He was a member of Ataturk's party.. What do you know about "Aziz al-Masry", the godfather of Abdel Nasser?

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It was a rainy winter's night that he met them for the first time, the slender brown young man, wrapped in his coat to avoid the cold and rain, moved to his destination remembering the map that his colleague Anwar Sadat described to him to that house in Ezbet al-Nakhl in Old Cairo, turning to his right and left clearly Repeatedly for fear that someone would track him down and spoil the whole thing, he tries to calm his tension by insatiable desire to smoke to kill time and tension, he reaches the intended house, just as he saved the map in his mind, he stands a little in front of the entrance to the building until he finishes the tobacco roll in his hand, He quickly ascends the stairs until he stands in front of the door, and after several light knocks, the maid opens for him. He asks her politely: “Aziz Pasha is there?” She replies: “Oh, is there, we say who?” He tells her: “I am Al-Yuzbashi Gamal Abdel Nasser, coming.” by Anwar Sadat.

Gamal Abdel Nasser sits in the room designated to receive guests, and as soon as three other visitors join, introducing themselves to military ranks, the maid greeted them and directed them to the same room, Abdel Hakim Amer, Abdel Latif Al-Baghdadi and Kamal Hussein. Waiting for Aziz Pasha, who soon came out to them with expressions of anxiety and annoyance, after a number of welcome expressions and compliments, Admiral Aziz Pasha Al-Masry stops talking, wondering with his eyes the reason for the visit, everyone becomes silent and Gamal Abdel Nasser begins to speak, with Gamal Abdel Nasser continuing Gradually the features of Aziz Al-Masry are changing.

Aziz Al-Masry (networking sites)

Among the features of anxiety and annoyance, his face gradually covered with features of seriousness and enthusiasm, Aziz Al-Masry listened to Gamal Abdel Nasser completely, until he was surprised at the end of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s speech by the last of what he expected; Abdel Nasser asked him clearly and frankly, saying: “We are now in the stage of building a political organization within the army from all branches and weapons to carry out a military coup to overthrow the regime in Egypt and get rid of the king, parties, the British and all the current political class, and we see you as a father, a role model and an example for all of us. We chose you to be our leader and face this change, because of your honorable national history.”

It was dropped in the hands of Aziz al-Masry. The young visitors whom Aziz expected at the beginning of the visit to be affiliated with the authority or the political police tell him explicitly now that they are an opposition political organization within the army, a military organization made up of angry young officers who intend to overthrow King Farouk and seize power in the whole land of Egypt, and the most dangerous They chose him himself to be a leader and a front for this coup based on his political and struggle history, and since he asked them for a time to think, he left Aziz Pasha for continuous nights, and throughout those nights his life appeared before his eyes, recalling its events and chapters, why did these young officers trust me in particular? It seemed to him that the answer might have already begun more than forty years ago, and with imagination, he began to see himself as a young man with his Turkish mother in the summer of 1896, and they were at the head of that luxurious ship heading to the most important cities in the world at that time, the capital of Islam and the Ottoman Empire; Istanbul, where it all began.

Askar Arabs, Turks and Germans..modernity without fans

Historian Isaiah Berlin recounts that the passage to modernity in Germany came in contradiction to the experiences of modernization in Western Europe, especially in France and Britain, where the transition to modernity in society, economics and politics in both countries came through massive revolutions carried out by the large and small bourgeois classes to eliminate On the feudal society, absolute monarchy, and the agricultural feudal-village mode of production, thus inaugurating the foundations of a new society where the industrial economy and the rule of the values ​​of modern science, the constitutional social contract and social and political freedoms, and on the contrary, the German-Prussian modernization - which came nearly a century later - was based on the German military establishment. , Modernity in Germany did not start with a middle class or bourgeois groups that wanted to reshape society, but because of the political and military pressure from both neighbors - Britain and France - on Germany, the need for a strong modern army was trained with all it needed from the technical structureAnd social is the first driver of the modernization of society and the economy in Germany.

