Extra-ordinary cooperation between ordinary Ottomans: creation of the first Armenian refugee settlements in the Syrian Jazira, 1918-1926 (original) (raw)
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in Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and Alp Yenen (eds), Age of Rogues: Rebels, Revolutionaries, and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 355-382.
T he Paris Peace Conference of 1919 paved the way for the emergence of new modern states in the Middle East, whether as fully independent entities or under mandatory oversight, by granting them sovereign powers within new 'national' territories. Paradoxically, however, as Bradley Miller puts it, the 'same sovereignty that empowered states also undermined them by limiting the reach of their authority in a world in which people crossed borders, with much more dexterity than law'. 2 Just as borders emerged as a resource for many to secure new economic avenues, sustain trans-border family connections or simply escape the law-criminals and smugglers 3-the 1 This chapter has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation approval (Grant Agreement No. 725269).
In the introduction to this special issue, we address the concepts of ordinariness and Ottomanness, and how they intersect within the general context of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.1 Given the already existing scholarship on ordinary groups or individuals in the history of the Middle East, we first position ordinariness as context- specific; that is, we understand it as subjected to various forms of exclusion from the elite. Second, within the framework of the major political changes that characterise the end of Empire we explore ordinariness and how it is embedded in everyday life and practices. We interrogate the capacities of individuals to maintain regularity through ordinary practices, after or despite a disruptive episode. We argue that persisting with everyday life practices despite crisis can serve as a strategy to reclaim spaces of autonomy from power structures. However, we also demonstrate that ordinary individuals, being vulnerable subjects or citizens, are also subject to change. These questions eventually lead us to rethink the debate on ‘continuities and ruptures’ within the post-Ottoman context. We suggest that framing Ottomanness as a time-marker, rather than as an identity-marker (Ottoman-era), allows us to focus on how groups and individuals coped with these changes, rather than attempting to define them.
The Reşwan Kurds and Ottoman Tribal Settlement in Syria, 1683-1741
Oriente Moderno 97 (2017), 256-269.
The Reşwan were one of the most important tribal confederations in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. Yet their history remains almost completely ignored, while the few contemporary authors who refer them almost invariably fail to mention that they were Kurds. This article seeks to retrace the history of the Reşwan confederation and particularly their place in the Ottoman imperial tribal settlement (iskan) scheme of the eighteenth century. Drawing on both Ottoman chancery documents and local şeriat archives, it seeks to show that the Reşwan enjoyed relatively good relations with the Ottoman authorities and a high degree of integration with other groups in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, with individual members attaining high offfijice in the region. While the Reşwan name has virtually disappeared, members of the confederation in Turkey today still trace their origins to the Syrian settlement initiative.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2015
This misunderstanding also compels Ahmad to deemphasize the importance of the CUP's policies and the way in which they were implemented. Hence he, in between lines, tells us not to take the portrayal of the CUP in Arab or Armenian nationalist scholarship seriously. According to Ahmad the CUP was such an ineffectual and uncoordinated organization that it could not design and carry out efficacious policies. It is jarring to see Ahmad, who totally disregards Ottoman archival sources and the CUP's own correspondence, claim that "most scholars writing on this period are unable to use Ottoman sources and have only a cursory knowledge of late Ottoman history," and thus they make arguments "on false premises" (p. 115). In fact, it is nobody but Ahmad who, with his perfunctory familiarity with Ottoman history, puts forward such preposterous opinions. He further regurgitates stock clichés of the Turkish nationalist historiography. For instance, he emphasizes that "the non-Muslim communities, and later the Arabs, provided suitable clients for the Great Powers to manipulate" (p. 4). As a consequence, Ahmad draws a relationship between the weak Ottoman government that could not force its governors to deport the Armenians and non-Turkish nationalists serving the interests of the imperialist Western powers. Ahmad writes, "though Armenian nationalist activity in Anatolia was a factor in the Porte's passing the relocation law, the more immediate cause was the Entente landing at the Dardanelles." Likewise, he suggests that "the Armenian population. .. of Istanbul was not relocated. .. because it was not considered revolutionary or nationalist." (p. 81). "A peace could have been negotiated at any time in 1915 or 1916," he adds, "and [the] deportees might have been allowed to return their homes" (p. 83). Alas, Ahmad would have us believe, Armenian nationalism, Western imperialism, and the prolongation of World War I prevented the deportees from returning to their homes much to the dismay of the CUP leaders. The multifarious and fundamental shortcomings of Ahmad's book render stylistic issues unimportant. Still, a few words should be said about the large number of misspellings. A good portion of the Turkish names are written incorrectly. Ahmad uses Turkish characters like many scholars writing on Ottoman and Turkish history. This, however, results in a host of misspelled words.
