Shattering Empires

by Michael A. Reynolds

I am sure many of you are familiar with the book your professor assigned where he was the author, or the guy who is writing a book ad had his students do his research.   Right?  Well this book smacks of this syndrome.  There are lots of bibliography notes (research notes) and some conclusions drawn by the author at the end of each chapter.  And yes I read this book with the same approach.  Upon completing the book, that was as disjointed as can be, I have little idea what the author’s thesis was.  Sure it’s about the collapse of both the Ottoman and the Russian Empires, and the book attempts to explain why…my conjecture for now.  For sure the author spends 90 percent of the Ottoman theme on Anatolia, leaving eastern Ottoman Empire mostly ignored.  Apparently, according to this author Russia’s demise did not go past Crimea and the Caucasus. This may be a common thinking for the average American bear, but not for someone who takes a position of authority such as this author on two empires.  And why did he leave out the Austro-Hungarian Empire?  It collapsed in the same time frame too.   There seems to be four themes in the book:

1. Ethnicity
2. Decentralized administering of government, specifically tax collection.
3. Colonization of the Great Powers, external pressure, interference, thus need for a defense.
4. Russian meddling in Ottoman affairs in their quest for a warm water port.

The supporting facts, well documented through end of chapter bibliographies, suggests to many that the common phenomenon, nationalism, best explains the empire’s deaths.  It is therefore, little surprise that historians of the Ottoman empire and the Middle East have traditionally approached the late Ottoman period not so much as the final era but as the prelude to (or resumption of) several distinct national histories.  If indeed he were accurate, he would owe the reader a broad conclusive statement to this affect in the onset.  Each chapter has a conclusion, but the book fails to tie them all together.  I made my own crib notes while reading the book.  Perhaps taking them all down may make some sense of it.  Here goes.

Before you read on I must inform the reader that in reading Birds Without Wings you become much better informed of the Atrocities of the Christian Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgarians waged upon the Muslims in that region.  Its a wonder why Ottomans equally in turned expelled Christians from Anatolia.  I am appauled that the author did not provide this level of detail of the now European  aspect.  It makes this book a tragic expose in history re-making. The professor/author should be shot.

Bibliography:  As of this date it’s still in draft.  It contains many comments of my own.

Page 4:  The consensus answer to the question posed above of what explains the radical disjuncture between the hopes of 1908 and the outcome of 1918 is straight forward: a clash of irreconcilable nationalism.

My comment:  While he makes this statement, the book is laced with an equal independent events about if internal strife in both Russia.  The book is also laced with the effects WWI had on both countries, which is inconsistent with the author’s statement of general consensus.

Page 5:  Terry Martin, in what in a sense amounts top a reply to Pipes’ juxtaposition of Bolshevik communism against native nationalism, returned the question of ethnicity to the origins of the Soviet Union by exploring how the Bolsheviks worked with, rather than repressed, nationalism.  This work takes a different tack.

Page 8:  To observe that the interstate system is an anarchic one is not to contend that it knows no order.  States develop and maintain shared modes of interaction and conventions to manage their quotidian relations, regulate more exceptional issues of war and peace, and arbitrate such questions as who qualifies the state.  The informal rules of a society, while not comparable to a legal codex enforced by a central authority do shape and channel the interaction of the society’s members.  These shared understandings or norms thus are not subsidiary to power relations, but are interwoven with them.  Understanding interstate relations thus requires that keen attention be paid to the norms of global society as well as to the relative distribution of material power among states.

My comment:  What he is saying is society influences the power structure of the State.  And then States interact with each other based on the influence of society.  Yet throughout the book the author speaks about ethnic crisis between the society with their own boarders.  On the surface there is a contradiction.  For example the author speaks of ethnic cleansing done by Ottoman and the oppressed reach out to Russia for protection. 

Page 9:  If empire means the domination of one “nation” over other “nations and the denial of the inherent right of the latter to self determination, then the destruction of empire becomes a moral necessity,

My comment:  As I go through the notes, I will make note (pay closer attention to)of this hypothesis being witnessed either with Ottoman or Russia.  It is true they both collapsed.  But there was no destruction.  Only a collapse.  The author portrays a rivalry between the two Empires but does not clear make a case for one destroying the other.

Page 9:  The common determining feature of the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires was not their imperial structures so much as the fact that they had all been defeated militarily.  Had the war’s military outcome been different – and it was a very closely run affair – so the list of collapsed empires would have been different.

My Comment: Austro-Hungary is the only empire on this list that this hypothesis applies to.  Russia withdrew under the weight of a civil war.  To blame the war, as expensive as it was is a real stretch.  Ottoman dealt with the same, it was termed a sick old man for at least 75years before its collapse.

