Abstract:
This study aims to expose the ways in which leading officials of the Committee
of Union and Progress (the CUP) interpreted, internalized, and questioned the
conditions of their mission in Arab lands during World War I (WWI). It builds on the
memoirs of Falih Rıfkı, aide-de-camp of Commander-in-Chief Cemal Pasha, and
Halide Edip, an ardent supporter of the social and educational reforms of the CUP
government. Both written after the war, these memoirs reflect not only nostalgia
and regret but also the complicated relationship between Turkish officials and
Arabs on the eve of their breakup from one another as citizens of the Ottoman State.
The study also questions the orthodox argument that the Turkist and anti-Arabic
ideology of the CUP government in general and Cemal Pasha’s wartime crusade
against Arab nationalists in particular triggered the emergence of Arab nationalism.
By contemplating the memoirs of CUP members in Arab lands, this study argues
that Falih Rıfkı, Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip tried to understand the region and
its people in order to create a mutual future for Turks and Arabs within the Ottoman
Empire.
