Background
Ahmed Pasa was born in Constantinople in 1872.
Ahmed Pasa was born in Constantinople in 1872.
Ahmed Pasa graduated from the War College in 1895 and received an assignment to Salonika (Thessaloniki).
In Thessaloniki (then Salonika) the Turkish Third Army provided a breeding ground for conspiracies among politically malcontented young officers. Cemal joined the Young Turk movement (the Committe of Union and Progress) in 1906. His posting as inspector of the Macedonian railroad system gave him a rich opportunity to promote the revolutionary cause. With his characteristic energy and efficiency, he rose quickly to a position of leadership.
Following the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Cemal entered the movement's executive committee. In 1909, then a colonel, he helped suppress a dangerous counterrevolution in Constantinople. He served as military governor in the capital and in several provincial cities, 1909-1911. The Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 brought Cemal a succession of prestigious military commands, but his political work overshadowed his career as a soldier. Elegantly mannered and charming in person, Cemal wielded a political style marked by ruthlessness and brutality. In the early months of 1913, as the Young Turks established their dictatorship, Cemal applied his talents to smashing political opposition in Constantinople.
A lieutenant general at forty, Cemal entered the cabinet in 1913. The following year he took over the post of navy minister. With British officers as advisers and with powerful warships on order from British yards, he hoped to create an effective navy. This was only one of his areas of interest. The view that the regime was controlled after 1913 by a dictatorial triumvirate of Cemal, Enver, and Talat Pasas has been challenged by recent scholarship. But even if a wider group of Young Turk leaders held ultimate power, these three had singular influence throughout the government.
In July 1914, Cemal took on the new role of diplomat. He approached Britain and France to explore the possibility of an alliance. They refused and the navy minister leaned toward establishing good relations with the Central Powers once World War I had broken out. But Cemal centered his attention on Turkey's needs. He was a reluctant convert to Enver's drive to enter the war. An important swing figure, Cemal had to be won over around October 10, before the Turkish government could permit German naval units to operate in the Black Sea and thereby precipitate Turkey's entry into the war.
Cemal played a variety of important roles after Turkey became a belligerent. He continued as navy minister. He commanded the Fourth Army in Syria. Most important of all, he governed the vast province of Syria, which included Palestine and the eastern shore of the Red Sea. Residing in Damascus removed him from control over the navy. On the other hand, his powerful military and administrative position in Syria made him a virtually independent potentate.
After an inept assault on the Suez Canal in early 1915 had failed completely, Cemal returned to Damascus to take up other concerns. He may have negotiated with Great Britain. Weber has suggested that Cemal toyed with leaving the war and making himself ruler of an independent Syria, a plan that foundered on French opposition. In any event, suspicion of Cemal's independent intentions began to cloud his relations with Enver and Talat back in Constantinople (Istanbul now).
Cemal moved with his characteristic ruthlessness to stifle possible Arab insurgencies. One group of Arab dignitaries went to the Damascus gallows on his orders in August 1915; a second group followed in May 1916. Cemal's heavy hand kept Syria itself tranquil. But in June 1916, the Arabs of the Hejaz rose nonetheless, and Turkish garrisons in Mecca and Medina came under siege. As British forces under General Murray and then General Allenby advanced from Egypt into Palestine in 1917, Arab insurgents rode alongside to protect the offensive's eastern flank.
As the hungry and poorly led Turkish forces in Syria and Palestine crumbled, internecine conflicts between Cemal and the front commander, General von Falkenhayn, added to the problems of an effective defense. With the loss of Jerusalem to Allenby in December 1917, the Turkish leader left permanently for Constantinople.
Cemal fell from office with the collapse of the Young Turk government in early October 1918. Along with Enver and Talat, he fled his country aboard a German ship the next month. In the postwar period, Cemal, like other Young Turk leaders, remained on the stage of Near East politics. He served as an intermediary between the governments of Soviet Russia and the new Turkish republic. He also found employment as inspector general of the Afghan army. During the war, Cemal had pro-fessed to be sympathetic to the plight of Turkey's persecuted Armenians. Such claims failed to alter his fate. Vengeful Armenians hunted down Turkey's wartime leaders with no regard to such selfexculpation. An Armenian gunman ended Cemal's life in Tbilisi, July 21, 1922