5/23/2018 When do empires end?

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Global Affairs

When do empires end?

ALLAN MALLINSON
 7 mins
23 May 2018

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In February, Recep Erdoğan issued an imperial warning to Donald Trump. The US military had
backed the mainly Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and pushed ISIS out of most of northern
Syria to a remote area astride the border with Iraq. Erdoğan sees the YPG as an arm of Kurdish
rebels in Turkey, and launched an operation against the group in the north-western Syrian enclave
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of Afrin, threatening also an offensive towards the Syrian town of Manbij where US troops were
training Kurd forces. If US troops stood in his way, said Erdoğan, he would deliver an “Ottoman
slap”.1

Things have gone quiet since, but what does Erdoğan’s reference to the Ottoman empire have to
say about modern Turkey’s relationship with its imperial past? Indeed, what does it say generally
about empires eclipsed by defeat in war rather than by longer-term organic decline?

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If Thomas Hardy had written his poem In Time of “The Breaking of Nations” in 1918 rather than in
1915, he might have written not “Nations” but “Empires”. The First World War was the end of four of
them: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist Russian and Ottoman. It left only the British and (of a
sort) the French, and begat a new one, the Japanese.

Das Kaiserliche Deutsche Reich came to an o icial end in 1919 at Versailles (where it had been
proclaimed in 1871). The instinct for a greater German imperium quickly revived, however, and was
only properly subdued in 1945 with Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies after almost
six years of devastating war, and the making thereafter of the Federal Republic.

While Berlin has since 1945 been content with liberal democracy,
recently Vienna and Budapest have taken a backwards look
The fate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was linked to that of the Deutsche Reich. The
Österreichisch-Ungarisches Reich was also dissolved at Versailles. Its two former monarchies were,
however, inveigled by Hitler into seeking past glories, and they too paid the price in 1945.
Ironically, though, while Berlin has since 1945 been content with liberal democracy, recently
Vienna and Budapest have taken a backwards look. Neither, though, show any interest in moving
their borders – only strengthening them.

The fall of Russia in 1918 came six months before that of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Exhausted
by three years of war for which the Russian army was ill-equipped, revolution had swept the Tsar
from his palace the previous year, and then the moderate socialist government that followed, and
in March 1918 the new Bolshevik Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany. In consequence, the

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old imperial Russia lost much territory. Moscow (now the capital) had not surrendered
unconditionally, though. Russia’s future was not entirely ordained by its former enemy, therefore,
and its leaders soon proved keen for a new Russian imperium, if only for “security”. The Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics soon looked as great an entity as had imperial Russia in 1914. Indeed, in
1940 it became in effect even larger. “New General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union is but old tsar writ large.”

Nor was Russia’s second defeat, in the Cold War, unconditional surrender either. And just as in the
1920s, after several years of civil war, albeit this time less bloody, the instinct for the imperium
returned, and with it the new tsar: President Putin.

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The case of the Ottoman Empire is rather different, and altogether more complicated. The empire
was created some 800 years ago by Turkish tribes in Asia Minor. The word “Ottoman” itself derives
from  the founding Turkmen chief: Osman – in Arabic, the language of the empire, ‘Uthmān. At its
height, the Ottoman empire included modern Hungary, the Balkans, Greece and parts of Ukraine.
On the other side of the Bosphorus – Asia – the Ottomans conquered huge tracts of the Middle
East: modern Iraq, Syria, Israel and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Egypt and North Africa as
far west as Algeria fell to them too. In 1529, however, the Ottomans were defeated at the gates of
Vienna, and with that began their long recessional in Europe.

Although by 1914, the Ottomans in Europe had been pushed back to within 150 miles of
Constantinople, much of the African empire had been lost to the British and French, (much of)
Greece had broken free, and Cyprus was under British dominion, the empire still ranged
extensively in the Middle East.2

Constantinople’s declaration of war on the Entente ended by

violently fracturing the Middle East
One of the greatest catastrophes of the First World War was the Ottomans’ siding with the Central
Powers. Successive British prime ministers, beginning with Palmerston, who viewed the empire as
important to the continental balance of power, Gladstone who thought likewise, and Salisbury who
wanted to see an orderly contraction to reduce great power rivalry, had been on good terms with
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the Porte, as the Ottoman government was known. (The Crimean War had in part been fought to
stop Russian advances on Ottoman territory and suzerainty). Constantinople’s declaration of war
on the Entente ended by violently fracturing the Middle East. Moreover, it eroded Russia’s ability to
withstand German and Austrian aggression, from which arose the revolution.

But the Entente powers had been reluctant to give any guarantees respecting the future of the
empire, and the Kaiser had assiduously courted the Porte in the decade before. And so in
November 1914 “the Sick Man of Europe”, as Tsar Nicholas had called Turkey before the Crimean
War, rose from his bed to put up a gallant but ultimately futile ight against the might of the British
empire.

In October 1918, with the whole of the Middle East lost and the Entente closing in on
Constantinople itself, the Ottoman rulers led for Berlin. Soon afterwards British, French and Italian
troops entered the city from the west.

