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5.6

 According to Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın and Ziya Gökalp, ―public consciousness‖ guarantees that no one can dare to wear a hat in public.943 Living in European countries, the diplomats faced the challenge of the ―hat‖, and they ended up wearing hats and normalizing what had previously appeared to be taboo (and subsequently turning into open or shy defenders of the hat and again finding in it an intense symbolism unassociated with the realities of the fez and hat).944


941 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali, Atina Sefareti (1913-1916), Türkiye Yayınevi, 1946, p. 40.

942 İbrahim Hakkı Pasha was another staunch defender of the hat. According to İbnülemin, he proudly defended wearing a hat in his Berlin tenure while he was the Grand Vizier. İbnülemin Mahmut Kemal İnal, Son Sadrazamlar, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, v. IV, p. 1798. For the depiction of the unusually Westernized habits and lifestyle of İbrahim Hakkı Pasha, see Findley, Carter, Ottoman Civil Officialdom, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 195-200.

943 Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın, Siyasi Anılar, Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1976, p. 237.

944 The irritation to the hat can only be compared with the uneasiness shown towards the pigs. For the symbolism of dirtiness (mekruh) and the anthropology of aversion to pigs and hats, See Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger, London; New York: Routledge & K. Paul, 1965.


Apparently as a general observation, Islam turned out to be a private matter in the minds and perceptions of the diplomats and other bureaucrats by the end of the Empire. İbrahim Hakkı Pasha perfectly illustrated this privatized and individualized understanding of Islam and faith. For İbrahim Hakkı; “Beş vakt de nemaz kılamıyorum…Kimsenin hakkını gasb etmiyorum.Üstümde kul hakkı yokdur. Allah, kendi hakkını afv buyurur emma kulun hakkını afv etmez…İman kalbdedir. Müslümanlık kelime-i şehadetten ibarettir…Esas budur, ibadat ve taat bunun füru‟udır.”945 (I don‘t pray five times (per day)…I do not infringe anybody else‘s right. God forgives those committed against himself but does not forgive infringements of the rights of his subjects. Faith is in the heart. Islam is a matter of believing in the Almighty. This is its essence; rituals and obedience (to God) are means to that.)The members of the Hamidian diplomatic service were the first generation who retained and upheld their Islamic heritage but adjusted and rationalized it.946 As will be shown in the coming pages, the next generation was indifferent to religion, preferred to disregard it, and did not take it as a reference system.

Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu‘s proposals to reform and restructure the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomacy are also worth mentioning. Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu suggested recruiting diplomats from the privileged families as it was done in Europe. In his memorandum on the ―Reform of Diplomatic Service‖ in 1909, he noted that ―like the other countries, the diplomats who will be appointed to the embassies have to be from prosperous families.‖ He recommended that, those graduates of Mülkiye who want to serve in the Ministry should be employed as Ottoman representatives abroad without being paid any salary or allowance for one year. After completing one year in the embassies without any salary, they should be entitled to be third secretaries. However, for one year they were to be paid only salary, but not an allowance.947 Apparently, this policy prevalent in European diplomatic services was a mechanism to eliminate those who could not support themselves and privilege those with financial means.


945 Quoted in İbnülemin Mahmud Kemal İnal, ibid, pp. 1796-99.

946 Also for the ―liberal‖ interpretation of Mehmet Rifat Pasha with regard to veiling and education of women, see Muhammed Ferid, Mısır Mısırlılarındır, İstanbul: Klasik Yayınları, 2007, p. 90.

947 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali. Hariciye Hizmerinde…, pp. 202-204.


For Galip Kemali, diplomats have to be familiar with the European social codes (adab-ı muaşaret) and with the codes of conduct of the European higher classes with whom they will be in contact throughout their diplomatic careers. For Galip Kemali, this was another reason why the diplomats had to come from families of respectability. Only people from reputable families can easily socialize with the European refined classes. Abdülhak Hamid was in concurrence with Galip Kemali on this point. He wrote ―an ambassador has to be from the high classes of the society which he is supposed to represent and has to be a career diplomat. If an ambassador lacks these qualities, there would be a loss of prestige….There had been several cases in which ambassadors of secondary ranks were more respected and taken into consideration by the aristocracies, rulers, and governments to which they were appointed948.‖ For Abdülhak Hamid, ―those ambassadors who lack social prestige are doomed to be failures. An ambassador has to be respected not only by the governments, but also by the social circles in which he is socializing. Otherwise, he will be unsuccessful (as a diplomat).‖949 Thus, ―an official in an embasy either should come from aristocratic background or should maintain aristocratic attitudes and outlook.‖950

Refinement and sociability were the unwritten requirements of diplomacy. The otherwise disappointing and unimpressive memoirs of Esad Cemal Paker seem to be written for the purpose of convincing the reader that he lived the life of a bon vivant and that he drank best wines.951 Apparently, the diplomatic establishment was associated with a

―Westernized‖ life style. This established prejudice had both positive and negative connotations. The diplomats were particularly targeted by the Islamists. Derviş Vahdeti in his journal Volkan targeted diplomats exemplifying the prevalent perceptions within the Islamic and Islamist milieus regarding the diplomats. For him; ―(a)mbassadors had taken Christians wives, had many children, and educated them in the mother‘s western European way. They learned European languages and were educated in Islamic beliefs and morals

 


948 Abdülhak Hamid, Abdülhak Hamid‟in Hatıraları, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, p. 64.

949 Abdülhak Hamid, ibid, p. 64.

950 Abdülhak Hamid, ibid, p. 387.

951 Paker, Esat Cemal, ibid.


only by governesses and teachers of other religions.‖952 They were preys for the populist discourses, as well. Fazıl Arif Bey, a parliamentarian representing Amasya in the parliament of 1908, was outraged with the diplomats whom he regarded as those ―who are bringing governesses and courtesans from Europe‖ and living in luxury while the Ottoman populace was in poverty.953 While this imagery was to be abused in the hands of populists, it made the diplomats objects of emulation for others. Feridun Cemal Erkin, one of the doyens of the Republican diplomatic service, is illustrative. His childhood memories vividly display the image of the ―superwesternized‖ Ottoman diplomat. In his memoirs, Erkin writes that when he was a kid, his father, who was a civil servant of prominence, was visited by two men. One of them was sporting a goatee and a white moustache, the other wearing a glass monocle. Impressed by their elegance and courtliness, Feridun asked who these visitors were. When his father responded that they were ―sefir-i kebirs‖, the impressed young Feridun, as he recalls after more than half a century, decided to be a sefir- i kebir like them.954 At least this is how Feridun Cemal Erkin explains why he wanted to be a diplomat. Abdülhak Hamid argued that the ambassadorial officials and military attachés not only have to be presentable, but should also be ―good-looking‖. ―Even a rich diplomat should not be poor in his physical appearance.‖955 He recalled ―that once an Ottoman foreign minister refrained from sending a son of a Pasha as an ambassador because of the son‘s poor appearance.‖956 For Abdülhak Hamid, ―especially the members of the demi- monde are superficial (so that they pay attention to physical appearance very much)‖957, and they had to be impressed accordingly. In short, these accounts should be a disclaimer to Marcel Proust who in his ―In Search of Lost Time‖ portrayed the Turkish ambassador


952 Kıbrıslı Derviş Vahdeti, ―Dindarlık-Dinsizlik ve Tarikatlar‖, Volkan, no. 36, 5 February 1909, quoted in Baer, Marc David, The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, p. 104.

953 MMZC, 1909, V. III, p. 50.

954 Erkin, Feridun Cemal, Dışişlerinde 34 Yıl, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1987, vol. I, pp. 6-7.

955 Abdülhak Hamid, Abdülhak Hamid‟in Hatıraları, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1994, p. 246.

956 Abdülhak Hamid, ibid, p. 246.

957 Abdülhak Hamid, ibid, p. 246.


and his wife as superfluous Orientals alien to the refinement and elegance of the aristocratic European culture and the diplomatic establishment.

Apparently, for Galip Kemali (and Abdülhak Hamid), the training of diplomats was also a major consideration. He resented the unsatisfactory level of training of the diplomats. After noting that the principal source of recruits for the diplomatic service was Mekteb-i Sultani, Galip Kemali argued that a higher college was necessary for the graduates of Mekteb-i Sultani for further study to be eligible to be recruited into the diplomatic service. What was in the mind of Galip Kemali was a part-time college of political science (ulum-ı siyasi). In the plan suggested by Galip Kemali, these youths were to begin to work in the ministry while attending the college until noon. They also had to be taught English or German as their second foreign language in their advanced studies. Galip Kemali did not ignore the practicalities either. These youths also had to be introduced to the European diplomats in Istanbul, so that they would not feel ignorant of the European code of conduct.

In short, Galip Kemali emphasized ―refinement‖ and ―civility‖. However, he was also very strict regarding the necessity of fostering the erudition of the diplomatic service. Apparently, he was disappointed with the miserable level of the erudition of the Ottoman diplomatic service. Nevertheless, concluding his memorandum, Galip Kemali was optimistic. He believed that by training prospective diplomats in a distinguished college with an intense curriculum, teaching them the basics of politics, and integrating them into the European world of culture and more, their skills and erudition would be enhanced. Thus, the quality of the performance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be satisfactory. Galip Kemali‘s memorandum was consistent with the self-portrait he drew in his memoirs. He depicted himself throughout his tomes as a professional-aristocrat. That is to say, in his self-representation, he was simultaneously very sensitive on the refined and socially exclusivist nature of the craft of diplomacy and on the intellectually demanding aspect of the profession. He was a professional in the sense that for him one needed to be

hard-working, working diligently days and nights when necessary.

Interestingly, his memorandum resembles the reform of the British and French Foreign Offices undertaken in the first decade of the twentieth century in some ways and


contradicts them in other ways.958 The similar themes were maximizing bureaucratic rationality and efficiency. Nevertheless, Galip Kemali also suggests retaining a culture of elitism and social exclusion, which the European reformist programs sought to diminish or eliminate. Galip Kemali, on the contrary, wanted to formalize what was de facto practiced and maintained and avoid ―democratic currents‖. What has been revealed here so far regarding Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu is a portrait of an aristocratic diplomat decorated with codes of courtliness. Yet, Galip Kemali is a staunch Turkish nationalist on the fringes of xenophobia.

Galip Kemali‘s propaganda publication in French, ―L‟Assasinat d‟un Peuple959, written for the purpose of defending the rights of Turkey under occupation, displays an amalgamation of different discourses: anti-imperialism, civilizationism, and Turkism. The pamphlet addresses Westerners and was written to unmask the hypocrisy of the West. He criticized the West for glorifying civilization and styling itself as the very embodiment of civilization, but ignoring the requirements of civilization when it comes to actual policy decisions. Galip Kemali criticizes the prevailing view of Turks in the West as barbarians and argues that the reality is just the opposite. He reminds the Western reader of the murdered, mutilated, and expelled Muslim civilian populace of Thrace and the atrocities committed by Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians. Galip Kemali develops the idea that European powers have a particular problem with Turkey. The Europeans‘ unjustified actions and attitudes towards Turkey were distinctive and could not be explained by the imperatives of Realpolitik alone. However, Galip Kemali refrains from revealing the motivations of Europeans in their mean attitude towards Turkey. He refrains from presenting the European great powers‘ aggression as a crusade against the banner of Islam

 

 

 


958 For the 1906 reform in the British Foreign Office, see Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1898-1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, pp. 76-78. For the 1907 reforms in the French Foreign Office, see Hayne, M.B, The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War 1898-1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 144-170.

959Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, L‟Assasinat d‟un Peuple, 1920. For its Turkish translation,

Yok Edilmek İstenen Millet, İstanbul: Selek Yayınları, 1957.


like many others although he seems to perceive this aggression as a crusade.960 He also refrains from presenting the case against the ―Turks‖. He appeals to the conscience of the European audience and evokes the notion of Western civilization to convince his European audience. Nevertheless, it is not very hard to detect his ―unspoken assumptions‖. Apparently, underneath the text we observe that he shared the ―commonsense perception‖ and hearsay knowledge that for ―certain reasons‖, Europeans cultivated an uncompromising enmity towards Turks. This enmity did not originate from Realpolitik reasons. It derived from historical animosities and was therefore a timeless and an eternalized antagonism that was not expected to be easily resolved.

He is more explicit in his memoirs given that here he addresses a Turkish audience rather than the conscience of the Westerners. In his memoirs and correspondence after the publication of his propaganda pamphlet, he revealed that his disgust and abhorrence of the Western powers was immense. He writes in a style influenced heavily by the Unionist rhetoric.961 In these texts, Galip Kemali, the elegant aristocratic and imperial patriot, apparently surrendered to a vulgar nationalist rhetoric (with sycophantic praise of Mustafa Kemal). For example, he wrote; “Mondros mütarekesinin devamı müddetince hak namına kılıçlarını çektiklerini senelerden beri bütün aleme haykırmış olan muzaffer devletler tarafından en mukaddes haklarımız kahpece ayaklar altına alındı…Yedi yüz senelik koca bir devletin, ezeldenberi hür yaşamış, asırlarca dünyaya meydan okumuş yüce Türk milletinin yalnız istiklali değil mevcudiyeti bile sarsıldı. Kendine yakışan bir coşkunluk ile, koca Türk, kalbindeki milli imanı, ruhundaki irsi celadeti göstermemiş, onun nelere kadir olduğunu keşfederek  tam vaktinde  başına geçecek bir  Dahi  çıkmamış  ve  nihayet

 

 


960 The rhetoric of the ―crusading instincts of the West‖ can be observed in the Young Turk press in the Hamidian era. For an article expounding on the crusading instincts by Mizancı Murad in Mechveret, see Emil,Birol, Mizancı Murad Bey, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2009, pp. 137-38.

961 See Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali, Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene: IV., Maarif Basımevi, 1955. For the level of degradation of the once courtly high-ranking diplomatic corps by 1921, see a ―poem‖ written by the ex-ministry of foreign affairs Asım as quoted by Söylemezoğlu. Dünya değişirde Türk değişmez/Bak vakti hazerde bir kebuter !...Yareb bu necibi Aliosman…/Olsun mu yarin esiri Yunan ?/Sönsün mü ocağı şanlı Türkün/Olsun mu o nam karini nisyan‖ Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali,ibid, p. 7-8.


memleketin en temiz evlatları, bir nur gibi gökten inen, bu ümit şiraresi etrafında büyük bir feragati nefis ile toplanmamış olsaydı, maazallah !”962

Yet, the making of a crude nationalist out of Galip Kemali was neither exceptional nor idiosyncratic. The recurring military and political defeats created a fear that fomented a blatant and unapologetic nationalism. The change of the political elite also forced the old timers to accommodate themselves. For example, Sami Paşazade Sezai, who had served in the ministry since 1885, had been a staunch defender and promoter of the ―West‖ and

―Western values‖, and had supported the incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the

―Concert of Europe‖ (which he called a ―Peaceful Conquest‖ -feth-i sulhperveri-)963 also lost his enthusiasm for ―Western civilization‖ during his ambassadorship in Madrid between 1914 and 1921 and after observing the occupation of Turkey in 1918.964 For him, after observing the policies of Britain in the World War I, the ―West‖ began to be associated with hypocrisy and imperialist Britain was the embodiment of this hypocritical West.965 Although he was also critical of the Christian prejudice and double standards of the West previously, for him these were side issues not eclipsing the superiority of Western values and political culture. Abdülhak Hamid, the elegant aristocrat of the 19th century Ottoman world, wrote in a strong anti-imperialist and anti-Christian jargon in 1924. ―The ones who share most responsibility (for the decline of humanity and civility) are those who acquired most territories in the Great War. Yes, those plunderers and pirates….. This cannibalistic personality wants to swim in the blood of Muslims. He enjoys eating Muslim flesh and even Muslim carcasses. In his eyes, no nation can have its own state and patrie except himself. Whenever he sees independence, freedom, and survival, he thinks of

 


962 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali, Başımıza Gelenler: Yakın Bir Mazinin Hatıraları, İstanbul: Kanaat Kitabevi, 1939, p. 6.

963 Samipaşazade Sezai, ―Riya‖, Tanin, 4 October 1333/1917, in Samipaşazade Sezai Bütün Eserleri, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu, 2003, vol III, pp. 313-316.

964 ―Sezai (Samipaşazade)‖, Tanzimat‟tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001, vol. II, p. 735. For some of his anti-Western articles published in Tanin, see Kerman, Zeynep, Sami Paşazade Sezai, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1986, p. 14.

965 Samipaşazade Sezai, ―Riya‖, Tanin, 4 October 1333/1917, in Samipaşazade Sezai Bütün Eserleri, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu, 2003, vol III, p. 516-520


annihilating it and plundering it, destroying whatever the nation has.‖966 In his anti- Western and anti-Christian tirade quoted above, he went as far as calling the personalized European imperialism as ―dünyadaki vatanların en kahbe haini‖ (the most whorish traitor of the fatherlands of the world). The Christian West as the eternal foe of the Muslim Turk emerged as an invented image prevalent not only in the Young Turk generation, but also in the elder generation. Nonetheless, this imagery was much more profound in the next generation of the diplomatic service. The next generation of the Ottoman diplomatic service introduced young nationalist poets and men of letters. Müftüoğlu Ahmet Hikmet and Enis Behiç (Koryürek) were two gifts of the diplomatic service to the nationalist literature.

 

 

 

6.1.  The New Generation and Cumulative Radicalization

 

Ahmet Hikmet was born in 1870 with a background typical of the bulk of the diplomat service (a middle-level bureaucrat father serving in the provincial administration, a respectable genealogy going back to the Peloponnesus, and himself born in Istanbul) and was a graduate of Mekteb-i Sultani, like most of his colleagues. He got his first appointments to Marseilles, Piraeus, and Poti in the Hamidian era. In his later career, he was appointed ambassador to Budapest in 1916, apparently to fulfill his Turkist and Turanist ambitions. He was active in Turkist activities in his tenure in Budapest, participating in the Hungarian Turanian circles and academic clubs enthusiastically. He died while serving as the ministerial undersecretary in 1926. Like Abdülhak Hamid, today,

 

 

 

 


966 Abdülhak Hamid, Abdülhak Hamid‟in Hatıraları, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1994, p.

60. ―Ve bunun ilk ve en büyük saik ve mesulleri Harb-i Umumi‟de en çok yer kazananlardır. Evet, o yağmagerler, o korsanlardır….O yayman şahsiyet, İslam kanında yüzmek ister. İslam eti, hatta İslam ölüsü yemekten hazzeder. Ve onun nazarında onlardan başka hiçbir milletin vatanı, milleti olmamalıdır. İstiklali, istikbali, hürriyeti, hakk-ı hayatı hangi millette görürse, onu mutlaka ya imha, yahut zir-i pa vü pençesine almak üzere maddi ve manevi nesi varsa yağma etmeyi düşünür.


he is not known and remembered for his remarkable diplomatic career but for his literary output and his contribution to the nationalist literature.967

Enis Behiç belonged to a later generation.968 Born in 1892, like Ahmet Hikmet, he possessed the attributes of the social and cultural background of a ―typical‖ diplomat. He has the three attributes of the average diplomat. He was fathered by a military doctor (a civil servant), was born in Istanbul, and was a graduate of Mülkiye. He entered the diplomatic service in 1913. Serving in mediocre posts abroad and in Istanbul, he is remembered better for his extremely nationalist poems. His poem ―Kırmızı Şezlong‖ (Red Chair) was an outrageous anti-Semitic poem recounting the lives of a greedy Jewish speculator, Mişon, and his lustful wife, Rebeka, who was deceiving her husband, and is a masterpiece of anti-Semitism, portraying the Jewish characters as nasty, corrupt, and disgusting rascals. The motives for writing such a poem remain conspicuous given that no full-fledged anti-Semitism developed in the Ottoman Empire and that such enmities were reserved for Christian groups within the Ottoman Empire. The anti-Semitism in this poem is a perfect illustration of the anti-Semitic themes prevalent in Germany and France at the time. Probably, Enis Behiç was influenced by European/French anti-Semite discourses of the time. Enis Behiç‘s poems are sharply divided into two: very individualistic poems reflecting the loneliness, failed aspirations, and melancholy of the modern individual and extremely nationalist poems depicting war scenes in which victorious Turkish soldiers are seeking Turan or are about to reconquer the lost Roumelia up to Budapest. Enis Behiç was definitely a ―salon Turanist‖. By this time, in the third generation of the Tanzimat, we meet a ―modern‖ individual in the personality of Enis Behiç, with whom we share the same sensibilities and for whom we feel empathy. He was at the same time a Turkish nationalist as a product of his own times.969 His nationalism is explicitly and blatantly secular. There


967 For a biography of Ahmed Hikmet Müftüoğlu, see Tevetoğlu, Fethi, Büyük Türkçü Müftüoğlu Ahmed Hikmet, Ankara: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1951.

968 For a biography of Enis Behiç Koryürek written by Fethi Tevetoğlu, see Koryürek, Enis Behiç. Miras ve Güneşin Ölümü, İstanbul: Güneş Matbaacılık T.A.O., 1951.

969 The same observation is equally valid for Ahmet Hikmet. While half of his literary works are elaborations of Turkist themes with crude nationalism, such as Gönül Hanım and Çağlayanlar, the other half of his works elaborate themes of very personal angst and quests reflecting the sensitivities of the modern urban individual, such as his short stories


is no aspect of religion in his poems whether they are nationalist or individualist. His poems display how, in three generations, religion had gradually retreated and then vanished from the worldview of the cosmology of the Ottoman bureaucrats. As suggested previously, secularization as relativization and decline of the individual faith does not soften or terminate the anti-Western rhetoric. On the contrary, like many other modernists nationalists of their time, famous names like Ömer Seyfeddin and diplomats like Enis Behiç and ambassador Galip Kemali were increasingly becoming anti-Westernist and xenophobic. In fact, in Galip Kemali‘s case (as with any other member of his generation), such xenophobia was enhanced by secularization. As monotheist universalism and morality had disappeared or been marginalized into the private realm; the nation and national ethics/morality emerged as the only reference points. The extreme nationalism of two close friends of Halid Ziya970, Reşid Safvet and Safveti Ziya, should also be mentioned as two other exempla of the third generation of Tanzimat and the third generation of Tanzimat diplomats.

Reşid Safvet did not get impressive promotions. His highest positions were first secretariat in the embassies of Bucharest, Washington, Madrid, and Teheran. He participated in the Lausanne Conference as the general secretary of the Turkish delegation. He became a member of parliament in 1927, serving for two terms. However, his major achievement was arguably his foundation of TURING (Touring Club Turc) in 1923. Reşid Safvet was an impressive personality with various interests and talents. Halid Ziya remembers him as a young man, a minor official in the Regie, who was about to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and whose sole interest was reading books. Halid Ziya tells us that Reşid Safvet lived in an apartment in Akaretler, which was so full of books and his many notebooks that there was only enough empty space for his writing desk. According to


collected in Haristan.  Nevertheless, some of his stories collected in Haristan and published after 1908 contain themes such as West versus East with their mutually exclusive attributes and the equating of Westernized cosmopolitism with decadence and corruption emerges.

970 The cosmopolitan Halid Ziya is hardly free of nationalist instincts. His memoirs reveal how the clashes and contradictions between Turks and non-Muslims are decisive in the formation of his political opinions. Experiencing the social worlds of Izmir and the intellectual milieus of Istanbul, he assumes a nationalist outlook. See Uşaklıgil, Halid Ziya, Kırk Yıl, Istanbul: Matbaacılık ve Neşriyat, 1936, pp. 114-19.


Halid Ziya, he read whatever he found on history, sociology, philosophy, politics, and religion (but never literature). He never went out, slept little, and showed up in the office exhausted but ahead of his colleagues.971 In short, Reşid Safvet was a man of his times, driven to learn and discover the whole new world in front of him. He displays the new intellectual of the third generation of Tanzimat who established for himself a completely new world and severed himself from the past explicitly, a move that is striking taken in this generation. He was a third generation Tanzimat figure like many others, fascinated with the enormity of Western knowledge and science. The encyclopedic curiosity of this new generation is embodied in the person of Reşid Safvet as well.

