It's a great pleasure to be here because some of the best work on Islamism has been done by Oxford faculty, by some 32 Zaman methodologies here.
And it's not the best Turkish studies scholarship. It's also here I went to promote Andrew Hammond's book is coming out on Ottoman Palestine.
Gallipoli is going to write about visionary Turkish diplomats and historians.
So it would be good for me to take this opportunity to present some of the new research
on the Lisbon Treaty and the role of the Indian Muslims and Indians in general,
and how we can make sense of this experience with many contradictory interpretations.
So let me tell what the contradictory interpretations are on the path to Turkey's diplomatic victory,
according to Turkish side, as well as from the British side at Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which devised a defeated empires,
remnants of a defeated empires division with the current sovereign Turkish nation states,
Indian Muslims played an extremely important role, in fact, that the success would not have been possible without India.
It was the financial, moral and diplomatic pressure and mobilisation.
In addition to the Muslims, there was also great support by the Bolshevik Revolution,
and thus this support is subject to many conflicting, also confusing interpretations.
One of the reasons why why this continued confusing and conflicting interpretations happened is that in contrast to the common perceptions of 1918,
1919, the end of World War One, as the end of Empire and the rise of the Estonian nationalism,
one of the most important aspects of this period is, is that the boom of nationalist activities across the world.
So in 1919, in some ways is not a Wilsonian moment of self-determination.
It's a pan-Islamic, Pan-African and Punisher moment in from 1982 onwards until all the way to 1922,
pan-Islamic across the world, not only in India, organised in different forums.
Indian Muslims rebelled against or revolted or objected against the punishment of the defeated Ottoman Empire by the Allied powers.
And they thought that this extreme punishment of them I post,
if you might Ottoman Empire to occupy Istanbul and then finally to occupy Anatolia with the Greek army,
which acted as a proxy for the British, is an Islamophobic act of punishing a muslim state by Christian powers.
And they met Woodrow Wilson Lloyd George Pope, grandson of Karl Marx.
There's a lot of diplomatic activity to try to persuade that they should not treat Turkey unfairly in this moment.
There was also a great support to Indian Muslims by Hindus, including Gandhi, by a large part, by all kind of people who are considered today.
Founding fathers of Hindutva were also involved in the support of the Muslims,
and they made this extraordinary argument that we see in the meeting of the Indian and African
division with Woodrow Wilson by Aga Khan after Syed Ahmed and Abdullah was somebody in the May 1919.
The argument follows this is that in 1914, when document empire declared war against and holy war against Britain, we didn't join that.
We joined the British fight. We died. We sacrifice our lives for the King and the British Empire.
But we have conditions.
We say that the war is against Germany and the young Turks, and it should not affect the Muslim holy cities as well as the caliphate itself.
And they said, because we were so loyal to the British Empire as the greatest Mohammedan empire,
and the sacrifice now we want as Muslims was the community that you kerb your anti-Muslim
prejudice in your treatment of the Ottomans and give them what they deserve.
That is a Wilsonian deal that the Muslim Turkish majority lands of Anatolia will become post Ottoman Turkey.
But they also had a very clear message that the arrogance of Iraq, Syria, Palestine will also be free from colonialism.
That's a very interesting vision of the Indian Muslims that we usually forget, which I will talk in more detail.
This Indian Muslim pan-Islamic mobilisation, coupled with also Bolshevik support,
and it was also coincided with young Turk pan-Islamic internationalism.
From 1990 to 1923, which triggers other passions in my shop.
Moving across Eurasia with Bolshevik support and making an alliance between
Islamic internationalism and Bolshevik internationalism played a crucial role.
It wasn't 100% the reason why Turkish nationals won, but it was without that kind of support.
You wouldn't think that the ultimate success of the Turkish nationalist government to defeat the Greek army and then get to the table,
make peace also with Russia and France, French empire, get to the table.
It goes on and get not everything but a lot of the teeth out of the of the allied powers in the British.
Before Lausanne there was something called the 73rd treaty was supposed to make the colonisation of the Arab lands also extend to Turkey,
but give an Armenian homeland, a Kurdish state, an expanded Greek empire.
Then Prince Philip's uncle was supposed to be the kingdom head in those areas.
There were so many other punitive measures included in the Senate treaty, which was then never ratified.
They were considered in Lausanne. They were thrown into the trash.
