Emre Erol Phd Dissertation Aug 2014

Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/28535 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Erol, Emre Title: Capitalism, migration, war and nationalism in an Aegean port town: the rise and fall of a Belle Époque in the Ottoman county of Foçateyn Issue Date: 2014-09-09 CHAPTER VI Extended Warfare and the End of the Belle Époque The Ottoman Empire engaged in a series of successive wars that started with the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 (Tripolitanian War, 1911-1912) and ended in 1923 with the Lausanne Peace treaty. This was a period of almost omnipresent warfare that witnessed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Republic of Turkey as a modern state from the remnants of the Empire. In a sense it was the last great Ottoman war, and a painful process of nation making. The effects of this extended period of warfare between 1911 and 1923 were first felt in the county of Foçateyn after the spring of organized chaos in June of 1914. The spring of organized chaos, which was discussed in the previous chapter, marked the local beginning of the transition for Foçateyn. This was a transition from peace to perpetual warfare, from empire to nation-state and from a fragile cosmopolitanism to nationalisms. The ousting of the Christians in June 1914, which was a direct consequence of the Balkan Wars, was only the beginning for Foçateyn, although the county was not affected by the early stages of the Great War. The effects of the war only became tangible after 1916 with a series of allied bombing operations. Later, the Kingdom of Greece invaded Western Anatolia in 1919 and the re-taking of the county by Turkish nationalist forces in 1922 followed this. Each of these periods constituted subsequent phases of violence and destruction that followed the spring of organized chaos. Once this period of transition and war was over, Foçateyn’s so-called Belle Époque, its cross-cultural reality and its expansion, was over as well. It was no longer a bourgeoning county with a growing boomtown and a cosmopolitan demography. Foçateyn was depopulated, structurally devastated and its boomtown Eski Foça was turned into a ghost town. The Belle Époque in Foçateyn, its cosmopolitanism, dominance of middle-class values and its wealth, were fragile and depended on the sustenance of growing world capitalism. Incorporation into the world economy was the major driving force behind the growth of Foçateyn into a more populous and developed county, but that was not 280 the only driving force. As I demonstrated in Chapter One, Foçateyn’s expansion was also a result of the modernist reforms of the Ottoman center, and the growing Ottoman state apparatus also triggered development and growth in the county. These reforms essentially lagged behind the pace of the changes brought about by incorporation and they were designed as remedies to reconsolidate the central power that was challenged by incorporation in the first place. The fragility of the Belle Époque and the values it represented was a result of the delicate balance that it had to maintain between the agents behind these distinct forces of change: the market and the state. The balance between these two forces relied on the agility and fragile existence of the emerging Ottoman middle-class in the incorporated parts of the Empire. This middle-class consisted predominantly of Ottoman Christians who had been accumulating capital and acted as a buffer in the face of further capitalist penetration, supporting reform for ‘order and progress’540 and demanding more political participation. The organized chaos of 1914 in Foçateyn marked the local beginning of the period of transition that brought an end to this balance and thus to the Belle Époque. Ousting the Ottoman Christians and destroying their businesses were the obvious reasons why the balance was shattered after 1914. Replacement of the fragile cosmopolitanism and middle-class values with ethno/religious nationalisms, an emerging distrust of economic liberalism and being engulfed by an extended period of warfare and its effects on trade, demography and diplomacy constituted the other important reasons. In the earlier phase of this period of extended warfare, strongholds of incorporation, and middle-class hegemony and cosmopolitanism, as embodied by Izmir, remained relatively safe and unaffected by the disruption of the balance compared to places like Foçateyn. The international focus on Izmir provided a temporary shield. However, once Izmir was also engulfed by warfare and transition at a later stage in 1922, it was equally devastated, destroyed and changed beyond recognition. 