Treaty of Sèvres (1920); World War, 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions -- Turkey; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
Jemal Pasha is of Turkish descent. He left the War Academy as Captain
of the Staff, and married the daughter of Bekir Pasha, who commanded a
division of the second army garrisoned at Adrianople. This Bekir Pasha
had risen from the ranks, and when he was still a non-commissioned
officer had throttled Midhat Pasha with his own hands. It has
been wrongly stated that his father was the public executioner at
Constantinople during the reign of Mahmoud II. Whereas Talaat’s and
Enver’s manners were distant, Jemal professed to be affable and strove
to please, though he was very cruel at heart. He was looked upon as a
friend of France when he came to Paris in 1914 to raise the Ottoman
loan. He was appointed military governor of Constantinople after Nazim
Pasha’s murder, January 10, 1913, in which he and Talaat and Enver had
a share; then he became Minister of Marine.
Talaat fully represented the Committee of Union and Progress, and
was supported by it, but Enver and Jemal, though also members, did
not make use of their connection with the party. Indeed Enver, who
disagreed with Talaat, had nothing to do with the party after he had
been appointed War Minister, and when he was called upon to resign
during the war, he retained his office with the support of Germany.
Only the difficulties which the Empire experienced could have brought
together three men who were actuated by such widely different motives;
at any rate the omnipotence of the Union and Progress Committee, which
even caused some liberals to regret the passing of the old régime, was
contrary to the constitutional system which the party had purposed to
institute in Turkey.
Though the leaders of the Unionist movement drove Turkey to the verge
of ruin, yet the movement itself to a certain extent aroused in the
Turkish people a consciousness of their rights, which they had nearly
given up under the control of foreign countries; the movements of
opinion brought about, and even the reaction that set in finally,
roused that national feeling, which found expression soon after the
events of the last war.
* * * * *
It must be acknowledged that the Capitulations, the extension of
which led to the improper interference of foreign nations in the
home affairs of the Ottoman State and gave them a paramount power
over it, formed one of the chief causes of the modern ruin of Turkey,
by weakening and disintegrating it. The extension of the economic
Capitulations was made possible by the carelessness of the Mussulmans
in commercial matters, and by their natural indolence, while the
extension of the judicial Capitulations, which originated in a Moslem
custom dating from the Middle Ages, seems to have been due to the
condescension of the Sultans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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