5.2

 

In the Ottoman/Turkish context, it may be explicable to use the word ―they‖ rather than ―other‖. Before the 19^th century, the ―Turks‖ (and ―Muslims‖) did know the ―others‖ without necessarily ―otherizing‖ them as ―they‖. This was because they did not previously

¹⁰¹ Zürcher, Erik Jan, ―The Young Turks-Children of the Borderlands ?‖, International Journal of Turkish Studies, vol:9, 2003, pp. 275-286.

¹⁰² For a discussion of ―we‖ in Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, see Neumann, Christoph K, ―Whom Did Ahmed Cevdet Represent ?‖, in The Late Ottoman Society, Elizabeth Özdalga (ed.), London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.

perceive a ―threat‖ from them. ―Other‖ was safely distant and unthreatening to ―us‖ never posing the danger of mingling with ―us‖. In the old order, everybody knew their place, as did non-Muslims. The passing of the old order severely shattered the non-Muslim communities as well. Once the old hierarchical order was shattered, the non-Muslim entities became legitimate rivals with equal or higher chances to outdo Muslims in a free (and Darwinian) competition¹⁰³. The process of realizing the competitive advantages of the outsiders of yesterday became the cement of the emergence of an awareness of belonging to a community for Muslims (of Turkish and non-Turkish origin). It may be argued that, as the Muslim populace lost its natural/naturalized and inherited superiority, the psychology of entrenchment put the seeds of a sense of nationalism in search of an identity.

This development was visible in the localities. However, such conceptualizations/categorizations were to remain local phenomena unless an external force was to be exerted. It was a ―central project‖ to ―politicize‖ these local senses of belongings and unite unrelated developments and incorporate them into one single grand narrative.¹⁰⁴ Apparently, ―nation‖ is a political concept by definition. However, it is built on non-political themes. It may be ―artificial‖ in its political construction, though this political construction builds on genuine non-political concerns and social-economical realities. If we define modernity as the politicization of what had been non-political, publicization of what had been private; then nationalism was arguably the main protagonist of this transformation.

 

 

 

¹⁰³ For a critique of the Balkan historiography regarding the Ottoman Empire, see Adanır, Fikret & Faroqhi, Suraiya,―Introduction‖, in Adanır, Fikret & Faroqhi, Suraiya, The Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography, Leiden; Boston; Brill: Brill, 2002, pp. 40-44. Also see Daskalov, Rumen, The Making of a Nation in the Balkans: Historiography of the Bulgarian Revival, Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2004.

¹⁰⁴ For the discussion of how diverse Greek regional communities with different languages, cultures and memories like Pontus Greeks, Capadocian Greeks, Cypriotic Greeks were assembled together and incorporated into a single Greekness by the policies of 19th century Greek government and intellectuals and managed by Greek schooling and other mechanisms, Kitromilides, Paschalis, ―Greek Irredentism in Asia Minor and Cyprus‖, Middle Eastern Studies, (26:1), 1990, pp. 3-17.

The existence of local rivalries does not necessarily bring out the politicization of the concepts of nation and belonging¹⁰⁵ as well as the form of its politicization¹⁰⁶ although it is a fact that with the advent of the modern age, ―knowledge of human behaviour.  became

nationalized and universalized. Events that occur in isolated villages and hamlets or on the city streets have become subject to placement in categories and contexts previously unknown to or incidental to the lives of those who experience them.‖¹⁰⁷ We may observe that, the ethnic tensions and atrocities in the Balkans before reaching its climax during the Balkan Wars established the founding memories of Turkish nationalism. The sufferings and the subsequent exiling of the Turkish/Muslim civilians in the Balkan Wars was arguably the apex of this process. ¹⁰⁸

Here, a very critical dimension had to be reintroduced. As claimed above, it is not possible to speak of the existence of a certain single ―Turkishness‖ within the Ottoman geography. ―A certain idea of Turkishness‖ can be constructed along with a certain conception of territoriality and the existence of an undisputable center. A well-know response of Fuad Pasha to the British ambassador to Constantinople, Stratford Canning as quoted in Cevdet Pasha‘s ―Tezakir‖ illustrates this perception: ―The integrity of the Ottoman Empire is founded on four premises. As long as these four premises are retained, it progresses. In the absence of any of these premises, it can not be held. These premises are as follows: the nation of Islam, the Turkish state, the dynasty of the Ottomans and

¹⁰⁵ For the evolution of local rivalries and aggressions into the ethnic hatreds during and after the Balkan Wars see the report of the Carnegie Report. The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993. For the violent crashes and feuds between Bulgarians and Greeks within villages and communities before the outbreak of Balkan Wars and throughout the Hamidian era, see Dakin, Douglas, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia, 1897-1913, Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1966, p. 45.

¹⁰⁶ For example left-wing political identities derived in many cases from local enmities as it happened in the post-WW II Greece, Italy and France. Accordingly, the endorsement of right and left political stances were derivations of non-political and pre-political cleavages. See Kalyvas, Stathis, ―Red Terror: Leftist Violence during the Occupation‖, in After the War was Over, Mazower, Mark (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 176.

¹⁰⁷ Brass, Paul, Theft of an Idol, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 4

¹⁰⁸ For the impact of the Balkan Wars on the production of Turkish memory, see the short stories of Ömer Seyfeddin such as Beyaz Lale, Primo Türk Çocuğu and Bomba.

Istanbul as its capital.‖ (Devlet-i Aliyye dört esas üzere müesses olup bunlar ile her nasıl istenilir ise idaresi ve ilerlemesi kabil olur ve bunlardan kangısı nakıs olur ise idare kabil olmaz. Dört esas budur. Millet-i islamiyye devlet-i türkiyye salatin-i osmaniyye payitaht-ı Istanbul.¹⁰⁹)

To be able to incorporate rivers Vardar and Arax within the same imagination, a deux ex machina is necessary. It may be argued that, it was the ―myth of Istanbul‖ around which the idea of Ottoman/Turkish imagery/ideal was constructed. It was a pivotal element that enabled the flourishment and consolidation of an encompassing Turkishness within a wide geographical setting. Apparently, Istanbul symbolized the grandeur of the Ottoman imperium. Here, the symbolism of Istanbul can be taken as the ―primacy of politics‖ (i.e. external interference of the center) which facilitated the unification of the various strands and embodiments of Turkishness. This was yet another instance of the critical role of the imperium in the making of the political Turkish ethnie.

Thus, the making of the Turkish nation and a single Turkish ethnie eliminating local differences was an amalgamation of different processes in progress. It is impossible to dissociate any of these constitutive elements of Turkish nation and nationalism. The center needed the peripheral forces; however, the peripheral forces were to remain politically negligible unless stimulated and manipulated by the center. Regarding the making and development of Turkish national awareness and Turkish nationalism, there was no one single storyline in progress but different plots developing independently within the storyline to be intersected at a later point in time in the storyline. The imperial center was the reference point both for the peripheral developers of Turkish nationalism and the intellectuals situated in Istanbul and served as the unifier of these different storylines.

 

 

 

1.1.                 Ruling Elite of the Tanzimat

 

At this point, it is necessary to undertake an analysis of the Tanzimat ruling elite. In order to make such an analysis, a meticulous and extensive work is to be undertaken; here two different clusters referring to two different generations, socializations and upbringings,

¹⁰⁹ Cevdet Paşa, Tezakir, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1986, Vol I, p.85.

will be proposed. The two clusters proposed are that of the Tanzimat generation and the Young Turk generation¹¹⁰. These clusters will constitute models similar to the Weberian ideal types. In reality, they resemble and overlap with each other as much as they diverge. The transformation of the former to the later and transitional figues defying such a reductionism and duality are also observable, especially in the outlook of the bureaucrats of the late Hamidian era¹¹¹. The complete detachment of these two clusters (generations) would only conceal the Tanzimat origins of the Young Turk era. Furthermore, this study aims to emphasize the evolution of a structure of mind rather than to assess the generational change in terms of ―the revolt of sons against their fathers‖. This study focuses on what we will call the ―Tanzimat generation‖ and discusses the ―Young Turk‖ generation when necessary. In the next chapters, it will be attempted to be demonstrated that, the diplomats of the Hamidian Foreign Ministry were very much representative of their Tanzimat generation in their upbringing, socialization and mental structures.

We may also divide the Tanzimat generation into two distinctive sub-groups. In our scheme, ―the early Tanzimat elite‖ was comprised of the higher echelons of the imperium from 1840s onwards who received limited and informal education, lacking professionalism and pursuing precarious careers. The Hamidian generation (the other sub-group of the Tanzimat generation) displayed the gradual maturation of the Tanzimat elite comprised of bureaucrats with more or less formalized educational backgrounds benefiting from the educational opportunities provided by the late Tanzimat reforms and holding clearly defined public offices and smooth careers. With the Hamidian era, it may be said that, the reforms of Tanzimat had widened to encompass the entirely of the state structure. Therefore, a modern bureaucracy, structured to a certain degree in terms of merit and formal education, became visible (albeit with limitations) as a gradual development of the Tanzimat. However, the nature of the Hamidian bureaucracy has to be qualified. The 19^th

¹¹⁰ By ―Young Turk generation‖, we do not refer strictly to the Young Turks and Unionists. By ―Young Turk generation‖, we refer to the generation that grew up in the late 19th century, educated in the Hamidian imperial schools, socialized in a particular cultural and intellectual milieu and became much more equipped with Western and modern knowledge and vision. Thus this category subsumes the bulk of the young bureaucrats of the Hamidian era.

¹¹¹ For example, see Çetinsaya, Gökhan, Ottoman Administration in Iraq, 1890-1908, London; New York: 2006, p. 71.

century bureaucratic culture hardly resembled the 20^th century formal and impersonal bureaucratic culture. Instead, it relied predominantly on personal connections, thrusts and skills acquired less based on formal education but more on cultural socializations. It may be observed that the preexisting agrarian-coercive ruling elite reinvented itself as the bureaucratic elite and assumed bureaucratic offices.¹¹²

Here, we are using the term, ―ruling elite‖, a rather ambiguous term. This term has to be precisely defined. By the term ruling elite, I mean a group of people who had reached the higher echelons of the Ottoman polity by merit, blood or mere chance and felt secure to transfer their wealth and prestige to their descendents. Şerif Mardin, in his classic book convincingly argued that by the time of Tanzimat or by the late reign of Mahmud II, there was an emerging self-consciousness and recognition of the idea of being a closed ruling elite with proper education and skills that was motivated and felt responsible for the maintenance and upholding of the Ottoman polity, taking the ultimate responsibility for the destiny of the Ottoman polity from the sultan.¹¹³

This elite was not a hermetically closed community. It allowed and even encouraged new recruits. However, that does not mean that it was a completely ―open‖ system welcoming any new member emphatically. A very important condition for admission into the ruling elite was the capacity and willingness to endorse the necessary mores, code of conduct, values and motivations of the governing elite and the state. In short, the new recruit had to attain the same ethos. Generally, this requirement did not generate such a drastic obstacle because the required education and training did infuse the relevant mores, and the new graduates learned not to pose serious challenges to the ideological pillars of the state structure. They willingly and enthusiastically assimilated themselves.

It is important to observe that many subjects of the sultan were unfavorable candidates to be admitted into the state elite due to their inappropriate ethnic, confessional or social backgrounds. Though, many from the unfavorable ethnic and communal groups were incorporated into the ruling elite, the extent of incorporation among these ―unfavorable

¹¹² See Akarlı, Engin Deniz, ―The Tangled Ends of an Empire: Ottoman Encounters with the West and Problems of Westernization—an Overview‖, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26.3 (2006), pp. 353-366.

¹¹³ Mardin, Şerif, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000, pp. 110-112.

groups‖ remained limited. It is possible to imagine that this discrimination tacitly and implicitly contributed to the realization of a belonging to a certain (national) identity which generates a sympathy with the population with whom they supposedly share the same ethos and same (notorious) fate in the context of the collapse of the empire which, incidentally, also threatened their material and non-material interests and dignity. The proposition could be made that an imagination of a cross-class community sharing commonalities was forged in this process.

The new recruits faced few practical problems in their conversion and assimilation to the state and the state elite. Of course, they were to encounter severe grievances and injustices as they were the new recruits to be sidelined and abused by the more privileged in the highly corrupted statecraft of the late Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman establishment was a conservative/patriarchal polity in which newcomers were not welcomed enthusiastically. That is, they were to be admitted to the governing elite although they were not acknowledged as equal as others. However, such mistreatments and discriminations derived partially from personal rivalries as a consequence of the gerontocratic and patriarchal understanding of statecraft which esteemed age and seniority and therefore would be outdone with the gradual promotion within the state bureaucracy.

