5.1

 

INTRODUCTION

 

This study is a modest attempt to examine the mental structures of the late Ottoman bureaucracy. It examines the intellectual/cultural/ideological formations of the Hamidian diplomatic service. The diplomatic service is selected as representative of the late Ottoman bureaucracy since it reflected the distinctive habitus and culture of the late Ottoman bureaucracy at its best with its elitist and exclusivist character. Although one of the motivations of the dissertation is to show the significance and extent of the ideological and cultural formations of the diplomatic service (and the entire Ottoman political establishment beginning with Abdülhamid himself) in the formulation of foreign policy orientations, the primary aim of this study is to investigate the emergence of a bureaucratic nationalism wielded around the Empire and to expose the imperial origins of Turkish Republican nationalism. Arguing that the Hamidian (as well as the Tanzimat) bureaucratic establishment was constitutive in the making of Turkish nationalism, I attempt to demonstrate that the Turkish nation was imagined and formulated by a certain state elite which defined the Turkish nation in its relation to the state, which claimed to represent the nation in itself. This Turkish nation was defined in a subservient relation to the eternal and transcendental state and the idea of the Empire. However, the same state was simultaneously intimitized by the state elite, given that the state was imagined and constructed with reference to a certain habitus, identity, and culture espoused by this elite. The study especially emphasizes that the state was not perceived as transcendent, but on the contrary familiarized by the Turkish state elite. The particular concerns of this state elite were projected to the imagined ―Turkish nation‖. I also elaborate on the continuities of the perceptions of the institutional culture of the Ottoman Foreign Office and its legacy in the Republican Foreign Office. Evidently, most of its peculiarities and its distinct social culturalization were retained and reproduced in the transition to the republic and persisted throughout the republic. Therefore, a cultural and ideological continuity may be observed from the late Ottoman bureaucratic establishment to the Republican bureaucracy.

This study will not develop a discursive analysis. It will be an inquiry into a certain mindset which was constitutive of Turkish modernity, the modern and secular Turkish state, and the Turkish national imagination. This study will not discuss the intellectual

formations of the late Ottoman elite in a vacuum but contextualize and situate its mental structure within a particular milieu in which the Empire was in retreat, and the challenge created by modernity, the imperialist powers, and non-Muslim groups could not be met. In a sense, this study will try to trace the progress of some of the prominent ―unit ideas‖ and

―unit concepts‖ as historians of Begriffsgeschichte applied to the fundamental concepts of European modernity.¹ Although, this study lacks the meticulousness and depth of Begriffsgeschichte, it aims to be a modest preliminary to a full study of the development of concepts constitutive of the modern Turkish political and national discourse. It attempts to show the intertwined character of the notions of the nation, modernity, and the state, especially in the imaginary of the Ottoman/Turkish elite. Furthermore, it will point out how the concept of the Turkish nation was constructed in the imagination of a particular elite deriving from an imperial vantage point. It tries to demonstrate that the particular concerns of the political (and therefore national) elite stimulated the constitution of a national imagination so that particular self-attributes (or ―cultural intimacy‖ to use the term of Michael Herzfeld²) of this particular elite were ―nationalized‖ and consecrated as ―national characteristics‖. In this dissertation, it will be argued that, many of the Turkish ―lieux de mémoire‖ were already formulated and espoused by the imperial ancien régime before

 

 

 

¹ For the literature available in English for conceptual history, see Koselleck, Reinhart, The Practice of Conceptual History, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002; Critique and Crisis: Pathogenesis of Modern Society, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988; Richter, Melvin, The History of Political and Social Concepts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Tribe, Keith, ―The GG Project: from History of Ideas to Conceptual History‖, Comparative  Studies  in  Society  and  History  31  (January 1989);  Melvin  Richter,

―Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas‖, Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (April 1987).

 

² ―Cultural intimacy‖ is defined by Michael Herzfeld as ―the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality, the familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation.‖ Herzfeld, Michael, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, London; New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 3.

their perfection in the early Republic, albeit some in a modified version.³ It will also emphasize the institutional and cultural continuities of the bureaucratic and political elites without underestimating the breaks, modifications, adaptations, and ruptures. This continuity from the pre-Tanzimat elite to the republican elite can be seen both in terms of its perceptions and genealogy. In short, this study attempts to expose some facets of an intellectual collective biography of the late Ottoman diplomatic service with a particular emphasis on the Hamidian diplomatic service embedded in a distinctive culture and habitus.

In many aspects, this study leans on the revisionist historiography of the late Ottoman Empire that challenged conventional assumptions and modernist paradigms. A long summary of the revisionist historiography of the late Ottoman Empire will not be presented here. The modernist paradigm that reigned in the late Ottoman scholarship was challenged and discredited by a new generation of Ottomanists who were in close contact with the paradigms and methodologies of the European historiography by the 1980s and approaching the late Ottoman Empire in a comparative perspective. The new generation of historians who challenged the paradigms and visions of the pioneers of the late Ottoman scholarship came from a different intellectual formation. They learned to be more critical of the alleged achievements of modernity and were skeptical of the extent of the transformative impact of 19^th century modernity. Following the European historians who demonstrated the impact of the early modern age on the 19^th century transformation and exposed the ―early modern origins of modernity‖, Ottoman scholars demonstrated the pre- Tanzimat origins of the Tanzimat. One of the latest interests in Ottoman historiography is the ―roads to modernity‖ of the post-classical Ottoman Empire. This period is no more regarded as decline and degeneration.⁴ Instead, the 17th and the 18th centuries are studied

 

 

 

³ For the concept of ―lieux de mémoire‖, see Nora, Pierre (ed.), Rethinking France: Lieux de Mémoire, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001 (v. I)

⁴ Kafadar, Cemal, ―The Question of Ottoman Decline‖, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, no: 4 (1997-98), pp. 30-76; Grant, Jonathan, ―Rethinking the Ottoman "Decline": Military Technology Diffusion in the Ottoman Empire, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries‖, Journal of World History, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 179-201.

as the foundational periods of the modern bureaucratized Ottoman/Turkish state.⁵ The new paradigm that reinterprets modernity not as a complete rupture exported from abroad, but as a continuous process fuelled by indigenous dynamics further questions the agency of the state (and especially the Tanzimat state) in the reception and production of modernity. Beginning from the avant garde study of Abou-Al-Haj, Ottomanists such as Linda Darling, Ariel Salzmann, Butrus Abu Manneh, and Beshara Doumani demonstrated the long history and multiple sources of an indigenous modernity in the Ottoman lands and the Middle East. These historians were also uninterested in grand theories and Gordion-knot concepts. The Arab historian Beshara Doumani wrote:

―(w)hen it comes to the modern period, this discourse has been dominated by a single overarching narrative: the piecemeal incorporation or integration of the Ottoman Empire into the European economical and political orbits. This narrative is a central one because it deals directly with the problems of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism...in discussions of these key issues the Ottoman Empire was, until fairly recently, usually portrayed as a stagnant, peripheral, and passive spectator in the process of integration. The decline thesis, as it has come to be called, has been persuasively challenged since the early 1970s, but the very thrust of the integration narrative, regardless of the theoretical approach used, tends to relegate the interior regions of the Ottoman Empire...to the status of a periphery‘s periphery.⁶‖

The new generation of scholars was also critical of the self-righteousness of modernity and the modern state. Influenced by the post-World War II critical scholarship on modernity, they did not cherish the emergence of modernity in the Middle East. On the contrary, they were prone to expose the mechanisms of violence and surveillance new modern states imposed under the cover of progress and development.

Other historians rejected dualities, such as secularism versus Islam, Republic versus Empire, and reaction versus progress, and portrayed the late Ottoman Empire in its complexity and multidimensionality. Studies such as Selim Deringil‘s ―The Well-Protected Domains‖ and Ussame Makdisi‘s work on Ottoman Orientalism exposed the rich mental

⁵ For the earliest effort to interpret these two centuries as the emergence of the modern state, see Abou-Al-Haj, Rifat, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century, New York: SUNY Press, 1991. Also see Salzmann, Ariel, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2004

⁶ Doumani, Beshara, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 3

worlds of the late Ottoman identity, representations, and possibilities.⁷ Şükrü Hanioğlu‘s evaluation of the Young Turks in exile exposed the ambivalent and syncretic nature of their mental formations and portrayed them in their complexity and in their contradictions.⁸ Many other works scrutinized the ideological and intellectual formations of the late Ottoman men of prominence. Dispositions such as Turkism, Ottomanism, Pan-Islamism, modernism, and traditionalism were no longer taken as mutually exclusive categories and diametrical opposites. The new generation of late Ottoman scholarship demonstrated how different dispositions coexisted and complemented each other and overlapped. In that regard, they also established the institutional, structural, ideological, and cultural continuities from the Empire to the Republic, partially influenced by the genre of

―persistence of the old regime‖ in the scholarship of modern European history. It was also established that Turkish nationalism did not emerge after the 1908 Revolution as a break from the ancien régime, but that its seeds, various manifestations in various disguises, were already observable much earlier.

Apparently, these new approaches were inspired and even exported from the changing paradigms of Western historiography and the social sciences. New intellectual history, Foucauldianism, cultural turn, poststructuralism, and postmodernism were all sources of inspiration.

In every decade, academia subscribes to some magical formulas and terms as revelations. The ―magical term‖ of the 1950s and 1960s in the heyday of optimism and self-confidence in the modern West, was ―modernization‖. Besides books such as Berkes‘ The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Weiker‘s study of Turkish modernization⁹ and the book on the beginnings of modernization in the Middle East edited by Polk and

 

 

⁷ Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains, London: I.B. Tauris, 1998; Makdisi, Ussama, The Culture of Sectarianism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

⁸ Hanioğlu, Şükrü, The Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Hanioğlu, Şükrü, Preparing for a Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Hanioğlu, Şükrü, Bir Siyasal Düşünür Olarak Abdullah Cevdet, İstanbul: Üçdal Neşriyat, 1981.

⁹ Weiker, Walter F, The Modernization of Turkey, New York: Holmes & Meier Publications, 1981

Chambers¹⁰, which all examined the modernization process in its totality, other classical studies scrutinized particular aspects of modernization within the modernization paradigm, such as the studies of Kazamias¹¹, Robertson¹², Frey¹³, Magnaraella¹⁴, Szyliowicz¹⁵, and Ross¹⁶. With the failure of developmentalism and the developmental state, this paradigm had  been  abandoned.  Governmentality  replaced  modernization.¹⁷  The  postmodern

¹⁰ Polk, William R. & Chambers, Richard (ed.), Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

¹¹ Kazamias, Andreas, Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966

¹² Robinson, Robert D, The First Turkish Republic, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1965.

¹³ Frey, Frederick W, The Turkish Political Elite, Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge, Mass:

M.I.T. Press, 1965

¹⁴ Magnaraella, Paul J, Tradition and Change in a Turkish Town, Cambridge, Mass: Schenkman Publishers,1974.

¹⁵ Szyliowicz, Joseph S, Political Change in Rural Turkey: Erdemli, The Hague: Mouton, 1966.

¹⁶ Roos, Leslie L Jr. & Roos, Noralou P, Managers of Modernization: Organizations and Elites in Turkey, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971.

