EMPIRES AND NATION BUILDING:
RUSSIFICATION AND TURKIFICATION COMPARED
By:
Erol Ulker
Submitted to
Central European University
Nationalism Studies Program
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Advisor: Professor Alexei Miller
Budapest, Hungary
2004
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................1
1. THE AIM OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................1
2. HISTORIOGRAPHY ON RUSSIFICATION AND TURKIFICATION..................................5
3. ARGUMENT OF THE STUDY ................................................................................................13
4. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY.........................................................................................16
CHAPTER I: DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE AND THE CONFLUENCE OF
COLONIALISM AND NATION BUILDING IN EUROPEAN EMPIRES...........19
1. PROBLEMS IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF NATIONALISM IN MULTINATIONAL
EMPIRE .............................................................................................................................................20
2. EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL STATE AS NATIONAL CORE OF EMPIRE ......................22
3. METROPOLE, COLONY AND DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE.............................................28
4. ANALYZING THE NATIONALITY POLICIES OF THE OTTOMAN AND THE RUSSIAN
EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE .......................................................33
CHAPTER II: TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND OFFICIAL IDEOLOGY
IN THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES ............................................................36
1. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES IN THE SECOND
HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY ........................................................................................................38
2. OFFICIAL IDEOLOGIES OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES.........................47
CHAPTER III: CIVILIZING MISSION WITH AND WITHOUT NATIONAL
CORE ..................................................................................................................................................55
1.
RUSSIFICATION AND COLONIALISM IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE.................................56
1.1. RUSSIFICATION AND THE WESTERN BORDERLANDS...............................................58
1.2. COLONIALISM AND THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS ..................................................61
1.3. EXPANSION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL CORE.........................................................66
2.
OTTOMANISM AND BORROWED COLONIALISM ...........................................................69
2.1
ISLAMIST-OTTOMANISM AS AN INTEGRATION PROJECT ...................................70
2.2
OTTOMANIZATION AND THE CIVILIZING MISSION
OF THE OTTOMAN STATE ........................................................................................................73
2.3. THE TURKISH SENTIMENTS OF REFORMERS AND COLONIALISM WITHOUT A
NATIONAL CORE........................................................................................................................77
CHAPTER IV: THE NATIONALITY POLICY OF THE YOUNG TURKS: FROM
DOMINANT NATIONALITY TO TURKIFICATION .................................................81
1. FROM ITTIHAD-I ANASIR TO THE DOMINANT NATIONALITY OF THE EMPIRE (19081913)...................................................................................................................................................83
2. FROM DOMINANT NATIONALITY TO TURKIFICATION: THE CONSTRUCTION OF
NATIONAL CORE IN ANATOLIA (1913-1918) ............................................................................95
2.1
ENSURING LOYALTY: DECENTRALIZATION IN THE ARAB PROVINCES .........97
2.2
CONSTRUCTING A NATIONAL CORE: TURKIFICATION IN ANATOLIA ...........101
2.2.1
POPULATION EXCHANGE ......................................................................................102
2.2.2
FORCED MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT POLICY ...........................................104
2.2.3
GEOGRAHICAL NATIONALIZATION AND THE ASSIMILATION OF MUSLIM
COMMUNITIES..........................................................................................................................106
2.2.4
WHERE IS KURDISTAN? THE EXPANSION OF ANATOLIA ..............................112
2.2.5
TURKIFICATION AND RUSSIFICATION ...............................................................115
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................118
PRIMARY RESOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................126
UNPUBLISHED PRIMARY RESOURCES ...................................................................................126
PUBLISHED PRIMARY RESOURCES .........................................................................................126
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...............................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
INTRODUCTION
1. THE AIM OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The main purpose of the present paper is to re-consider and re-examine the
peculiarities of the late Ottoman Empire’s nationality policy in a broad context, i.e. the
19th century phenomenon of modernization and centralization as well as nation building
in multinational empires. Given the fact that the era of Young Turks is this paper’s main
concern, it is more appropriate to use the expressions of “re-considering” and “reexamining” instead of “considering” and “examining”. To be sure, a notably large
literature has focused on this period ending up with the disintegration of the Ottoman
Empire. Furthermore, the relationship between the Ottoman center and various
nationalities of the empire after the constitutional revolution of 1908 has been
considerably studied. Therefore, the paper is by no means concerned with issues
untouched by the Ottoman historiography.
Yet the conviction underlying this paper is that the subject at hand still needs to
be studied further with approaches framed free from the anachronism that runs through
much of the existing historiography. The period is generally evaluated in reference to the
disintegration of the empire and to the emergence of the Turkish Republic whose builders
had their origins in the Young Turks movement, particularly, in the Committee of Union
and Progress (CUP). Thus categories of analysis employed for the evaluation of the
period are generally designed in accordance with the pursuit of the roots of Turkey as a
1
national state. With this motivation in mind, the subjects of inquiry addressed by most of
the works on the period are picked up willingly or unwillingly in search of an emerging
national state.
One of the consequences of the anachronism overwhelming the historiography
resides in the indifference to the fact that the state was still imperial, although powerless
and truncated1. Hence, the present paper aims to show that this indifference results in
another that concerns the thorny relation between the influence of nationalism on the
mindset of the Young Turks and the way in which they treated various nationalities of the
empire. My assertion is that our categories of analysis, in what concerns the nationalism
and nationality policy of the Young Turks, should take empire rather than national state
as a reference point. In other words, we should employ a contextual analysis by trying to
grasp the interaction among the imperial structure of the state, the peculiarities of Turkish
nationalism and their influence on the practices of the Young Turks.
This paper aims to take up such a contextual analysis in what concerns
particularly the implementation of Turkification and nationalization, as well as the
centralization policies of the Young Turks with consideration given to the existence or
non-existence of the influence of the nationalist outlook on these policies. Situating the
late Ottoman Empire in a global context and employing a comparative perspective, I aim
to interpret the peculiarities of the Young Turk’s nationality policy in the light of
aforementioned concerns. In doing so, I will stress the fact that the late Ottoman Empire
1
The definition of empire is a highly controversial subject. In order to avoid the uncertainty, I am defining
the empire as “… a composite state structure in which the metropole is distinct in some way from the
periphery and the relationship between the two is conceived or perceived by metropolitan or peripheral
actors as one of justifiable or unjustifiable inequity, subordination, and/or exploitation.” Ronald Grigor
Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, “National” Identity, and Theories of Empire”. Ronald
Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (eds.) A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin
and Stalin, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 26.
2
was not an isolated case. In this respect, the Russian Empire will be the chief subject of
comparison with the Ottoman Empire. I will discuss the case of the Ottoman Empire in
reference to the similar and dissimilar processes that the Russian Empire underwent
during the 19th and the beginning of 20th centuries.
To be concise, this study will examine to what extent the nationality polices of the
late Ottoman and the Russian Empires can be perceived as nation building projects. As a
corollary question, it will examine to what extent it is even reasonable to apply the terms
Turkification and Russification to the nationality policies of the late Ottoman and the
Russian Empires, respectively. Most importantly, to what degree did the nationalist
outlook shape the nationality polices of these empires?
To emphasize at the inception, this paper does not offer a symmetrical
comparison between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires. Requiring a competency in
both Russian and Turkish and for the large literatures produced on these empires, this is
too broad and too demanding a research agenda to be fulfilled within the limits of this
paper. Instead, the late Ottoman Empire constitutes the pivotal problematique of the
comparison. I aim to bring in fruitful insights to my interpretation of the process that the
Ottoman Empire underwent by examining them in the light of developments taking place
in the Russian Empire.
However, this should not lead to the underestimation of the comparative
perspective I aim to employ throughout this paper. The selection of Russia is by no
means a coincidence. Having been contiguous empires, the Russian and the Ottoman
Empires did not only share common borders, but also common hardships in consolidating
their center-periphery relations. Strengthening the colonial grips of their imperial centers
3
on the peripheries, and most importantly drawing the borders of the core nation of their
empires within their imperial domains proved to be far more difficult in these two
empires than modern overseas empires2. As I will stress throughout this paper, these
difficulties paved the way for comparable responses that emerged, to be sure, in different
contexts and with different motivations.
Moreover, that the interaction between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires had
undeniable influence on the forging of their imperial policies is beyond doubt. As
remarked by Alexei Miller, they engaged in a fierce struggle for gaining the loyalties of
the communities inhabited in the domains of their rivalry3. The Russian Empire struggled
to gain the loyalties of the Slavs and to ensure its protector status for the Christians of the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, on the other hand, attempted to ensure the
allegiances of the Muslim subjects of the Russian Empire by making appeal to the
institution of Caliphate, as well as to common kinship between the Turkophone subjects
of the Ottoman and the Russian Empires.
However, the interaction was not limited to the struggle over the “heart and soul”
of the subjects. The immigration flows originated from the territories of Russia to the
Ottoman domains crucially influenced the socio-political structure of the latter.
According to Kemal Karpat’s estimation, 4, 625,000 Muslims from Crimea, Kuban and
the Caucasus entered the Ottoman Empire between 1783-1917 in the face of the conquest
of their homelands by the Russians and some of its policies such as Christianization,
2
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out …”, p. 30.
Alexei Miller, “Between Local and Inter-Imperial. Russian Imperial History in Search of Scope and
Paradigm”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and European History 5, 1 (Winter 2004), p. 19.
3
4
conscription and re-settlement4. These newcomers that “consisted not only of rank-andfile individuals but also of traditional aristocratic families, tribal chiefs, religious leaders,
and even military officers” played a significant role in the rise and cultural-ideological
orientation of the Muslim middle class5. Promoted by the immigrations, the Muslim
middle class constituted a ground on which emerging Turkish nationalism relied6. At the
same time, the Muslim immigrants played a decisive role in the ideological fabrication of
Turkish nationalism. The most enthusiastic proponents of pan-Turkism, such as Yusuf
Akçura, Ahmet Ağaoğlu, İsmail Gaspıralı stood at the position in between two empires7.
The factors I have mentioned above constitute, of course, a good deal of
motivation leading me to undertake such a comparative study. Yet there is one more
reason in this regard that has to do with the historiography of the Russian and the
Ottoman Empires. Indeed, it is no less important than the aforementioned ones. This is
the similar ways in which the historiographies generated on the empires at hand evaluate
the phenomena of Turkification and Russification as well as nationality policies of these
empires.
4
Kemal H. Karpat, Osmanlı Modernleşmesi. Toplumsal, Kuramsal Değişim ve Nüfus, (Ankara: İmge
Kitabevi, 2002), pp. 128-131.
5
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the
Late Ottoman State, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 97-98.
6
Fatma Müge Göçek, “Osmanli Deleti’nde Turk Milliyetciliginin Olusumu: Sosyolojik Bir Yaklasim” in
Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekingil (eds.), Modern Turkiye’de Siyasi Dusunce: Milliyetcilik, (Istanbul:
Iletişim Yayınları, 2002), vol: 4, pp. 66-68.
7
The ideas generated by the Muslim immigrants of Russia began to be paid the attention they deserved.
Not only their contribution to the formulation of nationalist ideas but also the roles they continued to play
in Russian politics are investigated. For this subject, see A. Holly Shisller, Between Two Empires. Ahmet
Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey, (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003); Hakan Kırımlı, National
movements and national identity among the Crimean Tatars, 1905-1916, (Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1996);
Francois Georgeon, Turk Milliyetciligi’nin Kokenleri. Yusuf Akcura (1876-1935), (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi
Yurt Yayinlari, 1999).
5
2. HISTORIOGRAPHY ON RUSSIFICATION AND TURKIFICATION
To answer the research questions of this paper that have been mentioned above,
one of my primary concerns is to develop an analytical standpoint through which the
problems of the historiography dealing with the problematique of this paper are reevaluated. To be sure, this attempt consists in an appraisal of a historiographical dialogue
on the Turkification and Russification on the basis of which I will clarify the primary
argument of the present paper.
What is striking in the historiography on Russification and Turkification is the
vacillating meanings with which these terms are endowed. The dialogue on the meaning
of the notion of official nationalism, in general, and Russification, in particular, has
produced quite a rich literature since the 1990s. Thus, the primary approaches regarding
the meaning of Russification are easier to distinguish, if not sufficient to explain the
character of the phenomenon, whereas the historiography on the late Ottoman Empire has
hardly spawned sophisticated analytical stances regarding Turkification thus far. Yet one
can still identify some distinct meanings of Turkification in the historiography on the
Young Turks era of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, a careful consideration of these
distinctions shows that they overlap to a large extent with the different meanings of
Russification.
6
I would like to start my historiographical inquiry with a long quotation in order to
demonstrate the conceptual confusion marking the evaluation of the term of
Turkification.
The obvious response to separatist nationalism and centrifugal tendencies was a grand
design for Turkish nationalism. Goaded on by this situation, several of the Young Turk
leaders began to support increasingly the Pan-Turk option, as a way to offset
Turkification at home as a purposeful orientation towards the Turkic groups in Asia,
which ultimately could also assist the recovery of recently lost territories8.
The quotation belongs to Jacob M. Landau, a well-known historian of PanTurkism. He goes on to develop his argument as follows.
Of course, not all Committee of Union and Progress leaders took Pan-Turkism seriously
(they often differed on various issues); some considered it fanciful and impracticable.
Cemal Pasha, for example, inclined towards intensifying Turkification and relying on the
Turks of the Ottoman Empire9.
In order to show the validity of his argument, Landau applies to an excerpt from
Cemal Pasha.
Young Turkey realized that among the various Ottoman elements which were struggling
for the advancement of their respective nationalities the Turks alone were isolated ... so
they, too, began to work for a great national revival in knowledge education and virtue.
The Committee of Union and Progress had no right to put any obstacle in their way ...
Speaking for myself, I am primarily an Ottoman, but I do not forget that I am a Turk, and
nothing can shake my belief that the Turkish race is the foundation stone of the Ottoman
Empire ... in its origin the Ottoman Empire is a Turkish creation10.
Evidently, here we have a moot point about the subject of Turkification. Cemal
Pasha’s saying, which is apprised by Landau as an appeal to Turkification, is indeed
divulging the reflection of one particular formulation of Ottomanism in his mind. Recent
scholarly works on Ottoman history have taught us that the interpretation of Ottomanism
after the promulgation of the Tanzimat edict had never been completely free from appeal
8
Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkism in Turkey: A Study of Irredentism, (London : C. Hurst, 1981), p. 48.
Ibid., p. 51.
10
Ibid., p. 51.
9
7
to Turkish ethnicity (or race) as the Empire’s founding stone11. Even before the Tanzimat
period, one can find the clues of this understanding12. In this regard, Şükrü Hanioğlu
aptly brings the following point.
Ironically, although the state endeavored to Ottomanize its subjects, the symbols used to
evoke a supranational culture were Turkish. Thus, even non-Turkish Muslim Ottomans
who had acquired important state posts and who admired Tanzimat statesmen decried this
policy as a Turkification process13.
Seen from this aspect, Cemal Pasha’s saying does not stand as a break from a
disposition that emerged in the articulation of the Ottomanism principle during the 19th
century. Nor is Landau concerned with taking into account the period preceding the
Young Turks’ rule in order to show continuities and differences that emerged after 1908.
This last point is, of course, not confined to Landau’s approach. The
historiography on the second constitutional period of the Ottoman Empire has a
significant leaning to examine this period in isolation from the foregoing era of the
Empire. For example, Sina Akşin joins this tendency when he makes reference to how the
Turkification policies of the Young Turks in Albania ignited the revolt of Albanians
against Ottoman rule. He does not discuss in what sense the policies of the Young Turks
differed from the centralization measures of the 19th century, let alone the fact that he
does not attempt to define the meaning of Turkification14.
One of the possible explanations for this tendency has just been mentioned above,
i.e. the anachronistic interpretation of the Young Turks period. More than as a phase of
11
Illustrious to this literature are Usama Maksidi, “Ottoman Orientalism”, The American Historical
Review, vol: 107, 2002; Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of
Power in the Ottoman Empire 18776-1909, (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998)
12
Hakan Erdem, "Recruitment for the 'Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad' in the Arab Provinces, 18261827, in Gershoni, Erdem and Wokoek (eds.) Histories of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO. Lynn
Rienner Publishers, 2002).
13
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Turkish Nationalism and the Young Turks, 1889-1908” in Fatma Müge Göçek (ed.)
Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East, (New York: State University of New York Press,
2002), p. 86.
8
the imperial state, it is generally seen as the beginning of developments leading to the
emergence of the modern national state of Turkey. Therefore, it is not needed to engage
in a discussion on the character of Turkification for that period in the context of the
imperial history, as it is given for this view that implementation of what is called
Turkification reveals the influence of the Turkish nationalism on the governmental
practices.
There is indeed another explanation that is a corollary to the previous one. This is
the analytical inability of the Ottoman historiography in distinguishing the device of
nationalization that is imbued with the nationalist goals, and the policy of centralization
that remarks the policies of most of the multiethnic empires of the 19th century, which is
not necessarily determined by nationalism.
A similar, if not identical, problem looms large in the historiography on
Russification too. I should like to deal with this common point further, as it is closely
related to the interpretation of nationalism in contiguous multiethnic empires.
What I have just mentioned as a common confusion between Ottoman and
Russian historiography can be identified with the over-extension of the use of the terms
Russification and Turkification. These terms are applied to depict sundry centralizing
measures with a slight consideration given to how nationalist outlook influenced these
measures15. Broad ranges of policies from administrative integration to economic
14
Sina Akşin, Jön Türkler ve İttihat Terakki, (Ankara: İmge Kitabevi, 2001), p. 309.
Illustrious of this viewpoint for the Ottoman case is Mahmoud Haddad, “The Rise of Arab Nationalism
Reconsidered”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2. (May, 1994), pp. 201-222. In
what concerns the CUP’s policy vis-à-vis the Arab provinces, Mahmoud Haddad equates the centralization
policies of the CUP to the Turkification measures. He claims also that Turkification in the education system
and administration began to be exercised during the period of Abdulhamid II, especially after 1895.
15
9
exploitation and cultural assimilation are designated under the banner of these terms16. In
its extreme case, Russification, for example, stands almost as a ubiquitous phenomenon.
Even voluntary assimilation of the various communities is embodied in the definition of
Russification17.
If the over-extension of the meanings of Russification and Turkification is one
end of the stick, the other is the categorical denial of the use of these concepts for
depicting the empire’s nationality policies. This position can be found in the argument
that it is inaccurate to apply the term nationalism to the nationality policies of the Russian
and the Ottoman Empires18. The point of departure for such an argument is the
assumption that nationalist policy should serve to transform a multinational empire into a
nation state. Indeed, this argument denies implicitly or explicitly the reasonableness of
searching for the clues of policies related to Turkification and Russification. These terms
are taken in reference to the policies that should aim to fulfill what Gellner’s formulation
of nationalism suggests, i.e. “nationalism is a political principle which holds that the
16
For the clear manifestation of this view in relation to Russia, see Geoffrey Hosking, “Empire and NationBuilding in Late Imperial Russia” in Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (eds.) Russian Nationalism Past
and Present, (London: Macmillan, 1998), especially pages 28-32.
17
See Edward C. Thaden (ed.). Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855-1914, (Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 9. The word Russification is employed in three senses in
this study. The first one is unplanned, voluntary Russification taking place from the 16th century on.
Second is administrative Russification, more deliberate and conscious policy beginning with the reign of
Catherine II. “It aimed at uniting the borderlands with the center of the empire through the gradual
introduction of Russian institutions and laws and extension of the use of Russian in the local bureaucracy
and as subject of instruction in the schools”. According to cultural Russification, the third meaning, it was
not enough for the to integrate borderland peoples into the political and administrative structure of the
empire. Russia must have come out as a modern nation state and therefore borderland minorities must have
accepted the language, culture and religious values of the Russians
18
For the manifestations of this argument concerning Russian case, see Theodore R. Weeks. Nation and
State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914, (De
Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996); David G. Rowley, “Imperial versus National
Discourse: The Case of Russia”, Nations and Nationalism, vol: 6, no: 1, 2000. For similar, if not identical,
contention regarding the Ottoman case, see Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism,
and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997),
especially pages 88-96 wherein he generalizes his observations in relation to the Arab provinces to the
whole Ottoman Empire.
