From “notable Syrians” to “ordinary Anatolians”: the politics of “normalization” and the experience of exile during World War I M. Talha Çiçek Abstract This article examines an important attempt at the political engineering undertaken in Syria during the Great War. It focuses on the experience of the Arabs exiled to Anatolia by Cemal Pasha to redesign Syrian society in line with the Committee of Union and Progress’ idea of empire, which imagined an authoritarian regime. The members of the Arabist parties were removed from Syria to eliminate their contemporaneous and future resistance to the emerging despotic regime. The article sets out to analyze what the exiles experienced in Anatolia using their memoirs in Arabic and the Ottoman documents describing their conditions in Anatolia, and to what extent the aims could be realized. It argues that the purpose was to put a politics of “normalization” into practice by depoliticizing the Arab notable families through “relocation” to Anatolia, although the resistance of the exiles and varying attitudes in Ottoman bureaucracy significantly differentiated outcomes. It also uncovers many untold stories with regard to the daily life of the exiles and adds much to our knowledge on the experience of Arab exiles in Anatolia. It is the first serious examination of the experiences of the Arab exiles using their own texts and narrative. Keywords: World War I; Arab exiles of Syria; politics of normalization; Ottoman Collapse; Cemal Pasha Department of History, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul, Turkey. Author’s note: I am indebted to Salim Tamari who provided Issa al-Issa’s exile memoires to me which immeasurably enriched the content. Selim Deringil has kindly read the unpublished manuscript and made inspiring comments. I am grateful for his contributions. Anonymous reviewers have greatly increased the analytical level of the article by their comments and critiques. I am thankful for their feedback. Finally, I am indebted to NPT editors Biray Kolluo ˘ glu and Evren M. Dinçer for their patience and help during the reviewing and publication process. 1 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 00 (2021): 1–29 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press 10.1017/npt.2021.10 Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2021.10 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 24.133.120.97, on 16 Apr 2021 at 10:20:00, subject to the