Reşid Safvet produced numerous books in French in later life, defending Turkey and Turks before the international public in such works as ―Turcs et Arménians Devant l‟histoire: Nouveaux Témoignages Russes et Turcs sur les Atrocitiés”.972 These publications demonstrated the outstanding contributions of Turks to world civilization973 and defended the Turkish Historical Thesis adamantly in the heyday of the Kemalist regime. Reşid Safvet displays the contrast between the conspicuous Westernism in his life style and hatred towards the West. Reşid Safvet adopted a fervent nationalist outlook, not unlike that of his colleagues Ahmet Hikmet and Enis Behiç. Yet, Reşid Safvet was also a bon vivant and loved the good life. Coming from a rich family and married to the granddaughter of Rıza Pasha, Abdülhamid‘s chief of staff, he provided the demimonde in the marginalized and déclassé Istanbul of the Republic with various entertainments mimicking the grandeur of the Istanbul of yesteryear during the Empire 974. Yet, his hedonism did not hinder or soften his rhetoric of extreme and obsessive Turkism. He also volunteered to be an apparatchik of the Republican regime in Ankara. Nevertheless, the


971 Uşaklıgil, Halid Ziya, ibid, vol.V, pp. 177-184.

972 Kara Schemsi, Turcs et Arménians devant l‟histoire: Nouveaux Témoignages Russes et Turcs sur les Atrocitiés, Genéve: Imprimerie Nationale, 1919.

973 Atabinen, Rechid Saffet, Contributions Turques a la Sécurité et a la Civilization Méditerranéenes, İstanbul: Çituri Biraderler Basımevi, 1950; Atabinen, Rechit Saffet, Les Apports Turcs dans le Peuplement et la Civilization de l'Europe Orientale, T.A.C.T., 1952 (n.p).

974 For a biography (without any references) of Reşid Safvet, see Çelik Gülersoy,

―Ölümünün 29. Yılında Reşid Safvet Atabinen‖, Tarih ve Toplum, February 1994, no: 122,

pp. 68-73.


idiosyncratic playboy of the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs seemed to have his counterparts in other European diplomatic services. For Vladimir Lamsdorff, a diplomat serving the Russian Foreign Ministry, ―the court had ‗the character of a café‘, the Yacht Club was a ‗temple of idleness‘ and much of the aristocracy was ‗…a clique of which the court and the circle of profligates and idlers called ‗society‘…the Foreign Ministry was indeed not only the focus of Lambsdorff‘s professional skills and energies but also his home and his ‗fatherland‘, whence he drew most of his personal friendships…‖975

Safveti Ziya was one of the major figures of the Edebiyat-ı Cedide (New Literature) influenced from French poetry and literature of the late 19th century. A man of exquisite manners and elegance, Halid Ziya describes his artistic and bohemian worlds and circles. Coming from a respectable Istanbul family which sent many of his members to the privileged offices in the government, for Safveti Ziya, life meant good food, good clothing, spending money, and all kinds of luxury. In the account of Halid Ziya, he was well-known for frequenting the most trendy venues in Pera in order to be close to beautiful women. He danced the best, spoke the most fluent French and English, and was the most handsome. In short, for Halid Ziya, Safveti Ziya was a prototypical dandy. Nevertheless, his eccentric life style did not obstruct his successful career. At his sudden death (aged 54 in 1929), he had just been appointed as ambassador to Czechoslovakia after serving as the director of protocol of the ministry. He died during a party at the Yacht Club in Principio. Safveti Ziya lived well, dined well, and died well. Apparently, he belonged not to the Tanzimat generation, but to a new generation with different socialization and mores.

He was, like his other colleagues, a passionate Turkist and Westernist. His novel

Salon Köşelerinde was a novel originally ―published in…Servet-i Fünun, told the story of a ‗Europeanized‘ Ottoman man who socialized in the foreign quarters of Istanbul and tried to prove by waltzing like a European that he was ‗civilized‘ to an English girl with whom he had fallen in love. The protagonist of the novel writes that, ‗….I changed my plan of action, thinking that it would be necessary to prove to an English girl and an English family that Turkishness within a society is not an example of barbarity, but an adornment, and that the Turks too are a civilized nation.‘ Even in this non-political,


975 Lieven, Dominic, Russia „s Rulers Under the Old Regime, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 167.


romantic novel, the Europeanized character, who was ready to accommodate to European culture, exhibited a reactionary attitude to the European perception of the Turk and fought against this ‗misperception‘ by dancing(.)‖976 In the beginning of the novel, the author voices his regrets at Turks‘ failure to dance elegantly and hopes that one day Turks will master European dances.977 Safveti Ziya was encouraged to write such a book by Ahmet Hikmet, who opined, ―how great it would be if you account for your experiences in the salons and high society with regard to our nationality. No such work has been yet written.‖978 Apparently, both Safveti Ziya and Ahmet Hikmet perceived personal encounters with Westerners within a political prism. The politicization of every sphere of private life was an aspect of the third generation of Tanzimat.979 Whereas politics, Westernization, and the expression of Westernization were limited to public display and the political sphere while preserving the distinctly traditional lifestyles in the private sphere980 in the first and second generations of the Tanzimat, with the third generation of Tanzimat, there was a Westernization of every sphere of life, and every sphere became a contested zone of nationalism in which national displays and national enmities became prevalent.981 Safveti Ziya, like many of his generation, defined Turkishness with reference to their individual attributes and developed a Turkish nationalism to challenge and outdo the Europeans. Safveti Ziya‘s book Adab-ı Muaşeret Hasbihalleri (Conversations on


976 Boyar, Ebru, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans, London: Tauris, 2007, pp. 87-88.

977 Safveti Ziya, Salon Köşelerinde, İstanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 1998, p. 14.

978 Safveti Ziya, Salon Köşelerinde, p. 11. (in his preface to the novel)

979 Ömer Seyfeddin‘s short stories were also a good demonstration of ―the politicization of the personal‖ and ―the politicization of every sphere of life‖. For example, see his Fon Sadriştayn‘ın Karısı, (Bütün Eserler, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1999, V. II, pp. 191- 202), Nakarat (V. III, pp. 17-34), Bir Çocuk Aleko (V. IV, pp. 310-327).

980 The outward Westernization was not accompanied by the Westernization of the private lives of the Ottoman upper classes. For a vivid portrayal of the intimate lives and family relations of Ottoman dignitaries, see Melek Hanım, Haremden Mahrem Anılar, İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık, 1996.

981 For the politicization and nationalization of consumer culture and personal realms in the late Hamidian era, see Frierson, Elizabeth, ―Cheap and Easy: The Creation of Consumer Culture in the Later Ottoman Empire‖, in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922, Donald Qutaert (ed.), New York: State University of New York Press, 2000, pp. 201-243.


Good Manners) published in 1927 was another exposure of the prioritization of the national identity over daily social interactions. Safveti Ziya encouraged Turkish youth to participate in the rebirth of the Turkish nation by adopting the code of conduct of civilized societies and nations.982 In his ―guide book‖, Safveti Ziya particularly gives importance to the role of women within polite society. For him, respect towards women was an important sign of the degree of the civilized nature of a nation. For him, the code of good conduct and politeness was first and foremost a matter of national dignity. The subsuming of the personal manners and codes of conduct of the individuals was an extreme example of the politicization and nationalization of individual lives.

Definitely, these men had different mores and a different reference system than their predecessors. We observe the emergence and development of a new intellectual/cultural formation subsuming a particular national imaginary, a secularized worldview, and a militarized political imagination.

 

 

 

6.2.  Accommodating the New Times

 

Galip Kemali‘s aforementioned pamphlet in defense of the nation under attack was not unique. Two years earlier, Alfred Rüstem Bey, another senior Ottoman diplomat, published a tract in Bern in French to counter the Armenian allegations and address Western public opinion regarding the Armenian massacres.983 The text was conspicuous in the sense that its author, although a Turkish diplomat born in Turkey, was of Polish origins whose father was also a diplomat who converted to Islam after emigrating to the Ottoman Empire from Poland in Russian occupation. Ahmed (Alfred) Rüstem Bey was acquainted with Western knowledge and Western intellectual erudition thanks to his Polish origins. After denying the accusations regarding the Armenians, Ahmed Rüstem pointed to the hypocrisy of the West. He especially recounted the atrocities Britain perpetrated in her colonies. Not


982 Safveti Ziya, Adab-ı Muaşeret Hasbihalleri, Ankara: Türk Ocağı Merkez Heyeti, 1927,

p. 3.

983 Ahmed Rustem Bey, La Guerre Mondiale et La Question Turco-Arménienne, Bern, 1918.


restricting himself to conventional anti-imperialist rhetoric, he also exposed the British brutality in Ireland and condemned the British policies in Ireland. Not unexpectedly, he did not fail to mention the brutality of imperial Russia in Poland. Questioning the credibility of those who were themselves perpetrators of unspeakable crimes, he related the allegations regarding Armenians to the perpetual hatred of the Turks. Regarding the Armenian events, Ahmed Rüstem acknowledges the tragedy Armenians had suffered during World War I, but he subsequently pleaded with Europeans to acknowledge the great suffering Turks had experienced during World War I as well. Moreover, the cause of this tragedy was the militant activity of Armenian revolutionary committees, who tried to mobilize the innocent Armenian masses against Turkish rule.

Ahmed Rüstem represents a complex but characteristic exemplar of post-Unionist Turkish nationalism. The text was in some ways very emblematic of the Turkish nationalism of his time. On the other hand, some aspects were idiosyncratic and reflected his European origins. But it is striking to observe how his Polish Russophobia had easily rendered him a sincere Turkish nationalist resenting the hypocrisy of Europeans and European liberalism. He arrived at an anti-imperialist position more sophisticated than the average Unionist anti-imperialist or even Galip Kemali‘s anti-imperialism. His anti- imperialism was compatible with the European political language and vocabulary. Unlike many Unionist or quasi-Unionist texts and pamphlets, Ahmed Rüstem never abandoned the rhetoric of rights and liberties. On the contrary, he repeatedly reiterated his allegiance to humanitarian values. He claimed that his criticism was directed to those who were hypocritical and insincere in defending rights and liberties and did not abandon 19th century liberalism. Nevertheless, one can easily observe that his disillusionment with the West caused an alteration in his belief in rights and liberties as well. The development of his anti-imperialistic views was arguably very much prompted by the Russian expansionism towards Poland, the support the British gave to the Russians in the war, and the atrocities Russian committed against Polish civilians during World War I; this background enabled him to endorse and internalize the Turkist and Islamic anti- imperialism of the Unionists. The Polish aristocrat was forced to speak the language of a Roumelian upstart.


As suggested above, the years Galip Kemali and Ahmed Rüstem composed their French propaganda texts were traumatic. It was the time when the last bastion of Turkishness was occupied and humiliated. A similar propaganda text was composed by Ahmed Rıza, a figure who distanced himself from the Unionists after 1908 and displayed the same traits. Ahmed Rıza, the arch-secularist depicted the current situation as a part of the eternal struggle between Islam (and Turks as the banner of Islam) and the treacherous, barbaric West.984

The deterioration of the once-gentlemanly Ottoman civil officialdom, which was a product and unique composite of the Westernization and the classical Ottoman efendi tradition, was dramatic. Nevertheless, names who became prominent political figures after 1908 and before the Young Turks assumed direct control of cabinets, such as Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, and İbrahim Hakkı Pasha kept their distance from the new radicals of the time. They were the last ones to defend and uphold the Bab-ı Ali tradition. Lütfi Simavi‘s memoirs, which we will scrutinize in the coming pages, also reflect such a contemptuous attitude towards the Young Turks.985

 

 

 

6.3.  Voices From the Tomb?

 

Hayreddin Nedim Bey‘s book on diplomacy published in 1910 reflected the 19th century diplomatic socialization and its intellectual/mental build up as it coalesced with Tanzimat‘s official discourse at its best. Hayreddin Nedim‘s account of the 19th century Tanzimat diplomacy was laudatory. His praise of Tanzimat was not limited to its achievements in diplomacy. For Hayreddin Nedim, Mustafa Reşid Pasha was a man of extraordinary gifts and any Ottoman should be grateful to him.986 This was especially so because he managed to introduce the Ottomans into the concert of Europe as a reputable


984 Ahmed Riza, La Faillite Morale de la Politique Occidentale en Orient, Paris: Librarie Picart, 1922.

985 Lütfi Simavi, Sultan Mehmed Reşad Hanın ve Halifenin Sarayında Gördüklerim, Dersaadet: Kanaat Kütübhanesi, 1340, p. 159.

986 Hayreddin Bey, Vesaik-i Tarihiyye ve Siyasiyye, 1326, vol. I, p. 94.


member of the club987 Reviewing the close relations the Tanzimat statesmen developed with France and Britain to balance against the Russian danger, he noted that diplomacy and the diplomatic skills of the statesmen were crucial in the making of international politics and that the Tanzimat statesmen and diplomacy did an excellent job in upholding the Ottoman Empire via diplomacy. He emphasized that the conduct of diplomacy was settled predominantly by personal skills and qualities.988 Thus, Hayreddin Nedim regretted that the Ottoman diplomats and statesmen did not write their memoirs like the European diplomats and statesmen. He was impressed with the careers and accomplishments of prominent European diplomats who mastered their craft and inspired diplomats such as himself, who had studied them by reading their memoirs or the memoirs of their colleagues. Apparently, Hayreddin Nedim saw himself and his fellow Ottoman diplomats and statesmen as a part of the post-Vienna Congress European diplomatic family. In short, the intellectual cosmos of Hayreddin Nedim illustrates the emblematical Tanzimat diplomat loyal to the premises and principles of the Tanzimat and trying to invigorate the Ottoman Empire within the concert of Europe of the 19th century Europe. That is, in Hayreddin Nedim, the Congress of Vienna went hand in hand with the Tanzimat as if they complement each other. He was a believer in the ideal of a peaceful Europe in which an enlightened Ottoman Empire participated as an equal member. His ideal coincided with the ideals of the British, French, and Austrian diplomatic establishments as well. In fact, as already indicated, his (and the Tanzimat ideals in general) were partially taken from the 19th century European order and ancién regime ideals.


In another book of his on the Crimean War which he published in the same year, he regretted the collapse of the British/French alliance with the Ottomans, which was forged during the Crimean War and sealed in the Paris Treaty. Surprisingly, Hayreddin Nedim put the blame on both sides instead of indicting Britain unilaterally as his Ottoman contemporaries did. He criticized the Ottoman party for not fulfilling the commitments and reforms it had promised and criticized the British/French for their indifference and negligence towards the injustices the Ottomans and the Muslim population had suffered since then. Another surprising commentary developed by Hayreddin Nedim was with

987 Hayreddin Bey, op.cit., vol I, pp. 11-12.

988 Hayreddin Bey, ibid, vol I, p. 6.


regard to Ottoman-Russian relations. Observing the Russian aggression towards the Ottomans, he claimed that the best interests of these two ―great nations‖ were an alliance and peace.989

Salih Münir Pasha, one of the most reputable (or notorious in the eyes of the Young Turks) diplomats of the Hamidian ancien régime, in his book on Russian foreign policy published in Lausanne in 1918990 while he was in exile, reconstructs the course of the history of Tanzimat as the lethal struggle between hostile and expansionist Russia and the defending Ottomans. Whereas all the internal disorders of the Ottoman Empire perpetrated by Christian groups were either instigated or manipulated by the Russians, all the Tanzimat polices whether they may be international diplomacy, administrative reform or military action were undertaken to encounter this many-headed threat. In Salih Münir Pasha‘s account, Britain and France appear as bystanders in the Russian aggression. Although they also advance their interests in the Ottoman Empire and espouse the causes of the

―oppressed Christians991 of the Ottoman Empire (mainly because of the pressure of public opinion and Christian prejudice), their role remains secondary in contrast to the Russian menace. Salih Münir‘s approach to international relations is within the framework of international diplomacy and within the world of the post-Bismarckian European order. He perceives the Russian policy of the ―Eastern Question‖ as ―expansion‖ (rather than imperialism) and sees the ―Eastern Question‖ primarily as a diplomatic phenomenon.

Lütfi Simavi, a diplomat who served in various posts as the Ottoman consul and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Istanbul before his appointment as the Lord High Chamberlain of Mehmed Reşad (and was appointed as the undersecretary of the embassy to St. Petersburg and before his appointment as the Lord High Chamberlain992) was another voice from the tomb. Appointed to the palace chamberlainship, he was distressed to move

 


989 Hayreddin Bey, 1270 Kırım Muharebesinin Tarih-i Siyasisi, Dersaadet: Ahmet İhsan ve Şürekası Matbaacılık, 1326. For similar remarks regarding Ottoman-Russian relations, see Lütfi Simavi… v. II, pp. 44-47.

990 Salih Münir Pasha, La Politique Orientale de la Russie, Istanbul: Isis, 2000 (original publication in 1918 in Lausanne)

991 Salih Münir Pasha, ibid, p. 66.

992 Lütfi Simavi…, p. 10 (1)


from Europe to an archaic court and palace.993 In fact, what was expected from his was to modernize the imperial rituals and adapt them to European court ceremonial.994 What Lütfi Simavi did, according to his memoirs and his account, was to blend the traditional Ottoman rituals and the modern European court ceremonial and invent an Ottoman imperial pageantry.995 He administered Mehmed Reşad‘s public and ceremonial appearances. For this task, he benefited from his immense knowledge of European imperial and official ceremonies and the code of conduct, knowledge of which he was extremely proud. In Mehmed Reşad, Lütfi Simavi attempted to invent an Ottoman imperial pomp and pageantry in line with and in competition with the European imperial pomp and rituals. The low profile character and modesty of Mehmed Reşad was suitable for this newly defined and appropriated role.

Although in Lütfi Simavi, Ottomanism encompassed the non-Muslims996, the Muslim and Turkish character of Ottoman imperialism was not to be marginalized, sidelined, or obscured. On the contrary, its Muslim/Turkish character was blatantly expressed within the refashioned imperial ritualism. The new manifestation of the Ottoman imperium was to include non-Muslims, but not to renounce its Islamic heritage completely, and it was to render the overt Muslim/Turkish character not disturbing and threatening in the eyes of non-Muslim Ottomans. For Lütfi Simavi, the new imperial display should proudly reflect the heritage and magnificence of the classical age of the Ottoman Empire.997 In short, Lütfi Simavi tried to invent the Ottoman imperium as the very symbol and embodiment of an

 

 

 

 

 


993 Lütfi Simavi… p. 11, 72, 83 (2).

994 Lütfi Simavi… p. 6, 68, 83 (2).

995 For the monarchial and imperial ritualism, see the landmark book, David Cannadine & Simon Price (ed.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Society, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1992. Also see Fujitani, T, Splendid Monarchy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Burke, Peter, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

996 For example, see Lütfi Simavi… p. 10 (2), 11-12 (2),50 (2), 64 (2).

997 Lütfi Simavi… pp. 123-24.


Ottoman patriotism, to be endorsed by non-Muslims and to be esteemed and glorified by the Muslims/Turks.998

Lütfi Simavi was critical to the developments that commenced with 1908. He was not only distanced from the vigilance and nationalism of the Unionists, whose socializations and culturalizations were alien to him. He had legal reservations about the post-1908 politics as well. He was critical of the appointment of members of parliament to ministries.999 He pointed out the technical problems thus created. He argued that the Ottoman Empire moved from absolute monarchy to absolute parliamentarianism, which rendered parliament omnipotent. This was due to the habit of imitating the French. He notes that absolute parliamentarianism was the French practice. Lütfi Simavi argues that the French model was one of various alternatives and certainly not a suitable one in the Ottoman context. In this system, the ministers and prime ministers were to be elected from the parliament. The principal problem with the appointment of members of parliament to ministries and the prime ministry was mainly that most members of parliament did not possess any prominent official titles. However, in the Ottoman tradition and political culture, the Ottoman ministers and prime ministers had to possess titles and had to come from a socially privileged background. They were to be addressed with deference and held in high esteem. If they were to be given a title because of the importance of the prime ministry, then still it would not be appropriate because the title would have to be revoked after the holder no longer held office. It would be inappropriate for an ex-prime minister not to carry a lofty title, and, moreover, it would be embarrassing for an ex-prime minister to have to work to make his living, e.g., to work as a lawyer and live as a humble man. He wrote that in France neither the presidents of the state nor the prime ministers were bestowed with any titles. Presidents of the state were not even officially entitled


998 Fujitani interprets the transformation of Japanese imperial ritualism along the same lines. For Fujitani, the Japanese monarchy turned into a symbol of the nation and the Japanese political community in the making. In the image of the emperor ―the leaders of the Meiji regime (aimed to channel) the longings of the people for a better world and the inchoate and scattered sense of identity as a people in the direction of modern nationalism.‖ Fujitani, T, ibid, p. 9. For Carol Gluck‘s analysis of the image of the emperor, see Gluck, Carol, Japan‟s Modern Myths, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 73-101.

999 Lütfi Simavi… pp. 81-84.


―Excellency‖ although he was addressed as ―Excellency‖ out of respect. If prime ministers were to be elected from among members of parliament, this would create a problem of authority and respect. In short, for Lütfi Simavi the Republicanism of the French political system was not to be replicated in a political organization completely alien to it. Apparently, the concerns and priorities of Lütfi Simavi were alien to the Young Turks, who had much different concerns and priorities. Thus, Lütfi Simavi, who came from a reputable family1000, is an example of a loyalist and liberal/conservative imperial aristocrat whose loyalty was not to the monarchy per se, but to the idea the monarchy represents or should represent in a constitutional monarchy. He also entertained a strong civilizationist discourse.1001 He was distant from the Unionists, but not entirely opposed to them. In this regard, he was highly representative of a certain social cluster.

Nevertheless, the traditional nature and characteristics of the diplomatic service as a

―voice from the tomb‖, the survival of the 19th century European gentlemanly statesman ideal lived on in the names of Ahmet Tevfik Pasha and Mehmet Rifat Pasha, the ambassadors to London and Paris in the Unionist government. The appointment of Mehmed Rifat Pasha as the minister of foreign affairs after serving one year as the ambassador to London was welcomed by the British as ―the only safeguard for the dubious British orientation of the new Cabinet.‖ But it was noted by Lowther that, ―his capacity to cope with the CUP was also in doubt.‖ In his reply, Hardinge concurred. The new regime was ―gradually tending to a military despotism of a nationalist and chauvinistic character.‖1002 Mehmed Rifat served for two years as the minister of foreign affairs without much say in foreign policy decisions. After his appointment as ambassador to Paris in 1911, he continued to be neglected by the Unionist leadership like Ahmed Tevfik Pasha, the ambassador to London. Mallett, the British ambassador, just after the beginning of World War I related that, ― ‗(i)f Tewfik had had control of Turkish policy, there would be no war with Turkey now(.)‘ But Tewfik was poorly regarded by the Young Turks, as was


1000 For Lütfi Simavi‘s pedigree, see Gökman, Muzaffer, Sedat Simavi: Hayatı ve Eserleri, İstanbul: Apa Ofset Basımevi, 1970, p. 1.

1001 Lütfi Simavi... pp. 26-27, 37-38.

1002 Heller, Joseph, British Policy Towards the Ottoman Empire 1908-1914, London; Portland: Frank Cass, 1983, p. 26.


Rifat in Paris, and during most of October he obtained no replies to the numerous letters in which he had urged the Porte to abandon its policy, which as he had told Nicolson ―must inevitably end in disaster for the country.‖1003

Ahmed Reşid (Rey) also agreed with the observation made by the British embassy. In the homage he wrote after the death of Rıfat Pasha in Servet-i Fünun in 1925, he pointed out the resentment of Rıfat Paşa towards Enver and his cronies.1004 Apparently, it was no coincidence that the Unionists preferred to appoint aged, pro-Entente (Anglophile and Francophile), and very experienced diplomats to these capitals. While the Young Turk leadership pursued its own agenda in sympathy with revisionist and adventurist Germany, these ambassadors tried to co-opt and conciliate the traditional powerhouses of Europe.1005 However, by 1914 their efforts turned out to be futile and irrelevant as the pro-German orientation of the Young Turks progressed.