So in 1923, Lausanne treaty came and celebrated as the triumph of this pan-Islamic internationalism, where Indian Muslims played a great role.
Yet just soon after that glorious victory over victory of pan Islamism.
I was in a very anticlimactic moment where this whole pan-Islamic mobilisation was couched in
the terms of of saving the caliphate or keeping the institution of the caliphate in Istanbul.
And kind of government decided to abolish the caliphate on March 1924.
And an Indian Muslim leaders and others like it would kind of continued their demands because their demands were beyond what Turkey wanted.
In fact, they also found something unsatisfactory with the loss of treaty with regard to the colonisation of the House.
The new way that the Turkish compromise with the British. But then there was some insisted that that compromise wasn't enough.
It could have included full independence of Syria, Iraq and Palestine.
So we have this extraordinary transformation from 1918 to 1924, when we did this diplomatic moral power of pan-Islamic movement,
which then transitions into this post caliphate moment of nationalism,
and then gradually this experience of being interpreted with a very different narrative,
a narrative of nationalism, a narrative of Turkey's right to self-determination.
And the narrative that the Turkey gained is right to belong to Europe.
And losing was a confirmation of this and gradual distancing between Turkish nationalism and pan-Islamic movement based in India.
Does this episode is remembered with highly inaccurate myths and exaggerated feelings?
And I know when I was looking for research for this, I found out that there were so many historical erasures.
So the unexpected interpretation of one of them, I should note,
is that Hindu fundamentalists loved Mustafa Kemal Ataturk because they think
that the abolishment of the caliphate showed Indian Muslims how cool they were,
religious, they were unnecessarily. And then Mustafa Kemal taught them a lesson by listening to cultivate and declaring declared the second.
Of course, this is a very distorted, inaccurate, nonsense argument.
But some one of my student was writing a paper on this topic about Indian Hindus and in Lausanne,
and that actually became one of the start conclusions that the currently loosened is phrased by a Hindu nationalist,
as is almost like a soap bubble that showed that the Indian loyalty to another Taliban or more monarch was unnecessary.
But in reality, we do know that Hindu nationalists, including Mahatma Gandhi, were as active in the pan-Islamic movement of Islamic movement,
and they were very supportive of the Turkish nationalist cause and never forgot.
An aspect of it is that the Turkish current Turkish conservatives,
they are not strictly very proud of the Indian mobilisation and support for the caliphate,
but that they don't want to think what happened to Indian Muslims afterwards.
So they think that that was still working well, made a mistake by abolishing the Taliban.
And so they have a negative take on Muslim with a lot of conspiracy theories,
one of which is that on the 100 year anniversary of those ideas, a secular closing to abolish it, and they can be counted backwards.
But it's a no no basis in terms of any historical fact.
But there is a dark side of the Muslim treaty and it is multiple dark cycle,
because one of them is that it relied on a bargain between Turkish nationalists and the British,
that Europeans are going to stop any demands on behalf of the Armenians who were expelled from their homes.
In an apology, there was a project of them being able to go back to Anatolia, at least in some sort of an Armenian homeland.
But in return and this it of course not never expressed implicit the explicit that that it was implicit in the bargain.
In return, Turkey is not going to continue its claim over Arab provinces giving out Iraq and Palestine.
And this is is a topic that is that a Thomson will write about and shoot some very good research on this the forgotten aspects
of the Turks betraying Arabs in Lausanne because usually the argument was opposed by the Turkish nationalism in World War II.
The Arabs betrayed the Turks to the outer world, while Indians were very loyal to the Turks.
Actually, during that time, Indian soldiers were fighting on the British army.
That's also not accurate, but it not become very clear that the Arab publics,
Arab leaders, wanted Turkish nationalists to speak on their behalf to do.
A Balfour Declaration because technically unless because Arabs were free citizens of document empire so I'm kind of government could still
present them in some ways and without Turkey giving up on all in this way sovereign rights over former Ottoman provinces in Arab lands.
The mandate system could have taken them over just like a deed off of a property that they have to transfer them.
And given the limitations of the power of the Turkish nationals or be for other reasons, they actually did not pursue that path,
even though they kept this idea of an Arab Turkish federation and a caliphate until the very last moment.
