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'Near East' versus 'Middle East' Author(s): Alford Carleton Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Apr., 1975), pp. 237-238 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162422 . Accessed: 09/05/2014 16:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Journal of Middle East Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:16:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Near East' versus 'Middle East

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Page 1: Near East' versus 'Middle East

'Near East' versus 'Middle East'Author(s): Alford CarletonSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Apr., 1975), pp. 237-238Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162422 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 16:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toInternational Journal of Middle East Studies.

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Page 2: Near East' versus 'Middle East

Int. f. Middle East Stud. 6 (I975), 237-244 Printed in Great Britain

NOTES AND COMMUNICATIONS

'NEAR EAST' VERSUS 'MIDDLE EAST'

All the discussion in the July i973 number of the International Journal of Middle East Studies as to the whys and wherefores of the terms Near East and Middle East could set me on in a more serious letter than I am prepared to write today. I went to the Near East in I924 as a teacher, working in Turkey and Syria. By the time I gave up perma- nent residence there, thirty years later, it was from the lMiddle East that I returned to reside in America. I happen to know the real reasons for so dramatic a change, lying deep in the politics and rivalries of the Allied Powers. I had the account from General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson (later Field Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya) during and after the Second World War - years I passed entirely in the Near/Middle East, as the President of Aleppo College, in Syria.

Neither term was, obviously, an indigenous usage picked up by European scholars. Rather the distinction was one drawn by Western scholars and diplomats to sort out, from the European point of view, more vague terms like 'Orient' and 'Levant'. I remember owning at one time a good solid book by Hogarth entitled The Nearer East, in which the distinctions between English, French and German definitions of the respective areas were discussed. Basically, everything from the Eastern Mediterranean to a line drawn from the southern tip of the Caspian Sea to the northernmost point of the Persian Gulf was to be 'Near East'. (The English and French considered the Arabian Peninsula as falling all in the Near East. The Germans (on sound cultural grounds) extended the dividing line from Basra to Aden, putting the eastern and southern coasts of Africa in with Iran and India).

When the British and the French, in anticipation of a war clearly blowing up across the world, set out to create unified Allied Commands, both wanted the post of 'Com- mander in Chief, Mediterranean' for diverse but obvious reasons. Similarly both wanted the territorial command of the Arab Lands, where both were involved, but Britain having much larger forces involved. The inevitable dicker came out: To England the command of the Mediterranean, under Admiral Cunningham; to France the territorial command under General Weygand (at Beirut) as the 'Commandant en Chef, Proche Orient'. The territorial command further east, 'Middle East Command', was undisputed, and the British installed the command at Karachi.

Then came the collapse of France. General Weygand opted for Vichy, and could have no command over British forces in Iraq, Transjordan, Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan - forces now under pressure from the Italians, soon to be backed by Rommel.

General de Gaulle insisted on the preservation of the agreement, as a price of his continued collaboration with Britain anywhere, and named General Georges Catroux to the post of' Commandant en Chef, Proche Orient'. The British, not wishing to have a show-down with the Free French at this time, and yet faced with immediate need for higher command of the British (and Commonwealth) forces in the Near East, simply called on the Middle East Command at Karachi (being very little engaged in the war at that time) to send an 'Advanced H.Q., Middle East' to Cairo on an ad hoc basis.

This anomaly continued to the end of the war. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the British Foreign Office and the British universities reverted immediately to the usage of 'Near East' as of yore. At this point Winston Churchill stepped in to

237

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Page 3: Near East' versus 'Middle East

238 Notes and communications 238 Notes and communications

insist that a million or so Englishmen had fought and many died in what they knew as the Middle East, and Middle East it was to remain! Once the journalistic world accepted that usage, the fight was over. So politics and sentiment demolished one useful distinction, however artificial it may have been in the first case; and we were left with a Middle East reaching roughly from Gibraltar to Burma!

ALFORD CARLETON

Haworth, New Jersey

MORE ON THE ROLE OF ALI FUAT CEBESOY AS

TURKISH MILIARY EXPERT AND DIPLOMAT

Professor Feroz Ahmad, discussing 'The Role of Ali Fuat Cebesoy in the Turkish Revolution', IJMES, vol. 4, no. 3 (July I973), pp. 365-6, refers to some 'distortions' on my part in 'General Ali Fuat Cebesoy and the Kronstadt Revolt (I92I): A Footnote to History', IJMES, vol. 3, no. 4 (October I972). I shall confine my response to a few salient points.

It is not my purpose to defend General Cebesoy's military tactics as commander of the Turkish nationalist forces on the western Anatolian front, I919-20. He had

enjoyed a long and distinguished military career. The military situation in Turkey and in Soviet Russia at the end of I920 required the dispatch of a prominent and reputable Turkish military leader to Moscow to break the deadlocked treaty negotiations and to obtain Soviet military aid. The chief roadblock to the projected treaty involved the

disposition of Batum and the border districts of Artvin and Ardahan, following Soviet

military successes in the Caucasus. This concerned military strategy more than diplo- macy. Already a Turkish delegation led by Yusuf Bey had arrived in Moscow on i8 February I92I, ahead of Cebesoy, to reopen Soviet-Turkish negotiations, stalled since August I920.

