Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
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Putschcast
#15 Ottoman Empire - 3 Coups and a lost World War
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111 years after the Armenian Genocide, we provide context around the turbulent years that lead up to the massacres and the subsuquent fall of the Ottoman Empire.
In this episode, historian Professor Adrian Jones and political scientist Dr Tezcan Gümüş dismantle the narrative of the "Sick Man of Europe" to explore the empire's desperate gamble on the world stage at the start of the 20th Century.
We trace the three pivotal coups that shifted its destiny and examine why a triumvirate of military leaders sided with Imperial Germany in World War One, a decision leading to the empire’s dramatic downfall and the Armenian Genocide, an event deeply contested in Turkey today.
We analyse why the Battle of Gallipoli became a defining moment in modern Turkish history and explore the internal transformations that reshaped Ottoman society from within. Along the way, we meet the key protagonists, including an autocratic, anti-reform Sultan and the visionary Pashas who called themselves the Young Turks.
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Welcome to Putschcast. I'm your host, Oliver Heuter. Today we've got two fascinating guests in the studio: a doctor and a professor. The topic: the Ottoman Empire. We're talking about the late 19th, early 20th century. You won't believe there were three coups within a space of a few years, one successful one, a failed one, and yet another successful one. It led to a military dictatorship, a world war, and a James Bond-style exit. Furthermore, we asked why even bother with the parliament? But we also tried to answer the question of how are the protagonists viewed today. Three of them, very controversial characters and accused of genocide abroad. Lots to talk about and just a bit more than in our time. Let's get right into it.
SPEAKER_00Hello, I'm Dr. Tez Jan Gumish. Tez is fine, Oliver, as you know.
SPEAKER_03Tez Tez Man of Silver, I think.
SPEAKER_00Thesis as well.
SPEAKER_03And I'm here as Dr. Adrian Jones, a former associate professor of history at Lachov University.
SPEAKER_02Adrian, I assume you speak Turkish?
SPEAKER_03I speak bad Turkish. That is, I always, as a foreigner, I'm very much an Anglo kind of guy. With a name like Jones, how can you be anything other? But I learnt it as a uh as a young man, beside Turkish immigrants in Saturday morning school, because you couldn't learn it any other way in Melbourne at that time. I still don't think in in there's only one place where you can learn Turkish at a university, and that's at the ANU in Canberra. But that is very true. Yes. And that's the one place in Australia where there are hardly any Turks. Well, that's the irony. Which is an irony because that's what the Turkish ambassador wanted. He wanted them to have the class right there close to him so he could kind of look over it a bit.
SPEAKER_02Can you tell us what the geographics were like? So what was the size of this empire? I assume I can call it an empire still at that stage.
SPEAKER_03So you've got an Ottoman Empire that's in retreat since the really the late 17th century, early 18th century. So we're talking about from the failure of the siege of Vienna in 1683. So that's a moment where Ottoman power has twice attacked the gates of Vienna. It's such a powerful empire in 1526 and again in 1683 that it can deploy an army up the Danube and actually attack effectively, frighteningly, Vienna, and that's what gives us the Croissant, because they baked the croissant in Vienna to celebrate their victory over the crescent. That's why it's shaped like a crescent. And you have this amazingly creative dynasty called the Ottomans, which comes from the Italian to the English and to the Greek, Ottmany. So that's why we call them Ottomans, whereas they called themselves Osman. Osman.
SPEAKER_02Which is also a common surname, or is that just a noble family that has that name?
SPEAKER_03It's the dynasty's name. They have the house of Osman. So at the end of the of the beginning of the breakup of the Byzantine Empire, you have Turks arriving in the 11th century, and then they form various Baliks sub-principalities, and the Seljuks are the strongest, and then they fracture after the confrontation with the Mongols or Central Asian Turks, and then you have the Osmanla as one particular group, which is very effective in northwestern Anatolia around what we would call uh Bursa. Bursa, yeah. Yeah. And in the hinterland of Bursa.
SPEAKER_02That was one question I had that I couldn't answer during my research. Did the Ottoman Empire have one royal family the whole period through, or was there also struggles within the empire between different families? Is it similar to Western cultures?
SPEAKER_03It's a very good question, Oliver, and it depends on what answer and what period I would give you, because the Ottoman Empire was governed by the Sultan, and the Sultan, if we think about it in kind of modern nationalist racist terms, there was always a question mark over the Sultan because he was the product of the union of the previous Sultan with a slave captive woman in the Harem. So the ethnogenesis, if we take it that way, might well be half Caucasian, half Circassian, half Bosnian, half Greek, Serbian. Yes, exactly. So if we were looking at it from a kind of late 19th century racist ethnic frame of mind, and if I was a Turkish-minded person, very narrow-minded Turk, then I might say, Well, they're not us. They're a bit classier than us. That's what they think anyway. And certainly if you asked an Ottoman at the end of the 19th century and said to them, Are you a Turk? They would bristle and say, No, I am an Ottoman. And that meant that they were exquisitely educated in all of the important Islamic languages and in European language typically. They might well have been born in Bosnia or northern Greece, like Mustafa Kemal or Envipasha, people we're going to talk about today, both born in what we would call Greece.
SPEAKER_00Adrian touched upon something very important. When we discussed the key figures of these events, the key figures are born in what we'd know in the Balkans or Eastern Europe, obviously part of the Ottoman Empire by now. But in today's terms, yeah, they were born, you know, they were product of the Empire being in Eastern Europe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, before we dig in a little deeper, so Turkish then is not equivalent to Ottoman.
SPEAKER_03No, a typical Ottoman official, if you talked to him, if you were from the village in Anatolia or whatever, speaking pure Turkish, you would have the utmost difficulty understanding a thing he said because it was overwritten by this exquisitely highly educated Arabic and Persian, and if you became a top official in the Top Cup of Palace in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, you could spout the most beautiful Arabic poetry, call the prayer in the most exquisite fashion. And so you had all these highly developed skills that were utterly irrelevant to a Turkish filly.
SPEAKER_02So we we we spoke about the ethnic part, so I think there's a 19th, 20th century understanding of it, which is you know ethnicities, nationalism, which I think also is part of the story of why the whole thing came apart, and likewise why it worked for so long, because that nationalism was not a key factor. However, what was around the whole time was religion. So I've got a book here, not yours unfortunately, but it's called Ottomans, Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs. Caliph, Caliphate is always related to that. Islam, how important, and again it's a long period we're talking about, but maybe that time, the second half of the 19th century, how important was religion Islam at the time, and how did it treat the other religions?
SPEAKER_03So this is part of the reform process, and we have to see these putches that we're going to discuss in 1908, 1909, 1913. But basically they're discussing whether the old traditional Ottoman formula is relevant anymore, and in a way the regime in the 19th century had given up on it. They'd had a series of colossal defeats since the siege of Vienna in 1683, right through the 18th century, losing territories deeper in the Balkans and along the top of the Black Sea, and they're losing their grip on the farther reaches of North Africa, Morocco, and and their so they're in retreat and they're they have a discussion and that there is this period called reform where the Sultans try to claw back their position, and one of the ways they do it in starting in the so-called Tanzamut period between 1839 and 1876, and in this period they start to say, We will have citizens of the Ottoman Empire. It doesn't matter what ethnic group you belong to, or really from the Ottoman point of view, the traditional explanation was religious. Are you an Orthodox Christian? Because we're talking about Eastern Europe, or are you a Moslem? Or are you a Jew? These are the three key groups, nobody else. And each group has had almost complete autonomy for hundreds of years. They've been conquered, but actually when the Ottoman Empire was working well, when they were conquered, they got a pretty good deal from the Sultans. Almost invariably, for example, for for Christians, they ended up paying less tax, they had a firmer rule of law. But there are unwritten rules here. So we've got religiously defined groups. And so these people are saying, no, I think we need we really do believe in citizenship and rights. But this is a problem f for very pious Islamic people at this time because they never paid tax and they always had the top position. If you had a church, it couldn't be higher than the minaret of the mosque. In the 19th century, after a series of defeats, and particularly you've got to imagine that the reforms come after the Greek Revolution, which has been a bloodbath. So in the 1820s and in the Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which is also Ottoman territory, these landed fleets, the British have landed fleets. This is the kind of heritage for the reformants in the nineteenth century. And we're coming to the Young Turks, and the Young Turks at the end of the nineteenth century are trying to create a new constitutional society.