Page 11:  Western-educated elites came to regard the development of national consciousness as a necessary condition for scientific progress and modernization.

My comment:  I believe western-educated in a period of industrialization saw the combination of capitalism and democracy as the ingredients to scientific progress.  NOT nationalism.  If you really want to break it down Russia did not collapse or was destroyed.  Russia evolved to the USSR and then collapsed in 1990, when it finally realized the ingredients to success. 

Page 13:  The Congress of Berlin in 1878 revealed concretely the growing influence the national idea upon global order.  The basic goal of the congress was to manage the Eastern Question, the problem of how to partition the Ottoman Empire without triggering a great power war.

My comment:  Only three pages later the author contradicts his claim that the war was the cause of the Ottoman collapse, and points to date 30 years prior where collapse and partition was plotted.  And clearly the lines did NOT follow any self determination for a nation rules. 

Page 15:  The Congress of Berlin (1878) opened the epoch of disintegration of empires and the multiplication of nations.  The Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews, and others all began to claim their rights to as separate existence, justifying such rights by the unique nature of their cultures.

Page 18:  East and Eurasia is best understood as a form of geopolitics, not as phenomena that springs from some non-political base. 

The affirmation of the nation-state by the great powers as the normative unity of global politics exerted a tremendous impact upon local politics already in turmoil.

My comment:  Already within the opening chapter, the author claims war as a primary reason for destruction; when in fact less than tem pages later he claims local politics already in turmoil.  Let’s be clear Russia and Ottoman saw war action, but they were preliminary players.  The war may have accelerated the pending collapse, but they were not destroyed.

Page 19:  Chapter four covers World War I from its outbreak up until the Russian Revolution of 1917.  It argues that the Ottoman decision to go to war in 1914 was a calculated gamble undertake for reasons of security and not an irrational attempt to realize pan-Islamic or pan-Turkist ambitions.  Entry into the war was seen as the best way to exploit great power rivalries and obtain extended, postwar period of stability that would permit the implementation of revitalizing reforms without foreign intervention.

My comment:   First I have read too many books on WWI that describe how both the Great Powers and the Central powers sought to solicit Ottoman to their side.  Ottoman did much to stay out of the war and only chose Germany because France’s offer and no real opportunity to secure Ottoman or reward her for her help.  Ottoman’s biggest fear was Russia’s quest for a warm water port (Istanbul).  This is the first place I’ve read that Ottoman ventured in to a war out of greed. 

Page 22:  [of Ottoman} they believed the empire was weak for two reason:  its constituent peoples lacked solidarity, and the institutions of its state were underdeveloped and decentralized.

The leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) trusted in the efficiency of marrying the power of scientific reason to the power of the stats to guide, control and transform society.

My comment:  While I agree with both statements made here, neither are consistant with the author’s beginning hypothesis.

Page 23:  In an environment where no higher sovereign existed to regulate interstate relations, a state’s only guaranty of survival was its own power. Gains in power were a zero sum.  A gain by one meant a loss by another.  This state of affairs, was , arguably, as old as the state system itself, but now a handful of European states whose preponderant military, technological and economic capabilities earned them sobriquet of “great powers” stood astride the world.

The second part of the dilemma stemmed from domestic policies.  The Ottoman Empire owed its historical expansion and growth to the center’s ability to accommodate its multiple varied regions and groups with flexible relations tailored to the specifications of each.  This arrangement demanded little of the periphery.

My comment:  The picture the author paints parallels that of the USA.  The real weak spot here is the regional rulers (emirates) proved themselves incapable of keeping up with centers desire to keep pace with the Great Powers.  The Great Powers could have left Ottoman to their own fate.  If so would she have simply been left behind the way Africa went for the past one hundred years as opposed to have collapsed. In asking the question even using the word collapsed is wrong.  Would there have been a civil war between the Turks and the Arab States?  When you look at history this is essentially what Lawrence of Arabia’s Pillars in the Sand is all about. 

Page 24:  Its economy was agriculture, and its tax base was tiny.  To obtain the capital necessary to fund further development, the Ottomans, in the middle of te nineteenth century took loans from the great powers but then proved unable to service them.  To recover the loans, the European powers in 1881 established the Ottoman Public Debts Administration and through it began exacting excise and other taxes as well as control over the Ottoman budget.  Adding insult to injury of foreign control over domestic finances was the ability of European citizens, including predominantly Christian Ottoman subjects who through various avenues obtained European citizenship, to take advantage of a number of extra-territorial legal and economic privileges known as “capitalizations.”