On the other hand, the governing elite in the late Ottoman Empire was always ―in the making‖ and continued to be ―in making‖ throughout the early republic as the number of bureaucrats and the students studying in the imperial colleges of the Empire continued to rise exponentially in every generation. Every new generation of officials redefined the nature and build up of the Ottoman bureaucracy and polity although never radically altering its characteristics. Thus, continuity within changes is visible. The problem of failing to inject the ethos to the new recruits arose in the late Hamidian era when the education began to fail to mold the recruits with an appropriate upbringing. The new generation became disenchanted with the acclaimed ethos of the empire. The new generation demanded the modification of Ottoman ideological build up and rejected the ethos introduced to them in their training. Though, the main premises of the new generation were not destructive to the thrust of the imperial discourse.

1.2.                 The Elite-Formation and Identity-Formation Processes of the Tanzimat

 

It is important to emphasize that it is possible to speak of such a self-conscious state elite for the first time in the two decades just preceding the Rescript of Tanzimat (Reform) which ensued the proclamation of the Rescript. With the Tanzimat, dignitaries were assured that they would not be arbitrarily beheaded and their wealth and property not be confiscated as a consequence of their dismissal from office.¹¹⁴ The recognition of the maintenance of personal wealth after dismissal from office with the Rescript of Tanzimat also brought a new self-understanding of this elite. Previously, wealth, property and honor were seen as an imperial grant and therefore bound to the imperial grace. The state made the man and thus the beneficence endowed by the state may be revoked once the grace is withdrawn. With the termination of confiscations, the grandees‘ pomposity began to belong solely to the individuals themselves. Such a guarantee and acknowledgement of the right to retain their property and wealth turned this ―grouping‖ for the first time into a class-for-itself (in a non-Marxian sense). This does not mean that with the state‘s (or sultan‘s) recognition of the irrevocability of the wealth, this elite became relatively detached from the state. On the contrary, we may argue that, with the assurance of their possessions, they became associated/identified with the state even more closely since the legal recognition of their possessions meant that their wealth, prestige and reputation became bound to the survival and well-being of the Ottoman state. Thus, now, they had a major stake in the future of the Ottoman state for the first time.¹¹⁵

 

¹¹⁴ For a conscious advocacy of the importance of the assurance of the civil officialdom see Sadık Rıfat Pasha‘s Müntehabat-ı Asar, quoted extensively in Mardin, Şerif, ibid, pp.179- 190.

¹¹⁵ For a parallel and comparative ―emergence of an aristocratic caste‖ in the absence of official recognition of aristocracy, the Turkish aristocracy in Egypt is a very instructive example. The Turkish caste which derived its power not from holding land and property but from holding technical and bureaucratic knowledge and its domination of military and civil bureaucracy, establishment itself in the reign of Muhammed Ali and consolidated its power throughout the nineteenth century. Its supremacy was derived from functional and cultural origins. For a discussion of this peculiar aristocratic caste, see Grant, Samuel Becker, Modern Egypt and the Turco-Egyptian Elite, unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan, 1968, pp. 47-48, 88-90.

In the late Ottoman Empire, as a residue of the pre-modern political-economical order and pattern, wealth continued to be distributed and redistributed not according to the ownership of capital and holding of means of production but according to the control of the political power. The distribution of the capital was not determined as a function of relations of capital but as a function of relations of political power.

Marx is criticized for disregarding the importance of the mechanisms of distribution and redistribution and the prominent role the owners of the means of distribution and redistribution assumed in the economic sphere although it was Marx himself who vividly demonstrated the unprecedented transformative power of forces of capital with the onset of capitalism (i.e. modernity). Contrary to Marx, we may argue that, before the advent of modern age, regardless of who made the actual production, the power laid with the political authority. It was the coercive mechanisms of the political authorities that could be able to extract the surplus from the producers and the owners of the tools of production based on their legitimate rights drawn on the divine grace and customs.¹¹⁶ So, we may argue that, whoever generated a certain surplus within the Ottoman lands, the ultimate profiteer and ultimate accumulator of surplus was the political authority. The social group who benefited from the accumulation of wealth in the treasury was the state elite, the persons who held the key positions in the state‘s extraction of wealth.

Moreover, before the Industrial Revolution, productivity and efficiency was minimal and production created only very little surplus.¹¹⁷ That means, the best option to accumulate wealth was not intensive production (unless there was a gigantic market demand like in the Roman Empire) but plunder and tribute. Therefore, military activity was the quintessential occupation to accumulate wealth. Simply put, warfare was not only an economic activity in pre-modernity but it was also the most profitable business. Apparently, the military entrepreneurs and contractors like Wallenstein were amassing

¹¹⁶ Randall Collins names this mode of social order as ―agrarian-coercive‖. Collins, Randall, Macrohistory, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. For Collins, the chief benefaciaries of this order were those who held the tools of (material and spiritual) coercion like states, land and monasteries. In this order, it was not the market but the coercive mechanisms that determined the production and distribution of wealth.

¹¹⁷ For a very good demonstration of the role and meaning of warfare in the context of early medieval Europe, see Duby, Georges, The Early Growth of the European Economy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.

enormous amount of wealth and were the successful businessmen of their time.¹¹⁸ This analysis establishes that the possessors of the right to use violence and coercion and not the producers of material goods were more likely to be ―elites‖ even in economical terms. The state itself was also an economic activity and a mechanism to extract and transfer wealth. Moreover, the state was a privilege of those who claimed it for themselves and therefore benefited from its material advantages.

While discussing the transitional period of the Ottoman statecraft from a medieval self-interested and self-oriented organization to a ―patron state‖ claiming to represent and uphold the benefit of all its subjects (and land), Ehud Toledano defines the classical and transitional Ottoman state as follows:

―If ‗state‘ is taken to reflect a well-integrated modern entity  then this is not what the

Ottoman Empire was during the period reviewed in this book (19th century-DG). Rather, it was a ―compound‖ polity, made up of a coalition of interest groups that formed its imperial elite. That elite was mostly male and Muslim, multiethnic, kul/harem and freeborn, military-administrative-legal-learned, urban and rural, officeholding and propertied, Ottoman-imperial and Otoman-local.  It is in that sense

of a composite polity that we use here the term Ottoman ‗state‘ which also jibes with the notion of a ‗classical tributary empire‘....(It) consisted of ―segmented, loosely integrated, and partly overlapping forms of power and authority.‖¹¹⁹

The description of Ehud Toledano fits well with our Marxian framework which presupposes not a well-knit and perfectly organized exploitative elite but a conglomerate of various clusters with different inclinations and orientations sharing a common interest and assembled as a compromise in this joint venture. Toledano makes the point that in contrast to the rhetoric of Tanzimat, this organization did not change considerably throughout the 19th century although it was on its way to transform itself into a ―patron state‖, especially by the Hamidian era. It is also important to note that, this transition was arguably managed without disturbing the interests of the ―ruling elite(s)‖.

 

 

 

 

¹¹⁸ For Wallenstein, see Mann, Golo, Wallenstein: His Life Narrated, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.

¹¹⁹ Toledano, Ehud, As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. 108-9.

Of course, here it will not be intended to make a comprehensive and all-encompassing Marxian analysis of the Ottoman state elite.¹²⁰ However, it is important to construct an operational framework to comprehend the dynamics of the (trans)formation of the19th century Ottoman state elite. Here it is argued that, given that the structure and patterns of Ottoman political organization were favoring Muslims (and even more so Turks¹²¹) in admitting them into the elite and including them, this Marxian scheme can be seen as illustrating the foundations of the making of the Turkish nation forged around the pivot of Ottoman polity. Here, it is argued that, the effort and urge to safeguard the economical system maintained throughout the several Ottoman centuries contributed to the generation of a Turkish/Ottoman national awareness and subsequently nationalism to flourish throughout 19^th century and onwards.¹²² In other words, the very Turkish nationalism was

¹²⁰ For the conceptualization of the pre-modern Middle Eastern elites by themselves and by the people, see Ayalon, Ami, Language and Change in the Arabic Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 52-68.

¹²¹ Turks were began to be perceived as early as early nineteenth century. While the Ottoman Empire was establishing the new conscript army after the abolishment of Janissaries, non-Turks were seen as unreliable and therefore Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhamediye was formed of predominantly Turkish populace. See Erdem, Y. Hakan,

―Recruitment for the ‗Victorious Soliders of Muhammad‘ in the Arab Provinces, 1826- 1828‖,Gershoni, Israel & Erdem, Y. Hakan, Woköck, Ursula (ed.), Histories of the Middle East, Boulder; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002, pp. 189-206.

¹²² Although obviously nations did not exist as fixed entities throughout history, this does not mean that nations were created in the beginning of the modern age ex nihilo. In this sense, nations are genuine not because they did exist before the modern age but because they were constituted not as a manipulations of sinister puppet masters but constituted spontaneously due to the impelling of the dramatically changing circumstances. Nation- making process was the amalgamation of responses to the very recent developments and therefore ―nations‖ have their genuineness. Based on an economical explanation, nation- formation resembles the class-formation. Michael Mann explains fascisms as a formulation of class war, for example in countries such as Poland, Austria (and Germany to a less extent) Jew constituted a very high percentage of the practitioners of liberal professions and economical enterprises. In this context, anti-semitism emerged as an expression of class hatreds and class prejudices. It was also an expression of the have-nots against the haves. (see Mann, Micheal, Fascists, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2004). Mann interprets the genocides again as the ultimate expression of class envies.

―Ethnic hostility rises where ethnicity trumps class as the main form of social stratification, in the process capturing and channeling classlike sentiments towards ethnonationalism‖ (Mann, Michael, The Dark Side of Democracy, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2005, p.5) Mann criticizes theorists of nationalism such as Brubaker, Hutchinson

partially an effort of the beneficiaries of the political/economical structure to hold on to their medieval state privileges at a time when revolutionary transformations of economic and political environments took place.

The expropriation of the domestic produce was no more possible in the age of imperialism, foreign intrusion and the internationalization of Ottoman economy. Although with the introduction of machinery, the surplus obtained in production had boomed exponentially, the Ottoman state lost its privileged share in the distribution of the surplus obtained. Market forces and foreign merchants began to get increasing shares from the aggregate surplus and thus weakened the significance and pivotal status of the Ottoman polity and its shareholders. The role of the state in economical relations declined and destroyed the economic privileges of the beneficiaries of the Ottoman polity.¹²³ This process was expected in the age of the emergence and predatory expansion of the market. Although countries such as Britain had increased their power with benefiting from the expansion of the market, Ottoman polity perceived market as its binary opposite. With the marketization process, economic relations could no more be determined along ethno/religious identities and communities in the age of market in which everything solid melted into the air. Market in Europe demolished all socially constructed structures and communities such as guilds and aristocracy.¹²⁴ The Ottoman center elite, holding onto the classical perceptions, tried its best to perpetuate the economical relations as they used to be

and Smith for completely neglecting the class relations in the making of nationalisms. He also criticizes those who see class as something materialistic and nations something emotional such as Connor and Horowitz. (p.5) Although here Mann points outs the dynamics of class in the making of nationalisms, the class dimension is significant in the very making of the nations as well. In the Balkan nationalisms and the Turkish one, this interrelation was even more significant.

¹²³ Pamuk, Şevket, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 9-10; Quataert, Donald, ―The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914‖, in Faroqhi, Suraiya & McGowan, Bruce & Quataert, Donald & Pamuk, Şevket, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Cambridge,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997, v. II, pp. 762-63; Küçükkalay, Mesud A, Osmanlı İthalatı: İzmir Gümrüğü 1818-1839, İstanbul: Kitap Yayınları, 2007, p. 37; Kasaba, Reşat, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century, New York: SUNY, 1988.

¹²⁴ It may be interesting to recall Karl Polanyi‘s portrayal of the dissolution of all medieval social constructs and the crisis of the Ottoman state‘s imagination of the new age of market.

and depended on politically, socially and culturally constructed categories and distinctions. The fact that Muslims (and primarily Turks) were the beneficiaries of the pre-modern economic organization and it was the non-Muslims who benefited from the marketization of economy ensued the ethnicization of the economic transformation and thus the economic cleavages (such as in the case of Balkan peasant rebellions in which Christian peasants rebelled against the Muslim landowners throughout 19^th century) caused the formations of ethnic symbolisms and identities.