10
political and national unit should be congruent”19. In this viewpoint, therefore,
Russification and Turkification could hardly have characterized the nationality policies of
these empires, as keeping up the unity of the multinational empire is the first priority of
the imperial nationality policy.
The aforementioned double-edged classification simplifies the complexities of
each individual study, let alone the fact that it by no means represents an exhaustive
review of the literature. Besides, there are, of course, some other arguments situated in
the middle position20. Nevertheless, it is still safe to argue that the historiography on the
cases at hand lacks significant analytical approach to grasp the peculiarities concerning
the nationality policies of the empires under consideration.
The problem does not stem exclusively from the terminological turmoil. It is
indeed fully legitimate to come up with a specific definition of Russification and
Turkification in order to depict various policies related especially to centralization and
unification under the empires. In this sense, one can consider the 17th century
phenomenon of voluntary assimilation in the same basket with the forced, cultural
assimilation if his/her definition of, say, Russification allows. As a matter of fact, the
problem looms large in the question of to what extent something that was designated as
Russification or Turkification was put into the service of nationalism. In other words, the
19
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalisms, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 1.
For a clear demonstration of a middle position, see Witold Rodkiewicz. Russian Nationality Policy in the
Western Provinces of the Empire (1863-1905), (Lublin: Scientific Society of Lublkin, 1998). He basically
asserts that two principal conceptions of nationality policy were competing within the bureaucracy with
respect to the nationality policy: “Bureaucratic Nationalism” and “Imperial Idea”. According to
Rodkiewichz, the former conception saw in the bureaucracy the main agent of nation building. It
emphasized that the “Russian people” were the ruling nationality and promoted a transformation of the
Russian Empire into the Russian national state. The Imperial conception, on the other hand, stressed supra
national ties holding the empire united. Dynastic and State loyalty were the basic components of the last
one.
20
11
matter of confusion is not the endowment of terminology with various meanings but the
entrance to the equation of another variable, that is, nationalism.
I would like to give one more long quotation at this juncture in order to clarify my
argument. The following excerpt is taken from a recent seminal study on Ahmet
Ağaoglu, a prominent ideologue of pan-Turkism.
... many authors have interpreted these policies, particularly in the post-1908, as a policy
of ‘Turkification’, that is, as an ethno-nationalist policy of enforced assimilation or, as
Anderson would call it, official nationalism. Since many of the early Turkish thinkers
were from the Russian Empire, an analogy is often made to Russification. The
characterization of these policies as ‘Turkification’ or as examples of official nationalism
are both mistaken. First, the ‘Turkification’ policies of the Second Constitutional period
had to do with the desire to create a state of formally equal citizens with strong loyalty to
the Ottoman State, regardless of background and to do this in the context of a fully
constitutional and representative regime, that is, to do it in the context of a popular
sovereignty. In this respect, the program of the ‘Young Turks’ can not be considered a
program of ‘official nationalism’ as defined by Anderson, namely an attempt to naturalize
and shore up an illiberal dynastic regime21.
What I have mentioned about the historiography on Turkification does not fit in
Shisller’s argument that Turkification is generally considered as a forced assimilation.
Quite the contrary, most of the centralization measures of Young Turks are regarded as
Turkification, as I have previously shown. However, although predicated upon this wrong
assumption, he brings in a very fruitful argument by pointing to the linkage between
nationalism (according to him ethno-nationalism) and Turkification. Indeed, the policies
Shisller talks about at the beginning of this excerpt are the adoption of Turkish as an
official vernacular of the Ottoman Empire and the attempts at simplifying Turkish22. In
this sense, I agree with him that these policies do not necessarily have to do with
Turkification. However, just like other works that deny the existence of nationalist
policies in Russia and the Ottoman Empire, his way of gainsaying the Turkification
21
22
A. Holly Shisller, Between Two Empires..., p. 15.
Ibid.
12
measures assumes that Turkish nationalism did not influence the practices of the Young
Turks.
Shisller particularly predicates his assertion on Hasan Kayalı’s extensive study on
the relationship between the Young Turks regime and the Arabs23. In this study, Kayalı
shows cogently that, rather than Turkism versus Arabism, the character of the tensions
between the Young Turks and the Arabs resided in centralization versus decentralization.
As will be discussed below, this argument is to a large extent successful in interpreting
the character of Young Turks-Arab relations. Nevertheless, they both fall into the same
trap of generalizing the practices implemented in one region as the overall policy of the
Young Turks.
As a matter of fact, the line of reasoning Kayalı and thus Shisller employ is as
follows: Turkification was not implemented in the Arab provinces; therefore the Young
Turks did not resort to Turkification in the empire; Turkification is an ethno-nationalist
policy guide aiming at enforced assimilation; therefore Young Turks rule was not
affected by Turkish nationalism. As I have demonstrated above, a similar, if not identical,
approach denying the influence of Russian nationalism on the imperial practices also
exists in the historiography of Russia24. What I will try to display throughout this study is
that this argument is as problematic as the one identifying almost all of the centralizing
measures with Turkification or Russification.
23
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks... For Shisller ‘s use of Kayalı’s argument, see the pages 16 and
18 of his study.
24
The classical case of this is the argument advanced by David G. Rowley “Imperial versus National
Discourse: The Case of Russia...” According to Rowley, the goal of not only Tsarist but also Soviet leaders
was to maintain an empire and not a nation state, “and their national consciousness was imperial rather than
national”. Therefore, to Rowley, applying the notion “nationalism” to Russian case in which the idea of
transforming the empire to a nation-state did not entrench is a misleading attempt.
13
3. ARGUMENT OF THE STUDY
The aforementioned considerations delimit to a certain degree the content of this
paper. In the context of the problems of historiography, I aim to offer a clearer
understanding concerning the character of elusive interaction between nationalism and
the imperial practices of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
To do so, I propose to distinguish two kinds of influence that majority nationalism
may induce on the empires’ nationality policies. The first is the geographical
nationalization of specific areas in order to structure them to the basis wherein nation
building project would be implemented. In multinational empires, this process is to be
seen as the process of distinguishing the imperial core that has to be transformed into a
nation, and the periphery of the Empire25.
The second type of influence is the decision in terms of which peoples and
communities of the empire are to be involved in the empire’s core nation. This results in
the assimilation of some communities and dissimilation of others on the basis of
inclusion into or exclusion from the core nation.
It is these two aspects of nationality policy that I conceptualize as Turkification
and Russification in this paper. Hand in hand with these two processes is generally the
consolidation of center-periphery relations in the empires, which, in many respects, gives
way to the modern colonial relations disguised under the discourse of civilizing mission
towards peripheral peoples. Nevertheless, just as such a policy would emerge free from
25
Alexei I. Miller. “Shaping Russian and Ukranian Identities in the Russian Empire during the 19th
Century: Some Methodological Remarks”, Jahrbucher fur Geschicte Osteuropas, 2001, H.2, p. 5.
14
nationalist inclinations, so nationalization of one region would be coupled with
decentralization in another region.
Indeed, there is an implicit, if not explicit, assumption in the aforementioned
outlook equating the nationalist project in the Russian and the Ottoman Empires with the
project in terms of the transformation of the whole empire into a nation state. This
implicit assumption is the moot analytical distinction between maritime and continental
empires26. It is presupposed that the nationalist project in the latter category should be
shaped around the nationalization of the whole empire. On the other hand, the fusion of
the history of nation-states with the history of empires in the former category is ignored
as though classic nation-states in Europe stand as the opposite of maritime empires.
This implicit assumption has indeed a serious consequence for the analysis of
nationalist practices in contiguous empires. It leads to an inattention to the geographical
dimension of nationalization in Russia and especially in the Ottoman Empire. The
developments regarding nation building taking place in the continental cores of the
European national states are taken as a point of reference for evaluating the continental
empires as a whole. Thus the lack of nationalization in some regions of the empires (like
Arab provinces) comes to be seen as a proof of lack of nationalization at all.
Nevertheless, this paper aims to show that, with all the essential differences in
mind, in both maritime and continental empires of Russia and Ottoman, the process of
nation building in the imperial cores was in the making during the 19th and the beginning
26
My classification of maritime and continental empires relies on the taxonomy of Dominic Lieven. He
categorizes two different types of empire. The first is the West European maritime empires that had their
origins in the 16th century and by 1900 were the world’s leading industrial and financial powers. Britain
was the model type of this sort. The second type is huge, multi-ethnic polities governed by (in principle)
centralized bureaucracies and absolute monarchs, and ruling overwhelmingly agrarian societies. He counts
the Ottomans and Chings as the classical types of this sort Dominic Lieven. “Dilemmas of Empire 18501918. Power, Territory, Identity”. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No. 2. (Apr., 1999), p. 163.
15
of the 20th centuries. Hence, the imperial cores were defined (or in the process of being
defined) not only as imagined communities but also as imagined geographies. Since the
continental cores were isolated unequivocally from the peripheries, this process occurred
much easier in the modern, maritime empires of Europe, than continental empires of
Russia and Ottoman. Yet one can observe the attempts at distinguishing the geographical
national cores in these contiguous empires during the second half of the 19th century and
the beginning of the 20th century as well. And only the regions that were counted in
imperial, national cores became the areas where the nation building policies came into
effect. In other words, the correct reference point for comparison with the Ottoman
Empire is not the hexagon of France. It should be the French overseas empire as a whole.
To be sure, the projects emerged at different times and under different contexts
with different motivations. As will be demonstrated in the following pages, Turkification
as a nationalist project of nation building was a latecomer compared to Russia and the
overseas empires. Having emerged as a defensive policy aimed at maintaining the life of
the empire, it is notable not for its similarities but for its differences from the other nation
building projects that emerged in the empires. Yet this paper will concentrate not on these
dissimilarities, but on similarities in what concerns the selectivity of nation building
projects initiated by multinational empires in general and the Russian and the Ottoman
Empires in particular.
All in all, the argument around which this study will take shape is as follows.
Nationalist projects emerged in the multinational empires were selective in their project
of constructing a core nationality and national territories out of the empires. Some areas
and some peoples were included into but some were excluded from the boundaries of the
16
national core that was the object of construction by the nation building projects.
However, nationalist projects still maintained the center-periphery relation with those
areas and peoples that were kept out of the constructed core nation. Most importantly,
what is very clear in these regards for maritime empires was also the case for the
continental empires of Russia and Ottoman.
4. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
In order to accomplish the aims of this paper, I will first engage in a brief
discussion of overseas empires in order to situate my cases in a broader context, which is
actually fundamental for the purpose of the present paper. This part is concerned with
how the way in which character of nationalism’s influence on the practices of the Russian
and the Ottoman Empires can be examined in the light of this broad framework. For this
reason, I will award attention to the intersection of the formation of nation states in
Western Europe with the colonialism exercised on the overseas domains of the empires.
Besides the inattention of nationalism theories to this confluence, this section will also
deal with the increasing interest in the loyalties of the subjects, which resided in the
structural transformation of the European empires.
On the basis of this discussion, the second section will deal with the Ottoman and
Russian cases. It will show that the Ottoman and the Russian Empires underwent similar
structural shift, in the second half of the 19th century, from predatory to developmental
model of empire. In this respect, consideration will be given to the attempts at increasing
the infrastructural power of the state and re-organization of the center-periphery relations
17
on the basis of this transformation. The influence of this shift on the official ideologies of
the empires in question will be examined as well.
The third section will engage in a comparison of the nationality polices of Russia
and the late Ottoman Empire in light of perspective that will have been underlined in the
previous part. For the Ottoman Empire, the focus of this section will be Hamidian era
(1876-1909), which preceded the Young Turks’ period. This section will point out the
parallel and the different concerns that existed in the nationality policies of these empires.
On the one hand, the intermingling of centralization policies with a specific pattern of
colonialist device will be shown as a common point between them. On the other hand, it
will be demonstrated that while Russian colonialism was bound up with the
nationalization policies, “Ottomanization” was not coupled with similar policy of nation
building, having been an integrationist project.
The last section is dedicated entirely to the second constitutional period. The
primary purpose of this section is to examine the Young Turks’ policies in relation to the
previous period of the Ottoman Empire on the one hand, and the Russian nationality
policy on the other. In doing so, the policies of the Young Turks will be categorized in
two periods. It will be shown that the first period from 1908 to 1913 witnessed the
gradual ascendance of Turkish nationalism. This resulted in the re-interpretation of the
Ottomanism principle in line with the motto that Turkish nationality is the dominant
nationality of the empire. However, this did not bring Turkification policies. They began
to be implemented in the second period, from 1913 to the end of the empire. By means of
settlement and deportation policies, the Young Turks sought to nationalize Anatolia as
18
the base of Turkish national core. Nevertheless, characterizing these policies was its
selectivity, in the way that was conceptualized above.
19
CHAPTER I: DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE AND THE
CONFLUENCE OF COLONIALISM AND NATION BUILDING IN
EUROPEAN EMPIRES
In the introductory part of the paper, I have discussed the crucial distinction that
the existing historiography draws implicitly or explicitly between maritime and
continental empires. I have also argued that this distinction comes up with serious
conceptualization problems as regards to the character of nationalist policies deployed by
the continental empires of Russia and Ottoman. In this respect, the major intention of this
section is to point to the intersected formation of nation-states and modern, colonial
empires of Western Europe with two primary goals in mind.
First of all, as already mentioned, I am concerned with grounding my inquiry in
the global context of the 19th century. Thus, in this part attention is given to the 19th
century phenomena of modernization, centralization and nation building in the
multinational empires. To be sure, investigating the cases at hand in the light of this
wide-ranging framework is a fruitful endeavor in itself. Nonetheless, my interest here is
not limited to this goal.
The second purpose directly linked to the thematic of the paper is to examine how
the character of nationalism’s influence on the practices of the Russian and the Ottoman
Empires can be approached in the light of this broad framework. It is due particularly to
this consideration that I focus my attention on the intersection of the formation of nation
states in Western Europe with the consolidation of center – periphery relations associated
20
with the emergence of modern, colonial empires. Indeed, as will be demonstrated below,
misinterpretation of the nature of Russification and Turkification consists considerably in
neglecting this point.
1.
PROBLEMS IN THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF NATIONALISM
IN MULTINATIONAL EMPIRE
In the introduction, I have alluded to a strong propensity of the field of
historiography on the Russian and the Ottoman Empires for employing Gellner’s wellknown definition of nationalism as a theoretical framework27. That is, “nationalism is a
political principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent”28.
However, this definition is not satisfactory to account for the character of
dominant nationalism in the multinational empires and its effects on the imperial policies.
The problem consists above all in too much stress being put on nation (al) – state as a
category, conceived to be the most important item on the agenda of nationalism (or
nationalist movements) in what concerns the coincidence of polity with nation.
This emphasis is not at all confined to Gellner’s approach. This is argued in
chorus by the classics of nationalism theories. Hobsbawm, for example, categorizes
nationalism as a political programme without which, realized or not, it is a meaningless
27
See, for example, the introduction of Theodore Weeks study, Nation and State in Late Imperial
Russia…Predicating his idea of nationalism on Gellner’s definition, he questions the argument asserting
that the Russian Empire followed a coherent nationality policy through which the empire was desired to
transform into a modern nation state. He somehow admits that the longing of the imperial elite for equating
Russia with the Great Russian nationality and the Orthodox Church was at times irresistible. Nevertheless,
Weeks contends that the goal of the “official” governmental nationalism and its nationality policy was
above all keeping up the unwieldy, utterly non-national empire, and only in second place strengthening
Russian culture``
28
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalisms, p. 1.
21
term. This political programme holds that groups defined as “nations” have the right to,
and therefore ought to, form territorial states of the kind that have become standard since
the French Revolution29. Anthony Smith shares a similar understanding with both Gellner
and Hobsbawm in the sense of viewing nationalism as a movement aiming at the
correspondence of a polity with a nation30.
Underlying this commonality is indeed the fact that until quite recently the
historiography and the other disciplines of social sciences dealing with the emergence of
nation-states in Europe neglected the fusion of the history of nation-states with the
history of empires. In other words, “‘the nation-state’ has become too centered in
conceptions of European history since the late eighteenth century, and ‘empire’ not
centered enough.”31 The existing historiography conceives of European national states in
isolation from their imperial ties.
As a matter of fact, this neglect is of undeniable importance for the analysis of the
cases with which the paper is dealing. Taken by the classics of nationalism as a category
of reference and isolated from the imperial structure surrounding it, the nation state
becomes a model according to which the existence or absence of nationalism’s influence
on the practices of the continental empires is measured. What is disregarded, however, is
that nation states in Western Europe emerged, to some extent, as the continental cores of
the imperial conglomerates. That is to say, the existing historiography pays attention to a
wrong address, namely, the nation-state, as a reference point to determine whether nation
building was in the making in the continental empires.
29
E. J. Hobsbawm, “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today” in Gopal Balakrishian (ed.) Mapping the
Nation (London, New York: Verso, 1996), p. 256.
30
Anthony D. Smith, Nationalist Movements, (London, Macmilian /New York: St. Martin Press, 1976)
22
It is definitely true that the components of nation state refer to the convergent but
different historical processes that emerged in Western Europe. That is, the formation of
modern states and the building of modern nations. Nevertheless, coupled with the
emergence of national state, in Western Europe, was the expansion of the maritime
empires worldwide and their turning into modern, “developmental”, colonial empires.
This significant issue has not satisfactorily attracted nationalism theories and the
historiography of national states thus far. However, it is hardly possible to isolate these
coinciding developments from each other. While the emergence of nation-state refers to
the convergence of its two constitutive components, the transformation towards colonial
empires is very much embedded in this convergence.
2.
EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL STATE AS NATIONAL CORE OF
EMPIRE
The process of state formation emerged out of multidimensional developments. I
shall briefly give their account by starting with the consolidation of territorial units by
bureaucratic-absolutist states that for the first time were able to hold the monopoly of the
means of violence inside their territory. Another development would be the
transformation of frontiers delimiting different states in clearly fixed boundaries. And
lastly, the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a new class especially receptive to the ideas of
Enlightenment; and the new roles of monarchs and rulers which was characterized by a
31
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony. Rethinking a Research
Agenda” in Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (eds.) Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World, (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), p. 22.
23
legitimizing principle coming from the ruled rather than God’s will or royal blood32. This
process came to embody the emergence of territorially defined populations, each
recognizing a common paramount organ of government served by specialized personnel
to carry out the military and civil services. The emergent state was recognized by other
similarly constituted ones as “sovereign”, that is, independent in its actions upon the
territorially defined population33. Modern states had emerged long before nations, in the
modern sense, and it was not until the late eighteenth century that both elements, the
modern state and the modern nation, melted into the shape of “nation-state”34.
The building of modern nations constitutes the second dimension in the emergence of nation-state that became the recognized unit of political power par excellence,
not only for Western Europe, but also in the rest of the world. The deliberate attempts of
state-makers were designed to homogenize the culture of their subject population through
linguistic, religious and educational standardization35. Giving to citizens a common
national identity associated with common language and culture is the main target of
nation-building measures36. The creation of symbols of national identity like flags and
anthems, the socialization through educational system, and the establishment of political
institutions seen to represent all sections of society are among the important measures
undertaken by states to promote nation building37. And the result was that state, nation
32
Montserrat Guibernau, Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century,
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), pp. 51-52.
33
Samuel E. Finer, “State – and Nation – Building in Europe: The Role of the Military” in Charles Tilly
(ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975),
pp. 85-86.
34
Jürgen Habermas, “The European Nation-state-Its Achievements and Its Limits. On the Past and Future
of Sovereignty and Citizenship” in Gopal Balakrishian (ed.) Mapping The Nation, p. 282.
35
Charles Tilly. “Reflections on the History of European State-Making” in Charles Tilly (ed.), The
Formation of National States in Western Europe, p. 78.
36
Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 222.
37
Anthony H. Birch, Nationalism and National Integration, (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 40-42.
24
and society converged in the process of an effort to represent an entire society or
people38.