¹⁷ For the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, see, Graham Burchell & Colin Gordon & Peter Miller (ed.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. The Foucauldian narrative of the emergence of the modern art of government in his lecture on governmentality that follows is quoted in Rabinow, Paul (ed.), Michel Foucault, New York: The New Press, 1997, vol. III: ―(I)n the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, the art of government finds its first form of crystallization, organized around the theme of reason of state, understood not in the negative and pejorative sense....but in a full and positive sense: the state is governed according to rational principles that are intrinsic to it and cannot be derived solely from natural or divine laws or the principles of wisdom and prudence....The state, like nature, has its own proper form of rationality, albeit of a different sort. Conversely, the art of government, instead of seeking to found itself in transcendental rules, a cosmological model, or a philosophical-moral ideal, must find the principles of rationality in that which constitutes the specific reality of the state. ‖ (p.212-13) He discusses the redefinition of the meaning and reason of the state with the modern age and the emergence of governmentality as follows: ―(P)opulation comes to appear above all else as the ultimate end of government. In contrast to sovereignty, government has as its purpose not the act of government itself, but the welfare of the population, the improvement of its condition, the increase of its wealth, longevity, health and so on; and the means the government will act either directly, through large-scale campaigns, or indirectly...the population now represents

condition had contrived the word ―discourse‖ to replace the mystical powers of the now abandoned term ―modernization‖. Now, ―the long 19th century‖ Ottoman history was constructed along a ―discourse‖. The policies and reforms of the 19th century Ottoman state were no longer seen as efforts of modernization and Westernization, but as strategies of governmentality. The population censuses, the temettuat registers, the introduction of quarantine, the regulating of public health, the organization of modern education, and cartography were manifestations of the concern of the Ottoman state to measure and regiment its subjects and the land.¹⁸

Accordingly, this process was the emanation and fulfillment of an overarching discourse. The term ―discourse‖, as refashioned and formulated by Foucault, had tacit, evil connotations. For Foucault, discourse was there to dominate, control, and subdue the masses. Thus, the 19th century was no longer the ―good century‖ of the modernization school. Instead, it was now the mother of all evils, namely nationalism, excessive rationalism, modernism, intolerance, et cetera. The benevolent state of the 1960s turned out to be intrinsically malicious. Ehud Toledano concluded his book on the demise of slavery in the late 19th century as follows: ―In recent years the trend has been to portray states and empires in the long nineteenth century as the ever-centralizing, oppressing tool of the elites. Contrary to that, the case of Ottoman enslavement provides here sufficient evidence to argue that the state‘s growing interference in the slaver-enslaved relationship in fact benefited and protected the weaker partner in the relationship. The Tanzimat-state, I have tried to show, increasingly abandons its traditional support of the slavers‘ ownership rights and gradually began to favor manumission claims put forth by the enslaved.‖¹⁹ Of course, a fervent Foucauldian would argue that the state‘s benevolence towards the subaltern was a new strategy to include the previously non-included larger populace within the political and social community to be able to control, govern, and discipline them. This

more the end of government than the power of the sovereign; the population is the subject of the needs, of aspirations, but it is also the object in the hands of government.  ignorant

of what is being done to it.‖ (p. 216-17)

¹⁸ For the early modern state‘s appetite for measuring and knowing its land and its subjects, see Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

¹⁹ Ehud Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East, New Haven: New Yale University Press, 2007, p. 260.

is what Patrick Joyce called the ―rule of liberalism.‖²⁰ For Joyce and many others, the abolition of slavery and all other unnatural statuses are contrary to the logic of market and liberalism, the very ideological tool of the 19th century surveillance menace, and therefore have to be eradicated for market and liberalism to rule.²¹ Thus, according to them, the leniency on behalf of the state is yet another manifestation of Foucauldian pastoral power.²²

Also influenced by the rise of the new statism developed by historians such as Skocpol and Tilly, many new studies had taken the ―Foucauldian turn‖. These new works and dissertations tried to discover and ―unveil‖ the draconian encroachment of the state over society, over the public and the private. Various articulations and manifestations of the making of the centralized Ottoman/Turkish state were examined, such as the establishment of the modern police²³, army, social institutions, and the social state.²⁴ In Foucauldian jargon, modernity was identified with the insatiable assault and the subsequent victory of

 

 

 

 

 

²⁰ Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, London; New York: Verso, 2003.

²¹ For a Foucauldian treatment of liberalism, see Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, London; New York: Verso, 2003; Barry, Andrew & Rose, Nikolas & Osborne, Thomas (ed.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo- Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

²² For Foucault, ―pastoral power‖ which the early modern state derived from the Catholic Church is ―concerned with the salvation of everyone in ‗the flock‘ on an individual level, requiring, ideally, a thorough knowledge of the subject‘s ‗soul‘ and officials who could monitor and account for each and every individual. It (is) an individualizing power in that is sought, through supervision, to structure the life of the individual, both through confessional technologies and techniques of self mastery.‖ Introduction: Moss, Jeremy,

―The Later Foucault‖, in Moss, Jeremy (ed.), The Late Foucault Reader, London; Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998, pp.2-3.

²³ Ergut, Ferdan, Modern Devlet ve Polis: Osmanlı‟dan Cumhuriyete Toplumsal Denetimin Diyalektiği, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004.

²⁴ Ozbek, Nadir, Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Sosyal Devlet: İktidar, Siyaset, Meşruiyet 1876-1914, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002, also Ener, Mine, Managing Egypt‟s Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

the beast called ―the state‖, which was not a free agent but itself a prisoner and executer of the pervasive discourse of encroaching modernity.²⁵

This study is in agreement with the general premises of the Foucauldian movement. It holds that the Foucauldian movement catches the fundamental psyche of modernity very accurately. However, I believe that the Foucauldian movement is too simplistic and derives from a reactive moralism and resentment against the ―winners of modernity‖.

It is a question how reasonable and accurate it is to explain the complexity of the rise of the 19th century modern state with only one single overarching concept. Similarly, the papers gathered in ―Osmanlı‟da Asayiş, Suç ve Ceza‖ (Order, Crime and Punishment in the Ottoman Empire) also advances a critical approach to the ―Foucauldian effect‖ on Ottoman studies.²⁶ These papers pointed out the simplistic and reductionist tendencies of adapting Foucault to the 19^th century Ottoman trajectory. The modernization and centralization processes were not intended conspiracies perpetrated by the elites but were complex processes not to be explicable within one single overarching narrative. Likewise, as the papers in this collection demonstrate, it is inadequate to interpret the making of the Ottoman police and reform of the prisons as simply a cunning fabrication of the modern state.²⁷ Many different dynamics and concerns played an equal role in the reorganization and reconceptualization of the state, society, and the self in the 19^th century.

This study sees the thrust of the 19^th century transformation in the shifting structures of mentalities of the Ottoman elite. Nationalism and modernism derived from the concerns,

²⁵ For the rise and domination of this new discourse, see Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

²⁶ Levy, Noemi & Toumarkine, Alexandre (ed.), Osmanlı‟da Asayiş, Suç ve Ceza, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2008. For a critique of Foucault and the limitations of the Foucauldian approach in criminal history, see Özgür Sevgi Göral‘s chapter ―19. Yüzyıl İstanbul‘unda Suç, Toplumsal Kontrol ve Hapishaneler Üzerine Çalışmak‖ in this volume.

²⁷ Along the same lines, Bruce F. Adams in his study on Russian prison reform criticizes the Marxist and other schools of historical interpretation (and especially the historiography of 19th century Russia) that explain the course of history based on interest seeking and based on materialist assumptions. He underlines the reformist zeal in the Russian governing and elite circles regarding prisons. He concludes ―(a)ltruism and the desire of people to make the world conform to their ideals have been powerful forces in history.‖ Probably, Toledano would agree with this statement. Adams, Bruce F, The Politics of Punishment: Prison Reform in Russia 1863-1917, De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996, p. 197.

perceptions, and politics of the elite. This does not mean that these concerns and perceptions were merely fantasies and belonged to the realm of ideas. On the contrary, these concerns and dispositions were embedded within a certain material conjuncture and products of a certain social and political context as Quentin Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock, Koselleck, and others have demonstrated for the transformations of the European mental structures and perceptions.

The elite as a concept had not been examined as a specific and prominent formative component of Turkish modernity beyond the pioneering studies of Frey²⁸ and works of scholars such as Roderick Davison, Şerif Mardin, and Metin Heper. The concept of the elite and its structural qualities were not analyzed within a structural framework. The reductionist paradigm of the duality of center and periphery was preserved; this paradigm treats this duality as specific to the Ottoman/Turkish pattern and sees it as an ―aberration‖. This duality fails to answer several questions regarding the emergence and development of Turkish modernity. For example, why did the republican secular elite whom we may call

―Kemalists‖ assume the national leadership position and how did they retain this position long after the transition to multi-party democracy ? From where did it derive its legitimacy

? What were the structural reasons that enabled a ―superwesternized‖ elite to assume the position of ―national leadership‖ in most of the late modernizing, ―non-western‖ nations in formation and to be able to speak ―in the name of the nation‖? Kemalists in Turkey, the Congress Party in India, Muslim League in the future Pakistan, and Ba‘athists in the Arab world are manifestations of the same structural pattern²⁹. Why is it that the national leadership was always taken over by a modernizing/westernized and supersecular elite? What are the structural bases of this recurring pattern ? These questions need answers that go beyond the paradigm of the dichotomy of center-periphery which treats this dichotomy as a ―mistake‖ rather than a particular sociological and political pattern.

The question of why the 19th century non-western elites replicated the western model seems to be very obvious and straightforward at first glance, but in fact it is a very complex

²⁸ Frey, Frederick, The Turkish Political Elite, Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press, 1965.

²⁹ For the emergence of the modernist/nationalist elite in India, see Seal, Anil, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1968.

question. If we acknowledge that ―westernization‖ and ―modernization‖ are the sine qua non of the non-western 19th century elites, it means that westernization is not an autonomous process but a dependent variable of the politics and economies of elites and states. Then, westernization/modernization constitutes no historical/social category by itself. We have to assume that westernization is not a cultural category but a social/political one. Westernization and modernization are functions of the relationships of class and social structures. They are explicable within a socio-economical structure.

The nuances and modifications of the manifestations of westernization are to be varied in different geographies, but not westernization itself. Westernization emerges and develops as an imperative rather than a choice or an option. It is important to emphasize this dimension because Turkish sociology and political science literature takes it for granted that there is a dichotomy between the westernized elite and the traditional folk whether it be called center and periphery or otherwise³⁰ and treats it as a conspicuous phenomenon. We may even speak of the ―westernization of west‖ with reference to the path breaking works of Norbert Elias, Eugen Weber, and Marc Raeff³¹ where it has been demonstrated that the traditional ―folkways‖ were classified as barbarism and uncivilized and were effectively obliterated or transformed beginning in early modern Europe. This discourse is endorsed with equal vigor at the same time by both the Kemalist left and the Turkish right as the alleged dichotomy serves to enhance the self-images and righteousness of both parties, the first representing the courageous enlightened few against the ignorant

³⁰ Mardin, Şerif, ―Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics ?‖, Daedalus, 102-1 (1973) pp. 169-190. İdris Küçükömer‘s classic book, which preceded Mardin‘s article by two years, should also be considered as a complement to this article with its sweeping impact on Turkish intellectual thought and academia although it sometimes has the negative effect of simplifying the course of Turkish history and Turkish social dynamics. Küçükömer, İdris, Düzenin Yabancılaşması, İstanbul: Ant Yayınları, 1969. Whereas Mardin‘s periphery is the populace untouched by the reformism of the center, Mardin‘s center is state, and therefore the center-periphery clash is not between two compatible foes. Mardin‘s tension is between the state and its unruly subjects, and therefore it is wrong to develop this scheme along a cultural rift. Also see, Heper, Metin, The State Tradition in Turkey, Beverley, North Humberside: Eothen Press, 1985.

