Gastos administrativos y financieros

Turkish national identity developed in tandem with a desire for revenge, which was created by military defeats, the massacre of Muslims in many places, and the loss of Ottoman territories. The history of the uprisings of the 19th century is not simply the history of the massacre of Christian groups, who revolted for legitimate demands such as equality and social justice. At the same time, ‘it includes the subjection of the indigenous Muslim population to large-scale massacres.’147 _{From the middle of the} 19th century, large-scale migrations into Anatolia were undertaken by Muslim populations attempting to flee these massacres. Both the migra-

tions and the massacres of Muslim Turks left deep marks on Turkish identity. In the aftermath of the Crimean War alone, approximately one million Muslims emigrated into Anatolia and Rumelia between 1855 and 1866.148_{As a result of the Serbian, Cretan and other uprisings, hundreds of} thousands left hearth and home in order to save their lives, and arrived in Anatolia ‘in a destitute and dispersed state.’149_{The migrations during the} 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War, in particular, and the massacres that were experienced on the way reached truly dramatic proportions. Later still came the migrations that followed in the wake of the massacres during the 1912 Balkan War.

The refugees, who had surmounted a myriad of obstacles merely to reach their destination, struggled to keep alive the memory of their experiences through the associations and publications they founded in the new regions in which they were settled—often by the government’s conscious choice. All the while, they never abandoned the idea of avenging themselves for their dispersal. A poem published by an association founded by Balkan refugees in Istanbul after the 1912 war well reflects this mood. The poem, entitled ‘May it be an earring,’ concludes with the couplet, ‘Oh, Muslim, don’t distract yourself [from your purpose]! / Do not let your heart lose its desire for revenge.’150_{Another publication was titled ‘Bulgarian} Atrocities, the Banner of Revenge.’ These examples shed light on the mood of the refugees and help to explain how these persons, despite being helpless masses saved from massacre themselves, could soon afterwards become the willing executioners of other, non-Muslim communities of Anatolia—the Armenians, above all. We can better understand the dimen- sions of the refugee problem and its effects if we recall that, between the years 1878 and 1904, some 850,000 Muslim refugees were settled in the areas in which the Armenians had previously been the majority.151

The territorial losses of the Ottoman Empire occupy a place in Turkish national identity every bit as important as the murders of Muslim Turks, and the hunger-, poverty- and disease-filled migrations. The loss of the Balkans, in particular, remains a vivid tragedy in memory. The massacres and the mass migrations to escape them are likewise important because they are national reminders of the lands that were lost at that time. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk expressed this sense poignantly in 1931: ‘The refugees are a national reminder of our lost country.’152

Because of historical memory, the desire has persisted to recover these lost lands, intimately connected with a desire to take revenge on those who took them in the first place. This desire has paved the way for a militaristic and belligerent mindset to develop. Beginning during the era of Abdülhamid II, we see the prevalence of a militaristic, revanchiste spirit in the education given at the Ottoman military schools. ¸Sevket Süreyya

Aydemir describes the military education and the mood it inspired in its students:

War would certainly break out one day, and during this war, these young officers would take revenge for the defeat suffered in the war of 1878. An accounting would have to be made for the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897, which, despite our victory, concluded with adverse results for us. We can track the mood of the schools in the recollections of that generation.153

But this mood was not confined to the military schools. Belligerent, chauvinistic and militaristic ideas had embraced the entire society.

A good example is the situation in Istanbul in 1912 when it became clear that a war was likely to break out in the Balkans. Large demonstrations were held, both by the government and by the opposition parties. Univer- sity students poured out onto the streets. Speeches were given that reminded the Ottoman Muslims that they were ‘the heroic descendants of their glorious ancestors who had made the world tremble with their warlike nature.’ Poems were recited saying: ‘We are the Ottomans who instilled dread in the world / We were the ones who would suddenly set the world aflame / …when we were angered.’ Calls for war were echoed in the news- papers: ‘To say Ottoman is to say soldier / Long live the army! Long live war!’ And the lost territories absolutely had to be reclaimed: ‘The natural border of the Ottoman state is the Danube. We shall seize our national border. March, Ottomans! To the Danube!’154

But the Balkan War only resulted in a new wave of trauma. Another defeat, another massacre of Muslims, more refugees and more lost territories…The bitterness of the loss of Macedonia, which had been the birthplace of most of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, was indescribable. The Unionist publisher and journalist Hüseyin Cahit [Yalçın] wrote: ‘Being cast out of Rumelia…I still cannot forget the bitterness that this phrase produced in my heart at the time.’ Such things were ‘utterly incomprehensible.’155_{The profound effect of the territorial} losses can be seen in the 1914 speech opening the Chamber of Deputies by its president, Halil Mente¸se:

Other nations do not forget those portions of their homeland that they lose in war, rather they always keep their memory alive before the succeeding generations. Along with these the reasons for the disaster shall always live on. In this manner, they protect the future against the same disastrous results occurring again for the same reasons. From this exalted seat, I call on the nation: Do not forget! I call on it: Do not forget beloved Salonica, verdant Manastir, Kossovo, Scutari, Jannina; all of beautiful Rumelia.

