As its title indicates, Shattered Dreams of Revolution attempts to elaborate on the reasons behind the strong sense of disillusion on the part of the non-Turkish Ottoman ethno-religious groups that led to the ultimate failure of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. In this well-researched, tightly argued, and sophisticated book. Bedross Der Matossian maintains that the enormous chasm between the Weltanschauungen of the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP) and of the major Armenian, Jewish, and Arab political organizations and intellectuals made any agreement on the basic tenets of the new constitutional regime impossible.
Shattered Dreams further examines the ways in which these three distinct ethno-religious groups internalized the Young Turk Revolution and negotiated their space and identity within the precipitously changing political landscape of the Ottoman Second Constitutional Period. The book persuasively shows that these ethno-religious groups conceptualized “Ottomanism” and “Ottoman citizenship” in a manner significantly different from the CUP, which seized power in the wake of the Revolution.
As Der Matossian reminds us, the Young Turk Revolution did not merely make the CUP the dominant political power center in the empire, but it also marked a strong organizational shift among the elites of the empire’s diverse ethno-religious communities. For example, the Dashnaktsutiun, a revolutionary organization that prior to the revolution had joined the Second International, replaced the formerly dominant coalition among Armenians between the church establishment and the Amira class of merchants and artisans. Likewise, the Bashkimi Committee that wished to unite all the Albanians under the banner of Skënderbeu took the place of the Muslim notables and loyalist bureaucrats who feared that an Ottoman collapse in European Turkey would result in the partition of the imagined Albanian community.
Even before the revolution, the CUP and these organizations could not reach an agreement on the main tenets of a future regime and the concept of citizenship upon which it would be based. The most they could accomplish together was to strike tactical alliances to overthrow the Hamidian regime. Indeed, agreement even on this aim was not easy for them to attain. For instance, when the CUP and the Dashnaktsutiun negotiated a possible tactical alliance in late 1907 the latter wished to encourage the population to resist conscription as a means to pave the way to a revolution, the former staunchly opposed the proposal on the grounds that so long as the country was surrounded by enemies, the Ottoman armies must be better prepared for attacks than ever. After the revolution these disagreements only grew in importance, since these organizations gained the upper hand in the administration of the empire and of the respective ethno-religious community affairs.
Hence, unlike the pre-revolutionary era elites who cooperated, albeit uneasily, with the imperial center, the new elites were on a collision course with an administration dominated by the CUP which advocated centralization, wholesale Ottomanism, and the abolition of the old imperial privileges that had been conferred upon different ethno-religious groups. The intrusive demands of the CUP for a wholesale shift in identity from ethnic and religious to supranational and secular, coupled with the push for rapid centralization of the empire made the non-Turkish ethno-religious groups assume that the center was ultimately aiming at suppressing their identities and privileges.
Shattered Dreams, by focusing on the first year of the constitutional regime, ably demonstrates that the unbridgeable gaps in the definitions of fundamental concepts brought about the failure of a revolution that had raised high hopes among the non-Turkish Ottoman ethno-religious communities.
The book is of indisputably high scholarly quality, and Der Matossian advances solid arguments backed by original material drawn from a host of hitherto neglected sources in a variety of languages. Likewise, the study provides a well-organized, evocative narrative. It furthermore confronts stock clichés of nationalist historiography advanced in old-fashioned scholarship such as in the recent book of Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks and the Ottoman Nationalities: Armenians, Greeks, Albanians, Jews, and Arabs, 1908–1918. Nonetheless, a few criticisms may be voiced regarding the generally sound narrative that Der Matossian constructs.