Aziz Al-Masry was a member of the Association for Union and Progress, accompanied by many Turkish officers (communication sites)

Similarly, the modernization experience came in the Ottoman Sultanate, which was suffering from repeated defeats from the Tsarist Russian Empire, the expansions of Muhammad Ali, the Balkan revolutions, and later from the colonial expansions of France and Britain. The European style, and accordingly a kind of strategic cooperation arose between the Ottoman Sultanate and the German Empire, and the German Military School was the place where the first modern military nucleus of the Ottoman Sultanate arose, but unlike Germany, the Ottoman Sultanate did not intend to engage in the modernization experience with more than one formation Modern and trained military teams, as modernity did not go outside the walls of the army camps to establish a constitution, a modern economy, political and social freedoms, and a distribution of powers and authorities, which led to the emergence of political ambition and a different social imagination among students of graduates of military institutions.The German military to change the social and political structure in the Ottoman Sultanate, which appeared in the form of rebellions and coups led by the Turkish military against the Ottoman Sultan and the traditional elites within the Sultanate.

In this climate and political and social polarization, Aziz al-Masry was receiving his military education in Astana, where he graduated and his star rose and began to rise quickly within the Ottoman military institution until he reached in record time to the highest and most prestigious positions, at that time many secret societies appeared that were aimed at At the beginning of the order, the call for the application of the constitution and the establishment of a parliament and reliance on the youth in governing the state, and at a later stage the goal of these associations was the establishment of a federation that would bring together the countries under Ottoman rule, with the independence of each political unit in internal affairs and the unification of foreign policy and the army under one command. The latter was the goal of these associations to isolate the Sultan because his presence on the throne has become impeding any modernization. Aziz Al-Masry was a member of one of the most important of these associations, the Association for Union and Progress, accompanied by many Turkish officers who would rise afterwards, such as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Anwar Pasha, and Jamal Pasha who would later be known as JamalPasha al-Saffah, as well as other Arab officers such as Nuri al-Said, Jaafar al-Askari, and Yassin al-Hashimi.

Members of the Association of Union and Promotion of Turkish officers (communication sites)

In the year 1908, these modernist groups entered into a conflict with Sultan Abdul Hamid II over the constitution in order to restrict the absolute political powers of the Sultan. Al-Hamid after bloody battles, in the first military coup witnessed by the Arab and Islamic region, in which Turkish, Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian officers participated. The political strategy of the Union and Progress groups here explained that they were mainly based on deceiving the masses for the sake of the masses, adding that although "The movement’s objective is apparently noble, such as constitutional reform and opposition to sultan tyranny. To reform the state, they must also lead the society themselves to reform and modernity.

The dream of Arab nationalism and political Islam

Abdel Karim Ahmed Suleiman Jaradat confirms in his master's thesis, "Aziz Al-Masry and his role in the Arab movement."The joining of Aziz and a large number of Arab officers in the Association for Union and Progress was motivated by vague perceptions of modernization, nationalism, and the imperial Islamic and Arab political imagination, adding that Aziz al-Masry, the young officer, was loving the good of the Ottoman Empire, and looking forward at the same time to the future of his Arab nation and his Turkish state, and that he was He wishes that an Islamic empire would be based on the Turks and the Arabs, and that close and continuous cooperation would take place that would make them two equal forces for the glory and honor of the state. Sultan Abdul Hamid, despite his dictatorial behavior, resorted to racist or ethnic methods throughout his country, as he aimed to control all the Ottoman elements.Arab putschists, led by Aziz al-Masry.