³¹ Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, Oxford; Cambridge, Mass. :Blackwell, 1984; Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976, Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

masses, the later representing the vox populi against the illegitimate usurpers. If we assume westernization as a non-category, then we have to redefine the course of late Ottoman/Turkish history within a social/economical framework after redefining the

―cultural‖ dynamics as historical and structural categories embedded within their social context.³²

States are not only class-based entities, but they are also inventors of values as well as bearers of values. The modern state, by its nature of being ―modern‖ is a generator and promoter of certain values compatible with its vision of governance.³³ For example, one of the most indispensable and prominent values the modern state generates is its secularity. A modern state should be secular not only for reasons of state but also to fulfill its obligations towards its subjects, which it professes to uphold. Therefore, the state renounces any alternative source of power that may hinder its ability to espouse its legitimacy over its subjects. In that regard, secularism derives from such a structural concern and is an imperative. It is less a cultural category than a structural necessity. Secularism is not an option but a corollary of the modern state and nation-state. The legal understandings of religion and modern nation-states are wide apart. Whereas the religions prioritized the regulation of relations between the community as a whole and the individuals within this community, the modern nation-states acknowledge only relations established between the state and the individuals and deny the legitimacy of any intermediaries. Only individuals exist and not communities. We may argue that, modernity is the renunciation of communalism in favor of a nation-state universalism in which the state is able to monopolize the regulation of relations between individual citizens and the relations between the individual citizens and itself. Apparently, the modern states generated and disseminated values ex nihilo, values which were evidently not derived from social sources and do not need to be. What is called westernization is in fact the practice of the emerging modern/rational states.  The supposedly-westernized elites became the executer of this

³² For the outlines and premises of the new cultural history, see Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretations of Culture, New York: Basic Books, 1973.

³³ The classical work that underlines the value-generating nature of the early modern state is Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. For the 19th century modern state, see also Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.

practice not only in the 19^th century Ottoman Empire but also in other states including Eastern European ones. This elite‘s foremost quality is to acquire the necessary skills to manage and lead this process thanks to the process which is rightfully dubbed as

―westernization‖ (and modernization).

This interpretation makes the paradox of nationalism more elucidative. After all, a nation is created in the image of the elites (and the rising new intellectuals). By nation, a nationalist does not understand ―the ethnic community which he feels to belong to‖ but something more subtle. Nation is an idol which he adores and adheres to. It is not a coincidence that many of the nationalist intelligentsias developed anti-populist discourses, especially in the Third World, and despised the commoners unlike nationalist intelligentsias such as the Russian Panslavists who were ―going to the people‖ in late 19^th century czarist Russia and glorifying the people.³⁴ Indeed, it is the sacred mission of the nationalist intelligentsia to educate, civilize, and rear the people so that the ―nation‖ will be saved from obscurantism, ignorance, and the threat of national demise. Thus, the scorning of the people may be seen as an indispensable trait of the nationalist intelligentsia. It is an intrinsic attribute of its missionary zeal. This attitude is visible throughout the history of Turkish nationalism from the first generation of nationalists (and most explicitly in Ömer Seyfeddin³⁵) to the early 21st century neo-nationalists. It may be argued that this is because in the minds of the nationalist intelligentsia the nation they sympathize with is not the present-day nation but the ―future-nation‖ designed and appropriated by the modernist visions of the intelligentsia. It is the prospective ―ideal nation‖ that will be created after the overcoming of backwardness they feel attached to. Because such an ideal ―really existing nation‖ does not exist, it is only the image (or mirage) of the nation they adore and praise. In fact, in the image of the nation, the nationalist intelligentsia sees its own values and reference system. The fiction of the nation is thus appropriated from the prism of the self- attributes of the elite and serves to disseminate the traits of the culture and habitus of a certain cultural community in the disguise of ―national traits‖.

³⁴ See Kohn, Hans, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology, New York: Vintage, 1960.

³⁵ For example, the short stories of Ömer Seyfeddin, such as ―Tuhaf Bir Zulüm‖, humiliate Turks for their backwardness, ignorance, and stupidity. See Ömer Seyfeddin, Yüksek Ökçeler, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1973.

The nation is an idea before it becomes a reality. Even when it becomes a reality as a result of communication, education, and the practices of everyday, it still remains an idea. However, this ―idea‖ continues to shape and reshape the material world.

Moreover, the emergence and development of a ―national idea‖ cannot be dissociated from the encroachment of modernity. We may observe that nation-making and modernism go hand in hand. Furthermore, they are not only complementary processes but may be seen as consequences/manifestations of the same phenomenon. Actually, they are not hand in hand, but are actually different sides of the same coin. One obliges the other.

Here, the question of which one of these manifestations precedes the other may be raised. Here, I would argue for the precedence of modernism over nationalism. According to this suggestion, nationalism becomes a corollary of modernism. This does not mean that, a la Marx, nationalism and other developments should be regarded as epiphenomena and consequences of modernity. On the contrary, the establishment of nations and their espousal is an indispensable and preeminent element of the formation of modern states and modernity. Following the transformation of the state and subsequently the populace from which the state derives its legitimacy, a certain imagination is to be generated compatible with the transforming perceptions of the world, society, and the self. Subsequently, this new imagination acquired its own reality. Disentangling the ―concept of nationalism‖ from a label referring to ethnicity and reconceptualizing it as an expression of a collective self- identity constituted within a process of social and economic transformation and as a response to the challenges posed by these developments will let us frame it within the process of the formation of modernity (and early modernity). ³⁶

The new intellectual historians criticized conventional intellectual history for being interested only in what the authors wrote and not paying attention to the social/political

 

 

 

³⁶ For a discussion of nationalism as an expression of a collective identity, see Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. & Schluchter, Wolfgang, ―Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities- A Comparative View‖, in Eisenstadt Shmuel N. & Schluchter, Wolfgang, Wittrock, Björn (ed), Public Spheres & Collective Identities, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001, pp. 13-14. For a discussion of nationalism and early modernity, see Wittrock, Björn,

―Early Modernities: Varieties and Transitions‖, ibid, pp. 19-40.

milieus in which ideas developed and concepts emerged, matured, and died out.³⁷ Moreover, they questioned the reliability of taking only some eminent authors (some became famous only after their death) to portray the structure of the mentalities of the time. Likewise, the new cultural historians rejected the conventional understanding of ―culture‖. They arrived at a ―thick description‖ of culture in which culture was perceived as being constituted within a particular social, economic, and political background and milieu, and also as a reflection of the social, material, and political background in which they flourish.

This study was inspired by the impressive studies of new intellectual historians, new cultural historians,³⁸ and historical anthropologists who probed into early modern and modern European history, as well as political anthropologists such as Michael Herzfeld.³⁹ It attempts to emphasize the prominence of ideas and concepts which acquire an objective existence for themselves once they are constructed in the mind. Rejecting a duality of

³⁷ Among many others, especially see Pocock, J.G.A, The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; Pocock, J.G.A, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, University Press, 1957; J.G.A, Barbarism and Religion, Cambridge, U.K.

: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Viroli, Maurizio, From Politics to Reason of State, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1992; Baron, Hans, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.

³⁸ 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, Berkeley: University of California Press, 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.

³⁹ Herzfeld, Michael, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State, London; New York: Routledge, 1997; Herzfeld, Michael, A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991; Herzfeld, Michael, The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Origins of Western Bureaucracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Herzfeld, Michael, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology and the Making of Modern Greece, New York: Pella, 1986; Herzfeld, Michael, Portrait of a Greek Imagination: An Ethnographic Biography of Andreas Nenedakis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

―objective existence‖ and ―subjective existence‖, this study treats the intellectual/cultural/ideological formations as shaped by the social and political background they inherit and the social, economic, and political structures in which they were born. It also argues that structures of mentalities have the power and capacity to shape the supposedly ―objective‖ political, social, and economic dynamics. This relation is evidently double-track. They complement and mutually constitute each other simultaneously. Thus, the emergence of a ―nationhood‖ and a secularized outlook were at the center of the making of the ―Turkish modern‖ and were consequences of reflexes given in the context of a retreating and threatened empire. In short, this study is more of an essay of historical anthropology rather than a work of history proper focusing on the making of a certain structure of mentality that establishes the ―Turkish nationhood‖ and ―Turkish modern‖.

The first chapter of the study is an overview of the 19^th century transformations of the Ottoman structures of mentalities and the configuration of the state elite. This chapter also aims to construct a theoretical framework for the emergence and development of a

―nationalized‖ imperial elite. The second chapter is an overview of the mental and ideological formations of the 19^th century Ottoman bureaucracy. The third chapter attempts to discuss how modernity and ―modern knowledge‖ triggered a new configuration within the state elite and how the bureaucracy, enjoying the monopoly over access and employment of the ―modern knowledge‖, took over the state and controlled it before its power was restrained in the Hamidian era. This chapter also attempts to show how the dynamics of international politics and foreign policy had an impact on political developments.

After the first three chapters which deal with the Tanzimat and Hamidian bureaucracy as a whole, given that different governmental offices are hardly distinguishable from each other, the next chapters particularly focus on the late Ottoman diplomatic service with a specific emphasis on the Hamidian diplomatic service. The fourth chapter attempts to draw the main social characteristics of the Ottoman diplomatic service. As can be observed, the social backgrounds of the diplomats are conspicuously similar. They were predominantly born in Istanbul as the sons of (some low-ranking and some others high-ranking) officials and thus share a certain habitus welded around the state. Although, the 19^th century

Ottoman bureaucracy shares a common culture, the Ottoman diplomatic service is the one with the most elitist background (not unlike the European diplomatic services). This is not to say that all the diplomats came from illustrious families with aristocratic backgrounds. On the contrary, the chapter shows that the diplomatic service recruited from various layers of the Ottoman bureaucratic cast and thus constitutes a microcosm of the late Ottoman bureaucracy, albeit considerably more aristocratic one.

The fifth chapter focuses on the routine of the diplomatic service. This chapter examines how a certain structure of mentality may be molded from the routine of the Ottoman diplomatic service. The concerns of the diplomatic correspondence draw the outlines of a structure of mentality. The sixth chapter investigates the ―great transformation‖ of the ideological/mental/cultural formations of the Ottoman diplomatic service. This chapter argues that the third generation of the Tanzimat exhibits certain traits significantly different from the first and second generations of the Tanzimat. With the third generation, a conservative modernization was abandoned in favor of a radical modernization. The third generation was radical in many regards. This generation was radical with regard to its perception of modernity, its identity, and its perception of the ―others‖. However, this transformation is not just a matter of a ―clash of fathers and sons‖. It is argued that, on the contrary, this transformation is pervasive and not limited to the new generation. Thus, many Hamidian grandees adapted to the transformation and endorsed the ―new outlook‖ enthusiastically although many others were disillusioned with this process. The seventh chapter is a general survey of the cultures of the European diplomatic services. The chapter attempts to show that the Ottoman Foreign Ministry replicated the 19^th century pattern and shares its common culture. World War I brought not only the collapse of the Ottoman Empire along with the Romanovs, Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs, but also a European- wide aristocratic style of governance and culture.

At its end, the study will also try to highlight the continuities from the Empire and its structures of mentalities to the Republic. The epilogue is a preliminary attempt to demonstrate the continuities (as well as modifications and breaks) from the Empire to the Republic as can be observed in the social and cultural formations of the Republican diplomatic service and the patterns of Republican diplomacy.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

 

NATIONALISM, MODERNITY AND ELITE POLITICS

 

 

1.1.                 Nationalisms

 

This chapter aims to situate ambivalent concepts such as modernity, elites, nationalism and proto-nationalism with regard to their contributions in the making of modern Turkey before focusing on the ideological/intellectual/cultural formations of late Ottoman bureaucracy and diplomatic establishment.

The very early theories of nationalism had approached nationalism in terms of an

―idea‖. After all, this was the time when social sciences were conceived as an outer reach of humanitas, an activity related to the reflection on the world and the self. The most well- known classical study of nationalism within this paradigm was penned by Elie Kedourie. For Kedourie, nationalism was an innovation of early 19th century German romantics⁴⁰. Given that Kedourie was in the tradition of the pre-World War English conservativism, he was distressed with the endorsement, popularization and spread of this continrntal fiction, a consequence which for Kedourie was an avoidable misfortune.⁴¹

⁴⁰ Kedourie states his assesment rather bluntly. He begins his book with the following statement: ―Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.‖ Kedourie, Elie, Nationalism, Hutchinson & Co, 1966, p. 9. Kedourie‘s introduction to his book is an example to the genre of ―history of ideas‖ at its best.

