Parliament: Arabs in Opposition Parties and Issues of Arab Concern

The years 1910–11 were free of external complications for the Ottoman Empire. This allowed the political process embodied in the new constitutional order to take its course in the absence of military upheaval or foreign intrusions. The period witnessed the attempts of the CUP to build confidence and to exert itself more directly and fully in government and, in turn, the formation and growing opposition of rival political groups. Until the end of 1909 the CUP had not confronted an organized opposition. The Ahrar’s challenge had become real after the elections in Parliament but had been suppressed after the counterrevolution. In the next two years factions in Parliament, including some from the ranks of the CUP, began to form political parties.

When order was restored after the revolt of April 1909, the Unionists declared the formation of a Union and Progress Party, a political party distinct from the society bearing the same name.^[46] Along with the internal regulations of the party, the CUP issued in May 1909 a revised political program.^[47] The Unionists hoped that those members of Parliament who were not committed to the CUP and who had supported the opposition before 31 March would opt to identify with the Committee under the rubric of the new party. The intention was not, however, to discipline the Unionist deputies within a rigid political program, which could in turn have encouraged and legitimized opposition. Despite the initiative to move toward a broad-based political organization, the CUP continued to refuse to open up its high-level councils to newcomers, regardless of ethnic background.

Parliament adjourned its first legislative year several days after passing the Law of Association on 16 August 1909. The beginning of the next session witnessed the formation of the new parties. The more prominent of these were the Moderate Liberal Party (Mutedil Hürriyetperveran) and the People’s (Ahali) Party. Arab deputies played a leading role in the Moderate Liberal Party, established in November 1909. This party constituted itself as a conglomeration of national groupings. It might be viewed as a bridge between Ahrar, which ceased its activities after being implicated in supporting the counterrevolution, and the oppositional coalition that called itself Liberty and Entente (Hürriyet ve İtilâf ), which was to be formed at the end of 1911. The dissolution of the Moderate Liberal Party to merge with Liberty and Entente is well documented.^[48] Its organizational or ideological links with Ahrar are more tenuous. The president of the Moderate Liberal Party, İsmail Kemal Bey, an Albanian deputy from Berat (and one of the former leaders of Ahrar), announced that Ahrar had merged with the Moderate Liberal Party under a new program,^[49] but the merger was repudiated by the general secretary of Ahrar in an open letter that announced the dissolution of the Ahrar, published two months after the formation of the Moderate Liberal Party. These contradictory statements could have been viewed as a technicality, had it not been for the important substantive differences in the programs of the two parties.

The Moderate Liberal Party formally placed a number of Arab deputies in the ranks of opposition to the CUP, whereas Ahrar’s Arab sympathizers had not played a role in the organization of that party. In fact, Arab deputies dominated the new party, which also included Albanian, Christian, and a few Turkish deputies. As Albanian parliamentary deputies became identified with the Albanian nationalist movement and party president İsmail Kemal left to join the movement, the Moderate Liberal Party turned into an “Arab party,” though no Arab held its presidency. Nafi‘ served as vice-president, while ‘Abd al-Mahdi (Karbala) and Shafiq al-Mu’ayyad (Damascus) were founding members. The tenor of the Moderate Liberal program^[50] contrasted sharply with the particular action of its founder and first president. The program was fervently Ottomanist, with references to the Ottoman “nation” (millet) and “national” sovereignty (Article 1), and explicitly castigated decentralism as the principle that constituted the prelude to—“God forbid”—the disintegration of Ottoman possessions (Article 2). This language cannot be dismissed as political prudence, because the program begins with quotations from Western scholars of politics (one being from Johann Bluntschli) about the virtues of opposition in a democracy, thus leaving no doubts about the intentions of the founders.