SPEAKER_02You just mentioned the word constitution. Yes. So I assume was it an absolute monarchy until that period? And when did this constitution come about?
SPEAKER_03So the constitution comes about with the Tanzamat in between 1839 and 1876. They experiment with the creation of what you we we would call like a consultative parliament, and they create the idea where all citizens, you are a Moslem, and I'm a Christian Orthodox Christian, and you know, you're a Jew, we can all be part of the Ottoman Empire. We can even elect people who will be in a consultative assembly. Now this is something which is going to be very difficult in a lot of European societies in the nineteenth century. The Turks are actually doing pretty well. For example, in Russia, they can't even begin to discuss this. I mean, they discuss it, but it can't be implemented until 1905. But what we have with the Young Turks, the putsch that cast that we're talking about today, starts to happen 1908 for the second time. It's already been there in the middle of the nineteenth century. Consultative parliament, how far it's going to govern the Sultan? That's an open question.
SPEAKER_02We have Young Turks, and I assume they're called Young Turks because they were actually young, or would they thought?
SPEAKER_03So I think here we're getting a characteristically modern phenomenon. With the Young Turks, you've got a bunch of basically Balkan origin, some from Circassia, that is the part of what we now think of as the Stavropol region in Russia, and then going up into the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia. These areas, Chechnya, exactly. These are areas where being sustained pressure from from the north from the Balkans, from Serbia, from and uh northern Greece, Bulgaria. These are people who've had to flee, and they have a big chip on their shoulder, as they you would expect. They're frightened, they've had a childhood that was traumatized, and then they go into the army. This is the classic pattern for the young Turks, Enva Pasha, Jamal Pasha, they're all got this origin, and they want to modernize using military power. They're very highly educated, but they're educated in a w a way that's receptive to some kinds of European norms parliament, military efficiency. They think that the old ways of doing things, the kind of exquisite Ottoman old ways of doing things like smell the tulip. Here is a cup of coffee. Recite me some poetry, you know? Is that what they did during the war? You know, poetry.
SPEAKER_02It's kiosk. Is that a Turkish word?
SPEAKER_03Uh that's a Turkish word, kiosk.
SPEAKER_02Oh, fantastic. I never knew that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so because the good life, we think a lot about the things in the good life, sure, but coffee, kiosk, garden, barce. You know, these are all Turkish concepts because people from Europe who went there and saw this said, God, these guys can really live.
SPEAKER_02And I've got to ask, I'll give you my interpretation, then I ask you as a Turkish uh native speaker, and then hopefully we find out what it means. Being of German background, the word pasha is used in a these days in a derogative term for especially young men from the Maghreb of the Orient, as as we call it, who boss their women around. It's sort of an another word for macho. Also someone you know who bosses their mum around and and and sits on the couch and and doesn't do much. Is that what Pasha means?
SPEAKER_00No, not at all. What does Pasha mean? It's still used when you are referring to a high-ranking general. Yes. Pasha. Okay. Um so this is comes from the Ottoman era. Um very high-ranking, you know, military men. So Kenanevran, Pasha, we talked about 1980 coup. And even today, like the the most high-ranking generals that that run the military or the air force and uh and navy, yeah, will be referred to as the Pasha or Pashas, I'll be seen in the very different meaning. Pashalar. Um, historically and today.
SPEAKER_02I didn't know. It meant general. So I've learned a lot too. Is is the word Pasha used in English at all?
SPEAKER_03It was used in English because that's what if you were dealing with the top Ottoman officials, they're all Pasha. So you you call them Pasha. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So every time we hear in this podcast the word Pasha, we're referring to a general. That's what it means.
SPEAKER_03Pretty well, except it could be a general who now has a very senior, what we would call public service role as grand vizier or or or foreign minister or whatever.
SPEAKER_02So we've learnt the young Turks, intellectual, military men who want whatever suits them from Europe, but want to hold on to the old ways, redefine the Ottoman way. Set it up for the twenty sixth year.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so now we've got a discussion though about the Ottoman Empire's retreating, particularly in Europe, in Balkan Europe.
SPEAKER_00This is this is the term this is the era when it's called the sick man of Europe. Yes. Which was what most people know the expression. Yeah, so you obviously that that is a very derogatory term when we look at it in this context. But back then, obviously, it does signify that the Ottoman Empire is not well.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's crumbling, it's under siege internally and externally. And then you have these new class of uh bureaucratic military men, obviously not not women at that stage, but looking for ways to save the empire. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yes. And you've got to think the sick man, it's actually the Russians Ars remark. Nicholas I goes to meet Count von Ventnik in somewhere Munchengratz or somewhere in, you know, and he remarks that the Ottoman Empire is a sick man. And this is after he's negotiated in it the remark dates from 1833, and it's after he's projected military power deep into what we would call Turkish thrace, in and around Eden, and he's dictated a treaty to the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmoud II, at the height of the Greek crisis. He's dictated a treaty which says that Russia will now control the Stra the Bosporus and the Bardanelles. If we want to sail through there, we don't need to ask for permission. And what this does in 1833, and he says, Oh, they're just a sick man. And this is a product of since 1870 since 1774, the Russians could intervene in any Balkan Christian place and say, You're harming Christians, and I'm going to protect them. So you can imagine doing that in any foreign power, doing that in your own territory. This is what the young Turks are really aggravated about. Then the the Turkish state is bankrupt in 1876. And so the great powers go in again and say, We will manage your economy, and we will take the top most lucrative businesses, and what would they be in Turkey? Tobacco, alcohol, and they take them over. So basically, the powers are projecting their power over. They can send their agents anywhere. So there is a nationalist kind of response to reaction, definitely, by these young military men.
SPEAKER_02And let's talk economy quickly because uh it's usually at the heart of every crisis, as we know. Europe has undergone dramatic change during that period. Italy united, Germany united in the early 1870s, economy going gangbusters, really a big industrialization. Everyone's trying to catch up with UK. What state was Turkey in? You just mentioned alcohol and tobacco.
SPEAKER_03Well, alcohol is an ill illegal business, but it's, you know, like it if you're a good pious Muslim, you're not supposed to drink. But certainly everyone in the Balkans has seen what's happened in Italy and in Greece, and is thinking if I'm an Orthodox Christian person in Bulgaria or or in Serbia, or I'm going to try and achieve this. And then the Serbs and the Greeks basically achieve it in the 1810s, 20s, 30s, and they have a kind of the Greece that exists independently is a tiny Greece, the southern, the Peloponnese, and not much else.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But then they will want to get more. And so the Turkish nationalists are are seeing this, and they're the leaders have had to flee in some places. Like remember, Ember Pasha is from Thessaloniki, you know. Mustafa Kamal is from Thessaloniki. And so here are the two two of the five greatest leaders, you know. Jamal Pasha is a is a his mother is a Circassian, he grew up in uh Mytilene, in exile, you know, the island off the coast of the and the third one, Talat, is a similar case. He he and they they ferment their nationalist movement in the 1870s and eighties, in the eighteen eighties in particular, from Thessaloniki. And there you've got an amazing city which is 50% Jewish and like 20% Turkish, maybe, and 30% Greek. It's not even a Greek, now it's a Greek town. So you when you go there now, you think it's it's a Greek town.