In the Ottoman Empire, the askeri class/reaya distinction had already collapsed in the 17^th century if it had ever existed in its perfect form.¹²⁵ The devşirme system also had collapsed by the late 17 century. By 19^th century, all the constructed and imagined social structures and distinctions were in retreat and on the verge of collapse. In the pre-Tanzimat period, ―there was nothing like one Ottoman elite, there were a number of them, and some of the elite groups would have had no place in the sixteenth-century concept of askeri; it is sufficient to mention as examples the tax-farming provincial notable, the non-Muslim kocabaşı (local or regional community leader) the Phanariot hospodar or the Armenian money-lender of substance who belonged to the group of people called amira.”¹²⁶ In this period, we also observe the emergence of an ulema aristocracy.¹²⁷ ―Aristocracy‖ here is meant a closed community enjoying the advantages of entitlements and stubbornly keeping the community intact. This privilege was maintained due to the ulema‟s divine/exceptional status. The ulema had managed to avoid outside interferences and meddling, be it sultanic or otherwise. The ulema aristocratic families managed to hold onto a common interest, a certain sense of class-for-itself. In short, we can speak of a fragmented and subcontracted

 

¹²⁵ For an assessment of the askeri class in the classical age Fleisher, Cornell, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in he Ottoman Empire: Historian Mustafa Ali, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

¹²⁶ Neumann, Christoph K, ―Whom Did Ahmed Cevdet Represent ?‖, in The Late Ottoman Society, Elizabeth Özdalga (ed.), London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005, p. 117. For an overview of the Ottoman elite in the post-classical age up until the Tanzimat, see Christoph K. Neumann, ―Political and Diplomatic Developments‖, in The Cambridge History of Turkey Vol. III, Suraiya N. Faroqhi (ed.), Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 44-62. Especially see pages 52-3.

¹²⁷ Zilfi, Madelaine C, The Politics of Piety, Minneapolis: Biblioteca İslamica, 1988, p. 46.

ruling elite, not consistent with a legal framework, that survived throughout the 19^th century, basically dependent on the Ottoman state.

However, whatever the reconfiguration and reality of the Ottoman governing elite may be, the social imagination that society was split between those who are ruled (subjects) and those who rule (masters) persisted well until the early 19^th century and state continued to be imagined as a ―privilege‖. This division may be formulated in quasi-Marxian terms as between owners of the means of distribution and redistribution and those who do not own means of distribution and redistribution.¹²⁸ In theory, this division was determined by people‘s status/relation vis-a-vis the state. The askeri group was defined by its members‘ submission to a certain authority. It may be that all the members were seeking their own self-interest but pursuit of self-interests of all the individual members does not automatically entail the existence of a group interest. The existence of strong and shabby factions attested by Abou-El-Hajj and others does not indicate the existence of the presence of a bureaucratic aristocracy primarily because they did not set the rules themselves. However, these factions and rivalries had planted the seeds of the prospective emergence of a bureaucratic aristocracy and a state elite.¹²⁹ With the transformation of the Ottoman state, this group evolved into an elite for itself although the use of physical violence in intra-elite rivalries avoided the emergence of a unified and solid elite. The violent struggles between factions severely cost the governing elite as a whole and its development as a class.¹³⁰

¹²⁸ For an essay on some general characteristics of land-based pre-modern aristocratic empires (in contradistinction to the commercial empires of pre-modernity), see Kautsky, John, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997.

¹²⁹ For a comparative study of the early modern Ottoman Empire see Abou-El-Hajj, Rifat Ali, Formation of the Modern State, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991.

¹³⁰ The genealogical continuity was not a novel feature of eighteenth century. Itzkowitz writes ―Another reality which is revealed by a study of careers and career opportunities in the empire is the tendency for sons to follow in the careers of their fathers. This tendency for sons of Janissaries to become Janissaries, sons of Ulerna to become Ulema, and sons of bureaucrats to become bureaucrats was already well-established by the early seventeenth century and in the course of the eighteenth century it appears that it was getting to be awfully difficult for sons to break with the career patterns of their fathers. To put it another way, the Ottoman Empire may have been suffering from hardening of the career arteries‖. (Itzkowitz, Norman, ―Eighteenth Century Realities‖, Studia Islamica, No. 16 (1962), p. 91.

The bloody end of the Pertev Pasha-Akif Pasha conflict terminated the use of violence and physical elimination of political rivals as an effective method to advance in the hierarchy.¹³¹ The Tanzimat brought out the mutual recognition of the inviolability of the basic rights of life and property of the members of the governing elite as well as the recognition of these essential rights of the individuals belonging to the governing elite by the sultan. Hence, the Tanzimat paved the way for the emergence of a solid governing elite with a number of families, each member occupying various chief posts of the state.

Dror Ze‘evi speaks of ―the cunning hand of history...(that) plays tricks on the protagonists.‖ Ze‘evi points out to the self-destruction of the traditional kul (slave/servant – of the sultan- DG) class by voluntarily dissolving the pre-national and pre-modern (agro- literate) collective identity through the official nationalism of the Ottoman Empire. ―In the course of their attempts to create a new political and social structure, the kul unwittingly destroyed the foundations of the old one-their own.‖¹³² However, regardless of the shift to a new institutional model, I would suggest a genealogical continuity of the Tanzimat elite with that of the pre-Tanzimat elite. Itzkowitz after studying the eighteenth century Ottoman civil officialdom concludes: ―It is significant that the bureaucrats were in the forefront of those who supported the reforms of Selim III and Sultan Mahmud II in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The wearers of the fez and the long, black frock coat, the uniform of the bureaucracy under Mahmud II, were the sons of the scribes of the eighteenth century, many of them in turn, descendants of the scribes of the seventeenth century.‖¹³³

Here, it is claimed that with the diffusion of power from the political high-ranking posts to the bureaucracy at large, civil servants prominence increased. Hence, dissemination of power created a new grouping and identity.

¹³¹ For the bloody struggle between Akif Pasha and Pertev Pasha and its drastic repercussions, see Findley, Carter, Ottoman Civil Officialdom, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, pp. 70-80. This case is a very interesting showcase for the Foucauldian argument of the replacement of bodily violence with non-physical mechanisms of violence.

¹³² Ze‘evi, Dror, ―Kul and Getting Coller: The Dissolution of Elite Collective Identity and the Formation of the Official Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire‖, Mediterrenian Historical Review, 1996( 11), p. 195.

¹³³ Itzkowitz, Norman, Mehmed Raghib Pasha: The Making of an Ottoman Grand Vizier, unpublished dissertation, Princeton University, 1959, p. 21 Itzkowitz also notes that

The dignitaries of the early decades of the Tanzimat formed the first generation of these families who were predominantly scions and descendants of minor (or major) clerks and military officers of the preceding generation. Others were scions of provincial/peripheral elites moving to Istanbul. In the next decades, we observe the second and third generation of these governing elite families retaining the prominent roles of their families. A genealogical revolution will take place only with the coming of the graduates of  the  imperial  schools  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  although  even  after  the

―democratization‖ of the education, a remarkable continuity is visible.

A proposographic study would show us the genealogies, lineages and connections of the late Ottoman elite.¹³⁴ In this study, in the forthcoming chapters, this pattern will

Roderick Davison failed to recognize this continuity of the nineteenth century Ottoman bureaucracy implying that Davison treats as if the Tanzimat bureaucracy had came from outer space. Also see Itzkowitz‘s remarks in Itzkowitz, Norman & Shinder, Joel, ―The Office of Şeyh-ül Islam and the Tanzimat-A Prosopographic Enquiry‖, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Jan., 1972), p. 100. ―There is evidence to indicate that bureaucrats who progressed rapidly after 1839 to attain high; but not the highest, offices were the sons of Ottomans of low bureaucratic rank. In other words, tanzimat did not open up Ottoman status in any wholesale way to those who had not been Ottomans prior to 1839.‖ Avigdor Levy also underlines the persistence of the old elite. ―From a social point of view, the new military leadership was fully integrated with the older ruling class. It was this integration that had assured the acceptance of Mahmud's reforms in the first place, for they had not been accompanied by any social upheavals. This was an achievement of mixed significance. The absorption of the old ruling elite into the new system was a source of weakness in Mahmud's own time, for the transformation of a traditional leadership into a modern one is a slower process than the creation of a new elite. In the long run, however, the preservation of the old elite became a source of strength(.).‖ Levy, Avigdor, ―The Officer Corps in Sultan Mahmud II's New Ottoman Army, 1826-39‖, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1971), p. 39.

¹³⁴ Apart from various names articulated throughout this study, some examples coming from local dynasties and prominent families are Yusuf Kamil Pasha (İbnülemin Mahmut Kemal İnan, Son Sadrazamlar, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1982 , p. 196) Hüseyin Avni Pasha (İbnülemin…., p. 483), Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha (Rifat Uçarol, Gazi Ahmet Muhtar Paşa, İstanbul: Filiz Kitabevi, 1989, p. 7). (Istanbul or local) Ulema was another source for the recruitment of Tanzimat statesmen. Some figures were fathered by an alim such as Münif Pasha (Budak, Ali, Münif Paşa, Kitabevi, 2004, p. 4) and others came from prominent local ulema families such as Fuad Pasha (İbnülemin…, ibid,, p. 149) and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (Fatma Aliye Hanım, Ahmed Cevdet Paşa ve Zamanı, İstanbul: Kanaat Kütüphanesi, 1332, p. 7; Chambers, Richard, ―The Education of a Nineteenth- Century Ottoman Alim, Ahmed Cevdet Paşa‖, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), p. 440). Apparently, a significant portion of the

attempted to be revealed in the case of the Ottoman diplomats and a genealogical continuity from the first generation of Tanzimat to the early republic will be attempted to be established. What is more interesting than the genealogies extending from early Tanzimat (and pre-Tanzimat) to the republic are the marriage connections. The marriage- ties functioned as the glue of a somewhat closed community which delineated its borders and strengthened its cohesiveness. The significant role of the marriages will be revealed again in the case of the diplomats in the next chapters of this study. The lineages and connections observable among the Ottoman diplomats will also expose how this closed elite was integrated and how well the closed elite perceives itself as a community with clearly drawn borders and habits. Furthermore, marriages enabled this community‘s perpetuation and adjustment in terms of welcoming newcomers from the newly ascending segments of the society, which was in the process of capitalizing the economic structure and the centralization of the state.

The emergence of a kind of cohesive bureaucratic aristocracy and a state elite created a certain sense of belonging. For the first time, the governing elite constituted a certain community (imagined or real).¹³⁵ The development of the notion of belonging to a certain

 

Tanzimat elite were fathered by prominent servants of state like Mustafa Reşid Pasha (Sicill-i Osmani, p. 1384), Mehmed Emin Pasha (İbnülemin…ibid, p. 83), Mahmud Nedim Pasha (Pakalın, Mehmet Zeki, Mahmud Nedim Paşa, İstanbul: Ahmet Sait Matbaası, 1940, p. 1).

¹³⁵ The old paradigm equaled the advent of modern age with the decline of aristocracy. According to this paradigm, in the new modern world, aristocracy had no chance to live. Its age-old privileges were abolished and therefore it was forced to be ousted from the political scene. The monetarization and capitalization of the economy destroyed the economic base of the aristocracy. However, this paradigm had been questioned as the mechanisms the aristocracy developed to adapt itself to the modern economy have been studied. The new studies acknowledge a significant role to the aristocracy in the 19^th century not only in Britain but also in France (and apparently Germany). See Higgs, David, Nobles in Nineteenth Century France, John Hopkins University Press, 1987. Hence, although in the Ottoman Empire we can‘t speak of an official aristocracy in the European sense based on bloodlines, we may speak of an aristocracy based on belonging to a respectable family with venerable service to the state. In this regard, we may reanalysis the

―birth of modern Turkey‖ not centered around the Young Turks but around the previous generation. The Hamidian ―imperial classrooms‖ in which the prospective Young Turks studied and learned to revere the Ottoman polity were established out of the imaginary of the Tanzimat generation.

community was the first step for the creation of the idea of a national identity.¹³⁶ It could be envisioned that nations are imageries of families written large. If this allegory is correct, nations then symbolize what a family (or a small community consisted of people who know each other well like a neighborhood) symbolizes; intimacy, feeling of security and affection. In the case of the Ottoman governing elite, the image of Turkishness (which is itself to a certain extent a derivation of the Muslimness) may be interpreted as a projection of its own sense of belonging and identity in the face of a variety of threats close and distant.

The Tanzimat and post-Tanzimat generations of bureaucrats developed different political outlooks due to the experience of different social environments in their formative periods. The Young Turk generation, experiencing daily ethnic discriminations and cleavages, was more prone to conceptualize the social and economic matters in ethnic terms given that they felt themselves threatened and regarded themselves inferior to the non-Muslims in terms of economic and local political dynamics. For the Tanzimat generation, it was rather the opposite. ―They‖ were superior metaphysically and practically to the ones whom they regarded as their rebellious subjects or their ra‟yah.¹³⁷ They were superior to the non-Muslims both in reality and in perception. This perception, as pointed out above, originated from an actuality but persisted although the reality changed dramatically throughout the 19^th century when Muslims could not compete with the advancement of the non-Muslims. The idea that non-Muslims had to be submissive as the Islamic law and divine grace required endured even in the republican perception of the non-Muslims as a remnant of the imperial consciousness. In short, these two outlooks, sometimes contrasting and sometimes coinciding self-perceptions, were transplanted onto the modern self-image of Turkishness. Here, some simplistic categorizations do not apply.