The Arab membership of the Moderate Liberal Party showed great diversity in terms of political outlook during its two-year existence. It was joined on the one hand by supporters of the CUP such as Yusuf Shitwan and Sulayman al-Bustani and on the other by opponents like Shukri al-‘Asali and Sayyid Talib, who formed one of the two branches of the party in Basra. Several of the Arab members were from landed families and were less interested in administrative decentralization than protection of property at a time when uprisings were breaking out in the tribal regions. Article 11 of the program sought the implementation of measures to prevent the Beduin from plundering settled areas.^[51] The party provided a legitimate organizational framework under which Arab deputies could meet after the closure of the Arab-Ottoman Brotherhood and the prohibition by the Law of Association of ethnic-based societies. Baptized in the controversial surroundings of the Lynch concession (see pages 100–102), several members of the party emerged as the most prominent segment of parliamentary opposition to the CUP. The party program included clauses that reflected the interests of Arabists. It stipulated the protection of the language and literature of all Ottoman populations from extinction and expressed the Islamist modernist view of extending support to religious education consonant with modern science (Article 13). Yet, as a whole, the Moderate Liberal program fell short of offering a true alternative to that of the CUP, nor did the party have a cohesive membership.

The People’s Party, which included several Arab members, shared these traits and similarly failed to constitute an ideological alternative to the CUP. This party, however, was more representative in its composition of the liberal trend in İstanbul. In January 1910, when one of its most vocal members, Rıza Nur (deputy from Sinop), was arrested for alleged conspiracy against the government,^[52] the Moderate Liberals and People’s Party jointly petitioned for a parliamentary investigation of the government’s action. The petition, signed by fifteen deputies, carried the signatures of Arab deputies Shafiq al-Mu’ayyad (Damascus), Dawud Yusfani and Muhammad ‘Ali Fazil (Musul), and ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi (Hama), Sa‘id al-Husayni (Jerusalem), and Rushdi al-Sham‘a.^[53]

The new parties were indicative of a general dissatisfaction with the CUP, even though they did not offer a meaningful opposition. A fair appraisal of the condition of political parties in the empire was provided by a prominent opponent of the CUP, Lütfi Fikri (deputy from Dersim), in a speech he wrote in July 1910 for delivery in Salonika. Lütfi Fikri described the CUP contingent in Parliament as a conglomerate lending support to the cabinet under the appearance of a political party.^[54] He maintained that it was also unclear how the recently constituted parties differed from each other and that the three fundamental political currents (the conservative, the moderate, and the left) had yet to crystallize in the Ottoman Empire.^[55] Such differentiation was to occur within the CUP in 1911 temporarily with its splintering into a right (Hizb-i Cedid) and a left (Hizb-i Terakki) wing.^[56]

The various parties and factions that came into being in 1910 and 1911 did not have the ideological or organizational strength to oust the CUP. Their importance lay in impressing on the CUP that it was in need of ideological consolidation. They also demonstrated that an opposition would be capable of asserting itself under a formal party organization in the constitutional regime. Indeed, the various groups that emerged in opposition to the CUP joined forces at the end of 1911 to form the Liberty and Entente Party, which successfully challenged the CUP’s monopoly of political power.

The oppositional party activity in 1910 and 1911 exposed the estrangement of an important group of Arab deputies from the ranks of the CUP. While the convergence of several Arab deputies as the largest single contingent responsible for the formation of the Moderate Liberal Party, and the key role they then played in it, may be construed as an effort by Arabs to assert themselves politically as a national group, there was no ideological basis to this mobilization that would substantiate an Arab political movement. On the whole, Arab deputies remained divided in lending support to the CUP. In March 1911 a vote was taken on a motion by Lütfi Fikri challenging Grand Vizier İbrahim Hakkı Pasha on a cabinet decision that called for an extension of martial law in İstanbul. Of 38 nonabstaining Arab deputies, 19 voted in support of the government and 19 against it in a total tally of 112 to 62 in favor of the cabinet decision.^[57] Clearly, many deputies were shifting to the opposition, but the Arab contingent remained politically divided. Of the Arab deputies whose political inclinations can be identified at this juncture, Sabine Prätor classifies 33 Arab deputies as supporting the CUP and 25 as having joined the opposition.^[58]