SPEAKER_02I think that's crucial for our listeners to understand that most ethnic groups are still around, others have almost perished, like Assyrians and other minorities that were a lot more predominant back in those days, but that the borders were in what we're talking about now, right? So that when we talk Greece, it looked very different, and there were many Greek people living in Asia Minor compared to now, which is a different chapter in history, and the state was broke. Was there any attempt to industrialize the country before the Young Turks? Or is that one of their main goals?
SPEAKER_03Well, they do need to have some industrial development, particularly to equip their armies and to metallurgy. So, yes, there are attempts.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_03And there are the typical problems that go with that. But no, in general, when you look at the Ottoman Empire, you've got an underdeveloped economy. From the old Ottoman point of view, they were happy to let Jews, Armenians, and Greek run their European economy. And they offered what they called capitulations for hundreds of years, since the 16th century, for British merchants, Dutch merchants, French merchants to run trade. So when we think in European terms of fine textiles like Damascus, you know, that's a that's an Ottoman product or a product from Bursa at the end of the Silk Road, where all these gorgeous eastern embroidered silks and kaftans and stuff come. And these are all traded to Genoese and Venetians and Italians and Greeks and And so that the economy was never the top thing. The Ottoman thing was military power, effective government, serious Islam, cultural refinement. We're dealing with a society that is looking for its models more towards Persia than towards London. So they don't send ambassadors until really the very beginning of the eighteenth century. So these are not the people who are going to be able to manage industrialization. Abdul Hamid, the the Sultan after the Abdul Hamid II, Abdul Hamid II. So he we he's a very interesting figure because we've talked about the reformers. Abdul Hamid is the anti-reformer. Right? He's the the child of the third wife of Abdul Majid, and he's not really supposed to inherit the throne, but he's got a very acute ears for the political winds, and he knows that the reform is deeply resented by spious Islamic people, particularly in Anatolia. And so he closes down the first constitutional in 1876. And so then we get a period of tight centralization. Centralized autocratic rule again. So basically it lasts between 1839 and 1876, and it the key figure is a wonderful, interesting guy, Middat Pasha, who's very interested in getting as much European ideas in. He's not he's still this very pious Islamic person, but he understands the need to reform, yeah. Yeah. And he's he's doing he's the one who's talking about citizenship, whereas if I'm a pious Moslem, I'm probably not very happy about the idea that a Greek is the same status as me.
SPEAKER_00After centuries of of having those divisions in certain millet system, now you have you can understand the mindset, like, hang on a sec. Everyone's going to be equal, regardless of being a Jew or an Orthodox Christian or Catholic. That obviously there was going to always be a reaction because you're going up against something that is so ingrained in Ottoman culture, especially if you're a Muslim, you always see yourself as top of tree or a food chain, I guess, in very crass terms. I mean, we have to all we've got to remember that we can't interpret that mindset from 2026 in our modern mindset. This was something that That's what I always try to do on this podcast. You have to think about the Ottoman mindset in that era, and then to be told that everyone's going to have the same rights. Of course, you are going to get a massive reaction because you are going to push people off and basically you threaten their position or their self-seat position on top of the hierarchy.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The constitution did work for about 30, 40 years, I've learned. And then Abdul Hamid II, who came to the throne under suspicious circumstances, also an odd-looking character. There's some photographs of him in his younger and older years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's definitely not what you would think of as Ottoman Sultan, like uh Sultan Mehmed, Sultan Selim, would have looked like. So you cannot, he's not someone that you would imagine riding a horse into battle.
SPEAKER_03So please Google Google this. Abdul Hamid apparently was amazingly heavy drinker of coffee. And Turkish coffee is very strong, and he drank it with a lot of sugar, but he would he according to the museum displays that I saw in the Yildas Palace, because he built the Yildas Palace just up from the Dolma Bachia on the hill, he would drink about thirty cups of coffee Turkish coffee a day. So you've got a pretty wide kind of guy. Uh and he's definitely opposed to the reform era. And he's even his decision to build the Yildas Palace, which is a relatively modest palace in a big garden near the Baghdad Chud as you go up from the the uh football ground spot. I'm trying to think of the football club. Besiktash. Yes, of course. So it's in Beshiktash, yes, yes. So you go, but but then the reformers had strong support from the European powers, particularly France, Britain, and less support from Russia, even though so after the Treaty of 1833, the British and the French basically say we have to help the sick man get better, because if we don't, the Russians will dominate the whole of Eastern Europe. So that plays a new game.
SPEAKER_02Which then led obviously to the Crimean War.
SPEAKER_03So then they all work well in the Crimea. The the Turks perform pretty well in the Crimean struggle. And so they're all together, and then that the Sultans are building. If you go to Istanbul, you when you go to Topkapa Palace, that's a very different palace from Dalmabache on the Bay Bay, these other huge European style palace, not to my taste. I don't know how you feel about it as a a Turk when you go to the Dalmabace Palace, it's like glitz and chintz.
SPEAKER_00It's very much so. It's the the it's extremely opulent in like that you point out in very European style compared to topcupper palace.
SPEAKER_03Whereas the topcupa palace then got they've got no frame of reference Europe at all. What their frame of reference is Persia, the best kinds of gardens in the Middle East, where you sit in a kiosk in a lovely tulip garden. What's not to like? We even use the words kiosk.
SPEAKER_02I will I will reach out to Turkish Alliance to sponsor this uh episode, by the way. It's more uh it is a travel guide, but it's also a travel guide into history. So we've learned about the young Turks. Abdul Hamid's odd character, the opposite of reformists, so he's arch conservative, I would say. Can we say that again?
SPEAKER_03Yes, and then towards the end, he will start to play politics with ethnic rivals, which is something new.
SPEAKER_02The Crimean War went okay for the Ottomans. There was another short war against Russia that then led to the action of uh Abdul Hamid, is that correct?
SPEAKER_03That's right, because you have so Abdul Hamid comes to power in 1876. There's a previous sultan, Mustafa V, who's there just for 90 days, I think. And he had deposed Abdul Aziz, his uncle. Abdul Aziz had travelled extensively in Western Europe. These three sultans, Abdul Mijid, 1830s, Abdul Aziz, 1840s to 60s, through the 60s, then Abdul Aziz is deposed in 1876. Then this new Sultan comes to power and he has mental health issues, and Abdul Hamid, the court elite, comes around him and says, This guy's capable. Whereas Mustafa V was chronically anxious and totally a creature of the kind of coffee room. And he was also very worried that Abdul Aziz had been murdered after he had been deposed. So he thought he was going to be blamed for that and he wasn't responsible, but he felt obviously he would be blamed because his uncle paranoia. So he he basically retreated into a kind of deep mental illness. He actually came out of it later, and Abdul Hamid, for all his cruelty, kept him shut away in one of the palaces, and he lived to be nine Mustafa the Fifth lived to be until 1904.
SPEAKER_02So Abdulhamid II, Lervim or Lodim, he was quite successful in what he was doing because he was around for quite a while. So he's still there at the start of the 20th century. He's obviously taken his country on a back road, I assume, for this for this whole time. And then in 1908, the young Turks, are they still young after all those years? Anyway, the young Turks they they just remain young, okay? They had enough. 1908, the first putsch occurs. What happened? Could you walk us through, please?
