by Alan Palmer
Yet who was ‘lord of the Golden Horn’ following Abdulhamid’s deposition? Never again did the Ottoman Empire have a sovereign with pretensions to rule as well as to reign. Mehmed V was a benign dodderer. He ascended the throne physically and morally weakened by excesses of drink and sex, habits which for over thirty years were encouraged by his half-brother in the belief they would distract the heir-presumptive from political intrigue. Even had he been an ascetic monarch of quick intelligence, he would have found his powers trimmed by extensive amendments to the 1876 Constitution agreed by parliament in August.15 Only the Grand Vizier and the şeyhülislâm should in future be chosen by the Sultan, who would therefore no longer appoint individual ministers or the presiding chairmen of the two Chambers (henceforth elected by their own members). Even the Sultan’s personal staff was to be appointed by parliament—a provision intended to prevent the creation of another Yildiz inner government. Parliament had to meet from November to May in each year; ministers were responsible to the Deputies rather than to the Grand Vizier; and the Sultan was to possess no more than a delaying, suspensive veto on legislation initiated by either parliamentary chamber Fundamental to all these revolutionary innovations was the amended Article 3 of the Constitution: sovereignty was vested in the head of the Osmanli dynasty only so long as he fulfilled an accession oath of loyalty to Fatherland and Nation, pledging observance of both the şeriat and the Constitution. Parliament therefore asserted an inalienable right to depose any sultan who infringed the basic codes of his empire.
On paper these constitutional amendments of August 1909 promised the Ottoman peoples a system of parliamentary government more widely based than in Tsarist Russia or Hohenzollern Germany. Reality, however, fell far short of the reformers’ aspirations. The legislative record of the Young Turks in the first year of Mehmed V’s reign was sadly repressive. The Vagabond Law (8 May 1909) treated persistent beggars lacking ‘visible means of support’ rather less generously than did the statutes of early Tudor England. The Law of Associations (16 August 1909) forbade the formation of political groups bearing the name of nationalities or races; this measure led to the closure of Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian clubs but imposed no restraints on the Turk Denegli (Turkish Society), set up in the previous January, since it was argued that the word ‘Turkish’ implied a spoken language or popular culture and therefore lacked any political connotation. A ‘Law to Prevent Brigandage and Sedition’ (27 September 1909) provided for the raising of ‘pursuit battalions’ which would root out and suppress armed bands, particularly the Balkan comitadji. At the same time a Conscription Law introduced the new principle of military obligation on non-Muslims; this application of the CUP’s professed abhorrence of ‘distinctions of race and creed’ rapidly lost the Unionists support from Christians and Jews. Other laws forbade the printing of books or newspaper articles likely to incite disorder; organizers of public gatherings were required to obtain police permits and ensure that only subjects notified in advance were discussed at their meetings.16
Municipal administration was improved; more schools were founded, particularly for girls; and work began on ending anomalies over the ownership of land, seeking to eradicate the last vestiges of the iltizam system. Yet, though the Unionists emphasized their hostility to the enjoyment by foreigners of special treaty rights, the Capitulations were not abolished. Despite the new regime’s advocacy of Ottoman self-sufficiency, foreign experts were still encouraged to come to Constantinople and suggest ways of modernizing the administration: Sir Richard Crawford turned the experienced eye of a British civil servant on the Ottoman Customs service; M. Sterpin was brought from Brussels to direct Posts and Telegraph—Talaat had no high opinion of the efficiency shown by his old department; and Count Leon Ostrorog, already employed as an adviser on procedure to the judiciary, was given new authority as councillor responsible for reconciling Ottoman law with the major codes of Western Europe—a post from which, two years later, he resigned in disgust at the pressure exerted by traditionalist religious groups against whose obscurantism the more enlightened Young Turks had long railed.