He was answered from the Chamber by cries of ‘We shall not forget.’156 Until the republican period, the thought of recouping portions of their

lost territories—the eternal goal of the Ottoman Turkish cadres—was something of an idée fixe, especially among the Unionist leaders. Read, for instance, in the memoirs of Hüsamettin Ertürk, this utterance by Enver Pa¸sa:

How can a person forget those fields, those meadows, over which the blood of the ancestors has flowed? To abandon them, along with our mosques, our tombs, our dervish lodges, our bridges and our fortresses, over whose squares Turkish raiders let their horses run, to the children of yesterday, and then, after 400 years, to be cast out of Rumelia and to move to Anatolia: this is something that cannot be borne. I would be prepared to gladly give the remaining years of my life in order to take revenge on the Bulgarians, the Greeks and the Monte- negrans.157

Ertürk says that when Enver spoke these things, he became excited: his face turned a bright red and his eyes flashed like lightning.

The Unionists would ultimately go to great lengths in order to regain the Balkans. For them, to take back these lands that had been taken as a result of one crusade was a matter of honor. Again, Enver:

Everywhere there appear traces of the misery created by this latest Crusade. If I could recount to you all of the horrors done by the enemy, even those done right here in sight of Istanbul, you would understand what has happened to the poor Muslims that are far away. But our anger is strengthened: revenge, revenge, revenge…There is no other word.158

The same mood prevailed in the Ottoman press immediately after the Balkan defeat. Poems about lost territories were printed, containing phrases such as ‘sighs and laments,’ and ‘still unfulfilled’ (Sana Doymadan) and with titles like ‘Enmity.’ ‘Oh, my well-known father, who sleeps restfully in the grave / Your children’s name today is Conquering Vengeance (Sâdi

·

Intikam).’159_{The bitterness of a defeat that had not been accepted held an} entire society. Even the children were brimming over with feelings of vengeance:

It was the desperate, fiery year in which the Balkan War ended. We children were also immersed in the bitterness of a defeat that we had not digested any better than the adults, who had learned to forcibly bow their heads in respect.160

In his work Lausanne, Cemil Bilsel claims that one of the reasons for entering the First World War was this feeling of not wanting to forget these lost territories, and of revenge:

The Balkan peoples had turned Rumelia into a Turkish slaughterhouse…The Turks hadn’t forgotten this bitterness. They relived the narratives of the loss of Rumelia. Reciting these narratives, to students in the schools, to children at home, and to soldiers in their barracks, they awakened a national spirit, a

national grudge. They instilled a mood of demanding to one day see an account- ing for the insults and cruelties inflicted upon the Turks. On maps, Rumelia was shown colored in black. The entire army was encouraged to take revenge for their sullied honor. The soldier would go to lessons every day with the song ‘Turkish honor was sullied in 1328 (1912), ah. Ah, ah, ah, revenge!’ The soldier returning to his village would plant the seeds there by singing this song. On the day that the Great War broke out, every Turk in whose heart burned the fire of revenge for the bitter pain of the Balkan disaster sensed that the day had come in which he would have the opportunity to redeem his lost honor.161

As was previously described, this feeling of vengeance, formed among Ottoman Turkish officials as a result of continual territorial losses, was largely directed at the non-Muslim minorities, the ‘servants of yesterday,’ who lived on these lands. And during the First World War this revenge, which could not have been taken against the Bulgarians or the Greeks, was instead taken out against the ‘ungrateful’ Armenians, who, by ‘collabor- ating with the imperialists, struck us from behind.’ The other peoples existing within the Empire, such as the Arabs, also received their share of this vengeance. The memoir of Sergeant Selahettin well reflects the Turkish attitude toward the Arabs.

Baghdad has fallen. The Ottoman Army was in the grip of panic and making preparations to leave the city…Army Corps Commander Kazım Karabekir Pa¸sa was there. At that period the people assembled in the square upon the order of Bekir Sami. Bekir Sami sprayed fire into the crowd with the machine gun in his hand. Karabekir Pa¸sa asked: ‘Bekir Sami, what are you doing? What trans- gression has this people [committed]?’ The reply he received from Bekir Sami Bey was, ‘I am settling the account of four hundred years of Ottoman History.’162

The West’s Double Standard and