Turkish-Syrian Relations in the Time of Faisal 1918-1920

Authors : Sina Akşin

Pages : 1-17

Doi:10.1501/Intrel_0000000231

View : 17 | Download : 0

Publication Date : 1980-05-01

Article Type : Research

Abstract :Husain, Sharif of Mecca, on the strength of an agreement with the British, embodied in the so-called MacMahon correspondence, revolted against the Gttoman government on June lA, 1916, in the middle of the Great war. Reading the Memoirs of his son, King Abdullah, one is frequently reminded by the writer that the quarrel of the Hashimites was not with the Gttoman state but with the Committee of Union and Progress (CUp).l Specifically, Abdullah's quarrel is, on the one hand, with the CUP's policies of Turkish nationalism which tried to exclude the Arabs and/or to Turkicize them, and, on the other hand, with the policy of reducing the power of feudalism from the Suıtan down to the the local Sheikh (in other words, democratization). (One important issue closely related to the latter was modernization: the Hashimites, for instance, were opposed to the completion of the Hijaz railwayJ How far Abdullah was sincere in his protestations of loyalty to the Ottoman state, we cannot know for certain. What is clear is that the CUP was an instrument of Turkish nationalism and that, at least for some time, it did try to follow a policy of Turkincation which aroused reactions not onlyamong Arabs, but also among other Moslem peoples, most notably the Albanians.
Keywords : Turkish-Syrian Relation, Time of Faisal, 1918-1920