⁴¹ ―The attempts to refashion so much of the world on national lines has [sic]not led to greater peace and stability. On the contrary, it has created new conflicts, exacerbated tensions, and brought catastrophe to numberlss people innocent of all politics. The history of Europe since 1919, in particular, has shown the disastrous possiblities inherent in nationalism. In the mixed area of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, empires disappeared, their ruling groups were humbled and made to pay, for a time, the penalty of previous arrogance....What can be said with certainity is that the nation-states who inherited the position of the empires were not an improvement. They did not minister to

However, his particularistic explanation remained a minority view. ―The twin founding fathers‖ of the academic study of nationalism, Carleton B. Hayes and Hans Kohn,⁴² who wrote after World War I during the age of the emergence of numerous new nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe⁴³, argued that nationalism is by definition a modern concept. Within the modernist paradigm of the time, they tacitly assumed that this process (like any development in history) was inevitable. For them, nationalism was inherent in the making of the modern world and modern imagination. Hayes was a scholar who was one of the first to observe the bleak nature of the 19th century underneath the disguise of the glamour of progress⁴⁴ but nevertheless he viewed this undercurrent as a deviation from the inevitable triumphal march of modernity. In other words, his critical/ relatively pessimistic approach to modernity did not lead him to question the triumphalism and the myth of modernity.

Later scholars of nationalism distanced themselves from Kedourie, denied any room for contingency in history and advanced the path of Hayes and Kohn. The modernization

political freedom, they did not increase prosperity, and their existence was not conducive to peace  ‖ Kedourie, ibid, pp. 138-39.

⁴² See Carlton Hayes‘ The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism in 1931 and Hans Kohn‘s The İdea of Nationalism: A Study in its Origins and Background in 1944. Hayes sees nationalism as a pathology unexplicable with ―merely economic considerations‖. Rather than seeing it as a natural consequence of modernity, he writes in his introduction to one of his other books on nationalism that this nationalism is a mystery of modernity.

―Nationalism, as we know it, is a modern development. It has had its origins and rise in Europe, and through European influence and example it has been implanted in America and all other areas of Western civilization. But it is no longer peculiar to the Christian West.‖ Hayes, Carleton B, Nationalism: A Religion, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960, p.1.

⁴³ Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.3. Also from the excerpt quoted above in the second footnote we can observe how much Kedourie was also abhorred with the post-1918 Central and Eastern European developments. Mark Mazower develops a hollow portrayal of the post-WW I developments in Central and Eastern Europe and sees them as the precursor of the darkest years of the continent. See Mazower, Mark, Dark Continent, London: Penguin, 1999. It has to be noted that Anglo-Saxon academics of post-WW I ranging from conservatives to left- liberals were all longing for the peaceful ante bellum liberal/conservative Europe of empires which had been shattered and demolished by the arrogant nationalisms of small nations. It was ―the world they have lost.‖

⁴⁴ See Hayes, Carlton, A Generation of Materialism 1871-1900, Harper & Brothers, 1941.

school, which was an upshoot of structural functionalism,⁴⁵ treated the course of modern history and emergence of a modern society/social organization as an institutionalization of a mechanistic body in which there is no place for agency and ―meaning‖. Thus, they renounced anything peculiar and uncanny in nationalism. For them, nationalism was an inevitable and indispensable outcome of modernity. Nationalism was viewed as intrinsic in modernity and an indispensable element of modern social organization. It is functional in the establishment of a capitalistic and modern society. In the words of Benedict Anderson:

―(within) the formal universality of nationality as a socio-cultural concept- in the modern world everyone can, should, will ‗have‘ a nationality, as he or she ―has‖ a gender-vs the irremediable particularity of its concrete manifestations‖⁴⁶ in the modern age. However, these early historians of nationalism disagreed on why nationalism became unavoidable and inevitable.

A classical explanation was proposed by Ernest Gellner. For Gellner, ―nationalism is not the awakening of an old, latent, dormant force, though that is how it does indeed present itself. It is in reality the consequence of a new form of social organization, based on deeply internalized, education-dependent high cultures, generally transforming them in the process, but it cannot possibly use them all.‖⁴⁷ Gellner explains nationalism as a necessary instrument in the transition of humanity from agraria to industria within his

 

⁴⁵ Talcott Parsons, the founder of structural functionalism, perceived nationalism as an instrument of social needs. His interpretation of nationalism is as follows: ―At one extreme, the principal content of the normative order may be considered more or less universal to all men.  At the other extreme, both government and the normative order may apply only to a

particular small community. Within the broad range of variation between these extremes, modern societal communities have generally taken a form based upon nationalism. The development of this form has involved both a process of differentiation between societal community and government and a reform in the nature of societal community, especially with respect to membership.‖ Parsons, Talcott, Politics and Social Structure, New York: The Free Press, 1969, pp. 49-50. In his ―The Social System‖, he relates nationalism with industrialism. ―The connection between the development of industrialism and of nationalism is well attested. Soviet Russia in this as in so many respects, seems to be no exception, in spite of its ‗internationalist‘ ideology.‖ Parsons, Talcott, The Social System, Glencoe III: Free Press, 1951, pp. 187-88.

⁴⁶ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, London; New York: Verso, 2003, p.5

⁴⁷ Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983, p. 48.

periodization of human history.⁴⁸ Gellner‘s impressive interpretation of nationalism renders nationalism not an independent ideology per se but a mechanism to create a nation and society. National formation is a process which is a requirement for the emergence and consolidation of modern industry-based states and social organizations of industria. In short, for Gellner, nationalism is the sin qua non of capitalism, modernity and industrialization. Nationalism is thus not an irrational outburst, but a masterfully planned plot to serve for goals totally irrelevant to the ―official‖ goals of nationalism.

Gellner‘s modeling of nationalism appears to be impressive and instructive. However, what is unpersuasive in Gellner‘s account is its all-encompassing explanatory nature. The model is so perfect, so convincing and comprehensive, that it generates the suspicion that somewhere something is missing; it does not leave much room for contingency and variation. Although Gellner‘s general modeling is impressive, his presentation of nationalism as a rational and coldly calculated ideology that was hijacked for ends other than its declared claims remains too deterministic, concealing nuances and distinctions.⁴⁹

⁴⁸ For Gellner‘s suggested modelling of human history, see Gellner, Ernest, Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

⁴⁹ Gregory Jusdanis rejects the Gellnerian market-state-centered logic explanation of the emergence of nationalism in favor of a ―culturalist‖ alternative explanation. ―I argue that nationalism developed in the latter eighteenth century for two reasons. First, the far reaching transformations accompanying modernity brought about a profound interaction among populations. Although cultural and economic exchanges had always been part of human history, in the modern age this intercourse began to threaten the ethnic identities of regional groups more than had been the case with the polyethnic empires of the Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Capitalism, colonialism, and new means of communication and transportation pulled distant places closer together and mixed their populations, endangering thereby their cultural existence. The intensity and scope of contact among the world‘s peoples engendered a deep interest in the collective self and the separation of this self from others. The more people confronted groups beyond their frontiers and borrowed from them, the more the differences between those inside and outside were emphasized.‖ Jusdanis, Gregory, The Necessary Nation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 5-6. For the birth of Turkish nationalism, a reconciliation of these two approaches may be established. First of all, material considerations, to save the state which represented and affirmed the pride and exaltation of its kinship, played a prominent role. This urge did arise both from ―culturalistic‖ reasons (self-respect, pride, identity-formation, expression of the

―self‖- a la Charles Taylor-) and ―materialistic‖ reasons (employ it as a strategy to maintain and uphold the group‘s privileged status). The emergence of Turkish nationalism is a problematique for a Gellnerian approach because the Ottoman context lacks a market-

More recent historians in particular and social scientists in general had contemplated on the meaning of believing in belonging to a nation and the experience of discovering a nation. With the ―cultural turn‖ new generation of scholars of nationalism and comparative nationalism rehabilitated basic premises of Kedourie and refashioned them within the perspectives of ―new intellectual history‖ and ―new cultural history‖. Since Gadamer‘s

―Truth and Method‖⁵⁰, ―meaning‖ gained a prominence as the ultimate explanatory concept to comprehend the complexity of modern society and the making of modernity. In a sense, this shift can be seen as a return to Kedourie. However, the recent anthropological approach, rejecting the conventional ―history of ideas‖ perspective situating ―nationalism‖ belonging to the realm of ideas, focuses more on the context in which people are enforced and constrained to contemplate on their identity, their self and their relation to the outer world. In recent studies, the principal subject of inquiry focused on individuals and their appropriation of the outer world rather than anonymous masses.⁵¹ As historical anthropology developed, the cosmologies of individuals such as the miller Menocchio became objects of inquiry and interest.⁵²

Recent social scientists and historians sought to answer how a socio-political vision (named nationalism) may be engendered as an end to this ―existential‖ quest. Accordingly, the idea of nation may be viewed as inseparable from individuals‘ and group‘s encounter with modernity. The birth and development of nationalism cannot be dissociated from the unprecedented transformations individuals faced. It may be argued that, nationalism was received by these individuals and groups as a revelation to explain the perplexing and petrifying developments observed which individuals and groups failed to comprehend.

based economy. In the Ottoman/Turkish case, a, state-centred approach would be more plausible and convincing

⁵⁰ Gadamer, Hans Georg, Truth and Method, London: Sheed & Ward, 1979.

⁵¹ For example see Kidd, Colin, British Identities Before Nationalism, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999; Kidd, Colin, The Forging of Races, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

⁵² For some of the prominent examples of historical sociology, see Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980; Davis, Natalie Zemon, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983, Hunt, Lynn, The Family Romance of the French Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992; Darnton, Robert, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982;

Thus, we can further argue that, in an age of uncertainity, nationalism provided relief, certitude and confidence. It may be seen as a comprehensive answer given to all unknowns, thus resolving all ambiguities and obscurities, an action at once comparable to the cutting of the Gordion knot by Alexander the Great.

Recent studies also approached nationalism as a constitutive element of modernity rather than an outcome of modernity.⁵³ Accordingly, nationalism was neither a bastard of modernity nor its side effect. It was not the collateral damage of modernity. According to this view, something rather quintessential was present in the nature of nationalism.

With ―modernity,‖ a mechanistic transformation is not implied. Rather, by modernity, we understand a redefinition of the perception of the relation of man to nature, the relation of man to other men, and of man to society. Among other outcomes, modernity is the emergence of a new meaning of personal and social existence. Thus, it is an anthropological experience as much as a social and political development. The ideas of nation and of belonging to a nation are also upshots of the drastic alteration of social meaning and existence. This is not to claim that nationalism is a natural and automatic process that comes with the new configuration of meaning of man. On the contrary, the new structures of meaning were created, maintained or at least buttressed by the emerging modern states. According to this approach, a new interpretation of nationalism is necessary without reducing nationalism to a dependent function of the modern nation-state, industrial capitalism, or mass education. The simple question we have to answer is that why do people tend to feel to belong to a nationhood or why they tend to accept/affirm the ideological infiltration of the state-sponsored or intelligentsia-sponsored idea of nationhood and nationalism ?

For our purposes, we also have to ask the question as to why the 19th century European intellectuals were disposed to imagine and discover a nation for themselves. After questioning the reality of nationhood, then we have to address the question why the construct of nationhood was so foundational in the development of 19^th century social, cultural and political developments.

