A Local National Struggle Leader in the East: Cihangirzade Ibrahim

Cihangirzade İbrahim fought with his brothers Hasan and Aydın against the Shahists and Russians to help the supporters of the Constitutional Monarchy in Iran between 1908 and 1911. Afterward, he fought with the Caucasian Volunteer Corps on behalf of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa for the recapture of Edirne and the liberation of Western Thrace. He was the founder and leader of Cenubi Garbi Kafkas Hükûmeti Muvakkate-i Milliye (18 January 1919). Five and half months after its foundation, on 13 April 1919, Britains occupied the parliament building arresting Cihangirzade and thirty-five parliament members, thus, putting an end to the Cenubi Garbi Kafkas government. The resistance torch of the Kars government was taken over by Erzurum and Trabzon organizations. The experience of the Cenubi Garbi Kafkas Government showed that regional governments, even if established on the basis of Wilsonian principles, had little chance of survival. It caused the leaders of the National Struggle to think that the local liberation struggle, even with wide participation, had no chance of success, and that the only way to succeed was to unite the local struggle and reorganize it to save the whole country. This study benefits from TİTE, Ottoman and British archives, period’s narratives, and Cihangirzade İbrahim’s memoirs and evrak-ı metruke which was inherited by Cihangirzade İbrahim’s daughter Ayten to analyze the activities of Cihangirzade İbrahim as an example of the local resistance in the East.Particular attention will be drawn to the importance of Cihangirzade's evrak-ı metruke and memoirs in understanding a local resistance movement.

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