 

 

¹³⁶ For an assessment of nationalism as a collective identity, see Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. & Schluchter, Wolfgang & Wittrock, Björn (ed), Public Spheres & Collective Identities, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001.

¹³⁷ This perception is prevalent in various 19th century accounts of Ottoman statesmen. For example see Mahmud Celaleddin Paşa, Mira‟at-ı Hakikat, İstanbul: Berekat Yayınevi, 1983; Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Paşa, Sergüzeşt-i Hayatım, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1996, v. I.

On the contrary, these continuities within breaks show the complex nature of the nature of Turkish nationalism.

This observation is congruent with the argument made above. If we agree that nationalism is not a phenomenon out-there to be grasped with the onset of modernity but instead created (in the minds), then every social-political-economical context will produce its own actuality which we call for the sake of simplification ―nationalism‖ as if all the nationalisms are equivalent or similar.¹³⁸ If we define nationalism not as a consequence of other dynamics but a ―style‖ or a ―rhetoric‖ and contextualize nationalism in relation with the socio-economical and political context in which it developed, then we may answer larger existential, distressing and profound questions to which nationalism emanated as a modest response. In this regard, nationalism may be seen as a strategy of interest-seeking. Nationalism supplies a considerable legitimacy for propagandizing for other means, generally particularistic interests of a class, a status group or a generation.

Signs of these continuities could be traced to a symbolic level. The language and vocabulary of the classical Ottoman polity was a reservoir from which the basic tenets of Turkish nationalism were reproduced. Alleged symbols of the grandeur of classical Ottoman imperium such as ―Mehter Marşı‖ were invented by the Young Turks as

―tradition‖ as were the various ―inventions‖ of Abdülhamid II regarding the origins of the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman Empire in its classical age as shown by Selim Deringil.¹³⁹ After 1908, the anniversary of the birth of the Empire began to be celebrated as a national holiday.¹⁴⁰ This practice is what Anthony Smith calls the utilization of myths

¹³⁸ Lila Abu-Lughod goes one step further and notes that the nations are reconstituted in every instance and therefore representations of the nations differ drastically in every subsequent decade. See Abu-Lughod, Lila, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 14.

¹³⁹ Deringil, Selim, ibid.

¹⁴⁰ For the development of the Ottoman historiography of the Ottoman Empire for the purpose of its glorification and its internalization/endorsement by masses infused with national sentiments, see Akbayrak, Hakan, Milletin Tarihinden Ulusun Tarihine, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2009. For the celebrations of the anniversaries of the birth of the Ottoman Empire, see Efdaleddin, ―İstiklal-i Osmani Tarih ve Günü Hakkında Tedkikat‖, Tarih-i Osmani Encümeni Mecmuası, v. V, No: 25 (1 April 1330), pp. 36-48; Polat, Nazım, Müdafaa-ı Milliye Cemiyeti, Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1991. Also see Lütfi

and symbols. Smith argues that the ethno-symbolism was prevalent throughout centuries and nationalists had built on these ethno-symbols and myths.¹⁴¹ Here, developing on Smith‘s argument, we may recall how constitutive the Ottoman symbols and myths were in the making of Turkish nationalism. However, these continuities include not only myths and symbols but the basic discourses and perceptions as well. This does not mean that Turkish nationalism was a continuation, revival or modification of Ottoman imperialism (as the Balkan nationalist historiographies like to interpret). It demonstrated how certain perceptions and modes of conduct were predetermined by the inheritance which was voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously adopted. In short, although Turkish nationalism may be a novelty and a recent phenomenon, it rose over a legacy it had adopted and appropriated. First and foremost, it took a particular perception which had been produced within a certain socio-politico-economical context and background but once constructed, it created its own reality and independent existence for its own.

Regarding the emergence of a Turkish national identity, it had been pointed out that two alternative suggestions may be stipulated. First is to maintain that national identity was brought forth by the group of people whom we called ―Young Turk generation‖, mostly originating from Roumelia coming from provincial lower middle classes¹⁴² (and some from Anatolia and Istanbul as well). The alternative interpretation is to argue that a certain national identity was already conceptualized in the center (in the abode of imperium). Of course these two alternative suggestions are ―ideal types‖ and discussed here for presenting a palpable yet simplistic modeling. Here, it is suggested that the conceptualization of the Turkish nationhood was not a smooth and straightforward process. On the contrary, it was the outcome of an interactive and complex process made, remade and negotiated every day.

 

 

Simavi, Sultan Mehmed Reşad Hanın ve Halifenin Sarayında Gördüklerim, Kanaat Kütübhanesi, 1340.

¹⁴¹ Smith, Anthony, Myths and Memories of the Nation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 8-19.

¹⁴² For the Roumelian origin of the Young Turks, see Erik J. Zürcher‘s statistics; see Zürcher, Erik J, ―The Young Turks- Children of the Borderlands ?‖, International Journal of Turkish Studies, 9/1-2 (2003), pp. 275-286.

To summarize, here it is argued that Turkish nationalism‘s perceptions, premises and assumptions can‘t be disassociated from the Ottoman central elite‘s perceptions, premises, concerns, reflexes and responses to changing circumstances. The perceptions of ―retreat‖ and ―advances of the others‖ were all retained, maintained and reinvented. Though, many novel concerns particular to the ramifications of modernity and the encounter with modernity appeared such as the proposed strategies for ―regeneration‖, a step function trajectory from the 17^th-18^th century to the discourse and nature of Ottoman/Turkish modernity can be traceable.

 

 

 

1.3.                 The Pre-Tanzimat Istanbul Elite

 

Ariel Salzmann, based on her research on the tax-farmers of 18th century, showed how the Istanbul ‗aristocracy of service‘, took advantage of a distinctly old-regime type of insider trading or what the economist Joseph Stiglitz calls in a modern context,

―asymmetric information.‖¹⁴³ Rifa‘at Abou-El-Haj showed how a bureaucratic and military aristocracy, without carrying hereditary titles and designations, reproduced itself in the late 17th century.¹⁴⁴ Itzkowitz pointed out that sons maintained the career patterns of their fathers.¹⁴⁵ Whereas Dina Rizk Khoury demonstrated that the emergence of a local elite was not necessarily adverse to a centralized Ottoman polity within an Ottoman framework, Salzmann and Abou-El-Hajj established that the emerging self-interested households of the

―center‖ did not pose s threat to the effectiveness and authoritativeness of the state as well.

 

 

¹⁴³ Salzmann, Ariel, ibid, p. 19.

¹⁴⁴ Abou-El-Hajj, Rifa‘at, ―The Ottoman Vezir and Pasha Households, 1683-1703: A Preliminary Report‖, JAOS 94 (1972), pp. 438-47. Also see Itzkowitz, Norman, Mehmed Raghib Pasha: The Making of an Ottoman Grand Vizier, unpublished dissertation, Princeton University, 1959, pp. 15-21. Itzkowitz takes a snapshot of the eighteenth century Ottoman civil bureaucracy which according to Norman Itzkowitz became closed to its exterior and, self-perpetuating and ―became more and more self-conscious and jealous of its privileges.‖ (p. 16)

¹⁴⁵ Itzkowitz, Norman, ―Eighteenth Century Realities‖, Studia Islamica, No. 16 (1962), p. 91.

The aforementioned Ottomanists reveal that, these household maneuvers and politics, on the contrary, contributed to the development of an effective central power.¹⁴⁶

We can not consider all these crucial developments independent from the emergence of the modern state. This is especially what Abou-El-Hajj fundamentally demonstrated in his studies. In his dissertation, he denoted the Treaty of Karlowitz as a milestone in the gradual transformation of the character of the Ottoman statecraft from a military-based structure to a modern-bureaucratic structure. Abou-El-Hajj wrote that before the Karlowitz, the Ottoman state lacked any formal understanding for the role of diplomacy. The ―militant Islamic ideology‖ prioritized victory in the battleground. Diplomacy was not a habitual and institutional part of the statecraft but only a method used as a last resort applicable only when arms do not produce the anticipated results. After several defeats in the Ottoman- Austrian war, the Ottoman sultan did not ―turn to compromise until every chance of regaining the lost Ottoman territories, by military arms, had been exhausted. Finally, with the defeat at Senta in 1697, it became quite clear to the Court at Istanbul that the only alternative to compromise and a negotiated peace would most definitely have been an even more punitive dictation of terms.‖ Realizing the utmost threat, the Ottomans agreed for a settlement. Abou-El-Hajj proposes that ―for Ottoman history, the sultan‘s consent to negotiate peace has farreaching consequences.‖ For the

 

―patently militarist ideology, it is perhaps a truism to assert that to this State war rather than compromise had been the chosen and preferred instrument of international intercourses with Europe. However, this attitude could be sustained only as long as an Ottoman military superiority was upheld.  In the process of dictating its peace terms,

during moments of victory, the Ottoman State had developed neither the formal apparatus for diplomatic communication nor the corps of trained personnel necessary for the negotiation of peace. In the past, when knowledge of the immediate military situation was considered sufficient qualification for leading an Ottoman diplomatic delegation, the personnel of Ottoman mission was drawn almost exclusively from the military establishment. In some instances, the grand vizier himself, as commander-in- chief, would lead a delegation composed primarily of his military entourage  With

the appointment of the Reisülküttab Rami Mehmed Efendi as chief of the Ottoman

 

 

¹⁴⁶ For the rise of households in the 18^th century in provinces, also see Hathaway, Jane, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997.

delegation to the Congress of Karlowitz, the transfer of responsibility for leadership of Ottoman diplomatic missions from the military establishment is completed.‖¹⁴⁷

 

Although, the argument of Abou-El-Hajj remains reductionist, not giving its due to the developments in the scribal service in the preceding crucial decades, especially in the light of recent scholarship exposing the earliest stages of modern state-formation and bureaucracy-formation and he reiterates the Eurocentric assumption that the classical Ottoman (and Islamic) worldview was static, militarist and determined by religious affiliations and zeal¹⁴⁸, the basic premise of his argument that there is a gradual change of the self-perception of the nature of state within the Ottoman polity, is valid.¹⁴⁹

In the 18th century, the civil bureaucracy gradually enhanced its position vis-a-vis the military and the religious establishments.¹⁵⁰ Agreeing with Abou-El-Hajj, Virginia Aksan wrote that ―(t)he eighteenth century, then, can be seen as a battleground not just of the Ottomans and the Russians but also of the opposing visions of Ottoman elites, who gradually began to realize the inadequacy of the old ideology.‖¹⁵¹ She further commented that ―(t)he military was probably the most disenfranchised and alienated professional group

 

¹⁴⁷ Abou-El-Hajj, Rifa‘at, The Reisülküttab and the Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz, unpublished dissertation, Princeton University, 1963, pp. vi-x. For a detailed description of the negotiations at Karlowitz, also see Stoye, John, Marsigli‟s Europe: The Life and Times of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Soldier and Virtuoso, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, pp. 164-215

¹⁴⁸ For some studies demonstrating the openness and curiosity towards the West in the early modern Muslim worldview, see Matar, Nabil, Europe Throughout Arab Eyes, 1578- 1727, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; Matar, Nabil (ed.), In the Lands of the Christians, London; New York: Routledge, 2003; Davis, Natalia Zemon, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds, New York: Hill and Wang, 2006; Goffman, Daniel, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

¹⁴⁹ Woodhead, Christine, ―Scribal Chaos ? Observations on the Post of Re‘isülküttab in the Late Sixteenth Century‖, in Kermeli, Eugenia & Özel, Oktay, The Ottoman Empire: Myths, Realities and „Black Holes‟, Istanbul: Isis Press, 2006, pp. 155-172.

