Hamidiye (cavalry)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hamidiye fighters in Gumgum village

The Hamidiye or Hamidije were a cavalry force of the Ottoman Empire , which was set up in 1891 by Sultan Abdülhamid II from Kurdish nomads and semi-nomads as well as from East Anatolian Turkic peoples such as Turkmen and Yörüken , represented an important addition to the army and, in particular, was used to fight rebellions in Eastern Anatolia found.

prehistory

The establishment of the Hamidiye can be seen against the background that the loyalty of the Kurds to the Sultan should be promoted in order to maintain police control in the face of the threat to the eastern provinces, especially from Russia and in view of the engagement and ambitions of Great Britain in the " Armenian question " To effectively guarantee Eastern Anatolia: In the Russo-Ottoman Wars of 1828/1829 and 1877/1878 , parts of the Ottoman eastern provinces were occupied by Russian troops. The Armenian secessionism in the east of the Ottoman Empire was of Russia - according to the Slavic model in the West - stoked, so that even the Russian invasion 1877/1878 had been under Armenian assistance. After Great Britain had expressed its interest in the “Armenian question” at the Berlin Congress in 1878 , groups of Armenian “terrorists” were active in Constantinople and in the East in the 1880s , and in 1880 Sheikh Ubeydallah von Nehrî led a rebellion for the establishment of a Kurdish one When the state sought support from Great Britain, the Kurds' loyalty to the sultan's caliph, which is now also questionable, had to be strengthened.

Origin and dissolution

While the sultans usually relied on modernization by foreign advisors for the overdue reform of the Ottoman military , Abdülhamid, who tried to Islamize Western elements, created this new cavalry based on an outdated model. According to the historian van Bruinessen, the Cossacks were the model for Hamidiye , named after the Sultan . The Hamidiye also recalled the Akıncı cavalry of the 17th century or the Başı Bozuk , which were known in western depictions for the atrocities in Bulgaria . Even if Abdülhamit generally pursued a continuation of the reforms of his predecessors to settle the nomads and to detribalize, the establishment of the Hamidiye seemed to run diametrically against these efforts. The establishment of this tribal militia or gendarmerie was to ensure police control in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire under the command of the tribal leaders. It was originally set up to counteract the Russian Cossack forces in the Crimea on the one hand and to keep the tribes concerned under control on the other hand, by making them the responsibility of the new organization. The cavalry was first formed in the nomadic areas that touched the Russian border in the Vilâyets Van , Bitlis and Erzurum . Despite the rapid growth of the Hamidiye and their efforts to combat alleged "terrorism" in eastern Anatolia, proposals to use similar methods in other parts of the empire were never implemented. After Abdülhamid II was deposed by the Young Turks , the system of the Hamidiye - i.e. the sultan's loyal followers - finally fell out of use and was abolished by the Young Turks, who demoted the sons of Kurdish tribal chiefs who were appointed officers in the regular army were. However, since Kurdish tribal units could not be dispensed with as a supplement to the regular army - especially on the eastern border - in view of security problems, the Young Turks soon felt compelled - especially in the First Balkan War of 1912/13 - to rename the units under the name "militia" to revive and integrated them more strongly into the army, so that their new status hardly differed from that of the Hamidiye . Regiments of this militia then fought with heavy losses in the Balkan Wars , on the " Eastern Front " in World War I and in the Turkish Liberation War . The nationalist Kurdish organization Azadi ("Freedom"), founded in Turkey in 1923, recruited its members from among its commanders , who were to play an important role in the great Kurdish uprising of 1925 after the abolition of the caliphate by Mustafa Kemal .

