The Circassian: A Life of Esref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent.

• Author: Gunduz-Polat, Irem
• Position: Book review

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

By Benjamin C. Fortna

London: Hurst Publishers, 2016, 341 pages, [pounds sterling]25.00, ISBN: 9781849045780.

Kuscubasizade Esref (d. 1964) is probably one of the most complicated and elusive figures in the transformation period spanning the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the Republic of Turkey. Today, he has a controversial reputation within the country. Some view him as a heroic figure for his pan-Islamist and pan-Turkic operations to save the Ottoman state. Others view him as a traitor to his country because he did not follow the orders of Mustafa Kemal and the new parliament in Ankara. These two extremes are due in part to the paucity of information about and misinterpretations of his missions and the Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa) of which he was a part. In his new book, The Circassian: A Life of Esref Bey, Late Ottoman Insurgent and Special Agent, Benjamin Fortna considers the controversy about Esref's life misleading; he therefore tries to objectively describe and contextualize Bey's story. Fortna contributes not only to Esref's biography, but also to current knowledge concerning the groundbreaking events and institutions of the first decades of the twentieth century. To bring forward his compelling new interpretation, Fortna was fortunate enough to have access to a trunk full of Esref's documents--containing papers, memoirs, seals, paintings, and telegrams that had remained undisturbed since Esref's death--granted to the author by Esref's descendants (p. 1). (1) The resulting account thus contains illuminating details concerning the fragmented history of late nineteenth and the early twentieth century Turkey, such as the essence of the relation between Esref and the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal.

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The book is divided into nine chapters. The first describes the organization of the book, the approach of the author, and the concepts he finds significant concerning Esref's life. The next concentrates on Esref's early years, including his education, his internal exile in Arabia in 1900 after his father's altercation with the sultan, and his settlement in Izmir after receiving an imperial amnesty. The remaining chapters each focus on one of Esref's missions or his presence in a particular country. In chapter three, which covers the year 1911, Fortna describes Esref's mission to raise Bedouin...