SPEAKER_03The these Young Turks are basically more idealistic young military officers than they are young. They're not the top commanders, they're not the pushers. These are lieutenant colonels. This is a classic kind of 20th century formula, isn't it? You know, the colonels in Greece in 1974, you know, the Gaddafi in Libya. I was going to say that's the same as a.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, the 1960 coup in Turkey, the first coup of the republic, was undertaken by middle ranking so officers.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and so if we put it in a Turkish from this period, these are some of the best educated people to be found in in Turkey. They're better educated in European languages, in European norms, they're right up to date with the latest military technology because they understand that unless we do this, we'll be defeated by Russians and and Greeks and Serbs and so they're very so they're modernisers. And what they want to do in the first revolution is they want to insist that we bring back these liberal institutions. And they're actually so and the three key figures are Jamal, Talat, and Enver. And they each have their roles, but they're all basically got this refugee background. They're not from the old power elite of people who lived in and around Istanbul and Constantinople and manipulated the court. These are young modernisers, and they want they bring back the parliament, but at first they are happy to to remove the old Grand Vizier and the old elite and put in people they think are sympathetic to their modernizing vision. So that's the first constitutional revolution in 1908. They bring back the Mejlis, the Parliament.
SPEAKER_00So they're basically pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Yeah. At this point. At this point. It changes in i in in a few years' time.
SPEAKER_03And if if you walk down their natural home is actually if you if you've been to Istanbul and you walk down the Istakl Chad, and you go past all those glorious, basically Armenian and Greek built department stores, then you go there. And in there is the English club on the second floor. And that's where they often met. Or they'd meet on the Miss Ruchit Chad, near the Perapolis Hotel. And they would have coffee and wine. Very pious. And they would and sit and discuss. And so they their norms are, if you like, Parisian modernizing Third Republic norms. And they're even prepared to say, you know, like I can see that Armenians and Greeks have been oppressed, and in our new constitutional society, we will give them honor, try to protect them and give them rights. What they will never do is allow Greeks and Armenians to enter the army, but nor would the Ottoman elite, even the reformers.
SPEAKER_02You've talked about Abdul Hamid, he's been there for quite a while. He's clearly experienced, or was he weak at the time? Because a a few junior officers don't just topple an ancient dynasty like that. What actually happened? Can you walk us through? Was he actually toppled in 1908?
SPEAKER_03No, he's not. He's not. He's basically shown a new reality from the leaders of the military who are saying this is how it must be, and he has to swallow it. He doesn't like it. And so there will be an attempt at counter-revolution led from the palace and Abdulhamid in 1909. You know, once you've been shown absolute power, it's a very rare person who gives that up.
SPEAKER_00I don't know whether you would especially when you've got hundreds of years of history there as well, tradition.
SPEAKER_02Why should I? I'm the Sultan.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And if you've had that power in your hands for a while, it's it's hard to say, yeah, okay, no worries like this is going to change.
SPEAKER_02So within a year, basically, we have a coup, we have a counter coup in 1909? Was that bloody? Was it at gunpoint? How did it happen?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. We have to then the l the young Turks, the top three, have to then call in what they call the action army, Hariket or Dussu. They brought in people from what we would call Bulgaria, you know. And there was a formula for that, because that happened in 1808 as well. If there's trouble, they bring in more of their kind of Balkan friends in the army, and they put down the counter-revolution, debose Abdul Hamid, and bring in the next Sultan, Mehmet V. And he's the guy who'll take us right through the First World War. And he is their man for the throne. So the young Turks have played a bit hands-off, probably a bit politically inexperienced in a sense. Still a bit of that old Ottoman culture, I think, that they thought, oh, we can't rule directly, we're only Lieutenant Colonel and you know a bit shy. So a little bit shy, yes. So now in the second coup in 1909, they're again taking charge and putting in a new government, but they still don't run the government.
SPEAKER_02Which means Abdul Hamid's counter coup has de facto failed.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it's failed, and he's now out of power. He's been shunted away.
SPEAKER_02Did he lose his head?
SPEAKER_03That's a good question. I don't think so. I think he's held his I actually forgotten what happened to him. I knew what happened to Mustafa V, but I thought he might have had a similar feeling. He's deposed. This is a period where you don't kill people of with imperial blood too lightly. But I actually forgotten how That's okay.
SPEAKER_02Here on Putschcast we we're honest and we don't know everything either, but we will uh provide information as soon as it comes to hand.
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SPEAKER_02You're listening to Putschcast, your favorite revolutionary podcast on the airwaves, and in our studio is Professor Adrian Jones and Dr. Tejgan Gimish. We have been talking about the late Ottoman Empire. We've learned many things, such as the tolerance that was often present, also the financial trouble the Empire was in, and also we've learned about the first two coups. So I think it's the first uh Putschkast episode where we actually talk about three coups in one go, simply because they were so close to each other. So the 1908 coup, young Turks, which are young military officers trying to bring back reform, bring back a parliament, and simply modernize what was then still the Ottoman Empire. Abdulhamid II Sultan at the time wasn't too happy. Counter-coup on the 31st of March, the year after. However, he failed, and then the Young Turks definitely had enough. He was gone. God knows what happened to him. And then he was replaced by Mehmed the Fifth. Yeah. And Mehmed the Fifth was then in power from 1909 until the end of the Ottoman Empire.
SPEAKER_03Not till the end, but nearly the end.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03And he nearly he nearly lived to the end of the First World War.
SPEAKER_02And then, even before the war, there was another coup.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_02How did it get to that?
SPEAKER_03So the Young Turks are getting more and more effective. So one of the things that they do is rig an election in 1912 and win a colossal majority. And so what we have intervening is the Balkan Wars. So again, now a whole new round. So we've had a series of kind of struggles in northern Greece, in particular, is the focal point. So in 1881, the Greek government manages to take what we would call Thessaly, that is the part down from Mount Olympus. And so Turks have to leave from these areas. And basically the typical pattern in these what we think of Greece is that there are Turkish communities mainly living in the towns, doing the trade and managing the courts and whatever. And then we also have a series of more trouble in Crete. There was one where the Greeks are saying, look at these Turks, they're modernizing, we have to modernize, because the Greek army had not performed well in 1897 against the Turks. So they so it's not just the Turks who are going through these pressures, you know. Um so there's a Greek military coup, they promote Venizelos, and Venizelos' idea is very simple. He says, Look, we will never move the Ottoman Empire out of the Balkans unless we Bulgarians, you Yugoslavs, you not Serbs, unite. And we've always hated each other because Greeks don't like Slavs, right? But he says, if we're going to break the power of the Ottoman Empire in Balkans, we need a united front.
SPEAKER_02Let's be pragmatic.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And that's exactly what they do in 1912.
SPEAKER_02Was the Kremlin involved by any chance given pass the government?
SPEAKER_03Of course, the Russians are are pan-Slavists, and they are very strongly supporting this well, not just the Greeks, but the Slavic Slaviciz re-Slavicization of the Balkans. So you have the Balkan Wars, and these are devastatingly successful. A united front, and in 1912, we suddenly have Greeks in Thessaloniki. We have them even in we have Bulgarians in Edener. We have the loss of you know what we would call now Northern Macedonia. The old so the Ottomans only have help from Albania, which is half Moslem. And so it's a massive crisis, and the young Turks, the the the governments that were not were handling this war were losing, and this prompts the three top young Turks to take charge.
SPEAKER_02Was this Jamal, Tamat, and Enver? Yeah, Enver and Enver.
