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Book Review: The Ottoman Spring: Bedross Der Matossian's 'Shattered

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  • Book Review: The Ottoman Spring: Bedross Der Matossian's 'Shattered

    Washington Free Beacon
    Nov 2 2014



    The Ottoman Spring

    Review: Bedross Der Matossian's 'Shattered Dreams of Revolution'


    BY: Sam Taylor
    November 2, 2014 5:00 am

    On July 24, 1908, a group of disaffected Ottoman military officers and
    members of the secretive Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) mounted
    a successful coup against the despotic rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II,
    and restored the constitution that he had suspended thirty years
    prior. What became known as the Young Turk Revolution brought euphoria
    and optimism to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious populations of the
    Ottoman Empire, who were enticed by the CUP with the promise, rooted
    in the rhetoric of the French Revolution, of 'Liberty, Equality, and
    Fraternity.'

    In Izmir, Ottoman Jews marched alongside government dignitaries,
    shouting "Long live the fatherland! Long live liberty!" In Beirut,
    Biblical and Quranic passages were posted side by side. In Jerusalem,
    Armenians, Greeks, and Arabs celebrated under a banner at the city
    gate that read, "Long live the army, long live freedom. Liberty,
    equality, and fraternity." All over the Ottoman Empire, Muslims,
    Christians, and Jews marched in processions together, basking in the
    dawn of a new era.

    But within a year, the last great Islamic empire's brief foray into
    secular constitutionalism deteriorated into ethnic and religious
    violence.

    The major consequences of the coup, in real terms, were a genocide
    that claimed the lives of more than one million ethnic Armenians, the
    displacement of hundreds of thousands of former Ottoman citizens in
    Eastern Anatolia, and--following the First World War--the loss of the
    Ottoman Arab lands, which were carved into unwieldy nation-states
    controlled by British and French suzerains.

    In Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the
    Late Ottoman Empire, historian Bedross Der Matossian addresses the
    fraught ethnic relations that played a significant role in the failure
    of the Ottoman constitutional experiment.

    According to Der Matossian, the goals of the revolution were doomed
    nearly from its inception because of their own internal
    contradictions.

    CUP leaders, including Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, sought to unite
    disparate populations of Arabs, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Kurds and
    Turks under the banner of "Ottomanism"--a nebulous concept that could
    be molded to advance either a commitment to a multi-ethnic Ottoman
    political project, or to a Turkish nationalist agenda, depending on
    the context.

    Due to linguistic limitations (perhaps 'limitations' is an
    inappropriate word, as Der Matossian conducted research in Arabic,
    Armenian, French, Hebrew, Ladino, and Ottoman Turkish for the book)
    the author chooses to examine the dissolution of Ottoman unity among
    three primary non-Turkish ethnic groups: Arabs, Armenians, and Jews.
    Although all three groups played instrumental roles in bringing the
    CUP to power in the 1908 coup d'état, it soon became clear that the
    Young Turks' version of Ottomanism--assimilation and promotion of
    Ottoman Turkish as the primary language of the empire--clashed with the
    promotion of their respective identities, languages, and
    ethno-religious privileges.

    This clash precipitated a collective disillusionment with the ideals
    of the revolution, which had failed to satisfy each community's desire
    for autonomy within a decentralized Ottoman framework. Loss of
    prestige among the empire's Arab population gave rise to Arabism,
    violence against Armenians "shook their trust" in the CUP, and Zionism
    was met with significant hostility from both Arabs in Palestine and
    the Ottoman government.

    As early as 1909, the semblance of 'brotherhood' in Palestine that had
    existed in the brief euphoric moment following the revolution had
    devolved into bitter ethnic rivalries that manifested themselves in
    the pages of the local Arabic and Hebrew press.

    Der Matossian has sought out primary sources--including newspapers,
    political communications, speeches, and religious sermons--which help
    to paint a picture of late Ottoman society unavailable in official
    repositories like the Ottoman Archives. It is well-known among
    scholars of Republican Turkey that Ataturk hired scholars to construct
    a historical narrative that suited his political ambitions, advanced
    the notion of a modern and secular Turkish state, and eschewed the
    inconvenient blemishes of its Ottoman past, especially the Armenian
    genocide.

    Thus, utilization of the Ottoman Archives becomes problematic for the
    historian seeking the truth. It should further be noted that access to
    the Ottoman Archives is difficult and in many cases impossible to
    achieve for those of Armenian origin, depending on the 'nature' of his
    or her research.

    Der Matossian's ambitious project (the 260 pages of which may seem
    modest when one considers that they are distilled from a 600-plus-page
    dissertation completed at Columbia) breaks sharply from the
    'microhistorical' approach employed by many scholars of the period.
    Rather than examining one locality and attempting to extrapolate
    larger conclusions about the empire as a whole, Der Matossian's work
    analyzes the complex revolution from both central and peripheral
    areas, sifting through the "study in contradictions" that is the Young
    Turk Revolution to establish a comprehensive narrative about the
    feverish rise and fall of the 20th century Ottoman dream.

    The lessons of the failed Ottoman experiment, however, extend far
    beyond the limited historical scope of Shattered Dreams of Revolution,
    which covers a period between 1908 and 1909. Like other modern
    revolutions, Der Matossian writes, the Young Turk Revolution was
    driven by the notion that the predicaments of society "should be
    solved through the kind of political reform that had transformed the
    West into a successful entity: constitutionalism and parliamentary
    rule vehicles to curb the power of the monarchy." Constitutionalism
    alone, however, "failed to create a new understanding of Ottoman
    citizenship," and could not stem the rising tide of nationalism that
    enveloped the rapidly decaying multi-ethnic Empires of the
    era--including Czarist Russia and Austria-Hungary, both of which
    crumbled at the end of the First World War.

    Even in the 21st century, we continue to see a similar template in
    Middle Eastern revolutions. In the book's conclusion, Der Matossian
    includes an excerpt from a speech given in an Egyptian church at the
    peak of the Arab Spring's optimism in December 2011. The Anglican
    pastor, Reverend Sameh al-Qasim, welcomes a prominent imam from a
    Tahrir Square mosque along with a delegation of hundreds of Muslims to
    celebrate the New Year side by side. The imam, Sheikh Mazhar Shahin,
    invokes Egyptian patriotism and describes the relationship between
    Christian and Muslim Egyptians as one of "love and harmony."

    "The pillars of this country were founded with the sweat of the
    Egyptians...Muslims and Christians [alike]," Shahin says. "Egypt will
    remain a safe country, guarded by whoever walks on it, be they Muslims
    or Christians."

    It is, sadly, clear just how that worked out.

    Der Matossian rightly points out that in the wake of both the Young
    Turk and Egyptian revolutions, "continued tensions between Christians
    and Muslims quickly became part of the post-revolutionary political
    milieu." These parallels make Shattered Dreams of Revolution essential
    to a sober and honest understanding of the Middle East in the 20th
    century--and in the 21st.

    http://freebeacon.com/culture/the-ottoman-spring/

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