Nuri as-Said

Nuri as-Said

Nuri as-Said ( Arabic نوري السعيد, DMG Nūrī as-Saʿīd; * 1888 in Baghdad / Ottoman Empire ; † July 15, 1958 in Baghdad / Iraq ) was an Iraqi politician and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Iraq fourteen times between 1930 and 1958 .

Especially under the regent Abd ul-Ilah and King Faisal II , he was at times considered the most powerful man in Iraq. Because of his ties to Great Britain , of which he was a valuable ally, and the bloody crackdown on several revolts, he was greatly hated in Iraq and was killed in the 1958 coup .

Life

Nuri as-Said came from a family of officials in Baghdad, then Turkey. He started out as an officer and attended the military academy in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul . As a Turkish officer he served in Libya in 1912 during the Italo-Turkish War and organized the resistance against the invaders. After the outbreak of the First World War and Faisal's declaration of independence by the Arab peoples in 1916, he joined this and took part in its close staff in the Arab revolt against Turkish rule in the Middle East .

Nuri (2nd from left) as Faisal's companion at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 , through which Faisal was recognized as "King of the Arabs", he was one of Faisal's companions. After Faisal's expulsion from Syria by the French in 1920 and acceptance of the promised royal office in Iraq in 1921, Nuri followed him there in 1922 and was first police chief and later deputy army chief. His influence in the Iraqi security apparatus dates from this time.

He became Prime Minister for the first time in March 1930 and held this post a total of 14 times until his death. Through his commitment to the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930, he attracted the displeasure of many compatriots. In 1932 he was dismissed by Faisal, who died in 1933. Under Faisal's son Ghazi I , Nuri's influence was significantly curtailed. From 1934 to 1936 he was Foreign Minister. After the nationalist military coup of Bakr Sidqi in 1936, he had to flee the country and spent a year in exile in Egypt . Shortly after his return, he was transferred to Great Britain as ambassador in 1937. With the help of the army , he was able to eliminate his opponents in December 1938 and was appointed prime minister. In April 1939, King Ghazi was killed in a car accident, which was probably caused by tampering with his car.

In 1941 there was a nationalist coup against Nuri, supported by parts of the army , who in turn had to flee abroad. The new government of Nuri's long-time opponent, Rashid Ali al-Gailani , was only ousted by a British military intervention, after which the country remained under British military occupation until the end of the war.

After the end of the war, Nuri and Abd ul-Ilah tried to counter the growing influence of nationalist and socialist-oriented groups by establishing stronger ties with the West and especially Great Britain. To this end, they concluded a series of treaties with Western states, on the occasion of which they were signed repeatedly to large demonstrations (1948, 1954, 1956), most of which were violently suppressed. When Abd ul-Ilah, who remained his advisor to Faisal II in 1953, took steps to convene free elections, Nuri had the parliament, which was occupied by his informants, issue powers that made him practically the sole ruler. This questionable situation was ended on July 14, 1958 by the coup of a group of radical officers around Abd al-Karim Qasim . In the course of the coup, in which Faisal II and ul-Ilah also perished, Nuri was recognized and murdered while trying to escape unnoticed.

Web links

• Newspaper article about Nuri as-Said in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Charles Tripp: A history of Iraq. Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 110 ff.