Organization, character and scope

The first formation in the border areas with Russia already had a number of conscripts of around 50,000 men who were divided into regiments of 768 to 1,152 men each. Initially divided into 30 regiments of 600 men each, the Hamidiye grew very quickly (1892: to 40 regiments, 1893: to 56 regiments) and by the end of the 19th century reached a number of over 60 regiments of 800 to 1,500 men each. Each tribe provided one or more regiments, while smaller tribes provided composite regiments. The youths usually entered the Hamidiye at the age of 17 , served as trainees for three years, then remained in the service of the regular associations ( nizam ) until the age of 30 , after which they were in reserve until the age of 40 Units have been connected. The Hamidiye units were not ready for action at all times. Recruited men were only paid if they were in active service, but they and their families were exempt from all taxes with the exception of tithe and cattle tax. Weapons, it was believed, were only made available to them when used for combat, but in practice most managed to keep their traditional weapons. The new battalions or regiments were led by tribal chiefs, who were, however, assigned regular Ottoman inspectors for training and supervision. A tribal school ( Aşiret Mektebi ) was established for the training of local Turkmen and Kurdish officers, but no more than 15 men graduate each year. Some nomad officers without an officer license were also sent to the regular cavalry and military schools for training and - when they returned to their native units - provided most of the commanders there. The military hierarchy was similar to that in the regular army and knew the onbaşı (German about "leader of ten") and the yüzbaşı (German about "leader of a hundred", "captain"). Unlike the externally similar Cossack troops of the Tsar , the Kurdish and Turkish tribes from which had Hamidiye had been recruited, lived by the highway robbery by the Sultan as a combat unit before use. In the mountains of Erzurum in particular , the Kurdish troops in the Hamidiye maintained a high degree of independence and, under the sign of Islam, used their armament and organization in regiments for bloody attacks against the Christian Armenians . As a “tribal gendarmerie”, they saw their “national” identity and traditional opposition to the westernization pursued by the Tanzimat as confirmed by their sultan and caliph , who did not take any measures to counter fanaticism.

Use, impact and evaluation

In addition to suppressing the still moderately increased, separatist Armenian activities, the establishment and deployment of the Hamidiye regiments aimed at controlling the Kurds, who were to be obliged to rob the Sultan through the highly respected salaried employment and the factually effective toleration . The Sultan was actually venerated by the Kurds concerned as Bavê Kurdan ("Father of the Kurds"). The mutual playing off of the Kurdish tribes for the purpose of Ottoman control over them - as, for example, contemporary British consuls in the region saw it as an intended effect - had only been partially achieved. The number of documented feuds between the tribes in the years 1893/1894 had increased compared to previous years. However, the acquisition of competencies in the Hamidiye for the tribal leaders used as officers resulted in an apparently inadequate increase in power, which they obviously also misused for their own interests and which also led to a shift in the balance of power within the tribes of the region. Both the high prestige pay as Hamidiye commander and the availability of weapons gave individuals such advantages over their rivals that at least two leaders were able to achieve positions of power that posed a potential threat even to the state. These were the Mistefa Pascha of the Mîran, who is still in high regard in the region today, and the second Ibrahîm Pascha , the head of the great Milan Confederation, who became famous abroad as "the uncrowned King of Kurdistan" for his legendary robbery and that influential son Mehmûd 1919 was still traded as a suitable candidate for rule in a Kurdish vassal kingdom, the establishment of which the British were planning at the time.

The Hamidiye is notorious for the role she played in the first series of massacres of the Armenians (1894–1896). When in 1894 the movements of Armenians in exile - after three years of terrorism and counter-terrorism - led to Armenian uprisings in the Sasun district (south of Mus ) against the tax system favoring the Kurds, their crackdown by Hamidiye troops culminated in "massacres" (or " Counter massacres ”) against Armenians, who were particularly accused by the British of the Ottoman government. While, according to Shaw & Shaw (1977), for example, the initiative did not come from the central government but from the Ottoman troops and local commanders, van Bruinessen (1989) assumes that the orders for the attacks and raids on the Armenian villages are mostly was given by the Sultan, although he admits that not only were no systematic evictions or exterminations attempted, but on the contrary civil authorities tried to repair some of the damage caused by the militias. In any case, however, the use of the Hamidiye as “militant” Muslims by Abdülhamid II encouraged the major European powers to largely condemn and reject Abdülhamid. The sultan was charged with ordering the annihilation of 25 villages and the execution of 20,000 Armenian villagers. Even if international studies have shown that the allegations were exaggerated, the European public and politics could only be dissuaded from intervening when the Sultan protested his willingness to reform. In Asia Minor, however, the Hamidiye's work left a lasting legacy of racist and religious hatred that continued well into the 20th century.

literature

So far there are very few scientific studies about the Hamidiye, their origins and history, and they are exclusively in Turkish. Furthermore, it is fundamental:

  • Bayram Kodaman: Hamidiye Hafif Süvari Alayları. (II. Abdülhamid ve Dogu-Anadolu Aşiretleri). Tarih Dergisi. 32 , 1979, pp. 427-480.

While Kodaman (1979) evaluated Ottoman archive materials, Shaw & Shaw (1977) based their taut presentation on contemporary British consular reports from Eastern Anatolia:

  • Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975. In: Stanford J. Shaw (ed.): History of the Ottomoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1977, ISBN 0-521-21449-1 , pp. I-XXV, pp. 1-518, here p. 246.