The years following the military coup and the seizure of power by the officers of the Union and the promotion of power were difficult for all parties within the Ottoman Empire in general. The conflict between Arab and Turkish officers reached its most intense. Aziz al-Masry and a large number of Arab soldiers were arrested, and most of them were sentenced to death, and the sentence was executed in a number of cases. Indeed, the authority of Union and Progress - under the pretext of modernization and Turkish nationalism - practiced many massacres in the Levant, Anatolia and Turkey against the Armenians, Arabs and other minorities in Anatolia, and the confrontation erupted in Yemen between the Arab tribes and the Ottoman forces, and Italy seized Libya after the defeat of the Ottoman army and the Senussi resistance, up to the outbreak of World War I and the Great Arab Revolt in which the Arab elites in Egypt, the Levant and Iraq saw their salvation from Ottoman Turkish tyranny.

A few months before the outbreak of the World War, Aziz Al-Masry had just arrived in Egypt after escaping the death sentence and the attempt to assassinate him in prison, following Arab and international pressure on the Government of the Union and Promotion to release him. With Turkey entering the war, the Arab elites were in a critical testing phase.

Do you stand with the Islamic Caliphate State in its ordeal, or separate from it and hostile to it?

The prevailing opinion among the men of the Arab reform movement was to stand with Turkey and forget the differences with it until the end of the war. As for the position of Aziz Al-Masry - the former commander in the Turkish army - it was accurate. His old comrades in arms sentenced him to death, and even tried to kill him, and Britain - the occupying power - mediated for his release. , This problem between the "Great Arab Revolt" and the old loyalty to the Ottoman Empire and the attraction with the English will define important chapters to come in the life of Aziz Al-Masry.

The Great Arab Revolt (networking sites)

In modern Arab history, historians agree that the Arab Revolt began with the correspondence of Sharif Hussein, the ruler of Mecca, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British commissioner in Egypt (1915-1917), which is largely true, but the British correspondence felt the pulse of the Arabs and moved them against Turkey. And the Ottoman Empire was broader than just the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, where British intelligence played an important role in correspondence with many Arab elites in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent to feel the pulse and then prepare and coordinate the Arab revolution to weaken the Turkish-Ottoman side, in this context British documents revealed an interview Between Aziz Al-Masry and Captain Russell, a British intelligence officer in Cairo.During that interview, Aziz Al-Masry asked to know Britain’s position on the establishment of an Arab state independent of Turkey - the Ottoman Empire. Al-Masry, who was speaking on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Covenant Society - an association founded from dissident Arab officers from the Society for Union and Progress - added that if Britain agreed to support That state, in return, it will receive preferential privileges and not others, and it will exercise the foreign policy of this Arab state on its behalf.

During that meeting, "Al-Masry" presented a plan for a revolution starting from Iraq, supported by approximately fifteen thousand Arab soldiers in the Ottoman army, and he also requested that Britain assist this revolution by providing money and weapons only, and Aziz Al-Masry defined the Arab country in which the revolution would take place. It is the regions that speak the Arabic tongue, and their northern borders extend by a line that begins with the Libyan desert and passes through Alexandria, Egypt, Sudan, Najd, the Levant and Iraq, and leads to the Iranian borders, where the agreement that Aziz sought was to create an Arab empire independent of the Ottomans with its distinguished relations with Britain, in exchange for the British assistance in defeat of the Turks.

However, Aziz Al-Masry’s contacts with British officials during this period, as Jaradat records in his letter about Aziz Al-Masry until 1916, did not yield a decisive result, because Al-Masry was strict in his requests and conditions about independence and guarantees, and this is what Britain does not want, as these contacts were The meetings held by Aziz Al-Masry reflect his personality, who spent many years in political and military affairs, and caused him frustration with British policy, unlike the project of the Sharif of Mecca, who enjoyed a higher spiritual status among Arabs than Aziz Al-Masry, and showed political flexibility among the British, which was not available to the British. Aziz and the Arab military have in the Al-Ahed Society, something that the military of the Sharif of Mecca did not forget over the coming decades.