 

 

 

6.4.  The Unionist Generation

 

It is legitimate to question if these idiosyncratic personalities were representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a whole. Some anecdotal evidence may also be gathered from otherwise unknown officials of the lower ranks, such as the comment of Mehmed Ali Bey, the secretary of the Bern embassy in 1917, who made a racist remark regarding the Armenians to his German counterpart.1006 A cumulative radicalization was not limited to the diplomatic service, but was observable in the other Ottoman government offices as well.1007 In short, we may observe that there was an apparent radicalization of diplomats


1003 Heller, Joseph, ibid, pp. 153-54.

1004 Çankaya, Ali, ibid, vol. III, pp. 93-96.

1005 For Mehmet Rifat‘s pro-Entente credentials, also see the remarks of Mahmud Şevket Pasha in his memoirs. Mahmut Şevket Pasha, Sadrazam ve Harbiye Nazırı Mahmud Şevket Pasha‟nın Günlüğü, İstanbul: Arba Yayınları, 1988, p. 48.

1006 Quoted in Kieser, Hans-Lukas, Türklüğe İhtida, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008, p. 78.

1007 For the cumulative radicalization of the military officers throughout the Hamidian era, see Akmeşe, Handan Nezir, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the


with the coming of the third generation of Tanzimat in line with the pattern observable for the Ottoman political, intellectual, and bureaucratic elite in general. These third generation diplomats did not share much with their elder colleagues. The radicalization had three manifestations: nationalism, secularism, and modernism. These three traits of radicalization complemented and consolidated each other. Nevertheless, a resistance to the radicalization within the ministry was observable. The ministry, like its counterparts in Europe, was one of the most conservative and elitist offices within the Ottoman bureaucracy. Of course, they were not in a position to influence the decision-making process, except by providing the flow of information from European capitals and providing legal and technical support. The old guard diplomats were contemptuous of the amateurishness and crudeness of the Young Turks.1008 Moreover as an institutional instinct, the ministry had to be cautious and avoid any tensions. However, it must be said that the resistance was limited to the shifting mentalities and orientation of foreign policy. Disillusionment with long-trusted Britain was a significant factor in this process.1009 This was also due to the fact that the radicalization derived not from particularistic developments within the Ottoman Muslim elite, but derived from a radicalization of the state of mind in Europe. It was a generational phenomenon as well. The younger diplomats socialized in a milieu which forced them to maintain radical political stances. Thus, instead of speaking of a Unionist political leadership or ideological disposition, we may speak of a quasi-Unionist generation capturing the minds and souls of a particular generation.1010 This


March to World War I, London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. For the intellectual trajectory and evolution of Ebubekir Hazım. See Tepeyran, Ebubekir Hazım, Zalimane Bir İdam Hükmü, İstanbul: Pera, 1997. Compare and contrast this account with his account depicting his experiences in the Hamidian era. Tepeyran, Ebubekir Hazım, Hatıralar, İstanbul: Pera, 1998. A similar observation can be made with regard to Ahmed Ihsan, the owner and publisher of Servet-i Fünun. His memoirs display an ideological and intellectual evolution before events crystallized in 1908. For his nationalist rhetoric, Tokgöz, Ahmed İhsan, Matbuat Hatıralarım, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1993, p. 205.

1008 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali, Atina Sefareti, pp. 82-83;Lütfi Simavi… p. 159; Abdülhak Hamid… p. 352.

1009 Ahmad, Feroz, ―Great Britain‘s Relations with the Young Turks 1908-1914‖, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul., 1966), pp. 302-329.

1010 For the aggressive nationalist literature prevalent after the Balkan Wars, some written by authors with clear Unionist sympathies but others written by authors aloof from the


process was not a distinctly Ottoman evolution but a manifestation of the global forces enhancing the radicalization of minds and ideologies.1011

Recently, conventional assumptions of the discipline of international relations have been criticized.1012 International relations‘ isolation from the other disciplines of social science came to an end, and it was integrated into the larger framework of social sciences. Critical of the conventional paradigms of international relations and rejecting approaching states as ―black boxes‖, constructivists in international relations argued ―(1) that the structures of human association are determined by shared ideas rather than material forces, and (2) that the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather than given by nature.‖1013 Therefore, within the constructivist paradigm, foreign policy orientations and international alignment preferences are determined not merely by Realpolitik and the ―supreme interests of the nation‖ but by ideologies and

 

 


Unionist intellectual environment, see Aksakal, Mustafa, The Ottoman Road to 1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, pp. 19-41.

1011 For the national radicalization of the German intellectual elite, see Verhey, Jeffrey, The Spirit of 1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 231; For the national radicalization of French intellectual elite, Hanna, Martha, The Mobilization of Intellect, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996. For ―radicalization‖ as a reaction to conventionalism and order, see George Mosse, The Image of Man, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring, New York: Anchor Books, 1990; Gentile, Emilio. ―The Struggle for Modernity: Echoes of the Dreyfus Affair in Italian Political Culture, 1898-1912‖, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 497-511; Gentile, Emilio. ―Fascism as Political Religion‖, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, No. 2/3 (May - Jun., 1990), pp. 229-251; Berghaus, Günter, Futurism and Politics, Berghahn Books, 1996. For a book overviewing the radicalization as a generational attribute, Wohl, Robert, The Generation of 1914, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979.

1012 Among many others, see Hobden, Stephen; Hobson & John, M. (ed.), Historical Sociology of International Relations, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2002; Wyn Jones, Richard (ed.), Critical Theory & World Politics, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001; Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Relations, Cambridge,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999; Smith, Steve & Booth, Ken & Zalewski, Marysa (ed.), International Theory: Positivism & Beyond, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

1013 Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Relations, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 1.


perceptions determined by social, cultural, and other factors.1014 Foreign policy considerations are (to a certain extent) reflections of struggles within elites and between different social amalgamations.

In the case of the pre-World War I Ottoman priorities, we clearly observe that the difference regarding the foreign policy orientations derived from diverging class origins and mentality structures. The upstart and radical revolutionary Young Turks detested the status quo, and they found an alignment with the revisionist Germany, relating their efforts to crash the Ottoman establishment‘s status quo with Germany‘s drive to demolish the European conservative status quo designed by Britain and France. Needless to say, Young Turk ideological dispositions (and those of the Young Turk generation as a whole) were compatible with the German radical/militarized modernist vision (especially prevalent in the German general chiefs of staff) which was on the eve of World War I in the process of escalation.1015 In contrast, the Hamidian old guard, having faith in the 19th century conservative optimism in order and progress, remained aloof from Germany‘s revisionism and felt close to the conservative international order of Britain. They also kept their faith in resolving of matters with diplomacy, a view not only not shared but detested by the Young Turks. The Hamidian establishment was defensive within the changing circumstances, resisting the rising new generation with its different agenda and social background. It was in their interests to stick to an order in which they could safeguard themselves. The old world was a world they knew and a world in which they felt secure and content.

Apparently, in terms of domestic politics, Germany embodied the conservative order as portrayed by Wehler, Mommsen, and many others. However with regard to international


1014 For the role of the perception of threat determined by the ideological backgrounds and dispositions of the foreign policy decision-making elite, see Haas, Mark L, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics 1789-1989, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

1015 For example, for an interesting text exalting the German social and political order of Germany during World War I written by the General Director of Secondary Schools after visiting Germany as quoted in Gencer, Mustafa, Jöntürk Modernizmi ve “Alman Ruhu”, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003, pp. 114-15, see (Taylan) Muslihiddin Adil. Alman Hayat-ı İrfanı, İstanbul, 1333. For other pamphlets exalting the achievements of Prussianism and Germany‘s military preparedness just before World War I, see Aksakal, Mustafa, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 31,33. For Enver‘s admiration of Germany, Trumpener, Ulrich, Germany and the Ottoman Empire 1914-1918, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 18.


politics, German militarism was the revolutionary/revisionist dynamic threatening the conservative order and the status quo. It was Great Britain that was desperate to defend the international order and resist change. That is to say, the political regime of Germany was contradicted by its international aspirations. Nevertheless, this does not mean that political stances and international visions contradict each other ideologically. On the contrary, they manifest an affinity. The expansionism of the conservative Germany had led the political regime to transform itself to a radical and revolutionary position in two decades. This is not to say that this transformation was inherent in the Prussian order, but it is an example how interactions between the level of international politics and domestic politics influence and shape each other.1016 The revisionist zeal in terms of international politics restructured Germany as a militarized autocracy in which the military and the newly rising classes were in the ascendancy by 1914.1017

It is equally true for the Ottomans. The revisionism of the Young Turks on the international level led them to endorse a radical and modernist agenda and policy program. Such a comprehensive vision was quiet different from the dispositions of those who were not pursuing territorial revisionism and who were eager to accommodate the international order. Therefore whereas the Young Turks allied with Germany (although this was not the original intention), others looked to side with Britain and France even after the break-up after World War I in Europe. Apparently, the Young Turks‘ association with Germany was not limited to a political alliance. It was the German vision with which they were

 

 


1016 This is not the place to discuss the multifaceted and controversial historiography of late imperial Germany. Nevertheless, the approaches of Wehler and Mommsen were previously criticized. Some studies listed above are valuable readings to attest the transformation of the German political regime within. Eley, Geoff, Reshaping the German Right, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990; Chichering, Roger, We Who Feel Most German, London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984; Fritzsche, Peter, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992; Repp, K, Reformers, Critics and the Paths of German Modernity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000.

1017 Responsibility for the outbreak of World War I is a subject which has preoccupied scholars since 1914. For a review of the question of German responsibility for the outbreak of World War I, see Mombauer, Annika, The Origins of the First World War. Controversies and Consensus, New York: Longman, 2002.


fascinated.1018 The same was equally true for the pro-English and pro-French old guard and the opponents of the Unionists (as well as pro-British and pro-French Unionists such as the liberal Minister of Finance Cavid Bey), who were pursuing a moderate political stance (arguably both for their class interests and due to their political socializations).

Although such orientations may derive from formations that developed based on class backgrounds, aspirations, and identities, once they are developed, they surpass social differences and socializations. The sons of old Istanbuliots and diplomats of the new generation who came from socially exclusive backgrounds were also heavily influenced and shaped by the new radicalism. As argued in the previous chapters and in this chapter, this was a generational phenomenon determined by interacting complex dynamics (surpassing class interests). As the new intellectual historians and new cultural historians have shown, patterns and structures of mentalities were formed, constructed, and developed within certain milieus, and subsequently these structures of mentalities also stimulate their surroundings and transform them.1019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


1018 For the impact of German militarism and effective governance, see Gencer, Mustafa,

Jöntürk Modernizmi ve “Alman Ruhu”, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003.

1019 For some prominent studies of new intellectual history and new cultural history, see Darnton, Robert, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982; Darnton, Robert, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of the Pre- Revolutionary France, New York: W.W.Norton, 1995; Hunt, Lynn Avery, Family Romance of the French Revolution, 1993; Furet, Francois, Rethinking the French Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982; Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992; Grafton, Anthony, Defenders of the Text, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1991; Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1990; Pocock, J.G.A, The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2002 (3 volumes); Chartier, Roger, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.


 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

 

 

 

THE EUROPEAN PATTERNS AND THE OTTOMAN FOREIGN OFFICE

 

 

7.1.  The End of the Old Order and the Old Diplomacy

 

Regretting the decline of the influence of the Foreign Office over policymaking and criticizing the ignorance of the political elite of Britain regarding international affairs, Permanent Undersecretary Hardinge wrote to Buchanan, the British ambassador to St. Petersburg, in 1917: ―We have two diplomacies-one the Foreign Office and the other

‗amateur,‘ running side by side.‖1020 Harold Nicolson, one of the foremost historians and scholars of diplomacy and himself a prominent diplomat in the service of the Foreign Office, narrates several witty anecdotes reflecting the amateurishness of the leaders participating in the Paris Peace Conference. One of them is as follows: ―Addressing the House of Commons on April 16, 1919, he (Lloyd George-DG) made the following frank, modest, and eminently reasonable statement: ‗How many members have ever heard of Teschen? I do not mind saying I had never heard of it.‘ Obviously, no more than seven members of the House of Commons could ever have heard of that remote and miserable duchy, yet Mr. Lloyd George‘s admission of that fact struck horror into the heart of those specialists, such as Mr. Wickham Steed, who had been familiar with the Teschen problem for many years.‖ Nicolson was evidently emphasizing the ignorance of Lloyd George but nevertheless shared the apprehensions of Wickham Steed, who reacted to the self-exposure of Lloyd George‘s ignorance as follows: ―The cry was raised at once. ‗Lloyd George knows nothing of the problems which he is attempting to solve. From his own lips, we


1020 Neilson, Keith, Strategy and Supply: The Anglo-Russian Alliance 1914-1917, London; Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1984, p.18.


learn it. The whole British Delegation in Paris, the whole Conference in fact, are ignorant and unprepared. Disaster is upon us.‖1021 Ironically, the Cassandran prophecy of Wickham Steed1022 turned out to be correct. The Paris Peace Conference failed to maintain a peaceful Europe. Instead, it sowed the seeds of future conflicts.1023 The snobbish amateurishness of Lloyd George became even more marked in its mismanagement of Turkish affairs to the opposition and resentment of the British Foreign Office, and the Turkish-Greek war ended up as a disaster for Britain.1024

Nicolson, in his book on the Paris Peace Conference, from which the above excerpts are taken, makes his points clear. He did not see the political leaders as personally responsible for this failure. ―Given the atmosphere of the time, given the passions aroused in all democracies by four years of war, it would have been impossible even for supermen to devise a peace consisting of moderation and righteousness. The task of the Paris negotiators was, however, complicated by special circumstances of confusion. The ideals to which they had been pledged by President Wilson were not only impracticable in and of themselves but necessitated for their execution the intimate and unceasing collaboration of the United States.  It was thus the endeavor of men like Clemenceau and Lloyd George to

find a middle way between the desires of their democracies and the more moderate dictates of their own experience, as well as a middle way between the theology of President Wilson


1021 Nicolson, Harold, Peacemaking 1919, London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1933, pp. 24-25

1022 For Wickham Steed, see Macmillan, Margaret, Peacemakers, John Murray, 2003, p. 123-125. Wickham Steed was not a member of the ―old school‖ like Harold Nicolson. Originally a journalist, in the course of World War I, he subscribed to the cause of the Slavs. A Germanophobe, he advocated the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and supported the dissidents of the Habsburg Empire from various non-German nationalities. His views became very influential in the higher echelons of Foreign Office at the end of the war.

1023 The settlement of the Paris Peace Conference was long taken as the cause of the miseries of the 1930s. See Fromkin, David, A Peace to End All Peace, New York: H. Holt, 1989. Recently Margaret Macmillan tried to save the Paris Peace Conference from disparagement and rehabilitated it. She criticized the view of the conference as the main culprit in the developments that took place in no less than ten to fifteen years. Macmillan, Margaret, Peacemakers, John Murray, 2003. For Lloyd George‘s own views on the conference, see Lloyd George, David, The Truth about Peace Treaties, London: Gollancz, 1938.

1024 Maisel, Ephraim, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1919-1926, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1994, pp. 64-66.


and the practical needs of a distracted Europe.‖1025 Nicolson situates the shortcomings of the Peace Conference within a wider framework. ―I have tried to deal with the transitional phase between pre-war and post-war diplomacy and give some picture of the Paris Peace Conference.‖1026 For him, the diplomacy of Peace Conference reflected the changing times and milieu. For him, in the new world of the post-war, no effective and constructive diplomacy could be pursued. He clearly sympathized with the ―old diplomacy,‖ the world he had known from his childhood, from his career in the Foreign Office and from his father, who was also a prominent diplomat in the Foreign Office and served as the undersecretary of the Foreign Office between 1910 and 1916. Nicolson wrote, ―Diplomacy essentially is the organized system of negotiation between sovereign states. The most important factor in such organization is the element of representation-the essential necessity in any negotiator that he should be fully representative of his own sovereign at home... in other words, it is the incidence of sovereignty which has gradually shifted and not the essential principles by which efficient diplomacy should be conducted.‖1027 In these lines, he was clear. Post-war diplomacy represented interests other than those of the 19th century diplomatic services.

Arno Mayer contrasts the participants of the Paris Peace Conference with the participants of the Congress of Vienna a century earlier.1028 ―In 1814-15, the peace was negotiated ‗in elegant and ceremonious privacy.... (by) a group of Aristocrats life-trained


1025 Nicolson, Harold, Peacemaking 1919, London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1933, p. 7.

1026 Nicolson, Harold, ibid, p.5.

1027 Nicolson, Harold, ibid, p.4.

1028 Almost all the diplomatic participants of the Paris Peace Conference had the image of the Congress of Vienna in their minds. For example Sir James Headlam-Morley, who initially worked in the Propaganda Department during World War I and joined the British Delegation at the Conference, wrote in his diaries, ―It is very interesting and amusing here. On the whole, I am coming to have much higher respect for the Congress of Vienna than I used to have.‖ (Sir James Headlam-Morley, A Memoir of the Paris Peace Conference, Methuen & Co Ltd, 1972, p.17) Also see the introduction of Harold Nicolson to his book on the Congress of Vienna; Nicolson, Harold. The Congress of Vienna, London: Constable & Co Ltd, 1946. Evidently, the Congress of Vienna, the triumph of the ―party of order‖ against the revolutionary tide symbolized an impressive illustration of the old school gentlemanly diplomacy which established the peace and order for the upcoming half a century before the rise of Prussia in the 1860s. The experience of the Paris Peace Conference hardly accomplished such enduring peaceful results.


as statesmen or diplomats‘ who considered themselves responsible to crowned sovereigns and barely worried about partisan pressures. The situation was not so serene a century later when seasoned party politicians of petit-bourgeois background - two professors, a journalist, a solicitor- gathered around the conference table. The Big Four were responsible to parliaments, and they never seriously considered insulating themselves from the political parties, pressure groups, mass media, and mass electorates, which were highly agitated over the peace question. To be sure, compared to Metternich, Castlereagh, and Talleyrand, the Big Four were ―amateur‖ diplomats.‖1029

Arno Mayer developed an impressive interpretation of the logic of the Paris Peace Conference. For Arno Mayer, it was the last stand of the ―party of order‖ to reestablish and impose the status quo, which had been severely crushed. Mayer notes that, in 1917-18, during the heat of war, the ―parties of movement‖ were in a strong position. With the end of the war and the treaties concluding war, the ―party of order‖ reclaimed its supremacy.1030 However, this victory remained only on paper. The good old days of the party of order were already gone. For him, the Paris Peace Conference was the last stand of the party of order.1031

The Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitto wrote in his memoirs, ―Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the terrible World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion to brutality, which suggests the fall of the Roman Empire.‖1032 World War I was certainly a watershed for the ―old regime‖ and ―ruling elites.‖ There were few republics in Europe in 1914. The end of the war brought the collapse of four monarchies and declarations of numerous republics, big and small and continent wide. At the end of the war, the first socialist state of the world was calling for a world revolution. Democratic


1029 Mayer, Arno, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967, p. 12. Zara Steiner, one of the foremost diplomatic historians, also contrasts Vienna of 1815 and Paris of 1919. Steiner, Zara, The Lights that Failed, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 16-17.

1030 Also see Mayer, Arno, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-18, New York: Vintage, 1973.

1031 For the transformation of the diplomatic corps after World War I, also see Steiner, Zara, ―The Foreign Office Reforms 1919-1921,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 131-156.

1032 Nitti, Francesco S, Peaceless Europe, London: Cassell and Company, 1922, p.3


and revolutionary currents were on the rise. The world of 19th-century Victorian conservative values was gone forever. The red scare of the postwar era was to be accompanied by the fascist scare at its zenith in the 1930s. Socialism, fascism, and liberalism were all challenging the status quo in their own unique ways. Although they diverged in their political visions, with regard to the threat they exerted on the conservative orders and the milieu in which they were fostered, they were different manifestations of the same phenomenon. They were all the products of the post-1918 milieu and the consequences of the collapse of the old order.

In that sense, 1918 was a landmark year. It sealed the end of the Old Regime. Many old guards like Harold Nicolson lamented the passing of the good old times in which diplomacy was not a quarrel (and not philanthropy in the Wilsonian sense) but a gentlemen‘s discussion. The vision of diplomacy and statecraft imagined and presented in the earliest scholarly studies on diplomacy perceived the ―art of diplomacy‖ likewise. Diplomacy in the 19th century cannot be reduced to the staunch defense of state interests. It was also never a matter of principles, beliefs and commitments. It was not Realpolitik either. Realpolitik was yet to be invented in its Morgenthauen definition. These premises of the ―old diplomacy‖ began to change gradually in the last three decades of the 19th century as the alliances system replaced the conventional concert of Europe. The rise of Germany triggered the conclusion of bilateral agreements and alliances between the Great Powers.

However, others were not enthusiasts of ―old diplomacy.‖ For them, ―old diplomacy‖ was the epitome of the decayed aristocratic order. ―In the immediate aftermath of the Great War, impelled by revulsion at the carnage of that conflict, generations of historians identified 'old' or 'secret diplomacy' as a major factor leading to war. The pre-1914 Foreign Office, in particular, appeared to be the quintessence of 'old diplomacy'.‖1033 Mistrust of the Foreign Office and its dealings were already suspect in the eyes of the parliamentary

―Foreign Affairs Group‖ of the Liberal Party, which consisted of radicals who were


1033 Otte, T.G, ―Old Diplomacy: Reflections on the Foreign Office before 1914,‖ Contemporary British History, Autumn 2004, Vol. 18 Issue 3, p. 31. For a ―defense‖ of

―old diplomacy‖ against the claim that secret diplomacy was a major component of it, see Temperley. Harold, ―Secret Diplomacy from Canning to Grey,‖ Cambridge Historical Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1938), pp. 1-32. Also, for a contemporary critical account and assessment of ―old diplomacy‖ and ―new diplomacy,‖ see Mowat R.B, Diplomacy and Peace, London: Williams & Norgate Ltd., 1935. Especially see pp. 7-9, 13-17, 46-63.


heavily critical of the mandarin-like organization of the Foreign Office.1034 Another issue of the parliamentary group that was critical was the Foreign Office‘s defiance in giving information to the parliament on its conduct of foreign affairs.1035 In their eyes, ―old diplomacy‖ was another name for political conspiring and corruption. Thus, in the age of democracy, such an attitude and old diplomacy were relics of the old bigotry and had to be eliminated.1036

Old diplomacy ended with World War I, by which time it had become completely discredited. However, it has recently been acknowledged that the transformation from ―old diplomacy‖ to ―new diplomacy‖ was a myth exaggerated by the champions of new diplomacy, who were trying to legitimize their exercise of diplomacy by discrediting the old corrupt style of diplomacy.1037 The Bolsheviks‘ revelation of the secret treaties was the final blow to the defenders and makers of the old diplomacy. These revelations exposed the level of corruption and insincerity of the old diplomacy. The idealists, journalists, and radicals were advocating ―new diplomacy,‖ which was supposed to be ―open‖ rather than


―secret‖ and ―corrupt,‖ ―internationalist‖ rather than ―national,‖ and ―democratic‖ rather than ―aristocratic.‖ The League of Nations was an embodiment of this new ideal. In fact, the rhetoric of ―new diplomacy‖ was a sign of the changing class character of the makers

1034 For an insider‘s account, see Ponsonby, Arthur, Democracy and Diplomacy, London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1915. The book is a severe criticism of what will be known as ―old diplomacy.‖ Ponsonby, who is best known for his frequently quoted sentence ―when war is declared, truth is the first casualty‖ and a sincere believer in this phrase, opposed World War I from the beginning and blamed the diplomacy of a minority for sealing the fate of millions in the war. Also see, Ponsonby, Arthur, Falsehood in War-Time, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928.

1035 Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 67-8.

1036 For the parliamentary and intellectual opposition to ―secrecy in the making of foreign policy‖ in World War I, see Swartz, Marvin, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.

