Palmerston Launches Young Turks

A British ploy to permanently control the Middle East
-- by: Joseph Brewda, 1994-02, source: Schiller Institute
MHP hypertext version for non-profit educational use only

Introduction

[Note: This section has been condensed. --ed]

This report is adapted from presentations delivered to the Conference of the Schiller Institute/ICLC Conference in suburban Washington, D.C., on President's Day weekend, 1994. See "Solving the Paradox of Current World History" for the setting of the article. It was published as a special report by EIR, and is available from Schiller Institute...

Chorus: It is clear that the B'nai B'rith is an abject tool of British intelligence, run and directed to serve the interests of British imperial policy... At the end of the 19th century, one of the tasks assigned to the B'nai B'rith was to direct, with the help of other Mazzinian agents, the dismemberment and partition of the Ottoman Empire...

[During the 1870s], Giuseppe Mazzini formed a Young Ottoman movement out of an Adam Smith translation project in Paris. In 1876, the Young Ottomans briefly seize power in Constantinople. They end a debt moratorium, pay off the British, declare free trade, and bring in Anglo-French bankers. They are quickly overthrown; but the same network would soon make a comeback as the Young Turks, whose rule will finally destroy the Ottoman Empire.

The Young Turks

In 1908, the Committee for Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, carried out a military coup, overthrew the Sultan, and took power in the Ottoman Turkish empire. Once in power, they carried out a racist campaign of suppressing all non-Turkish minorities. Within four years, their anti-minority campaigns provoked the Balkan wars of 1912-13 among Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. By 1914, these wars had triggered World War I , with Turkey becoming an ally of Germany.

Within seven years of coming into power, the Young Turks destroyed the Ottoman Empire. British intelligence had manipulated every nationalist group in the Empire, both the Young Turks and their opponents.

When the Young Turks took power, the Ottoman Empire still included Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula. The empire still included much of the Balkans: half of Greece, half of Bulgaria, half of Serbia, and all of Albania. Its land area was much bigger than present-day Turkey. Although most of the population of the Ottoman empire were Turks, there were also large numbers of Slavs, Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds. The Ottoman empire was a multi-ethnic empire, as were the nearby Austrian and Russian empires.

The Young Turks came to power waving the banner of democracy, but they soon picked up the banner of pan-Turkism. The idea was to form a state that included all the Turkic peoples of Asia. Since half of these people lived in Russia, this policy meant a collision with Russia.

But pan-Turkism was not created by the Young Turks or even in Turkey. It was first called for in the 1860s by a Hungarian Zionist named Arminius Vambery, who had become an adviser to the Sultan, but who secretly worked for Lord Palmerston and the British Foreign Office. Vambery later tried to broker a deal between the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl and the Sultan over the creation of Israel [that is, a Jewish state in Palestine].

The Young Turks also raised the banner of a pan-Islamic state. The idea was to bring all the Muslim peoples of the world into one empire, whether or not they were Turkish. This was another goal that meant conflict with Russia.

This idea was also not created by the Young Turks or in Turkey. It was first called for in the 1870s by an English nobleman named Wilfred Blunt, whose family had created the Bank of England. Blunt was a top British intelligence official who advocated using Islam to destroy Russia. Blunt's family later patronized the British KGB spy "Kim" Philby.

While the Young Turks were pushing the pan-Turkic and pan-Islamic movements, the British were also boosting all the anti-Turkish independence movements within the empire. They were supporting Arab nationalism, led by Lawrence of Arabia. They were supporting Serbian nationalism, led by the British agent Seton-Watson; Albanian nationalism, led by LadyDunham and Bulgarian nationalism, led by Noel Buxton. All of these peoples wanted to break free from the Ottoman Empire; but they also claimed the land of their neighbors.

For example, the British supported the idea of carving a "Greater Armenia" out of Turkey, Iran, and Russia. This "Greater Armenia" had no possibility of existing. None of the Great Powers, including Britain, really wanted it. The Kurds, who lived in the same area, didn't want it. But the British told the Armenians they supported their plans. At the same time, the British were also telling the Kurds they supported the idea of "Greater Kurdistan". As the map shows, the proposed territories of "Greater Kurdistan" and "Greater Armenia" were almost identical.

In 1915, during World War I , the Kurds killed about 1 million Armenians. The Young Turks, who had been put in power by the British, used the Kurds (who thought they had the support of the British) to slaughter the Armenians (who also thought they had the support of the British). The British then used this genocide as a justification for trying to eliminate Turkey.