It was assumed, both in the capital and abroad, that the reforms were directed by the collective leadership of the CUP, acting through the Grand Vizier and his chosen ministers, as the constitution required. This was a misleading impression. The CUP was mistrusted in the capital, its spokesmen accused of being irreligious self-seekers, steeped in Freemasonry and/or Zionism. Significantly, CUP headquarters remained in Salonika until 1912. Moreover, although both Hilmi and Hakki were technically Unionists during their terms of office, they did not have the last word in determining policy. The real power behind throne and parliament was General Shevket, and he remained outside the Union and Progress Movement.17 His prestige as commander of the Third Army and instigator of the March on Stamboul enabled Shevket Pasha to impose a veiled military dictatorship on the constitutional Empire in the four years which followed Abdulhamid’s fall. In May 1909 Shevket was confirmed as Inspector-General of the First, Second and Third Armies. A few days later he received wider powers as martial law administrator, thereafter maintaining for two years a virtual state of siege in towns where there was a risk of disaffection. Early in 1910 he entered Hakki’s cabinet as Minister of War, observing such tight-lipped secrecy over the disposition of the armies and the purpose of his military budget that even Talaat and Cavit were never sure if he were friend or foe. Eventually Shevket emerged from the shadows, and for the first six months of 1913 served as Grand Vizier himself.
Disillusionment with the CUP, and more especially a mounting anger at its encouragement of narrowly Turkish nationalist groups, provoked opposition in several regions of the Empire, widely separated from each other. Resentment over the Law of Associations intensified the growth of secret conspiratorial societies, especially among the Arabs of the Levant. Muslims educated under French auspices in Syria and Lebanon funded a ‘Young Arab Society’ in Paris in 1911 as a direct challenge to Young Turk policies of centralization. More immediately serious was unrest in Albania. There had been fighting in the Lyuma district as early as May 1909, when attempts were made to levy new taxes, but a rebellion in the early spring of 1910 made a greater impression on the authorities, not least because it was concentrated in Kossovo, the region in which Shevket Pasha had so recently served as military governor. He over-reacted to what he regarded as a personal affront and sent 50,000 troops to restore order, authorizing public flogging of clan chieftains as a means of intimidating a fiercely proud people. The rebellion spread to include Christian as well as Muslim clans, forcing Shevket himself to lead yet another expeditionary force in April 1911, and two months later to encourage an official visit to the Albanian provinces by the Sultan-Caliph. And still the fighting dragged on.18
While the army was thus engaged at the north-western fringe of the Empire, the Armenian Dashnaks stirred up trouble once more in the north-east. At the same time, in the Sultan’s far south-eastern lands, two Arab rebellions broke out, respectively under Sheikh Muhammad al-Idrisi in the Asir region south of Jeddah, and under the Iman Yahya Hamid-al-Din further south still, bordering Britain’s Aden Protectorate. To meet these military emergencies at such distant extremities of the Sultan’s empire, his Ministry of War sent to Arabia another 30,000 men, drawn from provinces where the Young Turk reforms remained as yet unchallenged. Accordingly transports sailed for the Red Sea, not only from Üsküdar and Smyrna, but from Tripoli and Derna in modern Libya, then at the south-western extremity of the Ottoman Empire. By the midsummer of 1911 the vilayet of Tripoli and the sanjak of Benghazi—the last North African lands directly under the Sultan’s rule—were garrisoned by no more than 3,400 effective regular troops. This thin defensive force was spread along a thousand miles of Barbary coast, barely a night’s steaming from the ports of southern Italy.19
Ever since the French had occupied Tunisia, Italian colonization societies had urged successive governments to show an interest in developing and acquiring Libya.
In the early years of the century a new wave of French colonial activity from Morocco eastwards persuaded businessmen in Rome and Milan that if their government did not soon annex Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, the opportunity would be lost for good. There was, so their Foreign Minister later wrote, ‘a general, vague desire to do something’ among his compatriots.20 As early as February 1911 the Ottoman ambassador in Rome expressed fears to the Porte that Italy was planning an attack, and in June he sent a further warning, which on this occasion was passed on to Shevket Pasha himself. There was, however, little Shevket could do—apart, that is, from sending 20,000 Mauser rifles and two million cartridges to Tripoli aboard a fast steamer, with orders that they should be distributed to the Arab tribesmen in the event of war. Despite Young Arab dissidents in Paris and revolts along the lower Red Sea littoral, Shevket knew that the invasion of Muslim territory by Italian Catholics would rally the tribesmen in support of their Sultan-Caliph against any Christian giaours.