⁵³ Herzfeld, Michael, Cultural Intimacy, London; New York: Routledge, 1997; Cheah, Pheng, Spectral Nationality, New York: Columbia University Press, 2003; Mann, Michael, Sources of Social Power, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1986, v. II, James, Paul. Nation Formation, Sage, 1996.

Very simply put, we may speak of two different types of nations in the 19th century Europe: those nations with their state in power and those nations without their states.⁵⁴ With regard to the first type, a scholar may study how the idea of nationhood was forged around an already existing state. Many studies investigated the emergence of a national idea in countries such as England and France where preexisting states became associated with a national essence and identity.⁵⁵ In other countries, national ideas and sense of nationhood developed before the organization and consolidation of modern states. A sense of nation was pursued and developed in countries such as Greece and Russia relatively late and parallel to the organization and consolidation of a modern state where state consciously enforced an ideological project.⁵⁶

A study investigating the emergence of nationalism in countries such as England and France would involve a survey of the state and the bureaucracy because in these examples the fiction of nationhood was forged with the active involvement and vanguard role of the state while the background of this endeavor was already prepared within an ideological

⁵⁴ Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990-1992, Cambridge, Mass.

: Blackwell, 1990, p. 116.

⁵⁵ Bell, David A, The Cult of the Nation in France, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001; Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nation, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997; Romani, Roberto, National Character and Public Spirit in Britain and France 1750-1914, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2002; Pincus, Steven, Patriotism and Protestanism, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1996; Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992; Wahrman, Dror, The Making of the Modern Self: İdentity and Culture in the Eighteenth-Century England, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004; Wilson, Kathleen, The Sense of People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England 1715-1785, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1998; Sayer, Derek & Corrigan, Philip, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution, Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1985.

⁵⁶ Hoskings, Geoffrey, Russia and Russians, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001; Weeks, Theodore R, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia, De Kalb, III: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996; Jusdanis, Gregory, Belated Modernity and Aeesthetic Culture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991; Tatsios, Theodore George, The Megali Idea and the Greek-Turkish War of 1897, Boulder: East European Monographs, 1984; Clogg, Richard, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1992; Kitromilides, Paschalis, ― ‗Imagined Communities‘ and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans‖, European History Quarterly, no: 2,

pp. 149-192.

setting. With regard to the second category where the emergence of a ―sense of nation‖ preceded the emergence of a state, nationalism was more or less an intellectual activity and a ―curiosity‖ turned into ―political‖. It was a ―fantasy‖ that was subsequently politically came into being. The Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech discourses of nations can be given as examples to this category. In the first category, the states forged an idea; whereas in the second, ideas appear to have forged states. For example it was the sense of being a Czech (and Slovak) that to an important extent enabled the foundation of Czechoslovakia.

In comparison to the abovementioned models, the Turkish/Ottoman trajectory follows rather an idiosyncratic path. In the Ottoman case, an idea took over an already existing state. Moreover, the conspicuous situation in the Ottoman Empire is that the state bureaucracy and the intellectual elite are mostly indistinguishable. Therefore, in the Ottoman/Turkish case, the ―nation‖ may be both an intellectual fantasy and a political imposition at the same time.

Why does ―an intellectual‖ need to belong to a nation and furthermore dedicate his life for a fictitious nation ? Certainly ―nation‖ is an idea which has emerged within a certain social context, and since ideas can be meaningful only within the framework of social contexts, intellectual quests may be contextualized in their social/historical settings.

Here, primordialist theories of nationalism provide some assistance to us. As is well- known, Anthony Smith and others claimed that nations existed prior to the modern age. John Armstrong, in his survey book discussing the ethnics within the gigantic scene of history throughout centuries, claimed that nations do exist before nationalism.⁵⁷ Anthony Smith wrote:

 

―…ethnie and nations are not fixed and immutable entities ―out there‖ (not even the nationalist thought so); but nor are they completely malleable and fluid processes and attitudes, at the mercy of every outside force. To interpret them as masks and channels of ―real‖ social forces or the cultural surface of anatomical structures beneath, is to miss the independent role and originating power of ethnic identities and ethnic cleveages.  (h)ence the need to take the ethnic roots of modern nationalism seriously,

and give due weight to those myths, memories and symbols that can ignite

 

 

⁵⁷ Armstrong, John, Nations Before Nationalism, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

populations and mobilize them for assault on the precarious balance of forces that hold the regional systems of state together.‖⁵⁸

 

In other words, for Smith, the ethnic symbols, myths and the very ethnicities themselves constituted a reservoir of material to be utilized for other goals. However, this does not mean that ethnie is a blank sheet to be filled freely. The ethnie has its own genuinity and autonomy. The genuinity of the ethnie as a value limits the extents of manipulation as well. Ethnies are not simply words of Humpty-Dumpty meaning whatever the nationalist meant to be.

In the light of the Smithian perspective, what did ―nationhood‖ mean for the ruling (and intellectual) elite in the context of the Ottoman Empire ? The Ottoman case exemplifies neither the first (nations with states) nor the later version (nations without states) of the two ―types of emerging nationhoods‖. The Ottoman ruling elite had its state but this state was to be reclaimed and reshaped. It had to be charged with new attributes and meanings. As Smith pointed out, there is no one objective and single notion of ethnicity and nation, thus lacking one definite meaning. It may signify different meanings in each historical context, continuously shaped and reshaped in interaction with various dynamics that are also in constant change. The dynamics that shape the makings of nationhoods are not necessarily domestic. International factors may be as influential as are domestic factors as apparent in the development of Turkish nationalism. In the end, some of the competing meanings of ―nation‖s arise amongst others, due to suitable intellectual and realpolitik conditions.

 

 

 

1.2.                 Imperial Nationalism vs. Ethnic Nationalism

 

The ―creation of the Turkish identity/nationhood‖ will tell us not about a certain (social and political) reality but about a mental set derived from a certain preexisting structure of mentality. All nationhoods began their careers as an idea before they became a reality.

⁵⁸ Smith, Anthony D, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988,

p. 211.

Abigail Green begins her book Fatherlands with a quote from Heinrich von Kleist‘s German Catechism (1809). ―In his ‗German Cateschism‘, Kleist envisages a confrontation between a Saxon father and his German son. ‗I am a German‘, the son declares. ‗A German‘ his father cries. ‗You must be joking. You were born in Meissen, and Meissen is in Saxony !‘ ‗I was born in Meissen‘ the son replies ‗and Meissen is indeed in Saxony; but my fatherland, the country to which Saxony belongs, is Germany-and your son, my father, is a German.‘ But the father remains unconvinced. ‗Where is this Germany ?‘ he asks. He cannot find it on the map⁵⁹.‖ This anectode is probably one of the earliest examples of the clash of generations; the radical son revolting against his conservative father; a popular theme of the 19th century European literature and imagination. The anecdote also resembles the late Ottoman overlapping of identities. One can easily replace the ―Saxon‖ with the ―Ottoman‖ and ―German‖ with the ―Turk‖ to adapt it to the Ottoman context (later to meet the Teuton and Turanian dyad as well). However, Green criticizes the conventional historiography of 19^th century Germany and those who assume the anecdote of Kleist as sheer reality. She asserts that, rather than a break, German nationalism displays continuity.

―The book (Green‘s book-DG) attempts to establish how national Germany was before unification and how federal it remained thereafter.‖⁶⁰

Same criticism may be leveled against the conventional historiography of 19^th century Ottoman historiography and Turkish nationalism. The conventional historiography dates the emergence of Turkish nationalism to the era of the Young Turks⁶¹. According to this narrative, the idea of Turkishness emerged in the minds of Young Turks in the first decade of 20^th century when they were in opposition in the Hamidian era. The idea came to power

⁵⁹ Green, Abigail, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 1

⁶⁰ Green, Abigail, ibid, p.7. For the persistence of local political identities disguised within the discourse of the centralizing and imposing German identity, see Confino, Alon, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory 1871-1918, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

⁶¹ Ramsaur, Ernest, The Young Turks, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 147; Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, London: McGill University Press, 1964, p. 313; Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 228-29; Shaw, Stanford, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1976, v. II, p. 289.

with the 1908 Revolution. One dissenting interpretation, however, had been proposed as early as 1977 by David Kushner. In his book, he demonstrated the prevalence of Turkism as early as the era of Abdülhamid II⁶². Interestingly, the Turkists of Kushner were not revolutionaries or upstarts unlike the Turkist Young Turks. On the contrary, Kushner‘s Turkists were established figures writing in the harmless dailies of Istanbul and publishing articles approved by the censor of Abdülhamid II‘s censor. In short, in their intellectual orientations, they were men of different stock than were the Young Turks and in their class background. Although Kushner‘s study did not capture attention in his day, later studies of Turkish nationalism did begin to date the emergence of Turkish nationalism at an earlier date.⁶³ This observation also requires questioning the alleged sharp dichotomy between the Hamidian generation/establishment and the Young Turk generation in their intellectual orientations. Dating the emergence of a ―certain idea of Turkishness‖ to an earlier date is not only a matter of chronological precision. It also requires us to question the main premises and features of Turkish nationalism. The redefinition of Turkish nationalism acknowledges the intertwining of various coexisting and sometimes contradicting dispositions, ideologies and leanings in its very emergence.

The presumed characteristics of the two variants of nationalism/national awareness (Hamidian versus Young Turk) differ in many ways. The Young Turks were busy

―inventing‖ a nation ex nihilo in their image. Conversely, the earlier imperial generation was mending the society (Muslim society in process of being imagined as a Nation) into the already existing imperial identity and into an imagination of social order. The nation was to serve a certain purpose. That is to say; the nationalism of the earlier generation was a ―matter of state‖ although it is not claimed that that was intentionally and consciously done. In the perception of the Hamidian dignitaries, the Nation is submissive, hiearchically organized community. Nevertheless, within this framework; ―the Ottoman Empire hedged

 

 

⁶² Kushner, David, The Rise of Turkism 1876-1908, Cass, 1977. Also see Albayrak, Hasan,

Milletin Tarihinden Ulusun Tarihine, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2009, p. 42.

⁶³ Especially the see Karpat, Kemal, The Politicization of Islam, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; Hanioğlu, Şükrü, Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

towards a ‗nationally imagined community‘ as Ottoman identity assumed an increasingly Turkish character, even if this identity was packaged in universalist Islamic terms.‖⁶⁴

However, whatever the differences between the two strands of nationalism may have been, there was no simple process of replacement of the one with the other. On the contrary, the social imagination and premises of the Hamidian generation was prominent in the formation of the nationalism of the Young Turks. In this study, it has been argued that, the Young Turks took over many propositions of the earlier generation as indispensable tenets of their imagination of the Turkish nation and Turkish nationalism which they were professing to invent. Turkish nationalism was constituted as a state project although not necessarily planned so intentionally. It is also interesting to observe that dating the emergence of a full-fledged nationalist discourse to the Young Turks was first developed by the Young Turks themselves (presenting themselves as the generators of a national awareness in contrast to the corrupt Hamidian ancient regime) and the assumptions of historiography derived from this ideological maneuver (which was further consolidated by the Kemalist/republican historiography).

The very early historiography on the emergence of Turkish nationalism developed after the World War II within the modernization paradigm insisted on establishing a dichotomy between Turkish ethnic nationalism and imperial Ottomanism.⁶⁵ In fact, these accounts were heavily influenced by Young Turks‘ discrediting Ottomanism and presenting it as a naïve and almost effeminate paradigm. Here, ―imperial Ottomanism‖ is not taken as the official Ottomanism propagating the equality of subjects of the Empire regardless of religion. Apparently, the Ottoman center was not a neutral site but biased disproportionately towards an Islamic and Turkish identity.⁶⁶ By ―imperial Ottomanism‖,

⁶⁴ Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains, London: I.B. Tauris, 1998, p. 11.

⁶⁵ Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961; Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, London: McGill University Press, 1964; Shaw, Stanford, History of the Ottoman Empire and the Modern Turkey, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1976.