In fact, one could say that Turkish delegation leaders who went to Lausanne with some sort of a caliphate in Palestine,
as well as one puppet and Bolshevik support of his other pocket within the left,
he showed these on his trash can and then left with some sort of a new understanding and
a bargain with the British and American new narrative of Turkey as a civilised race.
So what I was trying to do today is to resolve some of this contradiction and talk about new research and and offer another
way of meeting this extraordinary couple of years in terms of pan-Islamic mobilisation on behalf of the Turkish nationalists.
These readings will rely on one argument that I would like to have is that we have to look at Islamism not as a wasted utopia,
not as a failed project of seed, as part of the global history of rights.
And this is one of the weakest spot of the history of rice literature.
There's a lot of literature on his right to self-determination, a history of human rights,
and that is that literature is still consistently very Eurocentric.
So only time they refer to non-European societies, it still refers to them as as non Europeans adopting European ideals and actualise.
And so Gandhi becomes a figure or object or someone taking ideas from French Revolution and Europe.
And Toynbee clearly say that the Asians are learning from Europe how to fight against their learning,
the concept of rest from Europeans and talking back against the Europeans, but is a very minimal role.
You basically act like you come over character ideas that are only emerged in Europe,
which would punish nationalism as much to replace them as there are.
A couple of things that needs to be highlighted. Maybe I start with that and I will go into the second part of of narrative refashioning after those
are what I argue in terms of the significance of Islamism where the history of race is that.
Concept of rights, world globalised.
And there were unique aspects of the question of rights in Asia and Africa beyond a Eurocentric notion from 1870s to 1930s.
And we cannot understand decolonisation as well as the 1960s famous moment of the United
Nations approving the end of empire in Asia and Africa without this time nationalist argument,
which will also leave us an important legacy of India's official notions of civilisation as a result of struggle for rights.
So the idea of Islam being a very important and sending an important is part of this global demands by Pan-African clinicians around Islam is to
decolonise the world and asked rights within empires as well as beyond empires in a pan-Islamic more open till appears ethical mode of argumentation.
I will get to that. But what that means, in fact, let me finish that part of rights in the next five,
10 minutes and then go back to the fact of refashioning narratives as part of the Lisbon Treaty.
Significance.
In fact, European future European elites noted how much of a of the dynamism activism was happening after World War One on behalf of Asia and Africa.
And there was a Pan-African conference by Dubois in Paris.
pan-Asian has had the race equality proposal where it mobilised all of China and Japan around it.
And pages and pages like this were not not only young Turks were everywhere, but also Islamic movement.
And there was a man named Norman Engle who received Nobel Prise for peace and he just interview was noted by Paris.
There were some petitioners who said, Well, maybe we made too much mistake.
We promised these Asians that Africans during World War One and now we can keep up this promise of democracy, freedom, equality.
And so he said Europe must be united at the League of Nations, otherwise we will lose against the Asian Africa.
So you say something very nice that Asians and Africans won twice,
but he still ties it to their exaggerated promises during World War One, which he thinks was a mistake.
And then the League of Nations project emerges as the kind of a conservative response to
solidifying European empires against these new demands that came out after World War One.
In reality, however, Marshall's language of rights emerges simultaneously across Asia and Africa in the 1870s and eighties and the first stage.
They rely on this very naive language of civilizational uplift and improvement and very apologetic.
And the first generation from Afghani generation to Tagore, even after the pan nationalist argument for rights goes like this,
is that we are part of empires and we are part of the world order, but our rights are denied.
We don't have equal rights.
And the reason why we have we are denied with these rights is that we are considered inferior as blacks, Asians and Africans.
Thus, we have to assert our equality by proving that we are work here,
that this sort of civilizational work to this of equal citizenship sort 1870s to 1900
generation of Muslim Asian African intellectuals always talk about how they are,
if they are fully civilised, that they deserve to be treated equal.
That seems to achieve something, but they have some limits.
And in some ways this is what we professors from Colonial worked in teaching in America and Europe.
We are still doing that right. We are always an attempt to teach the European and American public what they think about Muslims, Asians and Africans.
Correct. And their prejudice and their Islamophobia.
We have been doing it for the last 150 years and we still have racism.
So we need to think about how successful that project is.
Maybe you can think of some sort of a vaccine shot that doesn't kill the pandemic, but it the pandemic of racism into an endemic of racism.
