State Building (Part 2)

1. State Building (Part 2)

2. The Ottoman Empire: once an integrated economic unit • Was parceled into fragments. • Each new Arab state had • its own tariff and customs regulations, • its own currency, and • its own form of economic ties with its European overlord.

3. What forces of political loyalty and cultural identity could replace it? • Faysal’s Syrian kingdom with its Pan-Araborientation. • New identities: Iraqis, Syrians, and Palestinians.

4. 1919 • The Ottoman state: an attempt to reassert the central government’s claim of legitimacy.

5. Mustafa Kemal Paşa • Assigned to reorganize what remained of the Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on April 30, 1919. • He and his staff left Istanbul.

6. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1920-1945)

7. The Turkish War of Independence (May 19, 1919 to July 24, 1923) • A war waged by Turkish nationalists against the Allies, after the country was partitioned following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in WW I.

8. December 1919 • Elections for the Ottoman parliament. • Another attempt to reassert the central government’s claim to legitimacy.

9. National Pact or National Oath • Six provisions passed by the (last) Ottoman Parliament. • Parliament met on 28 January 1920 and made its decisions public on 12 February 1920.

10. National Pact: Provisions 1 and 6 • 1. The future of the territories inhabited by an Arab majority at the time of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros will be determined by a referendum. On the other hand, the territories not occupied at that time and inhabited by a Turkish majority are the homeland of the Turkish nation. • 6.In order to develop in every field, the country should be independent and free; all restrictions on political, judicial and financial development will be removed.

11. The response: • The Treaty of Sevre. • The Occupation of Constantinople by the British, French and Italian troops on 16 March 1920.

12. Ottoman officials • Concealed from the occupying authorities details of the developing independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia. • Munitions initially seized by the Allies were secretly smuggled out of Istanbul into Central Anatolia.

13. The British • The Ottoman government not doing what it could to suppress the nationalists.

14. March 1920 • Turkish revolutionaries announced that the Turkish nation was establishing its own Parliament in Ankara under the name Grand National Assembly (GNA). • On April 23, the new Assembly summoned for the first time, making Mustafa Kemal its first president and Ismet Inonu chief of the General Staff.

15. Turkish nationalism • Kemal had set up a National Assembly in Ankara, in open defiance of the government in Istanbul, • Assembled forces capable of checking Greek advances, which had occupied more and more of western Anatolia.

16. Anatolia: • From being partitioned and occupied in 1920 (Treaty of Sevres), it emerged three years later as the internationally recognized independent nation-state of Turkey (Treaty of Lausanne); • Free of restrictions on its domestic policies, on its finances, and on its jurisdiction over foreign nationals.

17. The Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923) • Turkish sovereignty was recognized over all areas claimed by the 1920 National Pact with the exception of Mosul (northern Iraq).

19. Ataturk (1923-1945) • Shifted away from Islam as the foundation of the state, • Committed to modernization and Turkish nationalism to create the ideological underpinnings of the state. • Endorsed rationality and science.

20. Ataturk (1923-1945) cont. • Rather than seeing modernization as an import from abroad, he saw the Ottoman Turkish core as being essential in promoting it. • Since Turkism, in his view, was the very source of modern civilization, becoming modern meant regaining identity that the Turks have actually already had.

21. Molding Turkish national identity: • Elevated Turkish identity as a touchstone of the new state. • Ataturk sought to distance the Turkish identity from that of the Arabs by claiming the superiority of Turkish over Arabic. • Claimed that being Turk was superior to being of any other nationality.

22. Distancing from Arabic: • Attaturk commissioned a translation of the Quran into Turkish and had it read publicly in 1932. • In 1932, legislation made obligatory the issuing of the call to prayer in Turkish instead of Arabic.

23. The successor Turkish Republic • Turkish cultural heritage as distinct from the Ottoman one and as making crucial contribution to the successes of the empire, • Turkish ethnicity substituted for Islam. • Legitimacy by claiming to represent a coherent national group, namely the Turks.

24. Turkey:November 1, 1922 • The assembly passed a resolution that: • separated the caliphate from the sultanate and • eliminated the sultanate.

25. Molding Turkish political identity • The capital of the country was transferred from Istanbul to Ankara in 1923. • In 1924, a new constitution was passed in which the principles of republicanism and popular sovereignty were reaffirmed.

26. Ataturk’s secularism and official institutions: • The grand national assembly voted in March 1924 to abolish the caliphate, and to banish from Turkey all members of the Ottoman royal family. • Abolished: • the office of shaykh al-Islam, • the religious schools, and • the Ministry of Religious Endowments.

27. Ataturk’s secularism and the religious practices • The Sufi orders were dissolved, and worship at tombs and shrines was prohibited by law. • In November 1925, the assembly endorsed the president’s practice and passed a law that made it a criminal offense to wear a fez.

28. The Turkish assembly: • In 1926, formally abolished the Mejelle and the shari’ah and adopted a Swiss civil code that forbade polygamy and broadened even further the grounds by which wives could seek divorce. • It also adopted a penal and commercial codes modeled on Italian and German examples respectively.

29. The Turkish government • effectively took over control over religious affairs by setting up the Ministry of Religious Affairs that became involved in making key appointments in the religious establishment.

30. This radical secular doctrine: • based on the belief that there is no need for religion in public affairs; • it allowed religion to exist only as a source of personal faith wholly subordinated to the state and • made the military the guarantor of this new political order.

31. Kemalist secularism • Adopted in the cities by modernized descendants of the Ottoman elite bureaucrats, officers, and professionals. • Rejected by the rural and small-town majority.

32. Reza Shah (1926-1941): • Borrowed many of his programs from Ataturk: centralization of state power; secularization of state institutions (legal and judicial sphere). • In 1928 the Majlis voted to adopt a new civil code modeled on that of France. • In 1928 a law was passed that required males to dress in the European manner, and in 1935 the wearing of a hat became compulsory.

34. Reza Shah (1926-1941): • Deployed the army to establish state authority over the tribal leaders. • His power was based on coercion rather than consensus.

35. Reza Shah (1926-1941): • The religious schools were not abolished as they were in Turkey.

36. The Arabian Peninsula (at the end of WW1) • Britain the dominant European power along the shores. • Britain cared little about the interior so long as its shifting tribal confederations did not threaten the stability of the rulers along the coast (shaykdoms: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the Aden Protectorate).

38. Sharif Husayn • Emerged from the war as king of Hijaz.

39. Sharif Husayn • (Much) less than he hoped for. • After Turkey abolished the caliphate in 1924, he claimed the title for himself (unilaterally). • His shortcoming made him unpopular (being blamed for weakening the Ottoman Empire).

40. Enters Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa’ud (1881-1953) • The political revival of Wahhabism began in 1902; Ibn Sa’ud seized Riyadh. • Between 1902 and the end of WWI brought most tribes of Najd under his authority. • From tribal to religious commitment. • Built mosques to communities, sent ulama into them to disseminate the Wahhabi doctrine.

42. 1924: • Ibn Sa’ud led his Ikwan warriors into the Hijaz. • Seized Mecca and Medina. • Drove Sharif Husayn into exile. • Arabia had a ruler: the head of the house of Sa’ud and the head of the Wahhabi religious order.

43. The Treaty of Jiddah (1927): • Britain recognized Ibn Sa’ud as the king of the Hijaz and sultan of Najd and its dependencies. • Ibn Sa’ud acknowledged Britain’s special relationships with the coastal rulers.

44. Of the ten core Middle Eastern states • Only Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen exercised full sovereignty during the interwar era. • Saudi Arabia and Yemen were allowed independence solely because they were isolated and because Britain and France regarded them as relatively unimportant.

46. The mandate system: • Provided Britain and France with an opportunity to secure their strategic interests in the Middle East while paying lip service to the principle o self-determination. • Different from prewar imperialism in that the mandatory power was bound to terminate its control at some unspecified time.

47. What kind of political systems developed in the ME after WWI? • A model of a nation-state: • Separation of powers; • Secularized legal, judiciary, and educational systems; • Expansion of state power; • Cultural uniformity; and • Diminished role of religion.

48. The new protectorates were expected to develop into modern states: • Social engineering (by Europeans): • The limitation and ordering of government in a constitutional state. • Constitutions that set rules establishing the relationship between government and citizens. • Specifying the institutions and processes through which political power would be exercised.

49. Adaptability was the very essence of the Ottoman system: • It governed directly the areas that could be efficiently controlled and allowed a certain degree of latitude to chieftains and feudal emirs in more remote locations. • Even in areas of direct control (as in Greater Syria), the Ottoman governors exercised their authority in association with the local Arab notables.

50. The Ottoman rule also • tolerated a rich diversity of religious and cultural practices throughout the Arab province.