⁶⁶ For some works rehabilitating Ottomanism and investigating the discourse of Ottomanism within such a framework, see Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains, London: I.B. Tauris, 1998; Somel, Selçuk Akşin, ―Osmanlı Reform Çağında Osmanlıcılık Düşüncesi (1839-1913), in Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet‟in Birikimi, Mehmet Ö. Alkan (ed.), İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001, pp. 88-116; Cleveland, William, The Making of an Arab

we refer to the ideological/political orientation prioritizing the imperial interests and having imperial reflexes in contrast to the Turkist reflexes of the later generation which would prioritize the explicit interests of the Turkish nation. This dichotomy assumes as the imperial Ottomanism had became defunct and succumbed without leaving any trace. This simplification derives from the very categorization Young Turks themselves formulated. The caricature of Ottomanism by Young Turks (and the non-Muslim and non-Turkish intellectuals) obliterated the significance and possibilities of Ottomanism. The gradual secularization, radicalization and ethnicization of the Turkish nationalism between early years of 1900s and early 1910s obscured the transitions, linkages and interwining between imperial nationalism and ethnic Turkish nationalism.⁶⁷ In a sense, Yusuf Akçura‘s breakthrough article ―Three Modes of Politics‖ [Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset] published in the Young Turk journal ―Türk‖ in Egypt in 1904 determined the course of Ottoman studies, persuading the practitioners of it to assume that (secular and radical) Turkism was the only feasible ideology, the only one capable to adapt to the modern times in a somewhat Darwinian logic.

Interestingly, Akçura in his ―Three Modes of Politics‖ himself does not speak of three mutually exclusive ―modes‖ of politics (i.e. ideologies) but seems to blend them. Furthermore he is ambivalent in opting for one among the three options.⁶⁸ He is a pragmatic Turkish patriot urging for strategies to save the Empire rather than urging for ideologies. Ideologies are a secondary concern for Akçura.⁶⁹

Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati‟ al-Hus, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971; Prator, Sabine, Der Arabische Faktor in der Jungtürkischen Politik, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1993.

⁶⁷ See Hanioğlu, Şükrü, Preparing for a Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 64-73.

⁶⁸ Akçura ends his treatise as follows: ―hulasa, öteden beri zihnimi işgal edip de, kendi kendimi ikna edecek cevabını bulamadığım sual yine önüme dikilmiş cevap bekliyor: Müslümanlık, Türklük siyasetlerinden hangisi Osmanlı Devleti için daha yararlı ve kabil-i tatbiktir.‖ Also note the pragmatism in the text. Yusuf Akçura, Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1976, p. 36.

⁶⁹ Yusuf Akçura was not unique in his pragmatism. In a response to the article of Yusuf Akçura, Ahmet Ferit, one of the future public figures of Turkists, concluded: ―Türk siyaseti bugün mevcut değildir; fakat Osmanlı siyaseti milli mevcudiyetimizi muhafaza ederse, belki gelecekte İslam birliği siyasetinin gözden kaybolduğu zaman bize bir yardımcı olur.

For Akçura, Ottomanism, Islamism and Turkism were all ―ideal types‖ because he had written his text in a relatively early date when Turkism was not yet seen as a predatory ideology destined to monopolize the ideological scene by eliminating its rivals as an iron law of history. 1904 was too early to realize that ethnic nationalism would turn into the inevitable ideology of the future whereas the others were destined to collapse. But it turned out to be so. Turkish nationalism (in its particular form) succeeded to present itself as the only viable and popularly feasible ideology. In this study, the extent of this success, the contradictions between Turkish nationalism‘s self-presentation, and its actuality will be investigated. It will be claimed in this study, following several other studies of the past two decades, that Turkish nationalism has its peculiarities and distinctivenesses deriving from what it had inherited from its Ottoman/imperial heritage. Turkish nationalism neither resembles state-centred ―Western nationalisms‖ nor is idea-centred ―Eastern nationalisms‖.⁷⁰ Rather, Turkish nationalism is an imperial nationalism with its distinct features and background. Apparently, such ―peculiarities‖ are not unique to Turkish nationalism. The riddle of nationalism is that nationalism is a general label/code word used to define various distinct evolutions of certain imaginations that do not necessarily resemble each other. As Anne McClintock aptly states, ―nationalisms are invented, performed and consumed in ways that do not follow a blueprint.‖⁷¹ Likewise, as expressed by Partha Chatterjee, they don‘t ―follow ‗script already written‘ but they are projects of individual national imaginations.‖⁷² Therefore, with regard to Turkish nationalism, our work is to expose what social/cultural/class-related attributes Turkish nationalism evokes under the rubric of nationalism and the national imagination.

 

 

Bilmem siyasi işlerde, fırsatları değerlendirmekten (oportuniste‟)likten daha doğru, daha faydalı bir yol var mıdır ?‖ Excerpted in Yusuf Akçura, Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, p. 55.

⁷⁰ For ―Western‖ and ―Eastern‖ nationalisms, see Plamenatz, John. ―Two Types of Nationalism‖, in Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea, Kamenka, Eugene (ed.), Edward Arnold, 1976, pp. 23-36.

⁷¹ McClintock, Anna, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, London; New York: Routledge, 1995, p. 360.

⁷² Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 5.

1.3.                 Development of an “Official Nationalism” at the Otttoman Center

 

Nationalism was an ―import‖ into Ottoman lands. The use of the word ―import‖ may sound rather odd as if it were a commodity. However, nationalism was in fact an ―import‖ in the sense that the arrival of the word ―nationalism‖ preceded the arrival of nationalism as a social-political reality. The concept of ―nationalism‖ had been learned as a textbook concept before it had been encountered in its mature form manifested resembling its European versions disregarding the proto-nationalist popular movements preceding the European-style nationalisms observable within the Ottoman geography beginning from the early 19^th century. The South Eastern European intellectuals marveled with the ideas and worlds of the Enlightenment which had developed their national identities and transformed Balkan peasant rebellions into national revolts and awakenings.⁷³

The approach of the Ottoman ruling elite towards the Balkan nationalities was very

―technical‖ not unlike their approach to the concept of ―nationalism‖ itself. Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (1823-1895), the conservative reformist statesman and one of the emblematic figures of the culture of the 19^th century Ottoman imperial elite, wrote that these Balkan nationalities had taken the motive of nationhood from the West as if it was an imported commodity. He also noted that ―nationalism is an outcome of French Revolution‖ as he copied down the French historians‘ accounts covering the French Revolution without contemplating on the dynamics and origins of this novel phenomenon called nationalism. Ahmed Cevdet Pasha held a rather negative opinion of nationalism. He wrote that there is no equivalent of the word ―nation‖ in the Ottoman vocabulary. According to him ―vatan‖ (patrie) implies just the village square and has no capability to motivate the soldiers, whereas ―Islam‖ provides a far better motivation for waging war.⁷⁴ However, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha‘s usage of ―Islam‖ was also ―national‖. For him, Islam was a political cause

⁷³ Kitromilides, Paschalis M, ―The Enlightenment East and West: A Comparative Perspective on the Ideological Origins of the Balkan Political Traditions‖, in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 10, no: 1, 1983, p. 64.

⁷⁴ For the complex dimensions of the concept ―vatan‖ in Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, see Heinzelmann, Tobias, ―Die Konsruktion eines Osmanischen Patriotismus‖ in Aspects of the Political Language in Turkey, Hans- Kieser, Lukas (ed.), Istanbul: Isis Press, 2002, pp. 41-51.

to be pursued not limited, to the ―other world,‖ but also related to this world. Islam was what is just, good, and simply the pillar of the ideal political order for Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. This mental background was the reason for his disparagement for Balkan nationalisms. For Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Balkan insurgencies were no more than brutal and barbaric banditry, failing to surrender to the perfect and just political order of the abode of Islam as practiced by the Ottoman polity.⁷⁵

In the perception of the Ottoman elite, Bulgarians, Greeks or Serbians were not equal to the imperial Ottomans. The emerging nationalisms of these Balkan nations were only expressions of rapaciousness and arrogant and uncivilized sentiments of these nations. Contrary to the obnoxious nature of the Balkan nations, Ottoman Empire symbolized the ultimate goodness and righteousness. Thus, its use of force was legitimate and served for a higher ideal. These were the premises of the imperial discourse elaborated against the unruly Balkan nationalisms. Given that, Balkan nationalisms to a certain degree emanated from rural banditry and were reactions of the Christian villagers to their subordinate status vis-à-vis their Muslim landlords before it had been given nationalist twists in Bulgaria, in Serbia, in Bosnia, the perception of the imperial discourse was not too wrong.

The Ottoman imperial vision took for granted that the Ottoman polity was inherently superior to the ―unhistorical nations‖ of the Balkans. The Ottoman imperial vision did not acknowledge any agency to the Balkan nations.⁷⁶ As Ebru Boyar rightfully pointed out in her book, the perception of Ottomans ―represented the Balkans very much within the centre-periphery paradigm, assigning no concept of ‗sentient being‘ to the areas of the periphery whose very existence depended not on their own aspirations and actions but on a centre, be it Istanbul or elsewhere  although nationalism came to be used more and more

in the interpretations of the later Ottoman historians and, especially, of those of the early Republic, essentially the late nineteenth-century understanding  of the uprisings remained

 

 

 

⁷⁵ Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Tezakir, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1963, v. II, pp. 266-275,

v. III, pp. 3-107.

⁷⁶ Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Tarih-i Cevdet, Darü't-Tıbaat'ül Amire, 1309, v. XII, pp. 204-219; Şani-zade Mehmed Ata‘ullah Efendi, Şani-zade Tarihi, Çamlıca, 2008, v. II, p. 1187.

framed within the centre-periphery paradigm.‖⁷⁷ The traditional Turkish/Kemalist historiography attributed this perception to the mental backwardness of the nineteenth- century Ottomans, their inability to comprehend contemporary ideological developments. However, more recent studies pointed out to other motivations for Ottomans‘ denouncement of Balkan nationalisms. It did not derive out of being not in touch with the latest developments but out of its imperial discourse and worldview.

In fact, a striking discursive continuity exists from the narrative of Ahmed Cevdet regarding the depiction of the Balkan nationalist uprisings in the official Kemalist discourse in terms of denying them any agency in their exploits.⁷⁸ The Kemalist historiography reiterates the imperial assumptions and assumes that these Balkan rebels might be only manipulated by the Russians (or other foreign powers)⁷⁹. The Ottoman ruling elite did not recognize any legitimacy for the banditry in the Balkans to claim political authority for themselves.⁸⁰ This perception is in contradistinction to the self- victimizing perception of the Unionist and Kemalist nationalisms which portrayed Turks as

⁷⁷ Boyar, Ebru, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans, London; New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007, pp. 70-71.

⁷⁸ For the persistence of the Ottoman/imperial discourse in the Kemalist era, see Boyar, Ebru, ibid, p. 59,79

⁷⁹ For example, see Tarih III (Yeni ve Yakın Zamanlar), Ankara: Devlet Matbaası, 1933, pp 257-258.