My comment:  Ok let’s set aside the role of the Kurds and the ethnic cleans that occurred, and examine the above.  Who are the Imperialists?   I hope you answer the European colonists.  Colonization met its demise finally in WWII.  It proved itself immoral, by American code in 1776.  In the wake of continued wake colonization, Ottoman fell prey to the capitalist colonist agenda to seek more territory.  You wonder what motivated the founders of the USSR.  Watch the movie Reds.

Page 26:  Like Istanbul, Berlin has an interest in stymieing the advance of each of the powers in the Near East.  It alone had opposed the Macedonian reform project without exacting concessions from Istanbul in return.  Most important a deep anxiety about the rise of Russia exercised both capitals.  More over, a number of influential German foreign policy thinkers by the end of the nineteenth century had become intrigued by the potential of pan-Islam as a revolutionary force to blow up the empires of their Russian, British, and French rivals.  Kaiser Wilhelm II was among those fascinated with Islam, going so far as to declare on a trip to Syria that the world’s 300 million Muslims had in him an eternal friend.

My comment:  And to think the author’s original hypothesis was Ottoman greed as a reason to join Germany and thus the cause to their demise.

Page 27:  This was the environment in which the Unionists found themselves.  Outside their empire, predatory states ere engaged in an intense, often bloody, contest of expansion that was often at the Ottoman’s expense.  Austria-Hungary’s brazen annexation of provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina in wake of the 1908 Revolution underscored the unforgiving nature of global society. Inside, the empire’s constituents chafed under the relative deprivation.  Yet efforts to overhaul and streamline the empire’s traditionally decentralized administration often provoked only resistance from the subjects who opposed ceding power to the center and who now had options beyond remaining loyal to Istanbul.

Page 28:  Russia’s statesmen. Like their Ottoman counterparts, faced the challenge of transforming a polyethnic, multiconfessional, dynastic, imperial state into a modern, efficient, and more centralized state from within, while simultaneously meeting and beating back challenges from without.

My comment:  This is a more appropriate assessment to lead any discussion obout collapse of either of the two empires and perhaps from this angle you could find reason to leave Austria- Hungary out of it.

Page 29:  Ottoman collapse was foreordained, but had to be delayed until Russia was strong enough to impose its will on the Ottoman lands.  In the meantime, Russia could use the Ottomans to block Austrians in the Balkans.

Page 30 Their fierce anti-imperialism not withstanding, the Unionists could hardly afford to spurn overatures for better relations from Russin, since less than a year after coming to power the government was already embattled at home.  That April, anti-unionist elements of the First Army Corps in Istanbul. Joined by members of a party called the “Muhammedan Union,” marched on the parliament, calling for the government’s resignation and the restoration of the eriat, Islamic Law.  The government fled Istanbul in panic, and across the empire disturbances broke out.  In Adana, Muslims lashed out at Armenians, killing thousands.  Only the arrival ten days later from Salonica of another faction of the military, an “Action Army under General Mahmud Sevket Pasha accompanied by Enver Bay, defeated the uprising.  The episode failed to shake the Unionists’ will to rule.

Page 32:  Thus, despite receiving a propitiating response, Rome attacked the next day.  Described by one historian as  “one of the most unjustified [wars] in European history, Italy’s aggression provided one more example to the Ottomans of the merciless nature of the Great Powers and the interstate system the dominated, and belied the Europeans’ rhetoric of support for stabilizing reforms.  To the contrary, the Ottomans concluded, the great powers preferred to keep the Ottoman empire weak and confused, the easier to carve it up.

My comment:  Again where do the author’s words suggest that Ottoman’s greed in overreaching is reason to destroy her?

Page 33:  Between 1900 and 1909 the straits accounted for one-third to one-half of Russia’s total exports, and shipments of coal, manganese, and oil from the Caucasus and Ukraine were growing in importance.

Page 34:  On October 8 1912, Montenegro got a jump on its Balkan allies and declared war on the Ottoman Empire ceded Tripoli and made peace with Italy.  They enjoyed no reprieve, however, as the other Balkan followed Montenegro and attacked Ottoman positions throughout the peninsula.  The Balkan armies enjoyed stunning success, inflicting a series of catastrophic defeats on the Ottomans everywhere from Albania to Thrace.

Page 35:  Crushed on every front, the Ottomans in Early November found Bulgarian forces on the outskirts of Istanbul…By mid November 1912 the Bulgarian advance had stalled.  With the threat defuse momentarily, Snasonov returned to his policy of maintaining the status quo until such time as Russia was strong enough to impose its will [on Ottoman]

My comment:  Where in this does Ottoman come off as imperial?