During the 1909–10 and 1910–11 annual parliamentary sessions three issues of imperial significance concerned the Arab provinces directly: the Lynch concession, Zionist settlement, and the war with Italy over Libya. In deliberations on all three issues Arab deputies, both from the ranks of the CUP and those who identified with the opposition, participated extensively, as the questions bore upon their constituencies directly or indirectly. More than to the consolidation of discernible Arab collective interests, these issues pointed to the continued diversity of opinion among Arabs. The beginning of the creation of an Arab party group during the first crisis was undercut by the later growth of ideological polarization.

The Lynch Concession

The government’s plan to offer a commercial concession to a foreign enterprise in Iraq triggered a political crisis that pitted Iraqi and a number of other Arab deputies against the government and culminated in the resignation of Grand Vizier Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha. A British navigation company, Lynch Brothers, had operated on the Tigris since 1839.^[59] More than a commercial venture, the Lynch Company signified Britain’s interests in this critical region between its Egyptian and Indian possessions. Toward the end of 1909 the Ottoman government considered the proposed merger of the Ottoman Hamidiye Company (also operating on the Tigris) with Lynch, which would have given the latter a long-term monopoly over river transportation. The Unionists for the most part favored the merger in the hope of receiving a much-needed loan from the British government in return for the concession.^[60] Some Arab deputies interpreted this as a lack of governmental concern for the empire’s Arab territories. They opposed the expansion of British influence in the area, which would not only undermine local trade but also expose the region further to the Anglo-German rivalry in that part of the empire.^[61]

Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha pressed for the endorsement of the merger. Earlier in his career Hüseyin Hilmi had served as mutasarrıf in Karak and in Nablus. In 1898 he had been sent to Yemen to undertake reforms and establish government authority. He did not distinguish himself and was removed from that post in 1902. Immediately following this inglorious service he was appointed inspector of Rumelia. The Arabic Al-khilafa (London) had expressed astonishment about his new appointment and written that Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha’s governorship in Yemen was clearly responsible for the worsening of the situation in that troubled province.^[62] The perception of disservice in the Arab provinces may have reinforced Arab opposition to him.

Hilmi Pasha was only implementing the Committee’s decision. The CUP’s material need for loans and the psychological need for the political support of the liberal European powers were such that it was willing to recognize the British monopoly in the two rivers, which already existed de facto, in return for closer relations. The Committee failed to predict the reaction of local elements, whose economic and political interests the concession jeopardized. By acting in the face of local demands the government not only allowed a political issue to manifest itself as a national one but also set a precedent for Britain to aggravate such differences in an ethnically divisive direction. The concession was opposed by Iraqi deputies, Unionist and non-Unionist alike, including Tanin’s Babanzade İsmail Hakkı. All but four Arab deputies abstained in the vote of confidence that the Chamber granted Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha.^[63] Despite the vote in his favor, the grand vizier resigned his post. Mahmud Shawkat Pasha, an Iraqi himself and like many officers not a friend of Britain, most likely threw his weight for Hüseyin Hilmi’s resignation following the vote.

There was a growing need in the CUP for a grand vizier who was better versed in foreign affairs and someone who could accommodate the will of the Committee and the quest of the army, led by Mahmud Shawkat Pasha, for a greater share of political power. The choice fell on İbrahim Hakkı Pasha, who was serving as ambassador in Rome. Having received his education in the Mülkiye and served in several diplomatic and administrative posts, he offered wide experience and promise to deal with pressing issues confronting the government such as the search for loans, the related Lynch question, and insurgency in different parts of the empire. İbrahim Hakkı had worked on commissions that regulated commercial and diplomatic relations with foreign countries before serving in Young Turk cabinets as minister of education and later minister of the interior.^[64] In his new cabinet he appointed Mahmud Shawkat as the minister of war. İbrahim Hakkı’s first task was to reverse his predecessor’s decision in the Lynch affair.

