A History of the Middle East (29 page)

The title of caliph has not since been revived. In May 1926 a caliphate congress, held in Cairo, was attended by delegates from thirteen Muslim countries (not including Turkey), but its deliberations were inconclusive. Since then, the caliphate has not been an issue in the politics of the Muslim world.

Mustafa Kemal was a secular nationalist who believed that all the inheritance of the Ottoman Empire should be abandoned and Turkey should be transformed into a modern European state. This involved less of a sudden break with the past than might appear. The
Tanzimat
reforms had laid the foundations of a secular state, and the Young Turks, even while attempting to preserve the empire, had given a powerful impetus to the cause of Turkish nationalism. During the war years, the secularization of education had proceeded and the universities and public positions had been opened to women. Certain of the law courts under the control of the religious authorities had been placed under the Ministry of Justice. A law in 1916 had reformed marriage and divorce.

Mustafa Kemal carried the process much further. A new legal code, based on a variety of European systems, was substituted for the Islamic
sharia
. In 1928 the constitution became officially secular with the deletion of the clause reading that ‘the religion of the Turkish state is Islam’ and ‘laicism’ was established as one of the six cardinal principles of the state. A Latin-based alphabet replaced the Arabic script of Ottoman Turkish and finally, in 1935, surnames on the European model were introduced. Mustafa Kemal took the name of Atatürk or ‘Father of the Turks’.

Because of Kemal’s extraordinary ascendancy over his people, these reforms were profound and far-reaching; however, they did
not mean that the Turkish people as a whole renounced Islam. Though the authority of the
ulama
was destroyed, the Turkish masses, who remained peasant farmers, preserved their Islamic faith. Even the intelligentsia would have ridiculed the idea that they had ceased to be Muslims – in their view there had only been a Turkish reformation of Islam.

What the creation of the Turkish Republic and the abandonment of the empire did mean was that Turkey abruptly ceased to be a factor in the political development of the Middle East (only territorial disputes involving the vilayets of Mosul and Aleppo remained, and these were settled in the 1920s and 1930s – with Britain and France). Atatürk’s success in developing a strong national state capable of dealing with the European powers on equal terms influenced both Arab and Persian nationalists – especially the latter – but their differing circumstances meant that Turkey was more of an inspiration than an example. They neither wished nor could hope for their countries to become part of Europe, although Turkey could nurse this aspiration, even if to some it appeared unrealistic.

After the abolition of the sultanate and caliphate, Atatürk organized the new republic as a secular parliamentary democracy. The 1924 constitution guaranteed equality before the law and freedom of thought, speech, publication and association. In theory sovereignty lay with the people and was exercised in their name by the single-chamber parliament – the Grand National Assembly – which elected the president of the republic, who chose the prime minister. Ministers were supposed to be responsible to parliament.

Democracy remained severely restricted, however. Atatürk used his immense prestige to override the constitution whenever he chose. In 1924 he organized his supporters as the Republican People’s Party (RPP). This dominated political life, as all members of the Assembly belonged to it, and the RPP ruled Turkey for twenty-seven years. Yet, despite his authoritarianism and arbitrary methods, Atatürk planted the seeds of liberal constitutional government. The Assembly had real powers, and Atatürk tried to have his way by persuasion rather than by force.

In the economic field, Atatürk concentrated on developing Turkey’s rich mineral resources, industry and communications. With a lively memory of Ottoman Turkey’s subservience to European financial and economic control through the Capitulations, he instituted an
étatist
policy of large-scale state enterprises to exercise close control over planning and development. Although increasingly bureaucratic and inefficient, these enterprises made considerable progress towards industrializing Turkey between the two world wars and, because they had no Marxist ideological basis, their eventual liberalization did not present insuperable difficulties.

After Atatürk’s death in 1938, opposition to the elected dictatorship gained ground and his successor, Ismet Inönü, partly under the influence of the democratic ideals of the Western Allies in the Second World War, allowed the establishment of a multi-party system. The Democratic Party emerged as the chief rival to the RPP, advocating free enterprise and a multi-party system, and it steadily gained popularity until it won a resounding victory in the 1950 elections. The genuineness of Turkey’s secular democracy was demonstrated when Inönü allowed a peaceful transfer of power.

