Well-Informed Occupiers in Charge: Russian General Governors of Occupied Ottoman Territories during WWI

• In Event: Occupation and Liberation, 1916-1922

Abstract

After Britain and France gave their approval for Russian acquisitions of the Ottoman lands during WWI, an Imperial decree concerning “The Rules for the Temporary Administration of Areas of Turkey Occupied in Accordance with the Law of War” was issued on 18 June 1916. This decree established the military Governor-Generalship of the occupied territories of Turkey. The first Military Governor General was Lieutenant-General Nikolai Peshkov, who occupied this position until January 1917. Peshkov was an expert on the Ottoman Empire as he had been a military attaché in Istanbul and the Russian consul in Rize, before the war. Following the three month tenure of General Romanovski-Romanko as the general-governor for three months, another expert on Ottoman lands, Lieutenant-General Petr Averianov became the last Governor General of the occupied Ottoman territories until the dissolution of the Russian Army at the Caucasian front in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution and Bolshevik takeover. Averianov had been the secretary of the Russian Consulate in Erzurum before the war, and had served at the Caucasian Military district for a long time, and published several books on the Ottoman military and on Ottoman population.
In this paper, I analyze the role of Russian military officers who had extensive knowledge about the occupied territories, in the formation of Russian policies towards the multi-ethnic population under occupation. Main sources for the paper are the materials from the Russian State Military History Archive and the memoirs of General Averianov from the Russian State History Archive.

Author

• Halit Dundar Akarca, Nazarbayev U (Kazakhstan)