[BLANK_AUDIO] So, what were the challenges that led to the emergence of Turkish nationalism? In Turkish nationalism, we are talking first and foremost of the pressure that is coming from Europe and the problem of secession by the Christian populated territories in the European part of the empire. Ottomanism failed to keep the Christians inside the empire. During the Tanzimat, we learned about the equality before the law that was passed, and this equality before the law that included Christians and Muslims; was supposed to create a shared Ottoman identity, but it did not. In the face of Christian secession, Sultan Abdulhamid turned to Pan-Islam to strengthen the bonds between the increasingly Muslim empire. As Christian seceded, so the empire became ever more Muslim. But this idea of pan-Islam and uniting the people on the basis of their religion. Was becoming less and less acceptable to the new, Westernizing Turkish elite. They believed in Turkish national solidarity, based on a common language, Turkish, European-style. The empire now was almost entirely Turkish and Arab. Therefore, the emphasis on Turkishness could be a cause of tension with the Arabs, especially after 1908 when the Young Turks came to power. So, though Turkish nationalists, the Young Turks were reluctant to push Turkish nationalism too far not create a break with a very large Arab Muslim population. ?Then who were the Young Turks The Young Turks were young military officers and bureaucrats, the graduates of the Tanzimat and not the usual ,opponents of the Sultan not the local potentates or the unruly tribes or the Christians. And it's the Young Turks who staged a revolution in July 1908, deposed the Sultan in April ,of 1909 and continued with the process of reform in the military with German advisers as they continued like their predecessors, building new schools and adding to legal reform. The Young Turks continued as their predecessors, building a modern infrastructure. Telegraph, roads, and railways, generally modernizing the Ottoman Empire. Government became ever more centralized. Even the development of an effective secret police. Many of the revolutionaries, those who carried out the Revolution of 1908. were military officers organized in an organization that was called The Committee of Union and Progress. In short, the CUP. They sought the salvation of the empire and the restoration of the 1876 Constitution. They believed in Turkish nationalism. on Westernized education and on the implementation on the constitution. There was very impressive impact amongst the Young Turks and others in the Muslim Middle East of the defeat of Russia in 1905 by the Japanese. This was a defeat of a European power by an Asian power. And in looking for the success of the Japanese against the Russians, many in the Middle East focused on the fact that Japan had gone in the direction of constitutionalism, whereas the Russians had not. And therefore, the idea of a constitutional government was gaining ground as a source of collective power. ,But also for the Young Turks constitutionalism meant the steady shift of power into the hands of the army at the expense of both the sultan and the bureaucracy. They also believed that the resumption of parliamentary life would ease European pressure. But it did not. In the Balkans, the Ottomans continued losing ground. And in 1911, the Italians took Tripoli in Libya. In 1912-13, the Ottomans lost nearly all the territory they had left in Europe. In 1913, the CUP assumed complete control, which they had not enjoyed entirely until then. But they didn't manage to do much before the outbreak of the First World War, and that changed a great deal. Since the second half of the 19th century, there had been a steadily increasing interest in the ,history of the Turkish people as well as in the Turkish language, in Turkish literature. Ziya Gokalp, who lived from 1876 to 1924, was the most prominent ideologue of Turkish nationalism. He rejected Ottomanism and made the Turkish nation the basis of his program. But as long as the empire continued to ,exist Turkish nationalism, as a practical political program, had little appeal to the leadership and to the general public. The CUP, those sympathetic and supportive of Turkish nationalism, continued like their predecessors with Ottomanism, centralization and modernization. It would take the end of empire for Gokalp's ideology to become the policy of the new Turkish republic. This emergence of Turkishness, and Turkish nationalism, gives rise to a question of how this all relates to the notorious Armenian tragedy And now we turn to this so called Armenian problem. Since the empire was losing territory all the time, what was left of the empire which essentially was ,the area of Anatolia faced increasing nationalist challenges by others that served to reinforce Turkish identity and nationalist passions. With the loss of the European provinces, Anatolia was established as the heartland of the Turkish-speaking people. And it was the zone of their prospective self-determination. But this allowed for the emergence of the Armenian problem as a potential threat to the Turkish .heartland Anatolia developed impressively like the rest of the empire, especially in the west of Anatolia during the 19th century. Eastern Anatolia remained less developed and there was considerable social and political tension between the Armenians who are Christians, and the Kurds who are Sunni Muslims in the eastern part of Anatolia. There were Armenians in all of Anatolia, but especially in the eastern provinces. ,And during the 19th century an Armenian national consciousness developed very much under the influence of Western sources, especially through the American partisan missionaries who were active amongst the Armenians. The Armenians engaged in provocations against the Ottomans to attract European intervention on their behalf. Cooperation with Russia meant cooperation of the Armenians with the traditional enemy of the Ottomans. Tensions between the Turkish-speaking Muslims and the Armenians rose. And in the last quarter the 19th century, there were massacres of Armenians by Kurdish irregulars of the Ottoman army in the eastern part of Anatolia. A combination of a lack of government control with suspicion towards the Armenians as a national movement that threatened what the Turks had left of their empire. These two came together to allow for a terrible massacre of the Armenians to take place. This terrible massacre took place in the midst of World War One, in the early years of the war. [BLANK_AUDIO] Armenians in eastern Anatolia had fought with the Russians against the Ottomans. Other Armenians had engaged in guerrilla operations and some Armenians populations rose against the Ottomans during the war. In the spring of 1915, with the British ,attacking at the Dardanelles the Russians attacking in the east and the British apparently advancing on Baghdad, the Ottomans decided on the deportation of the Armenians in eastern Anatolia. In the process of this deportation, hundreds of thousands, maybe even one million Armenians or even more perished because of the harsh conditions, dying of hunger, disease and exposure. Many were murdered by local, mainly Kurdish, tribesmen and villagers. Thus what turned into the Armenian Genocide. was part of a larger transition that was taking place in the Ottoman Empire. The transition from communal identity to territorial self-determination. And this had some very unfortunate consequences on the ground. The transition from communal co-existence, where religious communities lived side by side Ottoman style to territorial nationalism, European ,style required some degree of territorial contiguity. The need for communities now to acquire territorial contiguity in the name of self-determination, rather than communities just living side by side, created unavoidable clashes between the mosaic of minorities within the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by horrific bloodshed. The Balkans of those days and latter-day Yugoslavia of the 1990s were one example. The Armenians in Anatolia was another. Not all products of modernity and change had positive results. Some were quite catastrophic. Indeed, the Turkish-Armenian clash was the worst example of this unfortunate reality.