About this stage of his life, Aziz Al-Masry says in his memoirs with Muhammad Abdul Hamid in his book “Abu Al-Thaeerin”: “I did not know what my position was with the British, and what was the position of the parties in Egypt regarding my presence in Cairo. My case was that the Arab countries should separate from the state. The Ottoman Empire, and also there must be a federation that includes all of them, a union based on the right of each state to dispose of its internal policy, while foreign policy and the army are the right of an Arab central government, and my idea changed later about this federal union, and my call was for an Arab unity supported by an Arab army able to protect this unity, but the English, French and Italian colonialism were planning their interests through modern armies protecting these dreams.My main problem was that I am not a professional politician but a military man professional in this profession.And I began to think how to realize my ideas in terms of being a professional military man, but I am not Politically, I didn't know where my field was."

The book "Abu Rebels" (communication sites)

Under the pressure of the fait accompli and the acceleration of events, Aziz Al-Masry and Nuri Al-Saeed met with Sharif Hussein, and everyone accepted coordination in the joint conflict with the Ottomans, but the seeds of disagreement were present from the beginning. The military coup, as happened with Sultan Abdul Hamid a few years ago, while the vision of the officers of the Covenant Society was that the revolution was not intended to permanently sever the connection with the Ottoman Sultanate. The Arab military force is to prevent the spread of military actions between the Ottomans and the British in the Hijaz, and in the rest of the Arab regions so that we can achieve the independence of the Arab state.Britain.

Indeed, after a short period, this Arab alliance was crushed before achieving its goals. The political and organizational dispute is too big to include a successful alliance between Sharif Hussein, the leader of the Arab tribes in the Hijaz and Yemen, the Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian Arab forces and the leaders of the Covenant Society. Aziz Al-Masry was removed and returned to Cairo before he was exiled To Spain, and Sharif Hussein had what he wanted to defeat the Ottoman forces from the lands of the Hijaz and Yemen and to recognize him as the king of all Arabs, in exchange for Britain and France's occupation of Iraq and all of the Levant and the port of Aden.

The road to the military state of July

After ten years in exile, Aziz Al-Masry returned to Egypt under a government and a parliamentary majority and a ransom that provided him with political and legal protection from the danger of the British, and that was in the year 1924, during that period Egypt changed a lot from the Ottoman Egypt that he knew and Aziz Al-Masry lived in before the war The first world, the Ottoman Sultanate collapsed and the great Ottoman army disintegrated, and the revolution of 1919, the deepest and broadest popular revolution in the entire history of Egypt, and the Egyptian national tendency grew among the general people in Egypt, the Egyptians - whether they were employees, workers, youth, women or children - made a revolution Popularity in order to write the constitution, evacuate colonialism, and transform Egypt into a constitutional monarchy and a sovereign national state. Political religious tendencies receded, and the dream of an Islamic or Arab empire ended in the minds of its owners with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the occupation of Arab territories. The title of the political field and the struggle through it was complete liberation from colonialism and protection the ConstitutionEgypt's fledgling democracy and nationalism.

The government of the delegation appointed Aziz al-Masry as superintendent of the police school, and entrusted him with the file of reforming the Egyptian police, an apparatus that, since the reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha, has been a symbol of oppression and domination.

Despite the atmosphere of relative freedom afforded by the 19th Revolution, the 23rd Constitution, and the enormous political power of the Wafd Party, in complete contrast to public life and political life in Egypt before the revolution, Aziz al-Masry's memory faded and his influence diminished during the time of the Wafd and liberal constitutional Egyptian patriotism. The Wafd government was appointed Aziz Al-Masry was a superintendent of the police school, and I entrusted him with the file of reforming the Egyptian police, the apparatus that, since the reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha, has been a symbol of oppression and domination, to be a professional national body. He impressed the Wafd government, political parties, and even King Fouad, who asked to meet Aziz Al-Masry and offered him to be an educator for his son and Crown Prince Farouk, to educate him on order, military life and the morals of leaders. Ahed Farouk,However, all those years have been just the calm before the storm.