Page 36:  The same repot argued that because the idea of seizing the straits “had lain in Russian consciousness for so long and so deeply” it would be dangerous to forego it.  Minister of the Navy Admiral Ivan Grigovovich assured Smasonov not only that powerful fleet could be built on the Black Sea within five years, but also that Turkish Straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, inevitably will become, sooner or later, a Russian possession.

The Naval Ministry drafted a plan to build up the Black Sea Fleet.  Calculating that Britain and France would in the event of fait accompli acquiesce to Russian control of the straits, the planners underlined the need for good relations wit Greece.  Russia between 1915 and 1918 was to concentrate both Baltic and Black Sea Fleets in the Aegean by making use of Greek ports.  Then, at the appropriate time, predicted to be 1917 and 1919, Russia was to strike and seize the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.  Russia’s ministers gave the plan their unanimous endorsement.

The message of the Balkan Wars was that the death of Europe’s Sick Man” was at hand.  The challenge for Russia was to keep the Ottoman empire around at least until 1917.  It was worth noting that Sanzonov did not fear that the Ottoman empire was about to disintegrate on its own.  To the contrary, he believed that the empire was robust enough to handle its internal problems and that under the right conditions it could continue in existence for some time to come.  The existential threat came from the outside, and that was worrisome enough..  “We cannot close our eyes to the dangers of international situation created by Ottoman weakness, Snazonov continued.

Page 38:  In the two year period between September 1911and 1913 the [Ottoman] empire had lost over a third of its territory and one-fifth of its population.  The refugees had their blood shed, homes burned and families expelled from their birthplaces because as Muslims they were judged to be without legitimate claim to their birth lands in an age of nation-states.  When, destitute and embittered, they arrived in what was the Aegean coast, prosperous communities of Christians, especially Greeks, causing their resentment to burn more intensely.

Page:  38-39:: In his private letters Enver expressed his anger over the “pitiless” slaughter of Muslims, even “children, young girls, the elderly, women.” Call the Balkan the “latest” Crusade he seethed: “But our hatred strengthens: Revenge, revenge, revenge; there is no other word.”

It would be in correct to explain the savagery of the Balkan Wars as the product of a final reckoning of sorts in the longstanding opposition between Balkan Christians,  and Balkan Muslims.  Balkan Christians inflicted upon each other precisely the same savageries that they exchanged with Muslims.

Page 40:  Ottomans and outsiders alike recognized that the question of the next onslaught against the empire was when, not if.  In order to survive even into the near future, the empire had to obtain outside support.  Germany was the most logical choice of ally.  It was powerful and a rival of Britain, France, and Russia, and held no immediate pretensions to Ottoman territory.

My comment:  In reading the above excerpts I am totally amiss as to how the same author can make any overtures that Ottomans greed led to their demise.

Page 41:  These two or three warships would give the Ottomans supremacy on the Black Sea until at least 1917 when Russia would launch four planned dreadnoughts. St. Petersburg, in a major departure from its policy of supporting  domestic industry, attempted to prevent the Ottomans from acquiring dreadnoughts by preemptively purchasing those ordered by Chile and Argentina and by pressuring London to slow construction of the vessels ordered by Ottoman.  Sazonov succeeded in the latter, and when World War I broke out right before their scheduled delivery, Britain would claim them as its own in a move that produced large unforeseen ramifications.

My comment:  According to Churchill, Russia had nothing to do with the move to renigg on their deal with Ottoman as he saw with the onset of WWI the British selfish need for those ships.  Many historians use that decision as the sole reason that Ottoman sided with Russia.

Page 42:  Ironically, the completion of that agreement cleared the way to warmer relations.  Sazanov was open to cooperation as a way top preserve the integrity of te Ottoman empire until such a time as Russia could violate that integrity on its own terms.

Page 44:  Talat, accompanied by Minister of War Izzet Pasha, arrived in Livadia on 10 May.  The tsar explained that Russia desired a stron independent Ottoman state so that Istanbul, a vital national interest of Russia, would remain free.  He warned that St Petersburg had forgotten about the Limon von Sanders crisis and would not tolerate Ottoman dependence on Germany.  Talat replied that the Ottoman had little choice but to ask the Germans for technical assistance.

Page 46:  Ottoman and Russian empires, whose vast territories contiguous and whose populations overlapped.  Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Tartars, Caucasians Turks, Assyrians, and Cossacks among others inhabited both empires and moved back and forth between them.  The imperial states were interpenetrating.  They could and did, project their influence and power beyond formal boarders to challenge the authority of the other inside its own territory.  The identities, loyalties, and aspirations of their heterogeneous subjects pointed in multiple directions, offering rich opportunities to exploit and creating vulnerabilities to shield.  In unstable borderlands, such conditions invite fierce contestation.