On the other hand, as Frederick Cooper and Laura Stoler persuasively hold,
‘nation-building’, and ‘empire-building’ were mutually constitutive projects in France,
Britain and Holland39. The validity of this affinity is perhaps most apparent in what
Michael Hechter terms “internal colonialism”40. Both states and empires were created
through conquest, colonization and cultural change41. The European monarchies that
were at the head of the colonial expansion had been constituted through the same means
by which they acquired their empires:
the rulers of composite monarchies faced problems that would be familiar to the
administrators of any empire: the need to govern distant dependencies from a powerful
center; collisions between metropolitan and provincial legislatures; the necessity of
imposing common norms of law and culture over diverse and resistant populations; and
the reliance of the central government on the co-optation of local elites42.
As Fernand Braudel notes, those European countries that had a consolidated state
power were the first to begin their overseas conquests43. In the case of those countries
that confronted difficulties in developing a strong central authority, such as Germany,
even though they manifested a tendency towards imperialist expansion, they could pursue
imperial purposes only after gaining the marks of statehood.
More important than the similar instruments by which nation state and imperial
polity were forged, the former was structured with premeditated efforts out of and in
38
E. J. Hobsbawm, “Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1915” in E.J. Hobsbawm and Terenge
Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 265.
39
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony…”, p. 22.
40
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966,
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 60-64
41
David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire… p. 15.
42
Ibid, p. 23
43
Fernand Braudel, The Mediteranian and the Mediterranian World in the Age of Philip II, trans Sian
Reynolds, (London, 1973), p 659, in David Armitage, The Ideological Origins…, 2000, p 15
25
interaction with empire. More precisely, it was brought about as the imperial core of
empire.
Many of the oldest nation-states of our time began their historic evolution as
heterogeneous dynastic conglomerates with the characteristics of imperial relationships
between metropole and periphery44. Only after the hard work of nationalizing
homogenization were hierarchical empires transformed into relatively egalitarian nationstates based on a horizontal notion of equal citizenship45. That is to say, one of the
primary items on the agenda of overseas empires was the consolidation of an imperial
continental core, which was isolated from the peripheries unequivocally with a natural
border of water mass, into a nation-state.
Indeed, through his cogent depiction of the transformation of France into a nationstate, Eugen Weber makes reference to this enduring process that characterized the
policies of 19th century European empires. That is why he likens the 19th century France
to an empire more than to a nation-state46. He classifies education, military conscription
and other central measures as instruments serving to the homogenization of the
population inhabiting in the hexagon.
To be sure, different conditions were at work and different strategies were
employed47. In France, for example, cultural and administrative homogenization
distinguished the attempt to construct a nation-state as Weber’s study displays. Even in
the revolutionary era, France faced the fact that the territory it assumed to rule was not
44
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, “National” Identity, and Theories of
Empire” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (eds.) A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in
the Age of Lenin and Stalin, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 27.
45
Ibid.
46
Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 485.
26
coterminous with the boundaries of who were considered as French. Thereafter,
Napoleon set off on expanding the region that could be made into a French nation
through cultural homogenization. He accompanied this with the enlargement of
dominance over regions that could not be so integrated48. Later on, when the Third
Republic succeeded in turning “peasants into Frenchmen” within continental Europe,
imperial expansion in West Africa and Southeast Asia was put into practice too49. Despite
the ruling fictions that appealed to the France of one hundred million Frenchmen, less
than half of whom lived in the hexagon or spoke French, however, the need to maintain
distinctions against a colonized population was compromised with the assimilationist
rhetoric50.
On the other hand, British policy resorted to “hybrid assimilation” combining
regional identities with a concept of Britishness51. In the 18th and early 19th centuries,
Britishness came out as a category defining the common identity for English, Welsh, and
Scottish peoples52. It was to a large extent “the Protestant Nation”, which for a
considerable period served as a major rally, given the strong Protestant feelings in Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland53. Within this loose identity in the making, however, the
English core was predominant. It is true that Britishness was not merely the imposition of
an English core, as Linda Colley rightfully emphasizes54. Welsh, Scottish and the English
47
Alexei I. Miller. “Shaping Russian and Ukranian Identities in the Russian Empire during the 19th
Century: Some Methodological Remarks”, Jahrbucher fur Geschicte Osteuropas, 2001, H.2, p. 4
48
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony…”, p. 22.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
51
Alexei I. Miller. “Shaping Russian and Ukranian Identities…”, p. 4. .
52
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, (New Haven, London: Yale University Press,
1992), pp. 6-7.
53
Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), p. 37.
54
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation…, p. 6.
27
remained in many ways culturally distinct peoples sub-divided into different regions55.
Nonetheless, what Krishan Kumar defines as “imperial or missionary nationalism” helps
to explain the elusive interaction of British and English national identities56. English
imperial nationalism is to be identified with its attachment to the British Empire. Instead
of developing a separate national identification out of the English identity as a core nation
of the Empire, the British Empire embarked upon the construction of a loose core identity
of Britishness57. It was clear, however, that many of the subject peoples of British
Empire neither could nor should be assimilated58. A sharp distinction was made from the
outset between the British core on the one hand, and the overseas colonial subjects on the
other.
It is apparent that the emergence of national state in Western Europe has a lot to
do with imperial structure. As the cases of France and Britain demonstrate, national state
was brought about as a result of a distinction made between the regions where nation
building policies were to be carried out and other regions that were left as the parts of
imperial administration. In other words, the emergence of nation state was geographically
determined within the imperial structure that persisted in the course of this process.
Needles to say that this argument cannot be generalized to Europe as a whole. I
am concerned here with national states of Europe that were bound up with empire. That is
why I opted for Britain and France as examples around which the discussion of this part
has been conducted.
55
Ibid., p. 7.
Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, pp. 32-38.
57
Ibid., pp. 36-37.
58
Dominic Lieven. “Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918…”, p. 179.
56
28
Two crucial points rise at this juncture in the light of my above discussion. Firstly,
I have thus far emphasized the argument that nation building and empire building are
closely correlated developments of the 19th century. After emphasizing these aspects, I
aim to develop further the topic of empire building and to underline the relevance of this
discussion for the analysis of Russification and Turkification
The remaining part of this chapter is devoted to these two points. As it is shown
below, they are highly related to each other. What I argue below sheds light on the way in
which I propose to conceptualize Turkification and Russification.
3.
METROPOLE, COLONY AND DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE
As already mentioned, the consolidation of nation states “at home” was
accompanied by the construction of different kinds of states abroad, produced by colonial
rule59. This affinity, indeed, derived from the shift that European overseas empires
underwent from the type of “predatory” empire to “developmental” empire in the course
of the 19th century. Developmental empires are to be distinguished by their greater
penetrative capacity from predominantly redistributional predatory ones, which
functioned in an international context in which there was commercial exchange but no
expectation of cumulative economic development60. They acquired more and more what
Michael Mann terms “infrastructural power”, i.e. “the capacity of the state actually to
59
A. G. Hopkins, “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History”, Past and Present, no:
164, Aug 1999, p. 203
60
Ibid., p. 202.
29
penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the
realm”61.
Especially in the second half of the 19th century, European expansion that
increasingly took a capitalistic form, required increased military protection abroad, more
complex legal regulations of property and market transactions and domestic property
forms62. Promoted by the demands of capitalistic property-owners, who sought to
mobilize the state power for the regulation of civil society on this basis, the developments
of the era necessitated an effective state intervention into the social realm. Regular
taxation, a monopoly over military mobilization, permanent bureaucratic administration,
law-making and enforcement came out as the instruments of this sort of state
intervention63.
The growing infrastructural power can be seen as a response that West European
Empires advanced to the hardships in sustaining together polities of great territory,
population and therefore power and in managing this while satisfying the demands of
nationalism, democracy and economic dynamism64. If the unevenness of the economic
transformations of the 19th century is one determinant of the increasing infrastructural
power of state, the other is the growing dependence of state interest on the mobilization
of the ordinary citizens.
The competitive international environment deriving from the struggle for global
economic resources and market was exacerbated by the uneven development, which
61
Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results” in John A.
Hall (ed.) States in History,(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 113.
62
Ibid., p. 133.
63
Ibid.
64
Dominic Lieven. “Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918…”, p. 165.
30
necessitated social and economic “modernization programs”65. On the other hand, the
political attitudes of the subjects were matters of vital interest to state, given the
democratization of political space through the growing extension of suffrage, and, of
course, given the growing threat posed by labor movement, not to mention the nationalist
opposition to imperial rule66. Besides, the willingness of men to serve in the army became
an essential variable in government calculations with the inauguration of modern armies,
which was, in a sense, the result of fierce international environment. The degree of
sacrifice of citizens and their mobilization for warfare was brought onto the agenda of the
governments to an unprecedented degree67.
The state, in short, “…defined the largest stage on which the crucial activities
determining human lives as subjects and citizens played out”68. The infrastructural power
of state that found its expression in direct and increasingly intrusive and regular
interaction with the individuals not only transformed them from being merely subjects
into citizens but it also tended to weaken the older devices through which social
subordination had been maintained. This situation raised unprecedented problems in the
perspective of the rulers and dominant groups of the state. These problems resided in how
to maintain or even establish the obedience, loyalty and cooperation of subject members,
and the legitimacy of the state in their eyes69.
As the discourse of the nation became the dominant universe of political legitimation, its
claims of popular sovereignty with its inherently democratic thrust and its call for a
cultural rootedness alien to the transnational cosmopolitanism, such as those practiced
earlier by European aristocracies, acted like a time bomb placed at the feet of empire70.
65
Ronald Grigor Suny, “The Empires Strikes Out…”, p. 30.
E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Programme, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 83.
67
Ibid.
68
E. J. Hobsbawm, “Mass Producing Traditions….”, p. 264.
69
Ibid., p. 265.
70
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out,,,”, p. 34.
66
31
As underlined by Ronald Suny, in the age of nationalisms, highly competitive
international context challenged empires not only economically and militarily but also at
the level of dominant understanding concerning what constitutes states’ legitimacy.
Traditional guarantors of loyalty such as dynastic legitimacy, divine ordination, historic
rights and continuity of rule were severely weakened71. Facing the de-legitimizing power
of nationalism and democratic ideas, empires embarked upon modernizing polices that
must have unavoidably taken the problem of loyalty into consideration.
It is apparent that the emergence of developmental empire that was accompanied
by increasing infrastructural power of state, and the growing legitimacy problem were
two sides of the same coin. Developmentalism was accompanied both by the
consolidation of national economy72 and national state “at home”. In a sense, endowing
the citizens with the sense of belonging to a nation represented by more and more
nationally defined self-image of states was taken as a panacea against the loyalty
problem. However, the rules of the game were quite different in the colonies.
First of all, what characterized the shift from predatory to developmental policies
in the colonies is the enhanced role of governments. The attempt at activating latent and
underused resources for cumulative economic development required to manipulate land
and market resources and to improve infrastructure and associated public works73.
More importantly, even though colonial rule is authoritarian by definition, subtler
forms of power had to be devised due to the inefficiency of coercion. This sort of power
forms covered a broad range of policies from the elaboration of public ceremonies in the
71
E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism…, p. 84.
E. J. Hobsbawm, “Mass Producing Traditions….”, p. 264.
73
A. G. Hopkins, “Back to the Future…”, p. 211.
72
32
way that endowed colonial rulers with powers that largely spiritual to the mastering of
medical knowledge and environmental awareness74.
As well, a series of deals with the key interest groups and with the less visible
majority stood behind them to incorporate and placate the different segments of colonies
in favor of colonial rule was also worked out. The process of subduing, classifying and
civilizing the colonial subjects came to influence nomads, small-scale, scattered and
remote societies too. They were provided with stronger sense of identity than had before
in order to ensure the loyalty to the imperial rule75.
Loyalty, in short, became more important in the colonies than it had ever been.
The civilizing mission of the colonial powers assumed that the subjects inhabiting
colonies were to be a suitable docile copy of the home country76. Many institutional
devices from missionary activism77, which propagated Christian moralism, to the
governmental educational78 system were put into the service of this goal.
It is true that pursuing a civilizing mission designed to make colonized
populations disciplined and obedient subjects of colonial state. But at the same time they
had to be remained different from home country, which came to have national
identification that was by no means the case in colonies. As I have underlined above,
from the very beginning of the construction of nation state in the imperial cores, an
74
Ibid., p. 212.
Ibid., p. 214.
76
Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler, “Introduction. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Control and Visions of
Rule,” American Ethnologist, no: 16, 1989, p. 611
77
For the interaction between missionary activities and British Colonialism in India, see C. A. Bayly, “
Returning the British to South Asian History: The Limits of Colonial Hegemony”, South Asia, Vol. XVII,
no: 2 (1994).
78
For the use of educational policies for this purpose by French Colonialism in Algeria, see Fanny
Colonna, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria” in Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper
(eds.) Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1997), pp. 346-372.
75
33
unequivocal line was drawn between colonies and the emerging nation states. Thus
acquiring the allegiance and docility of the colonial subjects did not mean to identify
them with the dominant nationality at all. On the contrary, difference between the
colonies and imperial cores were to be ensured. Hence, since this difference is neither
inherent nor stable, it was to be redefined and maintained continuously79.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that those peasants of Basque region, Flanders
and Bretagne in whom “‘there was no trace of the French language’ who ‘have barely
been grazed by the civilization of the French language’ had to be assimilated, first by
disseminating the French language with French teachers: ‘Frechmen are needed to make
the Bretons French, they won’t do it by themselves’”80. In colonial Algeria, however, the
criterion of “excellent” student defined by French educational policy is one’s ability to
function as a balanced intermediary, neither too removed from Kabyle society nor too
close to French norms.
“‘The native intellectuals,’ wrote S. Faci, founder of La Voix des humbles, ‘are the best
intermediaries between France and the Moslem masses; their knowledge of the various
milieus, their culture, their respectability, their independence, their impartiality, their
attachment to France, are so many guarantees for the public powers”81.
All in all, the allegiance of the subjects was of vital significance for
developmental empire that is characterized by its capacity to penetrate civil society. Yet
the way in which it was assured was completely different in metropole and colony. There
was a big deal of difference between the nationalization of the subjects of national core
and creating obedient, docile bodies in the colony.
79
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony…”, p. 7.
Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity…”, p. 348.
81
Ibid., p. 365.
80
34
4.
ANALYZING THE NATIONALITY POLICIES OF THE OTTOMAN
AND THE RUSSIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF
DEVELOPMENTAL EMPIRE
The discussion I have hitherto conducted in this chapter has pointed to bounded
development of nation states and colonialism in the European Empires in the course of
the 19th century. I have demonstrated that while they consolidated the continental cores of
the empires into nation states, they exercised simultaneously their imperial grips on the
colonies in a more efficient way under the disguise of civilizing mission.
The question that arises at this juncture concerns the relevance of this discussion
to the analysis of the Russian and the Ottoman Empires’ nationality policies. First of all,
it demonstrates that taking only the creation of nation state into account and employing it
as the category of comparison with the continental empires is analytically wrong. If the
terms Turkification and Russification are taken in the sense of geographical
nationalization and cultural assimilation, as they are conceptualized in this paper, it is not
proper to expect the implementation of these policies in the territories of Russia and the
Ottoman Empire all together. This is to compare the continental empires as a whole to the
imperial cores of European maritime empires. In truth, this approach, which is proved to
be the case as the use of Gellner’s definition of nationalism by the historiography
symbolizes, produces as serious results as disregarding the geographical aspect of
nationalization or taking the centralization measures as the policies of Russification or
Turkification.
35
This paper will show in the next chapters that one can account for the nationality
policies of the empires at hand as parallel to the bounded development of nation state and
colonialism that came about in the European maritime empires. This is absolutely not to
argue that these were identical processes. While the overseas empires of the nineteenth
century were able to nationalize and to an extent liberalize their metropoles, keeping
simultaneously up imperial regimes in the colonies, for contiguous empires pursuing
different policies in core and periphery was far more difficult than for noncontiguous
ones82. The distinction between the nation and empire was more difficult to draw in
contiguous empires than maritime empires where the continental cores are unequivocally
divided from the colonies. Besides, undoubtedly, the material capacities of European
regimes were far more developed than Russia and, especially, the Ottoman Empire to
fulfill this policy pattern. .
As a matter of fact, it is these difficulties that characterized the routes taken by the
Russian and the Ottoman Empires in the course of consolidating colonial relation with
periphery and imperial core that was to be constructed as the basis of nation.
Nevertheless, the contention of this paper is that one can still elaborate these routes as
parallel to the developments taking place in the maritime empires.
The second point that I would like to stress is very related to the first one. In the
course of the 19th century, the Russian and the Ottoman Empires underwent a shift from
predatory to developmental models just like maritime empires. Putting aside the degree
of success determined by the material capacities, which was definitely very poor for these
two empires, developmentalism was ultimately embedded in imperial polices83. Hence,
82
83
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out,,,”, pp. 29-30.
Ibid., p. 30.
36
the attempts at penetrating the society in Russia and the Ottoman Empires were
accompanied by analogous concerns of acquiring the loyalty of subjects with the
maritime empires. In this respect, the next chapters will demonstrate that the growing
interest of the imperial administration with the “hearts and souls” of the subjects of
peripheries had a lot to do with the efforts of increasing the infrastructural power of state.
But, at the same time, just as similar concerns did not have to with the nationalization
policies in the maritime empires, so the centralization policies in continental empires did
not come up with Turkification and Russification policies.
Most importantly, the nationality policy in the second constitutional period of the
Ottoman Empire is to be apprised in line with the consideration I have brought in. It was
shaped on the line ranging from implementing Turkification measures within a specific
geography to assuring the allegiance of the peripheral regions to the imperial rule.
37
CHAPTER II: TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND OFFICIAL
IDEOLOGY IN THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES
In the last chapter, I have dealt with the bounded development of nation states and
colonialism in the European Empires. In doing so, I have stressed that it is not
appropriate to compare the continental empires en bloc to the imperial cores of European
maritime empires, as this perspective disregards the geographical dimension of
nationalization in the Russian and the Ottoman Empires. It has also been contended that,
with all the essential differences in mind, the nationality policies of the empires in
question can be assessed as parallel to the confluence of nation building and empire
building in the European Empires.
This part will start dealing with the Ottoman and Russian cases in the light of the
perspective I have underlined in the earlier section. For this reason, as a prelude to my
discussion on their nationality policies, this part will demonstrate the transformation that
the Ottoman and the Russian Empire underwent in the second half of the 19th century
from predatory to developmental model of empire. First of all, consideration will be
given to the attempts at increasing the infrastructural power of the state and reorganization of the center-periphery relations on the basis of this transformation. Second,
the influence of this shift on the official ideologies of the empires in question will be
examined.
It has been argued in the previous part that the growing interest of the maritime
empires in the loyalties of the peripheral regions rooted in the increasing infrastructural
38
power of the state, which undermined the traditional basis of legitimacy and necessitated
subtler forms of governance for efficiency. It has also been contended that the attempts at
penetrating the society in Russia and the Ottoman Empires were accompanied by
analogous concerns of acquiring the loyalty of subjects in the peripheral regions.
Regarding this last argument, one of the two primary objectives of this section is to reveal
the similar material basis of this novel concern in Russia and the Ottoman Empire by
pointing to the new forms that modernization efforts acquired in the second half of the
19th century.
The second purpose of this part is to show that the re-formulation of the official
ideologies in the Ottoman and the Russian Empire were different. While the Russian
official ideology came to adopt gradually more a nationalist ideology, the Ottoman
official ideology remained immune to Turkish or any kind of nationalism by promoting
the idea of Ottomanism. Indeed, as will be demonstrated in the next section, this
difference paved the way to different tracks of development. Whereas the official
ideology in Russia gave way to Russification policies, the Ottoman official ideology of
Ottomanism did not promote the implementation of similar kind of nation building
project.
39
1.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN
EMPIRES IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY
It is, of course, not appropriate to consider the transformation that, say, the British
Empire underwent towards becoming a modern, imperialist power of the world under the
same category of developmental empire with the motivation of “catching-up” that tended
to characterize the modernization programme of the Russian Empire. Likewise, it is also
too simplistic to categorize the reformation policies of the Ottoman Empire and Russia
together, overlooking their uneven material capabilities, and the different timings and
contexts of these policies that emerged over the course of the 19th century.
