Trechos de The Fall Of The Ottomans (2015), de Eugene Rogan.
Spring brought a new wave of optimism to the Ottoman Empire in 1914. Victory in the Second Balkan War and the recovery of Edirne and Eastern Thrace had done wonders for national confidence. After years of wartime austerity, the Ottoman economy was the first beneficiary of peace. Demobilized soldiers returned to the workforce. Farmers predicted record harvests. A building boom was reported in towns across the Turkish and Arab provinces. Trade resumed with renewed vigour once the sea lanes were cleared of warships and mines. With the expansion of foreign trade came novel inventions of the modern age that, within the year, would be converted from civilian to military use.
The advent of the automobile shattered the tranquillity of Istanbul's streets. Until 1908, cars had been banned from the Ottoman Empire. When they were finally permitted after the Young Turk Revolution, the pioneers of Ottoman motoring encountered many obstacles. By and large, the streets of the empire were unpaved. Garages to service and fuel cars were few and far between. And there was no highway code, with chauffeurs disagreeing over such basic issues as the side of the road on which they should drive. Not surprisingly, very few cars had been sold in the Ottoman Empire since 1908. By the end of 1913, when there were already 1 million cars on the road in the United States, American consular officials estimated there were no more than 500 automobiles in the Ottoman Empire as a whole - with 250 of those in Istanbul. In a remote provincial town like Baghdad, you could literally count the number of cars on one hand. Yet by mid-1914, the imperial capital was beginning to experience its first traffic jams as "limousines, touring cars, motor trucks, gasoline driven delivery wagons and hospital ambulances" jostled for space.
The airplane also made its first appearance in the Ottoman Empire in the Young Turk era. [...]
The first Turkish pilots were sent to Europe for training in 1911. By 1914, Turkish aviators were beginning to claim the skies above the Ottoman Empire. In February, Lieutenant Fethi Bey, accompanied by one of Enver Pasha's aides, Sadik Bey, attempted to fly from Istanbul across Anatolia and Syria to Egypt. Their plane, a Blériot design named the Muavenet-i Milliye (National Assistance) covered one twenty-five-mile leg, from Tarsus to Adana, in twenty minutes, at a speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. Crowds on the ground clapped as the plane flew overhead. They managed to reach Damascus safely, but their plane experienced engine problems on the flight to Jerusalem and crashed to the east of the Sea of Galilee, killing both pilots. Fethi Bey and Sadik Bey were laid to rest next to Saladdin's tomb in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, Turkey's first airmen to die in military service. A second air mission ended in a similar result before two pilots, Salim Bey and Kemal Bey, finally managed to complete the journey from Istanbul to Egypt in May 1914.
- - -
The spread of mechanized transport fed the sense of optimism growing in the Ottoman Empire in the spring of 1914. With the negotiation of a $100 million public loan from France in May, the Ottoman government secured the means to invest in major public works projects that would bring electricity, public lighting, urban tramways, intercity railroads, and modern port facilities to all of the provinces of the empire. The announcement of the French loan fed widespread expectations of a commercial and industrial boom.
- - -
The Ottoman government commissioned two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from the British shipbuilders Vickers and Armstrong in August 1911, scheduled for delivery in July 1914. The orders were placed as part of a British naval mission to help modernize the Ottoman fleet.
- - -
The outbreak of war in Europe provoked alarm across the Ottoman Empire - from the cabinet offices of the Sublime Porte through the towns and countryside of Anatolia and the Arab lands. The need for a defensive alliance to assure the territorial integrity of the empire became critical. The Young Turks knew from Cemal's reports that there was no prospect of such an agreement with France. His trust in Britain was likewise soon to be betrayed.
- - -
Russia, then Britain and France recalled their ambassadors from Istanbul before declaring war on 2 November.
The Ottoman Empire was at war. All that remained was to raise the banner of jihad.
- - -
On 1 August, the Ministry of War dispatched Enver Pasha's call to arms by telegraph across the empire. Village headmen and leaders of town quarters posted notices in public squares and on mosque doors. "Mobilization has been declared," the posters trumpeted. "All eligible men to arms!" All men, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, aged twenty-one to forty-five, were given five days to report to the nearest recruiting office. Local officials were told to encourage martial enthusiasm by "beating drums, showing joy and gladness and not despair and neglect".