The crisis over the Lynch concession lasted only two weeks, and when it ended the initiative for merger was scrapped. The crisis revealed much about the state of imperial politics. It pointed to the CUP’s ineptitude in formulating policy and judging local reaction. It thus demonstrated that the CUP’s control over both the central and provincial government was incomplete. The Lynch affair was the first time that a local issue was vigorously pressed against the will of the government in the Chamber. There was remarkable unity against the measure in Iraq. The landlords, the merchants, the tribes, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, and also the local Committees of Union and Progress all opposed the measure.^[65] The Lynch affair gave the fledgling decentralists the opportunity to assert themselves. Future parliamentary leaders of the opposition, such as Lütfi Fikri and Rıza Nur, jumped on the bandwagon. Finally, the Lynch affair revealed that other modes of participatory politics could transcend Parliament. This would not be the first time that a CUP-led vote of confidence failed to forestall a political crisis in the face of extraparliamentary pressures. Local rallies and a petition campaign backed by Iraqi as well as overlapping contingents of Arab and decentralist deputies ultimately obstructed the concession. İstanbul had no choice but respond to pressures from the widening public realm. Interestingly, the Arab deputies would not display similar unanimity in Parliament again. The Lynch crisis developed immediately before the crystallization of parliamentary opposition. Though it partly explains the propensity of the Arabs to join the Moderate Liberals, once ideological divisions between the centralists and the decentralists started to take shape, future political divisions followed those lines.

Jewish Settlement

The second parliamentary showdown between the CUP and its opposition occurred in the spring of 1911. The decentralist opposition launched a frontal attack against the CUP-controlled government by bringing to the agenda the sensitive issue of Zionist settlement, which closely concerned segments of the Arab constituency. The budget discussions, in the context of which the Zionist issue was broached, became also the forum in which Turkish-Arab tensions, concurrently unleashed in the press, were voiced.

At the end of 1910 an article by the owner of the İstanbul daily Al-‘arab, Ubeydullah (deputy for the Anatolian province of Aydın), used language offensive to the Arabs while discussing the rebellion in Asir. Immediately picked up by the increasingly vocal opposition press, this particular article reverberated widely in the Arab provinces. Sharif Husayn, who was waging the war in Asir against Idrisi, expressed his concerns about the article, and the government had to send assurances that Ubeydullah was properly advised.^[66] The opposition press in Beirut and Damascus made the article the launching pad of a systematic antigovernment campaign in an anti-Turkish idiom. The first outburst appeared in ‘Abd al-Ghani al-‘Uraysi’s Al-mufid in Beirut in the form of an anti-Turkish poem. Alarmed by the divisive language, the Ministry of the Interior communicated to the provinces that similar publications should be prevented. It also dispatched to Beirut an official, who spoke Arabic and was expected to render useful service in ending the dispute.^[67] As the Damascus governor Galib Bey reported after five months of this press campaign, some papers had taken it upon themselves to promote the “separation of elements” (i.e., Arab and Turk) by sowing discord and little could be done with the existing press law to suppress such action.^[68]

Other factors contributed to making an assault against the government particularly opportune in the first months of 1911. The winter had been a particularly severe one, especially in northern Syria, causing much suffering and inducing the tribes to raid villages and towns.^[69] More relevant to the issue of Jewish settlements, reports from Jerusalem and Beirut had raised alarm about some families selling land to Jewish immigrants, on which large-scale construction was rumored to be taking place.^[70]

In the spring of 1911 the deliberations on the budget provided the opposition with an opportunity to embark on a multifaceted attack on the CUP government. On 25 February ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi^[71] took the floor to denounce salary increases endorsed in Parliament for some high officials. He dwelled on a proposed increase for the salary of the secretary of the Chamber of Notables and pointed to the wide discrepancy in pay between the highest and lower officials. He concluded that a certain lower-level secretary in the same Chamber, “from the Arab nation that has no representatives in the offices of government,” was being paid less than his colleagues.^[72] This was the first assertion in Parliament that Arabs were underrepresented and underprivileged in state offices, indeed in Parliament itself. During the budget talks the ultimate concern was with finances and these intimations of alleged discrimination were not addressed.

