The Fall of the Ottomans Quotes

“Muslim crowds massacred thousands of Armenians in the south-eastern city of Adana. The roots of the pogrom dated back to the 1870s. In the course of the First World War, that hostility would metastasize into the first genocide of the twentieth century.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Like the Armenians, the Assyrian Christians of the Ottoman Empire were accused of making common cause with Russia at the outset of the Great War. The Assyrians are a Christian ethnic group who speak dialects derived from ancient Aramaic. For centuries they lived among the Kurdish communities in the border regions of the modern states of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Syrian Orthodox Christians are the main Assyrian denominations.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920

“The Ottoman Empire under the sultan had degenerated into a police state. Political activists were imprisoned and exiled, newspapers and magazines were heavily censored, and citizens looked over their shoulders before speaking, fearful of the ubiquitous spies working for the government.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Tensions ran high in 1920 as Jewish immigration, encouraged by the Balfour Declaration, accelerated. Between 1919 and 1921, over 18,500 Zionist immigrants flocked to Palestine’s shores.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Of all the cities of the east that our men had passed through,” one New Zealand cavalry officer recalled, “Jericho easily led the way as the filthiest and most evil-smelling of them all.”8”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Kurdish irregular cavalry and other auxiliaries). That gave”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“The German offer remained the best deal on the table, and by the end of August the Ottomans reverted to their special relationship with the Central Powers. That the Young Turks approached the Russians at all demonstrated the lengths to which they were willing to go in order to stay out of Europe’s war.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920

“The object of these men is to keep the Armenian cause alive by lighting a flame here and there and calling: Fire!”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920

“In a brief letter to Walter Rothschild dated 2 February, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the declaration that would come to bear his name: His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“The diplomatic Faysal was the ideal candidate for the commission. A loyal but critical Ottomanist who had served in parliament as a member from the Hijaz, Faysal was known to be a supporter of the empire.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Lord Kitchener was still secretary of state for war and still the most influential voice in the meeting. (It is ironic that, to this day, Churchill takes the blame for Gallipoli when Kitchener was so clearly the campaign’s most influential decision maker.)”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“Balfour, a member of the Conservative Party, took Winston Churchill’s place as first lord of the Admiralty. Churchill, condemned for his role in the unsuccessful naval campaign in the Dardanelles, was demoted to chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, becoming essentially a minister without portfolio.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“In the aftermath of the wars in Libya and the Balkans, men of military age had been discretely fleeing the Ottoman Empire to avoid the draft. In 1913, emigration to North and South America increased by 70 percent over previous years.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“As early as 1906, Oppenheim predicted, “In the future Islam will play a much larger role. . . . [T]he striking power and demographic strength of Islamic lands will one day have a great significance for European states.”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

“House, and ships in harbour”. Worse yet, the wells and”
― Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East