SPEAKER_03So they they're the ones for now, so from 1912, 1913, we now have the the Young Turks not just in the government, no longer now they're running the government, and we have what we call the triumvirate.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So they emancipated themselves finally, which they should have or could have done four or five years before that.
SPEAKER_03And they're so worried, these are worried guys, because remember they're refugees from this region in their own families, and they have got a huge chip on their shoulder. They're going to exact revenge. The question is, what kind of revenge? So what they want is to rebuild the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And they're going to try and rebuild it in Tripoli and Libya as well, 1911. And so they are taking charge and they're doing it with authoritarian action.
SPEAKER_02So you just mentioned that 1911 they were also fighting the Italians who were building up their own empire in what is nearly.
SPEAKER_03Because the Italians are saying, Oh, I can pick out this bit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which again, Sigmen of Europe. And I have to ask one question though. So we've had the young Turks, military background, smart men, you know, saloon militarists, basically, you know, had all the great ideas and vision. How come they failed so miserably in 1901? How come that countries that didn't even have standing armies, such as Bulgaria and Macedonia, whoever was you know uprising, local peasants with, you know, very basic arms revolting against the Ottoman rule? How come those young generals, Pashas, which they would have been at that stage, I assume, how come there was no resistance? And that doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_03Well that was exactly the question they were asking. Remember, they're not in the top positions in the government. They have deposed one Sultan, Abdul Amir, and brought in Mehmet V. But they uh they're not running everything except they may increasingly think they should. Yeah. And so they are very angry at the Minister of War. And so one of their number assassinates the Minister of War at the gate of the Sublime Port, the head of the government. So in in in 1912, one of the young Turk zealots, and it's unclear, murders the minister of war because he's failed so badly in his eyes. We've got a situation where Thessaloniki is fallen to the Greeks in 1912. The Bulgarians aren't happy about that because they thought they should have Thessaloniki. The Bulgarians are feeling they haven't got much. In March of 1913, you have the fall of Edne, probably my favourite town in Turkey. You know, it's the town right in the tip of uh European Turkey with the border with Greece and the border with Bulgaria, and it's got some of the most gorgeous Ottoman architecture, and so this city falls in March of 1913 to a Bulgarian army. And then Enverpasha, because the Greeks and the Bulgarians and the Serbs fell out, the Bulgarian army had to be Has to leave. And Enverpasha comes back in July to Edena. That's why that place is still a Turkish place. It's not a Bulgarian place. Even though the Bulgarian border is only ten kilometers away and the Greek border is only ten kilometers the other way. So Enver Pasha gets enormous kudos. The old elites are blamed for the defeat, but Enver got us back to Eden A and all those archetypal Ottoman values. And then Enver then makes a decision that the only way we can beat and regain our control of our birthright in the Balkans is for an alliance with Germany.
SPEAKER_02Even though the Austro-Hungarian Empire just grabbed Bosnia on the way.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. So you've got then the seizure of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, which was a very well, how would you say it, naughty act in terms of international law.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then when you need one sem because we all know that the First World War w was sh started when an Austrian crown prince was murdered in the streets of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, you know? And that's because for the Austrian crown prince to visit Sarajevo was a very provocative act for every Slavonic speaking person in the Balkans. And Gavrilo Princip shot him dead. And then that causes the First World War. Of course, we always ask, you know, why did the rest of Europe care?
SPEAKER_02Because the sh the shofar didn't know what he was doing, but also the Turks have lost Bosnia to begin with. If they wouldn't have lost it, well one would have never happened. So this is stuff you find out on Putschkas.
SPEAKER_00Great history lessons for me. I mean my focus has always been on the republican and and so modern Turkey. So Ottoman era is a bit more of a has always been less of a focus and research area. So hence why I'm really loving listening to Adrian talk.
SPEAKER_03There is a script book though that which they're all following, you know, Kinan Evren, the coup leaders in 1960, that I, as a military officer, very well educated and know best for you.
SPEAKER_00Well, these are things that I think towards the end wanted to pose was the continuities of this area with with the modern republic. But I think we're I don't know. I'm sure I'm jumping ahead yet, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I think the the especially if people have listened to our episode that we've done previously about 1980 coup, the parallels are already there.
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SPEAKER_02So we have those three Pasha's in power. You've used the word triumvirate.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02Now, I've heard about that before in history. One was Caesar, the other one was Napoleon, and none of them ended well.
SPEAKER_03Yes, exactly. I think well it's probably that the the word they use wouldn't have been triumvirate. That's a Latin word, but like Pompey Caesar and Crassus.
SPEAKER_02So Adrian, you're saying there's no positive example in history where triumvirate actually worked out. What happened in this case and how powerful were they actually?
SPEAKER_03Well, they definitely not oppose the idea of the Sultanate. They they're not republicans, they're not French revolutionaries or they're modernizing military officers who've changed the man at the top. The man at the top is meant to follow their advice like a constitutional monarch, but it's not announced in that way. And also you've got to rem remember to make the German the Kaiser alliances with Vienna, Kaiser there, Kaiser in in Berlin, you know. So you need you the the the three Kaisers are important. So they need Mirmut V to operate in that way. We know that the the German Kaiser is definitely in charge. He's made the key foreign policy decisions. But in Vienna, mm, maybe not. Franz Joseph is a very old man and he's there at the start, but and he's obviously ki a key figure, but that there are people around him uh in each of those places. Now in the the young Turks start to make decisions to go closer to Germany. They bring in, after the defeat in the Balkan Wars, German military bot specialists von Molke.
SPEAKER_00I think it's it really important to say that Mvad Pasha is head of the military now. So out of the three, they they divide the powers, and Envad is in charge of the entire military of the Ottoman Empire.
SPEAKER_02Let's talk about him a bit more because he is the central figure here, and I have to be honest, I knew his name, that's about it. In my research for today, there's not much on him. Yes, in literature there is, but in English is not much on him when it comes to documentaries or films compared to other leaders of the time. In Turkish, there seems to be abundance of material on this man, and there's still a song that's that's flooding the internet everywhere. Well, it's much better to say that I've come across. And just to break it up a bit, let's just listen to this and maybe afterwards if you could tell us, Tez, as our interpreter of the day here, what the song roughly was about. So let's just have a listen to this song. I'm not sure when it's from, but maybe some of our listeners know. It does sound like early 20th century March, March, March. I think even I understood that.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, that's very good.
SPEAKER_02And it's called Enver Pasha March. Have you ever heard the song before?
SPEAKER_00Immediately the melody and the chorus came back to me and I started hymning to it. And it's been I can say it's been probably decades since I've heard it.
SPEAKER_02But it is a song people know.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, d definitely. So you are right. It's something the music is akin to the Ottoman marching band. So the, you know, the the trumpets and and and those sort of wind instruments and the drums. The lyrics are about glorifying M. Varapasha's military prowess, taking land in the Caucasus and things like that, but also glorifying the the great Turkish soldier, the military. That, you know, and it's urging, so say, march, march, march forward at you know, the Turkish soldier or Turkish military. So it's a very, very patriotic song. It's there to like get the heart pumping and really just that those patriotic, you know, emotions overflowing.
SPEAKER_02And it might not be even from the period. The song might be from after where maybe he was glorified. I'm not sure. That's a very good question, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think it possibly is from the period. It's certainly a traditional branch. Yeah, because you needed the meta band, because if you're in battle in the tumult, you needed the the drums to tell you what to do. That's what you did.
