How Revisionist Zionism founder failed to outsmart Ottoman rulers

“I hated Constantinople and my useless work.”

This was how a Zionist Jew from Odessa noted his time in Istanbul in the time of writing his memoirs almost a quarter century later. Initially excited by the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, his optimism quickly turned to frustration as his efforts in Istanbul fell short.

Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky, founding figure of Revisionist Zionism, an ultra-nationalist and more expansionist visage of Zionism, spent his years between 1908 and 1910 in the cosmopolitan city. He initially arrived in Istanbul as an observer for the Saint Petersburg journal, Rassvyet (The Dawn). Soon, he became an active contributor to the newly established pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper, Le Jeune Turc.

Until his arrival at Istanbul, Jabotinsky was already known for his fierce activism in Russia by the European Zionist circles. After the revolution, as a member of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO), Jabotinsky sought to persuade the Ottoman ruling elite to allow Jewish settlement in Palestine, framing it as aligned with Ottoman patriotism.

However, this effort failed as neither Jabotinsky nor the WZO could convincingly deny the separatist implications of a Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Ottoman ruling elite saw this as a threat to the Empire's territorial integrity.

More than a century later, this failed attempt at securing land in Palestine stands as evidence of long-standing Zionist aspirations in Turkish territories. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently echoed this sentiment, warning that the Zionist delusion of a 'promised land' may one day extend Israel’s ambitions to Türkiye.

Istanbul as a gateway to Palestine

Before Jabotinsky, it was Theodor Herzl who initiated the diplomatic efforts to convince the Ottomans for the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Yet, despite multiple visits, his efforts bore no fruit due to the firmstance of the Ottoman sultan at the time, Abdülhamid II. After the 1908 revolution, the WZO officials saw this as an opportunity to rejuvenate the Zionist efforts in the Empire.

Jabotinsky, an ideal candidate for this renewed effort, had already published a series of articles in a Russian newspaper, sharing his observations on the Ottoman Empire with his Russian audience. In these writings, he advocated for supporting the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and fostering strong relations between Sephardi Jews and Turks.

Jabotinsky realised that the Ottoman Turks were unsympathetic to the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine, partly due to their limited understanding of the Zionist movement and their fears of potential Jewish separatism. However, he saw this as an opportunity. He believed that a Jewish population in the Arab region could benefit the Turkish leadership by diluting the Arab demographic, thereby weakening Arab dominance.

By the time Jabotinsky arrived in Istanbul, other Zionist leaders, such as Dr. Victor Jacobson, were already laying the groundwork for diplomatic efforts. Jacobson, the head of the Istanbul branch of the Anglo-Palestine Company—registered locally as the Anglo-Levantine Banking Company—had been working to establish the first Zionist office in the city. This office aimed to garner both governmental and widespread support for Zionism, particularly in areas with significant Jewish populations such as Salonica and Izmir.

Zionist Propaganda

At the August 1909 meeting of the WZO, a committee was formed to oversee Zionist press activities in the Ottoman Empire. On 4 August 1909, the newspaper Le Jeune Turc was established, financed by Zionist officials such as David Wolffsohn, the WZO’s second president, and Dr. Victor Jacobson.

The newspaper’s most prominent contributors included Jabotinsky, its editor-in-chief Celal Nuri Ileri, as well as notable figures like Ahmet Agaoglu and Moiz Cohen (later known as Munis Tekin Alp). From its inception, Le Jeune Turc served not only as a press outlet but also as a meeting place for Turkish and Jewish intellectuals, where Jabotinsky prominently delivered speeches promoting Zionist propaganda.

In its early stages, the newspaper was successful. Some Ottoman intellectuals viewed Zionism as a peripheral movement and a reactionary force in the broader European order. For this reason, they supported Zionists in their conflict with the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which they saw as an agent of French imperialism. At that time, Zionism did not explicitly promote any European imperial identity.

Among the Ottoman Jewish community, however, the situation was more complex. Chief Rabbi Naim Hahum opposed the Zionists, as they had supported his rival, Rabbi Yaakov, during the 1909 Chief Rabbinate elections. Nevertheless, several members of the Ottoman Parliament, including Emmanuel Carasso, Nissim Mazliah, and Nissim Russo, were more sympathetic.

These parliamentarians worked to demonstrate that Zionism did not have separatist ambitions, portraying it instead as compatible with Ottoman patriotism. Munis Tekin Alp even spoke at the December 1909 Zionist Congress in Hamburg, emphasising the alignment between Zionism and Ottoman values.

However, Jabotinsky grew dissatisfied with the slow progress of Zionist goals in the Empire, believing that the gradual approach obscured the true objective—Jewish settlement in Palestine.

Activism Beats Gradual Gains

Reflecting on his frustration with the Young Turks, Jabotinsky later wrote in his memoirs, 'I was not successful with Nazim Bey, the Secretary General of the Young Turk Party… I felt that no pressure would help: for them, wholesale assimilation is a sine qua non condition for that nonsense which is their state; and there is for Zionism no other hope but the destruction of that nonsense.'

His disagreements with the WZO, combined with his distrust of the Young Turks and disdain for 'the Orient,' led to his resignation and dismissal in 1910. Jabotinsky’s activist nature pushed him to seek more radical solutions, including joining British forces to fight against the Ottomans.

In late 1914, while working as a war correspondent in Egypt, Jabotinsky began organising volunteers to form a Jewish Legion, an independent initiative separate from the WZO. Together with Joseph Trumpeldor, Pinhas Rutenberg, and Meir Grossman, he lobbied for a Jewish military force to support the British in the war.

However, instead of direct combat in Palestine, the British assigned them to the Zion Mule Corps, a rearguard unit in the Canakkale War. This experience would fuel Jabotinsky’s later resentment towards the British, which eventually contributed to the formation of the Irgun terrorist organisation.

In 1925, Jabotinsky founded the World Revisionist-Zionist Union in Paris, aiming to revise Zionist policies, though not its core goals. Alongside this, he established the youth movement Betar (Brit Trumpeldor), with its headquarters in Riga.

Despite his failures in Istanbul, Jabotinsky lived to witness the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual fruition of his Zionist propaganda. In 1933, 15 years before the founding of Israel, the Istanbul branch of the Betar movement, which he had established, was opened by a new generation of young Jews in Türkiye—descendants of those who had once distanced themselves from Zionism.