¹⁵⁰ For an overview of the rise of the 18th century Ottoman civil officialdom see Aksan, Virginia, An Ottoman Statesman in War & Peace: Ahmed Resmi Efendi, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 1995

¹⁵¹ Aksan, Virginia, ibid, p. xii.

of the eighteenth century(.)‖¹⁵² Aksan sees her protogonist, Ahmed Resmi Efendi, as a transitional figure but notes that ―those ideals (of the classical Ottoman discourse) disappear for the most part in the political advise literature of the later eighteenth century, although appeals for the preservation of religion and state (din-ü-devlet) remain constant.‖¹⁵³ Likewise, although peace with infidels was accepted, ―jurists were interpreting the concept of holy war to permit a legal state of peace, basing it on the rationale of the good of the Muslim community –maslaha- a term much evoked in later treaties.‖ The justification was legitimized by a story of the prophet Muhammad, which became a cliché in the Ottoman writings on war and peace. In the Treaty of Hudaybiya in 628 AD between Muhammad and the Meccans, the prophet was forced to concede a truce of ten years, in order to enable the new Muslim community to perform the pilgrimage in the city of Mecca. In the event, Muhammad and his community made a triumphal entry into Mecca the following year. In other words, such concessions were only a temporary stop on the way to the ultimate Muslim victory.‖¹⁵⁴ In short, we, like Aksan, observe the process of a dramatic upheaval going along with the persistence of the discourse of the classical age.¹⁵⁵ What we observe is not a total repudiation of the former ideology but its adjustment, refabrication or even restoration, rendering it compatible in the changing environments and communicable/relevant in the novel political vocabulary of the modern age.

The civil bureaucracy had more vested interest in the survival, well-being, and advancement of the state as they were more likely to acquire wealth and property to inherit to their scions. Therefore, a civil bureaucratic elite is more prone to stability and thus more conservative in its orientation in comparison to the military caste. With the increase of the number of clerks within the nascent bureaucracy and their advancing role within the administrative body, a new elite with a strong sense of commitment to their stakes was

¹⁵² ibid, p. xiv.

¹⁵³ ibid, p. xvii, also se Aksan, Virginia, ―Ottoman Political Writing, 1768-1808‖, IJMES

25 (1993), pp. 53-69.

¹⁵⁴ Aksan, Virginia, Ottoman Wars, New York: Longman, 2007, p. 27.

¹⁵⁵ For the Ottoman legal perception of non-Muslims, see Panaite, Viorel, The Ottoman Law of War and Peace, Boulder: East European Monographs, Boulder, 2000.

consolidated. Here, it is suggested that, to understand the Tanzimat and the Ottoman modernity, we have to reconstruct the nature of this newly emerging elite preceding the upcoming radical transformation of the Ottoman polity and contextualize Ottoman

―transformation‖ within this socio-political background. Although the early modern age of the Ottoman polity became an area of interest for study, the integration of the field of early modern Ottoman Empire into the field of European early modernity is yet to be achieved, especially due to the lack of interest of the historians of early modern Europe towards the Ottoman Empire. Framing early Ottoman modernity within the European early modernity is yet to be undertaken.¹⁵⁶

The few decades prior to the Rescript of Tanzimat are conspicuous in the sense that in them, themes of premodern history and themes of modern history are intertwined and blended. Therefore a study of this time span requires a knowledgeable background and needs a sophisticated and subtle interpretation. Recent Ottomanists meticulously tried to portray this crucial transitional phase in its complexity.¹⁵⁷ They questioned the alleged revolutionary features of the Tanzimat and conceded a long period of ―preparation‖. However, we are yet to comprehend the peculiarities of the reforms of Mahmud II, Selim

III  and  their  backgrounds  in  their  complexity.  Furthermore,  although  the  term

―Westernization‖ is getting less and less explanatory and abandoned for its value-loaded

 

 

 

¹⁵⁶ See Goffman, Daniel, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2002. For an overview of early modernities of Asia in

―national‖ and regional contextes, see the issue of Daedalus on early modernities, Daedalus, 127-3 (1998).

¹⁵⁷ Salzmann, Ariel, Tocqueville in Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2004; Aksan, Virginia, An Ottoman Statesman in War and Peace, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 1995; Hamadeh, Shirine, The City‟s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century, Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2008; Quataert, Donald (ed.), Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922, New York: SUNY Press, 2000; Marcus, Abraham, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century, New York: Columbia University Press; Eldem, Edhem & Goffman, Daniel & Masters, Bruce, Ottoman City between East and West, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999; Faroqhi, Suraiya N. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, v. III, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

content while conceptualizations such as ―centralization‖ are proposed¹⁵⁸, we still lack a systematic treatment and an alternative assessment of the sweeping transformation undertaken by the pre-Tanzimat Ottoman state.

A subtle assessment of the era may be established with entering into the mental world of the ruling elite. Such an endeavor may allow us to figure out some aspects of the

―social‖ origins of the so-called Westernization. As suggested above, Westernization may be seen as a dependent function of elite politics and state affairs. When we are speaking of the state and formation of the modern state, we cannot comprehend this process without contextualizing it within a social framework. Into what kind of socio-political background, was all the upcoming tremendous upheaval to be born?

Joel Shinder discusses the career and worlds of Mustafa Efendi, a civil servant, a nobody for history, and one of those losers ―staffing the bureaus …[who] turned out enormous mountains of paperwork‖. He tries to reconstruct the world of Mustafa Efendi according to his inventory on his death registered item no. 2448 in Kamil Kepeci classification. After documenting his library, full of Islamic books, poetry, political tracts and chronicles reflecting the intellectual world of premodernity before the advent of rationality and natural sciences, Shinder ended his article writing: ―During the succeeding generation a radical change in style and pace of Ottoman life would commence. This change was Westernization.... (t)he defeats of 1768-1774 and the changes they called for were part of another world. However many watches and chime clocks and European locks he might have owned, Mustafa Efendi would not have understood, not at all.‖¹⁵⁹ Although it is true that any generation faces grave problems in adapting to a changing world, these encounters can not be reduced to a simplistic Westernized vs. Eastern dichotomy. The recent studies studies on the 18^th century Ottoman Empire, while demolishing reductionist myths such as ―Age of Tulips‖¹⁶⁰, demonstrated the interactions which can not be reduced

¹⁵⁸ Levy, Avigdor, ―Military Reform and the Probllem of Centralization in the Eighteenth Century‖, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. XVIII (Jul 1982), pp. 227-249.

¹⁵⁹ Shinder, Joel. ―Mustafa Efendi: Scribe, Gentleman and Pawnbroker‖ , IJMES, Vol. 10, No. 3. (Aug., 1979), p. 420.

¹⁶⁰ Erimtan, Can, Ottomans Looking West ?: The Origins of the Tulip Age and its Development in Modern Turkey, London: New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008.

to two mutually exclusive categories¹⁶¹. It is important to notice that although the phrase

―taking from the West‖ was employed, this process was not a wholesale Westernization, and an import. As it had been demonstrated, what had been dubbed as ―Westernization‖ had indigenous inspirations and dynamics.

Westernization was not a goal in itself but a method to survive/revive in the changing times. It was an effort of adaptation and cooptation. Mustafa Efendi, a member of the ruling elite and in the view of Shinder was ―probably a scribe in the imperial council when, to France‘s delight and Austria‘s dismay, the Ottomans managed to win as much at the conference table in 1789‖; illustrates the mental repercussions experienced at the dawn of an unprecedented transformation and disproves the supposed dichotomy between the old- type clerk and the Westernized bureaucrat.¹⁶² As it had been suggested by Itzkowitz, Aksan and many others, there is not only a traceable ideological/mental continuity and affinity between the 19^th century and the 18^th century but a genealogical continuity as well. This does not mean that there existed a closed elite. Apparently, inclusion in the Ottoman state elite was considerably easier vis-à-vis its European counterparts. It may be even argued that incorporations into the state elite was perceived as reinforcing the state and thus encouraged. However, the extent of inclusion and the assimilative/selective nature and form of this incorporation situated the motor of change within the established elite of the Empire. Therefore, assuming a sharp break between Tanzimat and its preceding era would be misleading and conceals affinities and continuities. The drastic Otttoman undertaking of reorganizing and modernizing the state had been born in such a social milieu.

 

¹⁶¹ Salzman, Ariel, The Age of Tulips: Confluence and Conflict in Early Modern Consumption Culture (1550-1730), in Quataert, Donald (ed.), Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550-1922, New York: SUNY Press, 2000, pp. 83-106; Hamadeh, Shirine, Expressions of Early Modernity in Ottoman Architecture and the 'Inevitable' Question of Westernization, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,

v. 63 (March 2004), pp. 32-51; Artan, Tülay, "Arts and architecture", in Faroqhi, Suraiya (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2006, v. III, pp. 85-109; Hamadeh, Shirine, The City‟s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century, Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2008, pp. 3-16.

¹⁶² For a survey of the post-classical ―Ottoman mind‖ which assesses it compatible with the

―mind of the early modern Europe‖, Faroqhi, Suraiya, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.

1.4.                 Modernity as Reorganization of the State, Reorganization of the Society

 

At this point, a few words have to be said about Ottoman modernity in order to link and relate it to its immediate prehistory. As it should already have been noticed, we have not yet presented an operative and authoritative definition of the ―modern‖. Understanding

―what is modern‖ and what it takes to be ―modern‖ are crucial in our framework for the study of the making of the modern Ottoman/Turkish state.¹⁶³

First and foremost, it should be observed that formation of modernity was not a

―democratic‖ process in the sense that it was not equally and simultaneously disseminated to all the strata of society simultaneously and in equal proportions. Moreover, the intensity of its diffusion is not equal among various social classes, segments and spheres. This pattern is not unique to the Ottoman or non-Western contexts. As shown best in the landmark study of Eugene Weber, it was only by the late 19th century or the early 20th century that modern state and modernity had infiltrated into the French countryside. It was the state that had developed and instigated ―modernity‖ by intentionally radiating (or imposing) it via the means of education, conscriptions, railways et cetera. The states found it necessary to ―socially disciplinize¹⁶⁴‖ and ―modernize their subjects‖ by means of educating and civilizing them. Thus, the states had stake in the ―modern‖. It was in their best interests to reconstruct the individuals and the community which they ruled over (dubbed and redefined as nations) as ―modern‖ and ―saving‖ them from being unruly savages. By reformatting them, the states rendered their subjects more efficient, productive and, thus, controllable.¹⁶⁵ Their governmentality policies necessitated a modernization

¹⁶³ Among others, see the classic work Weber, Eugene, Peasants into Frenchmen, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976; also see Furet, Francois & Ozouf, Jacques, Lire et Ecrire: L‟alphabetisation des Français de Calvin a Jules Ferry, Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977.

¹⁶⁴ Oestreich, Gerhard, Neostoicism and the Eary Modern State, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1982.

¹⁶⁵ For some prominent historical studies on social discipline, see Raeff, Marc, The Well- Ordered Police State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983; Melton, James Van Horn, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Education, Cambridge,

program.¹⁶⁶ Regardless of the reasons and motivations of these actions; the official initiatives had shaped the emergence of the modern society.¹⁶⁷ In short, to an important extent, modernity was imposed from above by political decree. We have to consider the artificial nature of the genesis of modernity to understand the dynamics of the emergence of the Ottoman modernity.

As argued above, first, it was the state that was ―modern‖. It was the early modern states that reorganized themselves according to objective, rational, sound and effective norms. The states did not self-consciously ―opt‖ for ―modernizing themselves‖ but the opportunities, such as the development of transportation, communications and accumulation of knowledge, as well as constraints such as expansion of the military,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1988; Oestreich, Gerhard, Neostoicism and the Eary Modern State, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1982.

¹⁶⁶ See Foucault, Micheal. ―Governmentality‖, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Burchell, Graham & Gordon, Colin, & Miller, Peter (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Foucault defines art of government in his lectures on governmentality as follows as quoted in Michel Foucault (Rabinow, Paul (ed.), 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 canot be derived solely from natural or divine laws or the principles of wisdom and prudence....The state, like nature, has its its own proper form of rationality, albeit of different sort. Conversly, the art of government, instead of seeking to found itself in transcendental rules, a cosmological model, or philosophico-moral ideal, must find the principles of rationality in that which constitutes the specific reality of the state. ― (pp.212- 13) He discusses the redefinition of the meaning and reason of the state with the modern age and emergence of governmentality is 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 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.‖ (pp. 216-17)

¹⁶⁷ There are numerous studies on the radiation of the culture to the society. Among them see, Grafton, Anthony & Blair, Ann (ed.), The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. For a new reasssesment of Enlightenment in the light of recent works exposing the social presence of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century Munck, Thomas, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History 1721-1794, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

growth of the bureaucracy, financing the rising expenses, had compelled them to undergo a radical reorganization. This reorganization was accompanied by a restructuring and adaptation of the mental sets to maintain, uphold and co-opt with the newly emerging necessities of the governmentalities. Simply, ―modernity‖ emerged as an ―official‖ project. The states decided to ―civilize‖ and ―modernize‖ their subjects when it became clear that only transforming and reorganizing the state was insufficient. Their population had to be rendered ―efficient‖ for the state to counter the sweeping challenges¹⁶⁸ -hence the Turkish nationalism of the late Ottoman Empire and la mission civilisatrice of the Republic-. The state and the power of the state were no more understood as an administrative-military structures superimposed on the subjects and its territories. The power and wealth of the states were now measured and defined with the level of the well-being of the subjects¹⁶⁹ (from now on ―citizens‖) and the quality and prosperity of the land it reigned over.¹⁷⁰ Such a transformation of perception was clear in the eyes of the men of the Tanzimat as observable in the text of the Rescript of Tanzimat which refers to the quality and fertility of the Ottoman lands and the hardworking nature of its subjects.¹⁷¹ For this reason, the state was supposed to involve itself with the society and the land. We observe that from early 19^th century onwards, society became a pivotal concern in state affairs in the Ottoman context. Issues such as public hygiene, education and poverty became concerns of the

¹⁶⁸ For an interesting case study of the ―rational‖ and ―modern‖ state faces when it decided to modernize agriculture by opening several agricultural high schools, supplying seeds and investing in the modernization of agriculture Quataert, Donald, Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia 1876-1908, unpublished dissertation, UCLA, 1973.

