The way the Middle East is planted is the sapling of endless conflict
Where is the beginning of the violence that the people of the world have been witnessing in the Middle East for almost a century? The German historian Bernhard Zend showed that its seeds were sown during the First World War. The Arab Spring, which is currently hoping for a positive change in the minds of millions of people across the Middle East, will not bring any final solution to the region. In fact, the seeds of the endless conflict that were sown in the region during the First World War are a form of spring.
World War I ended in 1918. But the war that sparked the violence in the Middle East has not stopped. For their own benefit, the colonial powers have drawn a tactical frontier here, which the people of the region have not yet been able to overcome.
Syria is in its third year of civil war. The 4th Division of the Syrian army is firmly entrenched in the Casion Mountains area of Damascus. It is said that this is where Cain killed Abel. According to a US missile expert, the gas rocket that struck the Muadamia and Ain Tarma areas on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, 2013, was fired from somewhere in Mount Casino. The attack claimed the lives of 1,400 people. Many such attacks have claimed millions of lives since the beginning of the conflict.
Baghdad. U.S. forces set up a so-called green zone just behind the Old Palace area on the sharp bend of the Tigris River. Two years after the withdrawal, control of the zone has returned to Iraqi control. When the chaos in Iraq escalated after the invasion, the Americans took refuge in this green zone. Even after so many days, the situation has improved slightly. Death has become casual in the 'red zone on the other side of the wall. Last year, the number was more than 6,200.
Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, is a favorite place for all Arabs. The city has long been a mixed symbol of Arab culture and conflict. Religious or secular, Muslim or Christian, Shia or Sunni are all here. The conflict in Libya and Syria, given the ongoing instability in Egypt and Iraq, raises the question: has the threat of a conflict surpassed Beirut; Or will he become the next center of violence?
Two years after the 2011 uprising, the Middle East has never been more depressing. It goes without saying that there is no country in the region that has not had a war or an internal crisis in the last few decades. It is unlikely that they will be free of violence in the near future. The movement known as the Arab Spring is also lost in the quicksand of counter-insurgency.
This counter-uprising will only surprise those who saw the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria only as a historic turning point in the Middle East. In fact, it is just a recent chapter in a century-long regional conflict. And in that sense, it will never end.
Children of England-France
The conflict of World War I and its aftermath is not as relevant today as they were in the Middle East. Nowhere else in the world has a war that took place at the turn of the twentieth century been so influential as a political one. The so-called European Civil War began in 1914 and devastated the whole of Europe in 1945. The Cold War ended in 1990. But the intensity of the poison that World War I spread in the Arab world has remained the same. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, crushing some of the more indigenous and relevant facts of Europe. The Middle East is now in the same predicament as Europe was in the aftermath of the treaty.
In Africa, Latin America, or bloody post-World War II Europe, where history has drawn the map of the state, people have somehow accepted it. The only exception is the Middle East. The states that have been born in the region since 1914, the way the map has been divided, are still illegal to many people in the region. Recognition of the state and the map of the modern Middle East must come from the depths of a long tradition, from the ruling class and the founders of various regimes, the legends, and their successors. Otherwise, this map will not be meaningful. This is the comment made by the American historian David Fromkin in his article 'A Peace to End All Peace.
Egypt and Iran are the only two countries in the Middle East to have a long history. Although there is a big problem, there is no fear of shaking the foundations of the two states. The other two countries are Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The founders of these two states are two historical rulers. Turkey was formed by Mostafa Kemal Atatrk. And the foundation of Saudi Arabia was strengthened in 1932, by the hand of Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud.
These four states surround the center of the Middle East, where there are five countries and one permanent ‘state’. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. In Fromkin's language, they are the children of England and France.