Page 46:  The Unionists [Ottoman] were determined to assert central control over and extract revenue and resources from the region.  Vastly complicating this ambition, however, was the fact that the region’s primary communities, nomadic Kurds and sedentary, Armenians, were ambivalent toward Istanbul and locked in conflict with each other over land and the sharply diverging trajectories of their communities.

Page 47:  To block such a contingency, the Russians began cultivating allies among Ottoman Kurds resistant to Istanbul’s centralizing ambitions, counterproductively sabotaging the establishment of the very stability they desired.

Page 48:  Still more worrisome was the possibility that another European power might fill the vacuum to Russia’s south and use Kurds and Armenians against Russia.  To block such a contingency, the Russians began cultivating allies among Ottoman Kurds resistant to Istanbul’s centralizing ambitions, counter productively sabotaging the establishment of the very stability they desired.

Page 50  Abdulhamid II piles Hamidye leaders with ranks, titles, money, and land, often expropriated from the Armenians.  Although the experiment succeeded in buying the loyalty of a large portion of the tribal leadership, the undisciplined nature of the regiments rendered then un reliable in time of war and downright dangerous in time of peace.  The Hamidiye officers, far from being restrained by official ties to the center, felt emboldened to use their new authority and weapons to rob, pillage, and grab still more land, often but not exclusively from the Armenians. 

Page 51:  The penetration of te global market had opened economic opportunities that the Armenians were, by virtue of their own openness to education and by the privileged ties they held to Christian European merchants, diplomats, and missionaries, better able to exploit.

The mass of Kurds, by contrast, lacked the basic education and skills that the globalizing economy demanded and so could not compete.

Page 52:  The fundamental rifts between the Christians and Armenians and the Muslim Kurds stemmed not so much from religion or ethnicity as from clashing ways of life and modes of existence.  Most Kurds were nomads, while the Christians generally were peasants. … The more numerous and powerful Kurds routinely commandeered winter quarters from the Armenians and demanded taxes.  Less routinely they plundered Armenian villages.

Page 54:  The cycle of violence peaked in the mid 1890s when, in massacres abetted if not directed by Sultan Abdulhamid II, Muslims in Anatolia slew tens of thousands of Armenians.  The great powers reminded the “Bloody Sultan,” as European papers now referred to Abdulhamid II, of the Treaty of Berlin and their prerogative to intervene on behalf of the Armenians.  When still worse mascaras followed, however. Russia squelched any plans for intervention for fear that a rival might exploit the moment to its own benefit, and the great powers stood aside.

Page 56:  Resistance to the new regime, however, was building.  Alongside the tribal elite who resented the government’s effort to displace their authority with its own, many Kurds (and other Muslims) regarded the Unionist’s recognition of equal rights for Christians as tantamount to betrayal.  Central rule had comparatively little to offer either Kurdish notables or the mass of Kurds other than conscription and taxes.  Istanbul’s treasury was chronically depleted, and its policies promised in the short term to strip the tribal leadership of its power and in the long term as to asphyxiate the rest of the Kurds economically, seemingly to the advantage of the gavur, the unbeliever.  … Russia’s counsels took notice of the dissatisfaction brewing among rte Ottoman Kurds and began to wonder how they might exploit it in the interest of their empire.

Page 57:  Russian strategists looking to the longer term concluded that control of the Anatolian plateau would be a vital asset in their competition with other powers.  It would give Russia the ability to dominate Iran, exert influence on the Mediterranean and te Persian Gulf, and threaten Britain’s lines of communication to India and its other eastern colonies.  …Russian officials scanned Eastern Anatolia for opportunities to expand their own influence.  Given the growing dissatisfaction of the Ottoman Kurds with the Unionists regime, they did not have to look very hard.

Page 61:  Fear that state authorities would confiscate and redistribute the land to the Armenians was a powerful motive behind Kurdish tribal leaders’ cooperation with the Russians.

My comment: The author states earlier that the State was mostly biased towards the Kurds.  The author also earlier states that the Kurds had little issue with “commandeering” Armenian land.  So here just a few pages later he writes the above.  If this is the case, the author should reconcile the statements somehow.

Page 62:  The Unionists, however, could not ignore Muslim resentment indefinitely.  Muslims were their base constituency, and it was not only in Eastern Antolia where Muslims suspected the government of favoring Christians.  The so-called counterrevolution of 31 March 1909 and the accompanying massacre of thousands of Armenians around Adana had indicated the depth of hostility among Muslims at large toward Christians.