¹⁶⁹ This concern was defined by Foucault as ―pastoral power‖. 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 through 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.

¹⁷⁰ For the early modern state‘s appetite to measure and know about its land and its subjects, see Headrick, Daniel R, When Information Came of Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

¹⁷¹ For the text of Rescript of Tanzimat, see Alkan, Mehmet Ö. (ed.), Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet‟in Birikimi, İstanbul: İletişim, 2001, pp. 449-451.

state.¹⁷² For the first time, the state began to attempt to regulate and design society beyond aiming to rehabilitate the sphere of government and administration.

This Foucaldian governmentality project was legitimized by nationalism, especially in latecomer countries. It may be argued that, the radical nature of Third-World nationalisms in general and the Turkish nationalism in particular developed due to the immediacy of this governmental project as these states were pushed into the corner during the age of imperialism and thus destitute to undertake such a radical governmentality project. In this regard, nationalism emerged as a function of the encounter with modernity and modernization. The secularism of the Turkish Republic was also arguably derived from this Foucaldian concern which was perceived as an indispensible component of Turkish nationalism as if national identity could not be imagined without impeccable secular credentials.

A full-fledged ―modern/rational methodology‖ was the founding stone of Ottoman modernity. The emergence and development of modern ethics and premises of a ―modern society‖ are a different matter. Although a ―modern stance‖ is an ambiguous term and there is no ―authoritative‖ definition of the ―modern‖, I would argue that Kantian moral individualism and individualized ethics constitute the basis of this modern stance.¹⁷³ Kantian moral individualism is a corollary of the demystification of the concept of society, metaphysics and divinity. Kantianism is the moral foundation of modernity with its demanding  categorical  imperatives  enforcing  the  individual  who  have  become

¹⁷² See Maksudyan, Nazan, Hearing the Voiceless-Seeing the Invisible: Orphans and Destitute Children as Actors of Social, Economic and Political History in the Late Ottoman Empire, unpublished dissertation, Sabancı University, 2008; Özbek, Nadir, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu‟nda Sosyal Devlet, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002; Somel, Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1908 : Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001.

¹⁷³ After the collapse of the social and communal mechanism of control, for Durkheim

―personal autonomy of modern man....(is the) central feature of contemporary morality‖ although he perceived development of individual personally as socially constructed. Regardless of his ―scientific observations‖, he believed in Kantian moral individualism as the base of a society. Lukes, Steven, Emile Durkheim, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975, p. 23. For Kant‘s influence on Durkheim, see pp. 54-58. For Durkheim‘s suggestions of ―moral education‖ of citizens of the Third Republic in a strictly secular and rationalist fashion in primary schools which he sees as the modern counterpart of churches, pp. 110- 119.

―emancipated‖ from divine imperatives. Yet, modernity is not merely a philosophical assumption but also a transformation of the social imagination of man acquired not only voluntarily but also superimposed upon him involuntarily by political and economical dynamics beyond his control. Kantian ethics is to some extent an outcome of modernity and a proposed resolution in response to the perils and ambivalences of the post- metaphysical world.¹⁷⁴ However, Ottoman modernity was a political endorsement of the modern as a methodology of reform. The philosophical corollaries and premises of modernity, however, did not accompany its structural and political framework. It would wait until Kemalism for a partial internalization of modernity along Kantian lines although the significance of imported Kantianism remained limited during the Republican decades. In short, modernity lacks to a certain extent its epistemological as well as ethical bases in the Ottoman/Turkish context. Modernity in its actuality/experience and modernity as a discourse are two different phenomena. Although the later is a consequence of the former, it does not necessarily accompany it. In the Ottoman/Turkish context, not dissimilar to other ―belated and borrowed modernities‖, the later followed the former belatedly and only partially, establishing the basic premises of the Turkish ―modern‖ as legitimate as any other path to modernity.

The problem of speaking about the ―modern‖ in history is to conceptualize the

―modern‖ without historicizing it. The ―modern‖ in philosophy may refer to a different notion, but ―modern‖ in historiography is a social concept referring to a certain mode of attitude and perception independent from the intentions of the actors. In other words,

―modern‖ does not describe a certain act but a state of being that is generalizable within a spatial and temporal context. That is to say, we are not interested in men and women themselves but in the socially and historically constructed mental climate and environment in which they are embedded. These remarks are important to reassess the origins and dynamics of ―Ottoman modernity‖.

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁷⁴ See Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1991.

Ottomans didn‘t fail to endorse the modern ―military science‖ rationality since the late 18^th century.¹⁷⁵ This did not imply a genuine Ottoman transformation and reorganization but a reception of the 18^th century European military practices and drills.¹⁷⁶ The problem with the general conception of a ―genuine transformation‖ (versus imitating a model) obscures the nature of the process. The general Hegelian idea that history is a progression of ideas discards the extent of the role and significance of technical necessities that had obliged drastic and ideational transformations. Given the intertwined nature of the

―technical‖ and ―philosophical‖, it is impossible to disassociate them from each other.

In the eyes of the reformers, the manual for the conduction of reforms was evident. It appears to be that at this early stage, there was no reasonable alternative to be suggested other than the complete reception of the Western model. There is yet no perception of the possibility of a partial reception of the West.¹⁷⁷ There is also no conceptualization of the two realms of the Western prototype, one technical, the other spiritual, as the reformists did not yet face the challenge of modernity and that the problem was not simply a matter of technical failure did not become apparent. Of course, the reception was not a choice but considered a necessity. The very motivation for ―modernization‖ derived from the fear that

¹⁷⁵ Even it is possible and legitimate to speak of the adoption of the modern military organization to an earlier date. Gabor Agoston relates the Ottoman military reformism with the early modern military revolution and thus eliminates any boundary between the modern and premodern military reformism. See Agoston, Gabor, Guns for the Sultan, Cambridge,

U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2005. Also see Ibrahim Müteferrika‘s Usul ul-Hikam fi Nizam ul-Ulum which is a tract written in 1720s and very much reminiscent of the tracts written to Selim III in the late 18^th century. Müteferrika‘s work is very much influenced by the military studies of Montecuccoli and Marsigli, the Austrian military men turned into military scientists. See Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey , London: Hurst & Company, 1964, pp. 36-46.

¹⁷⁶ For the development of military practices and drills in the early modern and modern eras, see McNeill, William, The Pursuit of Power, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Also see McNeill, William, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995.

¹⁷⁷ Malkam Han, one of the pioneers and fervent advocates of Persian reform suggested that ―European systems of government...had to be accepted on faith.‖ He advocated a full- fledged and prompt adaptation of European way of governing. For Malkam, ―(i)n the same way that the telegraph can be brought from Europe and without any difficulty established in Tehran...so too it is possible to adapt their principles of organization and without delay establish them in Iran.‖ Bakhash, Shaul, Iran: Monarchy, Bureaucracy & Reform under the Qajars 1858-1896, London: Ithaca Press, 1978, pp. 13-14.

unless all the required adaptations were successfully fully implemented as perfect replicas; a collapse was inevitable and unavoidable.¹⁷⁸ A rereading of the not-much-known reign of Selim III complicates the picture that we have taken for granted.¹⁷⁹

Contrary to Shaw‘s depiction of two warring parties, the layihas (reports) presented to Selim III drawing the proposed outlines of ―reform‖ displays very complex sets of minds.¹⁸⁰ In the layihas, the sole intention was the survival of the state and the recipes were purely technical, not considering any repercussions of these technical reforms. ―(T)he key processes of late Ottoman history can be explained above all, not by the logic of ideas, but by the structural constraints imposed on the leadership of the Empire by geography, demography, institutions, and the examples set by European countries. This does not mean that one should approach late Ottoman history in a simple-mindedly historicist manner, seeing that the path of Ottoman history as predetermined. Rather, it means that one must begin with the recognition that the set of realistic choices that lay before the Ottoman leaders was not unlimited. One need not be a passionate Social Darwinist to recognize that the modification of the old order became inescapable in the late eighteenth century, if the Empire was to survive; or that the most logical source of inspiration for any new order was Europe.‖¹⁸¹

¹⁷⁸ The ―trends‖ in academia had gravitated from taking modernity as a breaking point (Weber, Weberianism, Braudel, Wallerstein, Tilly) to a revisionist perspective investigating early modernity and denying the transformative role of the modern. Jack Goody goes as far as questioning the uniqueness of the modern capitalist West‘s claims associated with the rise of West/modernity/capitalism. See Goody, Jack, The Theft of History, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 2006. Goody suspects if the word capitalism and modernity has any explanatory capacity at all. Goody claims that these terms conceal more than they reveal. Goody follows the lead of historians such as Pomeranz showing that the mastery of West dates only from early nineteenth century but surpasses them in the revisionist aspects of his assertions.

¹⁷⁹ For a reinterpretation of the Nizam-ı Cedit politics, see Yıldız, Aysel Danacı, Vaka-yı Selimiyye or The Selimiye Incident: A Study of May 1807 Rebellion, unpublished dissertation, Sabancı University, 2008.

¹⁸⁰ For a summary and overview of the layihas submited to Selim III, see Şen, Adil,

Osmanlıda Dönüm Noktası: III. Selim Hayatı ve Islahatları, İstanbul: Fecr Yayınları, 2003,

pp. 219-247.

¹⁸¹ Hanioğlu, Şükrü, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 210-11.

Beginning with the military reorganization, Ottoman statecraft restructured its organization under dire pressures. This restructuring was seen as an obligation to adapt to the changing circumstances and environment. This does not necessarily mean a sharp renunciation of the ―old‖ as assumed in the conventional historiography. It is, in this perception, a ―modification‖. The instruments employed do not necessarily reveal the attributes and motivations of the individuals and groups who employed the instrument. Of course, the instruments have the power to transform the hand that used the instrument but limits of this transformative power should not be exaggerated. We do not observe a transformation of the structures of mentalities. On the contrary, with the new equipment in hand, the habitual mindset may invigorate and consolidate itself. Modernity is a method although a method with unintended and infinite consequences and implications.¹⁸² Modernity develops a certain state of mind, but this particular state of mind derives not from intellectual encounters but from methods implemented and habitualized. That means, although it is completely novel, radical and disquieting, modernity is not necessarily a total revocation of the mental sets of premodernity. Beyond the vast opportunities and equipments provided by modern technologies (in the Foucaldian sense) , the ruthlessness and cold rationality of the modernity may exacerbate the ordinary and banal violence of the premodernity and therefore does not necessarily generates a transformation of the structures of mentalities.

Evidently, we do not distinguish between different manifestations of modernity. The seemingly different paradigms of the Tanzimat and the Republic derive from the same considerations and embedded within the same historical structure. The Republic legitimized itself by discrediting the modernizing experience of the Tanzimat era and criticizing it as a half-hearted modernization which failed to comprehend the mentality behind the European modernity, as it was most lucidly expressed by Ziya Gökalp, the chief ideologue of the Young Turk regime.¹⁸³ As mentioned above, ―mentalities‖ do not develop within a vacuum. It is not an ideological category but a historical one determined by its

 

¹⁸² Such an interpretation is presented by Reid, James, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000.