The world after the 19th revolution was completely different in terms of its slogans, speeches and forces from the Ottoman and imperial world in which Aziz al-Masry grew up, and formed in and through him his political awareness and social imagination. Through a constitutional and democratic struggle, and in a civil political sphere consisting of political parties, elections, newspapers, and an enlightening, liberal-conservative cultural sphere, he talks about the values ​​of the social contract, citizenship, rights and freedoms, in contrast to the world of military coups and secret societies through which Aziz al-Masry tried to reach independence, sovereignty and dreams of empire as he imagined and dreamed always have it.

In the mid-thirties, decisive events occurred in Egypt and in the world that upended this calm in which Aziz Al-Masry lived until he thought that it would continue forever into storms and conflicts that did not subside for a decade and a half after that. The repercussions of this on Egypt, which is under the control of British colonialism, are strong, and in the Egyptian interior, the conflict between the delegation, the Egyptian National Party and the king was at its most intense, as the work of the constitution was suspended and Parliament was dissolved, and in the face of that, demonstrations, protests and strikes spread throughout the Egyptian country. The trump cards for the English in Egypt, but with the possibility of a war, Britain wanted to tighten its political and security control over Egypt, so it chose to ally with the overwhelmingly popular Wafd party instead of King Farouk, so it forced the king to allow the delegation to form a government, return to work with the constitution and respect the election results. Parliamentary, and on the other hand acceptedThe delegation joined forces with the English to obtain British-international recognition as the official representative of the Egyptian people and exclusively authorized to negotiate with Britain and the international community to achieve independence, as well as to put an end to the king’s manipulation of democracy and the constitution.

The result of these new political arrangements was what is known in Egyptian history as the Treaty of 36, which recognized the legitimacy of the delegation’s representation of the Egyptian people, but it was also implicitly a disastrous concession by the delegation, which in its relentless pursuit of political legitimacy recognized the legitimacy of the British colonial presence in Egypt, which It is a waiver of the core of the national issue on which the delegation gained its popularity and representative legitimacy on the basis of which, which meant that the official legitimacy that the delegation gained from signing the treaty lost in return the popular and political legitimacy that it gained from the Egyptian masses for signing the same treaty. In this sense, the delegation became a local agent for External colonialism, and the Wafdian government and its security services became the authoritarian alternative in repression, monitoring and punishment of the colonial forces and the political police of the king, which at the popular level represented a terrible decline in the popularity of the delegation and its national representative legitimacy.

This concession from the Wafd Party was a derogation from the legitimacy of the Wafd Party itself, but rather from the legitimacy of the parliamentary liberal constitutional project itself, because although the party called for parliamentary liberalism and constitutional monarchy, it presented itself before all that as the owner of a liberal and constitutional democratic national project and the Egyptian National Party that was formed after the revolution On these three foundations (liberal patriotism, constitutional monarchy, and parliamentary democracy), and not just a political party, and thus the Wafd’s retreat was an erosion of the legitimacy of the entire political system, and not just a decline of a political party that lost its popularity, since the signing of the treaty and the authoritarian practices of the Wafd in power, the middle class began The increasing urbanization - as a result of modernization, such as the unified school and university education policies that expanded with the revolution - in the direction of organizations that express a new radical political mood in the middle class, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Young Egypt Movement and the various communist organizations, whose popularity increased at a record time.The same in which the participation rates in elections and official political life decreased.

The Free Officers Organization was the offspring of a post-36 treaty world, a world that fed on the old ghosts of the Islamic Ottoman Empire and dreams of the Arab revolution.