⁸⁰ After the publication of Edward Said‘s Orientalism and his exposure of the ―invention of the East‖, this theme was ―applied‖ to many other non-western regions. For Balkans, see Wolff, Larry, Inventing Eastern Europe, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press; Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. For the Ottoman images of Balkans in the Ottoman caricatures which strikingly resembles the Western imaginaries depicting the Balkan nations as bandits wearing traditional clothes (in contrast to civilized-looking and appropriately dressed Turks) see Heinzelman, Tobias, Osmanlı Karikatüründe Balkan Sorunu, İstanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2004. This book shows that the imagery of Ahmed Cevdet Pasha and his contemporaries persisted in the heyday of Unionist Turkish nationalism within a more ethnically loaded jargon. Balkans was continued to be represented as the culturally and socially underdeveloped periphery of the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars as Heinzelmann‘s study demonstrates. For another Ottoman author who depicted Bulgarians as ―killing their prime ministers in the streets‖ and Montenegrins as ―lacking any sign of civilization and progress‖ in 1905, see Samipaşazade Sezai, ―Balkanlar‘da İttifak-ı Müselles‖, Şura-yı Ümmet, 4 June 1905, excerpted in Kerman, Zeynep (ed.), Sami Paşazade Sezai: Bütün Eserleri, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 2001, v. III, p. 200.

oppressed and in retreat and Balkan nationalists as arrogant and aggressive. However, the republican perception may be interpreted as a consequence of the change of the conjunctures and not as a modification in ideological outlook. Yet, if we agree to establish a link from Ahmed Cevdet Pasha to the Turkish nationalism of the coming decades, we also need to acknowledge a continuity from the post-classical Ottoman historians to Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. Ahmed Cevdet Paşa in his Tarih, in his Tezakir and in his other works reiterates the premises and contours of the age-old Ottoman discourse, which relies on the Islamic law and Islamic notion of polities⁸¹, claiming the absolute legitimacy to rule over the territories already seized and ruling over its subjects without necessarily paying attention to their considerations. The mercilessness of premodernity and the naturalization of violence (as long as it is just) is also prevalent in Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, reminiscent of his predecessors. Once the subject races revolted, the Islamic âmân (―mercy‖) was to be abandoned and being in a ―situation of war‖ the life of any rebellious subject was no more to be maintained.⁸² Therefore, a dehumanizing discourse was maintained based on classical Islamic and pre-modern premises prevailed in the modernizing 19^th century.

⁸¹ For the Islamic perception of state and order with special reference to the Ottomans, see Lewis, Bernard, The Political Language of Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, Also see Lambton, Ann K.S, State and Government in Medieval Islam, London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 1991, pp. 15-16. ―Belief in the divine origin of community and the lack of any separation between ‗church‘ and the state had important consequences so far as civil war and internal disturbances were concerned. These were called fitna (pl. fitan) and were considered to be, fundamentally, rebellion against the divine law.‖ (p.15) I do not establish that there is a certain Islamic law and perception concerning the state, community and order unchanging throughout centuries. However, certain premises derived from Islamic legal perceptions have the power to partially shape and influence the later perceptions including the founding axioms, reference system and mental cosmology of Turkish nationalism and Ottoman imperial official nationalism. Apparently, Turkish nationalism has Islamic origins in many regards and visible in its various attributes and manifestations.

⁸² For such a language of dehumanization see Mehmed Es‘ad Efendi, Vak‟a-Nüvis Esad Efendi Tarihi, İstanbul: OSAV, 2000; Erdem, Hakan Y, ― ‗Do not Think of Them as Agricultural Laboureres‘: Ottoman Responses to the Greek War of Independece‖: Ottoman Responses to the Greek War of Independence‖, in Dragonas, Thalia & Birtek, Faruk (ed), Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, London; New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 67-85. For the premodern dehumanizing perceptions, see Kiernan, Ben, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. In the Ottoman perspective derived from Islamic law

The transformation of the Ottoman perception with regard to its taking care of its subject and the endorsement of the discourse of the modern benevolent state was visible as early as the reign of II Mahmud.⁸³ Although to claim to serve its subjects and maintain their prosperity and security was present in the premodern political rhetoric and was a pivotal part of the Islamic (and therefore Ottoman) conception of law and governance⁸⁴, the modern understanding that acknowledges its subjects as individual citizens and perceives the duties of the state not as graceful benevolence but a social responsibility was novel. Moreover, the enhancement of state capacities ensured the interference of the state to lives of individuals directly and indirectly. The changing perception of the Ottoman polity was manifested in various occasions such as in the tour of the Grand Vizier Kıbrıslı Mehmet Emin Pasha in Bulgaria (who also planned to visit Macedonia but cancelled the trip due to the emergency situation in Lebanon) in 1861 to listen the complaints of its Christian subjects⁸⁵ although ―visits‖ to distant areas as far as Varna began with Mahmud II and Mehmet Emin Pasha‘s visit was only the most comprehensive and most publicized

 

 

 

and Islamic political culture, the non-Muslim subjects were not regarded as fully human beings deserving a dignity but captives whose right to life were recognized conditionally. In many ways, this language may be seen as dehumanizing the non-Muslims. However, such a judgment would not be correct because dehumanization refers to a normality in which humans are not seen as individuals with complete control over their bodies. Apparently, in premodernity there was no such perception. The persistence of this dehumanizing discourse in Tanzimat can not be regarded as the ―persistence of old regime‖ but should be perceived as an integral part of the Ottoman modernization experience. This was the main argument of James Reid in his study. See Reid, James, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse 1839-1878, Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2000. For a dehumanizing discourse regarding the Balkan rebellions of 1875 and the Turkish-Russian War, also see Mustafa Celalaeddin Pasha, Mirat-ı Hakikat, İstanbul: Berekat Yayınları, 1983.

⁸³ Somel, Selçuk Akşin, ―Osmanlı Reform Çağında Osmanlıcılık Düşüncesi (1839-1913), in Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet‟in Birikimi, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001, p. 93; Kırlı, Cengiz, Sultan ve Kamuoyu, İstanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2008.

⁸⁴ İnalcık, Halil, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, Praeger Publishers, 1973, pp. 65-68.

⁸⁵ For an evaluation of the tour of Kıbrıslı Mehmet Emin Pasha, see Köksal, Yonca & Erkan, Davut, Sadrazam Kıbrıslı Mehmet Emin Pasha‟nın Rumeli Teftişi, İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2007.

one.⁸⁶ Nevertheless, this new sensibility and ―rhetoric of inclusion‖ did not terminate the prevailing ―rhetoric of exclusion‖. Instead, we observe the coexistence of these two contradictory discourses. The Islamic dehumanization of non-Muslims did not die out. Rather, it adapted itself and went along with an inclusive rhetoric towards the non-Muslims as long as they kept their loyalty. This conditional ―rhetoric of inclusion‖ would be pursued as long as the aspirations of non-Muslims would not challenge the notions and premises of Islamic hierarchy, morality, justice and order.

Ahmed Cevdet Pasha‘s perception of the French Revolution may be read along the same imperial rhetoric. His negative attitude towards the French Revolution⁸⁷ did not arise from the fact that he was, as an "old Turk‖, imperceptive to the latest European currents and developments but due to his class/status origins.⁸⁸ Apparently, he was alarmed with the revolution not only for the Ottoman polity but for the European order in general. He was an aristocrat in the sense that he was a member of the semi-closed and privileged community

⁸⁶ Kırlı, Cengiz…, p. 28; Özcan, Abdülkadir, ―II. Mahmud‘un Memleket Gezileri‖, in Prof. Bekir Kütükoğlu‟na Armağan, İstanbul: İstanbul Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1991, pp. 361-80.

⁸⁷ For his attitude towards the French Revolution and his interpretation of the revolution, see Neumann, Christoph, Araç Tarih, Amaç Tanzimat, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2000, pp. 138-140. For Ahmed Cevdet, revolutionaries were immoral and barbaric threating justice and order.

⁸⁸ It would be insightful to assess Ahmed Cevdet Pasha‘s attitudes in comparison with the attitudes developed by the established elites with regard to the French Revolution, empire and subalterns. John Mackenize, one of the prominent and most severe critics of Edward Said writes; ―they (orientalists) were culturally conservative and technically innovative. Far from offering an artistic programme for imperialism, they were finding in the East ancient verities lost in their own civilization.‖ MacKenzie, John, Orientalism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p. 67. For MacKenzie, orientalism was not the fifth column of imperialism but a conservative enterprise in the aftermath of French Revolution. MacKenzie‘s criticism of Said is rather instructive for us to remember to look for ideologies and mental sets within a social framework. Along the same lines, David Cannadine also portayed British empire –pace Said- as an extension/replication of the British perception of society, order, hieararchy and privilege. For Cannadine, empire was an aristocratic encounter and the premises of the empire are understandable only with understanding the British mind and the aristocratic perceptions of society and nature. See Cannadine, David, Ornamentalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Both of the authors are ―socializing‖ imperialism in contrast to the essentialization of the empire by Edward Said. MacKenzie‘s and Cannadine‘s hints may be useful for us to understand some tenets of the making of the worldview of the Turkish nationalism as well.

of the Muslim state elite. He happened to be also an ethnic Turk. These two identities of his were intertwined: being an ethnic Turk was associated with membership in the state nobility.⁸⁹ Many ethnic Turks might be denied this privilege and despised as vulgar masses but still being an ethnic Turks (and being a Muslim from different origins to a lesser extent) was relatively advantageous for incorporation to the state elite. It could be claimed that a peculiar Turkish national identity was born from this overlapping. This identity implied a certain notion of superiority (millet-i hakime), not only vis-a-vis the non-Turks but vis-a-vis the ethnic Turkish masses as well⁹⁰. The separation was established between those who were almost divinely ordained to rule and those who were supposed to be submissive (Muslim masses and non-Muslims) to those who were morally superior (the Muslim/Turkified imperial elite). The imperial identity was forged not based on ethnic lines but with implications for its ethnicity. Similarly, imperial identity was not strictly exclusive but open to those comfortable with the imperial premises including the non- Muslims.

⁸⁹ For the prominent role of his high class background on his writings and analyses, see Neumann, Christoph, ―Bad Times and Better Self: Definitions of Identity and Strategies for Development in Late Ottoman Historiography 1850-1900‖, in Ottomans and Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography, Farouqi, Suraiya, Adanır, Fikret (ed.), Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2002, p. 64.

⁹⁰ Many ethnies were established and forged within social and class contexts. For example, although there were variations, as a general observation, in the Central and Eastern European lands, it was the German-speakers who were nobles and who also constituted urban populace whereas the folk and peasantry spoke various accents of Slavic languages. This was not because classes and social formations were constituted along ethnic lines but because certain languages were associated with respectability and ethnic differences were alleviated with social connotations as the dissemination of modernity began to privilege some ethnies. Similarly, social unrests turned into national rebellions as it happened in Balkans against the Turks who constituted the ―dominating class‖ vis-a-vis the reayah Christians. In an interesting case, Belorussiannes was a provincial identity defined by the tongue of the peasantry in contrast to the urban population speaking Polish and Ukranian. With the invention of a Belorussian nationality, the peasant tongue established its own nation and Belorussian identity joined the superleague of nations. For the emergence and consolidation of the Belorussian national culture and identity, see Snyder, Timothy, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 41. Also see Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Empire, 1923-1939, Ithaca: Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

The concept of millet-i hakime appeared in the first half of the 19^th century as a reaction to the rise of non-Muslim nationalities, probably inspired by the Habsburg Herrenvolk⁹¹ idea and the Germans‘ self-perception in the Habsburg Empire.⁹² This concept denotes the development of what Benedict Anderson calls ―official nationalism⁹³‖ imbued with a nationalized imperial identity. The racist doctrines of late 19th century Europe were far away from the mindset of the Ottoman imperial elite although such a linkage might be tangible to the Young Turk thought. Whereas the racist doctrine is egalitarian, equalizing any member of the racial community/ethnicity, the Ottoman imperial identity and the idea of nationhood was flamboyantly elitist and inegalitarian.

It had been suggested that the future racist nationalism of Germany had emanated from the European-wide colonial thought which divides society into two, i.e. those who are destined to be subjugated and those destined to rule. It has been argued by scholars such as Deringil and Makdisi that European colonialist discourse influenced the 19th century Ottoman political governance and ideology.⁹⁴ Apparently, we observe several manifestations of the impact of the European political visions and terminology on Ottoman political culture such as the term and notion of millet-i hakime (which was refashioned with a new content by the Young Turks as boldly articulated by Hüseyin Cahid in his

⁹¹ I thank Hakan Erdem for drawing my attention to the novelty of millet-i hakime and its probable transplantation from Habsburgian political language.