But in fact, there is there's a beautiful line by Mohamed Barker, who wrote in the magazine Islamic Fraternity in Tokyo in 1911 and says,
You know, when I'm talking about Dutch violence in Indonesia, I just mean that I hate the Dutch.
I like them. It doesn't mean that I want them to to have all of this stigma.
I just want them to be aware of what horrible crimes are committed on their behalf and if they feel some shame and.
The best way then to pressure their own empire and to change the policies due to their invasion Muslim subjects.
And I think that's the common mode of every intellectual, everywhere in Asia, in Africa, to talk back, to defend rights.
Around 19 or 1900 nationwide, people realised that you can gain your rights by just ignoring you.
People are not shameless. I mean, it's also power relations.
I mean, how much you can talk to persuade someone in London, Paris or Amsterdam to be nicer to you, to give you equality?
The second stage is quite interesting. They say, okay, dinner.
If it doesn't work, we need power. That's like Japan is very important.
And Turkey, Brussels, Germany, they say we create solidarity amongst ourself for power.
Well, solidarity is also not enough, just geopolitical solidarity,
solidarity of the poor and which is great morally, but you need someone with batons, with armies.
So solidarity also involves someone with power.
DJOKOVIC You need to then fight back to to create to create some imbalance.
And this starts with Japan, Turkey, Moldova, excellent.
All the way to possible to Germany, Russia.
And there's a sort of logical, logical solidarity in geopolitics.
I think in that moment we have to understand why all the punishment for punishment is unusual.
They were so excited about Japan's victory because their main goal is to if only we
could take Japan out of an alliance with Britain to being the big brother of Asia,
that we could defeat colonialism, that kind of language of rights that are embedded.
And they are so excited about Turkey's plans, the reforms.
So the pendulum obsession with Turkey and Japan has two purposes.
On one hand, these two countries prove that Muslims than Asians on an interior, they're very civilised,
but they might also they also prove that they are part of their big they have
that they can play the geopolitical global power politics and you may need to.
There's an amazing line. I think there are certain versions of this thing will be published and I can tell you the published references.
There's a great line by saying I said in a speech on great Asian ism in 1924, he clearly goes to the stage and says,
We Asians are always asking for our rights and equality, but we wouldn't get here if it wasn't for Japan and Turkey.
And he does mention was the pan-Islamic mobilisation during 1924 after those lines,
is that Japan was the first to gain legal equality in international law.
But Russell, jump in is what it shows that we're not stupid, we can organise militarily.
And is this turkey to Turkey that the first thing that you don't give up, even if you are defeated, you fight back.
So there's a narrative that the turkey is not an Ottoman Empire, it is a victimised nation,
which is the narrative refashioning that the Bolsheviks stopped in some ways in 1990.
And then is that the effect that the Chinese nationalism now highly inspired because of these two model, the two sides of it?
So there is this pragmatic aspect headed toward a final one of open nationalism.
Is that it? It goes into the controversial part that at some point pan nationalist notions
of rights moved beyond the logic of showing your civilizational work in.
As for equality that that there's a Eurocentric criteria you have to provide proof that you are worthy of equal rights.
To to an argument that that philosophical notion is that in order to be equal, modern, progressive humanist,
you have to go beyond Europe and revive your own historical traditions and past the gestures of legal abortion that we were talking a lot about.
This today can best be seen in Ahmadi Ahmadi arguments that emulation of the West is not enough.
It's not necessary either, that you need to revive Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism,
because the true humanism will come again in passion of of balancing between the best of the East and the West is a great degree thing.
There is a very good line that I hope I think I told this to call it, but I'm going to test you on one thing.
I need to find my method of energy over time.
We find in my talk because I'm so I'm going to read the lines is this is a speech that
in 1920 in Bombay to long have the scientists looked to Europe as a part of wisdom.
There's evil as well as good in the European education and ideas of life, as scientists have become inferior to Europeans.
Why? Because they have object to imitate them, renouncing criticism because they had not pride as a scientist on their own ground of Asia.
They are not inferior, but they are different.
Everything that is based on the world, religion, romance, jewellery comes from Asia Indians you proud that you are a sceptics seem to worship blindly.
Everything good or bad could comes from Europe, except from Europe only what is good?
Take up your burden of responsibility and full grown men forming a full grown nation.