***

The experience of Turkey’s former Arab subjects was wholly different.

At the end of the First World War the principal concern of the four Western Allies, as they prepared for the peace conference to be held in Paris, was the post-war settlement in Europe following the defeat of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The future of the Middle East was not high on the conference agenda. As a consequence of its defeat of Turkey, Britain had acquired supreme power in the region, subject only to its obligations to its French ally. The war in the desert had caught the imagination of the British public, as the well-publicized romantic exploits of T. E. Lawrence provided relief from the squalid horrors of the trench warfare on the western front.

The possibility of annexing the former Ottoman Arab provinces as colonies was not seriously entertained except by a few Arabist
officials – the age of European imperial expansion was already at an end. But the Arabs, who for so long had been ruled by Turks, were regarded as one of the ‘subject races’ rather than a ‘governing race’, to employ Cromer of Egypt’s categorization of humanity. (The ‘noble and independent’ Arab beduin were different, but they did not occupy territory of political or economic significance.) The conflict between the undertakings to Sharif Hussein and to France concerned only a small minority of specialists, such as T. E. Lawrence himself, who were almost unanimously Francophobe. In general it was felt that the Arabs should be grateful for their liberation from the Turks – as indeed most of them were. Although in theory the new doctrine of self-determination, based on President Wilson’s ideals, was the guiding principle of the post-war settlement, its effect was quite underestimated.

It was Egypt – the country which had already been under British control for nearly forty years – which provided the first shock. Compared with the Syrians, the Egyptians had suffered little from the war. With the huge rise in cotton prices, Egypt’s natural wealth had actually increased. Large profits were made from the supply of goods to the Allied troops. But the prosperity concealed powerful social grievances. Although supposedly voluntary, recruitment of the
fellahin
and their camels and donkeys to the labour and transport corps was in effect compulsory under martial law, and was deeply resented. The new wealth accrued to the big and medium-sized landowners, who possessed 75 per cent of the cultivated area, and to a small new capitalist class in the cities. The reality for the rest of the population was a steep rise in the cost of living. The government’s lack of any social and economic policy allowed the large landowners to abandon food-growing for cotton-growing, thus creating a near-famine and a sharp rise in the death rate, which actually exceeded the birth rate during the war.

The fermenting nationalism which had merely been submerged by martial law came to the surface. The British high commissioner, Sir Reginald Wingate, had allowed the formation of a commission headed by the British judicial adviser to consider legislative reform
and Egypt’s political status after the war. This reached the conclusion that Egypt should have a legislature of two chambers, of which the Upper House would be the more important. This would include Egyptian ministers, British advisers and representatives of the foreign communities elected by special electorates. The judicial adviser’s view was that, since Egypt’s financial interests were largely in foreign hands, the Egyptians had no right to a dominant voice in legislation affecting them.

These proposals, when leaked in November 1918, were a provocation to Egypt’s nationalist leadership. They were fully aware that the Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination for the people freed from Turkish rule had been endorsed by the Allies. Already the Arabs of Arabia, whom the Egyptians regarded (with some justice) as being more backward than themselves, were preparing to send a delegate to the Paris peace conference. Two days after the Armistice, Zaghloul Pasha presented himself at the British Residency at the head of a delegation (
wafd
in Arabic – the name that was to become attached to Zaghloul’s supporters) to say that the Egyptian people wanted their complete independence and to request proceeding to London to present their case. Zaghloul had been kept out of the government by Wingate, but he was the undoubted leader of the nationalist movement. Balfour, Britain’s foreign secretary, who was already looking forward to the Paris peace conference, brusquely rejected the visit and when Rushdi Pasha, the prime minister, proposed that he should come to London instead he repeated the refusal, saying in a dispatch to Wingate that while the British government ‘desire to act on the principle which they had always followed of giving the Egyptians an ever-increasing share in the government of the country…as you are well aware, the stage has not yet been reached at which self-government is possible.’ Britain had no intention of abandoning its responsibilities for order and good government in Egypt ‘and for protecting the rights and interests both of the native and the foreign populations of the country’.

Zaghloul seized his chance. Pointing out that even Egypt’s prime minister had been spurned, he organized a nation-wide campaign
of protest to back his claim to be Egypt’s true representative. Balfour relented to the extent of inviting Rushdi to London, but he rejected Rushdi’s insistence that Zaghloul should accompany him. Rushdi and his cabinet then resigned on 1 March 1919, with the full approval of Sultan Fuad.