SPEAKER_02But I think what this uh song beautifully reflects is that German influence as well. It's that very Prussian sort of marching style mixed with Ottoman influences, which is what the triumvirates and Vapasha back to the topic was all about, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, the the meta band is very old. It's dates from the 15th century. So and they were the first military force to use music to choreograph the battle. Yeah. So that they're the first military band. So like in the Scottish Highlands, the same, the Pipers. And of course you have Pipers in that band. Yeah. But what I hear is the Kafka's. And that's so what's a great segment. And he he mentioned Turkestan. And this is the difference between Mustafa Kemal's generation after the war and the wartime generation. Enver Pasha died in Turkestan after the war in Bukhara, in Tajikistan, trying to create a federal Turkic republic. Because they speak a Turkic language in Kazakhstan, in Tajikistan, in Turkmenistan, and Enver is saying so the reason he wanted the first thing he did in the First World War when they started is that he shelled Odessa from using German battleships that they'd given him. So that meant he poked the eye of the Russian bear. Yeah. You go to Odessa and you pulverize their port. And then of course there's war. And then the second thing he did was to march an army to to what we would call high Armenia in the Caucasus, and they fought this colossal battle in the mountaintops at Sadi Kamish. December, January 1914, and this is the song. He's saying, Go to Kafkaz, go to Caucasus.
SPEAKER_00Urging, yeah.
SPEAKER_03What Enver was saying is that we, if with the alliance with the great German powers, German-speaking powers, we can build the Ottoman Empire again. And the j and the Kaiser Wilhelm is telling him, Yes, you can, because he doesn't have that much interest in that part of the world. And so there we have the dream. It's a kind of Turkestan dream, but he would also like to do the same in Bulgaria, in northern Macedonia.
SPEAKER_02The word Turkestan being used, like the Russians have the Pan Slavism. He now introduces a Turkish version of that, which is basically what it is, right? It's a form of imperialism to s unite all the Turkish people and spread the borders as fast as we can. My question regarding that one is is that the moment where Ottoman was buried and Turkey was elevated?
SPEAKER_03Is that sort of Yeah, so we're now starting, we're in a modern world with nationalism important. The Balkan War, they're dealing with somebody else's nationalism. Greek.
SPEAKER_00So, then you got but also got in the south the Arab populations too. We haven't touched on that, yeah. Yeah, I mean World War I, you have, you know, the the the British do a fantastic job with obviously, you know, everyone knows Laurent Arabia in in galvanizing the Ottoman-Arab population to revolt against the Ottomans. But then you've also got, I guess, the the I think we have to understand Enver Pasha is also highly criticized for his adventurism. Yes. And for aligning the Ottoman state with the Germans and entering World War I is a you know highly, highly criticized move by him.
SPEAKER_02Let's take it a step back. Let's understand who this man was. So there's three people in the tram route. We don't have time for all of them, but Enver Pasha, he has a song dedicated to him. Let's dedicate him a few minutes. Do we know anything about his biography, who he was? In my research, I found that he was always interested in anything German, Prussian earlier, and then it became German. He spoke German fluently, apparently. That really helped with the negotiations. And then also the name Ludendorff popped up again. And you mentioned Molke before. And so if you listen to a previous Putschkast episode where we talked about the fall of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Ludendorff had a very crucial role to play, never, never um owned up to anything, blamed it on everyone else. And this seems to be a very, very similar scenario here. So but what do we know about this man? You told us about his ethnic background. What do we know about his personality and Vapasha?
SPEAKER_03Well, he's a he's a an arrogant fellow full of belief in his own destiny, which he saw kind of played out because they had lost Edony and he had taken it back. He's the one leader who's had some success in in his case July 1913, and now he's going to extend power into the Caucasus and humiliate the Russian army. He has a colossal defeat. He's an interesting guy. He's from Northern Macedonia, from Monastir, Bitula in Slavonic, you know, southern Northern Macedonia, which is now thoroughly Slavonicised, but it was Greek Ottoman sort of place, has some very rather nice mosques. But he's full of self-belief. He's come through a period where he's still given power to the Ottoman elites, trading different sets of them, and now he's calling the shots, and his shots are to r basically try to rebuild as much of the Ottoman Empire in partnership with the other empires, the Austro-Hungarian. So he's a realist, he's not going to get Bosnia back, but he's uh he's a risk taker. These are colossal risk takers, and Mustafa Kemal is always saying, and he can say something, this is too big a risk. And the vision of a pan-Turkic state, which is one national state option, but if you ask a Kazakh, they're not interested in that. Enver's not going to do that. He'll die in in Bukhara in 1920. In exile. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Fighting, fighting, fighting for what he believed in, yeah. In terms I think the irony is that when we talk about the Young Turk period, obviously people do ask about what about Mustafa Kamal Atatürk. He was a a l a mid-ranking officer at that stage, and he was he was extremely critical of Envad. Enver the same thing. So Envad actually did not want him in the elite circles of the Young Turk movement.
SPEAKER_02So it's so he was important enough for Envert to know him at a time.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and but the irony is even though and like Adrian has said, Atatürk uh I I will call him Ataturk, I guess Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was critical of his adventurism and his his his wish to him basically starting a front with the Russian Empire. And so he thought he was an unrealistic commander. But the irony is MVA is the is is the man that put Mustafa Kemal in charge of the Gallipoli campaign, which ended up being pretty much the only victory in World War One for the Ottomans, which created made him into a national hero. Yeah. So even though the two men didn't like each other, it was MVA's decision to place Mustafa Kemal at the charge of the a defense of Gallipoli, which obviously the Australian audiences, the British New Zealand audiences listening to this would would know how important that that campaign was.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and even uh Winston Churchill had a connection which makes us global again. Who doesn't know Winston Churchill? We haven't really talked about the 1913 coup. That still bothers me a bit.
SPEAKER_00When we think of the 1913 coup, it is what we would think of a coup to be. It was them taking direct control of the administration of the Ottoman Empire, leading taking yeah, taking control of it.
SPEAKER_03Their first key decisions are foreign policy decisions and they're wanting to reverse the recent losses in the Balkan Wars and whatever. And what do they do? They make crucial decisions which enable the success in Gallipoli. They bring in German military advisors to help them strengthen the Dardanelles forts because they know that's obviously a pressure point. They renew the defensive infrastructure, which is already pretty impressive. Of course they need that because they're going to have a colossal Allied fleet come to them in Jen in February, March of 1915 to try and storm the Dardanelles. And they can't they can't get anywhere.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So there are whole reasons for that. But but basically they had this colossal fleet, but they they needed to have better battleships than the ones they had to storm it. They already moved towards a German alliance by using the German advisors, and then they make the fatal decision in August secretly to back the Germans.
SPEAKER_02Plus there's the famous railway to Baghdad, I think, which Well that's right.
SPEAKER_03The Germans have already been funding the extension to Baghdad. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Is it okay for me to call it a military dictatorship at this stage? Which is what we ended up in Germany during World War I as well.
SPEAKER_03Well I think in order to that was uh pretty well the pattern throughout the First World War, that you had to have wage total war, which probably the Ottoman side didn't understand as much as some of the others. For example, they never used their Greek population or mobilized them, they never used the Armenian population. In fact, they did the opposite.
SPEAKER_02So it was mainly Turkish ethnic Turks fighting in the army?
SPEAKER_03Yes, because you you you if you're a Greek or an Armenian, you could be pressed into what was called an amo amur taburele, a labor depiction. And your job was n not to bear arms, but to bring it Sorry, Arian.