Two sessions later, opposition deputies Lütfi Fikri and İsmail Hakkı (Gümülcine) accused the Unionist government of operating under the influence of Zionists in concluding certain loan agreements and favoring Jews with alleged links to Zionism when granting economic concessions.^[73] İsmail Hakkı referred to Zionism as an appalling malady in the internal politics of the state and went on to describe the goals of Zionism as the establishment of a state extending from Palestine to Mesopotamia through a systematic increase of the number of Jews in those regions.^[74]

The opposition’s charges were taken up on the one hand by the Jewish deputies,^[75] and on the other by Minister of the Interior Talat and Grand Vizier İbrahim Hakkı Pasha. The Jewish deputies rejected the claim that there was an attempt to establish a Jewish government and disavowed any links between Ottoman Jewry and the Zionists. The ministers disclaimed the alleged links of the implicated Ottoman Jews with Zionism. The Arab deputies remained passive during the discussion. The brief interjections by two deputies, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Yusuf (Damascus) and Ruhi al-Khalidi (Jerusalem), served to discredit the arguments of the opposition deputies. But when Ubeydullah, the deputy from Aydın, who had been tainted by his derogatory remarks about Arabs in his Al-‘arab, accused the opposition of being motivated by spite, four Arab deputies—Zahrawi, Khalid al-Barazi (Hama), ‘Abd al-Mahdi (Karbala), and Rida al-Sulh (Beirut)—rallied to the opposition’s support and threatened to leave the floor unless Ubeydullah retracted his words. “We will leave,” al-Sulh declared, “so that you can go ahead and insult the Arabs now.”

On the whole, during this first debate about Zionism, the division of the Arab deputies between the government and the opposition remained the rule. Nevertheless, the parliamentary debate highlighted the Zionist issue, and more attention was paid to it in the Arab provinces in its wake. Palestinian Arabs sent telegrams to Parliament asking for a halt to Jewish immigration. The press took a keener interest in the issue.^[76] For the first time a work written by an Arab, Najib Nassar, on Zionism appeared in Haifa warning of the dangers of Jewish immigration and urging the people to assume greater responsibility to stop the Zionist tide. This increase in public awareness of Zionism led the Arab deputies to take a clear position in the question of Zionist immigration and land purchase. Shukri al-‘Asali, who had carried out an anti-Zionist campaign as kaymakam of Nazareth and was elected to Parliament in the Damascus by-election as these debates were taking place in İstanbul, joined al-Sulh and al-Khalidi in this effort.^[77]

In May 1911 the Arab deputies brought the issue of Zionism to the Chamber during the deliberations on the budget of the Ministry of the Interior. On 16 May Ruhi al-Khalidi took the floor expressing his wish to hear the government’s position on an “internal issue,” namely Zionism, before the budget negotiations started.^[78] He addressed how the Jews had settled in Palestine and acquired property despite legal prohibitions and maintained that this had been possible because of the officials’ corruption. He proceeded with an extended lecture on Zionism. Even though such a lengthy discourse was out of place in the context of the budget talks, his account was heard with interest. The floor, betraying its ignorance on the subject, urged al-Khalidi on as he talked about the difference between Zionism and Semitism, the different origins of Jews, the formation of the first colonies by Russian Jews in Jaffa, Herzl’s and Mendelsohn’s theories, and so on. He also read various telegrams from Ottoman Jewish leaders and societies denouncing Zionism. He cited biblical verses that depicted Palestine as the Jewish promised land, drawing criticism from the Jewish deputies.^[79]

