How the Ottoman oil regions became "lands not ours"

Consider the years 1906-1907, when the project of a "Turkish nation withdrawn to national borders" was being discussed among Ottoman officers. Abdülhamid II is still on the throne. Ottoman territory has not yet been completely withdrawn from the Balkans. Salonica, Monastir, a significant part of present-day Greece are still Ottoman. Moreover, present-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Libya are still ours, and there is a state that is stable, for better or worse.

There are of course enemies sharpening their teeth against this state, but within the international balances everyone recognizes the Ottomans and counts them among the largest countries of the day. That is, even if we are not in the top three, we are certainly in the top 5. In such a period, that Ottoman officers had had their minds addled by the question "How will this country be saved?" is perhaps the greatest threat gnawing at the country from within.

WHOM WILL THEY SAVE THE COUNTRY FROM?

What is wrong with the country? Under what threat are they going to save it from that threat? Şükrü Hanioğlu's book titled Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography, which in my opinion has still not been read enough or given its due, describes very well how the circles of deliverer (halaskâr) officers who emerged together with the debates of that period formed, and under the influence of which ideological atmospheres they took shape and were nourished.

Today let us relay two important accounts from two other important sources on precisely that atmosphere.

FALİH RIFKI ATAY, who is the official historian of the Republican era and of Çankaya, has an important book titled "What Is Atatürkism?" Right at the beginning of this book, he mentions that Mustafa Kemal's idea of the National Pact had taken shape not after the Armistice but perhaps long before that, in 1906-8.

Atay of course relays this as an example of Mustafa Kemal's tremendous foresight. Yet perhaps the right question is precisely the contribution made to the formation of this "nation withdrawn to national borders." Is it foresight about Turkey's future, or an achievement reached in a plan made about Turkey's fate? And what kind of achievement is this achievement? That is a separate and vital question.

As an important description of the discussion settings of that time, Falih Rıfkı Atay writes as follows:

"According to what we have heard from each of them separately, Atatürk was mired since his early youth in the worry of the salvation of the Turkishness of Turkey. Wherever and with whomever he met, even at a drinking table or a pleasure party, the only subject of conversation was the cause of 'How shall we be saved.' I had heard from Cebesoy. One evening Fethi Okyar, Mustafa Kemal and he went to a casino in Salonica. At that time in Greece, Venizelos had taken to the mountains for Crete. A hero of freedom had also raised the banner of rebellion in the mountains of Iran.

At the table someone says:

-'Why can't we raise heroes like them?'

Mustafa Kemal does not let go of this subject. He is always on it. Since Fethi is bored, he wants to change place, and they go to another place of entertainment. Mustafa Kemal does not see his surroundings. His subject is again the same. This time Fethi takes Mustafa Kemal to a place with women and, while he himself is absorbed in the entertainment with one he fancied, Mustafa Kemal is with Cebesoy, sir Venizelos, sir I don't know what Khan, on the same subject! Morning has come, Fethi has gone to his house. Mustafa Kemal takes his friend to his own house. His mother does not sleep until he comes and she has given him his breakfast. The two friends have no time to sleep. They will shave and go to their duties. Cebesoy complains to his mother:

-'Your son has fixed on a topic and will not let go. Fethi, dear, wanted to get up and say let us have a bit of fun too...'

-'Fethi is clever.'

-'We went, and your son is again on that topic. Fethi, getting us out of there too...'

-'Fethi is clever...'

All of Atatürk's meetings with friends, until his last days, always passed like this. These were serious discussion meetings occasionally interrupted by entertainments.

We understand from the stories of the past that Atatürk was not an Ottoman imperialist. In the Paris publications of the 1908 Constitutionalists, on the other hand, it was being promised that as soon as the despotic regime was overthrown we would regain the old lands we had lost. Atatürk had been a very good soldier since his first days as an officer.

He was a realist based on calculations of force. One evening in one of the Salonica casinos this subject was raised again:

-'We all want the despotism of Sultan Hamid to be overthrown. But none of us says what we will do if it is overthrown and power is left to us.'

Everyone put forward his own ideas in turn. When it came to Mustafa Kemal's turn, he said:

-'I would draw a border that does not include the lands in Rumelia and Asia Minor that are not ours.

I would try to save the country and nation within this border.'

Had he not had strong comrades like Cebesoy, he would even have been attacked by those at the table. Leave Bosnia-Herzegovina and Crete, indeed! Leave Syria, Palestine and the Hejaz, indeed!...

According to the 1908 Constitutionalists we would take Bosnia-Herzegovina back from Austria-Hungary and Egypt from Britain. The Mustafa Kemal of that night was the Mustafa Kemal of the National Pact 10 years later."

Falih Rıfkı Atay knows how perilous this subject was, even for those in the setting at that time. Just imagine, today, the subject of saving Turkey being opened and, for example, someone proposing to give a part of Turkey to an ethnic group. The idea of renouncing or withdrawing from a single span of homeland soil for one reason or another was of course not that normal even then. Atay also knows what kind of attack those who thought so could be exposed to. That is why he says that had Mustafa Kemal not had comrades like Cebesoy who would defend him in every circumstance, he could have been exposed to a great attack at that table. In those days Bosnia-Herzegovina and Crete, Syria, Palestine and the Hejaz are homeland soil, and no one is talking about pressing at the Ottoman door and taking them. But how did the idea of leaving those places, in the name of saving and exalting the state, to whoever wants them come to be born among Ottoman officers and find supporters?

In the sentence in this account, "I would draw a border that does not include the lands in Rumelia and Asia Minor that are not ours," when did the expression "LANDS THAT ARE NOT OURS" begin to be thought of among Ottoman officers? In the period when these lands were counted in the category of "not ours," a more concrete matter of Arab betrayal is not even mentioned. When and why did these lands, which the Ottomans had governed for 400 years, which were regarded as homeland soil integrated with the center in every respect, indeed considered the most cherished of the homeland's soils, become "lands that are not ours"?

THE CRUX OF THE MATTER: how could the idea of renouncing, on the Ottomans' behalf, these lands, all of them oil regions, governed by the Ottomans for 400 years and for which the Ottomans had generally, so to speak, suffered the hardship, at the very time they were about to bring the Ottomans oil and wealth, become possible among Ottoman officers, among the Unionists, or among the Young Turks? Whom would this project, which would not serve the Ottomans but would on the contrary sink them, serve, or whose project could it be?

We will continue on this subject with other accounts.