Nowhere else in the world can such a group be found, which, despite its small size, has witnessed so many wars, civil wars, power struggles, and terrorist attacks in recent times. In order to understand the mystery of this conflict, a number of issues need to be considered. The history of the region's deprivation before the First World War, the failure of the Arab socialist or ruling class, the continued intervention of superpowers, the role of political Islam, the discovery of oil, the establishment of the state of Israel, and the Cold War.
In search of ultimate peace
Perhaps the most important thing is the agreement between Britain and France. These two European colonial powers literally cut their mark on the sands of the Middle East-desert for their own needs and interests. The British historian James Barr also named his book on the Middle East 'A Line in the Sand' from this idea. The book was published in 2011.
There is no clear way yet, where the Arab Spring will take us and what will happen in the Middle East. The borders of the Middle East countries will be more integrated, the political structure will be better, it is expected, but the fear of more horrific clashes is rising at the same level. But what is the source of this crisis of legitimacy and lack of mutual trust? How to reach the desired peace that Fromkin calls the end of all other peace.
The summer of 1914. Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, was then about half a-distance from the Imperial Villa in Isle, where Emperor Joseph I of France signed his "Two My People" manifesto. World War I began with the declaration of war against Siberia. For many centuries the Ottomans ruled the southern and eastern Mediterranean from Alexandria to Arish and from the Maghreb to Suez. But in 1911, Algeria and Tunisia came under French rule, and Egypt was occupied by the British. On the other hand, Italy established a base in Libya. By the time World War I broke out, the Ottoman Empire had shrunk. Within the empire, except Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula stretched from Iraq in the Middle East to Yemen.
This region of present-day southern Turkey was the main battlefield in the Middle East during World War I. The region has been steeped in history for 400 years. But in the early twentieth century, they became the epicenter of the crisis. When the names of Basra, Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Gaza, or Suez are uttered, the image of a few generations of violence and catastrophe comes to the fore.
Unaware of World War I, the rear of the Ottoman Empire floated on the world's largest oil reserves. If he had known, the war in the Middle East would have become more violent and more brutal. At that time, the goal of the war was that, according to the plan of the world order, it would last only four years. Great Britain's goal was to build a navigable route with friendly Russia. At the same time, they wanted to maintain good communication with India through the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf. But the Germans wanted just the opposite.
From the center to the border
Joseph of France declared war. But for some time there was no way to understand whether the Ottoman Empire would join the war. If so, which side? But the confusion did not last long. Shortly after the start of the conflict, Istanbul joined Berlin and Vienna. On August 2, the Germans and the Ottomans signed a secret treaty. Shortly afterward, two German warships, the SMS Gibbons and the SMS Breslau sailed from the western Mediterranean to Istanbul. Upon arrival at the destination, the two ships were handed over to the Ottoman Navy. Ottoman on paper but still neutral. The two German ships were renamed Yavuz and Midili. The German crew of the ship remained. They just changed their clothes.
The presence of two warships in the Golden Horn area and the launch of mines in the Dardanelles area was enough to start the war in that area. The Ottoman-German alliance cut off French and British contact with Russia. Shortly afterward, the Ottoman-flagged Gibbon bombed a Russian-controlled port in the Black Sea. And why the delay. Russia, Great Britain, and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire in early November.
The plan went to London. How to break the barricade at Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. Such thoughts work. Three months later, a British-French fleet emerged south of the Gallipoli Peninsula. In the beginning, the bomb was targeted only at the Navy. But in the end, it turned into a full-fledged land war. But the result was not in favor of the British. The attack failed dramatically. Britain's First Lord Winston Churchill was forced to resign after the Ottoman conquest. And the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. On the other hand, the war became a national catastrophe for Australia and New Zealand. Because thousands of their soldiers died in Gallipoli.