On 27 September 1911 the Italians, complaining of Ottoman maltreatment of traders and merchants in Libya, delivered a totally unacceptable ultimatum to the Porte. War followed next day, with a naval sortie preparing the way for landings at Tripoli, Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk. The depleted Ottoman detachments could offer little resistance to an attack which, as well as bombardment from modern warships, also used aircraft for the first time, with small bombs dropped by hand from primitive biplanes. The Ottoman General Staff’s improvised strategic plan worked well enough, however. Although the invaders seized the coastal towns, they could not penetrate the interior; their troops were untrained for desert warfare against skilled Arab horsemen and, in consequence, the rapid victory sought in Rome and Milan eluded the invaders. A naval blockade prevented Ottoman reinforcements reaching Libya from the Aegean or the Levant, but individual officers in mufti made their way through British-controlled Egypt and slipped across the frontier to help the resistance in Cyrenaica. Among these officers were Enver Bey and Mustafa Kemal, both of whom joined Ottoman regulars and Arab Sanussi tribesmen keeping watch on the Italian garrison at Tobruk. Enver Bey then travelled across the desert into Tripolitania while Kemal remained in the vicinity of Benghazi and Derna. By early November, when Libya was formally annexed by the Kingdom of Italy, the war had reached stalemate, with the ‘conquerors’ effectively holding no more than the coastal strip.21
When news of the loss of Tripoli, Benghazi and Derna reached Constantinople there was widespread anger. Hakki Pasha at once resigned as Grand Vizier; the CUP was blamed for weakening the army be seeking to indoctrinate the officer corps; and some months later Shevket resigned as Minister of War, complaining that it was impossible to modernize the Ottoman armies if differing factions of Young Turks and Liberals insisted on playing politics in the barracks of every garrison town.22
With the coming of spring in 1912 the Italians broadened the scope of the war. On 18–19 April Vice-Admiral Leone Viale’s squadron of twelve warships bombarded the forts of the Dardanelles, but Viale was forced to abandon plans to escort a flotilla of torpedo-boats up the Straits to attack vessels at anchor in the Narrows: Ottoman gunfire proved too accurate, and his activities were causing a sensation among the Great Powers—not unnaturally, the Turks at once closed the Straits to all commerce, a particular blow to the Russian Black Sea trade. When thwarted at the Dardanelles, Viale turned back into the Aegean and, with troop transports joining him at Stampalia, proceeded to occupy Rhodes and the remaining islands of the Dodecanese during the month of May.
Militarily the successive emergencies of the Italo-Turkish War showed clearly to foreign observers both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire. Outside Europe well-armed Bedouin, supporting the Sultan’s regular troops, could with shrewd leadership prevent a final victory, wearing down a conventional enemy force by raids and ambushes; and, nearer to the Ottoman capital, foreign artillery sited in strategic forts would repel any enemy assault. Although the Ottoman Navy had three modern cruisers, eight destroyers and fourteen torpedo-boats as well as some venerable battleships, it was of little account as a fighting fleet: Admiral Williams, who succeeded Sir Douglas Gamble as head of the British mission in 1910, found Turkish officers resented all attempts at reform; for purposes of prestige, they were more concerned with fitting out two newly purchased twenty-year-old German battleships than with manning their smaller warships adequately.23 There were no manpower problems in the recently enlarged conscript army, but most recruits remained untrained in modern weapons. Moreover, while staff work was good for limited operations in a particular campaign, it was incapable of handling the logistical problems of a major war waged simultaneously on several fronts. Had the Young Turk reformers enjoyed five or six years of peace in which to impose genuine ‘Union and Progress’ on the empire, the Ottoman state might well have become militarily formidable once again. As it was, the crisis years 1911 and 1912 caught the constitutional empire at the weakest moment of partial transition, a time when there could be little hope of victory in defensive wars which no loyal subject of the Sultan-Caliph wished to fight.
Worse was soon to follow. The evident plight of their once powerful neighbour encouraged the Balkan states to come together under Russian auspices and make a determined thrust to expel the Ottomans from Europe after five and a half centuries. Despite rival ambitions in the rebellious Albanian lands and in Macedonia, during the summer of 1912 Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro came together in a Balkan League, with more precise secret military alliances following during the early autumn. The Balkan Wars began on 8 October when Montenegrin troops advanced into northern Albania and the sanjak of Novibazar.24 The three larger Balkan kingdoms opened their campaign a day later, with a combined assault on Macedonia, a Bulgarian thrust into Thrace (which soon enveloped Edirne) and Greek naval operations in the Aegean. The Balkan allies could put more than 700,000 men into the field. Nazim Pasha, the ambitious general who took over from Shevket as War Minister in early June, could not hope to raise more than 325,000 men to oppose them.