The well-known work by van Bruinessen, who carried out field studies himself in the mid-1970s, is based on his dissertation (1978), which, like its German translation and adaptation (1989), does not yet take into account certain results from Kodaman (1979):

  • Martin van Bruinessen: Agha, Sheikh and State - Politics and Society of Kurdistan. Pp. 247-253.

Probably reflects the current state of research

  • Hendrik Fenz: The Hamidiye Militias: Borderlands out of control. In: Hendrik Fenz (Hrsg.): Structural constraints - personal freedoms. Ottomans, Turks, Muslims: reflections on social upheavals. Commemorative ribbon in honor of Petra Kappert . (= Studies on the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient, Vol. 21) Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-020055-3 , pp. 105–126.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruno Öhrig: Opinions and materials on the history of the Karakeçili Anatolia. In: Matthias S. Laubscher (Ed.): Münchener Ethnologische Abhandlungen. 20 , Akademischer Verlag, Munich 1998 (Edition Anacon), at the same time inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree in philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-932965-10-8 , p. 36, among others with Reference to Ş. Beysanoğlu: Ziya Gökalp´in İlk Yazı Hayatı - 1894–1909. Istanbul 1956, pp. 164-168.
  2. ↑ See German-language Wikipedia, article “Yörük”, section “ Origin and immigration to Asia Minor ”, version ID 31139363.
  3. ↑ a b c Erik J. Zürcher: Turkey - A Modern History. Tauris, London / New York 1998, ISBN 1-86064-222-5 , p. 169.
  • ( MvB ) Martin van Bruinessen: Agha, Sheikh and State - Politics and Society of Kurdistan. Ed. Parabolis, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88402-259-8 .
  1. ↑ p. 248: van Bruinessen mentions the "occasional" recruitment of a "Turkish" tribe ("Quarapapakh")
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k p. 248.
  3. ↑ a b c d p. 252.
  4. ↑ a b p. 252f.
  5. ↑ a b p. 467, footnote 173.
  6. ↑ a b p. 253.
  7. ↑ pp. 253, 403.
  8. ↑ p. 249, footnote 169, p. 487, with reference to Bayram Kodaman, Hamidiye hafif Süvarî alayları (II. Abdülhamit ve Doğu-Anadolu aşiretleri), Tarih Dergisi, 32 , 1979, pp. 427-480.
  9. ↑ a b p. 248f.
  10. ↑ a b c d p. 249.
  11. ↑ p. 249, with reference to S. Duguid, The politic of unity: Hamidian policy in Eastern Anatolia , Middle Eastern Studies, 9/2, pp. 139–156.
  12. ↑ p. 242, 249f.
  13. ↑ p. 250.
  14. ↑ pp. 252, 409, with reference to Captain Woolley, FO 371, 1919: ME44 / 91 479/3050
  15. ↑ p. 252.
  16. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen: Agha, Sheik and State - Politics and Society of Kurdistan. P. 487, footnote 169.
  17. ↑ Martin van Bruinessen: Agha, Sheik and State - Politics and Society of Kurdistan. 7, 9-16, 487, footnote 168.
  1. ↑ a b pp. 1–448, pp. 249, 258 and 389.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g p. 249.
  3. ↑ a b p. 250.
  4. ↑ a b pp. 250 and 259
  5. ↑ p. 258f.
  • ( SeS ) Stanford J. Shaw, Ezel Kural Shaw: History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808-1975. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1977, ISBN 0-521-21449-1 .
  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m p. 246.
  2. ↑ p. 246, with reference to Başvekâlet Istatistik Umum Müdürlüğü, Istatistik Yıllığı , 1963, p. 42.
  3. ↑ a b p. 246, with reference to Düstur: Tertib-i Salis , vols. 1-41 , Ankara, 1921–1971 [Laws of the First Turkish Republic, 1920-1970], 21 , 443 and on Resmi Gazete [Official newspaper of the Turkish Republic], Ankara, 1920 [to date], 2892
  4. ↑ p. 246, with reference to Başvekâlet Istatistik Umum Müdürlüğü, Istatistik Yıllığı , 27 , 249 and to ZY Hershlag, Turkey: A Economy in Transition , The Hague, 1968, p. 201.
  5. ↑ p. 203.
  6. ↑ a b c p. 204.
  7. ↑ p. 204, with reference to DE Webster: The Turkey of Ataturk: ​​Social Process in The Turkish Reformation. Philadelphia, Pa. 1939, pp. 307-309 and on Suna Kili: Kemalism. Istanbul 1969, p. 79.

See also