Here Aziz al-Masry returned to political life again. The ruling alliance between the delegation and the British heralded the end of the post-19 revolution world, as the settlement between the revolution and its enemies was reduced. Talking about the values ​​of the Enlightenment, the social contract, the national economy, and the broad implications of politics and modern culture, in favor of a radical political mood that calls for The old ghosts preceding the 19th revolution, where the international dreams of the empire returned in the style of the Islamic caliphate for the Muslim Brotherhood and Young Egypt, as well as the class communist international for the Egyptian communist movements, and as a result of the political authoritarianism of the Wafd and Saadian governments the legitimacy of the semi-liberal democratic system collapsed, and Egypt returned to the culture of covert work and assassinations. And political violence and secret societies as the only means of political struggle.

This period witnessed the rapprochement of Aziz Al-Masry with all the new organizations in Egypt. Al-Masry first approached the Young Egypt Movement. And in all circumstances: at the police school, at his home, at work, after he assumed command of the army, and after that. He knew many of its members, paid them with books, and showed them the best of what they read. At the same time, Aziz Al-Masry was one of the few people of confidence in Hassan Al-Banna from outside the Brotherhood, and he often helped the Brotherhood in training the special organization’s armed wing of the Brotherhood and working to arm it. Members of the Free Officers Organization, specifically Gamal Abdel Nasser and Abdel Moneim Abdel Raouf, also got to know Anwar Sadat through the Young Egypt movement.

The Free Officers Organization was the offspring of a post-36 treaty world, a world that fed on the old ghosts of the Ottoman Islamic Empire and dreams of the Arab revolution, a world that reduced all possibilities of politics, culture and identity in the conflict with the colonial West and dreamed of restoring imperial glory that was shattered with the First World War, not preoccupied with issues Building modern national societies and issues of freedom, law, political legitimacy and democracy. The imperial imagination clearly appears in the dream of the Islamic caliphate and the mastery of the world at the Muslim Brotherhood and the Young Egypt in a different extent, the class communist international among the communist movements, and the dream of ethno-Arab nationalism among the Free Officers, in contrast to the complete disappearance of the question The social contract, modernization and legitimacy, i.e. how the population blocs in Egypt and the Arab world are transformed into modern societies within democratic states and regimes.

In the middle, Hassan Al-Banna (left) and Aziz Al-Masry (right) (communication sites)

      Since his return from exile, Aziz Al-Masry has been complaining that the men of the delegation do not communicate with him and do not respect his political and militant history. On the other hand, he did not understand much of their discourse, and after the delegation retreated and his world collapsed, Aziz Al-Masry was the godfather of most radical political organizations, especially Young Egypt. And the Muslim Brotherhood and the small armed cells deployed in Cairo, Alexandria and the Canal cities, as well as the secret organizations in the army, and every post-36 treaty world. On the other hand, the Free Officers Organization was a wide gathering of young officers who themselves participated in each of those previous organizations and collected all the discourses and political fantasies within Their political project before and during their rule of Egypt.

In 1962, Uzair al-Masry, the former Pasha, sits listening at his home on the radio to President Gamal Abdel Nasser's speech on the occasion of the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the military coup that brought him and his companions to power. In 1942 we went to Aziz Al-Masry, and maybe he was with me Kamal Hussein, Abdel Hakim (Amer) and Baghdadi.We went to the team, Aziz Al-Masry, in his house and he was in Ezbet Al-Nakhl, we told him, “We are officers.” Or the political police sold you, I am talking, ask what you want, we said to him: What is the work? He said: Work is revolution. Aziz Al-Masry is a man today, he is 88 years old. This is in our hands the hope, that there is hope in which the will to change, and that the people will walk with the will of change.”

Whoever is on his seat, Aziz Al-Masry Abdel Nasser and smiles. Perhaps he already knew the answer to the question that troubled him when the Free Officers visited his home twenty years ago, to reveal to him the order of their organization that easily, and even choose him as their leader, before he refused their request, and chose Major General Muhammad Naguib instead of him. Aziz Al-Masry turns off the radio and goes to bed feeling that his life - despite all that he suffered through - was full, exciting, proud and grateful.