In fact, the next year, the British and French got together to plan the division of the Ottoman Empire between themselves. According to the plan, which only partially worked, Turkey itself would be reduced to a tiny area on the Black Sea. The rest of the empire would go to Britain and France.

[See also "The Dönmeh: The Middle East’s Most Whispered Secret" by Wayne Madsen, 2011]

B'nai B'rith and the Young Turks

But who were these "Young Turks", who so efficiently destroyed the Ottoman empire?

The founder of the Young Turks was an Italian B'nai B'rith official named Emmanuel Carasso. Carasso set up the Young Turk secret society in the 1890s in Salonika, then part of Turkey, and now part of Greece. Carasso was also the grand master of an Italian Masonic lodge there, called "Macedonia Resurrected". The lodge was the headquarters of the Young Turks, and all the top Young Turk leadership were members. [E1]

The Italian masonic lodges in the Ottoman Empire had been set up by a follower of Giuseppe Mazzini named Emmanuel Veneziano, who was also a leader of B'nai B'rith's European affiliate, the Universal Israelite Alliance.

During the Young Turk regime, Carasso continued to play a leading role. He met with the Sultan, to tell him that he was overthrown. He was in charge of putting the Sultan under house arrest. He ran the Young Turk intelligence network in the Balkans. And he was in charge of all food supplies in the empire during World War I .

Another important area was the press. While in power, the Young Turks ran several newspapers, including The Young Turk, whose editor was none other than the Russian Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky had been educated as a young man in Italy. He later described Mazzini's ideas as the basis for the Zionist movement.

Jabotinsky arrived in Turkey shortly after the Young Turks seized power, to take over the paper. The paper was owned by a member of the Turkish cabinet, but it was funded by the Russian Zionist federation, and managed by B'nai B'rith. The editorial policy of the paper was overseen by a Dutch Zionist named Jacob Kann, who was the personal banker of the King and Queen of the Netherlands.

Jabotinsky later created the most anti-Arab of all the Zionist organizations, the Irgun. His followers in Israel today are the ones most violently opposed to the Peres-Arafat peace accords.

[For more on Jabotinsky and his role in the founding of the Jewish State, see "Zionism and the British Empire" --ed]

Another associate of Carasso was Alexander Helphand, better known as Parvus, the financier of the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions. Shortly after 1905, Parvus moved to Turkey, where he became the economics editor of another Young Turk newspaper called The Turkish Homeland. Parvus became a business partner of Carasso in the grain trade, and an arms supplier to the Turkish army during the Balkan wars. He later returned to Europe, to arrange the secret train that took Lenin back to Russia in 1917.

Of course, there were also some Turks who helped lead the Young Turk movement. For example, Talaat Pasha. Talaat was the interior minister and dictator of the regime during World War I . He had been a member of Carasso's Italian masonic lodge in Salonika. One year prior to the 1908 coup, Talaat became the Grand Master of the Scottish Rite Masons in the Ottoman Empire. If you go to the Scottish Rite headquarters in Washington, D.C., you can find that most of the Young Turk leaders were officials in the Scottish Rite. [E2]

But who founded the Scottish Rite in Turkey? One of the founders was the Grand Master of the Scottish Rite in France, Adolph Cremieux, who also happened to be the head of the B'nai B'rith's European affiliate. Cremieux had been a leader of Mazzini's Young France, and helped put the British stooge Napoleon III into power.

The British controller: Aubrey Herbert

You can find the story of the Young Turks in the B'nai B'rith and Scottish Rite archives, but you cannot find it in history books. The best public account is found in the novel Greenmantle, whose hero is a British spy who led the Young Turks. Carasso appears in the novel under the name Carusso. The author, John Buchan, who was a British intelligence official in World War I , later identified the novel's hero as Aubrey Herbert.

In real life, Herbert was from one of the most powerful noble families in England. The family held no fewer than four Earldoms. His repeated contact with Carasso and other Young Turk leaders is a matter of public record. Herbert's grandfather had been a patron of Mazzini and died leading revolutionary mobs in Italy in 1848. His father was in charge of British Masonry in the 1880s and 1890s. His uncle was the British ambassador to the United States. During World War I , Herbert was the top British spymaster in the Middle East. Lawrence of Arabia later identified Herbert as having been, at one time, the head of the Young Turks.

The U.S. State Department also played a role in the conspiracy. From 1890 through World War I , there were three U.S. Ambassadors to Turkey:

• Oscar Straus
• Abraham Elkin (Abram Elkus)
• Henry Morgenthau

All three were friends of Simon Wolf. And all three were officials of B'nai B'rith.