FIGHTING THE OTTOMAN GREAT WAR

Abstract

This dissertation examines the Ottoman and German soldiers and officers who fought the First World War in the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, it pins down how they articulated a sense of Self and Others, and how their narratives stand in connection with past and future understandings of various concepts such as nation and the East. The Ottoman war presents a peculiarity in bringing Ottoman and German military fields together in an alliance. This close cooperation gave way to a juxtaposition of ideas and discourses in the fronts that acted as a habitus, a collection of generative principles drawing boundaries around what can be said, for these individuals. By using the memoirs and diaries from both sides, I establish that while the Ottoman side’s aggregated narrative delineated unique challenges on each front, such as the memory of failure in the Caucasus or the navigations of a Jerusalemite private within the Ottoman troops in Palestine, the German contingent painted a more Orientalist picture that conceived of the empire as a “past” place, with an eye on future possibilities for colonization. While complicating the mainly monolithic historiographical narrative about the Ottoman war so far, this dissertation also gives depth to how the West perceived the East at the turn of the twentieth century, amidst a big catastrophe.