Abstract:

This paper aims to expose the ways in which the leading Committee of Union and Progress (the CUP) officials in the Arab lands during the First World War have internalized, questioned, and interpreted the conditions of their mission. It is based on the memoirs of Falih Rıfkı, aide-de-camp of Commander-in-Chief Cemal Pasha, the writer of the second memoir, and Halide Edip, an ardent defender 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 dusk of their break up as citizens of the Ottoman State. The paper also questions the orthodox argument that the Turkist and anti-Arabic ideology of the CUP government in general and Cemal Pasha’s crusade against Arab nationalists during the war caused the emergence of Arab nationalism. By contemplating on the memoirs of the CUP members in the Arab lands, it argues that both Falih Rıfkı, Cemal Pasha, and Halide Edip tried to understand the region and its people in order to create a mutual future for the Turks and Arabs in the Ottoman Empire.