Hurriedly, on 15 October, a peace was made with Italy. By the Treaty of Ouchy the Sultan accepted the loss of Libya in return for recognition of his religious status in the ceded provinces and an Italian undertaking—never fulfilled—to evacuate the Dodecanese islands and restore them to Ottoman administration. But there was no speedy way for Ottoman troops to be withdrawn from Libya and concentrated in Rumelia. It took Kemal and Enver over a month to return to the capital—in Kemal’s case by steamer from Alexandria to Marseilles, by train to Bucharest and by steamer again from Constanza to the Bosphorus. By the time Kemal had completed his journey, in mid-November, Thrace was already lost to the Bulgarians; Kossovo, Monastir, Ochrid and Skopje were in Serbian hands; and the Greeks had won the race to seize the greatest of Macedonian prizes, the port of Salonika. The ex-sultan Abdulhamid was hurried back to the Beylerbey Palace aboard the German stationnaire guardship SMS Lorelei as Greek and Bulgarian forces converged on his city of exile.
Constantinople was by then crowded with less illustrious refugees, in pathetic flight from towns and villages which generations of their families had looked upon as their true home. The Bulgarian army, although still besieging Edirne, was also attacking the main defences of the capital, the Chatalja Lines, barely twenty miles from the old walls of Byzantium. Mehmed Kamil, appointed Grand Vizier on 29 October in the hopes that his anglophile reputation would win support from the British Government, appealed to the Great Powers to send their warships through the Straits to protect the city from occupation. At the same time he ordered the police to arrest several CUP activists, whom he suspected of plotting a coup. But by the third week of November tension had eased, both inside the capital and at the Front. The Chatalja Lines held firm, and morale was boosted by the exploits of the light cruiser Hamidiye whose commander, Hüseyin Rauf, slipped out through the Dardanelles and threatened Greek naval mastery of the Aegean. When the first snow swept westwards from Anatolia into Rumelia, the Balkan
allies agreed on a cease-fire. The guns fell silent on 3 December. Within a week peace talks began in London under Sir Edward Grey’s chairmanship.
Rumours that Kamil Pasha was prepared to accept humiliating terms in order to placate his English friends allowed the CUP to recover the political initiative.25 The Grand Vizier was right to fear a coup. Talaat tried, in the first instance, to win support from General Nazim, but he remained so mistrustful of the CUP that he refused to be drawn into any conspiracy. On 23 January 1913 reports that Kamil was prepared to allow Edirne to become a Bulgarian city encouraged the Unionists to carry out the coup they had been planning for several weeks. Colonel Enver led a band of officers into the principal council chamber of the Sublime Porte building and forced Kamil’s resignation at gun-point, while one of his companions shot dead General Nazim, who must have known more about the CUP’s overt activities than was good for him. While the Young Turk general, Ahmed Cemal, took emergency powers as Governor of the capital, Enver went to the palace and browbeat the Sultan into appointing Shevket as Grand Vizier. Soon afterwards an Egyptian steamer left for Alexandria with Kamil aboard, a British diplomat having secured him a safe-conduct. 26
‘The Sublime Porte Raid’, a dramatic episode which figures prominently in Young Turk legend, took place at a time when the peace talks in London seemed close to collapse, largely through Bulgarian intransigence. Fighting was resumed on 3 February, but hopes that the new Shevket government would pull off a victory in the field were soon dashed. On 6 March the Greeks at last captured Ioánnina, where Essad Pasha had maintained a valiant resistance throughout the winter in Ali Pasha’s old lair. At the same time it proved impossible to loosen the Bulgarian hold on Edirne; shortage of food forced the city’s surrender on 26 March after fierce fighting with heavy casualties. On 14 April another cease-fire was imposed; the peace talks were resumed, and by early June the Ottoman Government had to accept terms which recognized the loss of Crete, Macedonia, Thrace, Albania and most of the Aegean islands. Henceforth ‘Turkey-in-Europe’ would be limited to the hinterland of Constantinople, with the frontier running in an almost straight line from Enez (Enos) to Midye (Media), thus leaving Edirne more than thirty miles inside Bulgaria.