No amount of drum beating or official displays of joy could overcome the foreboding among Arab villagers when mobilization was first announced. A Shiite Muslim cleric in the southern Lebanese village of Nabatiyya captured the public dismay in his diary on 3 August 1914:
"The people were deeply troubled and agitated by the news [of general mobilization]. They gathered in small groups in public spaces, astonished and bewildered, as if confronting the Day of Judgement. Some wanted to flee - but where could they go? Others wanted to escape, but there was no way out. Then we heard that war had broken out between Germany and Austria on one side, and the Allies on the other side. This only increased the fear and alarm of the outbreak of a murderous war that would devour the cultivated lands and the dry earth."
Similar reactions were recorded across the Ottoman Empire. Shops closed in Aleppo on 3 August in response to the mobilization orders. As one resident noted, "Great uneasiness prevails throughout this city." In the Black Sea port of Trabzon, the American consul recorded, "The decree of general mobilization came like a thunderbolt." Though anyone evading conscription faced the death penalty, many young men preferred to take their chances and go into hiding rather than face what they believed to be a more certain death fighting with the Ottoman army.
In the imperial capital Istanbul, the call to arms was announced in each quarter by the town crier, popularly known as "Bekçi Baba". In daytime, Bekçi Baba delivered water to urban neighbourhoods. At night, he served as watchman over the streets of the quarter. It was Bekçi Baba who sounded the alarm when fire broke out, and it was Bekçi Baba who summoned men for war.
Irfan Orga remembered how his father was called to war by Bekçi Baba. The mobilization that had started in the summer of 1914 accelerated after the Ottoman entry into the war, with ever-older men being called up. Orga went outside into the November cold with his father to hear the crier's announcement and watched as Bekçi Baba rounded the corner and stopped beneath the street lamp "to shout his shattering news": "Men born between 1880 and 1885 must report to the recruiting centre within the next forty-eight hours. Who fails to do so will be prosecuted."
One of the men of the household shouted out, "What does it mean, Bekçi Baba?"
"War! War! Don't you know your country is at war?" he roared.
The capital's recruitment centres, flooded with men of military age, were in a state of confusion. Harassed officials bellowed instructions to civilians, who were herded like cattle, hungry, hopeless, and apathetic. It could take days for conscripts to be processed for service.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeWKYLfYzoRX-W2LXeh1ES_g
The advent of the automobile shattered the tranquillity of Istanbul's streets. Until 1908, cars had been banned from the Ottoman Empire. When they were finally permitted after the Young Turk Revolution, the pioneers of Ottoman motoring encountered many obstacles. By and large, the streets of the empire were unpaved. Garages to service and fuel cars were few and far between. And there was no highway code, with chauffeurs disagreeing over such basic issues as the side of the road on which they should drive. Not surprisingly, very few cars had been sold in the Ottoman Empire since 1908. By the end of 1913, when there were already 1 million cars on the road in the United States, American consular officials estimated there were no more than 500 automobiles in the Ottoman Empire as a whole - with 250 of those in Istanbul. In a remote provincial town like Baghdad, you could literally count the number of cars on one hand. Yet by mid-1914, the imperial capital was beginning to experience its first traffic jams as "limousines, touring cars, motor trucks, gasoline driven delivery wagons and hospital ambulances" jostled for space.
The airplane also made its first appearance in the Ottoman Empire in the Young Turk era. [...]
The first Turkish pilots were sent to Europe for training in 1911. By 1914, Turkish aviators were beginning to claim the skies above the Ottoman Empire. In February, Lieutenant Fethi Bey, accompanied by one of Enver Pasha's aides, Sadik Bey, attempted to fly from Istanbul across Anatolia and Syria to Egypt. Their plane, a Blériot design named the Muavenet-i Milliye (National Assistance) covered one twenty-five-mile leg, from Tarsus to Adana, in twenty minutes, at a speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. Crowds on the ground clapped as the plane flew overhead. They managed to reach Damascus safely, but their plane experienced engine problems on the flight to Jerusalem and crashed to the east of the Sea of Galilee, killing both pilots. Fethi Bey and Sadik Bey were laid to rest next to Saladdin's tomb in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, Turkey's first airmen to die in military service. A second air mission ended in a similar result before two pilots, Salim Bey and Kemal Bey, finally managed to complete the journey from Istanbul to Egypt in May 1914.