Khalidi was followed by Sa‘id al-Husayni, who dwelled on Jewish land purchases in Jerusalem and urged the government to take more effective measures against Jewish land acquisition. When it was Shukri al-‘Asali’s turn, he proceeded with the same kind of historical introduction to Zionism as al-Khalidi’s. Claiming to speak on the basis of his firsthand experience and investigations, he asserted that three-fourths of Tiberias and one-fourth of Haifa had been acquired by Jews. He accused the government of indifference and of yielding even strategic sites to them. Talat responded that Jews were entitled to buy property anywhere in the empire except in the Hijaz.^[80]

The speeches of the Arab deputies did not create the desired alarm. An Albanian deputy, Hafız İbrahim (İpek), raised objections about procedure and complained that the deputies should not be allowed to make speeches on whatever matter crossed their minds. He said that the question of the Jews was neither novel nor as alarming as presented. He scoffed at the notion that “one hundred thousand Jews who have come to Jerusalem will conquer Syria and Iraq.” According to Hafız İbrahim, the Jews were taking over not territories but the economy, as they had done even in Britain, and added that all of Salonika’s trade was in their hands. Dismissing Rida al-Sulh’s attempts to remind him that the Salonika Jews were not foreigners, he pointed to the fact that the trade of Beirut was also in the hands of foreigners. Instead of resenting the foreigners, he concluded, the Ottomans should try to reach their standards.

The discussion on Zionism came to an abrupt halt and the Chamber proceeded to other matters. The next day, apparently swayed by the representatives of the Zionist movement in İstanbul,^[81] the Bulgarian deputy Dimitri Vlahof took the floor to speak about the potential economic benefits of Jewish immigration.^[82] His statements, at times factually incorrect, met with the protests of Arab deputies. Yet the Arabs were not able to pursue the issue further and apply pressures on the government. The deliberations on Zionism dissipated amidst the broader issue of the budget negotiations.

The unanimity that the Arab deputies had displayed in the Lynch affair was missing during the debates on Zionism, when the battle lines between the centralists and the decentralists were drawn more sharply. Decentralist Arab deputies strengthened the opposition’s assault through periodic outbursts. No sooner had al-‘Asali entered Parliament than he took up the theme of discrimination that had been broached by al-Zahrawi in more militant terms. He decried Arab underrepresentation in state offices, disagreed with the proposition that there was a shortage of properly trained Arabs, and maintained that being Arab was the main reason for rejection when applying for a government post. He demanded legal regulations to ensure the appointment of Arabs to official posts.^[83]

These proceedings in Parliament should be viewed against the background of the articulation of the decentralist agenda in an Arabist idiom outside of Parliament. The press articles in Beiruti and, to a lesser extent, Damascene papers advanced similar demands for upholding Arab interests. Accusations and counteraccusations between the Unionist and the Arabist press started in November 1910 and continued through the entire duration of the parliamentary debates on the budget, Arab discrimination, and Zionism. This period also witnessed a renewed effort to constitute an Arab caucus in Parliament. A meeting was held in the home of Sayyid Talib, one of the decentralist leaders in Parliament and later outside it, with the participation of the majority of Arab deputies.^[84] Presumably, one initiative that came out of this organizational activity was a letter that was secretly relayed to Sharif Husayn of Mecca imploring him to assume the leadership of an anti-Turkish Arab movement.

The deputy governor in Beirut communicated to İstanbul in April his apprehensions about the growing rancor in the press. He impressed on the government that “up to now such national conflict would have been unimaginable here.” He also reported on a meeting he arranged with the owners of local newspapers. The journalists blamed the CUP for the animosity and stated that they were simply responding to the accusations of Turkish papers. The deputy governor expressed concern about foreigners seizing the opportunity to create further division. He urged the Ottoman navy to visit Beirut “to confirm bonds.”^[85] The Ministry of the Interior replied that a delegation would be sent at the end of the parliamentary session. The despatch of this delegation would have to wait until the election campaign of the following year.