It is true that the colonialism of Europe built on the experience of rule and the
cultural difference of the old empires. Nevertheless, its novelty entrenched in the making
of bourgeois Europe, in its contradictions and pretensions as well as in its technological,
organizational and ideological accomplishments84.
What Dietrich Geyer terms “borrowed imperialism” in Russia implies, on the
other hand, “the coexistence and at times fusion, of traditional interests based on premodern social and political structures and modern interest similar to those in the
advanced industrial nations.”85 . Its distinctive features are to be found in the overlapping
and intertwining of the old with the new, as well as in the relationship between reform,
structural backwardness and the imperial will to power86.
84
Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony …”, p. 2.
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy 1860-1914,
(Leamington Spa, Hamburg and New York: Berg Publishers Ltd., 1987), p. 10.
86
Ibid., p. 33.
85
40
The character of Ottoman colonialism, however, differed considerably from those
in expanding empires, including Russia which continued to enlarge in Central Asia in the
19th century with the system of internal colonies to which it gave birth87. For the
Ottomans, as Selim Deringil aptly emphasizes, colonialism was a survival tactic88. So
was the modernization programme of the 19th century, which came up also as a result of
pressures of Great Powers, symbolized in the declaration of Tanzimat (1839) and Islahat
(1856) Edicts89. And in this sense, it is not comparable with industrial empires of the
West. In the Ottoman Empire, the main stimulus of modernization conflated with
colonialist grip on the peripheries was to keep pace with its external rivals as well as to
contain internal challenges to its sovereignty90. For this reason, lacking serious advance
in industrialization, the Ottoman modernization and colonialism differed also from the
industrial expansion of Russia that characterized its imperial progress, though dependent
and backward in comparison to the Western industrial empires91.
What makes it still possible to treat these cases under the same category of
developmental empire is not of course their structural similarities, which is apparently not
the case. It is indeed no more than their common attempts at penetrating their peripheral
societies, which raised concern with the direction of the loyalties of their subjects. This
attempt was in accordance with what I have conceptualized earlier as developmental
empire, which is to be identified with the increasing infrastructural power of state. Hence,
quite similar to those in the maritime, industrial empires, the efforts of consolidating the
87
Ibid., p. 10.
Selim Deringil, “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman Empire and the
Post-Colonial Debate”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol: 45, 2003, p. 313.
89
Roderic H. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774-1923. The Impact of the West,
(London: Saqi Books, 1990), p. 79.
90
Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire. Transjordan, 1850-1921,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 2.
88
41
center-periphery relations, which was rooted considerably in the competitive international
context, as the preceding chapter discussed, produced direct, increasingly intrusive and
regular interaction with the subjects, bound up with unprecedented interest in their souls
and minds.
Responding to the challenges presented by the efficiencies of new national states,
imperial elites promoted a transition from “ancient regime” empires to “modern”
empires, from a more polycentric and differentiated polity in which regions maintained
quite different legal, economic, and even political structures to a more centralized,
bureaucratized state in which laws, economic practices, and even customs and dialects
were homogenized by state elites92.
Roughly speaking, for both Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the second half of
the 19th century marked the state-led endeavor to centralize the peripheries in an
increasingly intrusive manner. For Russia, this coincided with the “great reforms” that
began with the emancipation of the serfs after 1861. The reforms that paved the way to
the abolition of serfdom and the process of rapid industrialization produced greater
standardization compared to the previous era. As Andreas Kappeler points out, “from the
1860s onwards Russian policy makers attempted to systematize the heterogeneous empire
in administrative terms, and reacted to the national movements with a certain degree of
cultural russification”93.
Though not coupled with an ambitious project of industrialization that existed in
Russia, the afterwards of 1856 witnessed further development of Tanzimat reforms of
183994. The Tanzimat had already set in motion a series of administrative reforms
designed to modernize the Empire95. These reforms encompassed a variety of objectives
91
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism … pp. 125-149.
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out,,,”, p. 30.
93
Anderas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, (Harlow, England : Pearson Education,
2001), p. 283.
94
F. A. K. Yasamee, Ottoman Diplomacy. Abdulhamid II and the Great Powers 1878-1888, Studies on
Ottoman Diplomatic History VII, (Istanbul: The ISIS Press, 1996), p. 9.
95
Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire…p. 4.
92
42
from the modernization of army, central bureaucracy and education to the reinforcement
of state control in the provinces, which necessitated administrative and military
centralization.
Although they had marked an unprecedented break from Ottoman
tradition, they remained conservative in ultimate objectives. More than the transformation
of Ottoman society fundamentally, they had sought to stabilize the existing state by
providing it additional incentive to survive96.
After the Crimean War (1856), however, the underlying mentality of reforms
shifted, symbolized by the promulgation of Islahat Edict. The reforms following this date
deepened the penetration of society and were put more and more to the service of the
transformation of society on the whole. The Land Code of 1858, which founded the base
of individual land ownership, replaced the outdated tax-farming system. It not only
facilitated the emergence of Muslim middle-classes, as Kemal Karpat argues, but also,
contributed to the development of a direct fiscal relationship between bureaucracy and
taxpayers, in other words, to the eradication of centrifugal authorities between individuals
and the state97. The Provincial Reform Law of 1864, on the other hand, standardized
Ottoman administration and rationalized administrative and judicial structure as well as
established a clear hierarchy of authority. It was a big step forward in the centralization
policies.
As far as the center-periphery relations are concerned, both Russia and the
Ottoman Empire attempted to re-design the framework of their central authority. The
policies that were related to this concern, which had already been at issue under different
forms indeed, gained a new content. There appeared a qualitative change in the way that
96
97
F. A. K. Yasamee, Ottoman Diplomacy…, p. 7.
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam … , pp. 94-95.
43
centralization was implemented. Of course, the context and manifestation of this process
differed deeply in the Russian and the Ottoman Empires.
Russian penetration to its borderlands was of different kind. Industrialization and
state-directed economic expansion penetrated all over the Empire, making the Russian
policy, as regard to peripheral regions, more and more the domain of the Minister of
Finance. Gradually, the characteristics of modern imperialism came to mark Russian
colonial relations with its newly conquered or older peripheries98. Industrialization
proceeded both in the regions of the “Russian center” and its peripheries, yet it was
initiated in the peripheral regions not by natives but by Russian entrepreneurs and, to
some extent, foreigners99. The ideological conviction underlying this expansion was that
“…only by becoming a metropolis herself could Russia overcome her historic
‘backwardness and her subservient role as a colonial source of exploitable resources for
the more developed powers…”100.
In this sense, the colonial grip exercised on the peripheries turned out to approach
the relationship between metropole-colony that characterized the industrial, Western
Empires of the 19th century. On the whole, the strictly exercised colonial power was
regarded increasingly in economic terms. The regions kept under control would supply to
the Russian industrial expansion required raw materials. The penetration gaining this new
meaning destroyed the traditional economic structure of peripheral regions and came to
subordinate them into the Russian imperialist circles of economy101.
98
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism … p. 186.
Anderas Kappeler, The Russian Empire…,p. 304.
100
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism … p. 187.
101
Ibid., pp. 318-337.
99
44
Furthermore, the traditional way in which areas were acquired and integrated
considerably changed. On the one hand, the earlier pattern of incorporating the newly
acquired territories consisted of integrating the upper classes, or nobility of the
borderlands into the imperial order. These kinds of measures were practically set in
motion, early in 19th century, in the Caucasus, rewarding Georgian nobles, beks and
khans from Azerbaijan and Dagestan and so forth102. On the other hand, as Alfred Rieber
emphasizes, Russian policy of empire building oscillated between peaceful assimilation
and coercive integration. This oscillation was visible in the policies of the emperors from
Peter the Great to Catherine I, who resorted mainly to peaceful assimilation, and
Alexander I, whose policies resorted to coercive integration103. The second half of the
19th century is, however, remarkable for the number of attempts to integrate peripheries
in the way that came out in the industrial Empires. As will be demonstrated below, this
process was characterized by the demarcation of a national core and colonial regions.
While the creation of a national core in some regions was underway, the center-periphery
relations in most of other Asian regions took the shape of colonialism, which is notable
for the efforts of creating docile, loyal bodies, as in the maritime empires.
For the Ottoman Empire, the new direction of center-periphery relations
proceeded at a lower level compared to Russia. The chief motivation of centralization
manifested itself in the struggle between central bureaucracy and the centrifugal forces
represented primarily by ayans and esrafs or notables who had become a sort of
102
Austin Lee Jersild, “From Savagery to Citizenship: Caucasian Mountaineers and Muslims in the Russian
Empire” ” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Boderlands and
Peoples, 1700-1917, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 102.
103
Alfred J. Rieber, “Struggle Over the Borderlands” in S. Frederick Starr (ed.) The Legacy of History in
Russia and the New States of Eurasia, (Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 70-79.
45
landlords, and the bureaucratic-military elements of the peripheral regions104. This
struggle speeded up the centralization policies, which can be traced as far back as the
period of Mahmud II. Starting before the promulgation of the Tanzimat edict, in the
1830s, to the 1850s, the Ottoman government took up a number of measures in order to
re-assert its authority in the African and Asian provinces105. But these early initiatives of
centralization relied primarily on the traditional instruments (or despotic power) of the
Ottoman State ranging from military re-conquest to the dependence on local authorities to
establish central authority and initial attempts at undermining the basis of indigenous
privileged groups.
In Eastern Anatolia, for example, centralization took the shape of military
campaigns against Kurdish tribes106. In Hijaz, the Ottoman direct authority remained tied
to the cooperation of the local Amirs, and lacked any institutional means to impose
change on the local inhabitants107. Even in Syria and Palestine, that were crucial centers
of the Ottoman existence in the Arab provinces, the initial attempts of centralization,
performed between 1840-1861, remained at the level of undermining the local notables
through disarmament and taxation108.
In the second half of the 1860s, however, the Ottoman Empire embarked upon a
new series of initiative in terms of deepening its power in the peripheries. The gist of
these new reforms was, as argued cogently by Eugene Rogan, to increase the
104
Kemal Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908”, Internal Journal of Middle East
Studies, 3 (1972), pp. 251-256.
105
Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire…pp. 9-12.
106
Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaykh and State: The Social and Political Structure of Kurdistan,
(London: Zed Books, 1992), pp-176-177.
107
Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire…pp. 10-11.
108
Moshe Ma’oz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine 1840-1861. The Impact of the Tanzimat on
Politics and Society, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 76-86.
46
infrastructural power of the state in the peripheral provinces109. The new round of reform
in the peripheries comprised numerous measures, some of which had been already
regulated by the Tanzimat reforms. The introduction of 1864 Provincial Reform in Syria
in 1866, in Libya in 1867, in the Hijaz in 1868, and in Yemen in 1872 was surely the
most important indication of the new mentality110. It was put into effect in order to
establish a clear hierarchy of authority and accountability all over the Empire. Social
services such as schools and hospitals, new central organs of local administrations and
other institutions strengthened the existence of central power in the periphery. Most
importantly, they provided the state with numerous channels to penetrate the peripheral
societies, which were bound up with the undermining of traditional structures as well as
the devotion of the loyalties of the subjects to them.
Accordingly, in both Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the central authority on the
peripheries acquired a new content, over the course of the second half of the 19th century.
Most importantly, this did not take place free from the transformation of state-subjects
relations. The growing infrastructural power of the state and its incursion into even the
most remote areas resulted in the erosion of traditional values and centers of loyalty. To
be sure, this process occurred in the Ottoman Empire to a lesser extent compared to
Russia, but it was still visible. The direct rule of central authority went with the
commercialization of frontier societies. Kinship groups in tribal societies and other
traditional power centers were gradually diminished under the pressure of modernization,
commercialization and the intrusion of central rule. The state promoted this process by
actively seeking the adherence of local communities in favor of reforms and direct rule.
109
110
Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire…p. 12.
Ibid.
47
Besides the entrance of modern institutions such as schools, press, centrally assigned
imams, hospitals and so forth, the state trampled on intermediate local authorities in its
relations with the subjects, whose transformation from mere subjects into Ottoman
citizens was underway111.
The impacts of these changes were clearly felt in the political-ideological field.
As Kemal Karpat argues aptly in relation to the Ottoman Empire, “the process of
integration, which began originally as a drive towards administrative centralization, was
broadened to become concerned with the basic question of political loyalty”112. What
Karpat observes for the Ottoman Empire was surely the case for the Russian Empire too,
as will be demonstrated below. In both empires, hand in hand with the decisive
transformations was the reconfiguration of official ideologies of the states. The increasing
infrastructural power of the state was rooted in the same determinants with the West
European Empires that was underscored in the last chapter, i.e. competitive international
environment, the crisis of old forms of legitimacy, the growing needs for the loyalties of
the subjects and so forth. Hence the reconfiguration of their official ideologies reflected
the responses of the Russian and the Ottoman Empires to these issues. Yet the
articulation of these ideologies were different, which indeed came to coincide with and
justify the distinct ways in which nationality policies were molded in these two empires.
As in other European Empires that underwent a transformation towards colonial
imperialism, the Russian official ideology adopted “a kind of state nationalism”, as
111
See Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam …” , especially, pp. 117-136; Osmanli
Moderneslesmesi…, especially, pp. 83-119; see also Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late
Ottoman Empire…pp. 12-17.
112
Kemal Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State …”, p. 261.
48
Dietrich Geyer calls it113. On the other hand, the Ottoman official ideology developed in a
way that handled the diversity with an appeal to the unification of different nationalities
under the umbrella of Ottomanism. In this respect, it was a unique case compared to the
maritime empires and Russia.
2.
OFFICIAL IDEOLOGIES OF THE RUSSIAN AND OTTOMAN
EMPIRES
What Benedict Anderson classifies as “official nationalism” is an appropriate
departure point to begin the discussion in what concerns the official ideologies of the
Russian and Ottoman Empires114. Predicating his concept mainly on the example of
Russia, Anderson generalizes it to other dynasties and empires, including Japan, and the
British and Habsburg Empires. In his consideration, official nationalism refers to a
specific policy pattern put into practice by these empires after the second half of the 19th
century. In a sentence, he interprets this as the policy of “…strechting the short, tight
113
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism … p. 56.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,
(London, New York: Verso, 1992), pp. 83-112.
114
49
skin of the nation over the gigantic body of the empire”, which was developed in reaction
to the popular national movements that flourished in Europe since the 1820s.
The concept of “official nationalism” offered by Anderson refers not only to the
official ideologies but also to the nationality polices of the empires. Despite the
undeniable importance of his concept, it is unclear that to what extent the depiction
employed by Benedict Anderson grasps the character of the nationality policies of the
empires in general and the Russian and the Ottoman Empires in particular. As a matter of
fact, it is appropriate to approach his concept from two point of views, i.e. imperial selfimage and imperial nationality policy.
What is suggested by the concept of Anderson brings of course important insights
to the study of nationalism in the empires. He cogently points out a novel tendency of the
19th century imperial representation. This tendency is towards the identification of the
royal images of the empires increasingly with symbols appealing to the ties between
royal institution, monarchy and its subjects.
On the whole, the volume edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The
Invention of Traditions, is notable for its portrayal of the working out of this tendency in
the British Empire. After 1877, when Victoria was made empress of India, the meanings
with which royal ceremonies, rituals and coronations were endowed changed profoundly.
More important than the fact that they were managed more adeptly than the ineptly
organized previous practices, which had carried the features of traditional royal rituals115,
they also served to place Victoria and Edward above politics as patriarchal figures for the
115
David Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the
‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820-1977” in E.J. Hobsbawm and Terenge Ranger (eds.), The Invention of
Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 108.
50
whole of the nation. Deliberate, ceremonial presentation of the monarch as a unifying
symbol presented it as head of nation, which was rather a novel phenomenon116.
Similar developments occurred in Russia too. The Russian Monarchy became
more “national” in its self-image and public representation as Richard S. Wortman’s
studies on the production of myths and ceremonies as the legitimizing scenarios of power
in Russia displays. The epitomes of nation began to be embodied in public ceremonies
and celebrations from the reign of Nicholas I on, with the rise of the trilogy of official
nationality (nationality, autocracy, Orthodoxy)117. This new scenario of power had
gradually replaced what Wortman calls “elevation”, i.e. the animating myth of Russian
monarchy, which associated the ruler and the elite with “foreign images of political
power”. The dominant Petrine myth was modified with a new scenario according to
which the Russian people voluntarily chose their rulers. Since they were invited and then
obeyed and loved by their people, they had national roots118.
As opposed to the preceding foreign image, new dimensions of public ceremonies
and celebrations bestowed the autocracy increasingly with national representation. But
the last blow to the Petrine myth of westernized, foreign ruler came after the
assassination of Alexander II, under the rule of Alexander III. The new representation of
autocracy took shape in the writings of the members of “Russian Party”, such as
Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Mikhail Katkov and Vladimir Meshchersjkii, throughout the
116
Ibid., p. 122.
Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, From Peter the
Great to the Death of Nicholas I, Volume I, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 5.
118
Richard S. Wortman, “National Narratives in the Representation of Nineteenth-Century Russian
Monarchy” in Marsha Siefert (ed.) Extending the Borders of Russian History. Essays in Honor of Alfred J.
Rieber, (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), p. 53.
117
51
1860s and 1870s119. Hence, what Wortman terms “monarchical nationalism” expressed
close cultural and even ethnic affinity that Alexander III claimed with his subjects120
On the other hand, as Selim Deringil points out, parallel developments came out
in the Ottoman Empire. Modernizing bureaucrats abandoned certain traditional
hierarchical practices that privileged Muslims. After Tanzimat they attempted to create a
civic nation of all peoples of the empire, an Ottomanist idea of a new imperial
community. According to Deringil, “official nationalism” in Russia corresponded to the
concept of national monarch in the Ottoman Empire, the various aspects of which he
displays, from the invention of iconography as public image to the monopolization of
sacred. “This concept of national monarchy was precisely what the Ottoman ruling elite
was aiming for with its policy of Ottomanism, a concept meant to unite all peoples living
in Ottoman domains, Muslim and non-Muslim, Turkish and Greek, Armenian and
Jewish, Kurd and Arab”121. This policy began with Imperial Rescript of the Rose
Chamber of 1839 and took on a much more Islamic character during the rule of
Abdulhamid II, though it did not deviate from many aspects of the Tanzimat reforms. The
adoration of Abdulhamid II as the father of the Ottoman nation through public
ceremonies and rituals increasingly firmed up the ties between monarch and his subjects
in the public representation and thus proliferated the tendencies of the Tanzimat era122.
These three examples bring important points to the fore. Seen from the view that
the representation of monarchs claimed increasingly their ties with their subjects, roughly
119
Ibid. p. 57.
Ibid.. p. 58.
121
Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition in the Ottoman Empire 1808-1908”, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, vol: 35, 1993, p. 5.
122
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains…pp. 16-43.
120
52
around the same period, Benedict Anderson points to a very crucial development that
emerged in the second half of the 19th century through his concept of official nationalism.
Yet when it comes to the question that to what degree this changing
representation of imperial image coincided with the identification of all the subjects of
empires with “short, tight skin” of the nation, Anderson’s concept loses its explanatory
power. The previous part has already shown that this was absolutely not the case in the
colonies of the modern, overseas empires at all. Thus I will not deal with this issue in this
section. However, the significant point is that Anderson’s concept is not able to apprise
the disposition of Russification too, even though, inspired by Seton-Watson, he builds his
notion of official nationalism largely on the case of Russian Empire.
The problem, in brief, stems from one crucial point that Anderson disregards.
The Russian nationality policy was by no means carried out with the purpose of
Russifying the whole empire if the term is taken in the sense of nationalization of a
geographical area and cultural assimilation of empire’s population on the basis of
Russian-ness. Rather, as will be demonstrated in the next part, the Russian national
venture of Russification was confined to limited areas and to specific communities. On
the other hand, the Eastern Borderlands witnessed the consolidation of the centerperiphery relations during the 19th century, which increasingly came to approach
colonialism of the European Empires.