- - -
The spread of mechanized transport fed the sense of optimism growing in the Ottoman Empire in the spring of 1914. With the negotiation of a $100 million public loan from France in May, the Ottoman government secured the means to invest in major public works projects that would bring electricity, public lighting, urban tramways, intercity railroads, and modern port facilities to all of the provinces of the empire. The announcement of the French loan fed widespread expectations of a commercial and industrial boom.
- - -
The Ottoman government commissioned two state-of-the-art dreadnoughts from the British shipbuilders Vickers and Armstrong in August 1911, scheduled for delivery in July 1914. The orders were placed as part of a British naval mission to help modernize the Ottoman fleet.
- - -
The outbreak of war in Europe provoked alarm across the Ottoman Empire - from the cabinet offices of the Sublime Porte through the towns and countryside of Anatolia and the Arab lands. The need for a defensive alliance to assure the territorial integrity of the empire became critical. The Young Turks knew from Cemal's reports that there was no prospect of such an agreement with France. His trust in Britain was likewise soon to be betrayed.
- - -
Russia, then Britain and France recalled their ambassadors from Istanbul before declaring war on 2 November.
The Ottoman Empire was at war. All that remained was to raise the banner of jihad.
- - -
On 1 August, the Ministry of War dispatched Enver Pasha's call to arms by telegraph across the empire. Village headmen and leaders of town quarters posted notices in public squares and on mosque doors. "Mobilization has been declared," the posters trumpeted. "All eligible men to arms!" All men, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, aged twenty-one to forty-five, were given five days to report to the nearest recruiting office. Local officials were told to encourage martial enthusiasm by "beating drums, showing joy and gladness and not despair and neglect".
No amount of drum beating or official displays of joy could overcome the foreboding among Arab villagers when mobilization was first announced. A Shiite Muslim cleric in the southern Lebanese village of Nabatiyya captured the public dismay in his diary on 3 August 1914:
"The people were deeply troubled and agitated by the news [of general mobilization]. They gathered in small groups in public spaces, astonished and bewildered, as if confronting the Day of Judgement. Some wanted to flee - but where could they go? Others wanted to escape, but there was no way out. Then we heard that war had broken out between Germany and Austria on one side, and the Allies on the other side. This only increased the fear and alarm of the outbreak of a murderous war that would devour the cultivated lands and the dry earth."
Similar reactions were recorded across the Ottoman Empire. Shops closed in Aleppo on 3 August in response to the mobilization orders. As one resident noted, "Great uneasiness prevails throughout this city." In the Black Sea port of Trabzon, the American consul recorded, "The decree of general mobilization came like a thunderbolt." Though anyone evading conscription faced the death penalty, many young men preferred to take their chances and go into hiding rather than face what they believed to be a more certain death fighting with the Ottoman army.
In the imperial capital Istanbul, the call to arms was announced in each quarter by the town crier, popularly known as "Bekçi Baba". In daytime, Bekçi Baba delivered water to urban neighbourhoods. At night, he served as watchman over the streets of the quarter. It was Bekçi Baba who sounded the alarm when fire broke out, and it was Bekçi Baba who summoned men for war.
Irfan Orga remembered how his father was called to war by Bekçi Baba. The mobilization that had started in the summer of 1914 accelerated after the Ottoman entry into the war, with ever-older men being called up. Orga went outside into the November cold with his father to hear the crier's announcement and watched as Bekçi Baba rounded the corner and stopped beneath the street lamp "to shout his shattering news": "Men born between 1880 and 1885 must report to the recruiting centre within the next forty-eight hours. Who fails to do so will be prosecuted."
One of the men of the household shouted out, "What does it mean, Bekçi Baba?"
"War! War! Don't you know your country is at war?" he roared.
The capital's recruitment centres, flooded with men of military age, were in a state of confusion. Harassed officials bellowed instructions to civilians, who were herded like cattle, hungry, hopeless, and apathetic. It could take days for conscripts to be processed for service.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeWKYLfYzoRX-W2LXeh1ES_g