¹⁸³ See Gökalp, Ziya, Türkçülüğün Esasları, İstanbul: İnkılap Yayınevi, 2001.

temporal and spatial context and structure.¹⁸⁴ Such a criticism had been leveled by the Republican ideology (beginning earlier with Gökalp), claiming that the Republic did internalize the mentality of modernism in contrast to the non-committedness of the Tanzimat.¹⁸⁵ Apparently, for the Tanzimat elite, modernizing was a technical matter to be resolved in practical terms. What was different in the radical modernization of the Republic was that ―society‖ and ―social culture‖ began to be taken as technicalities that had to be transformed. What really changed was not the paradigm but the scope of the technical transformation. Looking at a modernist Ottoman governor of the early 19th century, Lisa Pollard describes the perception and vision of modernity of Mohammad Ali Pasha as follows: ―(He) ranked the world‘s ―nations‖ scientifically and placed Egypt vis-a- vis other nations in a hierarchy of development, at the apex of which sat ‗modernity‘. Knowledge that was useful to the state created a cartography of modernity in which the intimate details of domestic activities stood out as prominent features and were used as units of measurement.‖¹⁸⁶ Modernity and adaptation of the Western methods (which was what was understood from ―modernity) was a matter of implementation. ―The Egyptians who left Alexandria for Europe were sent out in search of practical knowledge  Egyptians

in Europe set sail in search of Egypt‘s future-a future that they themselves would later construct.‖¹⁸⁷

As illustrated throughout this work, practical knowledge was not limited to mechanics. A grasp of international relations, economics, the underlining philosophical and mental foundations of the ―modern West‖ were all seen as practical knowledges to be acquired as well. Modernity may be seen as the endorsement of the imperatives of the changing times. The very crucial and urgent problem for the Ottomans and other ―trailing states‖ was to manage a more effective military and a more efficient state organization. For a management of this colossal machine, they were enforced to collect more taxes for

¹⁸⁴ For the study of the new intellectual history, see Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1978.

¹⁸⁵ Ziya Gökalp is the chief propagator of this argument. See his Türkçülüğün Esasları, İstanbul: İnkilap Yayınevi, 2001

¹⁸⁶ Pollard, Lisa, Nurturing the Nation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 15

¹⁸⁷ ibid, pp. 16-17.

provisioning the army and to construct an effective bureaucracy to maintain the technicalities of the military.

The supposed distinction between possible different kinds of modernity such as the supposed conservative modernism of the Empire and radical modernism of the Republic is simplistic/reductionist and needs reassessment. From a structuralist view, all the modernist transformations including the Ottoman/Turkish one can be analyzed in terms of a technical adaptations and adjustments. What was new, striking and daring in the Republican reformism was its endeavor to reshape the society, if necessary by force. This was a radical break from the earlier mode of modernization which was basically concerned with the reorganization of the state. The motivation of the Republic to undertake such a sweeping social and cultural modernization project derived from the recognition of the failure to transform and uphold the state by limiting its efforts to reorganize it. The changing conceptualization of the state which began to be conceived in relation with the society and the nation supposed to represent and serve fostered the motivation to reorganize the society and the individuals besides the organization of the state. The individuals, the minds of the individuals and the society as a whole had to be transformed for the state to encounter the challenges of the modernity, the progress of the non-Muslims and the encroachment of the Western powers. The nation replaced the state as the pivotal and critical object to be saved, protected and maintained. The radicalism of the project derived from its endeavor to prioritize the nation/society instead of the state in its transformative project. Therefore, the difference between the mode of modernizations of the Republic and the Empire can be interpreted as limited to its means rather than its objectives.

 

 

 

1.5.                 Reconstituting Religion Beyond Faith in the Modern Age

 

One of the fundamental subjects of inquiry of the modern social sciences, religion was long seen as the arch enemy and diametrical opposite of the European Enlightenment, science, reason, modernity and all the things assumed to be ―modern‖. The assumption was that the year 1789 was the decisive year (year zero) in which religion began to retreat against the forces of modernity although the retreat was already observable throughout the

eighteenth century, the century of the Enlightenment. Religion did its best to fight back the forces of modernity but it was too late for a recovery and there was no chance to avoid what was inevitable. Religion was to remain on the defense and its inevitable doom was only a matter of time.

This paradigm was more a self-propaganda of the nineteenth century ―enlightened‖ thought rather than a disinterested observation. Moreover, it reflected the triumphalism of the 19th century positivism. This argumentation is now known as ―secularization thesis‖ and has been severely criticized after the World War II.¹⁸⁸

Contrary to the positivists who celebrated the end of the stage of metaphysics to be followed by the stage of positivism, it is now recognized that, on the contrary, 19th century was the apex of religion in many aspects. It was the century in which Europeans cultivated a particular piety and showed their respect to God in masses. The Victorian value system developed urban middle-class and upper-class forms of piety that were unprecedented in many ways.¹⁸⁹ The rural areas were also reconquered from the darkness of superstition. The old superstitions were wiped out by the Church, thanks to the village priests it had sent to the remote villages and working-class neighborhoods. The superstitions were replaced by the organized and regularized ―correct teachings‖ of the Church. It was the first half of 20th century or even the two decades succeeding the World War II that religion retreated dramatically.¹⁹⁰

¹⁸⁸ For Comte and his contemporaries see Wright, T.R, The Religion of Humanity, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1986. For the two founding books of the critique of secularization thesis, Luckmann, Thomas, Das Problem der Religion in der Modernen Gesellschaft, Freiburg, 1967; Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy, Garden City: Anchor, 1990 (originally 1967). Also see Luckmann, Thomas & Berger, Peter, The Social Construction of Reality, Garden City: Anchor, 1967. This landmark book summarizes the philosophical conceptualization the critique of secularization thesis builds on. This book reveals what the exponents of secularization thesis fails to conceive.

¹⁸⁹ For Victorian religiosity, see Wilson, A.N, The Victorians, New York: W.W.Norton, 2004; Himmelfarb,Gertrude, Marriage and Morals among the Victorians,Chicago: I.R.Dee, 2001.

¹⁹⁰ For a description of the sudden collapse of religion in the post-war Europe see Judt, Tony, Postwar, Penguin Press, 2005; also see Brown, Callum G, ―The Secularization Decade: The Haemorrhage of the British Churches in the 1960s‖, paper presented at the conference “The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000”, Paris, 1977; quoted in McLeod, Hugh,. Secularization in Western Europe, 1848-1914, London:

The early criticism of the ―secularization thesis‖ derived from the German hermeneutic tradition. While contemplating on the much neglected area of ―sociology of knowledge‖, they claimed that religion derived from the human quest to give a meaning to the outer world around the self. Therefore, religion cannot be reduced to mere ignorance and superstition. It is not simply deception but an outcome of the quest to know what is unknowable. Hence, religion is not to be dissolved as easily as it had been presumed. Hermeneutics also enabled the social scientists to approach religion not as an enemy but as a social and intellectual phenomenon needing to be explained.

Of course religion is not one single ―entity‖. In line with 19th century Positivism, we observe the disappearance of rural religion and the waning of its culture of superstition in which local saints were helping the peasants who visited to ―sacred‖ sites nearby the villages to seek for healing of their sufferings.¹⁹¹ The peasants arriving at the cities did leave their countryside habits and beliefs. But in this process of urbanization, we also observe the development of an organized religion at an unprecedented scale sponsored by the states to manipulate it for their agenda. Taking the hermeneutic analysis of religion to the ―realm of state‖; we observe the evolution of a new, more politicized and an encompassing version of Christianity in the world of nation-states and modern Empires crafted by the states to serve for the self-legitimization of these polities and infuse them with self-righteousness and glamour. Institutionalized religion provided the meaning these politics needed to legitimize themselves.

Religion is a historical category which has many manifestations differing in different ages and geographies. The religion of the nineteenth century had risen parallel to the rise of the modern states and therefore understandable within this socio-political context. First of all, the church institution may be seen as the first modern organization to be replicated by

 

 

Macmillan, 2000, p. 8. Also see the overview of the ―decline of religion‖ theories in the introduction of the book.

¹⁹¹ For superstitions and ―and beliefs‖, see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978, p. 23-29. Also for the medieval rural religion and its transformation in the early modern era, see Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World, London: Penguin, 1984; Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

states as argued by Max Weber a century ago.¹⁹² The church had transformed itself from being a holy see regulating the spiritual affairs of Christians to the first bureaucratic, political and colossal machine beginning from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.¹⁹³ The Counter-Reformation was the climax of this transformation. The Counter-Reformation was not an invention of the early modern ages constituted as a reaction to the rise of Protestantism but denoted the culmination of the earlier dispositions of the Church.¹⁹⁴ It is also a very important point to clarify that the Inquisition is itself a product of late Middle Ages, institutionalized so as to respond to the proliferating heresies and therefore an outcome of the Early Modern age as a manifestation of the expansion of the Church institution.¹⁹⁵ The vigorous resurgence of the Church also transformed the social meaning of the religion. Religion became an institutionalized culture. Catholicism was always defined with reference to the existence of a hierarchical institution with a divine grace to which the faithful had to submit; however, with the onset of the early modern era, the scale

 

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁹² See for an excellent interpretation of Weber‘s underestimated studies on the medieval Church, Collins, Randall, Weberian Sociological Theory, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1986.

¹⁹³ The church also transformed itself from being the preacher of the souls to being the commander of the souls. See De Boer, Wietse, The Conquest of the Soul, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001.

¹⁹⁴ For the German church historian, Hubert Jedin‘s interpretation of the ―Counter- Reformation‖ back in 1946, see De Boer, Wietse, The Conquest of the Soul, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001, p. 9. For the Counter Reformation, see Po-Chia Hsia, R, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540-1770, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1999, Jones, Martin, The Counter Reformation: Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1995; O‘Malley, John W, The First Jesuits, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007.

¹⁹⁵ The ―myth of the Inquisition‖ was created by the Protestant pamphleteers of the time to blacken the name of Catholicism and Spain (hence dubbed as Black Legend-La Leyendra Negra- by Julian Juderias in 1914) in the name of Protestant propaganda. For the development of this myth and its historiography, see Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; Kamen, Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.

and the scope of the institutionalized religion had become more imposing.¹⁹⁶ Souls were not only to be guided but also to be commanded.

Of course the transformation of Christianity (in its Catholic and Protestant manifestations) was a multifaceted phenomenon. It was also related with the massive diffusion of literacy.¹⁹⁷ With the acquiring of the skill of reading, the flock demanded a new and more interactive style of adherence to the Christian community. They were no more to be treated as the passive sheep waiting for the commands and teachings of their shepherd. This requirement demanded the sophistication and activation of the Church institution. The Church also had to persuade its previously obedient flock in which the lack of continuous doctrinization might be won over by heresy. The Church should be proactive, aggressive and diligent.¹⁹⁸ Whereas earlier, the Church discouraged her flock from being literate and lay Bible reading in its struggle with the Protestant conventicals, in the eighteenth century, the Church began to promote literacy and perceived literacy as the best way to wipe out heresies and advance true faith.¹⁹⁹ There was one drive originating from the Church to refashion religion. Another drive derived from the secular authorities. As ascendant secular authorities enhanced their political authorities in centuries and monopolized sovereignty, they also felt the necessity to tame and domesticate religion. Given that Church and religion constituted the greatest sphere independent from the secular political authorities, the rise of the secular authorities throughout early modernity

¹⁹⁶ For a case study of the ambitious rechristianization effort of the Church in early modern France targeting the French countryside see Chevalier, Louis, The Religion of the Poor, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997

¹⁹⁷ See MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Reformation, London: Allen Lane, 2003, pp. 70-76. The classical book on the Printing Revolution and its impact is Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1993.

¹⁹⁸ See Rawlings, Helen, The Spanish Inquisition, Oxford, UK; Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2005; Kamen, Henry, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997. For the early Inquisition before its institutionalization, see Given, James, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline and Resistance in Languedoc, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997: Moore, R. I, The Formation of a Prosecuting Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

¹⁹⁹ For this sharp reversal of the Church policy in the eighteenth century, see Melton, James Van Horn, Absolutism and the Eighteenth Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 60-90.

gave them the opportunity to contract the autonomous sphere of religion.²⁰⁰ For this, concordatas with the religious authorities was essential. With concordatas and ―mutual understanding‖s, the social religion of early modernity and more so the religion of 19^th century was domesticated.

Another reason why Christianity had been transformed was related with the continent- wide political developments pertaining to the issue of legitimacy. As the absolutist states had felt the necessity to include the subjects in their body politic, they had to speak a language which is at the same time universal and sectarian. This was what a religion was. As absolutist states began to be more complex than ever, this process brought the religious institution which they had associated themselves with to be more complex and more institutionalized. As states had risen from being mere polities interfering only with matters of politics to administrative monsters regulating the everyday matters of their subjects, the religion followed it. Religious devotion also became a full-time occupation or this was what the clergy began to preach.

In short, there was a deal between the Church and the rising absolutist states. Certainly, the political authority needed the religious authority to be on his side to assist in realizing its ambitions²⁰¹. Religious legitimacy is the best method to reach and capture the subjects and the minds of the subjects. As it had been expressed above, for reasons mentioned and for many other reasons not mentioned, the consent and support of the subjects began to matter with the eighteenth century onwards. Not only the subjects themselves but the souls and the minds of the subjects began to matter in the eyes of the political authorities, they also had to be controlled and regulated. Of course, in the nineteenth century, in the age of nation-states, subjects and the considerations of the subjects will be important more than ever. After all, it is the subjects‘ will upon which the nation-states claimed to build themselves.

