The legacy of the Ottoman Empire

100 years after the abolition of the caliphate

It's 100 years since Turkiye led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the Ottoman caliphate on March 3, 1924. Members of the royal family were forced into exile, marking the end of the Ottoman Empire which had controlled at its peak large parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. From the 16th century the Ottoman Sultan had also held the title of Caliph, a position representing leadership of the world's Muslims.

From its 16th century zenith under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire shrank over the 19th century, losing ground to Russia and western colonial powers. Defeat in the First World War along with Germany and Austria-Hungary hastened its end. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire was accompanied by massacres, mass displacement and the creation of nation-states based on ethnic and religious homogeneity. Britain and France carved up the Middle East between them, Palestine was placed under British administration by the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration promising ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine was announced.

While the victorious Allied Powers gained control of parts of modern-day Turkiye following the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, Turkish nationalist forces led by Ataturk successfully pushed back. They abolished the Ottoman sultanate in 1922 and in the next year signed the Treaty of Lausanne establishing Turkiye’s present-day borders.

Questions

1) This reformist movement transformed the Ottoman Empire through a revolution in 1908 but some of its actions during World War I remain controversial. The name of the movement has been widely used worldwide to represent groups of young politicians advocating change.

A group of Republicans in the U.S. in the 1960s known collectively after the Turkish group ensured the election of X as House Minority Leader. He later became president.

While in India, Y along with a few others led a ruling party faction in the 1960s that advocated for socialist policies, which was named after the Turkish group. Y went on to become Prime Minister later.

Name the Turkish reformist group, X and Y.

2) The Dodecanese (twelve islands in Greek) chain of islands are controlled by Greece. They are located off the Turkish coast (one of them, Kastellorizo is just two kilometres away from Turkiye’s Mediterranean coast). There’s been heated rhetoric over the islands at various points in the past few decades. Another European country had seized the islands from the Ottoman Empire in 1912 along with parts of North Africa. Greece gained control in 1947 after the Second World War. Which country controlled the Dodecanese from 1912 until the 1940s?

3) This island was conquered by the Ottomans in 1571. In 1878 a secret agreement was reached between the Ottoman Empire and Britain under which the island would be administered by the British while remaining under Turkish sovereignty. It was annexed by the British Empire in 1914. Which island?

4) Fears that the caliphate would crumble with the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I prompted Muslim politicians in another country to launch a campaign against British policy. X (non-Muslim) who was leading the country’s independence movement found common cause with the agitation to restore the powers of the caliphate. But the movement collapsed in 1924 with the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the abolition of the caliphate. Name the country and the leader X.

5) The Soviet communist party organ Pravda and associated Soviet-era newspaper Izvestia, thanks to Commissar for Foreign Affairs Leon Trotsky, revealed in full a secret document from the Tsarist imperial archives in 1917. The Manchester Guardian published the leaked document in full three days later. (Hint: The document in question was prepared in 1916 and also approved by Italy and Czarist Russia).

6) The tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire is located in another country. Under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne the tomb remained Turkiye’s land, guarded by its soldiers. The tomb was relocated due to the construction of a dam in 1973 and again in 2015 amid fighting. This Turkish exclave is located within which country?

7) Who resigned as the UK’s First Lord of the Admiralty (civilian head of the navy) after a failed naval assault on the Dardanelles, a narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in 1915. The Allied Powers also suffered huge losses in their bid to land on the Gallipoli peninsula.

8) While a protectorate under the Ottoman Empire for more than 300 years, this was a Muslim-majority region. It was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783. Since then hundreds of thousands of Muslims were forced to leave and it became a Russian-majority region. In the 1940s Stalin oversaw a major deportation of the Muslim community. Which region?

9) What was the result of an agreement signed between Turkiye and Greece on January 30, 1923? (Hint: a major move towards forming two homogeneous nation-states)

10) The Ottoman Empire lost which part of its territory leading to the reorganisation of that region following the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin in 1878?

11) What was converted from a mosque to a museum under Ataturk in 1934? It returned to being a mosque in 2020.

12) This community was persecuted in Turkiye during World War I. The League of Nations failed in its efforts to ensure a nation-state for the community after the war. The largest number of the displaced were concentrated in and near Aleppo and Beirut under French control and those who stayed were granted Syrian and Lebanese citizenship by 1928. Others moved to the Soviet Union while many benefited from the League of Nations’ Nansen passport, which allowed its holders to cross borders for work and protected them from deportation. Which community?

13) One for the Tintin fan. This word, one among the many insults in Captain Haddock’s repertoire, comes from the name given to mercenaries/irregular volunteers used by the Ottoman Empire in conflicts. Name the word. (Hint: the Turkish term translates as ‘headless’ in English)