Djemal Pasha
Ahmed Djemal 'Pasha' was an Ottoman general and statesman. Along with Talaat and Enver, he was one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
As an officer of the II Corps, he was stationed in Salonica, where he developed political sympathies for the Committee of Union and Progress, a secret reformist party. He was initially praised by Christian missionaries and provided support to the Armenian victims of the Adana massacres.
In the course of his army career Djemal developed a rivalry with Mustafa Kemal, served in Salonica on the frontlines of the Balkan Wars and was given command of Constantinople after the Raid on the Sublime Porte. Djemal's authoritarian three-year rule in Syria alienated the local population who opposed Turkish nationalism. His role in the Armenian genocide has been controversial as his policies were not as deadly as other CUP leaders; Djemal favored the forced assimilation of Armenians.
After the Armistice of Mudros and the fall of the CUP government in 1918, Djemal fled the Ottoman Empire and was sentenced to death in absentia by the Special Military Tribunal. He was assassinated four years later in Tbilisi by members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.
Early life and career
Ahmed Djemal was born in a Circassian-origin Turkish family in Mytilene, Lesbos, to Mehmed Nesib Bey, a military pharmacist. Djemal graduated from Kuleli Military High School in 1890 and completed his studies at the Military Academy, the staff college in Istanbul, in 1893. He was posted to serve with the 1st Department of the Imperial General Staff, and then he worked at the Kirkkilise Fortification Construction Department bound to Second Army. Djemal was assigned to the II Army Corps in 1896. Two years later, he was appointed staff commander of the Novice Division, stationed on the Salonica frontier.File:Djemal Pasha.png|thumb|left|upright=0.6|Djemal Pasha when he was governor of Adana
Meanwhile, he began to sympathize with the Committee of Union and Progress, and joined the organization in 1898. It was in 1905 that Djemal was promoted to major and designated Inspector of Rumelia Railways. The following year he signaled his democratic credentials and joined the Ottoman Freedom Society. He became influential in the department of military issues of the Committee of Union and Progress. He was elected to the board of the III Army Corps in 1907. Following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 he became a member of the central committee of the CUP and later was deployed as a Kaymakam to Üsküdar, Constantinople.
Djemal served as the governor of the Adana Vilayet between August 1909 and April 1911. In Adana, he was involved in providing support for the Armenian victims of the Adana massacres, and was praised by Christian missionaries in the region as a competent administrator. He was also military governor of Istanbul in 1909, 1910, 1912, and 1913. In the III Army Corps, he worked with future Turkish statesmen Major Fethi and Mustafa Kemal, although Atatürk soon developed a rivalry with Djemal Pasha and his colleagues over their policies after they seized power in 1913.
Balkan Wars
In 1911, Djemal was appointed Governor of Baghdad. He then resigned to rejoin the army in the Balkan Wars on the Salonica front line, attempting to protect Turkey's European possessions. In October 1912, he was promoted to colonel. At the end of the First Balkan War, he played an important role in the propaganda drawn up by the CUP against negotiations with the victorious European countries. He tried to resolve the problems that occurred in Constantinople after the Coup of 1913, he became the martial-law commander of Constantinople and was appointed Minister of Public Works by Grand Vizier Mahmud Sevket Pasha. Djemal played a significant role in the Second Balkan War. By December 1913 he was given the title Pasha and in February 1914, he was promoted to Minister of the Ottoman Navy.World War I
When Europe was divided into two blocs before the First World War, he supported an alliance with France. He went to France to negotiate an alliance with the French, but failed and then sided with Enver and Talaat, who favoured the German side. Djemal, along with Enver and Talaat, took control of the Ottoman government in 1913. The Three Pashas effectively ruled the Ottoman Empire for the duration of World War I.File:Enver Pasha visiting the Dome of the Rock.jpg|thumb|240px|right|Djemal Pasha and Enver Pasha visiting the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, circa. 1916
Previously snubbed by the Allies, Djemal switched his attention to an alliance with the Central Powers, although he had at first been opposed to a full alliance with Germany. Nevertheless, he agreed in early October 1914 to use his ministerial powers to authorise Admiral Souchon to launch a pre-emptive strike in the Black Sea, which led to Russia, Britain and France declaring war on the Ottoman Empire a few days later. After the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war, Enver Pasha nominated Djemal Pasha to lead the Ottoman army against British forces in Egypt, and Djemal accepted the position. In late 1914, he was assigned to the governorship and military command for the southern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
Rule in Syria
Djemal Pasha was appointed with full powers in military and civilian affairs in Syria in 1915. A provisional law granted him emergency powers in May of that year. All cabinet decrees from Constantinople concerning Syria became subject to his approval. Both his first and second attacks on the Suez Canal failed. Coupled with the wartime exigencies and natural disasters that afflicted the region during these years, this alienated the population from the Ottoman government, and led to the Arab Revolt. In the meantime, the Ottoman army usually commanded by Colonel Kress von Kressenstein pushed towards and occupied Sinai. The two men had a thinly disguised contempt for each other, which weakened the command.He was known among the local Arab inhabitants as as-Saffāḥ, being responsible for the hanging of many Lebanese and Syrian Arab nationalists, including Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Christians, wrongly accused of treason on 6 May 1916 in Damascus and Beirut. In total between 1915 and 1916, Djemal had 34 Syrian and Lebanese politicians and nationalists executed.