The old caliphate was abolished, all remaining members of the

Ottoman dynasty expelled from the country, and (from 1928) Islam
was no longer the state religion: the republic was to be avowedly
secular
What then was to be done with the Sultan’s old empire? Half the Middle East was in no state to look
after itself; promises – some of them contradictory (Balfour had promised the Jews a homeland in
Israel; Lawrence of Arabia had promised the Arabs self-government and a tract of Palestine) now
looked impractical; and there were oil ields into which much British investment had been poured
and out of which much oil needed to pour to help the recovery of the former allies.

Initially, Russia had been promised Constantinople (Istanbul) and the straits – their longed for
opening into the Mediterranean – together with tracts of Asia Minor along the southern coast of
the Black Sea. By the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement of January 1916 (named after the two
“diplomats” who drew the lines on the map), the French were to have a sphere of in luence in Syria,
extending eastward to Mosul in Iraq, while in addition to ruling Egypt as a protectorate, the British
sphere of in luence in Mesopotamia was to extend from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad, and Palestine
was to be placed under international control. Italy, too, had been promised a share, in return for
joining the war on the Entente’s side – the Dodecanese and a large area of south-western Anatolia,
including Izmir.

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Russia’s withdrawal from the war in early 1918, and other factors, led to modi ications of the
agreements, however, which were not were inally presented to the new government in
Constantinople until 1920. By the Treaty of Sèvres (some of the negotiations actually took place in
the famous porcelain factory in the Paris suburb), the Turks would retain Istanbul, a part of Thrace
(European Turkey), but would lose all the Arab provinces, and cede a large tract of Asia Minor to a
newly created Armenian state with access to the sea. The straits would be internationalized, and
strict control of Ottoman inances established.

However, in early 1919 a campaign of resistance had begun, led by the former army general
Mustapha Kemal – “Ataturk”. The Allies found the campaign impossible to counter – there was
actually little ighting, except between Turkish factions and some ethnic minorities – and
conceded the declaration of a Turkish republic in October 1923, with Ataturk its irst president. The
old caliphate was abolished, all remaining members of the Ottoman dynasty expelled from the
country, and (from 1928) Islam was no longer the state religion: the republic was to be avowedly
secular.

In choosing to use the word “Ottoman” in his warning to the United

States, President Erdoğan reveals that to him too, Sèvres is
un inished business.
The Sèvres treaty was modi ied accordingly, but ever since it has helped fuel what has been
described as a form of nationalist paranoia – a “Sèvres syndrome” – which plays a part still in
Turkey’s sensitivity over, for example, Kurdish separatism. It is at the heart, too, of Istanbul’s belief
that the Armenian genocide — widely used at Sèvres to justify the plans for redistributing parts of
Anatolia — was always an anti-Turkish conspiracy rather than a historical truth. Furthermore,
Ataturk’s struggle against “colonial occupation” by the allied powers left a legacy of persistent anti-
imperial nationalism, directed irst against Britain, then during the Cold War against Russia (Turkey
was an eager member in the irst – 1952 – enlargement of Nato), and now increasingly against the
United States.

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History seems to suggest that the violent end of empires, if not terminal by a supreme act of
violence such as the dropping of the atomic bomb, which ended Imperial Japan, leave unclean
wounds wherein infection develops and then threatens to spread. These wounds need long-term
dressing, and the essential organs of the state need to be kept working properly, if the successor
polity is to remain healthy.

In choosing to use the word “Ottoman” in his warning to the United States, President Erdoğan
reveals that to him too, Sèvres is un inished business. (Although the rapport during his visit to
London at the beginning of the month suggests that the mutual respect that historically has
underlain Anglo-Turkish relations – even in war – continues.3)

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His speech in Sarajevo last week – a city which in the lifetime of his parents was the capital of an
Ottoman province – declaring that he wanted to be the protector of Muslims in the EU, was an
imperial gesture. And repeating the reference to the days of the caliphate, with which he had
taunted the US, asking the expatriate Turkish crowd “Are you ready to give the terrorist
organisations and their local and foreign henchmen an Ottoman slap?” was not so much a gesture
of incipient imperialism as the raising of an imperial standard.

The recidivist imperial gene is evidently a strong one, and if history has an imperial lesson, it is that
empire means permanent war or con lict – notably with other empires or quasi-empires. President
Erdoğan appears to be on increasingly good terms with that other re-emerging imperium, Russia. If
history has any tendency to repeat – even to echo – itself, this does not promise to be too lasting
an affair.

FOOTNOTES

1.  A full-bodied blow with the palm of the hand, said to have been used by Ottoman imperial troops to incapacitate their enemies when they
found themselves unarmed.
2.  In 1914 the total population of the Ottoman Empire was approximately 25 million, of which some 10 million were Turks, 6 million Arabs,
1.5 million Kurds, 1.5 million Greeks, and 2.5 million Armenians.
3.  During the Gallipoli campaign, 1915, which saw some of the toughest ghting between British and Turkish troops, a letter written the
night before to his wife was found on the body of a dead Turkish of cer – a tender letter, lled mostly with personal matters. In it
were the lines, “These British are the nest ghters in the world. We have chosen the wrong friends.”

FILED UNDER

First World War Historical knowledge Turkey Allan Mallinson

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