed troops in Izmir.

In the midst of this chaos and humiliation, Mustafa Kemal Paşa
(1881–1938) was appointed “Inspector General of Ottoman forces in northern and
northeastern Anatolia” and dispatched by the sultan to disarm and disband the
remaining Ottoman army units and pacify the local population. Having enrolled
in the Ottoman military academy, Mustafa Kemal had joined the Young Turks
before the 1908 revolution but had refused to assume political office. An
Ottoman army officer who had fought with distinction at Gallipoli (1915), the
Caucasus (1916), and Palestine (1917), Mustafa Kemal had emerged as a hero of
the First World War and was considered to be the ideal officer capable of
diffusing a rebellion against the sultan and the allies.

By the time Mustafa Kemal arrived in Samsun on the northern
coast of Anatolia on 19 May, he had already decided to disobey his orders and
organize a national resistance movement. Support came from other Ottoman
commanders and officers who shared his determination to remove all foreign
forces from Anatolia. After creating a national congress and launching a series
of successful military campaigns against the newly established Armenian state
in eastern Anatolia and the Greek forces in western Anatolia, the Turkish
nationalists forced foreign troops to evacuate the “Turkish homeland” in the
summer of 1922.

The military victories of the nationalist movement resulted
in a shift of attitude by the European powers, which recognized the new reality
on the ground. Having witnessed the decisive defeat of Greek forces in August
1922 and realizing that their allies, particularly the French, did not intend
to fight the Turkish nationalists, the British convinced the Greek government
to withdraw from eastern Thrace and sign the Armistice of Mudanya with the
Turks on 11 October 1922. On 1 November, the Grand National Assembly in Ankara
abolished the Ottoman sultanate. Shortly after, a Turkish delegation led by the
hero of the war of independence, Ismet Paşa, arrived in Lausanne,
Switzerland, to negotiate a peace treaty with the allies, which was concluded
on 24 July 1923.

Following the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, British
troops evacuated Istanbul in October 1923, and Mustafa Kemal and his victorious
army entered the city. The time had come to deal with the Ottoman royal family,
who had collaborated with foreign occupation forces throughout the war of
national liberation and had condemned Mustafa Kemal to death in absentia. On 29
October 1923, the Grand National Assembly proclaimed the establishment of the
Republic of Turkey, with Mustafa Kemal as its first president, while a member
of the Ottoman ruling family, Abdülmecid, remained the caliph. Determined to
cut the country’s ties with its Ottoman past and to create a secular republic,
the new government moved the capital from Istanbul to Ankara and on 3 March
1924, the Grand National Assembly abolished the caliphate and the last member
of the Ottoman royal family was sent into exile. The 600-year Ottoman Empire
had ceased to exist, replaced by the Republic of Turkey.

2 - SULTAN AND THE PALACE

The
Ottomans divided their society into two distinct classes; the rulers (
askeri
or the military) and the ruled (
reaya
or the flock). Because “the
state was organized as a war machine” geared toward conquest, “the ruling
classes were deemed to be part of the military organization.” The three major
strata within the Ottoman ruling class were “the men of sword or the military,
the men of the religious sciences (
ilm
) known as the ulema (or the
religious establishment), and the men of the pen or bureaucrats.” High
officials in the Christian communities such as the patriarchs of the Orthodox
Church were also included as members of the ruling class. The
reaya
consisted
of merchants, craftsmen, peasant farmers, and nomads. They produced the goods
and paid the taxes that sustained the state. The guild tradesmen or craftsmen
constituted an important segment of the urban
reaya.
Other urban
reaya
included the
saraf
(money changers) and the merchants who organized
the caravan and overseas trade. The peasant farmers constituted the
overwhelming majority of the population in the empire. The “Ottoman state
preferred peasants to nomads” because those who cultivated the land “were
settled, paid taxes and could be recruited for the army, whereas nomads, who
were not settled, disliked and avoided both.” As “an armed and mobile group,
the nomads were unruly and difficult to bring into line, and the Ottomans
struggled throughout their history to settle them and turn them into peasants.”

At the top of the power pyramid stood the sultan, an
absolute divine-right monarch. Since in theory the sultan enjoyed ultimate
god-given authority to rule, his subjects considered him the sole source of
legitimate power; he could, therefore, demand absolute obedience from them,
including complete control over their lives and possessions. He owned all state
lands and could dispose of them as he saw fit. Despite his absolute power, the
sultan could not violate the Islamic law or custom; the opinion of the Muslim
community, expressed through the ulema,
could strongly influence his
decisions and actions. God had entrusted his people to him and the sultan was
responsible for their care and protection.

As the Ottoman state transformed from a small principality
into a full-fledged imperial power, the political, social, and military
institutions that had given rise to the early Ottoman fiefdom underwent a
profound transformation. The principality founded by Osman and his son Orhan
was based on the active participation of charismatic rulers or
gazis,
religiously
driven warriors who fought in the name of Islam. Under this system, power and
authority derived from military units organized and led by the
gazis
who
fought with the Ottoman ruler. The Ottoman army was not only the backbone of
the state but was the state itself. The seat of power was the saddle of the sultan,
who organized and led raids during time of war. His leadership required him to
visit and inspect the territory under his rule.

The early Ottoman sultans relied heavily on fortresses they
had seized as defense against enemy attack and as a territorial base for
further expansion. The North African traveler Ibn Battuta wrote that the
Ottoman ruler Orhan visited these fortresses frequently to put them in good
order and examine their condition but never stayed for more than a month. The
sultan rode from one fortress to the next and fought the Byzantine Greeks and
other Christian powers of southeast Europe, attacking them continually and
keeping their towns under siege. Thus, the everyday life of the early Ottoman
sultan did not differ greatly from the commanders and soldiers who fought in
his armies. Their wealth and power depended on the taxes they collected and the
booty they accumulated from various raids into enemy territory.