Therefore, religion became politicized beginning in early modernity and further politicized in the 19^th century. This is not to say that religion was not political before.

²⁰⁰ Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983,

pp. 58-64.

²⁰¹ A very classical and one of the earliest case of the presentation of the states and kings as bearers of a some lofty ideal is Louis XIV. See Burke, Peter, Fabrication of Louis XIV, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Given that religion is a social phenomena (different from individual faith), it is by its very definition a political concept. What is new, however, was that with the rise of the absolutist states, religion had became a pillar of the absolutist states. For example, by the sixteenth century, the subjects had to be a believer of the denomination in which the political authority professed to.²⁰² If a subject was allowed to profess to another denomination, he will not be accepted as a member of the community. The act of non-adherence to the denomination of the political authority meant the rejection of the earthly power of the political authority as well. Associating confession with political loyalty was a novel phenomenon that became possible in the age of mass communications and literacy. This process became even more apparent in the age of nation. Religion, not being the antidote of nationalism, served as the cement of nationalism and national identity, especially in the states where nationalisms developed with the sponsorship of states.²⁰³ British identity was forged as early as in the 17^th century as being the ―New Jerusalem‖ fighting against the continental Catholics in the service of Satanical forces.²⁰⁴ Similarly, the Dutch identity was forged with the Dutch struggle against the yoke of Catholicism.²⁰⁵ Lutheranism of Prussia served the same function²⁰⁶. Catholicism was an indispensable element of the French

 

²⁰² MacKenney, Richard, Sixteenth Century Europe, London: Macmillan, 1993, pp. 268- 70.

²⁰³ Van Der Veer, Peter & Lehmann, Harmut (ed.), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

²⁰⁴ Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 36-65; McLeod, Hugh, ―Protestantism and British National Identity, 1815-1945‖, in Van Der Veer, Peter & Lehmann, Harmut (ed.), ibid, pp. 44-70.

²⁰⁵ Groot, Frans, ―Papists and Beggars: National Festivals and Nation Building in the Netherlands During the Nineteenth Century‖, in Van Der Veer, Peter & Lehmann, Harmut (ed.), ibid, pp. 161-177; Van Rooden, Peter, ―History, the Nation, and Religion: The Transformations of the Dutch Religious Past‖, in Van Der Veer, Peter & Lehmann, Harmut (ed.), ibid, pp. 96-111; Israel, Jonathan I, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477-1806, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 137-168.

²⁰⁶ Smith, Helmut Walser, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995; Altgeld, Wolfgang, "Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Germany", in Smith, Helmut Walser (ed.), Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001; Mommsen, Wolfgang, Imperial Germany 1867-1918, London;

national identity even in its Republican forms.²⁰⁷ Religion became the distinctive mark of the nations as well as their proof to be (morally) superior to other contenting nations. In other words, religions baptized and consecrated the nations.

 

 

 

1.6.     Politicization of Religion in the Ottoman Empire

 

As argued above, religion can not be limited to faith. Religion is not only the relationship between God and the believer but a relationship between the members of a particular community as well as the relationship between the members of the community and the community as a whole. The politicization of religion may not be taken as a sign of the rise of conservative modernization over liberal modernization but a corollary of the early modern developments before religion and modernization were dissociated. This does not mean politicization of religion is simply a consequence of modernity. Given that religion is a social phenomenon, it is inevitably political. The transformation of the meaning of religion and its politicization is rather the outcome of the interaction of many processes taking place simultaneously and independently from each other in Early Modern and Modern Europe.

In the earlier historiography of the late Ottoman Empire, Ottoman reforms used to be interpreted simply as a process of secularization as if these two concepts were synonymous. The Turkish translation of the title of Niyazi Berkes‘ classical Kemalist study on Ottoman modernization in the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic, where

―secularization‖ was translated as çağdaşlaşma, i.e. ―modernization‖, is an overt illustration of this assumption and ambiguity.²⁰⁸ Furthermore, Berkes‘ book‘s original name, seeing secularization as the pivotal aspect of the 19th century Ottoman transformation, also establishes such equivalence. In this perception, it was a matter of

New York: Arnold, 1995; Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, The German Empire 1871-1918, Berg, 1985.

²⁰⁷ Van Kley, Dale K, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, pp. 1-13; Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 91-107.

²⁰⁸ Berkes, Niyazi, Türkiye‟de Çağdaşlaşma, Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1973.

simple arithmetic. More modernization should have led automatically to less religiousness of the state and the individual.

However, recent studies critical of the Kemalist assumption highlighted the more complex nature of the 19th century Ottoman transformation. It had been demonstrated that the reforms of Mahmud II were legitimized upon a religious discourse presenting these reforms as ―religious efforts.‖²⁰⁹ The abolition of the Janissary corps was presented and legitimized as a religious duty and as a jihad against the infields (Janissaries) who had infiltrated among the Ottoman military. The janissaries were presented as enemies of state and religion in the service of Christian states.²¹⁰ The event itself was conspicuously hailed as ―Auspicious Incident‖ (Vaka-i Hayriye). According to this official propaganda, Mahmud II was the religious reformer (müceddid) of the era as heralded in the Islamic and Quaranic sources. He successfully eradicated all the heretics and all the remnants of the heresy.²¹¹ Mahmud II literally butchered all the Bektaşi graves and reestablished orthodox Islam and Bektaşicism was eradicated throughout the Empire and declared as a heretical sect.²¹² The Bektaşi influence over the Janissary corps was countered with the endorsement of an orthodox Islam and the required study of the works of orthodox Islam by the newly organized military corps such as Birgivi Risalesi for the purpose of ―rectifying the practice

²⁰⁹ See Şirvanlı Fatih Efendi, Gülzar-ı Fütühat (edited by Mehmet Ali Beyhan), İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2005; Es‘ad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2001. Also see Heinzelmann, Tobias, Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına, İstanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2009, pp. 42-44, 53; Yıldız, Gültekin, Neferin Adı Yok: Zorunlu Askerliğe Geçiş Sürecinde Osmanlı Devleti‟nde Siyaset, Ordu ve Toplum (1826-1839), İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2009, p. 24,26.

²¹⁰ Yıldız, Gültekin, ibid, p. 89, 115. For the self-legitimization of the abolishment of the janissaries and presentation of the act as a religious act, see the firman abolishing the janissaries as quoted in Heinzelmann, Tobias, ibid, p. 39-42.For the contemporary texts reflecting the official position on the abolishment and eradication of the janissary corps, see Şirvanlı Fatih Efendi, Gülzar-ı Fütühat, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2001; Es‘ad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2005. For some valuable comments on Selim III‘s and Mahmud II‘s emulation of the manners of the prophet, see Hagen, Gottfried, ―The Prophet Muhammed as an Exemplar in War: Ottoman Views on the Eve of World War I‖, in New Perspectives on Turkey, Spring 2000, no: 22, pp. 151-152

²¹¹ Heinzelmann, Tobias, ibid, p. 50; Es‘ad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, İstanbul: Kitabevi, 2005,

pp. 166-184; Es‘ad Efendi, Vak‟a-Nüvis Es‟ad Efendi Tarihi, İstanbul: OSAV, 2000, pp. 648-650; Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Tarih-i Cevdet, Darü't-Tıbaat'ül Amire, 1309, v. XII, pp. 180-184; Şirvanlı Fatih Efendi, Gülzar-ı Fütuhat, pp. 19-22.

²¹² Yıldız, Gültekin, ibid, pp. 115-130.

of religion and faith‖ (usul-ı diniyye ve aka‟idlerini tashih zımmında).²¹³ Furthermore, the unprecedented jihadist tone in the declaration of war against Russia in 1826 just after the destruction of the janissary corps, whether it be a public relations effort or not, was a novelty in the Ottoman official discourse. This radicalizing and orthodoxization of the official rhetoric was not a repetition of the traditional Ottoman discourse. It was an innovation and an expression of an emerging discourse embedded in the Ottoman modernization and in the emerging rhetoric of the Ottoman/Turkish proto-nationalism and nationalism.²¹⁴ This process also involved the etatization of Islam. Islam was rendered subordinate to the state and state interests. Although the case was not very different in the classical centuries of the Ottoman Empire, the extent of this subordination was unprecedented. These were early symptoms of the nationalization process interwoven in the modernization, not unlike the development of an evangelical language in 17^th century England in its road to nationalization in the early modernity.²¹⁵

The emergence of discourses of identity, demonization and ―othering‖ were preeminent manifestations and components of the formation of a modern state. Different from pre-modern polities, modern states developed their public faces and discourses to legitimize their existences. Along with cannons and rifles, the Ottomans reproduced such strategies of governmentality. These modern states differ from the medieval ones in their claim to serve for a particular mission. The medieval states knew what they were. Any Western barbaric kingdom from Merovengians to the Norman England was founded by a certain military/militarized elite longing for more glory and booty. In the words of Charles

²¹³ ibid, p. 302. For the printing of Birgivi Risalesi, also see Birinci, Ali, ― ‗Birgivi Risalesi‘: İlk Dini Kitab Niçin ve Nasıl Basıldı ?‖, in Ali Birinci, Tarih Yolunda, İstanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2001, pp. 93-97.

²¹⁴ See Erdem, Hakan Y, ― ‗Do not Think of Them as Agricultural Laboureres‘: Ottoman Responses to the Greek War of Independence‖, in Thalia Dragonas & Faruk Birtek (ed.), Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, London; New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 67-85.

²¹⁵ See Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1997; Pincus, Steven, Protestantism and Nationalism, Cambridge, U.K. : Cambridge University Press, 1996. Also see Hill, Christopher, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, Penguin, 1994; Hill, Christopher, Puritanism and Revolution, New York: Schocken Books, 1964.

Tilly, state making was an ―organized crime‖.²¹⁶ The case was not different in the Muslim Middle East. Although they claimed to serve for a higher goal, (religion and God) the mechanisms of these polities were not organized on their claims to serve for higher ideals. These polities were organized basically to maximize plunder and booty.

The modern states did not have such a luxury. They, on the other hand, (re)organized themselves to substantiate their claims to serve for respectable ideals. Accordingly, although Ottomans always claimed to uphold the banner of Islam; it was with the late eighteenth century they endorsed this claim more energetically and self-consciously.²¹⁷

To display the sacramentalization of the Ottoman Empire, Akşin Somel aptly named his book on the modernization of 19th century Ottoman education as “The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1908 : Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline”.²¹⁸ Somel‘s book‘s name also implies an analogy to the 19th century Russian autocracy‘s zeal in its claim of protection and promotion of order and religion.²¹⁹ The

 

²¹⁶ For the classic article defining pre-modern state-building as ―organized crime‖, see Tilly, Charles, ―War Making and State Making as Organized Crime‖, in Bringing the State Back in, Peter B. Evans & Theda Skocpol, Dietrich Rueschemeyer (ed.), Cambridge, U.K.

: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 169-187.

²¹⁷ A well-studied example of the Ottoman reorganization to claim to serve for a sublime ideal is Ottomans claim for the caliphate. See Buzpınar, Tufan, ―The Question of Caliphate Under the Last Ottoman Sultans‖, in Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration, Itzchak Weismann & Fruma Zachs (ed..), I.B. Tauris, pp. 17-36.

²¹⁸ Somel, Akşin, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839- 1908 : Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, 2001. Benjamin Fortna, who is the author of another valuable book on late Ottoman education makes similar points in his book. He criticizes the teleological look at the Ottoman modernization which equates it with Westernization and excludes Islam. ―By turning a blind eye to the continuities in the relationship between Islam and the modern learning, histories of the region perpetuated the belief that the two are mutually exclusive.‖ Fortna, Benjamin,The Imperial Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 1.

²¹⁹ For the creation of the official motto (―Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality‖) of the Russian czardom, framed by Uvarov, the minister of public education of Nicholas I, see Riasanovsky, Nicholas, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia 1825-1855, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. For the forging of the modern Russian autocratic symbolism from Peter onwards, see Wortmann, Richard, The Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995-2000 (2 volumes). For a general overview of ―self-legitimating‖, see Barker, Rodney, Legitimating

resemblance of the Ottoman imperium and the Russian autocracy²²⁰ (and the Meiji Japan²²¹) is also one of the points Selim Deringil had pointed out in his classic work on the self-representations of the reign of Abdülhamid II.²²² All these polities had throughout 19th century endeavored to establish a cult based on the splendor of their autocracy, the religiosity/divine grace of their regimes and their benevolence towards their subjects.²²³ Thus, the politicization of Islam was an inevitable and pivotal component of the 19th century Ottoman Empire replicating the pattern of a modernizing autocracy reminiscent of Russia, Japan and Prussia.