The defeat of the British-French at Gallipoli brought about a major strategic shift in the Middle East War. As the attack on the nucleus of the Ottoman Empire failed, they caught sight of the surrounding areas where the security of the Arab states was relatively weak. Apart from that, the desire of many Arabs for liberation from Ottoman rule is still lingering. That was better for the British-French alliance in the war against Istanbul. In July 1915, the Egyptian High Commissioner, Sir Henry McMahon, secretly began contacting the Hejaz and the Holy Meccan Sheriff Hussein bin Ali. Hussein and his three children, Ali, Faisal, and Abdullah, joined the ruling class in Damascus and dreamed of establishing a great Arab nation. The Arab state of their dreams stretched from the Taurus Mountains on one side to the Red Sea in southern Turkey on the other, from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border.
In October 1915, McMahon sent a letter to Hussein. He wrote that Great Britain was ready to recognize and support an independent Arab state in the area planned by Mecca Sheriff Hussein, subject to certain conditions.
Colonial bargaining
The Arabs fulfilled their part in the treaty. In June 1917, the Arabs launched a campaign against the Ottomans. It was very helpful for the British to reach Damascus from Sinai via Jerusalem. The revolt was further fueled by Thomas Edward Lawrence, a British archaeologist and member of the intelligence service at the time. Who later became known as Lawrence of Arabia. Britain, however, has not fulfilled its part of the agreement. In a message in early 1918, Lawrence wrote that the Arab uprising would be helpful to the British Empire because it would help us break up the Islamic world and defeat the Ottomans and end their rule. But in no way did the British want a united Arab state, as Hussein and his sons had dreamed of. Lawrence Aira writes that the establishment of a state of aspiration for the sheriff would be a legacy of Turkey but would be detrimental to Britain. The Arabs are less stable than Turkey. Properly controlled, they will outwardly become political, but their mutual violence will not allow them to come together.
France was more important to the British than handing over arms to Arab friends. Because on the western battlefield, the French army was fighting side by side and the British army was giving its life. Later, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George told his French friend Georges Clemenceau that "friendship with France is the equivalent of ten Syrians to Britain."
Great Britain could rule the whole region alone, agreeing to share the spoils of war with France in the face of power like Germany. Even when McMahon was talking to Sharif Hussein, Sir Mark Sykes, a British MP, was arguing with French diplomat Francis Georges-Picot on the exact opposite issue.
They were counting on the Arab kingdoms which were still under the Ottoman Empire. According to their calculations, the northern regions would be dominated by France and the southern regions by Britain. When Sykes was briefing the whole thing on Downing Street in late 1918, he remarked: ‘I want to draw a line from Accra A to Kirkuk A. The so-called Sykes-Picot deal was a testament to the shameless colonial mentality. There is no harm in the interests of those who are squabbling over land, their will or reluctance in the agreement, those living through small ethnic groups, or mutual understanding. One hundred years after the beginning of the conflict in the Arab Kurdish region, its intensity has remained the same. As James Barr wrote: "Even in those days it was a shameless selfish deal."
Belfort rearrangement
The document was kept secret at the time. The Bolsheviks staged a coup in Moscow in 1917. They revealed the subject of the Sykes-Picot agreement. But the British had struck another secret deal in those days, the news of which the Arabs did not know, even France was in the dark.
On November 2, 1917, Foreign Minister Arthur James Belfort promised the Zionist Federation of Great Britain that a national home for Jews would be built in Palestine. There were several reasons why Britain agreed to allocate a piece of the Ottoman Empire to neglected Jews. An important reason was that with the escalation of the war, allegations of colonial treatment against Britain were increasing. The British cabinet was not concerned about this. But the matter was in their consideration. Their concerns are heightened, especially after the re-election of Woodrow Wilson as US President.
Before the United States joined the war, Woodrow Wilson declared in January 1918, "Every nation should have its own development, freedom to make its own decisions without hindrance, without threat, and without fear." Wilson still did not know about the Sykes-Picot deal. But the British thought that in the end, they should have a clean image in their relations with the new country. With that in mind, Belfort was declared to hide the naked colonial appearance of the Middle East from America.
