CHAPTER EIGHT

LIBERAL PRACTICES IN THE TRANSFORMATION FROM EMPIRE TO NATION-STATE: THE RUMP OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1918–1923

Hasan Kayalı

Political history, with its emphasis on reigns, regimes, and real or imag- ined landmarks that point to the beginning and end of sequentially constructed eras, does not serve well the study of transition periods. Transitions are only occasionally recognized as periods intrinsically worthy of the historian’s attention, namely as more than preludes or epilogues tagged to other—and in retrospect clearly identifiable—his- torical eras. Positing a transition as an interregnum tends to legitimate its examination in its own right, as in the case of some interregna in the literal sense of the word, namely periods of prolonged conflict or uncertainty about dynastic succession,1 or interludes between two iden- tifiably distinct political regimes.2 Embedded in the notion of an inter- regnum is a degree of “freedom from customary authority.”3 This chapter addresses such an interlude in the rump Ottoman Empire4 between 1918 and 1923, a half-decade of ruptures and flux that followed the end of World War I and marked the transition from the empire to a Turkish

1 As in Britain between the rule of Charles I and Charles II (1649–60) or in the Ottoman Empire between Bayezid and Mehmed I (1402–13). 2 Thus, E. H. Carr devoted in hisHistory of Soviet Russia, New York: Macmillan 1954, a volume to the “Interregnum” of 1923–24, the power struggle that ensued from Lenin’s demise. The editors of a more recent compilation focusing on the Soviet collapse and its aftermath use the rubric of “interregnum” which “capture[s] something about the ill-defined and almost-impossible-to-define character” of the era from 1989 to 1999, suggesting that an interregnum is recognizable, even when it is not at all clear when and how it will end: Michael Cox, Ken Booth, and Tim Dunne, eds., The Interregnum, Review of International Studies 25 (December 1999), special issue. In his study of Otto- man Transjordan, Eugene Rogan refers to the two-and-a-half years between Ottoman and Hashemite rule (October 1918–March 1921) as an interregnum in Transjordan: Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999, 241. 3 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1182. 4 Ottoman territories not occupied by the Entente Powers during World War I. 176 hasan kayali nation-state. Situating this transition in historiography, it portrays a period ordinarily not associated with the flourishing of liberal practices as a unique era of liberal manifestations, as reflected in the expansion and diversification of associational activity, proliferation of the popular press, and revitalization of electoral and constitutional processes.

The postwar era as historiographical limbo

The immediate postwar years, from the signing of the Armistice agree- ment between the Ottoman government and the Entente representa- tives at Mudros (October 1918) to the conclusion of a peace treaty at Lausanne (July 1923), either fall through the cracks of the two distinct historiographical categories of empire and nation-state, or are seized by the latter. The period is referred to alternatively as the “national struggle,” “war of independence,” or “Armistice period.” These desig- nations represent different perceptions, even contesting visions, of the postwar years in the rump empire. “Armistice period” foregrounds the postwar ambiguity in the political and diplomatic status of the empire between Mudros and Lausanne. “War of independence” stresses rejection of submission to the dictates of the Entente powers and resistance to their military encroachments. “National struggle” conceives of a Turkish nationalist assertion. It is also common to view the “Armistice period” as limited to the months leading to Mustafa Kemal’s emergence within the Anatolian movement in the summer of 1919, which then starts the “national struggle.” This study will employ the designation “Armistice period” in its inclusive sense (Mudros to Lausanne) as the rubric under which to examine broadening political pluralism and revival of consti- tutional and electoral practices. The postwar years of the late 1910s and early 1920s have been appropriated by Turkish republican history and made to conform to the Kemalist construct of the unfolding of Turkish nationhood, which obscures much that does not conform to that conception, by privileg- ing only certain facets of the postwar ferment. The centerpiece of this period’s history in the nationalist-minded outlook is the political con- solidation of the resistance and the battles it coordinated against the Greek invasion forces. Mustafa Kemal’s own rendering of the narrative of these events in his 1927 “Speech” at the Republican People’s Party Congress has provided the template for historical accounts. The postwar