1037 Henig, Ruth, ―New Diplomacy and the Old: A Reassessment of British Conceptions of a League of Nations, 1918-1920,‖ in The Paris Peace Conference, 1919: Peace without Victory?, Dockrill, M. L., Fisher, John (ed.), Palgrave, 2001, p. 157-174. Steiner, Zara, Dockrill, M.L, ―The Foreign Office Reforms, 1919-1922,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), p. 151. For a critique of the ―myth of the new diplomacy,‖ also see Gilbert, Felix, ―The ―New Diplomacy‖ of the Eighteenth Century,‖ World Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Oct., 1951), pp. 1-38.


of foreign policies. Middle class radicals were now replacing aristocrats, both as makers of foreign policy and as opinion leaders with regard to foreign policy. The 1920s epitomized the development of a new style of diplomacy in Versailles, in Genoa1038, and in the routine conduct of diplomacy. However, the new style of diplomacy collapsed in the hollow decade of the 1930s, when democracies were uncertain as to how to respond to the rise of fascist and authoritarian regimes.1039 Vansittart, the last ―old diplomat,‖1040 failed in the face of the opposition of the political elites to pursue the ―aesthetics‖ of old diplomacy.1041 Arguably, one of the reasons why Vansittart was one of the British elitists who was most alarmed by the ascent of fascism and was concerned with opposing Hitler was his ―old diplomat‖ background. Nevertheless, the democratic world of politics and the active involvement of party politicians did not allow him to pursue a 19th century diplomatic game, which had been more efficient and had a more problem-solving orientation in its understanding of conflict resolution. The diplomacy of the post-World War II era, dominated by the ruthless realities of the Cold War and the rise of Realpolitik, was a world apart from the pre-1914 diplomacy. In short, the 19th century diplomatic world, with its class character and social culturalization, was gone and had turned into a curiosity for historians to study.

We have to situate the Ottoman Foreign Ministry within this framework. The Ottoman Foreign Ministry is a world lost to us as well. A similar and simultaneous transformation was observable with the coming of the republic. The Ankara government, with the habit (out of necessity and concern for the urgency of international bargaining and compromises that are not possible within the practice of routine diplomacy) it gained during the War of Independence, appointed several non-career diplomats (such as army generals) to


1038 For the failed Genoa conference, see Fink, Carol, The Genoa Conference: European Diplomacy 1921-1922, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

1039 For the diplomacy of the 1930s, see Steiner, Zara, The Lights That Failed, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

1040 McKercher, B.J.C, ―The Last Old Diplomat: Sir Robert Vansittart and the Verities of British Foreign Policy, 1903-1930,‖ Diplomacy and Statecraft, volume: 6, no: 1 (1995),

pp. 1-38.

1041 McKercher, B.C.J, ―The Foreign Office, 1930-39: Strategy, Permanent Interests and National Security, Contemporary British History, Autumn 2004, Vol. 18 Issue 3, pp. 87-

109.


important positions. They were trustees and de facto personal representatives of Mustafa Kemal. They functioned as persons in the service of Mustafa Kemal and the political authority in Ankara rather than as functionaries performing regular and professional diplomatic craft. Several of them retained their diplomatic careers after the end of the War of Independence War thanks to the prominence they acquired through the partial shift of the political and bureaucratic elite. Nevertheless, the displacement in the diplomatic establishment was fairly limited, - being limited to some ambassadorial posts1042. The rank and file of the ministry retained their posts. What changed was the style and aesthetics of diplomacy. The diplomacy of a nation-state was apparently different from the diplomacy of a retreating empire. The diplomacy of the latter was ―old diplomacy,‖ which had its own logic, whereas the diplomacy of the former entailed an interest-maximizing strategy of the nation state.

 

 

 

7.2.  The Aristocratic Worlds of the Hamidian Foreign Ministry

 

One of the significant signs of the transformation of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century was its changing perception of the European powers. The European powers came to be seen as equals and counterparts rather than as eternal foes of the empire. This was more a discursive transformative than a real one given that it was a de facto acknowledgement on the part of the Ottoman Empire. The European powers were also considered to have legitimate claims to power and authority. Moreover as fellow monarchies (or fellow republics as republics also had their legal personalities), they were regarded as ―venerable.‖1043 The principle of reciprocity was also established. The representatives of the foreign states (ambassadors, consuls, et cetera) were welcomed with due respect.


1042 The best source on the Kemalist diplomatic service and the making of diplomats by decree is Şimşir Bilal, Bizim Diplomatlar, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1996.

1043 Hurewitz, J.C, ―The Europeanization of Ottoman Diplomacy: The Conversion from Unilateralism to Reciprocity in the Nineteenth Century,‖ Belleten, vol. 25, July 1961, pp. 455-466.


The annals of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reflect this emphasis on respect. In the first annal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published in 1885, the chapter ―Düvel-i Ecnebiye‖ introduced the emperors, kings, and sultans with the biography of the reigning monarchs and names and titles of their honorable wives, sons, and brothers. The only other detail provided with regard to these monarchies was the official religion of each monarchy.1044 Thus, we are provided with ample information on the monarchs of Hawaii, Ethiopia, and Wurttemberg. The following chapter was entitled ―Cumhuriyyetle İdare Olunan Memalik-i Ecnebiye” (States governed as Republics).1045 It is interesting to observe that, at least theoretically, according to this categorization, the republics were not recognized as states proper given that whereas monarchies were introduced in the chapter “Düvel-i Ecnebiye”, the republics were introduced in a separate chapter titled as ―those governed by Republics‖ as if they are states needing an extra adjective (Cumhuriyetle İdare Olunan). At the very least, they were not seen as equal to those states which were monarchies. In this chapter, only the name of the presidents and the year of their election were listed. For example, what we learn about republic of Argentina is that its president was General Julio Roca and that he was elected on 12 October 1880. The same limited information was provided for republics such as France, the United States, Peru, and Haiti. Although considerable space was allocated to monarchies, the information provided for republics is conspicuously small. The next chapter listed the prime ministers and certain ministers of the states regardless of whether they were monarchies or republics1046. Therefore, here, an equality of republics and monarchies was acknowledged. Thus, although republics and monarchies were deemed as equal in introducing their administrative organization, in terms of their legal personality they were not. Nevertheless, in the Ottoman diplomatic jargon, while the emperors and kings were majestically addressed formally as Son Altesse Impériale and Son Altesse Royale,‖ the presidents of

 

 

 

 


1044 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1301/1885), pp. 342-396. 1045 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1301/1885), pp. 397-404. 1046 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1301/1885), pp. 405-428.


the republics were merely addressed as ―Notre trés cher ami et allié.‖ The French presidents of the republic were specifically addressed as ―Notre Grand et Bon Ami.‖1047

The next chapter listed the former representatives of the states in the Ottoman Empire as well as the actual personnel of the legations from ambassadors to minor scribes1048. In short, the annals of the Foreign Ministry were formalistic texts and clear manifestations of the Ottoman claim to be a part of the concert of Europe.

More significantly, the annals were very meticulous in their observations of ranks and formalities of aristocracy – so much so that a page was allocated for the definitions and explanations of the European aristocratic titles (―Avrupa‟da asilzadegana mahsus unvanlar‖) such as baron, cardinal, and marquis.1049 The decorations of European orders, insignia, and merits were also seen as very prestigious and thus worth mentioning. The biographies of the high-ranking members of the Ottoman diplomatic service listed the merits and orders granted by the European states. The listing of the decorations of European titles was also mentioned in the biographies of the prominent Ottoman diplomats and statesmen provided in the Foreign Ministry annals. It was also one of the five questions asked in the questionnaire of the Ministry kept in the personal files in Sicil-i Ahval. In fact, the awarding of decorations was a mechanism employed exhaustively by Abdülhamid to maintain the loyalty of his civil servants and to monitor them. This strategy, as well as ―inventing a loyalist Hamidian state aristocracy‖ was one of the pillars of the Hamidian regime.1050 While Esat Cemal Paker mocked the absurdity and ridiculousness of the exhaustive decorations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,1051 for

 

 

 


1047 Hüseyin Agah Bey, Diplomasi Usul-i Kitabeti, Konstantiniyye: Matbaa-i Ebuzziya, 1308, pp. 15-16.

1048 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1301/1885), pp. 429-490.

1049 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1301/1885) , pp. 547.

1050 Georgeon, Francois, Sultan Abdülhamid, Homer, 2006, p. 178; Paker, Esat Cemal. Kırk Yıllık Hariciye Hatıralarım, İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2000, p. 17; Mayakon, İsmail Müştak, Yıldız‟da Neler Gördüm ?, İstanbul: Semih Lütfi Kitabevi, 1940, pp. 34-35.

1051 Paker, Esat Cemal, Kırk Yıllık Hariciye Hatıralarım, İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2000,

p. 17.


Galip Kemali (Söylemezoğlu) 1052 and Hayreddin Nedim,1053 decorations were a primary institution of diplomacy and governance. In his memoirs, Galip Kemali seriously and meticulously listed the decorations he was awarded, as well as those given to others. We may conclude by arguing that while the Hamidian regime sanctioned and endorsed the contemporary European formalities, codes of conduct, and procedures, the sultan made use of them to maintain and reestablish a traditional loyalty alongside a new mode of loyalty established based on these new codes of conduct. In this regard, the Hamidian imperium was arguably an idiosyncratic blend of these two diverse political traditions. This was not different from the other 19th century Ottoman institutions that integrated traditions imported from Europe and those derived from the pre-modern Ottoman past and appropriated for 19th century usage.

The annals of the Foreign Ministry allocated numerous pages to the exaltation of the glamour of the Ottoman Empire at its zenith and during its post-classical age. The annals began with a long tribute to the sultans. The sultans were listed with their illustrious titles in due respect, reverence, and exaltation. Obviously, what was implied in these acclaims was that the glorious 19th century Ottoman Empire of Tanzimat owed its magnificence to the exploits and the splendor of the Ottoman Empire of the previous centuries.1054 The next entry in the annals provided brief information regarding the full names and the definitions of the prominent Ottoman titles beginning from the highest ranks (rütbe-i vezaret ve müşiriyyet) to the lowest titles (hacegan rütbesi-yüzbaşılık rütbesi).1055 The entry Rüteb-i Resmiyye-i Saltanat-ı Seniyye‟nin Suret ve Keyfiyyet Te‟sissine Da‟ir İzahat-ı Mahsusa‖ informs us that the ―modern‖ system of titles and its regulation was introduced in 1836.1056 The annals also listed how the bearers of certain ranks and titles were formally addressed.


1052 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali, Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene, İstanbul: Şaka Matbaası, 1949, pp. 127-28.

1053 Hayreddin Nedim, Vesaik-i Tarihhiye ve Siyasiyye Tetebbuatı, Dersaadet: Ahmed İhsan ve Şürekası Matbaası, 1326, v. I, pp. 61-69.

1054 For the periodization of Ottoman history by 19th century Ottoman historians, see Demiryürek, Mehmet, Tanzimat‟tan Cumhuriyete Bir Osmanlı Aydını: Abdurrahman Şeref Efendi, İstanbul: Phoneix, 2003.

1055 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 30.

1056 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 26.


It was clear that addressing individuals in a culture of hierarchy and ranks was not a simple procedure and was a matter of formality. First and foremost, everybody was to be addressed differently according to their own ranks and titles. Forms of address revealed the relations between the one who was addressed and the one who was addressing. Therefore, the forms of address also changed according to the position of the person doing the addressing. Moreover, when a bearer of a certain title was cited, out of respect, his title had to be used along with appropriate phrases. For example, the ulema had to address a former prime minister as ―ma‟lum-ı da‟ileridir ki‖ whereas members of the civil service had to address a former prime minister ―ma‟ruz-ı çakerleridir ki.‖ When the name of a former prime minister was cited in a speech, he had to be addressed übbehetlü devletlü   Paşa

hazretleri.”1057 The use of forms of address in a culture of aristocracy and hierarchy was not a technicality. On the contrary, it was one of the founding pillars of the polity. The superiority of the superiors was reproduced and reinforced every time they were addressed with the respect they were to be afforded. It was one of the constitutive parts of the hierarchical political order. In that regard, cultures of aristocracies including the Ottomans were no different than the Malaysian cockfights noted by Geertz1058 and the theater state of Negara.1059

The next entry in the annals describes the regulations governing the priority of the title- holders. Here, we learn who precedes whom in a ceremony. The entry continued with the listing of names and descriptions of the four decorations of the Ottoman imperium: Nişan-i imtiyaz, osmani, mecidi and şefkat. Of course, all these decorations have several degrees from first degree to fourth or fifth degree.1060 In short, the annals of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were books of protocol observing the codes of respect between fellow monarchies and states and reflected the ―official discourse‖ of the empire.

 

 


1057 For the list of the formal addresses, see age, pp. 31-33.

1058 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1973, p. 412- 453.

1059 Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

1060 age, pp. 31-32.


The appropriate and formal addressing of foreign emperors, presidents of the states, and other holders of various prestigious titles was crucial. Hüseyin Agah‘s pamphlet was written to instruct the young diplomats in the European protocol and formality of the diplomacy. The author was an official employed in the Translation Office of the Foreign Ministry. In his tables, he provided the Turkish and French versions of the principal forms of address. For example, he noted that the French ―Son Excellence‖ was the translation of the Ottoman title devletlu, atufetlu, saadetlu, asaletlu efendim hazretleri..‖ The French

Impériale Votre Majesté‖ was the Ottoman ―zat-ı hazreti mülükhaneleri.1061 It is interesting to observe the assimilation of the classical Ottoman titles and addresses into the European titles and addresses. In this adaptation process, the long Ottoman titles and addresses were shortened and specified.1062 Room for authenticity was also maintained. The adjective of ―imperial‖ was Ottomanized and absorbed into the Ottoman political culture. While zat-ı Şahane was employed for the emperor sultan, the term şahane was also employed to establish the exaltedness of the imperial institutions such as Mülkiye-i Şahane and Tıbbiye-i Şahane. The empire was begun to be called Memalik-i Mahruse-i Şahane as an alternative to the conventional Devlet-i Aliyye." The word seniyye was also employed as the Ottoman counterpart of imperial as in saltanat-ı seniyye. The Ottoman embassies abroad were known as ―sefaret-i seniyye‖s, translated into French in official documents as Ambassade Imperiale Ottomane.‖ The more traditional imperial titles were also retained and used for various and ancient institutions as in Hassa-i Hümayun and Mabeyn-i Hümayun-u Hazret-i Mülükane. With localization of the European terminology, the empire created an authenticity for itself within its accommodation to the European universalism. In this way, the original conventional Ottoman contents and their idiosyncratic senses of grandeur remained unchanged. The standardization and concretization of the traditional titles and addresses was also part of the process of the

 

 

 


1061 Hüseyin Agah Bey, Diplomasi Usul-i Kitabeti, Konstantiniyye: Matbaa-i Ebuzziya, 1308, p. 15.

1062 See Akyıldız, Ali, Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanlı Merkez Teşkilatında Reform, İstanbul: Eren, 1993, pp. 59-61.


adaptation of the Ottoman statecraft to modernity and modern governance.1063 However, the Ottoman forms of addresses continued to be longer (and loftier) than their European counterparts and the Ottoman distinctiveness was articulated in these formulations. Yet, it was apparent that there was an attempt at an accommodation of Ottoman political culture to European political culture.

In short, the contents of these annals demonstrate an aspiration on the part of the Ottoman polity to be recognized as a part of the Concert of Europe. The Hamidian and Tanzimat Ottoman Empire was the continuation of the splendid empire of the Suleiman I and Mehmed II. This emphasis continued to be the principal legitimacy for the maintenance and advancement of the 19th century Ottoman Empire. Although, the Tanzimat was perceived as the birth of a new political entity replacing the obsolete structure (an ancien régime) in terms of administration, the magnificence of the previous Ottoman centuries was to be hailed. The regression and degeneration of the Empire two centuries before the Tanzimat separated the Tanzimat-state from the glorious era of the Empire1064. However, the imperium was refashioned not as a military superpower with militarist fervor but an empire of cultivation and civility as a part of the empires international (as opposed to the republics and republican international).

The de facto aristocratic nature of the Ottoman Empire was not new, but its formalization and its open recognition, affirmation, and articulation was novel. It is also


1063 For the changes in the texts and discourses of the official documents of the Ottoman Empire with Tanzimat, see Akyıldız, Ali, Osmanlı Bürokrasisi ve Modernleşme, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004, pp. 103-116.

1064 The historiography of the Tanzimat divided Ottoman history into various parts. Devr-i istila (Age of Expansion) covered the years between the conquest of Istanbul and the death of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, although the exact years change in different accounts. The following era was named in different accounts as devr-i tevakkuf ve inhitat, teşettüt, devr-i vukuf, devr-i inhitat‖ (Age of Stagnation, Contraction, Decline). In these accounts, with the beginning of the reign of Selim III in 1789 and subsequently with Tanzimat in 1839, the Ottomans entered into the Age of Reorganization, Progress, and Regeneration (devr-i teceddüd, devr-i teceddüd ve inkılap, devr-i teceddüd ve tanzimat, teceddüdat ve terakkiyat). For Ahmed Vefik Pasha, as he wrote in his Fezleke-i Tarih-i Osmani, with Tanzimat, “fasl-ı sadiste yine tecdid-i usul-i hükumete karar vererek mihr-i saltanat tekrar kesb-i fer ve şevket eyledi… Demiryürek, Mehmet, Tanzimat‟tan Cumhuriyet‟e Bir Osmanlı Aydını: Abdurrahman Şeref Efendi (1853-1925), İstanbul: Phoenix, 2003, pp. 156-161.


significant that although republics and presidents of republics had been included in the first annals published in 1885, in the second annals, published in 1889, there was no mention of them. Instead, the table included the Pope, the king of Saxony, the prince of Monaco, and the grand duke of Hesse with an entry in the table showing the dynasties to which these monarchs and princes belonged.

The second annals published in 1889 allocated a chapter to the decorations granted after the publication of the first annals.1065 In other words, the list was refreshed. It included the names of the diplomats who were decorated and the insignias that had been granted. Another list showed the members of the diplomatic service who had been granted insignias by other states. For example, we learn that the former Ottoman Minister of Foreign Affairs was granted the insignia of the ―Red Eagle‖ from the state of Germany.1066 As expected, the list begins with the highest-ranking officials who had been honored with decorations. They were also given to low-ranking officials such as Galib Beyefendi, an assistant in the Office of Ceremonies in the Foreign Ministry who was decorated with a second-level Vasa insignia from the state of Sweden.1067 States ranging from Montenegro to Italy had decorated several Ottoman officials, although the two countries which decorated the Ottoman officials the most were Iran and Romania.

The symbolism and meaning of the institutionalization of nişans has been analyzed by Edhem Eldem. He has demonstrated the gradual transformation of the aesthetics and the style of the nişans from the first insignia in 1831 (or 1832) to the end of the empire. Although Mustafa Reşid Bey (the future Mustafa Reşid Pasha) suggested that the institutionalization of an insignia system would increase the prestige of the empire, it did not happen that way because the Westerners did not feel honored by the decoration of the insignia by the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, they felt that it was a degradation to be granted an insignia by a state of low prestige.1068 It was only in the later few decades that the Europeans began to be ―honored‖ by being awarded an Ottoman insignia. For Eldem,


1065 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), pp. 157212-143.

1066 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 190.

1067 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 195.

1068 Eldem, Edhem, İftihar ve İmtiyaz, İstanbul: Osmanlı Bankası Arşiv ve Araştırma Merkez, 2004, pp. 117-121.


the crucial decade for the institutionalization of the system was the 1850s. This was due especially to the endorsement of a cosmopolitan discourse created by the implications of the Crimean War and the coalition with Great Britain and France. Nevertheless, the Crimean War only reinforced this process. The modernization of insignias began as early as 1852 with the appearance of the Mecidiye insignia in 1852 prior to the Crimean coalition. By the 1850s, the more traditional designs and scripts of the insignia alluding to the classical age of Ottomans were replaced by more ―modern‖ designs and scripts in terms of the messages conveyed.1069 While the insignia of the early Tanzimat reflected a blend of the traditional discourses of the pre-modern Ottoman Empire and the modern self-images of the 19th century, in time this transitional phase was superseded by the complete endorsement of 19th century imperial discourses. We may argue that, by the 1850s, the Ottoman Empire had managed to enter the family of fellow European monarchies in the symbolic realm.

A significant part of the operation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was dedicated to ceremonies. The ministry was responsible for celebrating and congratulating the ―days‖ of the monarchs, which included birthdays, anniversaries of their accessions to the throne, and weddings. Of course, national holidays were also commemorated. The greetings of the fellow monarchs on the anniversaries of the enthronement of Abdülhamid and the religious holidays were received and dispatched to the palace.1070 The follow-up and conduct of this procedure was one of the tasks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.


In short, Ottoman officialdom endeavored to be incorporated into the European family. This was not a matter of symbolism. On the contrary, the empire‘s primary concern in its pursuit to be admitted into the European family was to secure its territorial integrity. Ottoman officialdom believed that the perpetual threat of partition and annihilation would be avoided by inclusion into the European family. Tanzimat statesmen thought that they had achieved this in 1856. ―Finally, the Ottomans had succeeded in gaining admission, however qualified, to the European club of powers. The Paris Treaty of 1856, which

1069 Eldem, Edhem, ibid., p. 169.

1070 For congratulations on the birthdays of the monarchs, see BOA, HR.SYS 222-101, for the anniversaries of their weddings, see BOA, HR.SYS 212/98. For the congratulations of the monarchs on the anniversary of the accession to the throne of Abdülhamid and the religious holidays, BOA, HR.SYS 211/91.


provided an unprecedented guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman state, made the empire, in effect, a member of the European concert. From the Ottoman perspective, this was a more important result than the Russian surrender of southern Bessarabia or even the neutralization of the Black Sea (.)‖1071 Nevertheless, the hopes and expectations of the Ottoman statesmen were not to be realized. Equal terms between the Ottomans and the European powers could not be established for apparent reasons. Realpolitik and Machtpolitik were better means to secure territorial integrity and Ottoman attempts at Europeanization and synchronization of its self-imagination and self-portrayal remained futile.

 

 

 

7.3.  Transitions to the Cultures of Bureaucracy

 


A glance at the salaries of the members of the diplomatic service also gives some inkling as to the aristocratic and patriarchal nature of the Ottoman culture of officialdom.1072 The disparity between the highest-paid officials and the lower echelons of the bureaucracy is striking. From the annals, we learn that the Foreign Minister was (supposed to be) paid 360,000 guruşes per year according to the 1889 yearbook. The undersecretary, the highest-paid employee of the ministry, was paid 288,000 guruşes. The second highest-paid employees were the ambassadors to London, Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Vienna, who enjoyed an annual income of 246,000 guruşes. They were also entitled to stipends of 186,000 guruşes each. Although the Ottoman representatives in Rome and Teheran also held the title of ―büyükelçi‖s, they were entitled a more modest salary of 120,000 guruşes per year (with a stipend of another 120,000 guruşes), which was considerably lower than the salaries paid to the holders of other more prestigious ambassadorships. Regarding the staff in the embassies, we observe a dramatic decrease for the lower posts including the salaries of the undersecretaries of the embassies. The

1071 Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 82.

1072 See Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 632-642. Discrepancy in the salaries of the pashas and the officials was a prominent feature of the Hamidian regime. See Georgeon, Francois… p. 177.


undersecretary in London was granted only 48,000 guruşes a year. The secretaries of the first rank, the second rank, and the third rank were entitled to an average of 20 to 35 thousand guruşes a year. The translator of the embassy in Teheran, who was not part of the regular staff of the diplomatic corps in the embassy, was paid 18,000 guruşes.1073 When it came to the porters, the salaries were even less. The porters serving in Istanbul were paid a maximum of 350 guruşes and a minimum of 150 guruşes a year.1074 That meant that the ministerial undersecretary was paid almost two hundred times more than the lowest paid worker, which was a conspicuous and manifest demonstration of the aristocratic/patriarchal nature of the Ottoman polity.1075 The salary scheme of the Ministry (with regard to diplomats) was like a steep pyramid in which the few highest ranking diplomats were paid enormously in comparison to the modest income levels of the low-ranking diplomats.

On the one hand, the 19th century Ottoman Empire resembled a bureaucratic state in which the level of incomes was determined by state fiat. On the other hand, it retained the vestiges of the pre-modern mode of wealth distribution in which there was no concern for egalitarianism and scales of wealth accumulation were determined by personalized, decentralized, arbitrary, and irregular dynamics.1076 Moreover, the lack of finances of the state meant that modestly paid officials were more likely to have their salaries curbed, something that is reminiscent of an inegalitarian mode of wealth distribution based on

 


1073 Of course, these were the salaries as indicated in the yearbooks. That does not mean that these salaries were paid on time or in full. As is well known, the state frequently failed to pay the salaries on time and in full. As mentioned previously, many ambassadors complained that their salaries were not paid for months and even for years .

