The Passage from the Ottoman Empire to the Nation-States

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sia Anagnostopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Nation States

National identity in the Ottoman Empire as a historical and social fact

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isra Shengul Chebi ◽  
Dilshat Karimova
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Social Fact ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Defined both in an individual and in a social or cultural context, identity is a historical phenomenon; a consistent, complete sense of identity develops in the historical process. Social relations created by historical conditions shape Turkish identity, just like other collective identities. Revealed as one of the oldest nations in history, Turkish identity has also been shaped by the amalgamation of the effects created by the rule of law in the collective consciousness. Despite the fact that the length of the historical process makes it difficult to clearly identify the stages of the adventure, when studying Turkish identity it is necessary to look at the Ottoman Empire, which is a prerequisite for the modern Turkish state, and the self-identification of the society that feels belonging to the above state. Indeed, it is not very wrong to associate the phenomenon of identity as a topic of discussion with the relationship of the Ottoman state with the modern nation states of the West. In this context, it would be appropriate to touch upon the perception of identity in the Ottoman Empire.

The Fruit of the Arts and the Mob

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 404-412
Author(s):  
Orit Bashkin
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
Mere Existence ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This essay considers accounts of the Dreyfus Affair published in the newspaper Thamarat al-Funun (founded 1875) during 1898 to demonstrate how Arab writers addressed the rights of minorities in Europe and examined failed emancipatory projects. Writing about the Dreyfus Affair allowed intellectuals in the Levant to reverse the power relationship between themselves and Europe and to comment on the kinds of politics that would ensure the equality before the law of the Jewish minority in Europe. These debates further illustrate that even before the shift to electoral politics in the Ottoman Empire (after 1908) and in postwar Arab nation-states, Arab writers were preoccupied with the relationship between statecraft and majority-minority relations. They argued that democratic institutions such as parliaments and courts of law were the best venues to safeguard the rights of religious communities whose mere existence was defined as a problem. Bashkin shows how Thamarat al-Funun pointed to phenomena that endangered religious communities, such as fanaticism, racism, abuse of power by the police and the military, and mob politics.

“Population Politics” at the End of Empire: Migration and Sovereignty in Ottoman Eastern Rumelia, 1877–1886

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 955-985
Author(s):  
Anna M. Mirkova
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
State Building ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Population Politics

AbstractThis article explores the migrations of Turkish Muslims after the 1878 Peace Treaty of Berlin, which severed much of the Balkans from the Ottoman Empire as fully independent nation-states or as nominally dependent polities in the borderlands of the empire. I focus on one such polity—the administratively autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia—which, in wrestling to reconcile liberal principles of equality and political representation understood in ethno-religious terms, prompted emigration of Turkish Muslims while enabling Bulgarian Christian hegemony. Scholars have studied Muslim emigration from the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire gradually lost hold of the region, emphasizing deleterious effects of nationalism and aggressive state-building in the region. Here I look at migration at empire's end, and more specifically at the management of migration as constitutive of sovereignty. The Ottoman government asserted its suzerainty by claiming to protect the rights of Eastern Rumelia's Muslims. The Bulgarian dominated administration of Eastern Rumelia claimed not only administrative but also political autonomy by trying to contain the grievances of Turkish Muslims as a domestic issue abused by ill-meaning outsiders, all the while insisting that the province protected the rights of all subjects. Ultimately, a “corporatist” model of subjecthood obtained in Eastern Rumelia, which fused the traditional religious categorization of Ottoman subjects with an ethnic one under the umbrella of representative government. The tension between group belonging and individual politicization that began unfolding in Eastern Rumelia became a major dilemma of the post-Ottoman world and other post-imperial societies after World War I.

scholarly journals The Status of the Non-Muslim Communities in the Ottoman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-34
Author(s):  
Naif Bezwan
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Status ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

