Collapse

Barrett: The Collapse of Iraq and Syria
of control resulting in a violent series of confrontations between sectarian
groups. It underscored two things: First, to rule the Levant, the Ottomans
needed tough administrators and enough military to suppress any disturbance;
second, any ‘trifling disturbance’ could turn into a calamity given
the simmering animosities between confessional and ethnic groups. 16 It was
a hard but realistic lesson for any would-be ruler of the region.
As Ottoman fortunes continued to slide, two conflicting approaches
emerged to combat European encroachment. On one hand, Istanbul called
on Muslims to rally in defense of their religion and the Caliphate. Caliph
Abdulhamit II invited the Muslim revivalist thinker Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani
to make his home in Istanbul. On the other hand, the religious proclamations
and pan-Islamic message flew in the face of the ideas now exposed by a group
of army officers, the Young Turks, who saw
Islamic ideas as part of the problem. In 1908,
the Young Turk Movement, based on a secret
organization founded in 1889, fomented a
revolution. They wanted a Turkish state and
empire and rejected the inclusive imperial
umbrella that had provided cohesion to the
Arab provinces of the empire and particularly in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
17 When the Great War exploded in 1914, the Ottoman state stood
with one foot in the traditional Islamic world and the other committed to
European-style modernization and flirting with ideas that would seal its fate.
Summary
… to rule the Levant, the
Ottomans needed tough
administrators and enough
military to suppress any
disturbance …
From the ancient empires of the Middle East to the rise of the Islamic
empires, the region stretching from Sinai to Basra contained such a diverse
concentration of ethnic and religious groups that cohesion of necessity had
to flow top down from whatever empire dominated the region at any given
time. The smaller states that emerged in the region of necessity aligned with
at least one of the competing imperial powers—be it the Neo-Assyrians, the
Hittites, the Egyptians, the Romans, Parthians, or the Persians. The communities
in the region maintained diversity and found themselves linked
together through the imperial structure as opposed to developing any sort
of real grassroots bond. Even the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-612 BCE), which
the SSNP would hold up as the justification for a modern state based on
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