War on the Desert: The Militarization of the Sinai and its Greater Syrian Sacrificial Frontier during World War I

Abstract

On November 21, 1914, Ahmed Cemal Pasha departed Istanbul's Haydarpaşa railway station for Damascus. A few weeks prior to his departure - after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary on October 29 - Enver Pasha, the minister of war, invited Cemal Pasha to his mansion. At this meeting, Enver Pasha requested that Cemal Pasha, who was then minister of the navy, take up the post of governor-general of the Greater Syrian provinces and assume command of the Fourth Army. Cemal Pasha enthusiastically accepted Enver Pasha's offer to, in his words, prepare for and carry out an attack on the (Suez) Canal, and also to maintain security and internal order in (Greater) Syria.1 He secured his existing ministerial post in addition to gaining full authority as the commander of the Fourth Army and governor of the Greater Syrian provinces. Before his train departed from Haydarpaşa, Cemal Pasha addressed the crowd who had gathered there to see him, describing his mission as the divine but extraordinarily difficult duty of saving Egypt from British invaders.2