SPEAKER_00Just on that point, I think we have to understand that it's given the growing nationalism within their borders, the Balkans, the separation, these men start to have extreme paranoia of the other within within the Ottoman Empire. So the other ethnic or religious groups. So they start to look at them with distrust as as colluders with outside empires that will work with the outside empires like the Russians or the British and so forth and the French.
SPEAKER_02As the Greeks have done before, right? In the 19th century.
SPEAKER_00So these men grew to be extremely distrustful due to their experiences with the with the Balkan Wars and the and also the growing nationalism within their borders, obviously expressed by the minority groups within the Ottoman Empire. So they really start to look that look at them with distrust, and that's where we look at what happened, I guess, to the Armenian population and and things like that.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and this was a problem. I mean, we know that, for example, Mustafa Kamal, about whom I'm writing at the moment. He was worried about whether in 1915 the Arab troops he had there and because when you go to the cemetery there and it was erected in 2007, very late on the Turkish side. You can see the names of Ara lots of Arab names from from Syrian provinces and whatever. He was worried whether they would fight, but they did. They did they fight quite strongly, had nothing to worry about. But when we have the Arab Revolt in Arabia itself, and we're moving into 1916, 1917, then we have a problem.
SPEAKER_02And I think this is me guessing, the reason why they did that is because it was also about religion. And obviously The Caliphate and also looking at what the English and the French have done over the last fifty years or so, building global colonial empire based on Christian values with conversions around the world, they obviously said, better the devil you know, and I'd rather fight with the Turks, but at least their fellow Muslims, rather than aligning with the French or the English.
SPEAKER_00Well, the Germans, when they entered, they thought the advantage of having the Ottomans on their side is that the Ottomans could create some sort of propaganda with the Muslim soldiers fighting for the British, so the Indian Muslim po soldiers, that they would be able to somehow use the Ottomans being Muslims to try the uprise against the British internally. So the Germans actually thought this was a real real tactic that they could use the Ottomans for. Yeah. Um the the appeal of the Muslims sort of fighting against the British.
SPEAKER_02Split the colonial powers of the British. Now to triumvirate, do they last throughout the war?
SPEAKER_03Yes, they they're I mean they each have their different spheres. Talat is managing foreign policy, the government, he's the principal architect of mass repression of the Armenians in particular. So that's Talat's role. Enver is making the key military decisions, uh liaising with the high command. I mean they all do this. Jamal is mostly in the southeastern provinces, so he spends most of the war in Syria, in what the what we would call Lebanon, Palestine. He's trying to stiffen the main battlefront for what for them in nineteen sixteen, seventeen. And then he has to then confront some very effective British generals in in the m in what we would call Palestine in nineteen sixteen, nineteen seventeen. But it takes some doing they have they lose like a whole British army is lost at Kuta Alomara in near Baghdad in nineteen sixteen. They lose. They they they're captured. We don't often hear that. They fight at Gallipoli on land because the naval attack failed. They don't get any further than the foot top ridge. So that's a huge setback. Then they try again at Thessaloniki, landing another army in night mainly French, in nineteen sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. They're fighting in what we would call Greek Thrace, Northern Macedonia, and the Bulgaria. They can't really shift that either. So it their first breakthrough comes in Palestine in nineteen seventeen. And it's Jamal who's trying to manage that. He has some responsibility for what happens to Armenians, yes. But he's not the zealot that Talat Pasha was. That's why I always have uh mixed feelings about when I cross the bridge going into Edenek there's a Talat Pasha bridge and I think should they name it after him?
SPEAKER_02We'll have that discussion in a minute. Usually in times of war, if you're doing well, you don't have to worry, you're being supported. Given that the three men we're talking about are de facto putists who are not there by any democratic means when things started going pear-shaped for the Ottoman Empire under their leadership, was there any resistance, any neoconservative movement that now blamed them for the outcomes of the war? Because after all, you know, you mentioned that Environmentally responsible for dragging the Ottoman Empire into this war. Was there any attempts of overthrowing them, especially in the dying days? Is what usually happens in empires.
SPEAKER_03No. What happens is that you know the there's an armistice signed you know on the 30th of October. So we think the First World War ended on the eleventh of the eleventh nineteen eighteen. But for the Ottomans it ended for Bulgarians it ended on the thirtieth of September. And then the Ottomans the top three are still in charge. They make the decision to sign the armistice. They have some debates about it in the last weeks but they're all pretty realistic about that we can't win this war. We were defeated. Total surrender. They lose control of the Dardanelles. You know within a month there are thirty-five battleships anchored off the city of Constantinople.
SPEAKER_00So I mean if any any listeners are interested if they if they're look they should actually look at how the Ottoman lands were divided up. So you've got Italy's got a sphere of influence the Greeks which is the the West Coast the French the Kurdish people have their own territory the Armenians so the the the only place that was neutral was Istanbul. And the reason for that was that the Russians really wanted that pushing Istanbul because they'd have control of the Bosphorus and Churchill obviously being the wily fox he was he said he knew exactly what would happen was that no we're going to have this as inter international sort of protectorate.
SPEAKER_03And they and they can do that because the Russian revolution has happened they're out of the picture. Yeah. So in 1918. Yes so they they've had negotiations. I always think of the Anzac soldiers and on Gallipoli the allied they had no idea what had been decided between Britain and France the so-called Sykes Pikachu pact where they just quietly negotiated in London and Paris and and with the Italians later they were cynical enough to offer the same pieces of Anatolia to the Greeks and to the Italians.
SPEAKER_02They did the same with the Arabs right and that's I've learned I've learned in my Russian studies that Trotsky was actually the one who leaked that information the Russians had to sign off on it. So there's another anecdote of history Putcast a global podcast about riots, rebellions, revolutions and the intoxication of power we're coming close to the end here today talking about the three coups in the late Ottoman Empire that I think we can say that now resulted in World War I because who knows what would have happened if it weren't for them if it was a different man in charge of the Empire at this stage.
SPEAKER_03But we also learned that the three survived well they run away on the so this armistice is signed on the 30th of October they choose to run away on the 9th the night of the 1st of November and the 2nd and they get into a German sort of speedboat and the Germans speed them across to the Crimea and there they sort of eventually end up in Berlin. Two of them are assassinated by Armenian revolutionaries later on 1922 and one dies in Bukhara but so they're spent and this is a problem because there wasn't much internal opposition you've got to imagine the the parliament's not functioning but there is very clear second level leaders of the movement the Young Turk movement the top three have run away that's very clarifying don't you think yeah and so they are starting to sound out other possibilities. They have an Anglo French Italian occupation but there is an undergurent of revolutionary agitation and they have to manage that and in that process Mustafa Kamal is starting to appear as the person the Young Turk movement do sound them out to take the leadership post these three leaders but he he doesn't want anything to do with it.
SPEAKER_02Okay so was the was the Young Turk brand pretty damaged by this stage?
SPEAKER_00Yes yeah it was toxic.
SPEAKER_03So a complete damaged political brand I understand that definition it's not so damaged in the sense that there's no other elite that's running the show. Yeah. So what they do is evolve towards a new movement that's to be sure but it'll take that'll take place in 1919. If we look at the political elite leave out the top three who've run away and are dead all of them by 1920, 22 24, right? They're all dead. Then the political elite that run Republican Turkey with Mustaf Gamal are all basically still there. The occupation puts some of them on trial but abandons the trial they stake a more realistic position not for the to revive the Ottoman Empire but to build a Turkish national state. Realistically obtainable knowledge they've got enough trouble doing that because they have a French occupation Italian occupation Greek occupation British occupation the Greeks have been fanned to go there by the British.