Reshaping Eastern Anatolia’s administrative and social structures was an enormous, long-term, and inherently unpopular task.  The ability of rebels to obtain backing from Russia severely undercut Istanbul’s ability to counter them and enact reforms.

Page 63: The Ottomans’ efforts to maintain control over their eastern provinces were undercut by Russia’s program to expand its influence.  By 1912, the Russians were funneling significant amounts of arms and money to Kurdish tribes.

Page 66:  In an analysis of the Kurd’s military potential, the Russian army’s leading ethnographer of the Kurds Aver’ianov wrote in 1912. “the Kurds have neither a clear national self- consciousness nor a sense of patriotism in the  Kurdish-national sense, and therefore all of their uprisings against Turkish domination were put down, were accompanied by fratricidal conflict, never simultaneously took throughout all of Kurdistan, and never led to the formation of the Kurdish state.

Page 69:  A longer-term goal was to pacify the Kurds by teaching them the peaceful – and sedentary – pursuits of agriculture, horticulture, metal working, and carpentry.  These three goals would serve the greater objective of facilitating Russian domination of the region by transforming the Kurds from a collection of disparate, other feuding, nomadic tribes inclined to disorder and rebellion into a cohesive, settled society that could become, ideally, a pillar of Russian rule.

Page 75:  Now Russia was eroding Ottoman sovereignty in Eastern Anatolia from within and simultaneously attacking that sovereignty from without calling attention to Istanbul’s inability to govern the region.

Page 77:  Kurdish and Armenian leaders at various times attempted to establish conciliatory relations and even a common front against the Ottoman government.  But none of these efforts led to substantive results.  The fundamental aspirations of te two were too far apart, indeed were fundamentally opposed.

Page 78:  In justifying their support for the reform project Russian officials made use of the duality.  To European audiences, they pointed to the threat posed to Armenians by Kurds, whereas among themselves they concentrated on the Armenian threat to Russia.  But in their execution of policy they could not help but muddle the duality.

Page 78:  The calls for Islamic law, however, reflected not so much a pious attachment to the legal requirements of Islam as distress at the economic ascendance of Christians and the upending of their traditional legal subordination.

Page 81:  Turkish rule in Kurdistan is without soldiers and without money, and lacks all prestige and influence, and now with the developing Kurdish movement calls forth disgust and tears’ “  He noted with satisfaction that even the Muslims at the bazaar were openly calling for Russian rule as a way to end the ongoing disorder and chaos, and cited the local belief that Russia could take the whole region with just 5000 soldiers.

Page 82:  The Russian empire had some fifteen to twenty million Muslim subjects; more, in fact, than lived under the sultan.  But the Ottoman empire was the world’s greatest independent Muslim state, and as such it could not but perform as a symbiol and barometer of the well-being of Islam for Muslims around the world

Sultan Selim I first claimed the mantle of caliph for the Ottomans in 1516 when he came upon a descendant of the last Abbasid caliph living among the Mameluks whom he had just defeated.  The Ottoman claim to the title was shaky on several grounds, and perhaps for this reason the Ottoman sultans invoked the title sparingly until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Abdulhamid II made it a cornerstone of sorts of his legitimacy at home and abroad. With more Muslims falling under the rule of the same European powers that were threatening the Ottoman state, emphasizing claim on the loyalties of Muslims around the globe was one way for Abdulhamid II to increase his empire’s geopolitical heft.

The practice Abdulhamid II’s support for pan-Islam was largely rethiorical.  The Unionists, however, despised Abdulhamid II’s personal piety.  They blamed his attachment to Islam for his autocratic conservatism, and some even suspected that St. Petersburg was backing this champion of Islamic values in order to retard the Ottoman empire’s modernization and keep it weak.

Page 83:  The three Causasian provinces of Kars, Ardahan, and Batumi possessed an unusual status in Ottoman eyes.  For centuries they had been Ottomanlands, until 1878, when Russia acquired them.  The superior administrative and economic capacities of the Russian empire revealed themselves in the transformation of te infrastructure and economy of te provinces over the following quarter-century….but not all Muslims reconciled themselves to tsarist rule.  Small numbers formed clandestine organizations, and these maintained contact with other underground groups in the Ottoman empire and with the Ottoman government.

Page 84:  The unionists proffered other noteworthy advice in a series of letters sent by their Paris office to “Our Muslim Brothers in the Caucasus.”  The letter’s message was pan-Islamist in so far as it implored the Muslims of Russia, Sunni and Shi-I alike, to work together and identified the tsarist government and the Armenian revolutionaries as the enemies of the Ottomans as well.