540 Vangelis Kechriotis, ‘Civilisation and Order: Middle class morality among the Greek Orthodox in Smyrna/Izmir at the end of the Ottoman Empire’, (Accessed: Nov. 2013), https://www.academia.edu/4123234/Civilization_and_Order_Middle- class_morality_among_the_Greek- Orthodox_in_Smyrna_Izmir_at_the_end_of_the_Ottoman_Empire 281 The major agents of change who represented the reconsolidation of state power and centralization after 1913 were the Unionists who seized full power in the same year with a coup. The Unionists decided to reconsolidate central authority at all costs vis- à-vis further capitalist penetration, imperialism and rival nationalisms through a nationalist framework during the period of extended warfare that threatened the very existence of the last non-colonized Muslim state. As I argued before in the previous chapter, it was a combination of their political will and design, and the peculiar post- Balkan Wars circumstances (the spread of the Macedonian Question into Western Anatolia) that brought the spring of organized chaos to Foçateyn. As we will see in this chapter, once the battle lines between a nationalist consolidation of central power and an imperialist and rival nationalist counter-scenarios were drawn, each successive stage of conflict brought increasing amounts of violence and destruction. As war became increasingly prevalent between 1914 and 1922,inter-communal relations became more and more strained in Foçateyn and violence became more widespread. And as warfare continued, more people were uprooted and displaced. The ‘enemy’ was increasingly stigmatized and dehumanized after each pahse of violence, and Greeks and Muslims fought each other in desperation and resentment at the western end of the Empire. In a sense, war-making during this period of extended warfare violently homogenized demographics541 and even physical space for the contemporary nation-states of the post-Ottoman geography. The nationalisms that loomed in the background of the fragile cosmopolitanism of the Belle Époque became the dominant discourses. Formulas of coexistence diminished before they had the 541 Hakan Yavuz argues that in the case of the Ottoman Empire, war replaced industrialization (or urbanization and others) as a catalyst of homogenization. War laid the foundations of national identities in the Ottoman context as opposed to the way identities were first homogenized by other forces such as the expansion of capitalism, industrialization or urbanization in Western Europe according to the modernist paradigm. Although war was very central to the emergence of national identities and although the Unionists utilized it as discussed here, I see it as only one of the many factors that affected the emergence of national identities in the Ottoman Empire, not the only one. The incorporation, urbanization and the emergence of a public space all contributed to the emergence of national identities in the Ottoman Empire as well. For Yavuz’s discussion see: Hakan Yavuz, ‘Warfare and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars as a Catalyst of Homogenization’, in War and Nationalism: the Balkan wars, 1912-1913, and their sociopolitical implications, ed. Hakan Yavuz and Isa Blumi, (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2013), 31-84. 282 time to mature. In short, war turned hypothetical ‘national enemies’ and ‘national borders’ into real ones. The Great War, the Unionists and the Ottoman Greeks The Ottomans were forced to defend themselves against the Balkan alliance before the Tripolitanian War of 1911 with Italy had ended. In addition, the Ottoman army had been under major reorganization and redeployment since 1910. It entered the Balkan Wars in ‘…a condition of professional unreadiness’.542 The changing tactical dynamics of the twentieth century greatly favoured entrenched troops supported by machine guns and artillery. This would have been an advantage for the Ottomans if they had not opted for offensive encirclement operations, and as a result, Ottoman offensives were unsuccessful and they resulted in heavy losses for the army. The Ottomans also divided their capabilities by focusing on both the Balkan and Thracian strategic centers of conflict. As a result, the Balkan alliance was able to isolate smaller Ottoman forces, beat them at their own offence and break the connections between the eastern and western theatres of war. The Ottoman flanks were exposed and the defeat was heavy and swift.543 Lengthy peace talks in July 1913, at the end of the two subsequent Balkan Wars, only succeeded in establishing a fragile status quo. These talks left the involved parties with many future uncertainties. The Ottoman public was deeply affected by the wars, and many expressed resentment and made calls for revenge.544 Boycotts, inter-communal violence, banditry and forced migration became often- encountered phenomena after the Balkan Wars in Western Anatolia. The failure to establish a new status quo after the Balkan Wars turned places like Foçateyn that had recently became border zones into potential war zones. Chettes, boycotts, forced migration and massacres were often considered to be ‘Macedonian stories’ before the 542 Edward J. Erickson, Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912- 1913, (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 332. 543 Erickson, Defeat..., 331-332. 544 For a seminal work on the Ottoman war propaganda see: Erol Köroğlu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey during World War I, (London & New York: I.B.

Load more