Although Zaghloul stepped up his agitation, the high commission believed the trouble would die down and recommended that Zaghloul be deported. Balfour agreed, and Zaghloul and three of his colleagues were bundled on a train to Port Said and taken on a British destroyer to Malta.

The public reaction was immediate and severe. Rioting students in Cairo were supported by strikes among government officials, doctors and lawyers and the capital came to a standstill. To British astonishment, the trouble spread to the provincial towns and the countryside, to take the form of a national uprising which Egyptian nationalists later called their 1919 Revolution.

Stern military action, with the use of flying columns into the countryside and bombing raids on suspect gatherings, brought the uprising to an end in a few weeks. But the British government understood that repression would not suffice. News of the uprising had been as unwelcome as it was unexpected at a time when the government was concerned with the Irish troubles nearer home as well as involved in the affairs of the Paris conference. The prime minister, Lloyd George, with one of his rare intuitive flashes, decided that General Allenby, who had arrived in Paris to give his views on Syria, was the right man to restore the situation in Egypt, and in March 1919 Allenby was instantly dispatched to replace Wingate.

Allenby’s brief was to restore law and order and do anything required ‘by the necessity of maintaining the King’s protectorate over Egypt on a secure and equitable basis’. However, behind the bluff and sometimes brusque military exterior of Allenby ‘the Bull’ lay an acute political mind with liberal tendencies. He had already, in Paris, argued against the imposition of French rule in Syria against the clearly expressed wishes of the inhabitants, and he at least half-believed in the principle of self-determination – which was 50 percent
more than the British and French politicians who had publicly adopted it.

Immediately on his arrival, Allenby assured the Egyptians of his intention to redress their justifiable grievances. Using all his prestige he forced a reluctant Lloyd George to agree to the release of Zaghloul and his colleagues – an action which horrified Anglo-Egyptian officials. Zaghloul unrepentantly resumed his demand for an end to the protectorate, and some of the strikes and agitation were resumed. Allenby acted firmly, as London expected, but he already understood, as the British government did not, that the protectorate would have to go. He now welcomed the decision to send out a high-level mission headed by the colonial secretary, Lord Milner, although again the mission’s brief was to study the cause of the disorders and to recommend the form of the constitution which
under the protectorate
, ‘will be best calculated to promote [Egypt’s] peace and prosperity, the progressive development of self-governing institutions and the protection of foreign interests’. In prescient words, Balfour told the House of Commons on 17 November that ‘…the question of Egypt, the question of the Sudan, and the question of the Canal, form an organic and indissoluble whole’ and England was not going to give up any of its responsibilities. ‘British supremacy exists,’ he said; ‘British supremacy is going to be maintained.’

The truth was that the course of the First World War had appeared to justify the British occupation of Egypt and the change in focus of British Middle Eastern policy from Istanbul to Cairo which had occurred almost accidentally in the nineteenth century. It was hardly surprising that in 1919 no British statesman was prepared to contemplate abandoning control of Egypt.

When the British government’s intentions were made known, Zaghloul ordered a boycott of the Milner mission, which spent three disheartening months in Egypt and was everywhere met by hostile demonstrations and demands for Egypt’s complete independence. However, the mission reached some firm and realistic conclusions: that, since it had never been part of the British Empire,
Egypt could not be annexed in the post-war world and had to be recognized as an independent constitutional monarchy. The preservation of British rights and interests would have to be secured by an Anglo-Egyptian treaty to replace the protectorate. This raised the question of who would sign on Egypt’s behalf. Adly Pasha, the prime minister, was a politician of standing but he knew he could not carry the nation without Zaghloul’s support. Adly persuaded Zaghloul to go to London with his mission to work at the details. After several weeks’ discussion, during which both sides made concessions, the basis for a treaty had been reached. Egypt would be independent, with its own diplomatic representatives. Britain would defend Egypt in case of war and, although it would have the right to keep forces on Egyptian soil for the protection of its ‘imperial communications’, this ‘would not constitute in any manner a military occupation of the country or prejudice the rights of the Government of Egypt’.