1074 Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306/1889), p. 670.

1075 The hierarchy between the workers was also apparent. The ―head of the hademes" (chief porter) was paid 1,000 guruşes whereas the assistant to the head of the hademes was paid 500 guruşes. In short, in the Ottoman arrangement of payments, access to reasonably high income was endowed to the ―heads.‖.‖ The ―head,‖ the paternal position was prestigious and privileged. This posture reflects the prevalence of paternalistic and hierarchical thought. For a classic study on the pre-modern hierarchical and paternalist mind, see Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost, London; New York: Routledge, 2000.

1076 For a case study examining the sources of revenues and commercial activities of a high-ranking 17th century bureaucrat, see Kunt, Metin, ―Derviş Mehmed Pasha, Vezir and Entrepreneur: A Study in Ottoman Political-Economical Theory and Practice,‖ Turcica, 9,1 (1977), pp. 197-214.


prestige and power. Furthermore, they were financially more vulnerable in case of non- payment of salaries.

The aristocratic and patriarchal nature of Ottoman officialdom can also be deduced from the table of salaries in Findley‘s work on the social history of the Ottoman officialdom.1077 In Findley‘s scheme, the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were divided into three: non-Muslims, ―modernist Muslims‖, and ―traditional Muslims. In his table, the ―modernist Muslims‖ were paid the best whereas the non-Muslims came second. The ―traditional Muslims‖ were paid very modestly and were predominantly employed in low-ranking posts. Considering that in Findley‘s categorization, ―modernist Muslims‖ were those who were educated in westernized (and therefore the best) schools, they occupied the highest and most prestigious positions for which non-Muslims were discriminated against unless their competence was indispensable, like the non-Muslim officials in the Office of Legal Counsellorship. This table clearly demonstrates that a good education secured considerably higher incomes. It also reflects the discriminatory nature of the Ministry in favor of Muslims. Although the non-Muslims on average had better education and skills, they were denied equal opportunity of advancement in ranks and income.

One of the radical moves of the Tanzimat was the inauguration in 1838 of a salary system that replaced the old structure in which no distinction between ―public‖ and

―private‖ had been made.1078 Obviously, the pre-Tanzimat rewarding of the public officials privileged the high-ranking officials who had better connections and occupied better positions. However, it was ironic that the ―salary system‖ of the Tanzimat ―while (it) intended to do the opposite, (it)... heightened officials‘ economic worries.‖1079 due to its evasion of arbitrary and irregular sources of extra income. Although, the new Weberian/rational system of payment seemed to serve as a relative equalizer between officials in public officialdom, ―a vast gap between highest and lowest salaries remained a


1077 Findley, Carter Vaughn, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 358-9.

1078 See Kırlı, Cengiz, ―Yolsuzluğun İcadı: 1840 Ceza Kanunu, İktidar ve Bürokrasi,‖

Tarih ve Toplum Yeni Yaklaşımlar, 4, Güz 2006, p. 49.

1079 Findley, Carter Vaughn, ibid., p. 296.


hallmark of the Ottoman official salary system, even if the gap narrowed with time.‖1080 In this regard, the Ottoman understanding of merit was a typical corollary of the aristocratic culture, albeit an aristocratic culture in which state was at the center and determined aristocratic credentials. The emerging bureaucratic state of the Tanzimat retained several features of the pre-modern state, especially in its structures of redistribution of wealth. Throughout the Tanzimat, (for Muslims) the state continued to be the foremost provider of wealth, which reproduced the principal attributes of a pre-modern polity. Although the Tanzimat acquired many features of the modern bureaucratic state and the Hamidian era witnessed the enormous growth of a bureaucracy with the number of civil servants employed in state service reaching one hundred thousand by 1900,1081 the facets of modern and pre-modern structures coexisted before most of the pre-modern remnants were gradually abandoned (culminating in the Hamidian era and progressing thereafter). The substantial steps to standardize and formalize salaries and their regular distribution were taken in the early reign of Abdülhamid II. One significant development was the 1881 Decree on the Promotion and Retirement of Civil Officials (Memurin-i Mülkiye Terakki ve Tekaüd Kararnamesi), which was superseded by another decree in 1884.1082 The decree of 1881 ―was divided into two sections, of which the first dealt summarily with conditions of appointment and promotion, while the second dealt with the creation of a modern kind of Retirement Fund (Tekaüd Sandığı), to be financed by the deductions from the salaries.‖1083 The foundation of the Mülkiye was another major step in the recruitment of officials endowed with sufficient skills and knowledge regarding administration and (modern European) law. The new recruits were provided with much better opportunities, rewards, and assurances compared to their older colleagues. The conditions of employment were also standardized and regularized. ―To govern the workings of the personnel records


1080 Findley, ibid, p. 296.

1081 Georgeon, Francois… p. 177. During the Hamidian era, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expanded enormously. The number of the officials employed in the departments of the ministry in Istanbul more than doubled in fifteen years. Compare the lists in the annals of 1902 and 1889.  Salname-i Nezaret-i Hariciye (1320 /1902), p. 70-100;  Salname-i

Nezaret-i Hariciye (1306 /1889), pp. 485-630.

1082 Findley, ibid., p. 273.

1083 Findley, ibid., p. 273.


system, there were two sets of instructions, the first being issued in 1879, the second in 1887.‖1084

It was the porters and the lower-ranking officials, not members of highest-ranking officialdom of the state, that benefited from the newly emerging Weberian regulation of public officials in which the disparity between the salaries of the higher and lower echelons of the bureaucracy gradually narrowed. Although the Hamidian bureaucratic reforms established a predominantly bureaucratic state, the higher echelons remained privileged and remained intact, insulated from bureaucratic modernization and development of a culture of (Weberian) bureaucracy.1085 This duality lessened with the 1908 and subsequent purges (tensikat). The tensikat of 1909 severely reduced the salaries and benefits of high- ranking bureaucrats. Against the motions of the parliament, the ministers had to defend the reasonableness of the level of salaries of the high-ranking bureaucrats, including those in the diplomatic service, suggesting that with the salaries proposed by the parliament, no one would want to work in the Foreign Ministry.1086 The motion prepared by the committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was rejected by the parliament, so the committee had to


1084 Findley, ibid., p. 271. Transition to a fully standardized and salary-based system in Europe occurred in the early 19th century. In the consular system of Britain, consuls earned their income through the fees they charged for their services, their personal talents, connections, and commercial activities. There was an attempt to replace this early modern system, which was highly corrupt, inefficient, and incompatible with the premises of an imperial modern-state, with a rational and standardized system in early 19th century. The reforms of Canning in 1825 intended to transform consuls into ―salaried, full-time state servants drawing a fixed income by the Parliament.‖ Nevertheless, it took half a century to implement the goals of the reform. Platt, D.C.M, The Cinderella Service: British Consuls since 1825, New York: Longman, 1971, p. 68.

1085 Akarlı, Engin Deniz, ―The Tangled Ends of an Empire: Ottoman Encounters with the West and Problems of Westernization—an Overview,‖ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26.3 (2006), p. 363. It also has to be said that such a duality developed with the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The highly developed bureaucracy and the Kaiser‘s entourage coexisted and annoyed the civil bureaucracy and middle classes. Therefore the Hamidian duality cannot be viewed as a remnant of the past to be inevitably crushed, but a variation of the 19th century constructions of bureaucratic states. See

―Introduction,‖ in Mombauer, Annika & Deist, Wilhelm, The Kaiser, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 2-3. Also see the article in the aforementioned volume, ―The Kaiser‘s Elite? Wilhelm II and the Berlin Administration, 1890-1914‖ by Katharine A. Lerman.

1086 MMZC, 1909, v. I, pp. 3-16, MMZC, 1909, v. III, p.49.


prepare a second motion regarding the salaries and reorganization of the ministry to satisfy the concerns of the critical parliamentarians1087. The scale of disparities of incomes and the gradual narrowing of these discrepancies in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was an indication of the development and evolution of the modern bureaucracy and state. As observed, this was not a linear and smooth process in which the former was repudiated and the new was endorsed but rather an evolution in which distinctions were retained and reproduced.

The rationalization and professionalization of the diplomatic service, as well as other governmental offices, progressed without a definite deadline. Nevertheless, 1908, and arguably to a lesser extent 1923, were two key turning points in this inevitable process. The move of the capital from Istanbul to Ankara protected Mustafa Kemal from the predatory elite of the Old Order. Therefore, instead of surrendering to them, he could demolish all the established strongholds of the aristocratic and imperial order. What the relatively rationalized and impersonalized bureaucracy replaced was not a pre-modern and unprofessional bureaucracy, but an institutional culture of its own which had retained its own intimate and personalized socialization. An institutional culture replaced another although the culture of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was retained to a considerably extent in the republican Foreign Office in Sıhhıye.

There were apparent continuities in the transition from the Empire to the Republic. Nonetheless, the foundation of a republic also meant dramatic changes in various areas. The relations established between the state and its privileged servants were one of the distinctions between a Republic and an Empire. Klinghardt, writing in 1924, just one year after the proclamation of the republic, puts the main difference between the old times and new times as the austerity and plainness of the style and aesthetics of the new regime compared to the ostentation of the old regime. He contrasts these two ―spirits‖ not with regard to architecture and ideology but predominantly with regard to the aesthetics of governmental offices and office habits.1088 For Klinghardt, the new state in Ankara

 


1087 Tural, Erkan… p. 58.

1088 Klinghardt, Karl, Ankara-İstanbul Arası İktidar Kavgası, İstanbul: Profil, 2007, pp. 100-104. For the plain modernism of the republic in architecture, see Bozdoğan, Sibel,


managed to halt the flamboyance and impudence of the imperial civil servants and imposed the authority of a modern and effective state. Klinghardt contrasts the toughness of the

―new men‖ with the elegance and effeminate-like courtliness and empty pageantry of the imperial establishment. Klinghardt was mesmerized with the end of the cosmopolitan world in Istanbul smashed by the Prussian and egalitarian Ankara representing genuine Anatolian Turkishness. For him, Ankara symbolized a new style of aesthetics not a world apart from the communist aesthetics of the Bolsheviks and the European fascist aesthetics of later years. One thing was for sure: The Ottoman pageantry, its distinct culture, and the ethos imbued in the imperium had vanished for good or bad.

 

 

 

7.4.  The Aristocratic Worlds of European Diplomatic Services

 

The pre-1914 diplomatic service was the most aristocratic of all the civil services throughout Europe. ―The atmosphere within the Habsburg foreign service was distinctly international and aristocratic. Only 3 percent of the seventy-two senior diplomats posted outside Austria-Hungary had no noble title. At the Balhausplatz, a prince, ten counts, twenty-four barons, and thirty-two with simple noble predicates controlled the bulk of the senior positions. Aristocrats, whether Austrian or Hungarian, held the top diplomatic posts abroad and usually represented decades of familial service to the Habsburg dynasty.‖1089 Russian diplomats ―in line with general European practice, were from much grander social backgrounds than any of the domestic civil servants.‖1090 ―Members of the Swedish foreign service were consequently recruited almost exclusively from the high nobility of the

 

 


Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic,

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.

1089 Williamson Jr., Samuel R, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991, p. 39. Also see Bridge, F.R, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary 1866-1914, London;Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 21.

1090 Lieven, Dominic, Russia‟s Rulers under the Old Regime, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, p. 80.


country.‖1091 ―In Belgium, ‗(o)f the 169 diplomats that can be accounted for in the period between 1830 and 1850, 120 were noblemen.‘"1092 The dominance of aristocracy in the diplomatic service prevailed throughout Europe until 1914 with the relative exception of France, where diplomatic service was bourgeoisified to a certain extent throughout the Third Republic, thanks to the conscious policies of Third Republican politicians.1093 The pre-World War I years were the years of talk of ―reform‖ to reorganize and ―modernize‖ the foreign offices and end the aristocratic institutional culture since aristocratic cultures of diplomatic services were not suitable for the complexities of the international politics of the age. Although ―talk of reform‖ was in the air, the implementation of reforms remained fairly limited1094 and foreign offices successfully resisted the efforts of the political elites to reform the foreign offices1095. Nevertheless, after World War I, diplomacy lost its blatantly aristocratic character in all Europe to the lament of aristocrat diplomats, including a sad Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu writing in 1940s.1096

The typical 19th century diplomat did not perceive his occupation as a profession but rather as an aristocratic pastime activity. The workload was far from being heavy and

 

 


1091 Calrlgren, Wilhelm, ―Sweden: The Ministry for Foreign Affairs,‖ in The Times Survey of the Foreign Ministries of the World, Zara Steiner (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 459.

1092 Willequet, Jacques. ―The Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Belgium,‖ in The Times Survey of the Foreign Ministries of the World, Zara Steiner (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 78.

1093 Hayne, M.B, Ibid., p. 9-10.

1094 On the reform of the British Foreign Office, see the articles of Zara Steiner below.

―The Last Years of the Old Foreign Office 1898-1905,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1963), pp. 59-90; ―Grey, Hardinge and the Foreign Office 1906-1910,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1967), pp. 415-439.

1095 For David Vincent, because the Foreign Office was the most elitist office comprised of the members of the traditional ruling class, it was the one that resisted the professionalization and the Act of Nortcote-Trevelyan most. Vincent, David, The Culture of Secrecy in Britain, 1832-1898, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 79.

1096 Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali. Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene, İstanbul: Şaka Matbaası, 1949, pp. 285-86.


―there was time for friends and visitors.‖1097 In other words, diplomacy was a part of the aristocratic way of life. It was not seen as a profession practiced for income and material reward but as an activity performed for prestige, glamour, and family reputation. Naturally, given that such an understanding of diplomacy prevailed in the foreign ministries, the organizations of foreign ministries remained backward in the nineteenth century in terms of their professionalism, organizational structures, and bureaucratic efficiencies in comparison to the other ―reforming‖ governmental offices. In the heyday of the Concert of Europe, diplomacy was seen as a culture of aristocratic socialization.1098 As the Concert of Europe unraveled and the complexities of international affairs became more sophisticated, an attempt at professionalization and ―disciplining‖ of the foreign offices was undertaken.1099 However, by the outbreak of World War I, as suggested above, the reforms had been only partially successful.

In the British Foreign Office, diplomats and Foreign Office officials were strictly separated. ―Diplomacy was recognized as elitist service... By 1914, career diplomatists numbered 150, forming a closed, gilded circle, staffed in the main by the sons of peers, landowners, and aspiring gentry, and drawn primarily from the prestige public schools and

 

 

 

 

 


1097 Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office… p. 16. It was not different in the Ottoman embassies. See Abdülhak Hamid… p. 351.

1098 For the intimate world of the British Office, see Henry Drummond Wolf‘s introduction of his colleagues in the Foreign Office. He introduces most of his colleagues with reference to their fathers, mothers, and uncles whom he personally knows and expects the reader to know due to their public prominence. Drummond Wolf, Henry, Rambling Recollections, London: Macmillan and Co., 1908, pp. 61-65.

1099 The Concert of Europe was perceived as the ―classical era of diplomacy.‖ The earliest academic studies focused on the Concert of Europe and its management by the skillful prime ministers and foreign ministers. In these earliest accounts of diplomatic history, diplomacy is an art mastered by the knowledgeable men of aristocratic descent. See Temperley, Harold, England and the East: Crimea, London: Longmans, Green and co., 1936; Temperley, Harold, The Foreign Policy of Canning 1822-1827, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1925; Webster, Charles, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1815-1822 : Britain and the European Alliance, London: G. Bell, 1925; Webster, Charles, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston 1830-1841, London: G. Bell, 1951.


Oxbridge colleges.‖1100 In contrast, Foreign Office officials were less aristocratic than the diplomats. The reasons were obvious. The expenses abroad were difficult to afford, especially bearing in mind that their salaries were comparably modest and they were paid no salary in the first two years of their service.1101 Apparently, such a material difficulty for the recruits was established to discourage those who lacked means of self-financing and favored those who were financially privileged. There was a sharp criticism leveled against this discriminatory practice. Both services cultivated prejudices against each other. ―The Foreign Office... tended to regard diplomatists as dilettantes and social butterflies. Quite naturally, a degree of competition, if not latent hostility, developed between the two services... continued until 1919 when formal amalgamation took place.‖1102 A transition between these two services was an exception, and such a move was not seen as laudable nor was it encouraged. For a Foreign Office official, a transfer to a diplomatic post meant degradation. For a diplomat, a post in the Foreign Office meant deterioration in social standing.

The idea that diplomacy is not a source of income was well established in the French and German Foreign Offices as well. ―No requirement was so carefully observed, as the rule formally in effect until 1908, that candidates had to have independent incomes…The Wilhelmstrasse had first insisted in the 1880s that candidates give evidence of private wealth, with the annual figure set at 6,000 marks.‖1103 In Austria, ―admission to the foreign office was not in the first place decided by the obligatory diplomatic examination but by social status; for a leading position in the Foreign Service, proof of a fixed income, which

 

 


1100 Rose, Norman, Harold Nicolson, London: Jonathan Cape, 2005, p. 29, also see Otte, T.G, ―Almost a Law of Nature? Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Office and the Balance of Power in Europe 1905-1912,‖ Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2003), p. 79.

1101 Moreover, for a candidate to be admitted as a diplomat, he had to have a yearly income of € 400. See ―Steiner, Zara, ―The Foreign Office Reforms 1919-1921,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), p. 137. The conditions were not different in czarist Russia. ―It was not easy to meet the expenses of diplomatic life in a major European capital without some addition to one‘s official salary.‖ Lieven, Dominic, Ibid., p.196.

1102 ibid., p. 30

1103 Cecil, Lamar, ibid., p. 39.


made it possible to fulfill the duties of representation, was also required.‖1104 ‖This was a common practice, enforced also in …Russia and Italy as well.‖1105 In Italy, ―the candidate had to be ‗possessed of sufficient financial means to maintain the volunteer in the Italian consulates abroad and, for a diplomatic career, a compulsory income of 6,000 lire‘; this last figure was fairly high so as to ensure that the number of candidates was limited.‖1106 In the Quai d‘Orsay, ―(u)ntil 1894 candidates (applying for the Foreign Office) had to have a private income of 6, 000 francs.‖1107The French Foreign Office was an island of aristocracy in the sea of republicanism. ―French governments (of the Third Republic) were prone to send aristocrats of great standing to important posts. Moreover, even if a Republican represented the French government, he usually made a clear distinction between internal and international politics…(R)epublicanism was simply not an export commodity. Like his aristocratic counterpart, the new Republican diplomat also found parliamentary politics thoroughly repugnant (.)‖1108 In an effort to make the Quai d‘Orsay more bourgeois, ―the Republic had attempted to upgrade salaries in the hope of attracting permanent officials of bourgeois Republican persuasion.‖1109 This policy did not work out primarily because the social costs of expenses of diplomatic corps were not affordable for a state official dependent on a salary. Although in the Ottoman Empire there was no strict separation of diplomatic posts and Foreign Office posts and diplomats were assigned to both tracks, these two tracks had their autonomies. The diplomatic posts were filled by men of comparably higher social origins and respectability.1110


1104 Rumpler, Helmut, ―The Foreign Ministry of Austria and Austria-Hungary 1848 to 1918,‖ in The Times Survey of the Foreign Ministries of the World, Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 54.

1105 ibid., p. 39.

1106 Serra, Enrico, ―Italy: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs,‖ in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Zara Steiner (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 298.

1107 Hayne, M.B, ibid, p. 8.

1108 ibid., p. 10.

1109 ibid., p. 20.

1110 For the necessity of appointing diplomats coming from prosperous and respectable families to the post of ambassador in the Ottoman Empire, see Söylemezoğlu, Galip Kemali… p. 286.


In reaction to the rising popularity of social and economical history and the thesis of

Der Primat der Innenpolitik,‖ Zara Steiner argued that the making of the British foreign policy and the road to World War I was decided primarily by the independent exploits of the Foreign Ministry. For Steiner, although several concerns might play a role in the making and implementation of foreign policy, the determining force was the closed world of diplomacy.1111 ―They operated in a closed circuit and tended mainly to hear each other‘s voices.‖1112 Denying a prominent role to social and economic forces in determining foreign policy orientations, Steiner maintains that states and ―official minds‖ had an immense power to shape foreign policy orientations. Moreover, the world of diplomacy was a socially exclusive world closed to the worlds and minds of the non-official elites (such as industrialists)1113 and, therefore, the secluded ―diplomatic mind‖ strictly hindered other


1111 Steiner, Zara & Neilson, Keith, Britain and the Origins of the First World War, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 (original publication in 1977 authored by Steiner alone) Other studies also developed balanced conclusions as to whether social forces or imperatives of the states had been decisive in the making of World War I. For such accounts, see Bosworth, Richard, Italy and the Approach of the First World War, London: Macmillan, 1983; Keiger, John, France and the Origins of the First World War, London: St. Martin‘s Press; 1983; Wilson, Keith, The Policy of the Entente, Cambridge,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1985.

1112 Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office p. 210.

1113 For a criticism of the ―economist‖ of the aristocratic antipathy of the diplomats towards the commercial world, see Steiner, Zara, ―The Foreign Office Reforms 1919-1921,‖ The Historical Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), p. 138. For a general assessment of the closed world and mentality of the Foreign Office, see Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1969. Also see the classic work of Robinson and Gallagher in which they argued that imperialism erupted from the ―official mind‖ of the British state denying that imperialism was an outcome of the amalgamation of the complex dynamics of economics and militarism. Gallagher J. & Robinson, R. & Deny, A., Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, Macmillan, 1961. Erik Goldstein, one of the leading scholars of British diplomacy, employs the idiom of ―official mind‖ to define a particular tendency and culture to investigate British diplomacy. Among his articles, see Goldstein, Erik, ―The British Official Mind and the Lausanne Conference, 1922-23,‖ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 1557-301x, Volume 14, Issue 2, 2003, pp. 185-206; Goldstein, Erik. Neville Chamberlain, the British Official Mind and the Munich Crisis,‖ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 1557-301x, Volume 10, Issue 2, 1999, pp. 276-292; Goldstein, Erik. ―The British Official Mind and Europe,‖ Diplomacy & Statecraft, 1557-301x, Volume 8, Issue 3, 1997, p. 265-278. Also see Goldstein, Erik, Winning the Peace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.


alternative visions and perspectives from contributing to the molding of foreign policy, avoiding any external influence of any sort.

Apparently, the diplomats shared a common educational background besides a common social background. A comparison between education systems and universities of various countries is illuminating.1114 Britain was the country where institutions of education were most strictly exclusive to non-aristocracy. In fact, Oxbridge functioned to sustain the social, political, and cultural superiority of the aristocracy. The Oxbridge and public schools were strictly nonegalitarian, class conscious, and class-based.1115 The Prussian gymnasiums were state institutions launched to recruit and educate future knowledgeable bureaucrats trained in a Humboldtian neo-humanist culture and imbue them with Bildung,1116 In gymnasiums, nobles and non-nobles were trained together without discrimination, especially in the late 19th century. In Russia, in contrast, education was overtly non-aristocratic. It was the sons of the poor, the lower middle classes, and the non- privileged who crowded the best universities in St. Petersburg and Moscow and cultivated contempt and hatred against the philistine, indolent, and unproductive aristocracy during their education. Lieven notes that in the Russian universities (and in the Moscow University in particular), it was the scions of aristocracy who were discriminated against.1117 In contrast to the Prussian case, the Russian state failed to absorb and assimilate the university students. As a result, a grave and insurmountable social


1114 For a general survey of the 19th century European universities and national traits of the university systems, see Rüegg, Walter (ed.), Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century (1800-1950), Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2004; Jarausch, Konrad, The Transformation of Higher Learning 1860-1930:, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

1115 Anderson. R.D, European Universities from the Enlightenment to 1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 191. Also see Soffer, Erba, Discipline and Power: The University, History and the Making of an English Elite, 1870-1930, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994; Deslandes, Paul, Oxbridge Men, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

1116 For the 19th century German universities, see Anderson. R.D. Ibid., pp. 51-65.; Ringer, Fritz, Education and Society in Modern Europe, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.

1117 See Lieven, Dominic, The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp.161-180.


contradiction emerged between the aristocracy and the new class of razhnochintsy.1118 The Hamidian graduates of the Ottoman Empire demonstrated a similar pattern in which the state‘s establishment of a modern and fine education system created an undesired outcome. As the education system paved the way to a communist takeover in Russia with the alienation of the university graduate intellectuals, the egalitarian and relatively non-class conscious Ottoman education system facilitated a Young Turk takeover against which the Hamidian establishment and aristocracy remained helpless. The constructions of the education systems were significant factors in determining the evolution of national paths. In the Ottoman and Russian cases, they became dysfunctional and worked against the establishment.1119 The Hamidian graduates of imperial colleges became adversaries of the system (although unlike their Russian peers, they were employed within the state administration and thus perceived their prospects in the state). Most of the upstarts cultivated resentment towards the beneficiaries of the ―unproductive‖ establishment and were in favor of a more efficient, productive, and meritocratic one.

Evidently, the diplomats in all the Great Powers of Europe were graduated from privileged and secluded schools of aristocracy and officialdom. The typical educational background of a British diplomat was schooling in Eton and university training in Oxford. A few graduates of Cambridge at the university level and graduates of other prestigious aristocratic public schools besides Eton such as Harrow, Rugby, and Wellington at the high school level were also observable. Career in diplomacy was certainly closed to any outsider.1120 In France, recruitment favored elite schools.1121 Austro-Hungarian diplomats were predominantly graduates of Theresianum, the school founded by Maria Theresa as a


1118 Alston, Patrick L, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969.

1119 The two major studies on Ottoman education are Somel, Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire 1839-1908: Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001; Fortna, Benjamin, Imperial Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

1120 For the lists and tables, see Steiner, Zara, ibid, pp. 217-221.

1121 Hayne, M.B, ibid., p. 22. For the elite schools in France training middle class youth (as well as the promising youth of lower classes) and preparing them for state service, see Bourdieu, Pierre, The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1998.


center of patriotic imperial officialdom.1122 In a republic with strong anti-aristocratic prejudices, over 60 percent of the diplomats of the United States in the late 19th century were graduates of Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.1123

In the Ottoman Empire, given that there were only a few university level institutions, apparently the diplomats came predominantly from Mülkiye and Mekteb-i Sultani. We observe that the graduates of Mülkiye and Mekteb-i Sultani who opted for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs came from relatively conformist backgrounds in comparison with those graduates who opted for other governmental offices. According to the list prepared by Ali Çankaya, 8 percent (124 men) of the graduates of the Mülkiye joined Ministry of Foreign Affairs.1124 This minority was comprised of the privileged graduates of Mülkiye. As pointed out previously, this was seemingly due to the costliness of the life of a diplomat.1125

 

 

 

7.5.  The End of the World of Aristocracy and Gentlemanly Diplomacy

 

The aristocratic culture of public administration enabled the 19th century configuration of the foreign offices to prevail, creating very limited friction until World War I. In France, prior to World War I, new recruits who were dubbed ―Young Turks‖ reacted to the conservative style of conduct of diplomacy. The French Young Turks were nationalists and Germanophobes.1126 Whereas the ambassadorial elite, comprised of men of aristocratic


1122 Williamson Jr., Samuel R., ibid., p. 39.

1123 Ilchman, Warren Frederick, Professional Diplomacy in the United States 1779-1939, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, p. 78. This educational elitism was retained after the early 20th century reform. See p. 95.

1124 Çankaya, Ali, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler, Ankara: Mars Matbaası, 1968- 1971, v. 8, page opposing 164. For a discussion, see Findley, Carter, Ottoman Civil… pp. 157-58.

1125 For a comparative survey of the graduates of Mülkiye, see the impressive documentation of Ali Çankaya. Çankaya, Ali, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler, Ankara: Mars Matbaası, 1968-1971, 8 volumes.

1126 Hayne, ibid., p. 199. For the rise of anti-German sentiment in the British Foreign Office, see Corp, Edward T, ―Sir Charles Hardinge and the Question of Intervention in the


background, held on to the alliances system to maintain peace, the Young Turks advocated an aggressive policy toward Germany and were willing to risk a war if necessary. The disagreements between the ambassadorial elite consisted of the ambassadors appointed to St. Petersburg, London, Berlin, and other old guards who advocated pursuing delicate diplomatic negotiations and Young Turks in the Centrale, who advocated a tougher and uncompromising stance and created mischief in the Moroccan Crisis in 1909. The crisis was finally resolved with a Franco-German agreement thanks to the workings of the old guard.1127 The Austrian historian Fritz Fellner argued that ―the unleashing of the war (World War I-DG) could be attributed in no small part to the activities of younger diplomats in the Viennese foreign office.‖1128 The ―old diplomacy,‖ which not only referred to the method and conduct of the craft of diplomacy, but also to the aristocratic culture, paved the way to a new culture of diplomacy determined by competing nationalisms and unilateralist postures in contrast to the premises of the old diplomacy. The old diplomacy was based on a mutual understanding of the shared interests of the aristocratic ruling classes.1129

 

―However self-enclosed or socially exclusive, this was a professional elite whose interests went beyond national borders. Because, with few exceptions, the same kind of men staffed the departments of all the states, they understood each other, they spoke the same language, read the same books. Members of the diplomatic establishment were the multinationals of their time. William Tyrell, Sir Edward Grey‘s pre-war private secretary spent his vacations from 1900 to 1910 at the home of Prince Hugo von Radolin, the German ambassador in Paris, whose mother-in-law was in turn a Talleyrand. Members of the profession, despite the occasional chauvinist, thought of themselves as members of a cosmopolitan, culturally homogenous,


Boer War: An Episode in the Rise of Anti-German Feeling in the British Foreign Office,‖ The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51, No. 2, On Demand Supplement (Jun., 1979), p. D1071-D1084

1127 Hayne, ibid., p. 143.

1128 Fellner, Fritz, ―Die ‗Mission Hoyos‘‖ in Deutschlands Sonderung von Europa 1862- 1945, Wilhelm Alf (ed.), 1984, pp. 283-316 quoted in Mombauer, Annika. The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus, New York: Longman, 2002, p. 188.

1129 For some ―masters‖ of old diplomacy, see Busch, Briton Cooper, Hardinge of Penhurst: A Study in the Old Diplomacy, Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1980; Nicolson, Harold, Portrait of a Diplomatist: Being the Life of Sir Arthur Nicolson, First Lord Carnock, London: Houghton Mifflin, 1930.


European family…They were the defenders of the same institutions, national and international. They were conscious of the common lines that kept the peace between them and had a vested interest in their preservation. There were unspoken assumptions about the way diplomacy should be conducted that influenced behavior at home and abroad.‖1130

 

In old diplomacy, the diplomats met not to maximize their own party‘s interest to the disfavor of the other party, but to reach a compromise on common ground to protect and advance their shared class-based interests. ―Europe‘s elite was more closely tied by culture and concrete interests to an international class than to the classes below them.‖1131 It was so much so that the Danish foreign minister Christian Bernstorff, who was an ethnic German like most of the Danish diplomats1132 and whose father was a Danish foreign minister as well, was transferred to Prussia as the new Prussian foreign minister to serve from 1818 to 18321133. This class-based multilateralism under the tutorship of Great Britain became unfeasible after the rise of Germany and emergence of rival alliances and camps in the last decades of the 19th century.

The responsibility for World War I is a matter of controversy, both as a political issue and as an academic debate. Fischer, in the 1960s, argued that Germany bore the sole responsibility for World War I.1134 Moreover, for Fisher it was not the German Foreign Office but the Chiefs of Staff that intentionally opted for a war. According to Fisher, it was the deliberate calculation of the militarist elite that had instigated the Armageddon.1135


1130 Steiner, Zara, ―Introduction,‖ in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Westport: Times Books, Zara Steiner (ed.), 1982, pp. 16-17.

1131 Halperin, Sandra, War and Social Change in Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 30-31.

1132 Kjolsen, Klaus, ―The Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,‖ in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Westport: Times Books, Zara Steiner (ed.), 1982, p. 166.

1133 Baack, Lawrence J, Christian Bernstorff and Prussia, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980, p. 21.

1134 Fischer, Fritz, Germany‟s Aims in the First World War, New York: W.W. Norton, 1967 (original German publication 1961)

1135 For such an interpretation also see Geiss, Imanuel, German Foreign Policy 1871-1914, London; Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976; Berghahn, Volker, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, London: St. Martin‘s Press, 1973. For a recent critique of the


However, others questioned the argument for the sole responsibility of Germany and suggested that the escalation of tensions, the irreconcilable nature of the Great Power aggressions and many other structural factors rendered a great war possible if not inevitable. Examining the change of attitudes, perceptions and the ideologies within the foreign offices of Britain and France as well as Germany supports such a claim.1136 The new cadres of diplomats were more nationalistic (even chauvinistic), and they were eager to demolish the international gentlemanly diplomacy.1137 Realpolitik and national interest became the catchwords of the new generation of the diplomatic service. These catchwords replaced the hegemonic discourses of ―balance of powers‖ and reciprocity.1138 Furthermore, every single incident and clash of interests began to be taken as ends in themselves instead of being seen as parts of a whole. Therefore, trying to maximize


Fischer thesis, see Mombauer, Annika, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus, New York: Longman, 2002, pp. 127-164; Mombauer, Annika, Helmuth Von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 1-6.

1136 With regard to Italy, C.J. Lowe and F. Marzari note that the right was able to determine the course of foreign policy thanks to the right-wing nature of the diplomatic corps. See Lowe, C.J. & Marzari, F, Italian Foreign Policy 1870-1940, London; New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 8. They also note that the lack of any substantial ideas on the part of the Italian left with regard to foreign policy (with the exception of Crispi) facilitated the control of foreign policy by the right-wing diplomatic establishment.

1137 For a parallel observation regarding the shift of the making of the Russian foreign policy, Lieven D.C.B, Russia and the Origins of the First World War, London: Macmillan, 1984, p. 64. For the depiction of the Russian diplomatic corps, see Lieven, Ibid., pp. 84-

102. Also see the pro-German disposition in the makers of Russian foreign policy originated from an ideological position defending authoritarianism as an ideology, see Lieven, D.C.B, ―Pro-Germans and Russian Foreign Policy 1890-1914,‖ International History Review, 11 (1980).

1138 For a literature of ―war aims‖ developed by the political elites, the military and the diplomatic establishments in the years before the world war and revision of the ―war aims‖ in the heat of the war; see Gooch, John, Plans of War, London; New York: Routledge & K. Paul, 1974; Stone, Norman, The Eastern Front: 1914-1917, London: Penguin, 1998; Kennedy, Paul (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers 1880-1914, Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1979; French, David, British Economic and Strategic Planning 1905-1915, London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1982; French, David, British Strategy and War Aims 1914-1916, London; Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986. All these works attest the changing military, political and strategic planning and maneuvers of the European powers in a transforming political world as a whole that had prepared the ground for the upcoming war.


national interest on every occasion naturally triggered the escalation of tensions and the irreconcilability of interests.

It was also the beginning of the 20th century when ideology and politics made their way into the Foreign Offices. Ideological and political preferences and inclinations began to influence and shape the advising and implementation of the foreign policy there. At this particular time, national and ideological orientations became decisive in the making of foreign policy as the old cosmopolitan and aristocratic cultures of the foreign offices were collapsing. The rising antipathy towards Germany in the British Foreign Office, which was a manifestation of these nationalistic and conservative inclinations, was a remarkable factor in the making of the anti-German alliances with France and Russia, which prepared the ground for World War I. Although the issue of responsibility for the outbreak of the war has been a controversy since 1914 and the culpability of Germany has been maintained by many scholars. This group of scholars includes not only Fritz Fisher and his followers (Imanuel Geiss, Berghahn), but also other respected scholars, such as Albertini in 1940s, and Taylor, Steiner, and Lieven since then. However, it seems more accurate to argue for common guilt with different levels of culpability. In an era of ideological escalation, the outbreak of World War I cannot be regarded as an accident or a consequence of the overreaching of one of the parties.

 

 

 

7.6.  Institutionalization, Modernization and Bureaucratization of Foreign Offices

 

The British Foreign Office evolved from being a small bureau predominantly preoccupied with the deskwork of diplomacy to a sophisticated office responsible not only for the coordination and conduct but also the making of foreign policy throughout the second half of the 19th century, albeit very gradually. It was only on the eve of World War I that the Foreign Office was acknowledged as the primary office responsible for foreign policy. In the 19th century, foreign policy was mainly the domain of the foreign minister. ―Castlereagh completely ignored his staff, Canning did all his own drafting... Palmerston wrote all important dispatches himself and left only minor administrative details to his clerks. He wanted abstracts made, dispatches copied, queries answered and


papers properly circulated, but he did not wish for or seek advice.‖1139 The Foreign Office grew in size and in its tasks throughout the second half of the century. The number of dispatches handled by the Foreign Office increased steadily (6,000 in 1829; 30,000 in 1849, 111,000 in 1905), but on the eve of World War I, the staff of the Foreign Office numbered only 176, including doorkeepers and cleaners.1140

In this era, a crucial development was the rise of the permanent under-secretary. The traditional duties and responsibilities of the permanent undersecretary (writing first drafts, preparing abstracts of incoming dispatches, and even copying and ciphering) were replaced by the advising and active coordination of the implementation and conduct of foreign policy.1141 By the turn of 20th century, the permanent undersecretary was perceived and regarded as the primary expert regarding international politics and the most prominent counselor in the conduct of foreign policy. Nevertheless, this transformation was not a linear and smooth process. On the contrary, many Foreign Office staff, including permanent under-secretaries, resisted the imperatives of the modernization of the Foreign Office. The conventional perception of the task of the Foreign Office was sustained in the minds of the officials. Many permanent undersecretaries avoided assuming political powers.1142 In short, the Foreign Office lagged behind the other governmental offices in assuming the responsibilities of a modern bureaucratic state, predominantly due to its aristocratic character.

The reforms of 1905 determined the character of the modern Foreign Office and signaled the end of the old order.1143 While many continued to question as late as the Cold War if the British Foreign Office had ever been reformed to adapt to the needs of 20th century, it became a nostalgic icon for those who remembered it at a later time within a

 

 

 


1139 Steiner, Zara, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898-1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 3

1140 Steiner, Zara, ibid., p. 4

1141 Steiner, Zara, ibid, p.7

1142 Steiner, Zara, ibid, pp. 4-10.

1143 Steiner, Zara, ibid, p. 210.


much more professionalized profession of diplomacy.1144 The 1907 reforms in Quai d‘Orsay were less drastic and radical given that its aristocratic character had already been considerably effaced1145. However, the most radical reform, which was in fact no less than a revolution, was undertaken by Schüler just after World War I in Weimar Germany. The German foreign office was also Weimarized/republicanized by the eradication of its aristocratic heritage and its commercialization and bourgeoisification under the supervision of Schüler.1146 These reforms, which were undertaken in all major European countries, significantly curtailed the cultural characteristics and distinctions of foreign offices. Although all the foreign offices continued to retain their own cultures and characteristics,1147 they began to look alike more than ever and transformed (at least) into semi-Weberian bureaucracies. It was the strange death of the Old Order.

It is also striking to observe that such a small number of people played such a fundamental and determinative role in the making of world politics, especially regarding the advent of World War I. ―Ministries remained tight organizations right until the First World War. Russia was the outstanding exception (.) Elsewhere, few foreign offices, even among the great powers, employed more than 50 officials at mid-century, or between 100 and 150 men on the eve of the Great War. The French, for instance, increased the number of their officials from 80 in 1870 to 170 (excluding doorkeepers, typists, etc.) in 1914. The Danish Foreign Ministry increased from nine officials in 1848 to 21 in 1914, the Dutch


1144 See reminiscences of the pre-reform Foreign Office by Sir Hughe Knatchbull- Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War, London: J. Murray, 1949, p. 11.

1145 Hayne, M.B, ibid, p. 170.

1146 Doss, Kurt, ―The History of the German Foreign Office,‖ in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Zara Steiner (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, pp. 235- 40.

1147 For example the American State Department resisted all efforts at reform and retained its own informal culture. See Scott, Andrew M, ―Environmental Change and Organizational Adaptation: The Problem of the State Department,‖ International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 85-94; Scott, Andrew M, ―The Department of State: Formal Organization and Informal Culture,‖ International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1 (March, 1969), pp. 1-18. For the partial success of the reform in the State Department in the late 19th and early 20th century, see Werking, Richard Hume, The Master Architects: Building the United States Foreign Service 1890-1913, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1977.


from 23 in 1849 to 45 in 1914.‖1148 It is also striking to observe how limited the level of professionalism was in offices which had immensely influenced, shaped, and designed the modern world. The secluded worlds of Foreign Offices led the course of history. Given the smallness of these offices, the role these individuals and small groups of men played in the shaping of the modern world order is striking.

 

 

 

7.7.  The Bismarckian and Wilhelmine German Foreign Office

 

Among the Foreign offices throughout Europe, the German Foreign Office was arguably the one that resembled the Hamidian Foreign Office most in terms of its incorporation of loyalty, subservience to the throne, and high level of professionalism. The German foreign office was the foreign office with the least institutional autonomy vis-à-vis its political superiors, compared to its British and French counterparts. During the chancellorship of Bismarck, the foreign office was completely subservient to him. Bismarck controlled the ministry via his son, whom he appointed as the foreign minister. The subservience of the foreign office prevailed after the downfall of Bismarck. In spite of his disregard of the diplomatic service, Bismarck was held in esteem by the diplomatic service, whose exceptional level of knowledge of international affairs, skill in conducting foreign relations, and political genius were acknowledged and revered. ―Under Bismarck, if diplomats were allowed only a limited initiative, they could at last be confident that they were serving Europe‘s preeminent statesman and the policies they would be expected to implement would be reasoned and coherent.‖1149 In contrast, Wilhelm II was seen as a reckless and unreliable amateur, if not a charlatan. However, although the destructive intrusions of the Kaiser were resented by the diplomats and his damage to the professionalism of the diplomatic service infuriated them, from 1890 to 1914, there was not a single resignation from the service in reaction to these arbitrary and coarse

 


1148 Steiner, Zara, ―Introduction,‖ in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Steiner, Zara (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 13.

1149 Cecil, Lamar …p. 256


intrusions.1150 Apparently, in the clash between professionalism and aristocratic loyalties, the aristocratic loyalties determined the deeds of the officials. In fact, these two attributes do not necessarily contradict. They may coexist. Nonetheless, what we observe is that aristocratic ethics came first since professionalism was an aptitude to be acquired and practiced whereas the culture of aristocracy was a habitus, a code of conduct, and a merit.

The only exception to the total subservience of the foreign office was the immense control Holstein exerted over the ministry during his tenure as the senior counselor of the Political Division.1151 Holstein was a figure that Bismarck had to take into consideration during his chancellorship; but Holstein‘s power reached its zenith during the ministry of Caprivi, who was inexperienced in foreign affairs and, therefore, in this period, Holstein reigned over the ministry de facto. With the exception of Holstein, the highest-ranking positions lacked prominence and never played major roles in policy making. ―The under- secretary was completely subservient to the state secretary, and it was, therefore, a post to be avoided‖1152 for the German diplomats.

The German diplomatic service was one of the clearest examples of the European- wide practice of diplomacy as a game involving gentlemen. It was strictly elitist. The German diplomatic service was predominantly Protestant. Only a few Jews ever served in the office.1153 Sixty-nine percent of the Foreign Ministry officers bore titles of nobility.1154 Moreover, most of these officials came from certain families which were closely related and affiliated with others operating within a closed circle.1155 It is not surprising that for Bismarck what a diplomat should know and do best was socialize in aristocratic salons and


1150 Cecil, Lamar  p. 256.

1151 For Holstein, the éminence gris of German diplomatic service, see Rich, Norman, Friedrich von Holstein: Politics and Diplomacy in the Era of Bismarck and Wilhelm II, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1965 (2 vols); Rich, Norman & Fisher, M.

H. (ed.), The Holstein Papers, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1955 (4 vols).

1152 Cecil, Lamar, ibid, p. 158.

1153 Röhl, John, ―The Splendour and Impotence of the German Diplomatic Service,‖ in The Kaiser and His Court, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 154.

1154 Cecil, Lamar, ibid, p. 66.

1155 For the prominent families who recruited their scions into diplomacy and their political and social connections, see Cecil, Lamar, ibid, p. 67.


display                                   the                                   best                                   manners.1156 Nevertheless, the aristocratic nature of German diplomacy went hand-in-hand with an aggressive and fervent foreign policy conducted both by Bismarck and Wilhelm II. German diplomatic aristocratic culture did not hinder the uncompromising tone of German foreign policy which, in the end, destroyed ―Old Europe‖ and its political order. On the contrary, it perceived aggression as a manifestation of the ethos of the aristocratic culture and upbringing of its members. Apparently, aristocratic distinctions in the original medieval era were distinguished by military vigilance and maintained with military honor. What the Wilhelmine German aristocratic culture did was uphold this militarized ethos and exercise it within modern militarist politics and culture.1157 Together with the fact that Germany was seeking a place under the sun, German aristocratic culture did not become a bastion of order and status quo in the international arena but an anti-status quo force that was forced in the end to bow to the non-aristocratic radicals. This is not surprising given the fact that the German old regime had developed its own ―peculiarities‖ and had not followed the path of the liberal/conservative credo of the British old regime. No two old regimes resemble each other. In that regard, the Ottoman Hamidian Foreign Ministry oscillated between subterranean radicalism and anti-status quo intentions, and pro-status quo conservatism. In time, it gravitated from the latter to the former as the ancien régime

generation passed away and international developments increasingly obliged it to change.

 

 

 

7.8.  The Hamidian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Comparative Perspective

 


The political division of the Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs was formed after the Revolution of 1908. The institution of the political division was a sign of the relative

1156 Cecil, Lamar, ibid, pp. 238-239.

1157 Vagsts, Alfred, A History of Militarism, New York: The Free Press, 1967, pp. 62-64, 65-74, 175-79. For the pivotal role of military honor and spirit in the German aristocratic tradition, see also Craig, Gordon, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964; Brose, Eric Dorn, The Kaiser‟s Army, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. For this ethos in Austria, see Barker, Thomas, Army, Aristocracy, Monarchy; Essays on War, Society and Government in Austria, 1618-1780, Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1982.


―autonomization‖ and institutionalization of the ministry after the Hamidian yoke had been lifted and a further step toward professionalization, distancing itself from its aristocratic culture. Nevertheless, the workings of the ―political divisions‖ in Britain and Germany show that the political divisions work not within a Weberian bureaucratic ethos but within an aristocratic ethos and worldview. The ―myth of professionalism‖ does not apply to these bureaus. The bureaus based on geographical specialization were formed only after the proclamation of the republic. This was one more step toward professionalization, institutionalization, and bureaucratization in the Weberian sense. Interestingly, geographical bureaus based on geographical specialization were formed in the Western foreign offices after World War I at the same time as their Turkish counterpart as one of the reforms undertaken to professionalize these offices.1158

To recap, as a continent-wide trend, foreign offices reached the zenith of their institutional power on the eve of World War I. This period was characterized by the meteoric expansion of bureaucracy and the development of bureaucratic professionalism. It was followed by the advent of the democratization of politics and governments following the devastating world war. The democratization and the middle-class takeover of the governments and administrations would bring about the imposition of political infringement on the bureaucracy.1159 The bureaucracy and the political elites no longer came from the same cultural and social class. The change of the class character of the political elites destroyed the coherence of the bureaucracy and political decision-makers in favor of the new political elites. The antipathy and distrust of Lloyd George towards the diplomatic service is well known. The liberal Lloyd George, who liked to expose his lower


1158 For the postbellum introduction of the regional bureaus in the French and German foreign offices, see Lauren, Paul Gordon, Diplomats and Bureaucrats, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1976, p. 93, p. 128.

1159 For Britain, among many other valuable narratives, see Cannadine, David, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990; Cannadine, David, Aspects of Aristocracy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Also see the classic work, Dangerfield, George, The Strange Death of Liberal England, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998 (originally published in 1935). The destruction of the Old Regime in Germany was incomparably ruthless. Germany had transformed and became the

―first truly modern experiment‖ from being the bastion of conservatism and hierarchical political society. See Peukert, Detlev, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, London: Penguin, 1993.


class origins on various occasions, disdained the snobbery of the diplomatic service and made foreign policy decisions with minimal coordination with the Foreign Office.1160 While he ignored the Foreign Office, he made his decisions in consultation with his informal ―garden cabinet.‖ From the prime ministry of Lloyd George onwards, the British Foreign Office was sidelined and lost its centrality in the decision-making process.1161 Its monopoly in shaping foreign policy was taken away, and some of the components of the foreign policy-making process were distributed to various governmental offices. This process destroyed the self-perception of the exceptionalism that the privileged foreign policy establishment enjoyed and the idea that foreign policy had to be conducted and implemented behind closed doors by knowledgeable experts, thus rendering the political elites‘ position stronger vis-à-vis the bureaucratic establishment.


