The authoritarian rule of Cemal Pasha in Greater Syria in the years between 1914 and 1917 left deep imprints on the minds of locals. His regime shaped the local collective memory and, in Arab nationalist narratives, became the primary reference to depict the historical image of Ottoman presence in the region. Selim Deringil’s recent book, The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands: Turkish Memoirs and Testimonies of the Great War, focuses on these controversial final years of Ottoman rule over Arab lands. The book consists of annotated translations of selected passages from the memoirs of Falih Rıfkı Atay, Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, Ali Fuad Erden, Münevver Ayaşlı, and Naci Kıcıman framed by a stimulating introduction and conclusion. Through the lenses of these memoirs the book explores how Ottomans, or atrak (Turks) as they were referred to locally, perceived themselves and the region amid the destructive dynamics of World War I.

In a fifty-seven-page introduction, Deringil discusses the close interaction between individual accounts, collective memory, and official historical narratives of post-Ottoman political entities. He examines the dominant discourses, which he refers to as “stab in the back syndrome” and “good riddance syndrome,” in Turkish sources concerning the Ottoman experience in the region and Arab soldiers in the army. By bringing the five memoirs to the center of the discussion, Deringil places each memoir – its content, writer, and audience – in context. Hence the introduction helps the reader understand the developments of the period, situate the memoirs’ content within the dynamics of World War I, and deliberate over the nature and legacy of these works.

The main body of the book is divided into five chapters, each corresponding to the memoirs’ translated editions. The chapters, which aim to reflect the intellectual mindset of the authors of the memoirs, provide different angles to approach the book’s central question. Throughout the translation, footnotes allow the interested reader to engage more deeply with the text. The first chapter is reserved for the account of Falih Rıfkı Atay. An aide and confidant of Cemal Pasha, Atay provides the reader with firsthand insight about Cemal Pasha’s decisions and mindset as well as personal recollections and comments concerning the region. The book continues with the memoir of an intriguing member of the Ottoman elite, Hüseyin Kazım Kadri (Chapter 2). Once one of the prominent figures of the Committee of Union and Progress, Kadri moved to Beirut in 1914 after disagreements with the political circles in Istanbul. Kadri differs from other eyewitnesses in the book due to his strong criticism of Ottoman rule in the region and his choice not to be involved in the politics of the Republic. In the third chapter, the reader engages with Ali Fuad Erden’s memories. Erden was one of the closest people to Cemal Pasha as his military chief of staff. Having held extensive authority over the administration of the region, Erden covers multiple topics including the Arab revolt, Cemal Pasha’s rule, and the execution of Arab patriots in Beirut and Damascus. In the next chapter, Deringil selects passages from two different books by Münevver Ayaşlı, who was a prolific intellectual in the Republican period. Ayaşlı witnessed the dynamics in the region as a young girl in an upper-class Ottoman family. As Deringil remarks, her accounts stand out as one of the few firsthand narratives on the topic written by a woman.Footnote ¹ Naci Kaşif Kıcıman’s account forms the fifth and last chapter. Kıcıman was the chief intelligence officer and a close companion of Fahreddin Paşa, the commander of the Hijaz Expeditionary Force. Accordingly, his piece focuses on Hijaz and contains detailed recollections concerning the nearly three-year siege of Medina from June 1916 to January 1919.

The memoirs have two important common points: (1) they were published in the Republican period, and (2) their authors had vivid memories of similar sociopolitical developments of the empire – particularly in the Balkans – before World War I. This shared feature, together with the varying perspectives provided, allows one to read the memoirs in relation to each other and to reflect, by force of comparison, on the contents, discourses, and production contexts of each. In other words, the book as a whole leads the reader to think about the Ottoman experience comparatively and reflect on the implications of how this experience has been narrated by different authors. As Deringil explains, the memoirs are subjective reflections of the past with diverse political agendas, and their authors share an interest “in writing for posterity.”Footnote ² The authors’ individual perspectives and the selected recollections chosen to be narrated add to other similar narratives and help shape an understanding of the region, the relations between Arabs and Turks, and the formation of national identities in the twentieth century. Indeed, Deringil points out that the memoirs are not free from the influence of the cultural and political developments of the period in which they were published. Except for Kadri’s work, there is an implicit dialogue between the discourse of the memoirs and the official historiography of the early Turkish Republic. Four of the five memoirs promote either a sense of the foreignness of Arab lands or the idea of “Arab treason” in accordance with “the good riddance syndrome” and “stab in the back syndrome.”