Jamal Pasha was praised for his good deeds by some Arab inhabitants of Aleppo, such as the water pipeline he built, which saved Aleppo's population from a severe drought in the summer of 1917. His popularity among some Arab inhabitants of Aleppo can be attributed to the city's orientation toward the Ottoman Empire.
In his political memoirs, the leader of the "Beirut Reform Movement" Salim Ali Salam recalls the following:
Jamal Pasha resumed his campaign of vengeance; he began to imprison most Arab personalities, charging them with treason against the State. His real intent was to cut off the thoughtful heads, so that, as he put it, the Arabs would never again emerge as a force, and no one would be left to claim for them their rights … After returning to Beirut , I was summoned … to Damascus to greet Jamal Pasha … I took the train … and upon reaching Aley we found that the whole train was reserved for the prisoners there to take them to Damascus … When I saw them, I realized that they were taking them to Damascus to put them to death. So … I said to myself: how shall I be able to meet with this butcher on the day on which he will be slaughtering the notables of the country? And how will I be able to converse with him? … Upon arriving in Damascus, I tried hard to see him that same evening, before anything happened, but was not successful. The next morning all was over, and the … notables who had been brought over from Aley were strung up on the gallows.At the end of 1915, Djemal with viceregal powers is said to have started secret negotiations with the Allies for ending the war; he proposed to take over the Ottoman administration himself as an independent king of Syria. These secret negotiations came to nothing, in part because the Allies reportedly could not agree on the future territory of the Ottoman Empire; France objected strongly, and Britain was unwilling to fund the imperial operations.
His most successful military exploit was against the British Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, which had arrived in early 1915 from India. 35,000 British troops marched north on Baghdad, hoping to take the citadel with relatively few casualties. Djemal Pasha was appointed to command and marshaled a vast army, ultimately led by Halil Kut Pasha, which by the time of the siege of Kut al-Amara numbered 200,000 Turks and Arab auxiliaries. The British could only evacuate their wounded with Djemal's consent and attempted to send emissaries requesting permission to evacuate while the city was encircled on three sides. Djemal refused to compromise his advantageous position, and strafed enemy attempts by the Tigris Corps to take relief boats up river. They had underestimated Djemal's considerable administrative capabilities and will to resist the Allied armies. The Ottoman troops fought hard at the Battle of Ctesiphon, but the subsequent fate of POWs and civilians later enhanced Djemal Pasha's wartime reputation as a capricious and cruel general. Nonetheless, the successes impressed T. E. Lawrence to write a significant account of their diplomatic encounters when finally Kut fell in April 1916, which provides for "a colourful character". The ever-present threat of Arab Revolt fomented by British intelligence was rising throughout 1916 and 1917. Djemal instituted strict control over Syria Province against Syrian opponents. Djemal's forces also fought against the Arab nationalists and Syrian nationalists from 1916 onwards. Ottoman authorities occupied the French consulates in Beirut and Damascus and confiscated French secret documents that revealed evidence about the activities and names of the Arab insurgents. Djemal used the information from these documents as well as from others belonging to the Decentralization Party. He believed that insurgency under French control was the main reason for his military failings. With the documents he gathered, Djemal moved against the insurgent forces which were led by Arab political and cultural leaders. This was followed by the military trials of the insurgents known as in which they were punished.