The reign of Vansittart in the British Foreign Office (and his failure to lead foreign policy due to the opposition of the political elite) was the last case of the éminence grises and a swan‘s song, thus bringing to a close the generation of the great diplomats that had begun in early 20th century. The ―golden age of the diplomats‖ contained such impressive names as Holstein and Schüler in Germany, and Hardinge, Eyre, and Crowe in Britain. These ―grey eminences,‖ who exerted immense power and controlled the implementation and making of foreign policy from the back of desks owing to their professionalism, erudition and respectability, were the product of a particular and idiosyncratic era. With the end of the ―old order‖ in diplomacy, enigmatic and thundering grey eminences disappeared and gave the floor to the dreary Weberian desk worker bureaucrats. The ―old diplomacy‖ in which personal skills and interpersonal relations were decisive and which was part of the conduct of business gave way to a depersonalized diplomacy in which personalities mattered less. The new mode of diplomacy hindered and limited the role of individuals in favor of the preponderance of the structural and political dynamics. Regarding the

1160 Maisel, Ephraim, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy 1919-1926, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1994, p. 68.

1161 For the efforts of the Foreign Office to adapt to the new circumstances, see Sharp, Alan, ―Adapting to a New World? British Foreign Policy in the 1920s.‖Contemporary British History, Autumn 2004, Vol. 18 Issue 3, pp. 74-86. Also see Sharp, Alan, ―The Foreign Office in Eclipse, 1919-1922,‖ History,1976, 61, pp. 198-218; Warman, Roberta M, ―The Erosion of Foreign Office Influence in the Making of Foreign Policy, 1916- 1918,‖ Historical Journal, 15, 1 (1972), pp. 133-159.


Ottoman/Turkish case, a similar pattern is observable with one difference. The zenith of the institutional power of the ministry, not in terms of exerting influence on the making of foreign policy but in terms of developing an institutionalized role in the conduct of coordination of foreign policy and establishing its institutional autonomy, was reached (after the collapse of ―old diplomacy‖ and in the age of Weberian bureaucratization) by the 1950s just after the end of the single party rule1162. However, this institutional power was a legacy of a process of decades. One figure that may be seen as the master architect of the institutional power of the ministry during the single party regime was Numan Menemencioğlu, the general secretary of the Ministry between 1933 and 1942 and the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1942 and 1944, a figure who is comparable to the grey eminences of the pre-World War I of European diplomacies and embodying the institutional power of the ministry in his persona. Apparently, this process was related with the development of the institutionalization of bureaucracy in general. In Turkey, the democratization of the political scene (not only in terms of the emergence of an electoral democracy but also) in terms of the background of the politicians was observed in 1950s which brought an end to the parliaments and cabinets composed of ex-bureaucrats and weakened the institutional powers of the bureaucratic offices.1163 Although, in Turkey, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs retained its institutional culture, privilege and relative autonomy due to the peculiarities of Turkey, the post-1950 was a new era for the Turkish diplomatic service as well1164.

 


1162 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs became much more influential in the making of foreign policy during the rule of Democrat Party (1950-1960) than the Kemalist single

party period in which the presidents (Atatürk and then İnönü) were decisive in the making of the foreign policy. During the rule of Democrat Party, the inexperienced Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and Minister of Foreign Affairs Faud Köprülü ensued the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to shape the foreign policy. See Uzgel, İlhan, ―TDP‘nin Oluşturulması‖, in Oran, Baskın (ed.), Türk Dış Politikası, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001, v. I, p. 74, pp.

76-77.

1163 For the social portrait of the Kemalist single-party period political elite, see Frey, Frederick W., The Turkish Political Elite, Cambridge, Mass. : M.I.T. Press, 1965.

1164 The democratically elected governments continued to acknowledge a considerable autonomy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seeing the international affairs as supra- political and conducted by the imperatives of state interests. However, the transformation


There is no evidence that the structuring of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was consciously modeled on any European example. ―There is no documentary evidence that the officials of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry made any close study of the organization of the corresponding agencies of European governments before 1908.‖1165 Yet, to conclude, we observe a similar/parallel pattern and trajectory regarding the evolutions and transformations of the Ottoman/Turkish Foreign Office and its Western counterparts. This is not due to emulation but due to the fact that Ottoman 19th century bureaucratic culture demonstrated a similar path of evolution and transformation sharing the same premises and externalities. One major difference is the time lag within which change occurred in the Turkish Foreign Office. The institutional zenith of bureaucracy in Turkey was reached with the Kemalist regime, building upon the institutional reforms already undertaken during the Hamidian and post-Hamidian eras and the premises taken from the Hamidian establishment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


of the social character of the political elites had an impact on the relations between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the political authorities.

1165 Findley, Carter E, ibid, p. 262.


 

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: PASSAGES OF THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE FROM THE EMPIRE TO THE REPUBLIC

 

From 1908 onwards, the pace of change accelerated. The ―new men‖ came to power with an entirely new political agenda, vision of politics, and social order. This transformation was not unique to the Ottoman framework. A similar transition and transformation was visible in the European scene as Europe approached World War I. The European mental structures were evolving in a direction in which ideologies such as fascism, communism, and Republicanism would later be able to flourish. This was not the world of Metternich, Castlereagh, or Bismarck anymore. This was not the world of Âli Pasha, Fuad Pasha, or Abdülhamid II either. The Ottoman Foreign Ministry which mastered the ―balance of power politics‖ became out of fashion in the new world of Machtpolitik. The Ministry was less at home and therefore less influential in the coordination of policymaking in the post-1908 world of Machtpolitik. The aging diplomats belonging to the age of Metternich-Castlereagh in Europe, who had faith in the traditional order and inclined towards France and Britain (i.e., Europe), were alienated and marginalized although they were also partially capable of adapting to the new cultural and intellectual milieu and radicalizing in pursuit of the ―spirit of the times‖.1166

Given that Ministry of Foreign Affairs was part of the Tanzimat/Hamidian bureaucracy and its informal culture, it cannot be separated and isolated from the attitudes and culture of the Tanzimat bureaucracy in general. This elite encountered an unprecedented crisis with the 1908 Revolution. The Kamil Pasha government which assumed office after the Revolution due to the lack of experience of the Young Turks may be regarded as the ―last


1166 For an insight and comparison, see the observation of Lieven on the gradual alteration of the making of foreign policy from the pragmatic style of the ―established elite‖ towards the ideologically committed (nationalist, panslav, rightist) new generation. Apparently, this was not a linear shift from one style to another but a constant struggle between different dispositions. Lieven, D.C.B, Russia and the Origins of the First World War, London: Macmillan, 1984, p. 64. Apparently, a similar vista is observable for the Ottoman context.


stand of the old/established Tanzimat bureaucracy. The Kamil Pasha Cabinet was ousted from office by the Unionist parliament after a tense period during which parliament, seeing itself as the representative of ―new forces‖ against the ancien régime (devr-i sabık), clashed on various occasions severely with the Kamil Pasha cabinet. Kamil Pasha‘s cabinet was ousted by the parliament with a vote of no confidence1167, the first in the Ottoman constitutional period.

The expectation of the Tanzimat bureaucracy in the first years of the Second Constitutional Period was that it would regain the position it had largely lost during the Hamidian era. This expectation did not materialize. On the contrary, with 1908 it lost its power and influence forever. This was true for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well. The ministerial staff was scrutinized harshly by a skeptical parliament. The salaries of its personnel were curtailed.1168 Many were dismissed from office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the conclusion of tensikat (purge). Many parliamentarians expressed their dissatisfaction with the diplomats and questioned their skills. The parliament was apparently distrustful of the Ministry, seeing it as a hub of ancien régime corruption and decadence.1169

If the conventional assumption that the Ottoman 19th century was characterized by the rule of the state is true, then the Foreign Ministry like all the other imperial offices should had been satisfied with the conduct of state affairs. The idea that raison d‘état was the decisive motivation for Ottoman statecraft is simplistic and conceals the complex dynamics and particular interests that pushed the 19th century transformation. Governance, underneath its claims to objectivity and dispassionate appraisal, is never free of ideological/political dimensions. There is inevitably always room for ideological preferences. The conducting of state affairs was never a technocratic and professional business even in non-representative authoritarian regimes. There was certainly room for ideology at the high tides of both the Tanzimat and the Hamidian eras. Nevertheless, their


1167 Tural, Erkan, Son Dönem Osmanlı Bürokrasisi: II Meşrutiyet Dönemi‟nde Bürokratlar, İttihatçılar ve Parlamenterler, İstanbul: Türkiye ve Orta Doğu Amme İdaresi Enstitüsü, 2009, p. 34, pp. 130-147.

1168 Tural, Erkan, ibid, p. 58,68.

1169 MMZC, 1909, v. III, pp. 47-50.


ideological disposition was state-centered and unless it was adamantly opposed, there was no self-recognition of its ideological nature. Its ideological attributes became manifest only when it was attacked by the Unionists at a time when Unionist ideology was powerful enough to take control of the state and cleanse the imperial offices from the traditional imperial powerhouses.

The post-1908 era was the transitional period from an imperial language to a

―national‖ one although this transition was not a linear and inevitable path with the discourse of the nation replacing the failed discourse of Empire. It may be formulated that, in many aspects ―the Empire was already national and the Nation still imperial.‖1170 The Young Turks, although they were ardent Turkish nationalists, did not denounce the Empire and the imperial idea. On the contrary, they aimed to build their nationalist project on the top of the imperial grandeur. Rather than abandoning Ottomanism, they Turkified Ottomanism. They tried to retain and even strengthen the imperial idea while trying to enact their national(ist) project. They had to reconstitute the Empire along with their worldview and render the imperial and national discourses compatible.

However, it has to be said that there was no one identifiable and concrete Young Turk worldview.1171 It is even hard to argue that any individual ―Young Turk‖ had a consciously developed, proper, consistent, and comprehensive worldview. The era can be characterized by a huge cloud of ambivalence. The acts and moves of the Young Turks developed spontaneously. It is clear that the Young Turk era and its disruption set the ground for the Kemalists to take over. The Kemalists managed to assume the control of the state thanks to the Young Turks‘ purge of the Tanzimat bureaucracy (or rical-i Tanzimat). The continuity was an ideological one as well. We can establish a link from the Young Turks to the Kemalists, especially in terms of constructing a nationhood. But there were very strong discontinuities between the two as well. In a sense, Kemalism was closer to the Hamidian view in its glorification and sacralization of the state than the Young Turks‘ attempt to


1170 For a book demonstrating the imperial characteristics of Republican Turkey and Turkish nationalism, see Meeker, Michael, A Nation of Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

1171 Kayalı, Hasan, Young Turks and Arabs, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997,

p. 3.


ideologize the state. Kemalism reestablished the ―primacy of the state‖ which had been destroyed by the Young Turk zealots.

As the Ottoman government in Istanbul was abolished by the leadership of the War of Independence on 1 November 1922, the Ottoman Foreign Ministry was also abolished. With that decision, hundreds of officials serving in the Ministry became unemployed. In two weeks time, all the foreign representations of the Ottoman Empire were assigned to Ahmed Ferid (Tek), the Paris representative of the Ankara government. Ahmed Ferid sent circulars to the undersecretaries or other assigned officials to take over the administration of the relevant embassies and representations.1172 For example, the man in charge in the London embassy was no longer Mustafa Reşid Paşa, but Şefik Bey. In Stockholm, the head of the representation became Esad Bey replacing the ambassador Galip Kemali (Söylemezoğlu). However, decisions with regard to other heads of representations were not unambiguous. Although Ahmed Ferid Bey assigned the second secretary, Numan Rifat Bey (Menemencioğlu), in place of the head official, Reşat Nuri Bey, he informed Reşat Nuri Bey that this decision was temporary and that he should stay in Berne and take a rest while waiting for the final decision. It seems that some prominent diplomats with connections and affiliations with the ancien régime were eliminated and others who were not associated with the ancien régime were retained.1173

Before the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, like all other Ministries, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara took over the responsibilities of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry although a representation in Istanbul continued to function until 1927. The transfer of the Ministry to Ankara was completed by 1928 with the opening of the new building of the Foreign Ministry at Sıhhiye.1174 We do not observe a Republican policy of purging the cadres. The ones who were eager to move to Ankara from their comfortable houses and mansions in Istanbul were all welcome to continue their careers with the exception of the ones who were thought to have been disloyal to the National Struggle during the War of


1172 I thank Gül İnanç for drawing my attention to the process of establishment and of the Republican Ministry of Foreign Ministry in November 1922.

1173 For this process, see Şimşir, Bilal, ibid, pp. 166-170.

1174 Girgin, Kemal, Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet Dönemleri Hariciye Tarihimiz, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992, p. 130.


Independence.1175 That was not an ideological purge, but a retribution for misdeeds. It is true that the Republic recruited many of its ambassadors from the Kemalist loyalists who had committed themselves to the Kemalist cause during the War of Independence.1176 Many military officers turned into career diplomats. Although some of the military officers terminated their diplomatic careers after one posting, others became professional diplomats serving the Republic for some two decades like Ahmed Ferid (Tek) and Hüsrev Gerede (who was ironically the son-in-law of Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, whose career was terminated by the Republic due to his service to the Istanbul government during the War of Independence) or more than one decade like Kemalettin Sami Paşa. However, the transplantation of the loyalists into the diplomatic service occurred only at the ambassadorial level. The cadres below the ambassadorial posts continued to serve as Republican loyalists who were promoted to more prominent posts in time. Although in the first ten years of the Republic, the Republican Ministry of Foreign Ministry, reluctant to fill the diplomatic posts with the sympathizers of Britain, France, and imperial loyalists found difficulty in recruiting qualified younger people due to the unattractiveness of Ankara and the limited prospects such a career promised, the Foreign Ministry reacquired


1175 For the purge of those who opposed the National Struggle, see Koçak, Cemil, Heyet-i Mahsusalar, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2005. The purge was not an ideological cleansing, but only retribution against those individuals who did not act ―appropriately‖ during the War of Independence. The purges punished individual misbehaviour. It may be useful to compare/contrast the Republican handling of the incumbent bureaucracy with the actions spurred by French 19th century regime changes.

1176 For example, Fahreddin Reşad, who served in diplomatic posts such as charge d‘affaires in St. Petersburg, ambassador to Cetinje, undersecretary of the embassy to Berlin, and who participated in the Şura-yı Saltanat ratifying the Treaty of Sevrés in 1920 representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was listed among the ―hundred and fiftiers‖ and exiled in 1923. Çankaya, Ali, ibid, p. 276. Some others were examined before their transfer from the administration to the new administration in Ankara. Although Mehmed Şefik was temporarily discharged from the Ministry of Foreign Ministry on 1 November 1922 with the abolition of the government in Istanbul, the investigation concluded that he did not participate in any anti-national activity and he continued his diplomatic career in the Republican Foreign Ministry. Çankaya, Ali, ibid, p. 448. Mehmed Kadri was also temporarily discharged from office with the end of the Istanbul government. The investigation concluded that he did not participate in any anti-national activity, and he continued his diplomatic career. Çankaya, Ali, ibid, p. 780. The investigations conducted after the abolition of the government in Istanbul enabled the members of the Istanbul bureaucracy to continue their careers in Ankara.


its earlier prestige and became a niche of prestige and high esteem, attracting the descendants of the aristocratic/imperial families of Istanbul and the sons of high-ranking bureaucrats and the new political elite in Ankara.1177 With the appointment of Numan Menemencioğlu as the general secretary of the Ministry, the Ministry became professionalized and ―admission to the Ministry was now conditional on the candidate passing an entrance examination.‖1178 The internationalization of politics, the escalation of tensions in Europe, and diplomacy‘s increase in importance from the early 1930s onwards should have played a role in the professionalization of the Ministry. In short, the Republic took over the imperial cadres and the Ministry became one of the most prestigious offices of the Republic following ten years of negligence.

However, this does not mean that the Republic continued with conventional policies. On the contrary, the Republican leadership was at a distance with the traditional Ottoman diplomacy. The Republic had a clear change of policy in foreign relations. It rejected the old style of ―balance of power1179‖ politics and turned to isolationism.1180 The Republic and the republican historiography demonized the Tanzimat declaring it a sellout of the Empire. It was also highly critical of the Tanzimat diplomacy. The Tanzimat was associated with capitulation and submission to the Western powers. It was perceived as

 


1177 Dikerdem, Mahmut, Hariciye Çarkı, İstanbul: Cem Yayınları, 1989, pp. 22-24.

1178 Kuneralp, Sinan, ―Turkey: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Under the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic‖, in The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World, Steiner, Zara (ed.), Westport: Times Books, 1982, p. 506.

1179 It has to be said that ―balance of power politics‖ was discredited continent wide. The old-style ―balance of power‖ was heavily criticized, and the alleged ―new diplomacy‖ was introduced. Although, the ―New Europe‖ group in Britain had aspired for ―open diplomacy‖ and ―Wilsonism‖, the Republic opted for isolationism, which was seen as a viable alternative after observing the successful Soviet example. It was such an environment that made the Kemalist reformulation of foreign policy orientation possible. It is meaningless to assess the Kemalist foreign policy within a noncomparative historiography.

1180 For the changing parameters of the early Republic‘s diplomacy and its new orientation, see Koçak, Cemil, Türk-Alman İlişkileri (1923-1939), Ankara: Atatürk Kültür, Dil ve Tarih Yüksek Kurumu, 1991. Also see Oran, Baskın (ed.), Türk Dış Politikası, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001, v. I; Krüger, Karl, Kemalist Turkey and the Middle East, London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1932.


effeminate and naïve in contrast to the vigilance and Spartan nature of the Republic.1181 The Republic took Turkey away from the predatory webs of European diplomacy. The Republic consciously disowned Tanzimat diplomacy. The resistance and delay by foreign diplomatic legations in Istanbul in moving to Ankara was symbolic in the sense that they symbolically resisted the change of the Turkish government‘s new diplomatic course and abandonment of the Ottoman ―old diplomacy‖. The Republican Foreign Ministry declined any request by an ambassador to meet with the foreign minister because such moves were reminiscent of the Tanzimat diplomacy in which the ambassadors were acting like semi- colonial governors.1182

The good news was that the Republic did not have a heavy workload (before the 1930s). The European powers were not interested in Turkey and the ―Eastern Question‖ anymore. The ―Eastern Question‖ had expired with the post-1918 settlement in the Middle East and Anatolia in which every party was forced to accept its share. Every country had its own problems at home to which they all had to turn. From being the hub of international diplomacy and the venue of military espionage and battles for world domination before World War I, the strategic assets of Turkey deteriorated, and Turkey became a remote land on the margins of world diplomacy after 1923 (to the satisfaction of the Republican elite). The British representatives‘ spare correspondence and remaining classified files (predominantly limited to technical and commercial matters rather than political concerns) sent from Turkey in the second half of the 1920s and the early 1930s in contrast to the heavy files containing extensive correspondence and reports before 1914 illustrates a drastic contraction in the diplomatic involvement and a distinct lack of interest.1183 The number of Turkish representatives abroad and foreign representations in Turkey shrank


1181 For some interpretations and representations of Tanzimat by the Republican discourse, see Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet, Yeni Türkiye Devletinin Harici Siyaseti, İstanbul: Akşam Matbaası, 1934, p. 1-3;Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları, İstanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 1999, p. 460, 465-66; Ankara: T.T.T. Cemiyeti, Tarih III (Yeni ve Yakın Zamanlar), Ankara: Devlet Matbaası, 1933, pp. 188-310; Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet, Türk İnılabı Tarihi, Türk Ankara: Tarih Kurumu, 1991, v. I, p. II, p. 149.

1182 Derin, Haldun, Çankaya Özel Kalemini Anımsarken 1933-1951, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1995, pp. 48-49.

1183 The correspondence from the embassy to Ankara (and earlier to Istanbul from the 1906) are kept in the British archives under the catalogue PRO, FO 371.


drastically disregarding the new representations opened in the post-1918 new independent states1184. This was the end of the age of diplomacy (and age of imperialism) in which the Ottoman Empire was a grand chessboard for the diplomats and on which the Ottoman Empire was always in a defense position. Instead of being entangled and trapped in the niceties of international diplomacy and forced to make new ―concessions‖ every time, the Republic, in the aftermath of the collapse of the old ―European order,‖ could manage to break with the past and Europe.1185 Hence, the Treaty of Lausanne was rendered mythical, the very symbol of being freed from former bonds and the founding moment of the revival/resurgence emerging from a disgraceful legacy.

In fact, in spite of the republican claim to disown the diplomacy of the ancien régime, continuity was also visible with regard to the conduct of foreign policy. The Republican stubbornness of the Republican/Kemalist foreign policy establishment observable during the negotiations in Lausanne, in the conduct of foreign policy throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and in the resilient neutrality of Turkey in World War II1186 was inherited from the Tanzimat and Hamidian way of conducting foreign policy. The Republican foreign policy‘s pragmatism, conservative attitudes with regard to the protection of status quo, and low profile diplomacy were also retained from the Tanzimat and Hamidian conduct of foreign policy.1187

The Republic willingly renounced any claim to grandeur. Instead, the Republic happily espoused the role of being a small nation-state, not interested in what was

 

 


1184 See Girgin, Kemal, ibid, pp. 123-27.

1185 Temperley, one of the doyens of the history of diplomacy, wrote just one year after the Treaty of Lausanne that this treaty ―seemed destined, in all human probability, to inaugurate a more lasting settlement, not only than the Treaty of Sévres, but than the Treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon and Neuilly.‖ Temperley‘s prediction turned out to be impressively accurate. Quoted in Anderson, M.S, The Eastern Question, London; Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1972, p. 376.

1186 For the ―active neutrality‖ of Turkey in the World War II, see Deringil, Selim, Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An “Active” Neutrality, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1989.

1187 Oran, Baskın, ―Türk Dış Politikasının (TDP) Teori ve Pratiği‖, in Oran, Baskın (ed.),

Türk Dış Politikası, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006, v. I, p. 23.


happening beyond its borders.1188 Lost territories were gone. It was not the time to weep for what had been lost. Macedonian melodies and the memories of lost Macedonia saddened Republican cadres, but they never dreamed of regaining what had been lost, even though it had been the homeland of many. They educated themselves to come to terms with this loss forever. They endorsed non-revisionism in international politics. Anatolia was the new Macedonia, the new El Dorado. It was the site where the Republic aimed to build its utopia. ―Peace at home, peace in the world‖ was the motto of the new understanding of international politics. Turkey did not interfere with foreign developments and expected the same attitude from the other countries regarding its ―resolution‖ of domestic problems. Suppressing the Kurdish insurgency from the 1920s to 1938 was an easy job because, especially after the settlement of the Mosoul problem, no one in Europe was interested in these policing maneuvers, unlike the ―Armenian problem‖ of the 1890s. Apparently, no one cared as well.

The Republic consciously denied imperialism whether in the Islamist or Turkist form. Many of the formal symbols of legitimacy of the Empire were abandoned.1189 The new discourse of legitimacy was constructed through a very different language. Turkishness became the only source of legitimacy.1190 This perception was in many ways a complete reversal of the Ottoman self-representation. However, all these were one side of the coin. The Republic retained and reformulated many practices and mental structures of the Empire. Arguably, the new Empire was in Ankara, and Turkishness was the new source of legitimacy functionalized to establish the imperial tradition in Republican/national garb. Many features and peculiarities of the Empire were retained in the Republic. Its political cosmology and its vision of social order were taken over from the imperial legacy. Its


1188 For the outline and vision of foreign policy of the Republic, see Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet,

Yeni Türkiye Devletinin Harici Siyaseti, İstanbul: Akşam Matbaası, 1934.

