Remarks on Some Correspondence Between Ankara and Yemen Concerning the Last Ottomans at Yemen in the Early 1920s

Year 2011, , 69 - 82, 01.06.2011

M. Lutfullah Karaman

https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2011.21.28

Abstract

As is historically known well, the part and parcel of Yemen, albeit so
remote, has come and been under Ottoman control and/or influence
for some 400 years. It was such a continual presence that, though intermittently,
persisted from somewhere in the 16th century till the early
decades of the 20th century. It was such a presence, again, during
which many Ottoman citizens resided in Yemen and served as incumbents,
of civilian or military background. It needs, accordingly, to
be emphasized that although formally administrative relations may
have ceased with the obvious defeat and de facto end of the Ottoman
political power, after the termination of the First World War, the relations
would be far from over in yet another aspect, that is, for the human
element: those numerous civilians and military officials of Ottoman-
Turkish stock who had remained behind, fortunately still surviving.
Accordingly, its focus being on that specified human aspect, this
paper will attempt to reopen a scarcely explored leaf in history,
within the multi-faceted outline of Yemeni history under the Ottoman
governance, with the special aid of a series of documents found (as
untouched and thus unknown for the public till the attempt of making
them open by this paper) in the Republican Archives of the Turkish
Prime Ministry, pertaining to the fate of the remnants of Ottomans stranded there in the aftermath of the First World War and during the
subsequent period of the National Struggle, a time when while the Ottoman
Empire vanishes and ultimately relinquishes control of Yemen,
a totally new, different Turkey appears on the same stage of the
worldsubject matter.

Keywords

the (last) Ottomans at Yemen, Imām Yaḥyā, Maḥmūd Nadīm, Governor(ate) of Yemen, Turkish National Assembly

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