Page 88:  It was t Europeans who coined the term [pan-Islam] in the 1870’s.  The elites of these empires all shares deep anxieties regarding the loyalties of their Muslim subjects.  The cultural gap between the dominant populations and their Muslim subjects was too large to make assimilation viable, and in an age increasingly receptive to t the idea that sovereignty should be tied to ethno cultural identity, the notion that Muslims might find the benefits of these empires worth association was not persuasive.  Logic itself seemed to suggest that at some point the Muslims must seek to separate.  The doctrine of pan-Islam, of Muslim unity, intensified imperial anxieties.  It conjured up images of brooding Muslim masses resentful of imperial rule and contemptuous of modern practices stirred to vengeful revolt ba a fanaticism innate to their faith.

Given pan-Islams’s “vitality” in the perception of Russian officials and the presence of so many Muslims in Russia, it is hardly surprising that the tsarist government made efforts to block the spread of the ideology from what many believed to be its source, the Ottoman empire.  Among the measures the government adopted were to track the Muslim press in Russia and sensor it as necessary; top check the Qurans and Quarnic exegeses brought back from Ottoman lands by Muslim pilgrims to confirm they were not propaganda in disguise; top put under surveillance visitors from the Ottoman empire, including those who described themselves as wandering mystics or dervishes; to expel all Ottoman subjects from teaching positions and to ban textbooks printed in Istanbul; to restrict the visits of Ottoman subjects and to interrogate those who did visit..

Page 91:  Indeed, one might consider pan-Islamic activity spanning two empires to have been generated les by shared resentment and more but desperation among Ottomans and frustration among Russia’s Muslims.

Page 92:  Such anal;yses from their subordinates notwithstanding, senior Russian officialdom exhibited a strong inclination to perceive pan-Islam and pan-Turkism as real internal threats whose origins lay outside the empire.

Page 98:  Not only did the Armenian soldiers have little loyalty to Russia, analysts wrote, but they were also spreading socialist ideas among the ranks and sapping the morale of the Russian army as a whole.  Moreover, the achievement of the Ottoman constitutional regime were winning sympathy among Armenian circles in the Caucasus.

Page 103  As part of their program to promote unity and equality, the Unionists in July 1909 had for the first time in Ottoman history made military service compulsory for all Ottoman subjects, regardless of religion.  The Christian communities were deeply ambivalent about shouldering the new burden.

Page 108:  Unknown to most cabinet members, Enver had already begin pressing the Germans for an alliance.  Senior German officials dismissed the idea initially, scoffing that an Ottoman ally would be a burden, not an asst.  Enver countered by warning the German ambassador Hans von Wagenheim that neutrality was not an option for the Ottomans.  Whereas he opposed joining the Entente because that would mean becoming Russia’s vassal, Istanbul could pursue reforms only if it “were secured against attacks from abroad,” and this required “the support of one of te Great Powers.”  Germany would have to choose between an Ottoman allay and an Ottoman enemy.

The certainty of war with Russia prompted the Germans to recalculate. 

Page 109:  The finance minister, Cavid Bey, objected vigorously, predicting that mobilization would bankrupt the empire and that a German defeat would lead to the empire’s final liquidation.

Page 112:  On September 26 British warships patrolling off the Dardanelles chased an Ottoman torpedo boat back up the straits. In response, the Ottomans shut the straits to all traffic, including commercial shipping.

The closing of the straits effectively ended Ottoman neutrality, and made the empire a power hostile to Russia in all but the formal sense.

Page 112:  …with the German army stymied in France and Austri-Hungary’s army suffering setbacks, the wat would not end soon.  The Ottoman empire’s value as an ally, however, was now greater than ever, and it was in any event a propitious moment to ask for a loan.  Cavid objected that taking a loan would be tantamount to committing the empire to war as Germany would demand in exchange for financing.  Cavid’s instincts proved right, but Talat, Cemal and Halil had already moved to Enver’s position in favor of closer ties to Germany.  The first consignment of gold arrived on 16 October and the second on 21 October.  That same day Enver met with German officers to finalize war plans.  As part of those plans, he ordered the Ottoman navy out into the Black Sea to attack without warning any Russian warships and shore targets they encountered.