Libyan War

Italy’s declaration of war against the Ottoman government in September 1911 broke the quiet on the international front, jolting the Ottoman government and public opinion. Arab deputies and the opposition accused the cabinet of neglect both in its appraisal of Italian foreign policy and in securing the defense of the Libyan provinces. İstanbul had recalled the Tripoli commander İbrahim Pasha and moved troops and ammunition from Libya for use against the Yemen rebellion.^[86] The government came under particularly heavy attack from the Libyan deputies. Foreign invasion of provinces where Ottoman sovereignty had never been disputed and the population was exclusively Muslim had a profound psychological effect on the government and the people of the empire.

İstanbul’s concern with domestic political issues and provincial unrest rendered Libya vulnerable to attack from Italy, which had been waiting for the opportune moment to join the colonial scramble. Despite Italy’s apparent military superiority and tactical advantages, the Ottoman government fought Italian aggression with all resources that were available. The most promising and best-trained officers, including Enver and Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk), were sent to Libya. Since Italian naval superiority hampered the mobilization of troops in the Mediterranean and the Egyptian administration did not allow troop movements through Egypt, Libyan militias and tribal forces played the leading role in the fight against the Italians. İstanbul engaged in a sustained effort to preclude Italian annexation, but it failed as a result of a more ominous threat from the Balkan countries in the fall of 1912.

The argument that the Unionist government attached little importance to the Arab provinces and hence dismissed Libya too easily is not convincing. A corollary of this view holds that the Italian War was an eye-opener for Arabs who after 1911 concluded that a government dominated by Turks would sooner or later dispense with the Arab regions of the empire; thus were the Arabs driven to autonomist, if not separatist, programs. A more plausible argument maintains that the Italian War showed that the Ottoman Empire could no longer realistically defend itself against even the weaker European states, and that at a time of growing tensions between European coalitions an isolated Ottoman Empire would either perish or diminish. Therefore, some Arabs came to the conclusion that independence from İstanbul might spare them this grim eventuality.^[87]

The Italian crisis had a unifying effect at the beginning. The unwarranted aggression galvanized Muslim Ottoman public opinion and rallied Muslims to the defense of the caliphate. The Revue du Monde Musulman reported that the Arabs were the first ones to forget their hatred of the Turks and that the CUP was actually able to profit from the war to maintain its position of power at a time of mounting opposition within Parliament and outside.^[88] The expression of support from around the empire was overwhelming.^[89] From Iraqi and Syrian tribes (including the Rwala shaykh who was reported to command 20,000 cavalry) to a retired brigadier in Aleppo, from Kurdish leader Seyyid Abdülkadir to Algerian and Tunisian immigrants in Syria, thousands of Ottomans volunteered to actively join the fight. In Baghdad large crowds gathered in front of the town hall while leading religious scholars pledged material support by forming commissions to recruit volunteers and to raise funds. There were donation drives in Acre and Tripoli (Syria). Progovernment Druze chief Shakib Arslan’s patriotic appeals echoed in the poetic rhetoric on Islamic bonds among the people of Kirkuk in Kurdish Iraq. A telegram of support and sympathy from Baghdad decried the “unseemly attack at a time when all were striving in the path of civilization irrespective of nationality [cins] or religion.”

İstanbul tried to subdue this initial outburst of enthusiasm, commending the patriotic sentiments while at the same time conveying the impression that the situation was under control. The antigovernment criticism in Parliament seemed out of touch with the sentiments pouring into the capital. In general, the opposition’s momentum dissipated in the face of the national emergency. Popular Ottomanist sentiments aroused by the war convinced the CUP to prevail upon Grand Vizier Said Pasha, who had replaced İbrahim Hakkı at the outbreak of war, to maneuver for early elections.