Indeed, this confusion looms large in the problem of distinguishing the policies
produced to endow the subjects with national affinity and to assure their allegiance to the
monarchy, which was discussed extensively in the introductory chapter. Undertaking the
53
risk of repeating the subject of the discussion of the last chapter, I shall resort to the case
of the British Empire in order to clarify my argument
In India, the glorification of British rule as the protector of all “creeds and races”
coincided precisely with the British ruler’s gaining national representation. Different
subjects belonging to different races and creeds were supposed to be guided by “the
strong hand of Imperial power” which had supposedly led to rapid advance and
prosperity123. Immediately after the Indian Mutiny (1857), a social order was established
with the British crown seen as the center of authority. It was represented capable of
ordering into a single hierarchy all its subjects, Indian and British. “The Indian princes
now were Quenn Victoria’s ‘loyal Indian Feudatories’, who owed deference and
allegiance to her through her viceroy”124. This meant an end of ambiguity in the position
of British in India. After Quenn Victoria gained the reputation of the Impress of India, the
British monarchy unequivocally encompassed both this colony and Britain itself.
The shift in the patriarchal representation of British monarchy had two aspects,
which were indeed two sides of the same coin. While the image of the monarch was
reinforced in the “home” via appeal to its national self-image, in India the same shift
found expression in the monarchy’s representation as the defender of different races and
creeds. Hence the game played on the loyalties of Indians had nothing to do with the
national self-image of British rule. Nor was it merged with the identification of Indians
with British “nationality”. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that this new emphasis put
on the protective supremacy of British Monarchy went with the definition and
123
Bernard S. Cohn, “Representing Authority in Victorian India” in E.J. Hobsbawm and Terenge Ranger
(eds.), The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 205.
124
Ibid., p. 180.
54
expropriation of Indian-ness by the imperial rulers125. It was absolutely molded by the
civilization brought by the imperial rule.
Indeed, the influence of the shift in the self-representation of the Russian
Monarchy can be likened to this duality. As Richard Wortman holds, the increasing
identification of the Russian Monarchy with ethnic and cultural idea of Russian-ness
justified policies of Russification on the one hand, while, on the other hand, it provided
legitimation for Russian colonial administration ruling over subject nationalities in
regions such as Central Asia126. Hence, as will be shown in the next section, colonial
penetration of the peripheries of the Russian Empire did not lack the coupled strategy
performed on the “souls and minds”, in short, loyalties of the subjects.
Accordingly, the Russian official ideology gained increasingly a content that
referred to the Russian-ness as an ethnic and cultural category. In practice, this national
representation was the expression of the fact that the Russian monarchy adopted
gradually a nationalist ideology, which is alternatively termed as “monarchical
nationalism” (Wortman), “bureaucratic nationalism” (Thaden) or “state nationalism”
(Geyer)127. But, as will be shown more extensively below, this nationalist project was by
no means directed towards stretching the tight body of the nation to the whole empire.
At this juncture, the main difference between the official ideologies of the Russia
and the Ottoman Empires must be elaborated. While Russian official ideology
transformed itself into a kind of nationalist ideology (or official nationalism as Anderson
125
Ibid., p. 204-205.
Richard S. Wortman, “National Narratives … “, p. 61.
127
All of these adjectives used by these authors are indeed significant, as they demonstrate the distinction
existed between the nationalism that was generated by Slavophile thinkers and the one adopted by the
monarchy. For this distinction see Richard S. Wortman, “National Narratives … “, p. 64; Dietrich Geyer,
Russian Imperialism … pp. 49-63; Edward C. Thaden, Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century
Russia, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), pp. 183-203.
126
55
terms it), identified gradually more with Russian-ness, as an ethnic and cultural category,
the unifying ideology of Ottomanism, in its classical sense, made appeal to equality of all
subjects regardless of their ethnic and religious peculiarities, which was immune to
nationalist ideology. As was described above, in its original formulation, Tanzimat
statesmen referred to Ottomanism as “a new egalitarian citizenship and concept of
patriotism”128. It was confirmed later by the Islahat Edict in 1856, subsequently by a
nationality law of 1869, and by the constitution of 1876. It was to a large extent
developed as a reaction to the spread of nationalism among the Christian subjects of the
Empire. In a sense, the goal that was aimed at through the concept of Ottomanism was
the building up an “Ottoman nation” from the fusion of different religious
communities129. This by definition must have excluded ethnic or cultural domination of
one, or more, nationality over the others.
Nevertheless, this aforementioned observation has to be developed further. Just as
it is hardly possible to talk about a unique way of dealing with the diversity in the
Russian Empire, so the content and meaning of Ottomanism underwent changes in time.
Hence, in a sense, the idea of Ottomanism gradually acquired a meaning that came to
justify the “civilizing mission” of Ottoman statesmen on the peripheries of the Empire, as
will be shown in the next section. Nevertheless, investigating, first, the disposition of
Russian nationality policy will make the shift in the meaning of Ottomanism easier to
identify.
128
Roderic H. Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History … p. 118.
Ercument Kuran, The Impact of Nationalism on the Turkish Elite in the Nineteenth Century, presented to
the Conference of Modernization in the Middle East in the Nineteenth century, Chicago, October 3 –6,
1966, (Ankara: 1966), pp. 3-4.
129
56
CHAPTER III: CIVILIZING MISSION WITH AND WITHOUT
NATIONAL CORE
This section concentrates on the Russian and the Ottoman Empires in light of the
perspective that has been underlined in the previous parts. Of primary concern is the
intermingling of centralization policies with a specific pattern of colonialist mind-set
towards peripheries that emerged in the 19th century Ottoman and Russian Empires.
Second of all, consideration will be given to the merger of this colonial mind with
nationalization policies in the Russian Empire and the lack of this fusion in the Ottoman
Empire up to its very last years. In this respect, this section will point out simultaneously
the parallel and the different concerns that existed in the respective nationality policies of
the Russian and the Ottoman Empires.
It will prepare the ground on the basis of which, in the next part, it will be argued
that the Young Turks continued to employ the pattern of nationality policy that emerged
in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire to consolidate the center-periphery relations.
Drawing upon the discussion that will be conducted here, it will be shown that the
nationality policy of the Ottoman State in the second constitutional period brought about
similar influences on the periphery with the previous practices. This influence, as will be
revealed, was centered on the colonialist attitude of creating docile bodies in and assuring
the loyalties of the peripheral regions.
This section will help to give an account of the novelty of Young Turks’ policy as
well. As will be demonstrated below, what had not existed in the 19th-century Ottoman
57
Empire was the merger of colonialist attitudes towards peripheries with an attempt to
create a national core within the domains of the empire. This is indeed what came about
in the Russian Empire over the course of the second half of the 19th century, which was
somewhat in line with the development of national state in Europe. In this sense, the
novelty that was brought by the Young Turks’ regime is the deployment of the device of
geographical nationalization. But what came as a novelty in the history of the Ottoman
Empire had already been underway in most of other empires that existed in the 19th
century. As was shown in the earlier chapter, the maritime empires of Europe had set out
to construct “national homes” in the course of the 19th century. As the first part of section
will display, the Russian Empire set off on the similar path mainly in the second half of
the 19th century. Based on this, the Ottoman case will be discussed in the second part.
1.
RUSSIFICATION AND COLONIALISM IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
It has been underlined above that Russian official ideology began to identify more
closely with Russian nationality in its cultural and ethnic sense. As was mentioned, this
was indeed part of a larger structural transformation of Russia, culminating in the Great
Reforms of the 1860s. Indeed, the shift that appeared in the nationality policy of Russia
towards the model of colonial empire accompanied with a national core was also part of
this larger transformation. Nevertheless, as aptly argued by Paul Werth, the Russian
polity became a hybrid of distinct models of state organizations: a traditional, dynastic,
composite state with an emerging national state as the center of modern colonial
58
empire130. This amalgamation was, indeed, just like Russia’s “borrowed imperialism”,
characterized by the fusion of backwardness with imperial will to power, or traditional
interests based on pre-modern social and political structures and modern interest similar
to those in the advanced industrial nations.
The primary component of the shift, as regards nationality policy, was the
demarcation of imperial core and peripheries. The former had to be re-structured into a
Russian national core within the empire, corresponding, in its own context, to the creation
of nation states in the European Empires. The latter category of regions, on the other
hand, had to be turned into areas on which the national Russian center exercised its
economic and cultural hegemony.
In short, this process was essentially about Russification. That is, the formation of
geographical areas in an empire that belonged to a Russian national core, the forging of
the constitutive elements of a Russian cultural nation, and the decision as to which
communities would be assimilated to Russian nationhood and which would not. But the
tension between the old and new characterized the way in which this policy pattern
worked out.
130
Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in
Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827-1905, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 125.
59
1.1. RUSSIFICATION AND THE WESTERN BORDERLANDS
Among the crucial fields in which this tension sharply expressed itself was the
demarcation of what was Russian and what was not. The drawing of the boundaries of
Russian-ness proceeded inadvertently from the outset. The formulation of the motto of
“Official Nationality” was doubtless a significant step forward in this respect.
Elaborated by the conservative minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, after the
first Polish uprising of 1830-1831, Nicholas’s ideological formulation of “Official
Nationality” stressed the ties between Tsar and people. This formulation was summed up
in the official slogan “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”131. Nonetheless, nationality
was the most obscure and blurred component of this trinity, which was intimately linked
with obedience and submission to Russia glorified “as a single family in which the ruler
is the father and the subjects the children”132. In both official and unofficial presentations,
Russian-ness referred sporadically to the loyalty to Autocracy, or it was identified with
Orthodoxy and Slavdom133.
But, in the course of the 19th century, the most common use appealing to the
national-cultural belonging turned out to be the “All-Russian” nation. In this sense,
Russianness was identified not only with Great Russians (velikorussy) but also with
White Russians (belorussy) and Little Russians (malorussy), namely, today’s
Ukrainians134. In short, it embraced all the Eastern Slavs of the empire. Hence the
131
Ronald Grigor Sunny, “The Empires Strikes Out,,,”, p. 48.
Ibid.
133
Ibid., p. 52.
134
Alexei I. Miller. “Shaping Russian and Ukranian Identities…’, p. 2.
132
60
Russification project, as the expression of Russian nationalist ideology that was adopted
gradually by the autocracy in the second half of the 19th century, as was shown above,
took shape around the aspiration of creating a Russian national core out of Eastern Slavs.
This being said, it is no surprise that, in a sense, Ukrainians and White Russians in the
Russian Empire and, for example, Scots in the British Empire shared a similar fate, in
different contexts.
It is true that Russification policy in the Western Borderlands came seriously onto
the agenda of Autocracy after the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. Introduction of the
Russian administrative and legal system in 1840 and liquidation of the Uniate Church in
1839 were the first measures undertaken135. Nonetheless, these first attempts were
essentially defensive and inadvertent measures more than being part of a larger project
serving Russian nationalist intentions. For this reason, after the uprising was crushed,
Alexander II conceded to the Poles a limited freedom to set up their own institutions, and
he amnestied the last rebels of the 1830s136.
The turning point that precipitated Russification in the Western Borderlands was
the second major Polish Uprising of 1863. Along with other reasons such as the rise of a
mass press and relaxation of government censorship137, this served as the catalyst of
Russian bureaucratic nationalism. Thereafter, four primary objectives shaped the Russian
policy in the Western Borderlands: undermining the social-economic power of PolishCatholic nobility and replacing it with Russian-Orthodox one; weakening the influence of
the Catholic Church; making Russian the predominant high culture; and integrating
135
Witold Rodkiewicz. Russian Nationality Policy in the Western Provinces of the Empire (1863-1905),
(Lublin: Scientific Society of Lublin, 1998), p. 19.
136
Geoffrey Hosking, “Empire and Nation-Building in Late Imperial Russia” in Geoffrey Hosking and
Robert Service (eds.) Russian Nationalism, Past and Present, (London : Macmillan, 1998), p. 22.
61
Russians, which referred also to Ukrainians and Belorussians, into the Russian national
community138. This strategy was directed at the ethnic and cultural Russification of the
Western Borderlands inhabited not by Polish but by Ukrainian and Belorussian peasantry.
In that sense, it implied an unequivocal break with the traditional imperial policy of
integrating borderlands through co-optation on the elite level139.
Accordingly, the Western Borderlands were the front where a nationalist project
of Russification, in the sense of geographical nationalization as well as cultural
assimilation, was carried out. The Russian government drew a strict line between
Russians and non-Russians, the latter category being composed not only of Poles and
Jews but also gradually of Germans, Latvians and Lithuanians, and even loyal Czechs140.
The former category comprising Great Russians and Ukrainians as well as Belorussians
was looked on as the constituent components of Russian nation and thus exposed to
assimilatory measures. The latter one, on the other hand, was to be restricted, and, as long
as possible, excluded from the key areas like land ownership and administrative units
However, the process did not function smoothly. The thorny fusion of the older
and novel forms of integration made itself obvious in many respects. The early appeal of
Russia to Orthodoxy as the predominant criterion of identification with Russian-ness
existed along with gradually more ethnic and cultural idea of Russian-ness. In the
Western Borderlands, “despite all rhetorical attempts to include Belarusian Catholics in
the bosom of the Russian nation, in the end the formula of ‘Catholic = Pole’
137
Alfred J. Rieber, “Struggle Over the Borderlands”, p. 78.
Witold Rodkiewicz. Russian Nationality Policy..., p. 20.
139
Ibid., p. 24.
140
Ibid., p. 129.
138
62
prevailed”141. So did the formula of “Russian = Orthodox” persist. In the meantime,
however, the search for a modern, ethnic and linguistically-based definition of Russian
nationhood was being put forward, crystallized by the ideas espoused by Mikhail Katkov
as opposed to the traditionalism of Ivan Aksakov142. The clash between the traditional
and modern ideas of Russian identity reflected onto the practices of imperial policy as
well143. Accordingly, the Russian Empire pursued apparently for a demographic and
geographical base on which it could construct the structural ingredients of a model of
nation state. But it was not easy for it to break up from the strong influence of traditional,
imperial ideas and policies.
1.2. COLONIALISM AND THE EASTERN BORDERLANDS
On the other hand, a considerably different policy was exercised in the Eastern
Borderlands at the time when the Western Borderlands witnessed the Russification
policies. In the east and south of the Russian Empire the indigenous peoples, like
Kazakhs, Kalmyks, Bashkirs and so forth, were portrayed as savage, wild, unruly and
disloyal144. Above all, the political universe that Russian officials bore in mind relegated
the native peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Volga to the position of
uncivilized people opposed to the civilization, morality and stately order that Russia
141
Theodore Weeks, “‘Us’ or ‘Them’? Belorusians and Official Russia, 1863-1914”, Nationalities Papers,
Vol. 31, No: 2, June 2003, p. 212.
142
Theodore R. Weeks, “Religion and Russification: Russian Language in the Catholic Churches of the
‘Northern Provinces’ after 1863”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and European History, Vol: 2, No: 1,
Winter 2002, pp. 102-107
143
For the discussion on the use of Russian in the Catholic Churces, see ibid., pp, 107-110.
144
Michael Khodarkovsky, “’Ignoble Savages and Unfaithful Subjects’: Constructing Non-Christian
Identities in Early Modern Russia” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient,
Imperial Boderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1997), p. 10.
63
represented145. This mental universe nourished in turn the civilizing mission of Russia for
its Orient.
Yet one crucial point ought to be noted at this juncture. The mental map that
molded the civilizing mission of the Russian Empire did not fit the Orient/Occident
dichotomy. Since the early 19th century, Russia’s difference from Europe was
emphasized quite often146. Indeed, Russian colonial encounter with the Caucasus and
Central Asia coincided with the intelligentsia’s discussion of Russia’s place between
Europe and Asia147. While expanding to the south and east, Russia was imagined as a
modern civilized state. But it was contemplated as different from Europe due to the
distinguishing features of Russian civilization, namely, loyalty to Orthodoxy and
Autocracy148. Initially, Russian civilization was seen inferior to that of the west but
superior to the savagery of Caucasian mountaineers or Central Asian nomads.
Subsequently and gradually this contemplation evolved into the self-affirmation
concerning the intermediary position of Russian civilization in between Occident and
Orient149.
In this context, as opposed to the cultural Russification policy conducted in the
Western Borderlands, Russia set about to establish a colonial grip on the east and south of
the empire. Corollary to that was the categorization of Asian peoples as inorodtsy,
carrying the meaning of alien peoples
150
. Though this term had been in use before, its
145
Ibid.
Adeeb Khalid, “Russian History and Debate over Orientalism”, Kritika, Explorations in Russian and
Eurasian History, vol.: 1, no: 4, 2000, pp. 697-699.
147
Ronald Grigor Suny, “The Empires Strike Out…”, pp. 47-48.
148
Mark Bassin, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space”,
Slavic Review, Vol: 50, No:1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 8-17.
149
Ronald Grigor Suny, “The Empires Strike Out…”, pp. 47-48. .
150
John W. Slocum, “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of “Aliens” in
Imperial Russia”, The Russian Review, no: 57, April, 1998, pp. 173-174.
146
64
codification began in the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-96)151. From 1822 to 1917,
the term came to be applied to numerous peoples, from Siberians to Turkic communities
and Jews. By contrast to its initial meaning referring first to nomadic not-yet-assimilated
subjects, and subsequently to non-Orthodox, and non-Christian peoples, the term began
to be used in the sense of non-assimilable peoples in the course of the 19th century. “And
yet, the term came to signify a set of peoples whose “aliennes” could not be ameliorated
despite the best efforts of the most well-intentioned imperial administrators”152.
This, indeed, meant to draw an unalterable line between the Russian as cultural
and ethnic category and non-Russian. Over the course of the 1850s, the term of inorodtsy
was used more frequently to designate the non-Russians regardless of the faith they
practiced153. This means that the older pattern of integration through conversion to
Orthodoxy underwent a fundamental shift. Instead of being regarded as Russian, those
who converted to Orthodoxy were regarded with another category, that is,
novokreshchenye, meaning “new converts”154. Then, they became simply “baptized
inorodtsy”. In brief, the Russian Empire did not necessarily view the baptized Orthodox
people as Russian any more. On the contrary, the core Russian nationality that was in the
making excluded the Asian peoples, especially Muslims even if they had converted to
Orthodoxy.
Instead, Russia adopted a new colonial orientation.
The fact that Russia now found itself faced with “fanatical” Muslims (and could therefore
assign itself the task of subordinating them to reason and civilization) established it as a
functional equivalent of other colonial powers, who of course had their own Muslim
151
Ibid., p. 178.
Ibid., p. 184.
153
Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy…, p. 129.
154
Ibid., p. 126.
152
65
“fanatics” to deal with”. In short, Russia was participating in the larger European project
of modern colonialism155.
This participation brought about similar concerns that existed in European
colonial empires in terms of assuring the allegiance of the colonial subjects. On the
ideological level, Pobedonostev’s conception of nationalism shows the basis of this
interest. Having been the prominent ideologue of what Wortman terms “monarchical
nationalism”, he advised the Russian state to concentrate on the fulfillment of the
following objectives.
a) the education of the Russian masses in the spirit of patriotism and loyalty to their
country, the tsar, and the Orthodox Church, and b) the promotion of values and ideas that
would bring the non-Russian nationalities of the tsarist empire spiritually into more
intimate contact with the Russian people and government156.
Edward Thaden emphasizes rightfully that Pobedonostev’s task was essentially
the same one that faced political and educational leaders in countries such as France and
Germany157. However, what is missed in his comment is that the second objective
Pobedonostev proposes is precisely in accordance with the goal of creating loyal, docile
bodies in the colonies. The second objective, in other words, can hardly be treated in the
same way with the first one, which was generated for Russians and for those who were to
be transformed into Russians, by the nationalist project of Russification.
Numerous measures were undertaken for and numerous instruments were put into
the service of the re-formulation of the civilizing mission of Russian colonialism. Subtler
forms of colonial administration were developed during the second half of the 19th
century. In the Caucasian borderlands, the reformers of the era promoted the
155
Ibid., p. 136.
Edward C. Thaden, Conservative Nationalism…, p. 189.
157
Ibid.