Do for yourself what the British in 150 years of failed to do for you.
And this speech is also given on in support of Turkish national of course in hospitable.
And so when I asked my students actually they didn't think that this was done by a muslim.
They thought this must be a Hindu or a Buddhist because it as the book about but this is a white
British convert why would you picked on who was them in in Bombay in any work in Hyderabad.
But but I think this askap it just uses optical turn and when the global transnationals taught us to be studied by the future Oxford students,
and then if I can expect new research to be done on this topic,
because it's also very important for our notions of an idea of what religion,
idea of race idea, feminism that is all linked to this moment in 20th century.
I will say that without this pressure on rights, pressure on shaming Europeans,
criticising European idea of civilisation, we would not have the the composition of Muslim.
Why? Because after Lausanne treaty, which started in November and then continued until July, it's a very long process.
The delegates did not just talk about the details of population exchange, which is horrible.
I'm going to talk about this on Turkey, you know, exchanging Muslims and Christians from Greece and Turkey or how to divide the debt.
So Turkey assumed to 65% of the debt from Ottoman Empire.
And they distributed the 35% in other countries, despite Turkish claim that they're no longer the inheritor of Ottoman Empire that they were.
There was also all of this fight over the meaning of history and progress who is civilised or not.
But they did this fight very politely and I think before Lausanne on the eve of World War One, during World War One, and even after World War One,
European discourse on Turkey was blandly Gladstone in and with its uncivilised death by unity,
which they clearly say that the Turks should not be part of Europe.
But you're very Europe and it's very mysterious.
I mean, they already stated we expelled the barbaric Turks from Europe at the end of the bargain Balkan wars.
But Europe could also be based in Turkey. Some in Europe could also be Istanbul.
They can they can continue. And the whole Turkish modernism is to assume that you can be Muslim and European at the same time.
That's what their goal. I will tell more about this. But it wasn't.
Suddenly everybody acts a little bit pull out because by then, by 1922,
I think this planned nationalist talk of right civilisation, modernity kind of defeats that European arrogance in the summit.
I actually expected more arrogant talk by Lloyd George and they implied and there's a chance this barbaric
and even after those time but they British and French and other delegates actually became aware about this.
The Turks, in early stages of the Turkish nationalists, continue that apologetic discourse, saying that you were telling us we are barbarians.
Look at where your Greek army did in Turkey, destroyed Anatolia.
And they tried to avoid, of course, talking about World War One. Turkish nationalists pretend as if the history starts in 1918, 1919,
and they have nothing to do with the expulsions of Armenians prominently or anything happened with the Turkish decision to enter were left.
But I would say this is extremely crucial in some ways.
So there is an important aspects of the language of rights going up to those on supporting Turkish claims,
even though of the military victories are really important in that process.
And that's actually even. Which is a.
Well, even when Turkey receives what they want, Turkish nationalists, most of it at Lawson.
Indian Muslims continue their struggle for rights in multiple ways.
So the eloquent moment goes, I will say, or Indian Muslims kind of global women is a project goes beyond laws on example
they support a resistance against Spanish colonisation and there is immediately
after Luzon and the abolishment of the caliphate there there is a meeting between
Indians and the Turkish diplomats on the question of pilgrimage to Mecca.
This is soon after a caliphate is already gone.
And Indian Muslims wanted to raise the question of at least resistance and ask all the Muslim delegates to raise funds and money and support them.
And Turkish delegates says, hey, we are here for talking about the pilgrimage and the foundation.
Is it the time to talk about the region? And certainly told to the Turkish delegates says, look, just two years ago you were sending your money,
you were asking your support, what happened to you, that you don't want us to do the same thing to the to the Moroccan Muslims?
And they do impact, send emails and telegraph to the League of Nations and asking them to go interfere and interfere,
interfere and the Spanish cruelties on Greek people and give them their rights.
So if if I have given at least a certain sense of taking plan, Islamism like that and their language of rights on the path to Lausanne,
then maybe then I want to move on to the Turkish perspective on that a little bit and then try to combine it with them.
So from a Turkish nationalist perspective,
obviously they were excited and happy and very pleased that they received this support and they knew that they couldn't do that.
And it turns out that they couldn't do what they did without the Indian and global
support to their cause without putting it Islamic nation nationalism attitude.
And, you know, and other Turkish leaders were in touch with the traffickers.