Page 113:  The Entaente states protested the attacks.  In response, the Porte indicated it was prepared to make amends and even pay compensation, but balked at demands to expel Germans and disarm the German warships in Ottoman service.  The Entate states cut relations.  On 31 October Tsar Nicholas II declared war on the Ottoman empire and on 2 November Girs quit Istanbil.  Briton and France followed with their declarations of war on 4 November, and then the Ottoman empire replied in kind  The struggle for control of Anatolia and th Caucas was now joined in the open

There can be little doubt that Enver Pasha had been intent on securing a formal alliance with Germany from July Crisis onward.  But his overtures to Gris had not been meaningless….What divided the Ottoman leadership of their state was not disagreement over the ultimat ends of policy – the preservation of their state – but rather the tactical question of how best to achieve external security that would make it possible to carry out the deep and wide-ranging internal reforms the empire required for survival.

Page 114:  Enver identified Germany as the best potential patron on account of its geopolitical compatibility and the likelihood of winning the war , and believed it would be better to act sooner while the Ottoman’ empire’s ffer of an alliance still held value.

My comment:  The preceding notes fly in the face to the many historians and scapegoat artists in the British government who want to blame Churchill’s Dreadnaughts ordeal on Turkey siding with the Germans.  If the book is worth reading these points would be the reason.

Page 118:  While there is no dispute that religious antagonism framed much of the violence unfolding in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus on the eve of the war, it would ne a mistake to conclude that then events represented simply the surfacing of latent currents of hostility.  Other factors played important roles.  The mobilization imposed intense hardship on all.  It sent prices skyrocketing, induced shortages of staples, and fed speculation.

Page  119:  In order to sway Kurds and other Muslims in Iran to joined their jihad, the Ottomans emphasized that all booty and loot acquired in the course of the jihad was  helal, or religiously permissible, and belonged in its entirety to its captors….. The patterns of behavior of the people residing in the borderlands of Anatolia and the Caucasus suggest that to mobilize groups for violent behavior, spiritual belief or identity is usually in sufficient and must be reinforced by material incentives or invested with direct political significance by outside powers.

My comment:  The words of religious documents do not stir wars.  They are only akin to the bullets of a gun, held by the powers of perspective governments.

Page 122:  German policy makers presumed that Muslims under Entante rule were essentially obliged by  both belief and psychological constitution to revolt.  With much encouragement from them. Ali Haydar Efendi, the Ottoman sheikh ul=Islam – the most senior authority in the ottoman state – proclaimed a jihad on 14 November, three days after the Porte’s declaration of war against Russia, Britain, and France… The call had little to no effect, except perhaps among Kurds of Iran, among whiom more immediate factors were at work.  The idea of waging a holy war in alliance with infidel powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary was dubious at best.

Page 129:  Akcura’s participation in the Congress of Oppressed Peoples is significant for what it tells us about the scale and nature of pan-Turkist or pan-Islamic efforts.  Akcura was a prominent figure at the time and close to the leading Unionists.  Today he is often regarded as a critical personage in the formation of Turkish nationalism.  Yet it is clear that his activities were not a very high priority for the Ottoman government in World War I.  Not only could he not obtain a passport in a timely manner, but he could also not count on substantial funding.

Page 131:  One of Nicolas’s proposals was to establish on Ottoman soil a Georgian Legion that would fight for an independent Georgian state.  Funded by the Germans and deployed alongside the Ottoman army, te legion was a mix of Christians and Muslims and numbered roughly 600 men recruited from prisoners of war and refugees.

Page 137:  The strategic situation of the Russian empire, however, was also troubled.  As early as October 1915, the Russian army’s chief of t General Staff general Mikhail Alekseev had begun warning that Russia simply was not capable of fighting simultaneously on multiple fronts and that it had better make peace with the Ottoman empire so as to concentrate on the western front against Germany.  Russia had lost Poland and te Baltic territory of Kurland to the Germans.  The failure of the Gallipoli campaign dashed all hopes of breaking the Russian isolation, and the economic and military strain of war was subjecting the tsarist regime to severe stress at home.  The capture of Erzurum, however, had created “an important psychological moment”  that “should not be missed.”  Here Alekseev implored, was an opportune moment  to make peace with the Ottomans and redeploy the Caucasus Army against the Germans.  The recovery of Kurland was more important for Russia than the straits.  Above all, victory over Germany in the shortest time possible had to take precedence.

Page 138:  Germany’s financial support to CUP, Russia’s downward spiral into revolutionary chaos in 1917, and the opportunity to realign the regional balance of power that Russia’s collapse offered kept the Ottomans in the war.

Page 139:  The Ottoman decision to ally with Germany, even at the cost of war was a rational response to the empire’s predicament of being too weak not only to defend itself from outside attack but even to pursue internal reform in the face of subversion.  Powerful, wealthy, and distant, Germany could provide the best counterbalance to Russia, their greatest existential threat, as well as Britain and France, which had already seized ottoman territories and aspired to grab more.