The first regards the timeframe and scope. The book focuses on the first year of the new constitutional regime. Der Matossian effectively demonstrates that further cooperation towards creating a democratic regime that would respect divergence and differentiation vanished quickly. The story did not come to an abrupt end in 1909, however, and various attempts were yet made to bridge the chasm between the aforementioned Weltenschauungen. For instance, the CUP and the Dashnaktsutiun continued their negotiations after the Adana massacres, and the Arab intellectuals reached an understanding with the center in the wake of the Arab Congress convened in Paris in 1913. Thus, a larger timeframe covering either the entire constitutional period or the era between 1908 and 1914 would provide better insights, and Der Matosssian who possesses all the necessary skills to expand the timeframe should do so in a follow-up volume.
As for the scope, Der Matossian focuses on three ethno-religious groups. While his research and analysis provide invaluable insights, he should have made comparisons with other ethno-religious groups that had similar relations with the CUP. Obviously, to ask for a study examining the original material published by Albanians, Greeks, Kurds, Kutzo-Vlachs, Macedonians, and Serbs would be to request something next to impossible. The available secondary literature, however, would have made comparisons with the Arabs, Armenians, and Jews possible. It is quite surprising to see just a single random reference to IMORO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) and virtually none to Albanians in a study that discusses relations between the CUP and various Ottoman ethno-religious communities in the wake of the Young Turk Revolution.
The second criticism regards the way in which Der Matossian conceptualizes ethno-religious communities. He rightly avoids essentialization; however, he treats these groups as equivalent, which is misleading. While these groups formed distinct ethno-religious communities in the empire, their sizes, cultural values, and the types of relationship they developed with the center all varied. Subsequently, their expectations for the new regime differed drastically. For instance, Armenians had a highly developed nationalist movement, well-organized political parties, and significant European Great Power sympathy and thus could entertain territorial-separatist ambitions. By contrast, in the case of Arabs we may speak about a proto-nationalism that gained strength under the new regime. As for the Jews, who did not form a majority or plurality anywhere in the empire but the town of Salonica, any form of Ottomanism, including the CUP’s version attributing a centrifugal role to the Turkish ethnic group, was preferable to becoming an ethnic minority in a nation-state. Accordingly, the CUP cooperated well with the majority of the Ottoman Jews, came close to achieving an understanding with the Arab intellectuals, and clashed with the Dashnaktsutiun. Der Matossian’s extensive focus on the Zionists, who were mostly foreign citizens, should not blind us to the fact that with the exception of the Kutzo-Vlachs, another ethno-religious group that could not entertain separatist aspirations, the Jews composed a distinct group enjoying overrepresentation not only in the parliament and bureaucracy but also within the CUP.
A final criticism may be advanced about Der Matossian’s judgement for the causes of the failure of the revolution. He tends to put the blame squarely on the CUP. This makes some sense since the CUP seized power and dominated politics after 1908 with only a brief interlude. As stated, in a book written a year after the Adana massacres, Harutiun Shahrigian explained the Armenian vision of Ottomanism and predicted that the empire would be saved through the cooperation of its national groups. It is true that the CUP’s Ottomanism served as a major obstacle to achieving such collaboration.
The Armenian vision that demanded extensive autonomy just a step shy of independence and represented an extreme at the opposite end from the CUP’s, and thus it also did not help the cause of cooperation. In fact, when before the revolution Shahrigian penned a long document reflecting the Armenian vision for a federalism that imitated the Swiss cantonal system with its extensive autonomy and sharply limited central power, the CUP leaders called him a “traitor, calumniator, and buffoon.” They further declared that the only way the Dashnak leader could put his ideas and principles into effect would be if he entered Istanbul with a victorious army. Even Sabahaddin Bey, who advocated extensive decentralization for the sake of reaching an understanding with non-Turkish ethno-religious groups, found Shahrigian’s vision radical and impractical. Thus, while the main reason for the shattering of great expectations was the CUP’s extremist policies imposed upon the non-Turkish ethno-religious groups of the empire, the inflexible and maximalist visions of those ethno-religious groups that could entertain separatist ambitions also played a significant role in the revolution’s failure.
These criticisms notwithstanding, students of Ottoman, Armenian, Arab, and modern Jewish history will be indebted to Der Matossian for his extremely valuable contribution to the field.
