Chapter 36 Outspoken

Chapter 36 Outspoken
These words, spoken in public one year after the Young Turks’ rebellion and scarcely three months after Abdul Hamid’s downfall, weren’t just the result of a fit of bad temper and impatience. Though in the dialogue both the Ottoman and the Foreigner pretended to defend the new sultan and the revolutionary officers, the mere fact of speaking about these leaders in a cavalier manner was significant. Botros was feeling a growing disappointment. He was more and more aggrieved, and he took advantage of the newly acquired freedom of expression to let it be known.

What exasperated him, first of all, was that the administration’s way of running things and the behavior of the local civil servants, whether governors of provinces or the lowest-ranking clerks, were still those of the old regime. But one had to be very naive to expect these things to change overnight on the mere publication of a decree.

Another thing that distressed him, even if he couldn’t be explicit about it, was that he was beginning to realize that nothing had been settled, or would be, concerning what he felt was the most crucial issue.

That issue was the “empire’s minority groups.” I’ve borrowed this term from the history books that deal with the problems of the Orient, but it falls short of explaining the most important thing. For defining the rights of minorities is not what is most important. As soon as one formulates the issue that way, one enters into the hateful logic of tolerance—that is, of protection bestowed condescendingly by the conquerors on the conquered. Botros didn’t want to be tolerated; nor do I, his grandson. I demand that my prerogatives as a citizen be fully recognized without my having to disown the many affiliations I possess. This is my unalienable right, and I turn away haughtily from societies that deprive me of it.

What Botros was interested in—but the word “interested” is too weak. I really should say: what governed all his emotions, all his thoughts, and all his actions was knowing whether he, a member of a minority group, a Christian whose mother tongue was Arabic, could have the status of a full-fledged citizen in a modernized Ottoman Empire and not have to pay for his birth throughout his life.

He had good reason to believe that the revolution of the Young Turks was moving precisely in that direction. All the minorities who had applauded the movement from its inception and sometimes actively contributed to it, these “free men from all communities,” were bound to have the same hopes as he.

But before long, there were some unsettling events. For instance, general elections were held that should have heralded an era of liberty and democracy, but they were marked instead by manipulation and rigging: all means were justified to ensure the election of the largest number of representatives supporting the revolutionary officers and their Committee of Union and Progress. These members of parliament came from all the different nations in the empire, but an alarming pattern became apparent: with every vote, the “unionists” divided into two clans, Turks and non-Turks.

The same split emerged within the ruling body. The minorities, “non-natives” as well as Freemasons, were gradually removed from power and supplanted by an ultranationalist group, led by Enver Pasha. He dreamed of a new Turkish empire that would extend from the Adriatic to the borders of China—a single nation, with one language and one leader. It was hard to believe that this was the same Enver who had inspired a wave of enthusiasm throughout the country when he addressed the crowd from the balcony of the Olympia Palace in Salonika and proclaimed that henceforth there would be no more Jews, Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Serbs in the empire, “for all of us are brothers under the same blue sky, all of us taking pride in being Ottomans.”

Those who had formerly applauded his inspired oratory wondered now if they hadn’t just heard what they wanted to hear. They began to find it significant that Enver had said there would be no more Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Muslims, Jews … but among these groups he hadn’t included Turks. And they began to wonder whether Enver didn’t have a hidden agenda, whether equality and fraternity weren’t just pretexts for revoking the specific rights enjoyed by the different peoples of the empire up until then.There had obviously been a grave misunderstanding, and it was to weigh heavily on my grandfather’s destiny, as well as on the destiny of the empire that was his birthplace. Botros was a patriot, whereas the officer whose sword he had hailed so bombastically at the dawn of the revolution was a nationalist. All too often we tend to equate the two attitudes, with the assumption that nationalism is an acute form of patriotism. In those days—and in other eras as well—this could not have been further from the truth: nationalism was the exact opposite of patriotism. Patriots dreamed of an empire where diverse groups could coexist—groups speaking different languages and professing different beliefs, but united by a common desire to build a large modern homeland. They hoped to instill a subtle Levantine wisdom into the principles advocated by the West. As for the nationalists, when they belonged to an ethnic majority they dreamed of total domination, and of separatism when they belonged to a minority. The wretched Orient of our day is the monster born of the two dreams combined.

At this late date, I deserve no credit in making these assertions. History has made me a witness to so many eloquent events. But in my grandfather’s day, the hopes raised by the rebel officers were growing slimmer month after month and were soon swept away. Enver pushed his country to enter the First World War on the side of the Germans and Austrians, for he nourished the dream that a Russian defeat would enable Turkey to acquire the Russian possessions in the Caucasus and in the Turkish-speaking provinces of Central Asia, commonly known as Turkistan. It was, however, the Ottoman Empire itself that was defeated and dismantled. The indomitable officer then went and offered his services to Lenin, before turning against the Red Army and dying under fire near Bukhara in 1922 at the age of forty-one.