SPEAKER_00The French basically give up after a while so that's the decision they're going more Turkish but a narrower definition of Turk It starts off with being a very highly liberal idea of what Turkish or Ottomanism is and then through their experiences it becomes more and more and more and more um narrow and narrower and exclusive which ends up being Turkish the founders of the Republic actually determine there's actually massive debates about what defines Turkishness, what is it? So it ends up being pretty much m being of Muslim faith, Sunni Muslim faith and they sort of decide on who falls into that category.
SPEAKER_02And this is all the result of the the end of the Ottoman Empire after centuries and centuries of consistent rule tolerance pragmatism. I love the James Bond story by the way with the speedboat across the Black Sea in the middle of the night like the Germans had nothing else to do in 1918. There was assassinations one died for what he believed in two two were assassinated in Burley. And I still can't believe that we don't know more about that in the Western English speaking world. Tez before today I did ask you to to snoop around a bit and maybe speak to people or do some research on on this period and how it's viewed today in Turkey. I'd love to find out is there any sense of nostalgia for this this late Ottoman period?
SPEAKER_00Because in the Western world it's still this mysterious you know place of I don't believe this particular last few decades there's any sort of nostalgia wish to return back to but there is a massive nostalgia and romanticism about the Ottoman Empire and its so-called glory rereading of of its history which fails to mention the last couple hundred years where it was a pretty decaying empire. That's sort of missed in in in this nostalgia and I think a lot of this has to do with you know as as Adrian and I were talking about before we started recording the AKP era really ushered in this this this glorification of Ottoman era which is the current ruling party yes yeah under President Erdogan and the so but prior to the AKP it was it was very much throughout the Republican history it was very much taught as as very backwards, very discrepit decrepit it's only captured imagination of a lot of the the public in Turkey or the nostalgia the the positive nostalgia in the AKP area and that has a lot to do with the the series the dramatization of the of this era with you can watch on Netflix is there's a couple of really popular Ottoman era series like Arturul about the the the you know and so it's it's sparked this I don't know I guess it's probably false nostalgia and because as any dramatization of of history is not based on reality it's based on you know very wishy-washy rose colour rose tinker asses. But in terms of that era no it's you know obviously if you look at if you talk to people of a very nationalist or right wing ideology they'll probably look at Mvarapasha as some sort of hero. Strong man strong man but if you look at if you talk to people of more of a republican or secular or Kamalist background they'll view it with complete criticism of of these three men. So it also depends on who you talk to but but definitely if you think about if you ask him about Ottoman era there's definitely a strong nostalgia this belief how glory the Turkish nation lived through throughout the history of Ottoman era.
SPEAKER_03So it's very handpicked sort of selective but then in the previous between you know 1919 and 1938 when Mustafa Kamal Atat died 1938 there's a lot of hostility towards Ottomanism there's language reform we turn our back on all that we need to westernize there's certainly deep criticism of the triumvers. Their bodies are only brought back to Turkey in 1943 five years in the middle of the Second World War as a kind of statement but they're not in a particularly prominent spot. They're in high on the hill above Shishli there's a huge freeway that goes across between the crossing point of the Golden Horn right across to the Rumeli the the first bridge, the Bosporus bridge and it's you know there's a monument there it's a monument to freedom a bid de hoodiet you know but it it's not a kit pivotal place. I think Inanu in the first Second World War felt that they should do something for them but he certainly couldn't do it when Mustafa Kamal was alive. So you have that it's so it's not but there are monuments that there are a lot of Talat Pasha streets and squares and you know and Jamal particularly Enver.
SPEAKER_02Yeah so there are monuments and streets and things yes I have to bring it up obviously but because of the genocide as it's called in in many countries war criminals in abroad. They're viewed as war criminals? Yes that's correct but they're still celebrated in Turkey these days.
SPEAKER_03I do think they were war criminals, yes. But we have to understand the context in the sense that we had they were very fearful. They were refugees themselves they responded with the utmost violence they killed m m the men outright and sent the families the old, the women the children to a kind of slow death in a difficult way. So that was a terrible war crime. They were facing what they saw as subversion. I think there are some r resemblances to what's happened in contemporary crisis in the sense that the leaders of the Armenian movement were calling for a rebellion from a safe, nice tidy house in the equivalent of Qatar right? In Armenia itself Russian dominated Armenia or somewhere like it. And they were calling for a revolution in the face of a regime that they know were their dreadful enemies and who are ready to kill if so when you do that with your people unique I think the first idea of a leader of the revolutionary Armenian movement was to look after their people and they delivered them into the jaws of hell. And that's the reality. Now whether there's still war criminal these three are war criminals definitely but a lot of people were involved you can understand why that generation of military officers refugees from the Balkans would respond in that way.
SPEAKER_02Turkey did stay out of the Second World War. Do you think this were lessons learned from World War I?
SPEAKER_00Yeah I mean is Ismetuneno who was the president after Mustafa Kamal Ataturk who was also essentially his right hand man, the second in charge throughout Ataturk's life and leadership of of of the country yeah consciously w uh kept Turkey out of of out of World War II.
SPEAKER_03Yeah so Churchill flies to Ankara I think after the war meeting in Casablanca where they decide that they will have to fight to surrender, complete total surrender, which probably prolonged the Second World War a little because that's what the Russians were demanding. They Churchill flies there and tries to get in the battle. And Hitler of course was quite capable of invading anybody's country really and he chose not to you know he's he's in the Aegean islands in the Italian islands you know they're just stones for it. So the Germans decided not to attack they also learned something too Hitler learned something.
SPEAKER_02But Hitler is also quoted as remarking that no one has ever talked about the Armenian genocide I think we'll leave it at that final question for me. Are there any Turkey related coups we should still talk about on Putschkas Tetesh?
SPEAKER_00Is the first one which is I think that's a dramatic one hanging the hanging the prime minister Mendrez and two other key figures around him I would definitely I mean we discussed 1980 so that was another and 2016 yeah there was the one in 1970 71 there's also been the postmodern coup in in nine in the mid-1990s as well so of course um that brought down the Islamist government so not running out of topics anytime soon and and Edwin in the in the centuries of Ottoman rule was there any other spectacular I mean they all killed each other that was normal you said like they Well I think one of the most famous coups is the Patrona Halu revolt in 1730 when the a bathhouse led revolution which overthrew Ahmed III the tulip age okay and so it's a very interesting Janissary bathhouse gossip is as a colossal violent revolution but this happened again in 1808 with the Janissaries trying to prevent the reforming sultans and we have the so-called auspicious event which was the mass murder of janissaries in the streets of Constantinople.
SPEAKER_02I can't get away from the stereotypes I'm trying so hard but we have a bathhouse revolution in Turkey in uh in 1730 I think we've heard we have to come back to how many more coups and putches we need to talk about when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire I want to thank you for your time my name is Oliver Heuter and also want to thank my guest today Teshgan Gumish mate it has been absolutely pleasure for me massive learning and so it was been hence why there was long moments of silence from me because I've just been listening to Adrian tell recount these histories because it's been fascinating for me. Professor Adrian Jones before you say farewell you have an OAM behind your title for all non-Australians what does that mean?
SPEAKER_03That means I'm a member of the Order of Australia which I got for work in basically community history work on the radio.
SPEAKER_02Does that mean you're some sort of knight working with curators no I'm at the lower level you're not a knight yet no I mean well that's that's another thing I've just learned about Adrian so there we go and I want to thank you and please subscribe tell your friends and especially your family members in Turkey about us who need more downloads and support from Turkey I think today's episode should do the trick for us and also send us an email to putcast at gmail.com with any suggestions that you have also if we made a mistake today point it out and we'll address that next time thank you for your time bye
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