With a focus on the key developments and critical junctures that shaped and reshaped the relationship between the Ottomans and its non-Muslim subject communities, this paper seeks to understand the dynamics and the rationale behind the Ottoman policies and practices vis-a-vis non-Muslim communities. It will do so by offering a periodisation of Ottoman rule along four major pathways, each of which also provides the title of the respective section. The first period is referred to as structural exclusion by toleration over centuries, from the conquest of the respective territories to their incorporation into the imperial domain. The second phase is entitled integration via politics of recognition which basically covers the Tanzimat era (1838-1876). The third period is put under the heading of coercive domination and control, roughly corresponding to the Hamidian Period (1876-1908). And finally, the last period is concerned with the Young Turks regime (1908-1918), discussing its politics and policies towards non-Muslims communities framed under the title of nation-building by nation-destruction. The chapter titles act both as hypothesis and structuring elements of the periodisation presented. As such they shall help identify the dominant paradigm of each period pertinent to the status and situation of the communities under consideration, while connecting them in a plausible manner. This paper is motivated by a non-Orientalised decolonial approach to the study of the Ottoman empire as well as the nation-states established in the post-Ottoman political geographies.

scholarly journals Naturalization and the Rights of Citizens

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-78
Author(s):  
Taha J. Al 'Alwani
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Islamic Movements ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right ◽  
Emergency Measures

The subject of naturalization, which is an integml part of the conceptof identity and its related problems, has been an issue in the Muslimworld since its filst contacts with western thought, culture, military, andpolitics. Even though the matter was decided, in practical terms, by theemergence of ethnic and geographic nation-states out of the wreckage ofthe Ottoman Empire, it remains an open topic at the cultural and academiclevels. In fact, whether it is addressed as a challenge, an excuse,or as a means to an end, it remains a major and very sensitive question.As new ethnic and regional Muslim nation-states begin to show signs ofinstability, the subject grows more complex: it takes on new aspects ofidentity and affiliation and seeks to discover the best way of ordering relationsbetween the peoples of each region or between them and the (factional,military, or otherwise) elitist governments controlling them.With the stirrings of a new Islamic movement and its members' beliefthat Islam represents a viable political alternative, the question of naturalizationhas become a major challenge to them. In fact, it is often thrownin their faces by their secularist opponents. Thus the question has becomeinstrumental in the current political struggle taking place in the Islamicworld. Many Muslim governments cite indigenous non-Muslim minoritiesas an excuse to deprive their Muslim majorities, who often represent 98percent of the total population, of the right to be ruled by the Shari'ah.These are the same governments that discredit Islamic movements byviewing their very presence, principles, demands, and objectives as athreat to national unity. To counteract this "threat," then, they promulgate"emergency measures" and suspend constitutional legal codes.Naturalization is the basis of nationalism, which gives identity to themodem state, and may be defined as an affiliation with a geographicallydefined region. Anyone who traces hisher lineage to that region is subjectto all accompanying rights and responsibilities. Thus the bond betweenthem is secular and worldly. The same is true of bonds betweenstates, for they are entirely secular and m e a s d in terms of profit andloss. It is essential that all citizens, regardless of their religious, ethnic or ...

The End of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Nation-States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Anscombe
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Slight Variation ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Nation States ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Republic Of Turkey

This chapter discusses the end of the Ottoman Empire, looking at three case studies which illustrate the pattern of change seen in the transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation-states. Greece, the first Ottoman territory to gain independence (1830), set precedents in establishing government by non-natives, introducing religious and legal institutions based on European models and working single-mindedly to instill national identity in its population. Almost a century later, King Faysal I (r. 1921–1933) of Iraq followed a similar path, albeit under British direction. The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1922 and offered a slight variation on the pattern in that it built on selected legacies from the late Ottoman Empire. It was the only post-Ottoman country founded primarily by internal effort rather than by European intervention, and the national identity it worked to entrench in the population drew upon the political ideas of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which had dominated Ottoman government from 1908 to 1918. Despite that continuity, the republican government pursued the agenda of tearing down Ottoman institutions and rebuilding state and society as national projects. Such nation-building ultimately succeeded, producing its own instabilities; in new post-Ottoman countries such as Greece, Iraq, and Turkey, social and political re-engineering aroused resistance within the population.

