Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa
The Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa ( Ottoman تشکیلات مخصوصه İA Teşkīlāt-ı Maḫṣūṣa , German 'Special Organization ' ) was a mixture of secret organization and guerrilla organization of the Committee for Unity and Progress ( İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti ) in the Ottoman Empire . It was brought into being by Enver Pascha and was subordinate to Süleyman Askerî Bey . According to the Turkish and pan-Islamic ideology of İttihad ve Terakki , the organization carried out activities such as espionage, propaganda and assassinations against enemies of the Ottoman Empire at home and abroad. According to various witnesses, the organization became active from 1911 and was officially subordinated to the War Ministry on August 5, 1914. After the government resigned on October 8, 1918, the organization was dissolved.
It has been documented that the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa formed resistance groups against foreign powers that were at war with the Ottoman Empire. So they set up resistance groups against the Italians in Tripoli , against the Bulgarians and Greeks in East and West Thrace, and against the English in Egypt and Iraq .
Almost all the leaders of the Turkish national movement ( Kuvayı Milliye and Müdafaa-yı Hukuk ) that were founded in Anatolia after World War I were members of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa. Even so, the connection between the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa and the national resistance has not been adequately investigated. The founder of the organization was Enver Pascha. The chairman was Hüsamettin Bey.
swell
An academic work on Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa is Philip Stoddard's 1963 dissertation. Two of the better-known members Eşref Kuşçubaşı and Hüsamettin Ertürk published their memoirs. Rauf Orbay's memoirs give some information about the activities in Iran and Afghanistan .
Galip Vardar gives valuable information about the organization in his book İttihat ve Terakki İçinde Dönenler from 1960. Hamza Erkan wrote in his book Bir Avuç Kahraman (1946) about Suleyman Askeri Bey's activities in Iraq.
There is no archive of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa; because when the leaders of İttihat ve Terakki fled abroad in 1918, this archive was destroyed. During the armistice, the organization faced many allegations and witnesses interrogated at court-martial in Istanbul. Some of the testimony before the court martial was published by Taner Akçam .
Reason and organization
Hüsamettin (Ertürk), who was chairman of the organization for a time, describes the reason for the establishment of Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa as follows:
“On the one hand, the aim of this organization was to gather all Muslims under one flag and thus initiate pan-Islamism . On the other hand, to bring the Turkish race into a political unity in order to realize Pan-Turkishism from this point of view . It is true that Enver Pasha received inspiration on Pan-Islamism from Emiri Efendi's program of İttihad ve Terakki on the one hand and Ziya Gökalp on Pan-Turkishism on the other . "
According to Philip Stoddard:
“The organization had two sources of money: from a secret budget from the War Ministry and from the gold trade in Germany. The German gold was regularly brought to Istanbul by the German military mission . According to all sources, the organization received a total of around 4 million gold. "
According to Stoddard, the organization's cadre reached 30,000 members during World War I (1916).
activities
The organization's name first appeared in the 1911 Italo-Turkish War , when Italy sent soldiers to Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya . There were several men of the organization in Libya, all of whom would later hold important political offices in Turkey, such as Mustafa Kemal, Rauf (Orbay) , Fethi (Okyar) and Nuri (Conker). Nevertheless, the resistance soon collapsed. The Ottoman state lost all rights over Libya and had to cede Italy to the Dodecanese as war compensation.
Before the start of the First World War , the organization was used to provoke war with Russia, according to the Ottoman Minister Çürüksulu Mahmud Pasha. The organization organized massacres and attacks inside Russia for this purpose.
When the British conquered Basra during World War I , one of the leaders of the organization, Suleyman Askeri Bey, organized hit and run campaigns against the English with gangs from Kurdish and Arab tribes . So the Abadan refinery was set on fire. In response, the English inflicted a heavy defeat on the Turkish army at Schuaybe between April 12 and 14, 1915. Süleyman Askeri then committed suicide.
On April 29, 1916, Halil Kut Pasha and his 6th Ottoman Army defeated the English at Kut and took many hostages. Meanwhile, some members of the organization such as Nuri Paşa and Rauf Bey went to neutral Iran and Afghanistan to attack the British with local groups behind them. According to Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders , this adventure was one of the reasons the Turks lost in Iraq.
According to some historians, this secret organization was used in carrying out the genocide of the Armenians .
According to some reports, the government of Ahmed İzzet Pasha , which succeeded Talat Pasha's government , has ordered the destruction of all documents belonging to the organizations.
literature
- Philip H. Stoddard: The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918. A Study of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa . Princeton University, 1963 (unpublished dissertation). Published in Turkish by the publishing house Arba, Istanbul, 1993 under the title Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa. Osmanlı hükümeti ve Araplar 1911–1918. Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa üzerine bir ön çalışma in the Arba yayınları series. Tarih, anı dizisi , No. 60, 22.
- Odile Moreau: Teskilat-i Mahsusa (Ottoman Empire) . In: Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, Bill Nasson (eds.): 1914-1918-online . International Encyclopedia of the First World War . Free University of Berlin, Berlin 2018, doi: 10.15463 / ie1418.11320 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dankwart Rustow Enwer Pa sh a in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition
- ↑ Philip H. Stoddard 1963.
- ↑ Taner Akçam : Armenia and the genocide - The Istanbul trials and the Turkish national movement . Hamburg 2004.
- ↑ Hüsamettin Ertürk: İki Devrin Perde Arkası . İstanbul 1957, sf. 115-116.
- ^ Philip H. Stoddard, p. 53.
- ^ Philip H. Stoddard, p. 52.
- ↑ Taner Akçam : A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility . London 2007, p. 127, there with the original source
- ↑ Liman von Sanders: Five Years of Turkey . Berlin 1922
- ↑ See: The Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa on the Caucasian Front and the First Military Operations . In: Raymond Kévorkian : The Armenian Genocide. A Complete History . IB Tauris, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-84885-561-8 , pp. 217-223.