156
66
implementation of a uniform citizenship158. While the old authoritarian notion of
subjugation of borderland peoples persisted, the new concept of citizenship opened the
possibility of different foundation for Russian rule and questioned the former
understanding, due in part to its inefficiency159. Colonial administrators promoted
increasingly the participation of borderland peoples to the realm of the civil life of the
empire160. Similarly, symbolized by Kaufman’s administration, the colonial rule in
Turkistan based on the assumption that integration of the natives into the empire would
come, when increasing numbers of the overwhelmingly Muslim population discovered
the benefits of Russian civilization161. Hence the administration of the region was
designed by Kaufman on the basis of this assumption.
Besides the subtler forms of rule, education and missionary activities were also
employed for gaining the loyalties of the peripheries. Subordinated to Holy Synod, the
Orthodox Missionary Society was established in Moscow in order to promote the
conversion of non-Christians to Orthodoxy as well as their participation in Russian
society162. To be sure, schooling the Asian peoples was among the most important
instruments of imperial rule. But the goal of schooling was hardly the overall
Russification of Muslim and pagan peoples. In the Volga-Kama region, for example, two
kinds of education systems were in effect in the second half of the 19th century. They
158
Austin Lee Jersild, “From Savagery to Citizenship: Caucasian Mountaineers and Muslims in the Russian
Empire” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Borderlands and
Peoples, 1700-1917, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 101. For the same
subject of citizenship, see also Dov Yaroshevski, “Empire and Citizenship” in Daniel R. Brower and
Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient…
159
Austin Lee Jersild, “From Savagery to Citizenship…”, p. 101-102.
160
Ibid., p. 106.
161
Daniel Brower, “Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan” in Daniel R. Brower and
Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917, (Bloomington
& Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 117.
162
Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy…, p. 137.
67
were Il’minskii schools and Russian-Tatar schools. The latter laid emphasis on the
education of the Muslims on the basis of Russian language163. The former, on the other
hand, brought up the schooling of peoples with their own languages in order to bring nonRussians closer to Russians164. In that way, Il’minskii intended to endow them with the
values of Russianness in which Orthodoxy, according to him, was the most important
characteristic. Yet none of the systems sought to create new Russians. Instead, the major
effort consisted in the creation of an intermediate class of Russified non-Russians “who
would maintain ties to their native groups and educate them with the ultimate intention of
turning their own peoples into loyal and patriotic Russian subjects”165. In this respect, the
Russian civilizing mission came to coincide in intention with its European counterparts.
Native peoples of the colonies were to be suitable docile body of the imperial core but to
remain different from it166.
Yet the education policy had another meaning. The interest in the loyalties of the
subjects and the expansionary character of Russification came to coincide. In VolgaKama region, Il’minski warned of the emerging national-political self-consciousness of
Tatars and Muslims167. By means of education policy, he also wanted to block the
influence of this consciousness on the Christian and animist non-Russians of the region,
such as Ugro-Finnic population. Indeed, this consideration had a lot to do with the
expansion of the Russian nation-building project, which came to deal with Christian and
animist population of the region as the targets of cultural assimilation.
163
Robert P. Geraci, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia, (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 143.
164
Wayne Dowler, Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia’s Eastern Nationalities, 18601917, (Montreal &Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill – Queen’s University Press, 2001), p. 47.
165
Robert P. Geraci, Window on the East…p. 157.
166
Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler, “Introduction. Tensions of Empire…”, p. 611.
167
Robert P. Geraci, Window on the East…p. 150.
68
1.3. EXPANSION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL CORE
Taken together, what was taking place in the Russian Empire in the second half of
the 19th century was parallel to what was happening in the European Empires. Just as
European Empires, Russia embarked upon the creation of a national core within the
empire. In this respect, Paul Werth cogently holds that
the appearance of new ideology of colonialism represented corollary to the new
aspirations of creating a national-state, since not all of the empire’s far-flung and diverse
territories could realistically be included in a project of national construction.
Accordingly, while all of those distinct from “the core population of the empire”
(Russians) would gradually be labeled inorodtsy, only some of those inorodtsy would
actually be considered objects for assimilation”168
This being said, it comes as no surprise that Russification – in the sense of
assimilating a particular community on the basis of Russianness and nationalizing a
particular geography – was confined to particular peoples and particular geographies,
which was supposed to form the basis of the Russian national –state established within
the empire. Over the course of the 1850s, Russia intended to draw the borders of its
national core which was to be transformed into a nation-state through the deliberate
policy of Russification. Alongside the Great Russians, White Russians and Ukrainians
were also considered as constituent components of the core nation. In this regard, the
question for the Russian elite was which groups of peoples could be assimilated into this
core and which could not. Apparently, most of the Asian communities, and above all the
Muslim ones, were excluded from the venture of assimilation.
However, as emphasized earlier, this process did not function smoothly at all. As
Paul Werth aptly holds in regard to the awkward nature of colonial relations in Russia, it
168
Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy…, p. 140.
69
is not always easy to say where colonial relations began in geographical terms169. It is
doubtless true that “…Central Asia is quite comparable to British India or French North
Africa to the extent that Russian administrators themselves made such comparisons and
that ‘the rhetoric of conquest mirrored nineteenth-century notions of colonialism’”170. Yet
when it comes to regions, such as Volga and Siberia, the ambiguity of the kind of relation
that Russian center established with them becomes inevitably apparent. The question that
whether Russia performed colonial control on these regions or whether they were
included into Russian national core is difficult to answer.
In a sense, however, the peculiarities of Russian rule on these two regions show
us the expansionist character of the Russian nation building project. Between 1861 and
1914, Siberia received four million peasant colonists from the zones of rural overpopulation. 2.5 million, more were added to this number as a result of the settlement
programme conducted between 1905 and 1911. Accordingly, Russians, including Little
and White Russians, comprised 85 per cent of the Siberian population by 1911, which
made the native people practically a minority in the territory of their traditional
settlement171. Thus Siberia became a part of the Russian national “homeland”172.
Furthermore, Russification was at issue in the Volga region too. Besides the fact that it
was included into the image of the Russian national territory, the Russian settlements
operated there as the carrier of the Russification process173. In addition, Russification in
the sense of cultural assimilation was being carried out on non-Muslim elements, such as
169
Paul W. Werth, “From Resistance to Subversion: Imperial Power, Indigenous Opposition, and Their
Entanglement”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1 (1), (Winter 2003), p. 31.
170
Ibid.
171
Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism … pp. 319-320.
172
Alexei Miller, “The Empire and the Nation in the Imagination of Russian Nationalism. Notes on the
Margins of an Article by A.N. Pypin”, in A. Miller and A. Rieber (eds.) Imperial Rule, forthcoming in Fall
2004 with CEU Press, p. 22.
70
Chuvash and Finnic peoples. Muslims, on the other hand, came to be seen increasingly as
inassimilable174. On the contrary, the Russian nation-building project in the Volga
competed with the assimilation of the population into Tatar culture.
On the whole, Russification was not a stable process. It continued to incorporate
some regions and some communities into its nation building process during the second
half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. This, indeed, stemmed from the fact
that, having been a continental empire, the Russian national core was not detached clearly
from the borderlands, which was the case for European maritime empires. Therefore,
which regions belonged to the national territories of Russia and which regions stood as
Russian colony turned out to be more blurred than in the rage of the overseas empires.
But this by no means thwarted the implementation of the Russian nationalist project of
Russification.
2.
OTTOMANISM AND BORROWED COLONIALISM
I have thus far focused my attention on the Russian case by pointing to the
parallel processes it underwent with the European maritime empires during the 19th
century. The subject with which I would like to deal in this part is how the late Ottoman
Empire can be evaluated in the light of discussion I have hitherto conducted.
As was noted in the preceding section, the 19th century Ottoman Empire pursued a
similar track towards modernization and centralization with the other multinational
173
174
Ibid, p. 21.
Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy…, p. 140.
71
empires of the period. Suffering military defeats, confronting nationalist outbursts
especially in the Balkans, and colonialist challenges of the Western Powers, the Empire
engaged in a rapid modernization with the declaration of the Tanzimat Edict (1839),
which precipitated in the latter half of the 19th century. This process was accompanied
more and more by the increasing infrastructural power of the Ottoman State, though it
remained at a lower level compared to industrial empires and Russia.
In what concerns the centralization and modernization efforts that came out in the
Ottoman Empire, the basic question which is crucial for the purpose of the present paper
is the next. To what degree did the transformation into a model of developmental empire
take up what came about in Russia during the 19th century in terms of the demarcation of
national core and the peripheral regions?
2.1
ISLAMIST-OTTOMANISM AS AN INTEGRATION PROJECT
Indeed, any attempt of dealing with this question cannot be fulfilled in the
Ottoman context without being concerned with the notion of Ottomanism, which
emerged as a child of the Tanzimat era and which remained the reference point of any
matter about identity up to the end of the empire175. As has been mentioned in the last
part, conflated with the Tanzimat reforms was the unity of all the subjects of the Empire
on the basis of equal citizenship, underlying the concept of national monarchy in the
Ottoman176. Through the idea of Ottomanism, the reforms sought to base the state on a
concept of Ottoman nation consisted in the individuals residing within a defined territory
175
Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.
68.
176
Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition in the Ottoman Empire 1808-1908”, p. 5.
72
and sharing a common citizenship and political culture177. In this respect, the reform
period of Tanzimat brought about under the reign of Abdulmecid represented a basic
departure from the traditional foundations and legitimacy structure of the empire.
In one respect, the official ideology of Ottomanism reveals the different routes
that the Ottoman and the Russian Empires took in pursuit of creating a common basis of
identification for the subjects of empires. Together with the All-Russians nation project,
the category of inorodtsy, which came to demarcate gradually more the non-Russian
population of the empire, draw a strict line among the subjects in terms of ownership to
Russian nationhood. The category of inorodtsy did not have an equivalent in the Ottoman
Empire at all. On the contrary, in its original formulation, Ottomanism was the project of
uniting all peoples living in Ottoman domains, regardless of their nationality and creed.
Nevertheless, as has been noted before, the idea of Ottomanism underwent
changes in time. At the level of ideas, it was the subject of different interpretations. In
this respect, Selcuk Aksin Somel classifies the idea of Ottomanism in three periods:
authoritarian-centralist Ottomanism (1839-1875); constitutionalist Ottomanism (18671878); and the Ottomanism of the Young Turks (1889-1908)178.
What is more important, at the level of state ideology, it was put more and more
to the service of the imperial center aiming to disseminate its values to the peripheries. In
other words, instilling Ottomanism to diverse communities served to assimilate them in
the value system of the imperial center179. This tendency came up somewhat with the
177
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam:, p. 9.
Selcuk Aksin Somel, “Osmanli Reform Caginda Osmanlicilik Dusuncesi (1939-1913)” in Tanil Bora
and Murat Gultekingil (eds.) Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Dusunce Mirasi: Tanzimat ve Mesrutiyet’in Birikimi,
Modern Turkiye’de Siyasi Dusunce, Volume I, (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2001).
179
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman
Empire 18776-1909, (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 109.
178
73
reconfiguration of Ottomanist ideology in the Hamidian era. Abdulhamid gave a new
content to Ottomanism through his Islamist policies180.
Among the reasons leading to the re-formulation of the principle of Ottomanism
was the failure of the state in rallying Christian communities around it. Ottoman
centralization – modernization policies had originally rooted in, first, the integration of
non-Muslim groups in the empire and, second, accomplishing the same for the Muslim
elements of the periphery181. Ottomanism, to a large extent, supplied the ideological
ground for the achievement of these objectives. Yet it turned out that it made little
headway with the non-Muslims in the empire. In the 1860s and early 1870s, the state put
a large amount of effort in order to popularize the new Ottoman identity and propagated
it for the union of Muslim and non-Muslim populations182. However, Ottomanism could
attract only those groups that had already sustained smooth relations with the imperial
rule. Among those groups were “Greek Phanariots, small minorities in various regions
preferring Ottoman rule to the prospect of becoming a minority in a small nation-state,
such as Jews and Kutzo-Vlachs; and businessmen of various ethnic communities who
needed the large Ottoman market to carry out their commercial and trade activities”183.
Nor were the Muslims, especially Arabs, satisfied with losing their privileged position
due to the official policy of counting Jews and Christians as their equals184. In this sense,
it was hardly possible to cement the Muslim peripheries with the structure of empire too.
180
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 320.
Serif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” in S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.) PostTraditional Societies, (New York: Norton, 1972), 175.
182
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 315.
183
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Turkish Nationalism and the Young Turks …”, p. 86.
184
Rashid Khalidi, “Arab Nationalism in Syria. The Formative Years, 1908-1914” in William W. Haddad
and William Ochsenwald (eds.) Nationalism in a Non-National State. The Dissolution of the Ottoman
Empire, (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1977), p. 209.
181
74
In the face of this situation, Abdulhamid revised Ottomanism by combining it
with an Islamist ideological element. In his era, Ottomanism took gradually more the
color of Ottomanism-Islamism, designed largely as a unifying ideology that addressed,
above all, his Muslim subjects, especially Arabs185. As Selim Deringil argues,
Abdulhamid’s “brand of Ottomanism was definitely an integrationist policy based on
Islam, but an Islam which was becoming less and less ecumenical”186. He broadened the
Ottomanism of the Tanzimat with the cultural and psychological ingredients of Islamism.
In that sense, it played the role of an ideology that helped integrate the Muslim
communities into a larger political unit by accommodating them into Islamic and
Ottoman identities, which emerged, as aptly argued by Kemal Karpat, as the components
of Ottoman proto-nation187.
The following excerpt, which is taken from a British report on the Ottoman
Empire (1906), reveals very lucidly the functioning of this process, that is, the
transformation of ruler-subject relations in Hamidian period.
…the tone and trend of Turkish papers is to intensify the hold of the Sovereign and
Khalif on the imaginations of the “true believers”, especially the lower classes, even in
outlying districts of his extensive dominions, thus indirectly increasing the influence and
prestige of the Central Ottoman Government among non-Ottoman tribes and
nationalities, such Kurds, Arabs, Albanians, etc188.
First of all, this excerpt demonstrates the use of modern press by Hamidian
regime in order to penetrate the society. More importantly, it points to the efforts of the
state to gain the loyalties of the subjects of various ethnicity and culture by propagating
185
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 321. For the argument seeing pan-Islamism as a kernel
of Ottoman proto-nation, see also Nikki R. Keddie, “Pan-Islamism as Proto-Nationalism”, The Journal of
Modern History, Vol. 41, No. 1. (Mar., 1969), pp. 17-28.
186
Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition in the Ottoman Empire 1808-1908”, p. 5.
187
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 319-320.
75
the value system of the political center in order to Ottomanize peripheral peoples. In
contrast to the earlier period in which the state targeted elites and intermediary authorities
to assure allegiance of the localities to the central rule, Hamidian regime sought to
entrench in society at individual level.
2.2
OTTOMANIZATION AND THE CIVILIZING MISSION OF THE OTTOMAN
STATE
Indeed, this pretty new concern underlay the reconfiguration of ruler-subject and
center-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire on the basis of what Selim Deringil
calls “borrowed colonialism”189. That is, a new mission that reformers assigned on
themselves in terms of civilizing not-yet Ottomanized population and bringing (or
assimilating) them in the value system of the center. It is in this sense that the official
ideology of Ottomanism, which was intermingled with an Islamic discourse, became the
ideological justification regarding the civilizing mission of the Ottoman reform elite.
There is no doubt that Ottomanization as an integrationist and assimilationist
device does not suffice to term the reform polices of the Hamidan era as “colonialism”
with or without the adjective of “borrowed”. What renders appropriate to use this term is
the way in which the Hamidian reformers regarded the values they stood for. There
appeared a mental distinction between the modernity that the political center of the
188
F.O. 371/345, “Annual Report for Turkey for the Year of [1906]” in British Documents on the Origins
of the War, 1898-1914, Vol. V, The Near East. The Macedonian Problem and the Annexation of Bosnia,
(London: 1928), pp. 27-28.
189
Selim Deringil. “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman Empire and the
Post-Colonial Debate”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol: 45, 2003, 313.
76
Empire represented and the uncivilized state of peripheries, which could not be amended
without being assimilated by the values of the center.
In the minds of reformers, as aptly argued by Ussama Makdisi, the political center
of the empire, namely, Istanbul was a location out of which the modernizing idea of
Ottomanism flowed. It was also the temporally highest point from where they looked
down and back in time at the provinces of empire190. However, Istanbul was regarded
also as an intermediary location in between the civilized west and uncivilized periphery.
The mental hierarchy in the minds of the Ottoman modernizing elite differentiated the
Empire from the West, relying mainly upon the consideration that Islam characterized the
Ottoman version of modernity191. In fact, this was just the way that Orthodoxy was
viewed in the Russian Empire. It was the value of Russian civilization and
modernization, which distinguished it from both the European civilization and savagery
of the Asian inorodtsy.
Seen from this aspect, the integration of the peripheries was not just the
assimilation of the subjects of the provinces in the morality of an Islamist form of
Ottomanism. Diverging from the Ottomanism of the Tanzimat reformers was that
Ottomanization of the peripheries meant to civilize the subjects “who remained in the
darkness, ignorance and tactless heretofore”192.
In this context, the Ottoman reformers set in motion numerous measures, aiming
to assimilate those who were seen marginal to the Ottoman civilization193. As it was case
190
Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism”, The American Historical Review, vol: 107, 2002, p. 771.
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman
Empire 18776-1909, London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998, p. 165.
192
BBA – YEE, no. 36/139-81, 07/05/1303 – 16/10/1885 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri (15251919), T.C. Basbakanlik Dvlet Arsivleri Genel Mudurlugu Osmanli Arsivi Daire Baskanligi, Yayin Nu: 11,
(Ankara: 1993), 176.
193
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains…,p. 67.
191
77
for Russian colonialism too, reformers resorted to education. The instruction of loyalty
became the most prominent theme of the curricula of education (which expanded
considerably during Hamidian period) against opposition and the separatist tendencies of
Muslim communities194. Furthermore, more direct measures of education were put into
the service of Ottoman’s civilizing mission. The Tribal School was the classical case. The
Ottoman elite was highly suspicious of tribes, whom they saw as “submerged in
ignorance” and “of wild and uncivilized behavior”195. In this respect, the Tribal School
was designed as a vehicle of indoctrinating, initially, Arabs, and then also, Albanian and
Kurdish boys196.
The Tribal School was located in Istanbul, the capital city of the empire.
However, the government sought to found schools in the provinces for the goal of
introducing civilization into tribal communities. For example, in order to “correct
ignorant and savage temperament” of the people from Hemaveden tribe, it was resolved
to establish school in regions where they were re-settled197. Another document shows that
the Ottoman administration sought to improve education in Baghdad and Musul by
opening new schools, so as to ameliorate the uncivilized conditions of tribes198.
Also serving to the assimilationist attitudes of Hamidian reformers were measures
undertaken to ensure the integration of heterodox religious elements into the official
Hanefi-Sunni faith. This policy was, indeed, merged with the civilizing mission of the
194
Mehmed Alkan, “Modernization from Empire to Republic and Education in the Process of Nationalism”
in Kemal Karpat (ed.) Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey, (Leiden, Boston and Koln: Brill, 2000), pp. 7787.
195
Eugene L. Rogan, “Asiret Mektebi: Abdulhamid II’s School for Tribes (1892-1907)”, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, (Feb., 1996), p. 84.
196
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains…,p. 101.
197
BBA – YEE, no. 36/139-81, 07/05/1303 – 16/10/1885 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … pp.
176-179.
78
Ottoman State as well. It was, above all, “correction of the wrong beliefs”, which was to
be achieved by systematic propaganda199. The government encouraged the conversion of
“deviant” Muslim sects to the official religion by awarding the subjects “who corrected
their beliefs” by accepting the “true belief”. For instance, the chiefs of Sarili and Sebek
tribes, which had been heretic (firak-i dalle) before, were awarded with the medals of
Mecidi of fourth level and monthly salary that amounted to 1,000 gurus, after their
accepting true belief (ehl-i sunnet). But it was also resolved that these awards were
granted as long as they did not act against the rules of Islam200. The government also
decided to open mosque and school in their villages in order to promote their adaptation
to Islamic rules201.