Serving the State: Military and Public Health Practices in Bulgaria (1878–1908)

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 686-707
Author(s):  
Evguenia Davidova
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Career Paths ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Public Health Services ◽  
Scientific Advancement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article focuses on Bulgaria and looks at the interconnected processes of building public health services and military institutions in the late Ottoman Empire and its other Balkan successor states: Greece, Serbia, and Romania. An elite class emerged from this development that moved between the army and civil service and vice versa. The paper draws on four case studies to follow the career paths of physicians who straddled two worlds – empire and nation-state – and tried to merge Ottoman notions of modernization with a compressed version of state-led modernization, de-Ottomanization, and militarization of Bulgaria. Both the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan nation-states borrowed models from European military, medical, and sanitary institutions. Thus, these states embraced the army as the epitome of modernization with concomitant attention given to medicine as a sign of scientific advancement. Such pairing under the umbrella of progress eased the subsequent expansion of state, militarization, and nationalism. The initial public health structures were thereby influenced by visions that privileged the state’s military needs and compelled the new elites to champion nationalism. The article is grounded in archival materials, diaries, and memoirs and adds a neglected dimension to the understanding of the transition from empire to nation-state.

THE OTTOMAN ALGERIAN ELITE AND ITS IDEOLOGY

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tal Shuval
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The One

By the late seventeenth century, Algeria and Tunisia had established regimes that were largely independent of Ottoman sovereignty in almost every regard, although the Porte continued, in strictly legal terms, to exert minimal rights of sovereignty.        Michel Le Gall1But, let there be no mistake: the more a regency of Barbary has become fearsome to the Christian princes, the more the Sultan is its absolute master. He had only to utter a word to end an unjust war and fix even the terms for peace.        Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis2Separated by two centuries, these two quotations describe the role of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa in very different—indeed, contradictory—terms. On the one hand, Ottoman North Africa is depicted as a region where independent political entities emerged out of a century of Ottoman rule, ready as it were for the eventual emergence of nation-states in the 20th century. Venture de Paradis's earlier description, however, is devoid of the hindsight gained by our knowledge of the “end of the story.” It tells us that by the end of the 18th century, contrary to the contemporary accepted view of the remoteness of the Maghribi “regencies” from the imperial center in Istanbul, the three Ottoman provinces of North Africa were indeed an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and the rulers of these provinces were obedient subjects of the Sublime Porte.

“NATIONALISM” AND KURDISH NOTABLES IN THE LATE OTTOMAN–EARLY REPUBLICAN ERA

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakan Özoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
World War ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
Hard Data ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Late Ottoman

The era culminating in World War I saw a transition from multinational empires to nation-states. Large empires such as the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman searched for ways to cope with the decline of their political control, while peoples in these empires shifted their political loyalties to nation-states. The Ottoman Empire offers a favorable canvas for studying new nationalisms that resulted in many successful and unsuccessful attempts to form nation-states. As an example of successful attempts, Arab nationalism has received the attention that it deserves in the field of Middle Eastern studies.1 Students have engaged in many complex debates on different aspects of Arab nationalism, enjoying a wealth of hard data. Studies on Kurdish nationalism, however, are still in their infancy. Only a very few scholars have addressed the issue in a scholarly manner.2 We still have an inadequate understanding of the nature of early Kurdish nationalism and its consequences for the Middle East in general and Turkish studies in particular. Partly because of the subject's political sensitivity, many scholars shy away from it. However, a consideration of Kurdish nationalism as an example of unsuccessful attempts to form a nation-state can contribute greatly to the study of nationalism in the Middle East.

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