1189 For example (with the exception of İstiklal Madalyası), as a reaction to the imperial flamboyance of the Ottoman imperial culture, the Republic did not designate any insignia or medallions. The introduction of insignia and medallions came only after the military coup of 1980, and they were predominantly given only to foreigners and in a very limited fashion. Eldem, Edhem, İftihar ve İmtiyaz: Osmanlı Nişan ve Madalyaları Tarihi, İstanbul: Osmanlı Bankası Arşiv ve Araştırma Merkezi, 2004, p. 491.

1190 Çagaptay, Soner, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk

? London; New York: Routledge, 2006.


imagination of the ―people‖ was arguably more imperial rather than nationalist in many aspects. The relation it established with its citizens also retained the Ottoman pattern. The state retained its mythical and supra-social attributes. It continued to be elitist. Its assimilative nationalism was also partially inherited from the Empire and Ottomanism.1191 As shown by recent studies, it was assimilationist and inclusive as long as its premises were endorsed and internalized.1192 It was exclusivist otherwise.

A valid question to be posed is with regard to the level of the endorsement of the new Republican line by the imperial diplomats. In the absence of archival sources, we cannot make any conclusive observation. However, it is safe to observe that many Ottoman intellectuals and diplomats became sycophants of the Kemalist regime throughout the 1920s in the absence of any alternative political center. We do not observe any significant ideological opposition or criticism leveled against the regime leveled by the imperial and bureaucratic elites. On the contrary, many turned into Kemalist Republicans overnight. Some preferred to stay silent in their later life in Istanbul, but almost none of them leveled an ideological assault on the Republic even after 1950. Their criticisms remained mild, and they were respectful of the ―achievements‖ of the Republic.

What is interesting is that the Republic developed its isolationist ―new course‖ with the

―old cadres‖. The experiences, frustrations, and disillusionments of the imperial diplomats may have reoriented their political and ideological outlooks. The pupils of the Republic, who studied in the Republican Mülkiye (in İstanbul and later in Ankara) instead of the imperial Mülkiye in İstanbul1193, started to take office in the Foreign Ministry by the 1930s. Interestingly, the generation trained by the Republic began to take high office by the late


1191 For a general assessment and overview of ―a nation of Empire‖ argument, see Meeker, Michael, A Nation of Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002

1192 For the assimilationist nationalism of the Kemalist Republic, see Yeğen, Mesut, Devlet Söyleminde Kürt Sorunu, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006; Yeğen, Mesut, Müstakbel Vatandaş‟tan Sözde Vatandaşa: Cumhuriyet ve Kürtler, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006; Yıldız, Ahmet, Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004. Bali, Rıfat, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri: Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (1923-1945), İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1999; Aktar, Ayhan, Varlık Vergisi ve “Türkleştime” Politikaları, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2000.

1193 It should be borne in mind that the Republic could intervene and reshape higher education much later than 1923. The critical moment for this move was the ―University Reform‖ of 1933, which had purged many undesired professors of Darülfünun.


1940s as the Republican isolationist policy gave way to a new internationalism within the alignments of the Cold War. Ironically, the first generation of Republican-trained cadres had, from the late 1940s onwards, established and directed the pro-Western policy, which was a divergence from the isolationist Republican foreign policy.

Taking over the imperial legacy, the Republic tried to establish its distinct and not-so- distinct ideology. It adopted various tenets of the imperial ideology and modified some others. In many ways, the Empire had already established a ―nation-state ideology‖ through a process that began in the early 19th century and escalated in the Unionist imperialism. As argued above, Ottomanism in its various practices and manifestations resembled the prospective Kemalist nationalism of the Republic. In that regard, staying away from romanticizing Empires (as opposed to the cruelties of the 20th century nation- states), we may argue that the Ottoman Empire may not be seen as an Empire in the universal sense if any of the other Empires (British, Habsburg, Russian) may be seen as such1194although it also has to be said that the Ottoman Empire took its Ottomanism and its claim to universalism seriously. The course of the late Ottoman Empire can be seen as the process of gradual transformation into a nation-state in the form of an Empire.1195 On the other hand, the Republic took over and retained many facets of the imperial ideology.1196


1194 For ―Empire‖ and ―imperial ideology‖, see Howe, Stephen, Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Pagden, Anthony, Peoples and Empires, New York: Modern Library, 2003; Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

1195 The continuity of the ideological discourse has been studied both in a theoretical framework and within a local setting and has been discussed and shown by Michael Meeker. See Meeker, Michael, A Nation of Empire, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

1196 Of course, it is a debate what we should expect from an Empire. It is certainly not possible to dissociate nationhood from Empire. Every Empire has its core constituency and

―original nation‖. The new turn in the study of nationalism emphasizes the early modern origins of nationalism especially in the English case. The very first nationalism of Europe had derived from the British imperium and Protestantism. See Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Paths to Modernity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992, Pincus, Steven, Protestantism and Patriotism, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Newman, Gerald, The Rise of English Nationalism, New York: St. Martin‘s Press, 1997. We now know that nationalism is not simply a modernist construct forged in


The Republic tried to establish the primacy of the state and raison d‘état against the primacy of ―politics‖ and ―ideology‖ which brought about the destruction of the Empire at the hands of the Unionists. In this regard, Kemalist nationalism differed from Unionist nationalism. Kemalism was the domination of raison d‘état and suppression of the

―political‖ in the aftermath of 1908 and its costly consequences. The Republic tried to create loyalty to the state by consecrating the state as the embodiment of the nation and rendering the nation subservient to the state. The ―Republic‖ repressed the non-official alternative interpretations of the ―nation‖. It rendered ―nation‖ subordinate to the state and defined it only in its submissive relation to the state. This perception was also a derivative of the imperial ideology.1197

The working assumption here is that Kemalism can be interpreted as statism (or nation-statism) rather than ―nationalism proper‖. This derived from the heritage it had received from the culture of Empire. In other words, as has been demonstrated in many other studies, there was a visible continuity from the Empire to the Republic. The transition was rather a step function. The considerably smooth adaptation and transition of political, intellectual, cultural, and bureaucratic elites to the new environment, and their impressive capacity and eagerness to adapt to the new ideological formations and the new ideological milieu is illustrative. The Republican bureaucracy which was crucial in the establishment, institutionalization, and consolidation of the Republic was taken over from the Empire. Even prominent men of the late Ottoman Empire who were sidelined and lost their positions in the Republic never leveled ideological criticism. They acquiesced in their retirement days in their mansions in Istanbul. This was partially due to the surveillance of


the 19th century. Instead, nationalism is an amalgam of different dynamics developing from early modernity onwards.

1197 Russian czardom‘s blend of monarchism and national principle which gave birth to the

―official nationality‖ resembles both the Ottoman ―official nationality‖ and the Republican idea of nationhood and thus arguably illustrates the linkage between the Ottoman background and the Republican notion of Nation in a comparative perspective. Richard Wortman, one of the foremost authorities on 19th century czarist Russia, writes; ―After 1825, nationality was identified with absolutism, ‗autocracy‘ in the official lexicon. Russian nationality was presented as a nationality of consensual subordination, in contrast to egalitarian Western concepts. The monarchical narrative of the nation described the Russian people as voluntarily surrendering power to their Westernized rulers.‖ Wortman, Richard, Scenarios of Power, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, v. II, p. 12.


the Republican authorities. However, it may be argued that it was more due to the culture of loyalty and the (emotional) relations they had established with the intimitized state. Therefore, it was easier for the old cadres to switch their loyalties without contradicting themselves. It was the state upon which they bestowed their allegiance, regardless of the specific ideological dispositions of the state to which they adhere. Thus, the Republican transition may be dubbed as a quiet revolution in which the old culture and habitus was retained and rehabilitated.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry with its radical Westernism and nationalism was an ideal place where we can observe this cooptation. Here it can be argued that the Turkish Foreign Ministry as an institution exemplifies the Kemalist vision at its best. Moreover, it may be argued that Turkish Foreign Ministry is the quintessential prototype of institutionalized Kemalism. Kemalism was not nationalism in its conventional sense (nationalism with a reference to ethnicity) but was a discourse of elitism that utilized the nationalist rhetoric to serve other ends. The nation was defined in the image of the habitus and culture of the elite. The national attributes and qualities were imagined and defined in line with the culture and socialization of this class. The nation was supposed to be secular, modern, and pure as a replica and extension of the ―cultural intimacy‖ of the late Ottoman and Republican bureaucratic elite which was constituted based on the absorption of a shared ethos and cultural intimacy.


A very prominent and universally accepted axiom of the Turkish diplomatic establishment is that foreign policy is a supra-political issue not to be interfered with by amateurish and irresponsible politicians.1198 This was also a dictum arguably retained from the Ottoman pre-political world in which the state was the chief object of allegiance and politics was not seen as legitimate, but viewed as corrupting (fitna). Thus, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs‘ elitism and its culture of detachment from the outside world were also arguably derivations/remnants of the imperial heritage it holds onto.

1198 This perception is not peculiar to Turkey. David Vincent writes that, in 19th century Britain, because the diplomatic service was the most elitist one and it had most access to the state secrets, it was perceived as most privileged (and most assosiated with the supreme interests of the state) office and thus, it was the office most resilient to reform and democratization of civil service. It was the service which was most disturbed from interference from outside. Vincent, David, The Culture of Secrecy in Britain, 1832-1898, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 79.


The social portrait and characteristics of the Republican diplomatic service are also worth an assessment. With its élitist background, it continued to constitute a Bourdieuian state nobility.1199 We may argue that, it retained the old Ottoman premise of the complete separation of the masses from the ruling class (askeri versus reaya) and developed its own askeri class (based on assimilation into its value system as well as genealogical continuity) with distinct qualities. The Tanzimat‘s new bureaucratic class‘s peculiarities rendered this separation even more tenable. Coming from distinctive and privileged backgrounds (education in Mekteb-i Sultani and the imperial high schools), experiencing their political and cultural socializations in their habitus, and cultivated as a la franga, they developed an exclusivist perception of the people. This elite also reserved the state their privilege and continued to intimitize it. In other words, they owned it rather than vice versa.

The persistence of the diplomatic establishment and its elitist characteristics can also be observed examining the biographical data of the diplomatic service as of 1967. By 1967, Istanbul continued to be the main source for recruiting diplomats. Of the 474 career diplomats serving as of 19671200, 191 were born in Istanbul1201. 52 diplomats were born in Ankara, 19 were born in Izmir, and 24 were born in foreign countries, including the lost territories of the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, 265 of the 474 career diplomats graduated from high schools in Istanbul. Given that 47 of the career diplomats graduated from high schools abroad and 94 of the career diplomats graduated from high schools in Ankara (84)


1199 See Bourdieu, Pierre, State Nobility, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1998. Also see Suleiman, Ezra, Politics, Power and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974, Suleiman, Ezra, Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Also see a more sophisticated discourse on the emergence of the Egyptian modern bureaucracy and the modern bureaucratic mind in, Mitchell, Timothy, Rule of Experts : Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

1200 See Tamkoç, Metin, The Warrior Diplomats, Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 1976, pp. 256-8.

1201 Ergun Sav, who joined the diplomatic service in 1962, finds it necessary to emphasize that he was born and grew up in Ankara (as opposed to being born and growing up in Istanbul). ―Don‘t think when I joined the diplomatic service, I was imprisoned in the circle of diplomats. I am a native of the capital, Ankara. I had social contacts in Ankara. I was not from the Galatasaray-Mülkiye line.‖ Sav, Ergun, Cumhuriyet Bebeleri, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1998, pp. 9-10.


or Izmir (10), only 56 of the career diplomats graduated from provincial high schools1202. Not surprisingly, forty percent of the diplomats graduated from a French-language school such as Galatasaray (the Ottoman Mekteb-i Sultani), Saint-Benoit, and Saint Joseph. Around fifteen percent of the diplomats were graduates of both Galatasaray and Mülkiye.1203 These statistics display the portrait of a ―typical‖ Turkish diplomat. It also has to be remembered that Mülkiye moved to Ankara only in 1937, and before the Republican purge of the faculty of the University of Istanbul in 1933, literally the Ottoman Mülkiye continued to provide diplomats to the Republic.

In this study, the Foreign Ministry was not only taken as a governmental body, but also as a manifestation of the making of the modern Turkish state elite. Given that the Ministry assumed an unprecedented, prominent role in the turbulent (and long) Ottoman 19th century, it is hoped that this study of the Ministry reveals that in the development of the discourse of modern Turkishness, modernity and nationalism were intertwined and inseparable from each other. The case of the Ottoman/Turkish Foreign Ministry provides us some insights concerning how Turkish Euroskeptic nationalism was an inherent part of the Turkish modernization project itself and how Turkish modernization, contrary to the established Kemalist and pseudo-Kemalist discourse, was not an attempt to renounce the

―old‖, but instead was an endeavor to revive and restore it in a brave new world. The study has tried to highlight that the very discourse from Mahmud II onwards had a lasting impact on the 20th century official/private Turkish discourse.

In his book, Yücel Bozdağlıoğlu evaluates Turkish foreign policy from a constructivist perspective and argues that Turkish foreign policy is a function of the identity and identity politics of the Kemalist elite.1204 Taking Kemalism as ―Westernism‖ and the ideology of Westernization, he argues that Turkish foreign policy priorities are determined by Turkey‘s effort to be involved within ―Western civilization‖. He takes Turkey‘s Cold War


1202 Data on 12 career diplomats are unavailable.

1203 According to Mahmut Dikerdem, until the end of the World War II, only ―sons of Istanbuliot families, especially those who were graduates of Galatasaray and the American College, could dare to take the entrance examination of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.‖ Dikerdem, Mahmut, Hariciye Çarkı, İstanbul: Cem Yayınları, 1989, p. 74.

1204 Bozdağlıoğlu, Yücel, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity, London; New York: Routledge, 2003.


diplomacy and alignments as Kemalist foreign policy orientation per se. However, I would argue that Kemalism is something very different from Westernism. Though Westernism is an indispensable and pivotal component of it, Kemalism is a much more complex amalgam. Contrary to Bozdağlıoğlu‘s assumption, here Kemalism‘s basic premise is taken as nation-statism, which is understood as isolationism and a rejection of any Western (international) interference along with an intense distrust of the ―West‖. Here, it is argued that, Bozdağlıoğlu fails to take Kemalism in its complexity and in its ambivalence. Furthermore, he overlooks the complex build up of Kemalism and merges the Kemalism of the single-party period and the Kemalism that had been reformulated, softened, and rendered compatible with democracy and the Cold War environment (and therefore reinvented) with the collapse of the single-party regime. In fact, Kemalism was reinvented with the collapse of the single-party regime.1205 Taking Kemalism as an evolution of the late Ottoman souveranisme, this study has tried to establish that Kemalism fits into the mindset of the late Ottoman Ministry of Foreign Affairs (and the Ottoman bureaucracy as a whole). This also explains the conservatism of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its perception of the dynamics of globalization and the process of accession to the European Union (especially before the Summit of Copenhagen in 2002) in the post-Cold War world and its becoming trapped in the arguably insoluble issues of Cyprus1206 and coming to terms with the Armenian massacres in 1915.1207


1205 Koçak, Cemil, Belgelerle İktidar ve Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006, pp. 633-692.

1206 For the discourses, views and approaches of Turkish diplomats regarding the Cyprus dispute, see İnanç, Gül, Türk Diplomasisinde Kıbrıs, 1970-1991: Büyükelçiler Anlatıyor, İstanbul : Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2007. Also see Yavuzalp, Ercüment, Kıbrıs Yangınında Büyükelçilik, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1993.

1207 Another book on Turkish foreign policy written by one of the eminent scholars of the foreign policy of contemporary Turkey that may be considered as ―constructivist‖ and suffers from the same bias is William Hale‘s study on the Ottoman/Turkish foreign policy from the late 18th century onwards. One of the principal premises of this book with regard to Kemalism underestimates the very complexities of the nature of the Ottoman/Turkish modernity and the Republican ideology. William Hale argues that ―in foreign policy, their (Republican elite –DG) primary aim was to see their country recognized as a respected European power‖ and ―to raise Turkey to the ‗level of contemporary civilisation‘ besides

―safeguard the hard-won security which they had achieved in 1923‖.  Hale, William,

Turkish Foreign Policy 1774-2000, London; Portland: Frank Cass, 2000, p. 57. However,


That is, observing the continuity of a certain discourse espoused by the Ministry not only from the Empire to the Republic, but also from the early 19th century to the 21st century, may open vistas in reinterpreting the ideological and mental structures of contemporary Turkey, and the crises faced by Turkey as manifested in its perceptions of the EU, Cyprus, the United States, and global liberalism. It is crucial to observe how this perpetual discourse of souverainisme was created at a time of imperial retreat and dissolution and was perpetuated and transmitted to the Turkish nation-state which continued to live with Sevrophobia as if time was frozen at a particular moment of the course of history.


We also should bear in mind that Sevrophobia does not simply refer to the Treaty of Sevrés signed in 1920 which rendered Turkey a small state confined to the interior of Anatolia and which delivered vast territories with Turkish populations to Armenians and Greeks. Sevrophobia goes back in time before the Republic and before the Sevrés Treaty. It is as much about St. Stephanos, the Balkan War treaties, and the other humiliating treaties the Ottomans had to sign as it is about Sevrés. Nevertheless, it may be argued that Sevrésphobia or the Sevrés syndrome, a concept introduced by liberal political scientists1208 to define a certain attitude, perception, and reflex is an apt label given that the Republic also strove to obliterate the pre-Republican traumas, subsumed the previous disillusionments under the bogeyman of Sevrés (republicanization of the traumas), and established a dichotomy between Lausanne and Sevrés. Nevertheless, it is important to reiterate that the trauma of Sevrés was not generated by Sevrés. On the contrary, the traumatic perception towards Sevrés was constructed upon the previous memories and experiences such as the loss of Crete, the unkept promises of the Western powers after the Balkan Wars, et cetera. What Sevrés did was to eternalize and transcendentalize the

here it has been argued that this was the Cold-War reinterpretation of Kemalism, concealing many other aspects of ―original Kemalism‖ which became more visible after the end of the Cold War. For a more subtle constructivist interpretation of Turkish foreign policy, see Robbins, Philip, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War, London: Hurst & Company, 2003.

1208 Piccoli, Wolfango & Jung, Dietrich, Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East, London: Zed Books, 2001, pp. 115-18; Kirişçi, Kemal & Winrow, Gareth, The Kurdish Question and Turkey, London, Portland: Frank Cass, 1997, p. 184, 193; Robins, Philip, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War, London: Hurst & Company, 2003, pp. 102-104.


mundane and Realpolitik, transmit them to the realm of universals, and amalgamate several traumatic experiences into one single overarching and encompassing traumatic experience which subsumed and reinforced all the others. With such disillusionment, it was the transcendentalized imagery of the state which the elite always turned to and espoused.1209 The transcendental state was not only a haven against external attacks, but also a shelter from the ignorant masses that had to be reeducated, civilized, and incorporated into the habitus and cultural intimacy of the state elite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


1209 For some memoirs written by prominent Turkish diplomats exposing such a relation established with the state, see Gürün, Kamuran, Fırtınalı Yıllar: Dışişleri Müsteşarlığı Hatıralarım, İstanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 19995; Yavuzalp, Kamuran, Liderlerimiz ve Dış Politika, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1996; İnan, Kamran, Cenevre Yılları, İstanbul: Timaş, 2002.


 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

This study investigates the cultural, intellectual, and ideological formations of the Ottoman diplomatic service in the late Ottoman Empire with an emphasis on the Hamidian era. The study attempts to describe the basic contours and premises of the culture of the late Ottoman bureaucratic culture (culture in its ―thick description‖) as well as the social origins of the late Ottoman state elite by examining the diplomatic service as a microcosm of the late Ottoman bureaucratic elite. The study also aims to highlight the prominent role the late Ottoman bureaucratic establishment played in the development of the modern Turkish national identity and Turkish nationalism as well as the ideological premises of the republic.

The Ottoman diplomatic service was the most elitist governmental office of the late Ottoman Empire. This elitism becomes even more apparent in the social backgrounds of the ambassadors. The elitist nature of the diplomatic service was not peculiar to the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, this was a European continent-wide pattern. It has been argued that the Tanzimat was an era of the consolidation of a state elite or nobility. In contrast to the European nobilities, the late Ottoman nobility was constructed on its relation to the state and based on serving in the state bureaucracy (which had some resemblance to the Russian nobility which was based on both blood lines and service to the state). The Ottoman state elite was welded around the state and developed a loyalty to the state which also served the self-interest of this class cluster. The Tanzimat elite was an amalgamation of different elites. It was consolidated by the marriage of the aristocracies of the center and the elite resident in Istanbul. It has been argued that the late Ottoman diplomatic service is a good place to observe the recruitment patterns, structures of loyalty, and other prominent characteristics and peculiarities of the ancien régime of the late Ottoman Empire because it is where we can observe the sons of grand viziers, ulema, and lower-ranking officials working alongside the sons of Kurdish mirs, Turcoman tribal


chieftains, and Turkish, Caucasian, Albanian, and Arab provincial dignitaries as well as the sons of the elites within the non-Muslim communities. The Ottoman diplomatic service was an amalgamation of modern, meritocratic professionalism with the traditional aristocratic service. This world of the Ottoman ancien régime came to an end with the Revolution of 1908. As education became a prominent factor in advancement in career and the accumulation of material and social capital, a new political and bureaucratic elite emerged. The new Unionist generation, predominantly coming from lower middle-class backgrounds and the families of lower-ranking civil servants, curtailed the privileged world of the Ottoman ancien régime. The mental and ideological structures of the ancien régime were abandoned in favor of a new radical stance. This was not only the end of the Ottoman ancien régime and the emergence of the Turkish nouvelle regime, but also the end of the Metternichean-Castlereaghian Concert of Europe and Bismarckian diplomacy and therefore the end of the late Ottoman diplomats and their diplomatic culture. Nevertheless, the Ottoman ancien régime, its culture, and its ideological underpinnings were constitutive in the Young Turk and Republican nouvelle regimes in terms of their cultural and ideological structures as well as their elite recruitment.

The continuities (as well as modifications and changes) from the Empire to the Republic are also emphasized. It has been argued that the notion of ―Nation‖ in the Republic was very much influenced by the image of ―Nation‖ created and developed by the Ottoman imperial center, which imagined ―Nation‖ in a subservient relation to itself. Although it is a very complicated process, studying the dispatches sent from the Ottoman embassies and legations to European and Balkan capitals, it had been suggested that the self-identity of the Ottoman imperial elite was constituted in the process of encountering (and opposing) perceived threats. These threats, unlike the perceived threats of earlier centuries, were diffuse and abstract, which rendered them not only less predictable but also more threatening. They were not clearly identifiable; thus, they were not only more dangerous, but also more treacherous. These enemies, as observed in the correspondence from European and Balkan capitals, included seditious non-Muslims, the expansionist and imperial aims of the Great Powers, ambitious, small Balkan powers, and other unreliable elements and ideas. Furthermore, these threats were envisaged as potentially acting in concert and coordination with each other. These perceived constant threats and dangers


ensued the emergence of a defensive and reactive statism. Within this environment, it has been argued that an intimate relation with the state was forged. It was the state and the imagery of the state that was aggressively protected, and simultaneously it was this state where these people could take refuge in the midst of constant danger.

It has been proposed that over time non-Muslim communities and eventually even Muslim ethnic groups (such as Albanians, Arabs) would come to be seen as unreliable and disloyal to the imagery of the imperial center, leaving only those of Turkish ethnicity as a reliable force. Thus, although an interest in Turkish ethnicity emerged, this derived less from ethnic awareness and more from the concerns of the state and the imperial center. As pointed out above, this nation was defined with regard to the (subservient) relation it established with the state. Nevertheless, what was radical and novel in the nouvelle regime was the renunciation of the multiple objects of loyalty in the Empire and the monopolization of one single object of loyalty, the Nation.


 

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

Archives

 

Hariciye Siyasi (HR.SYS) Hariciye Sicil-i Ahval (HR.SAID)

Hariciye Hukuk Müşavirliği İstişare Odası Belgeleri (HR.HMŞ.ISO) Hariciye Mektubi Kalemi (HR.MKT)

Yıldız Perakende Elçilik Şehbenderlik Ateşemiliterlik (Y.PRK.EŞA) Dahiliye, Sicil-i Ahval (DH.SAID)

Yıldız Hariciye Maruzatı (Y. PRK. HR)

 

 

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