General Cebesoy explained to me in person (28-29 August 1963) that Soviet

Foreign Commissar Chicherin refused to yield on any of the above strategic points, as did the Turks. It was during an evening session between Cebesoy and Stalin, arranged by the latter, that a solution was found. Stalin, according to Cebesoy, proposed that the Russians keep Batum, to which the Turks had no access by road, and that the Turks should get Kars, Ardahan and Arpa9ayi (Barley River). This compromise broke the deadlock. According to Cebesoy, Stalin treated him, not merely as an ambassador, but as the second most important man in Turkey, showing consideration and respect that he did not accord to others.

Russians, whether Bolshevik or Tsarist, who, strictly speaking, had never enjoyed a civilian government, would have shown nothing but contempt for a 'discredited' Turkish general, either in the settlement of the Soviet-Turkish boundary dispute or in the negotiation of Soviet military aid to Turkey. When the subsequent Ukrainian- Turkish treaty (2 January I922) was in the process of negotiation, the Soviet regime was equally careful to send a general of high prestige to Ankara, namely, Mikhail V. Frunze, commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in the Ukraine, a fact which Turkish leaders were quick to appreciate (see Marshal Mustafa Kemal's telegram to Kalinin, read at the Ninth Congress of Soviets, Moscow, December I921, in Soviet Russia and the East, 1920-1927: A Documentary Survey, edited by Xenia Joukoff Eudin and Robert C. North (Stanford University Press, I957), p. I89). Professor Ahmad implies

insist that a million or so Englishmen had fought and many died in what they knew as the Middle East, and Middle East it was to remain! Once the journalistic world accepted that usage, the fight was over. So politics and sentiment demolished one useful distinction, however artificial it may have been in the first case; and we were left with a Middle East reaching roughly from Gibraltar to Burma!

ALFORD CARLETON

Haworth, New Jersey

MORE ON THE ROLE OF ALI FUAT CEBESOY AS

TURKISH MILIARY EXPERT AND DIPLOMAT

Professor Feroz Ahmad, discussing 'The Role of Ali Fuat Cebesoy in the Turkish Revolution', IJMES, vol. 4, no. 3 (July I973), pp. 365-6, refers to some 'distortions' on my part in 'General Ali Fuat Cebesoy and the Kronstadt Revolt (I92I): A Footnote to History', IJMES, vol. 3, no. 4 (October I972). I shall confine my response to a few salient points.

It is not my purpose to defend General Cebesoy's military tactics as commander of the Turkish nationalist forces on the western Anatolian front, I919-20. He had

enjoyed a long and distinguished military career. The military situation in Turkey and in Soviet Russia at the end of I920 required the dispatch of a prominent and reputable Turkish military leader to Moscow to break the deadlocked treaty negotiations and to obtain Soviet military aid. The chief roadblock to the projected treaty involved the

disposition of Batum and the border districts of Artvin and Ardahan, following Soviet

military successes in the Caucasus. This concerned military strategy more than diplo- macy. Already a Turkish delegation led by Yusuf Bey had arrived in Moscow on i8 February I92I, ahead of Cebesoy, to reopen Soviet-Turkish negotiations, stalled since August I920.

General Cebesoy explained to me in person (28-29 August 1963) that Soviet

Foreign Commissar Chicherin refused to yield on any of the above strategic points, as did the Turks. It was during an evening session between Cebesoy and Stalin, arranged by the latter, that a solution was found. Stalin, according to Cebesoy, proposed that the Russians keep Batum, to which the Turks had no access by road, and that the Turks should get Kars, Ardahan and Arpa9ayi (Barley River). This compromise broke the deadlock. According to Cebesoy, Stalin treated him, not merely as an ambassador, but as the second most important man in Turkey, showing consideration and respect that he did not accord to others.

Russians, whether Bolshevik or Tsarist, who, strictly speaking, had never enjoyed a civilian government, would have shown nothing but contempt for a 'discredited' Turkish general, either in the settlement of the Soviet-Turkish boundary dispute or in the negotiation of Soviet military aid to Turkey. When the subsequent Ukrainian- Turkish treaty (2 January I922) was in the process of negotiation, the Soviet regime was equally careful to send a general of high prestige to Ankara, namely, Mikhail V. Frunze, commander-in-chief of Soviet forces in the Ukraine, a fact which Turkish leaders were quick to appreciate (see Marshal Mustafa Kemal's telegram to Kalinin, read at the Ninth Congress of Soviets, Moscow, December I921, in Soviet Russia and the East, 1920-1927: A Documentary Survey, edited by Xenia Joukoff Eudin and Robert C. North (Stanford University Press, I957), p. I89). Professor Ahmad implies

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:16:46 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions