The Circassian

A Life of Esref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent

By: Benjamin C. Fortna

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eText | 15 December 2016

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Esref Kusçubasi remains controversial in Turkey over fifty years after his death. Elsewhere the man sometimes called the "Turkish Lawrence of Arabia" is far less known but his life offers fascinating insights into the traumatic, increasingly violent struggles that ended the Ottoman Empire and ushered in the modern Middle East. Drawing on Esref's private papers for the first time, these pages tell the story of the making of a headstrong "self-sacrificing" officer committed to defending the empire's shrinking borders. Esref took on a string of special assignments for Enver Pasha, the rapidly rising star of the Ottoman military, first in Libya against the Italians, then in the Balkan Wars and World War I, before being captured by the forces of the Arab Revolt and turned over to the British and imprisoned on Malta. Released in 1920, he joined the national resistance movement in Anatolia but fell out with Mustafa Kemal's leadership and switched sides, earning him banishment from the Turkish Republic at its founding and exile until the 1950s. Never far from the action or controversy, Esref's dynamic story provides an important counterpoint to the standard narrative of the transition from empire to nation state.