Circassian Refugees and the Making of Amman, 1878–1914
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2017
In the final decades of Ottoman rule, several waves of refugees from the Russian Empire's North Caucasus region immigrated to Transjordan, where they founded Amman and other agricultural villages. This article examines the economy of Amman in its formative years as a Circassian refugee settlement. By exploring connections between North Caucasian refugees, Syrian and Palestinian merchants, and Transjordanian urban and nomadic communities, this study posits refugees as drivers of economic expansion in the late Ottoman period. I argue that the settlement of North Caucasian refugees and their active participation in the real estate market in and around Amman contributed to the entrenchment of the post-1858 property regime in Ottoman Transjordan. Through a study of an upper-class Circassian household and its legal battles, this article also illustrates the rise of refugee elites who benefited from the commodification of land and the construction of state-sponsored infrastructure in the late Ottoman Levant. Winner, 2018 Best Article Prize, Syrian Studies Association Winner, 2018 Khayrallah Prize in Middle Eastern Migration Studies, Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies
"Special Kind of Refugees": Assisting Armenians in Erzincan, Bayburt, and Erzurum
Documenting the Armenian Genocide, Palgrave Studies in the History of Genocide, 2024
Over 200,000 Armenians became displaced persons during the First World War as a result of the war on the Caucasus battlefront and the genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Drawing upon previously untapped material from Armenian, Georgian, and Russian archives and libraries, this chapter reflects on that mass population movement, examines the resulting humanitarian crisis, and analyzes Armenian refugee relief work. It shows that because of the complex structure of the empire, the nature of humanitarianism in imperial Russia was multilayered and heterogeneous. To control and coordinate the large population movements in the eastern occupied regions of the Ottoman Empire and in Transcaucasia, imperial Russian authorities needed to organize and facilitate proper registration of refugees: a challenging task in times of war, epidemics, and humanitarian crises. They also had to define who was and who wasn’t a refugee. This chapter reflects on Russian military and civil authorities’ responses to the refugee movements in newly occupied areas of the Ottoman Empire—Erzincan, Bayburt, Erzurum— in summer 1916 and emphasizes the new directions and challenges of relief work. It shows how the relief committees and agencies adjusted to the changing dynamics on the warfront and in the occupied regions and shaped their relief strategies and methods according to the emerging needs of various categories of refugees. Hence, it contributes to key discussions in interdisciplinary research on refugees and to the emerging literature on relations between humanitarianism and imperialism. Finally, it offers a more nuanced understanding of Armenian-Russian relations in this period.
New Perspectives on Turkey, 2021
This article examines an important attempt at the political engineering undertaken in Syria during the Great War. It focuses on the experience of the Arabs exiled to Anatolia by Cemal Pasha to redesign Syrian society in line with the Committee of Union and Progress' idea of empire, which imagined an authoritarian regime. The members of the Arabist parties were removed from Syria to eliminate their contemporaneous and future resistance to the emerging despotic regime. The article sets out to analyze what the exiles experienced in Anatolia using their memoirs in Arabic and the Ottoman documents describing their conditions in Anatolia, and to what extent the aims could be realized. It argues that the purpose was to put a politics of "normalization" into practice by depoliticizing the Arab notable families through "relocation" to Anatolia, although the resistance of the exiles and varying attitudes in Ottoman bureaucracy significantly differentiated outcomes. It also uncovers many untold stories with regard to the daily life of the exiles and adds much to our knowledge on the experience of Arab exiles in Anatolia. It is the first serious examination of the experiences of the Arab exiles using their own texts and narrative.
From Aintab to Gaziantep: The Reconstitution of an Elite on the Ottoman Periphery
The End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism, 2019
Much of the literature on the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians tells the story of a state captured by a radical party that enforced genocidal measures throughout the land. Scholarship about genocidal activity at the local level, however – what social scientists might call ‘the periphery’– is still in its infancy. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to examine such activity on the Ottoman periphery, focusing on the district of Aintab (or Anteb) – modern day Gaziantep. The chapter has two parts. Drawing upon primary sources from Ottoman, Armenian, British and French archives, as well as from memoirs and personal papers, the first part examines the persistent efforts of some of Aintab’s most prominent citizens to get the central government to expel the district’s Armenians, demands that seem to have enjoyed locally a considerable level of social support. Yet, for some time these demands encountered resistance from several powerful civil and military figures. The result was that Aintab’s Armenians were deported later than most of their eastern neighbours. The second part of the argument focuses on events after the genocide: the successive British and French occupations of the district; the return to Aintab of Armenians who had managed to survive; their efforts to recover their property; and then a second, and final, expulsion.
Imperial Refuge: Resettlement of Muslims from Russia in the Ottoman Empire, 1860–1914
Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 2018
Imperial Refuge revisits late Ottoman history through the lens of migration, holding the resettlement of Muslim refugees as critical to the making of the modern Balkans, Turkey, and the Levant. In the half-century before World War I, about one million Muslims from Russia's North Caucasus region arrived in the Ottoman Empire. Most of them came as refugees fleeing war and persecution. This dissertation investigates the political economy of refugee resettlement in the Ottoman provinces of Danube, Sivas, and Damascus and traces refugee networks throughout the empire and beyond. The ability of refugees to tap into local economies underpinned Ottoman regional and imperial stability. State support, whether in financial aid, legal infrastructure, or transportation, was paramount to the economic success of agricultural refugee settlements. In the northern Balkans, for example, insufficient state subsidies and scarcity of land for refugees contributed to the outbreak of Muslim-Christian clashes and then to the 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman War, which ultimately ejected the Ottomans from much of the Balkans. In central Anatolia, a lack of state investment hindered the development of refugee villages, which led to economic stagnation of the region. In contrast, in the Levant, Circassian and Chechen refugees took advantage of the state-built Hejaz Railway and land reforms to create booming settlements. The refugees founded three of the four largest cities in modern Jordan, including the capital city of Amman. This bottom-up history of refugee migration and resettlement is based on archival materials from Turkey, Jordan, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, and the United Kingdom, including previously unknown private letters and refugee petitions. Winner, 2018 World History Association Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in world, global, or transnational history Winner, 2020 Society for Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies (Gesellschaft für Turkologie, Osmanistik und Türkeiforschung) Prize for Outstanding Dissertation Honorable Mention, 2019 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences, Middle East Studies Association