2.3.
THE TURKISH SENTIMENTS OF REFORMERS AND COLONIALISM
WITHOUT A NATIONAL CORE
198
BBA – Y. MTV, no. 72/43, 22/Cu/1310 – 12/12/1892 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … pp.
219-222.
199
Illustrious of the propaganda activities was the priests who were assigned centrally the duty of teaching
Islam to heretics. For example, a mission of this kind was sent to Musul in order to tell the rules of Islam to
Yezidis BBA – Y.A.HUS, no: 243/23, 9 C.1308/20 January 1891 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv
Belgeleri … pp. 192-193.
200
BBA – MVM, no: 71/37, 23/S/1310 – 16/10/1892 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … pp. 207208.
201
BBA – ID, no: 53/S. 1310, 30/S/1310 – 23/10/1892 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … pp.
208-218
79
Accordingly, the Ottoman government sought to inculcate religious values as a
means to assure attachment to the state, the duty that was intermingled with a sort of
civilizing mission that reformers assigned on themselves. Indeed, termed by Selim
Deringil as “borrowed colonialism”, this mentality can be seen, to some extent, as a
common element between the imperial policies of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. In the
latter half of the 19th century, both of them re-framed their center-periphery relations by
accommodating a pretty new concern with the allegiances of their subjects in their
nationality policies. And they both merged this concern with a colonialist mind-set, built
on a view that looked down on peripheral peoples as backward, in comparison to the
level of civilization that the values of center represented.
However, the differences between Russia and the Ottoman Empire are as
important as the similarities. First of all, Russian’s nationality policy was endowed with a
nationalist character. Ottoman’s was not. In Russia, the colonial grip on the peripheries
sought to impose the domination of Russian nationhood in the empire. In this respect, it
approached the fusion of the construction of nation-states with colonialism in European
Empires. Quite the contrary, the Ottoman “borrowed colonialism” was a survival tactic,
as stressed out by Selim Deringil202. It sought to contend with the spread of nationalism
and separatist ideas among the Muslims, on the one hand, and the foreign influence
imposed not only by the pressures of foreign states but also missionary activists. Besides
a kind of national awakening that was propping up among the Muslim communities, the
Ottoman state needed to compete with the missionary activities for the loyalties of its
202
Selim Deringil. “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”…p., 313
80
own subjects203. In this sense, it was a defensive device unlike Russian’s nationalist
venture.
On the whole, the most important difference lies in the fact that the imperial
policy of Ottomanism and Ottomanization, even in its radical form emerged in Hamidian
era, is not comparable to the nationalist policy of Russification. The former lacked, to a
certain extent, the propensity for nationalist practices, even it was invented to hinder the
development of nationalism. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the Ottoman control
on its peripheries, which embodied gradually more the mentality of colonialism, was not
bound up with a coupled attempt regarding the construction of a national core, the policy
guide that was carried out in European empires and Russia. In other words, appealing to
the integrationist project of Ottomanism, the modernization movement did not set about
to nationalize particular geography, in the sense of imperial national core, to construct it
as the base of nation building. Nor did it attempt to assimilate (or nationalize) diverse
peoples on the basis of cultural and national category of Turkishness.
Nevertheless, this argument does not mean that the Ottoman State was immune to
appeal to Turkish culture and Turkish ethnic awareness. Actually, in some respects,
centralization measures illustrate their existence. Kanun-i Esasi (1876) declared Turkish
the official language of the empire. More importantly, Abdulhamid instituted Turkish as
the language of instruction in local state schools. The importance given to the schooling
in Turkish became sporadically visible in the official policies. For example, a circulation
issued in 1892 urged to raise the level of Turkish education in Musul, Sehr-i Zor and
203
For the activities of missionaries and the Ottoman response, see Selim Deringil, “‘There Is No
Compulsion in Religion’: On Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire: 1839-1856”,
Comparative Study of Society and History, vol: 43, (July 2000); Eugene L. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in
the Late Ottoman Empire … pp. 122-159.
81
Suleymaniye204. Moreover, Abdulhamid decreed for the first time that Turkish be the
language of official correspondence in the provincial and local administration205.
Isolated from their context, these measures do not necessarily point to a Turkish
sensibility, as any kind of polity would resort to the unification of language in
bureaucracy and education for the consideration of centralization and minimum
administrative efficiency. Yet in the context of the late Ottoman Empire, these measures
reflected the rising Turkish consciousness as a dominant nationality, which was most
clearly expressed by Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, a prominent statesman of the period.
…real strength of the Sublime State lies with the Turks. It is the obligation of their
national character (kavmiyet) and religion to sacrifice their lives for the House of
Ottoman until the last one is destroyed. Therefore it is natural that they be accorded more
worth than other people of the Sublime State206
Abdulhamid himself voiced similar opinion207. He also stated the necessity of
strengthening Turks in Rumilia and Anatolia208. Indeed, nourished by the backwardness
they attributed to the subjects of peripheries, the Ottoman reform elite came to identify
them increasingly with ethnic terms like Arab, Kurd and so forth and themselves as
Turk209. In other words, the categories of civilization that the Ottoman elite bore in mind
began to transform into ethnic and cultural distinctions.
Yet this awareness was not translated into a nationalist official ideology. Nor was
it carried to a clear formulation of Turks as the dominant nationality of the empire, the
motto that found its ultimate expression under the rule of Young Turks. Quite the
204
BBA – Y. MTV, no. 72/43, 22/Cu/1310 – 12/12/1892in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … pp.
219-222.
205
Mahmoud Haddad, “The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered”, p. 203.
206
Quoted in Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism”, p. 787.
207
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 176.
208
Ibid., p. 185.
209
Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism”, pp. 787-795.
82
contrary, Hamidian regime remained attached to Islamic interpretation of Ottomanism. It
is true that Turkish was made the language of education, judiciary and administration,
but, in the meantime, Arab culture was upheld to an unprecedented degree. The language
and cultural life of the Muslim elements of the empire was not restricted as long as they
did not register a development in separatist ideas.
The translation of Turkish consciousness into a political formula came up in the
second constitutional period. Turks as the dominant nation of the empire characterized
the understanding of Ottomanism that Young Turks raised. Hence, it is out of this
interpretation that Turkification, as a nationalist project, emerged.
83
CHAPTER IV: THE NATIONALITY POLICY OF THE YOUNG
TURKS: FROM DOMINANT NATIONALITY TO TURKIFICATION
The last chapter has been built on the comparison between the nationality policies
of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. In doing so, consideration has been given to the
similar and different concerns of their imperial policies. It has been shown that the
influence of Russian nationalism on the practices of empire brought about the merger of
Russification and colonialism. It has also been demonstrated that the centralization
policies of the Ottoman Empire began to embody a similar colonialist outlook towards
the periphery. However, the reform elite’s rising Turkish consciousness did not influence
the imperial policies. It remained attached to the official ideology of Ottomanism and its
Islamist re-interpretation in the Hamidian era, which ideologically grounded the attempts
of Ottomanization.
The goal of this section is to reveal that Turkish nationalism began to gradually
shape the character of center-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath
of the second constitutional revolution (1908). In this respect, it resembled to the model
of nationality policy that existed in the Russian Empire more so than the previous era.
However, this occurred slowly and, especially at the beginning of the period, in a
different framework from the Russian Empire. Therefore, attributing to the aftermath of
1908 the emergence of Turkification in the sense conceptualized in this paper is only
partially right.
84
In this context, the significant question of this section is the following: In what
aspects did the centralizing polices of the CUP differ from the general pattern that had
been implemented following the Tanzimat Edict, under the influence of Turkish
nationalism? As a corollary question, to what extent did the nationalist project of
Turkification as conceptualized in this paper influence the policies employed by the
Young Turks?
This section will reveal that Turkish nationalism gradually became more
influential in shaping the state policies after the constitutional revolution. Nevertheless,
the initial pattern that characterized the imperial policies was not in line with the nation
building policy of Russification. To certain extent, Young Turks carried further the
inclinations of the Hamidian reformers. They continued to regard the peripheries with the
same condescending attitude. Until the end of the empire, they tried to civilize and gain
the loyalty of the peripheral regions that were viewed as backward and uncivilized.
At the same time, Turkish consciousness that had emerged in the late 19th century
among the Hamidian reformers was translated by the Young Turks into the following
formula: Turkish nationality is (to be) the dominant nationality of the empire. Hence, it is
out of this formula that Turkification project came after the Balkan Wars. Just like
Russification, Turkification policy embarked upon the nationalization of specific regions,
and the foundation of Turkish domination on the peripheries, which had already been put
into practice under the motto of dominant nationality.
85
1.
FROM ITTIHAD-I ANASIR TO THE DOMINANT NATIONALITY OF
THE EMPIRE (1908-1913)
From the beginning of the second constitutional era, Turkish nationalism became
publicly more visible210. Alongside the similar trends among the other nationalities of the
empire, the ideas related to Turkish nationalism, which had begun to flourish during the
second half of the 19th century, came to be organized around journals and associations.
Turk Dernegi (Turkish Association), Genc Kalemler (Young Pens), Turk Yurdu (Turkish
Country), Turk Ocagi (Turkish Heart) were among these, displaying the increasing
importance of Turkish consciousness on the level of intellectuals.
However, when it comes to the influence of Turkish nationalism on the Young
Turks’ practices, however, the Ottoman patriotism formulated under the motto of Ittihad-i
Anasir (unity of the different communities in the Empire), rather than Turkish
nationalism, gave its color to their political discourse211. Indeed, the spirit of
constitutional revolution of 1908 was more Ottomanist than Turkist212. G. H.
Fitzmaurize, a British observer, noted this in his memoranda addressed to the British
government.
210
For an extensive review of Turkish nationalist ideas and journals during the second constitutional era,
see Masami Arai, Jon Turk Donemi Turk Milliyetciligi, (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2003).
211
Ahmet Yildiz, Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyebilene: Turk Ulusal Kimliginin Etno-Sekuler Sinirlari (19191938), (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2001), p. 73.
86
The early stages of the revolution were, however, distinguished by a remarkable
community of enthusiasm on the part of all races and religions throughout the empire. It
was impossible to view, without some skepticism, the picture of Greek and Moslem
embracing one another and Moslem and Armenians flaunting their affection for one
another213.
It is obvious that the end of the Abdulhamid’s authoritarian regime, which had
lasted more than 30 years (he stayed one year more in the throne after the revolution),
was embraced with great rejoice by the various nationalities of the empire. At the outset,
Young Turks seemed to be devoted to Ottoman patriotism as well, concerned with
making Ottomanism viable by including rather than excluding the non-Turk, and nonMuslim elements as opposed to its Islamist interpretation generated by the previous
regime of Abdulhamid214.
However, the Ottomanist sprit of the second constitutional period started to
change in the perspective of various nationalities when they confronted the centralizing
policies put into practice by the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress). As Hasan
Kayali holds, “the CUP’s notion of an Ottomanism that denied political representation on
a religious-communal basis, its denunciation of decentralization, and its flexible attitude
toward the demands and organizational initiative of the religious minorities exposed it to
the charges of ‘Turkification’…”215.
It is important to note that the identification of Young Turks’ policies with
Turkification is not confined to the scholarly works produced on the constitutional era,
which have been discussed in detail in the introductory section. The representatives of the
212
Feroz Ahmad, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian and Jewish Communities” in Benjamin
Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.) Christian and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. The Functioning of a Plural
Society, vol. II. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), p. 401.
213
F.O. 28455/23627/08/44, 10/August/1908, from Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey in British
Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: V, p. 258.
214
Feroz Ahmad, “Unionist Relations…”, p. 406.
215
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks …, p. 82.
87
non-Muslim communities currently expressed their grievances about the pressures of
“Turkification”. The re-opened Ottoman Parliament witnessed such concerns, which was
refused persistently by the government. For example, the Parliament became close to a
battleground between the non-Muslim deputies and the members of the CUP during the
discussions on the Law of Associations. Non-Muslim deputies such as Yorgo Boso,
Kozmidi Efendi and Hiristo Dalcef Efendi criticized the government, stressing the
pressures of Turkification imposed on the non-Muslim population216. In another case,
Levand Herald, Proodos and Telogos, the Greek newspapers that were published in the
Ottoman domains, were brought onto the agenda of the Parliament due to their
castigation of the Ottoman Government for resorting to the Turkification policies. But the
government, as usual, rejected this and very harshly criticized these newspapers for their
“seditious” actions217. It is also noteworthy that the Arab deputies also disparaged the
government with similar concerns as well. For example, Mustafa Efendi, the deputy of
Hamas, implied this concern pointing out that the government did not take into account
the regional differences as can be seen from appointing only Turkish speaking officials to
Hicaz, Basra, Yemen and Trablus218.
Accordingly, from the very first years of the second constitutional period on, the
Ottoman governments faced the charges of Turkification by various nationalities.
However, the validity of those charges is highly controversial. Even in the period
preceding the constitutional revolution, the similar sort of assertions were raised.
Although the state had endeavored to Ottomanize its subjects, the non-Turkish
216
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 2 Ictima: 115, 07/07/1325 – 07/07/1909, pp. 446-457, see especially p. 448, for
Hiristo Dalcef Efendi’s castigation against the government for applying the Turkification policy.
217
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 2 Ictima: 47, 14/03/1325 – 14/03/1909, pp. 479-487.
218
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 3, Ictima: 36, 16/02/1324 – 16/02/1908, p, 123.
88
communities had decried the state policies sporadically as a Turkification process in the
face of growing centralization running through the domains of the empire219.
As a matter of fact, what stirred up the condemnation of Turkification at the first
years of the constitutional period was the same kind of reactions raised against the
centralization policies. Added to this was the Young Turks’ aggressive interpretation of
Ottomanism. Their brand of Ottomanism was distinguished by the increasing stress on
the formula that Turks were the dominant nation of the Empire220. Before and after the
constitutional revolution, the journals close to the CUP made many appeals to this issue,
insisting that other nationalities should have fallen into line behind the dominant nation
of Turks221. Before the Balkan Wars, even the most important ideologues of Turkish
nationalism, such as Ziya Gokalp, had promulgated their adherence to Ottomanism,
shaped around the dominant position given to Turkish nationality222, let alone the
governing elite of the CUP. Only a relatively marginal group of Turkish nationalists,
composed mainly of Tatar-Turkish immigrants from Russia, like Yusuf Akcura, gainsaid
the Ottomanism in favor of pan-Turkist project223.
Hence if there is only one shift in the implementation of the centralization policies
between 1908-1913, it stemmed from this understanding of Ottomanism. The novelty that
emerged in this respect was observed perhaps most appropriately by G. Lowther in his
memorandum about the Young Turks regime.
The Committee [of Union and Progress] has been compared to steamroller, which in a
semi-Republican manner, is determined to level all privileges, starting with those of the
219
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Turkish Nationalism and the Young Turks…”, p. 86.
Sukru Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution…, p. 295-302.
221
Ibid., 300.
222
Masami Arai, Jon Turk Donemi Turk Milliyetciligi…pp. 92-103, 145-147.
223
For pan-Turkism and the ideas of Yusuf Akcura, see Francois Georgeon, Turk Milliyetciligi’nin
Kokenleri. Yusuf Akcura (1876-1935), (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari, 1999), especially pages 51113.
220
89
Palace. It has done so in Albania and Roumelia and is now busy in Syria. It also feels a
desire to apply the same leveling process to the privileged position of foreigners, e.g. of
the British, in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf224.
The Young Turks longed for asserting their imperial sovereignty on the domains
of Ottoman. For this reason, they regarded intolerable any kind of obstacle to this aim,
from the local privileges to the existence of foreign influence. They endeavored to
impose the initiative of the center to an unprecedented degree.
Also seen an obstacle was the ethnic and cultural privileges of the diverse
nationalities that had to be leveled as well. This was to be achieved by continuing the
policy of Ottomanization that had been rooted in Islamist interpretation of the idea of
Ottomanism. However, Young Turks carried this one step further. “…Their present
policy of Ottomanization is one of pounding the non-Turkish elements in a Turkish
mortar”225 and making the Turks the predominant nationality in cultural, economic and
political sphere.
In fact, more than Turkification, the matter of discussion between the government
(which was being controlled by the CUP226) and the representatives of non-Turkish –
particularly the non-Muslim communities – resided in this interpretation of Ottomanism.
The latter longed to see Ottomanism as an umbrella identity in which they indisputably
prospered in economic, political and cultural terms. According to Hiristo Dalcef Efendi,
for example, “that an Ottoman’s being Bulgarian, Arab or Turkish is not an obstacle to
the union. If there is only one thing that leads us to unity and coming together, it is our
224
F.O. 371/1004/31386/5607/10/44. 22/August/1910, from Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey in British
Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, Part: 2, p. 3.
225
F.O. 371/1004/31386/5607/10/44. 22/August/1910, from Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey in British
Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, Part: 2, p. 207.
226
For the strong influence of the CUP on the governmental policies between 1908-1913, see Sina Aksin,
Jon Turkler ve Ittihat Terakki … pp. 121-210.
90
common interests”227. In the view of the state, however, Ottomanism had completely
different meaning, which was lucidly expressed by the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Hakki
Pasha in the Ottoman Assembly.
Coming to the point of citizen, learning Turkish has greatest importance in that case too.
Since, a person who does not know Turkish will deprive of some rights [hukuk]. For
example, he will not be able to be deputy. But there is one more important thing. What is
it? Citizens should be of the same opinion on the matters that are connected to the life of
the state. Namely, they should interpret and view the future of the state in the same
manner and they should posses the same sentiment. This is absolutely the objective that
the Government and Kanun-i Esasi are looking for. The homogeneity of education and
culture (terbiye) is desired228.
In this interpretation of Ottomanism, there was no place to the “economic” and
“political” prosperity of distinct nationalities. And, to be sure, Turkish nationality should
have determined its framework. The existence of diverse nationalities was tolerable only
under the domination of Turkish nationality and only so far as their subsistence was not
politically expressed.
The promulgation and the implementation of the Law on Associations most
clearly demonstrated this approach. Having been issued on August 23, 1909, this law
prohibited the opening of political associations that were based on racial and national
distinctions229. As mentioned earlier, the negotiations on this law became the scene of
harsh critics, condemning the government for applying to Turkification by promulgating
this law.
However, its primary goal was by no means the cultural assimilation of sundry
communities into Turkishness. It, above all, aimed to prevent the evolution of ethnic
awareness of the nationalities into the political programmes. For example, a Jewish
227
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 2, Ictima: 39, 30/01/1325 – 30/01/1909, p, 123.
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 1, Ictima: 13, 25/11/1326 – 25/11/1910, p, 467.
229
Feroz Ahmad, Ittihat ve Terakki, 1908-1914, (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayinlari, 1995), p. 85.
228
91
association, Histadorot Civinit Otomanit, which was founded in order to disseminate
Hebrew language-history and to facilitate the settlement of Jews in Palestine, was forced
to close. Relying on the Laws on Associations, the justification of this decision was the
concern that this association is linked with political and national objectives230. However,
a Jewish school, Hocat Azra ve Sibyan Bagcesi, “which was established in order to
spread the idea of Zionism could not be closed”. It was resolved that this school would
continue to educate Jewish children unless its curriculum was found against the policy of
the state231. Similar measures were imposed on the non-Turkish Muslims’ associations as
well. For example, a club belonged to the Circassian community, Cerkez Ittihad ve
Teavun Cemiyeti (Circassian Unity and Mutual Assistance Association) was sanctioned,
due to its name232.
Accordingly, more than cultural assimilation, the state policies served to hinder
the flourishing of separatist political programmes among the nationalities. In terms of
language policy, this aim becomes clearer since there was a continuation in its
implementation between the constitutional period and the previous era233. The CUP’s
political program of 1908 included the clauses which declared the official language of the
empire as Turkish. It also promulgated that teaching of Turkish in elementary schools be
obligatory234, as can be seen in the following:
The official language of the state will remain as Turkish. All correspondence and official
memoranda will be executed in Turkish (Article 7)
230
BBA – DH.ID, no: 126/58, 27/R/1332 – 24/03/1914
BBA – DH.ID, no: 30/-1/46, 23/Ş/1329 – 18/08/1911.