They were always just telegraph exchanges.
Money will come into a bank account.
And the problem of that money they were also in touch with, of course, with the Bolsheviks, were very thankful to the support for their cause.
And in fact, they use this as a card all the time.
No question that any conversation that Turkish nationals had before Lovato always included that war charge.
All the support we received from Asia and Africa, mainly Muslims, but even beyond the Muslims to non-Muslims.
So we are not alone with that. You have to give a lot of people what would be asked and they make together with.
The pan-Islamic and other discourses on rights gave me this interesting notion that
Europe promotes Greece as its own proxy invaders in the name of European civilisation.
And the Greek argument is that Greece has to rule Anatolia because Turks have proven themselves to be highly uncivilised.
So if the population is mixed because Ottoman Empire Muslim Muslims proven to be barbaric during World War One would do with all kinds of actions,
including the expulsion of Armenians. Then it should be the right of the civilised Christian to these mixed areas.
And that's why the Turkish national anthem, written by a poet named Mehmet Activist I was an admirer of Mohammed.
Evolve, has a line which says Not only the self-determination is the right of my people, that worship is worshipped by God.
That's the use of the word that is right, but also named for God.
But in the next quadrant of the poem that is not part of the national anthem, it says Civilisation is a monster with defanged civilisations,
a defiant monsters, a very harsh critic of our discourse of opposition that comes from Europe.
And even though it was the Muslim migrant on the counter of the tradition of Afghani
and up to here had that emotional condemnation of the idea of civilisation,
Turkish and the pan-Islamic language of civilisation has a distance regionalism that we have to also take it seriously,
which says that even though everybody talks about universal criteria of values, of equality, of rights, there is some sort of emotional cheating.
And the pilgrims might that you sympathise with grief are Armenians, but not with me when we are brutally oppressed.
And then, you know, the earth might have been to the death.
Why? That everybody has to regionally organise on their own ways to support their own people.
So it is a kind of stomach argument or rites in an order which I think has to be taken seriously with what is happening with Ukraine,
that suddenly with Ukraine we have seen what the what the white Christian movement is capable of, but they supported the Ukrainians.
And that's what is like an argument that is an Asian or my African Islamic or if Palestinians or,
you know, Arabs or anyone is oppressor Turks is to be grateful to support them.
But that's not a tribal word that they talk about civilisation,
but not in a more consistent position that is always open, inclusive, and it moves beyond.
That's why in many of the meetings with the British Muslim,
a delegation brings Hinduism back to one with Woodrow Wilson, including a lot of Hindu leaders.
And they say that is not just not a question of us and them is the question of race.
And Hindus are 100%, which then I think one of Oxford pieces on whether the rise of Islamism by one year after the lesson of my
megalomania is a brilliant piece on talking about why a Hindu nationalist supported him on that independence.
Then, of course, if by incidentally no number of something,
but I hope everyone can read this is an open access article on the Hindu nationalists supporting that cause.
So I think that argument and Ukraine doctors should actually tell us that they they had a
point about world order and the emotional civilizational boundaries of right and never.
But there's one aspect of a highly misunderstood reinterpretation of Mozart is
that those are treaty was not a treaty by an Asian power with a European power.
The Ottoman Empire mobilised Islamism into those arms, but the Ottomans were always European from hundreds of years earlier.
I mean, the capitals in Istanbul was was considered part of Europe.
They of course, they were really affected by the language of Europe and Asia and Africa and where Islam fits imitated.
In fact, young Ottomans were very puzzled because the Ottoman Empire was part of the concept of Europe,
what Napoleonic wars, and there was no contradiction in their mind to be Muslim and European.
A lot of those were not just the Muslim empires, especially after Monza,
but they became even more cosmopolitan despite the dynastic credentials in their mind,
pan-Islamic support was not a natural support coming because they were part of Asia.
Pakistani support or pan-Asian support for Turkey is as a reward against the double standards and hypocrisy of the Eurocentric imperial world,
which created the racialisation of the world, and repression of Asians and Africans together with some of the non European monarchies.
So the monarchies like Japan, Ottoman,
Thailand and China were racialized in different forms and Ottomans were uniquely racialized and they were already part of the concept of Europe,
especially confirmed with the Paris Treaty of 1856 and only eight.
After 1870s and eighties, there was a glass code in language that the Turks are horrible,
Muslims are barbaric, they are anti-human specimen of humanity.
And there are all kinds of different racial theories around the language of Europe that some Europeans argued that,
you know, Arabs and Indians are better Muslims and the northern Muslims are worse than that.
They are the militaristic Muslims that gave Islam a very bad name.
Even in the in the Hindu-Muslim. Solidarity in support of Turkey is only this talk about Aryan and tyranny and race are getting together right that
there's this the racial language is always there as part of this moral humanist language for the struggle for rights.
Well, for Turkish nationalists,
the question of reason was that Turkey was kicked out of Europe by force and they're going back in there once they got that treaty.
And they are not thinking it that way because they are traitors to Omar or because they think Asia is backward, they need to leverage this.
You know, I wrote a book on pension as my big question about Japanese pension is saying that Japan initially said,
which is optical illusion, that Asia is backward.
Japan has to leave Asia to join Europe in order to be civilised and powerful.
And then if it the collision is in 1920s, all the Japanese leaders said, Oh, we have to go back to Asia.
But of course we are in reality with Asia and Europe is stuck. Articles,
inspections are born in the mid-19th century and whatever leaving and going back to Asia meant is that we
have to understand it is a geopolitical mental constructions with some political military implications.
It document is even more complex because they were never in Oriental power,
they were in Europe and their appeal to punish them is in the sense that they are not appealing to an Islamic bloc of countries to go back to.
There is no alternative to the European centre of international order in their mind.
And you know, but India,
Muslims and Ottomans realise it and they know that that the Prophet Muhammad is a moment in the British Empire, which is the greatest.
Muhammad is not it is not a movement of an alternative international order
interfering and to take Turkey to their side and protect them against Europe.
This has to be noted. Second. When the Turkish delegation started Mosul.
In fact, the Turkish delegation met in India, and neither is whether the Bolshevik leaders in Switzerland and the important delegation.
A meeting started now always being a meeting of conferences, the discussions going on around the conference, it's a long conference.
There's all kind of poker games happening. Picnics and parties are happening, too.
But there are, you know, friends of Turkey and Switzerland have a meeting and they experiment with solving a different argument.
So there's a hard power negotiation going on.
Then what will be the borders? What do you do with the people in those borders you want people around is a compulsory
population exchange and Turks insisted that the Armenians coming back is no cannot be discussed.
It's already closed chapter. There's the question of the Arabs where they're going to be in or out, how much Turkey will help get out.
So it's some sort of what kind of practical decisions we need to make.
But there's also this question of who is the was barbaric, which is our right and turkey gets is sometimes giving this very exaggerated speech.
Appeasement persists, which is that Turks invented tolerance of human rights.
They were already treating them very well.
So they got the chief rabbi from Istanbul as part of the Turkish delegation to how did, for example, Jews are a model minority.
Look, nothing happens to them. And that means that if anything bad happens to Armenians because of the European intervention,
then to Greece or Greece and Turkey, then support would be made in Greek armies.
So if anything is happening to them, it's because they deserve that they ask for.
But that's that. Well, that language is not what is happening.
There is that secondary language of race coming.
And this racial question is puzzling me. Enhanced. Lucas classmate is writing a book on this today.
This debate on race and civilisation.
What puzzled me is that the Turks, with support from the Swiss anthropologists, are very sympathetic to this idea that nobody should solve them.
Some of the white race and they say, well, we are, quote, sacrilege or tyranny.
And it is with so much contradictions in it.
Right. That if you separate your thoughts from the Arabs, you go back to central lives of the other barbarians that goes back to Jimi's car.
Right. That's one that in the Ukrainian war, according to The Wall Street Journal, Putin is becoming an Asian Jesus.
But they think if they could, they could sell it, they could make an argument that they are different than the other Asians.
They're they're white. There is civilising impact that this idea that the Turks will then have to subcontract the civilising
missions to uplift Asia and Africa is also happening there in all of these new compositions.
We see that in the history of the world order.
When we move from one form of imperial order, not yet national to another form of imperial order,
but actually European empires expand in the Middle East. So there's that sort of scramble for Africa.
There's a scramble for the Arab lands. And I think some of this work beautifully.
All these questions on why we have to see World War One.
NASR Another turning point for equal examination by the turning point for further colonisation of our lands.
