Summary
The Young Turks’ party, aiming to replace the Ottoman autocratic regime with a constitutional parliamentary government, whose secret Karak branch Niqula Khoury joined as a young teacher, becoming its associate secretary (‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), PDF p.95-97).
Details
- In Khoury’s Memoirs §9, “The Secret Party”: there was in Karak a branch of the secret political party known as the Young Turks; Sultan Abdulhamid fiercely opposed it, annihilating anyone accused of belonging, seizing his assets and exiling his family, yet the majority of Committee of Union and Progress members were highly ranked employees and army officers; befriending them, Khoury joined and swore allegiance, soon becoming associate secretary and right hand of the president, who was also the Mufti — all without his father’s knowledge (PDF p.95-96). The editors’ note: officially the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP); Abdulhamid II had instituted constitutional government in 1876 but suppressed it after less than two years, and the CUP was an initially underground movement pressing for its return (PDF p.95).
- Khoury was named to the committee chosen to test students for government schools, alongside the Mufti, the military commander, the battalion chief and the head of telegraph and post — a position never given to a Christian during Ottoman rule (PDF p.96).
- After freedom and the constitution were declared on 11th July 1908, General Isma’il Fazıl Pasha, governor of Syria and one of the party’s most prominent figures and its general inspector, toured the party’s centres making them public, and at Karak singled Khoury out, hugged him and praised his loyalty and dedication before the crowd (PDF p.96-97). The editors’ note dates Fazıl’s governorship of Syria to 1909–1911, so the tour must have occurred some time after the Young Turk revolution (PDF p.96-97).
- Khoury credits belonging to the party with benefits “that the highest academies could not offer”: Karak was almost a place of exile for Arab and Turkish officials who supported freedom, and close contact with them widened his perception, refined his manners and taught him to manoeuvre in elite society (PDF p.97).
- In Khoury’s §11 account, after Abdul Hamid rescinded freedom and the constitution, the party persuaded the free army officers, led by Mahmud Shawkat Pasha, to march on Istanbul, defeat the Sultan’s army, dethrone and capture him, and install his brother Mohammad Rashid Khalifa; command of the empire then fell to the army and the men of the party (PDF p.99). The editors’ note records the disillusionment that followed, culminating in the genocides against the Armenians and Assyrians during the First World War (PDF p.99).
Related pages
‘The House of the Priest’: A Palestinian Life (1885-1954), Niqula Khoury, Karak Revolt (1910), Karak