⁹² Ahmed Cevdet Pasha in his Tezakir writes; ―Ehl-i İslamdan bir çoğu; „Aba ve ecdadımızın kanıyla kazanılmış olan hukuk-u mukaddese-i milliyemizi bugün gaib ettik. Millet-i İslâmiye millet-i hâkime iken böyle bir mukaddes haktan mahrum kaldı. Ehl-i İslâma bu bir ağlayacak ve matem edecek gündür deyû söylenmeye başladılar. Teb‟a–i gayri müslime ise ol gün raiyyet silkinden çıkıp millet-i hâkime ile tesâvi kazanmış olduklarından anlarca bir yevm-i meserret idi”. Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1986, v. I, p. 68. Although the quote gives the impression that there existed an established self-perception as ―millet-i hakime‖ from time immemorial, in fact this perception was attained as a reaction to the perceived threat from the advancement of non-Muslims. Yetim, Fahri, SDÜ Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, December 2008, No.18, pp. 66-68.

⁹³ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, London; New York: Verso, 1991, pp. 83- 111.

⁹⁴ Deringil, Selim, ―They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery‖, Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 2, (2003), pp. 311-343; Makdisi, Ussama, The Culture of Secterianism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

notorious article ―Millet-i Hakime‖ in Tanin in 1908 and transmitted to the Young Turk generation and the secular and ethnicized Turkish nationalism and subsequently to the practices and premises of the republic vis-à-vis the non-Muslim minorities⁹⁵).

Given that the new generation of historians established that the early modern European state formation was pivotal in the making of the modern state and paradigms of governance⁹⁶, the reception of these structures of governance and the ideological settings by the Ottoman Empire had to be relocated to an earlier date. Thus, we can argue that the Turkish nationalist discourse was simultaneously influenced from the hierarchical premises of both modern and premodern imaginations and visions of political order. On the one hand, the 19^th century colonialist visions that presupposed the superiority of the

―enlightened ones‖ impacted nascent Turkish nationalism. On the other hand, hierarchy and order were two of the principal ethical premises of classical Ottoman polity appropriated by the later generations also receptive to early modern and modern influences

-both deriving from domestic origins and imported from the European patterns-. Thus, the hierarchy in its established form based not necessarily on acquired but inherited merits was one of the founding stones of the 19th century Ottoman ideology; furthermore, this specific ideological formation was derived from different and sometimes contradicting sources.

 

 

 

1.4.                 Discovery of a Nation for a State and for an Intelligentsia

 

 

 

⁹⁵ Kerimoğlu, Hasan Taner, İttihat-Terakki ve Rumlar 1908-1914, Libra, 2009, pp. 69-70; Peçe, Uğur, Greek Otttomans in the 1908 Parliament, unpublished MA Thesis, Sabancı University, 2007, pp. 16-18.

⁹⁶ Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; Bernard, Paul, Jesuits and Jacobins: Enlightennment and Enlightened Despotism in Austria, University of Illinoi Press, 1971; Bernard, Paul, From the Enlightenment to the Police State, University of Illinois Press, 1991; Ingrao, Charles, ―The Problem of

‗Enlightened Despotism‘ and the German States‖, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, Supplement: Politics and Society in the Holy Roman Empire, 1500-1806 (Dec., 1986),

pp. 161-180; Ertman, Thomas, The Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Within this hierarchical order paradigm, it is argued that, the Ottoman ruling elite

―discovered‖ Turks and ―Muslims‖ as a community with which it can identify itself in response to two different challenges. The first was the challenge of a series of non-Muslim unrests shattering the Ottoman imperal authority severely. The second was the encroachment of the European great powers on the Empire. The unchallengeable military and diplomatic supremacy of Europe exerted a severe pressure on the Ottomans forcing them to encounter the European powers. It may be argued that, a self-identity was developed in response to these emerging perceived threats. These perceived threats enforced the imperial center not only to develop new mechanisms of legitimacy but also to engender new self-identities. The discovery of a religio-ethnic community in its road to the discovery of Turkishness could be located within the historical context of these grim realities and pressures.

We speculated that, in the beginning, the idea of a certain proto-nationhood was an imperial project ―discovered‖ by the ruling elite, not necessarily overlapping with an ethnical understanding of nationhood. This argument is not surprising at all given that the process was more or less similar in some other cases, especially in the Eastern European examples (in the hands of ―intellectuals‖ in the lack of a ―ruling class‖).⁹⁷ However, we have to bear in mind that the Ottoman Empire retained its religious/imperial identity while discovering and developing a certain proto-nationhood for itself. Moreover, it is important to reiterate that at least before the 1860s, there is no possibility about speaking of an intellectual elite independent from the state. The Turkish/Muslim intelligentsia was hardly distinguishable from the state elite. No Habermasian intellectual ―public sphere‖ independent  from  the  political  realm  and  political  authority  emerged  in  the

 

 

 

⁹⁷ Hroch, Miroslav, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1985; Hroch, Miroslav. ―From National Movement into the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe‖, in Mapping the Nation, Balakrishnan, Gopal & Anderson, Benedict (ed.), London; New York: Verso, 1996, pp. 80-

81. For the emergence and discovery of of South East European nationalisms by intellectual elites, see Kitromilides, Paschalis M, ―The Enlightenment East and West: A Comparative Perspective on the Ideological Origins of the Balkan Political Traditions‖, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 10, no: 1, 1983, pp. 58-60.

Ottoman/Turkish centre (especially until 1908).⁹⁸ Furthermore, the emergence of a public sphere outside the state did not bring an ―emancipation‖ of the intellectual elite from the political authority as occured in Russia with the emergence of a totally new class known as

―raznochintsy‖. The latter one distinguished itself and its interests from the state and the classes whose interests were strictly dependent on the state. The raznochintsy, a class composed of graduates of colleges who were devoid of the prospect of quick advancement in the civil service and therefore alienated from the state-centered prospects of life and worldview, did develop its own knowledge, its own values and value system independent of the state. Therefore the raznochinsty nurtured its own public sphere and spaces of free public discussion such as literary journals and publishing networks.⁹⁹ Contrary to the process of the emergence and development of the intelligentsia in Russia, Ottoman intelligentsia did not break away from imperial paternalism. On the contrary, it associated its interests and prospects with the interests and prospects of the state. The Ottoman intelligentsia, in terms of its members‘ occupations, wealth and lineages (blood lines as well as genealogies not based on blood lines) continued to be wedded around the state. The question of the destiny of the Ottoman state continued to be the central preoccupation of the elite as their assets relied on the well-being of the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, it was their concern regarding the fate of the political authority in which they had faith that motivated them to endeavor for a community/nation.¹⁰⁰ Thus, the Ottoman/Turkish

⁹⁸ For the emergence of a bourgeois public sphere and its aspects, see Habermas, Jurgen,

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

⁹⁹ For the emergence and development of the raznochintsy in 1860s, see Kimerling Wirtschafter, Elise, ―The Groups Between: Raznochintsy, Intelligentsia, Professionals‖, in Lieven, Dominic (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Cambridge, UK. : Cambridge University Press, 2006, v. II, pp. 245-263; Confino, Michael, ―On Intellectuals and Intellectual Tradition in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Russia‖, Daedalus, 101-3 (1972) pp. 107-149. Also see Becker, Christopher, ―Raznochintsy: The Development of the Word and of the Concept‖, American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb., 1959), pp. 63-74; Pipes, Richard, Russia under the Old Regime, Penguin Books, 1977, pp. 249-280. For the background of the ―parting of ways‖ which did never happen in the Ottoman/Turkish context, see Riasanovsky, Nicholas, A Parting of Ways: Government and Educated Public in Russia 1801-1855, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

¹⁰⁰ For a discussion of nationalism as elite politics and elite strategies, see Brass, Paul R, Ethnicity and Nationalism, New Delhi; Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1991. Brass perceives nationalism as an invention of the elites especially in the case of Indian Muslims.

intellectual sphere was more or less a function of the state and the knowledge they produced could not be disassociated from the state including the knowledge they produced with regard to nation and ethnicity. Therefore, although the impact of Balkan nationalism was considerable, the Turkish intellectuals‘ discovery of the proto-nationhood and ethnie was a rather different experience from their East European counterparts. Their discovery was molded to a major extent within an imperial discourse.

At the same time, it is possible to talk about the actuality and historicity of a ―Turkish ethnie‖ a la Anthony Smith. By Turkish ethnie, we mean those Sunni Muslim populations who either spoke Turkish or who identified in their minds Sunni Islam with Turkishness. Furthermore, it could be claimed that there existed an implicit self-consciousness (based on linguistic and cultural distinctions) among the Turkish-speaking population who felt to a certain degree that they belonged to a certain community which distinguished them from the Albanians in Macedonia and from the Kurds, Arabs and others in Eastern Anatolia and in the Levante. It could be anticipated that with the improvement of communications, transportation and enhancement of the awareness of the existence of a world beyond their localities, a feeling of belonging that surpassed people‘s localities would emerge. However, this was not a natural and an inevitable process but rather a constructed one which was foremost political (rather than social or cultural).

Furthermore, it is more accurate to speak of various Turkish ethnies (or proto-nations) that shared a similar language and accumulated a shared memory transmitted in the courses of generations throughout centuries. However, the existence of common traits does not rule out the potentiality of separate nations-in making. It was the marginalization and trivialization of differences and nuances which together with the exposure and emphasizing of commonalities and resemblances that engendered the imagination of a single Turkish nation. Among these potential Turkish nations-in-making, the Roumelian community was arguably raised to betray the main attributes of the emerging Turkish nation in the eyes of

Also for an assessment which traces the origins of nationalism into the early modern centuries and designates the nobility as the founders and developers of nationalism, see Greenfeld, Liah, Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992. Greenfeld notes that the intellectuals and professionals of nineteenth century were the promulgators and disseminators of nationalism rather than inventors of nationalism. (p.22) Such an analysis of the roles of the social clusters in the making of Turkish nationalism may render the birth and development of Turkish nationalism more explicable.

its spiritual founders; what we have called the Young Turk generation.¹⁰¹ The rise of Roumelians was arguably fundamental due to two factors; Balkans‘ relative openness to the impact of the West and its position as a war zone in a combat in which Turks were on defensive. Thus, we may suggest that, the modern imagination and construction of the Turkish nationhood (Turkish nationhood ―as we know it today‖) was very much shaped by the individual/communal experiences of 19th century Roumelian Turks.

Therefore, it may be argued that, a significant factor in the forging of the imagination of a ―certain‖ Turkish nationhood was the Roumelian origin of the Young Turk generation. These Young Turks rose up from the opportunity of a good education and were able to subsequently join the Ottoman bureaucracy based on their distinguishing merits (besides all others belonging to the same generational cluster and coming from all the parts of Ottoman Empire benefiting the educational opportunities provided by the imperial schooling system).

This is not to say that they ―invented‖ the Turkish nation in their image. On the contrary, the origins of Turkish nationalism went further back before Roumelian recruits modified it. Here, I would prefer to use the word ―nationalism‖ rather than ―Turkish nationalism‖ because the sentiment of nationalism is not simply a matter of discriminating and privileging ethnies. Beyond referring to ethnies, nationalism is fundamentally a feeling of belonging expressed within the discourse of ethnicities establishing the inner and outer groups upon ethnic differences. However, nationalism can not be reduced simply to a matter of ethnicities. Indeed, nationalisms address loyalties beyond ethnicities. It is not easy to distinguish between coexisting loyalties and isolate one of them. The very fundamental reference of nationalism is the concept of ―we‖.¹⁰² In this framework of conceptualization, the antagonist is ―they‖.