Deringil’s work contributes to a growing scholarly dialogue aiming to understand the Ottoman experience of World War I and its implications for the history of the region. Despite the decisive impact of the war on the formation of the modern Middle East, the Ottoman experience of the conflict has not attracted the attention that it deserves in the historiography of World War I and the late Ottoman Empire. The premises of the nationalist agendas of post-Ottoman political entities, paired with the inaccessibility of archives, dispersed sources, and the need for fluency in multiple languages, has hindered the scope and outcome of scholarly inquiries. Thus, our understanding of the topic has remained limited with deficient and problematic narratives in the official historiographies of the post-Ottoman political entities. This, however, has started to change amid the broader developments in Ottoman studies in the last several decades. Notably, as the centenary of the war arrived, inquiries aiming to redress the gap from different historical perspectives have gained impetus.

Deringil’s book adds to these scholarly efforts in three significant ways. First, the book places the Ottoman experience of the war in the Arab lands at the center of the analysis. This is a topic that has suffered from a lack of comprehensive research during most of the twentieth century. While post-Ottoman Arab states have treated the war as “someone else’s war,”Footnote ³ Turkish historiography has either preferred to elaborate on scenes corresponding to the borders of today’s Turkey or has been shaped by the assumption that Arabs have betrayed the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, Western perspectives have mainly perceived the region as a peripheral zone in the war and have focused on the experiences of the Allied powers in the region. The book’s research question and method take our understanding of the subject one step further. It highlights channels to reflect on Ottoman perspectives and helps the reader to engage with them critically while also questioning the related historiography and its problems. Second, as Deringil remarks, a flourishing literature on the topic has largely benefitted from post-Ottoman memoirs. Nevertheless, the contents of these memoirs are still waiting to be studied through systematic analyses.Footnote ⁴ Deringil’s book fulfills this expectation and reveals possible gains from such studies. It allows us to deepen our understanding of the five accounts and their legacy. The book shows us that most of these memoirs were not only projections of the past but also active texts contributing to the cultural aspects of the Republic’s ideological agenda. Lastly, the translations of the memoirs provide essential references for further research. As mentioned, the lack of availability and accessibility of sources has impeded the quality and quantity of research on the subject. Scores of published memoirs and diaries in Turkey are inaccessible for non-Turkish-speaking researchers. In this context, “a critical annotated edition of memoirs” in English make these sources available to a wider audience. Moreover, the extensive analysis helps the reader to ask questions about the writers’ identity perceptions, political inclinations, and intellectual mindsets.

The book leaves some questions in the reader’s mind that I believe provide fertile ground for further work on the topic. One wonders about the relations as well as comparisons between these memoirs and other available eyewitness accounts, which in turn would provide the reader with a broader insight into available sources and contribute to our understanding of the possibilities in approaching Ottoman experiences and their implications. Hopefully this and similar points will be addressed as new studies continue to expand our understanding of the period and the region.

Indeed, The Ottoman Twilight in the Arab Lands is a timely contribution to the literature. It turns the recollections of five intriguing Ottomans during the last days of Ottoman rule in Arab lands into an effective channel through which to interpret how these people perceived what happened at the time. The book, moreover, goes one step further; it delves into the memoirs’ discourses, production contexts, and audiences to show how these sources interacted with broader historical narratives and cultural premises promoted by the political and intellectual milieu of the Republican period.