So the Turkish nationalists managed to take themselves out of that mode by not doing too much about the Arabs too,
but making interesting arguments of their whiteness and belonging to, to, to the European order.
As a result of that, I'm going to quickly move to my 45 minutes and then a couple of minutes I will wrap it up.
As a result of that, they reach a bargain apartment.
The dispute over the sorry, the window turkey ends up being republic at the end with this is truly an imperial one sided place.
There was the one question that they left open, but they resolved it later on and then British managed to resolve it on their own benefit.
That's the question of Mosul and the northern Iraq question.
Their terms were intact. Turkey wanted to keep it because they tried to sell their country as a country of Turks.
And Turks and British claimed that this was more of an Arab place.
So they kept it for Iraq, for themselves, with with the knowledge that there was also oil in there.
But the bargain is, from the Turkish nationalist perspective, is a triumph, is a satisfactory bargain from the British perspective.
It is also a very satisfactory one, because then they in their mind, they actually created peace in the in the Near East with a very costly,
traumatic, forced population exchange coming with the Greeks and Turks, which.
Fully implemented in Turkey and Greece managed a good relationship afterwards.
So if George was there, be able to write something together on this question of Turkey and Greece and civilisation as a joint article.
But I have to say that at this point, if you look at woman realises that this is an incomplete piece,
they immediately realise that Arabs are so abundant that Jordan wondered about there is no helping Arabs.
Palestine is colonised. Syria is under French mandate. Iraq is a horrible situation.
They are completely upset about the approval of the job, but they don't want to.
They can't do much about this and they keep your clothes on.
They said, this is great, you will revise their treaty, but this wasn't what we think we should have done.
You could have done more. And if local leaders then extend this, a seemingly religious argument, but clearly a very political one,
and its argument is this is that when they said when we say in return for our sacrifices,
caliphate should be preserved and holy lands of Arabia should be kept independent from Western European control.
We want to remind you that Jerusalem is also a holy land of Arabia and you are creating a mandate
in Palestine is a violation of the British promises to Indian Muslim support for the war.
And then they continue to say that. Meanwhile, you also destroyed our own country, that there was a Syrian state that was built,
that the French took over and they kept their own resistance to British imposition of colonial
rule in the Arab lands so that they are seen that this is not a fulfilment of their demands.
But as Margaret. So then the final note, how do we dead don't understand the abolishment of the caliphate and we can then start our discussion.
So this moment of July two in 1923 of Lausanne treaty signed.
Followed by a short period of almost eight months where I'm kind of government led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
kept a spiritual caliphate in Istanbul and they could have kept it longer.
So there were many different options. Why don't you give me the reasons why that spiritual caliphate, not the real caliphate, was abolished,
a caliphate that was actually created by the Turkish Parliament, but also abolished by the Turkish Parliament in March 1924.
During that process,
Indian delegation led by and Aga Khan tried to intervene and tried to persuade Turkish nationalists edition just keep it and in fact give more power.
And it would be precision for Turkey's power international, the new Turkey's power.
And what surprised me is rudeness and the arrogance of the Turkish leaders after benefiting so much from the climate movement.
So when that letter was published in Istanbul Press,
I guess many of you know the story that the government claimed that it was something of a British conspiracy.
This and in the letter being published in its public press before it reaches Ankara.
And then what I find very rude and I apologise for all the details,
the insult that I could come and see them when I did that, that these are also heretic Muslims.
They're not simply that one of them is the imam of these smileys, either of the Shia or Shia.
And he says, Why do you even care about the caliphate? Theoretically, you're not even supposed to believe in the country.
And that's before. And then there's this discussion.
But it also shows and we discussed this, that how much of Palestine is and was not theological and theocratic oriented,
that this was a project of rights reimagining the world.
We making it a to be done, you know, with or without empires.
It's much more complicated, but necessarily without empire.
So the peak success and excitement about the end of it and woman ended with a silence and disappointing news that
the not the last caliph was sent to France and there was nothing that anyone could do about it except that again,
an Indian Muslim prince ended up financially protecting the caliphate by marrying his sons to supporters or the royal family.
Suppresses is a separate story, which is a very fascinating story.
But I would like to stop here because I went beyond my minutes so that I get your feedback and I have some other comments.
But then the question then afterwards I hope you can think of.