Meanwhile, with the help of the Arabs, the British were continuing their military preparations. Against Ottoman and German resistance, they advanced from Sinai and Palestine to Damascus. At the same time, they advanced towards the Euphrates. Occupied Iraq. From 1915 to 1917, more than 1.5 million troops fought in the Middle East. There were hundreds of casualties. It is estimated that one million American soldiers were killed or starved to death in the Ottoman Empire.
The ceasefire in October 1918 marked the end of World War I in the region. The Ottoman Empire was defeated. With the exception of Anatolia, the whole of the empire was divided between Britain and its allies. At the same time, it is a strange kind of peace process that has been going on for centuries, destroying the peace that has been going on for centuries.
When US President Wilson arrived in Paris in early 1919 for peace talks with British Prime Minister Lloyd George and French leader Clemenchu, he witnessed a number of things that he did not expect. The two victorious superpowers were extremely divided and engaged in a fierce battle of words. France demanded that they give control of present-day Lebanon, which extends to Syria and the Tigris. Eventually, it was included in the Sykes-Picot agreement.
Ask the crowd
The opposition is Britain, which is still embroiled in controversy over its actions in Palestine. The real picture of oil resources in Mesopotamia, on the other hand, has just begun to emerge. Britain's promise to the Arabs at the beginning of the war to bring Syria under French rule is a clear violation of that promise. Without it, Britain would have had to fight in the Middle East alone. About 11 lakh 25 thousand soldiers were killed there. Lloyd George was saying so, Syria will be England's, there is no chance to question here.
Wilson pointed out the way. To find out if the Syrian people will be under French rule, Palestine and Mesopotamia, or British rule, the people of the region will have to ask directly. The idea is very simple and clear. For two months, Chicago businessman Charles Crane and American theorist Henry King traveled the Middle East. They spoke to hundreds of Arab elites. Although Britain and France had no way to influence them, the results of their search were clear. Syria has no desire to remain under French rule. And the Palestinians did not like to be subject to the will of the British. The rest is Mesopotamia. There, however, Britain was able to dissuade Americans from public opinion polls.
King and Crane presented their report in August. They suggested that Syria and Palestine should come out of the European colonial power and collectively be under a third neutral power, the United States. Hussein's son Faisal, whom they consider tolerant and wise, will be made head of the Arab states. News of the King-Crane report may now be known only to Middle Eastern experts. But it was, in fact, the greatest lost opportunity in the history of the Middle East. But pressure from Britain and France on the one hand, and Wilson's serious illness in September 1919 on the other, led to the report being frozen.
Which saw the face of light three more years later. In those days, London and Paris finished drawing new maps of the Middle East. Where King and Crane had no place to recommend. France divided their territory into Lebanon and Syria. Great Britain, on the other hand, became part of Mesopotamia, which they later renamed Iraq. In those days, however, Britain swallowed the oil-rich Mosul. A buffer state was formed between Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Named Transjordan. Britain emerged from the Arab state promised to Hussein, and the victorious power divided the Middle East into four states, geographically divided, ethnically and ideologically divided into four of the world's most complex states that are still difficult to govern.
The ill-effects of chronic catastrophe
They knew what was destroying them. Just before the agreement, the question arose as to where the northern border between Palestine and Israel would be. One of his advisers wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Lloyd George in London: ‘The truth is that any kind of division from Aleppo to Mecca would be unusual. So no matter how you share, you need to keep in mind the real needs. The strategy will show the way. 'In the end, the final decision came from the head of a British general. He was assisted by a director of the Ingo-Persian oil company.
Of course, the Arab world is not the only place where borders have been drawn, ignoring local opinion. The same thing has happened in Europe. But the division of the Middle East caused fatal and lasting consequences there. First, while Europe was busy building their national and political class identities in the early 19th century, World War I knocked the Arab world out of the abyss of its history. Ottoman rule in the Middle East was loose. Apart from that, they did not try to build any kind of political structure, intellectual or economic class in those areas.