232
BBA – DH.MUI, no: 81/44, 29/Z/1327 – 11/01/1910.
233
Stanford Jay Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey vol:2,
(Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991-1992), p. 283.
234
For the political programs of the CUP, see Tarik Zafer Tunaya Turkiye’ de Siyasi Partiler, vol:1, Ikinci
Mesrutiyet Donemi, (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1998), pp. 70-164.
231
92
Teaching of the Turkish language is compulsory in elementary schools. For secondary
schools [idadi] and higher [ali] education, firm guidance will be adopted on the basis of
Turkish language (Article 17)235
However, as mentioned earlier, the 1876 constitution had already designated
Turkish as the official language of the Ottoman Empire236. Neither the clause designating
the official language nor any other reference to language in the constitution was modified
in 1908 or thereafter237. In addition, the aforementioned clauses of the CUP programme
with respect to education by no means indicate an assimilative mentality. Besides the fact
that Turkification of curriculum had started before 1908, the difference between the
teaching of Turkish in elementary education and its adoption as the language of
instruction is very important. The state opted for the former in the aftermath of 1908. The
overall educational policy of the second constitutional period allowed the use of local
languages238. This demonstrates that assimilation (namely Turkification) was not the
primary objective. Rather, the integration of the society into the imperial administrative
and social system remained the primary purpose.
The policies of the state in terms of language in the constitutional period differed
from the earlier era in one respect, which had a lot to do with the formula of dominant
nationality. The state, in this period, was stricter in performing the clauses of Kanun-i
Esasi regarding the official language. It was emphasized very often that the official
language of the Empire is Ottoman, which practically meant Turkish. For instance, the
non-Muslim communities were warned for not to use Greek or Armenian in their official
235
Tarik Zafer Tunaya, Turkiye’ de Siyasi Partiler, vol:1, pp. 66-67.
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…p. 91.
237
Ibid.
238
Ibid. p. 90-91.
236
93
corresponding239. Non-Turkish Muslims did also take their share from the sensibility of
the use of Turkish. The petitions written to the state had to be Turkish not Arabic since
the official language of the empire was Turkish. The members of the town councils were
to be chosen out of Turkish-speaking people for the same reason240.
In another case, the government was informed about Arabic-published newspaper,
el-Arab, which disseminated the idea that Arabic had accepted as the official language of
the empire. The reaction of the government is an edifying one. It was held that such
gossips were wounding the idea of Ottomanism and the unity of the empire. Only the
educational language was allowed to be Arabic in the Arab provinces. Therefore, el-Arab
should have been officially warned and even was to be closed in case it continued to
propagate similar ideas241.
Indeed, these examples proved that the state did not attempt to Turkify the nonTurkish communities. The policies implemented after 1908 continued and broadened the
well-known centralization device of the empire. The difference was the growing
emphasis on Turkish and the strict execution of the already-existing measures regarding
the official language. Moreover, the way in which the government endeavored to acquire
the loyalties of the peripheral peoples was the same with that of the Hamidian reformers.
More than Turkification, the civilizing mission of the state vis-à-vis the peripheries
retained its importance in the period at hand.
The issue of educating and settling the nomads of the Asian parts of the Empire
came very often onto the agenda of the Ottoman Assembly242. The Kurdish tribes were
239
BBA – DH.ID, no: 126/3, 05/L/1328 - 09/10/1910
BBA – DH.MUI, no: 103/-2/1, 06/C/1328 – 14/06/1910.
241
BBA – DH.MUI, no: 69-2/1, 19/S/1328 – 19/02/1911.
242
See, for example, MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 1, Ictima: 82, 16/05/1325 – 16/05/1909, pp, 18-19
240
94
especially subject to betterment (islahat)243. This is reflected in the practices of the
government as well. However, the implementation of the betterment and civilization of
the peripheries made the weakness of the state apparent. One example illustrates the
dramatic combination of the condescending attitude towards periphery and the weak
material base of the state to achieve the aim of civilizing the backward subjects.
According to an official document, the chiefs of Kurdish Haydaranli and Zilan
tribes were required from the local branch of central administration the assignment of a
teacher for the education of their children. Living in the Patnos region of the Erzurum
vilayet, these tribes were backward and illiterate as to use the mosque and the school,
which had been constructed 18 years ago, as barn and hayloft. The local official (whose
name could not be read in the document) found “the coming of an illiterate Kurdish Bey
[Ali Bey] to a government agency to say that ‘our emancipation is possible only with
education. Since we don’t read and know … [and] due to our ignorance, we remained
backward from every nation’” to be conspicuous. But the striking point is that the same
tribe chiefs also offered to pay the salary of their prospective teacher “since the
government does not currently have a teacher working with salary”. Thus the local
official asked the central government to create a fund to benefit from this unexpected
mood of the backward tribes by opening at least some schools in the region244.
The government also allowed, even promoted, the opening of private schools for
the education of Kurdish tribes. For instance, a school established by a Kurdish
243
244
See, for example, MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 1, Ictima: 73, 04/05/1325 – 04/05/1909, p. 461.
BBA – DH.ID, no: 26-1/36, 27/S/1329 – 27/02/1911.
95
association called Kurd Nesri-i Maarif Cemiyeti (Kurdish Association of Spreading
Education) in order to instruct the Kurdish boys was exempt from taxation245.
It should be noted here that the establishment of the Kurdish based schools was
not prevented. On the contrary, the intention of civilizing, but not Turkifying, the Kurdish
population paved the way for the permission of Kurdish education. The association of
Kurdish Hevi, for example, applied to the government for a permission to establish a
school in Istanbul. The purpose of this school was to improve Kurdish literature and
language as well as to educate, train and increase the cultural level of the Kurdish
subjects. As a result, the government allowed the establishment of the school in
Istanbul246.
Accordingly, it was believed that to acquaint the “backward” tribes and nomads
with the civilization is the best way possible to acquire their allegiance to the center and
the ideology of Ottomanism. Thus the state tried to penetrate deep into the life of the
peripheries so far as its material capacity allowed. However, the struggle for the
allegiance of the subjects brought the same questions that had existed in the Hamidian era
as well.
First of all, the government had to struggle with the rival centers of loyalty. The
missionary activities were among them, which had concerned the Hamidian reformers as
well. For example, Protestant missionaries were abundant in Viransehir to convert the
Yezidi population. The government put a large amount of effort to prevent the activities
of Amerikan Misyoner Cemiyeti (American Missionary Association) and ordered the
245
The name of the school was Kurt Mekteb-i Mesrutiyet (Kurdish School of Constitution) BBA –
DH.MUI, no: 60/2, 18/M/1328 – 30/01/1910.
246
BBA – DH.ID, no: 126/43, 16/M/1331 – 26/12/1912.
96
prevention of its activities247. Another one is Mesik Amerikan Misyoner Cemiyeti (Mesik
American Missionary Association), whose activities disturbed the government as well248.
Apparently, the conversion of Yezidi’s to Protestantism was seen as detrimental to the
goal of ensuring the attachment of the subjects to the empire.
The second question was observed aptly by G. Lowther:
We must however take facts as they are and as far as Mesopotamia is concerned, Young
Turks policy is to spare neither energy nor money to create a strong military force in
those regions, to disarm the refractory tribes and bring them under effective control and,
in a word, to impress the Arabs and show them that the Turk is master against all comers,
native or foreign249.
What was at issue for the loyalty of Arabs was of different nature from those of
the tribes and nomads. Combined with the strong influence of Arab culture, the emerging
Arab national consciousness posed serious threat to the integrity of the empire. From
1910 on, the Arab party espousing the decentralization and the autonomy of the
administration for the Arab Provinces became stronger250. In the face of this situation,
Young Turks initially attempted to reinforce the centralization measures in the Arab
provinces in the way that was described by Lowther above. As will be shown below,
however, they, later on, needed to accept most of the demands of Arab parties, such as
loosening the centralization measures and the admission of the use of Arabic in schools
and administration, in order to keep the unity of the empire. But Young Turks initially
deemed the strong centralization and the imposition of Turkish on the administration,
247
BBA – DH.EUM.THR, no: 5/29, 10/N/1327 – 25/09/1909
BBA – ZB, no: 335/8, 28/Ha/1325 (Rumi) – 28/7/1909.
249
F.O. 371/1004/31386/5607/10/44. 22/August/1910, from Sir G. Lowther to Sir Edward Grey in British
Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, Part: 2, p. 3.
250
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…pp. 81-115. See also, Zeine N. Zeine, Arab – Turkish Relations
and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press-Publishers, 1981), pp.
73-89.
248
97
education, and judiciary activities as the best way of maintaining loyalty and cementing
the unity of the empire251.
On the whole, what characterized the tension between the state and the
nationalities of the Empire was centralization versus decentralization rather than
Turkification. This determined the nature of relations between the state and not only the
non-Muslim communities, Armenians and Greeks, but also Arabs, Albanians, Kurds and
so on. The growing emphasis of Young Turks on the formulation of dominant nationality
did not pave the way for geographical nationalization or cultural assimilation, namely,
Turkification.
The influence of Turkish nationalism on the mindset of Young Turks was felt in
the device of establishing the Turkish monopoly on power in the empire. The strict
implementation of the clauses of Kanun-i Esasi with respect to the official language was
one dimension of this influence. Nevertheless, this was absolutely not a sort of
nationalizing policy that worked out in Russia in the latter half of the 19th century. As in
the Hamidian era, the policies of the state between 1908-1913 differed from Russia’s
policy device in terms of the construction of a national core. So did the civilizing mission
of Young Turks that they assigned on themselves following the Hamidian reformers.
251
Young Turks always regarded decentralization as a betrayal to the unity of the empire. Prens Sabahattin,
who espoused decentralization as a panacea to the problems of the empire was condemned as serving to the
interests of the foreign powers and inner enemies of the state like Armenian and Greek nationalists. A
manuscript, which was currently edited and which included the ideas of prominent Young Turks about
decentralization and centralization demonstrates the rigidity of Young Turks against the idea of
administrative autonomy M. Bedri, Kirmizi Kitap: Ittihat ve Terakki – Adem-i Merkeziyet, (Dersaadet
[İstanbul] : Artin Asaduryan ve Mahdumları, 1330 [1914]).
98
2.
FROM DOMINANT NATIONALITY TO TURKIFICATION: THE
CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL CORE IN ANATOLIA (1913-1918)
The breaking point in what concerns the thorny relation between centralization
and nationalization came out when the empire lost significant parts of its territories in the
Balkans. The Balkan Wars and the Albanian revolt, which resulted in independence, were
crucial developments in this respect. Precipitated after the CUP seized the monopoly of
the empire’s administration by a coup d’Etat in January 1913252, the nationalist project of
Turkification was launched in a deliberate manner.
Numerous determinants were at the interplay in leading the Young Turks to the
Turkification policies. First of all, the two Balkan Wars led to loss of Macedonia and
Thrace. The end of Ottoman presence in the Balkans left the empire as a conglomerate of
today’s Anatolia and Arab provinces. This brought to the fore the question of Turkish
national core, dedicated to the maintaining the unity of the empire’s remaining territories
in Asia253.
In the face of the fundamental truncation of empire’s territories and its mostly
non-Muslim and non-Turk population, the appeal to Turkish domination in Ottoman
nation turned into an open Turkism. The Young Turks came to believe that the future of
the Ottoman Empire depended largely on their ability to awaken nationalist passions
among the Turkish populace. Above all, the Albanian revolt acted as a catalyst in
transforming the already-existing Turkish consciousness of the Young Turks into an
active Turkism. Albanians played a vital role throughout the history of the empire as
252
Erik Jan Zurcher, “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists…”, p. 157.
99
reliable soldiers and statesmen254. Besides, numerous Albanians undertook key roles in
Union and Progress societies as intellectuals, political activists and so on. However, the
disillusion that Albanian revolt created did not stem only from Albanians’ historical
loyalty to the empire. More importantly, the Young Turks regarded them merely as a
Moslem people with a slightly developed political ideal. They believed that by managing
them and exerting pressure they could make them docile Ottomans who would serve as
an example to the other nationalities255. Therefore, after Albanian independence, the
Young Turks concluded that it was impossible to conciliate different interests and attain a
unified empire through an Ottomanist policy256. Thereafter, they saw Turkification as a
more reasonable policy option than it had been hitherto.
Turkification policy implemented by the Young Turks had various dimensions.
The nationalization of the economy by the replacement of non-Muslims with MuslimTurks constituted one of the important ones, precipitating after 1914257. The national
economy was to be led by Turkish bourgeoisie that would supplant Armenian and Greek
commercial classes that had long dominated the trade and financial sectors. Through the
Language Reform (1915), for example, the use of the foreign languages for economic
transactions was prohibited in order to facilitate for Muslim-Turks to take part in the
253
Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam…, p. 369.
Ibid.
255
Stavros Skendi, The Albanian National Awakening, 1878-1912, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1967), p. 391.
256
Stanford Jay Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire…p. 289.
257
Erik Jan Zurcher, “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists…”pp. 158-159. For an
extensive review on the nationalization of economy, see also Zafer Toprak, Turkiye’de Milli Iktisat, 19081918, (Ankara: Yurt Yayinlari, 1982).
254
100
economic activities258. This was accompanied by financial boycotts against non-Muslims,
which were portrayed by Edward Grey as chauvinist acts259.
Coupled with the nationalization of the economy were the attempts of
demographic and territorial nationalization. However, nationalization or Turkification in
this sense was not at all consistent in all the territories of the empire. As in the
Russification device, underlying the project of Turkification was the creation of a
national core in the empire rather than the overall Turkification of empire’s territories and
subjects. Thus the Young Turks employed different measures in the different regions of
the empire and for the different communities. These measures embodied a series of
policies from cultural assimilation and geographical nationalization to centralization and
decentralization. From a broad perspective of imperial polity, the former category of
measures brought about the policy of Turkification performed with nationalist objectives
while the latter category served to the goal of maintaining the unity of the empire and
gaining the attachment of the periphery to the imperial polity.
258
Caglar Keyder, Turkiye’de Devlet ve Siniflar, (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1995), p. 90.
F.O. 6301/98/14/43, 10/August/1908, from Sir G. Lowther to Sir L. Mallet in British Documents on the
Origins of the War … Vol: X, part: II, p. 224.
259
101
2.1
ENSURING LOYALTY: DECENTRALIZATION IN THE ARAB PROVINCES
In order to grasp the peculiarities of Turkification project, one should bear in
mind a very significant fact. Even after 1913, the Young Turks did not completely give
up their ideological symbiosis that composed of Ottomanism, Islamism and Turkism260.
In a sense, they made use of the components of the symbiosis in the different parts of the
empire. The CUP simultaneously pursued Turkish nationalism, Ottomanism and
Islamism in different geographical areas261.
In this respect, the Turkification of the Arab provinces was by no means one of
the items on the agenda of the Young Turks. At the time when the Turkification measures
were being carried out in Anatolia, which will be investigated below, in the Arab
provinces, the Young Turks appealed to the emphasis on the Islamic unity under the
Caliph262. Indeed, this was a position developed as a response to the growing power of
the opposition among the Arabs to the centralization policies of the Ottoman Empire.
Until 1913, the majority of the Arab leaders in Syria and Egypt called for reform of the
provincial administration and greater autonomy for the Arab provinces. In June 1913, the
Arab opposition expressed itself smoothly in a congress, which formulated the demands
of the Arabs in favor of de-centralization263. In the face of this situation, the primary
objective of the Young Turk policy vis-à-vis the Arabs was to ensure their loyalty to the
Ottoman Empire, which had nothing to the with the policy of Turkification. In other
260
Feroz Ahmad, Ittihat ve Terraki,, p. 187.
Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkism in Turkey …, pp. 45-47.
262
Hasan Kayali reveals quite convincingly that it is hardly possible to find the clues of Turkification
policy in the Arab Provinces even during the World War I. Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…for the
emphasis on Islamism, see especially pp. 141-143, 174-184.
261
102
words, the aim of the CUP rule was to hinder the turn of Arab de-centralization
movement into an Arab nationalism with a separatist programme.
Therefore, besides the ideological accent on the Islamic unity, the Young Turk
regime gave many concessions to the Arabs. Decentralization began to be performed in
the Arab provinces. As was mentioned before, strong emphasis on the centralization and
hatred against the ideas espousing decentralization characterized the Young Turk’s
ideological mind-set. In practice, however, they were obliged to take a step back from
this position throughout the second constitutional period. In Yemen, traditional leaders
carved out sphere of influence to resist centralization policy of the government. Having
failed to contain the revolt of Imam Yahya, who were espoused by Shiite population, a
measure of autonomy and financial concessions were given to Yemen in October 1911, in
exchange for ending the revolt and declaring loyalty to Sultan264. In this regard, Arab
provinces turned out to be another region that was provided with the relative autonomy.
The new General Law on Provincial Administration of 26 March 1913 is notable
in this respect for its de-centralizing devices265. Yet its clauses was not confined to Arab
provinces but covered the whole empire. As a matter of fact, the pressure of reform
imposed on the Porte by the foreign powers was one of the primary reasons of the
promulgation of this law. The major goal of this pressure was to convince the Ottoman
Empire to give autonomous status to the Armenian cities of the Eastern Anatolia. This
part of the empire had always been subject to the external intervention due to the
separatist tendencies of the Armenian population and the conflicts between Kurds and
263
David S. Thomas, “The First Arab Congress and The Committee of Union and Progress, 1913-1914” in
Donald P. Little (ed.) Essays on Islamic Civilization. Presented to Niyazi Berkes, (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1976), p. 317.
264
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…pp. 81-115.
103
Armenians. The pressure accelerated after the revolution of 1908. For this reason, the
CUP rule put forward the overall reformation of the provincial administration in order to
avoid the autonomy to the Eastern Anatolia, which was regarded as a threat to the unity
of the empire266. To be sure, foreign pressure was not the only reason. The failure of the
centralization to retain regions affected by the autonomous sentiments became apparent
after the Albanian revolt and its subsequent separation267. Similar consequence was
highly probable in the Arab regions in case the government had continued to exercise
strict centralization.
However, the Provincial Law did not satisfy the Arab opposition. It was designed
to render local demands of autonomy obsolete by stipulating limited local administration
such as the local governance of tax revenues268. Even so, with its dual character
embodying simultaneously the elements of central and local administration, the new law
involved also many stipulations asserting central control on the locality269. Thus it was
not sufficient to subside the tension of the Arab provinces, such as Beirut and
Damascus270. The government, therefore, moved to undertake additional measures in
order to come to the terms with the Arab opposition. With another decree adopted in
April 1913, the use of Arabic in low courts was accepted and it was sanctioned as the
medium of communication in schools. Official communications was also going to be
conducted in Arabic271. It was also resolved that the officials appointed to the Arabic-
265
Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922,
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 320-321.
266
F.O. 40170/19208/13/44, 27/August/1913, from Mr. Marling to Sir Edward Grey in British Documents
on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, part: I, p. 504-515.
267
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…pp. 130-131.
268
Ibid., p. 132.
269
Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire … p. 310.
270
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks…pp. 130-134.
271
Ibid., pp. 135-141.
104
speaking regions should either belong to Arab nationality or know the local language. In
some cases, the government provided the officials with six-months-long Arabic courses
before they were sent to the region272
Accordingly, ensuring the loyalty to the empire was doubtless the major goal in
the Arab Provinces. But the concessions given to Arabs demonstrate the limits of
centralization policy. Lacking adequate material capacity to impose the authority of the
center, the Young Turks resorted to the delegation of power more than centralization in
the last years of the empire, despite their ideological mindset that was intolerant to any
kind of decentralization.
2.2
CONSTRUCTING A NATIONAL CORE: TURKIFICATION IN ANATOLIA
At the time that the Arab provinces were provided with relative administrative
autonomy and the language rights, Anatolia became the very region wherein
Turkification policies were exercised. Indeed, the notion of Anatolia as the fatherland of
Turks emerged long before the CUP rule. The sensitivity with respect to the economic
and social welfare of this region expressed by press during Hamidian era transformed
gradually into an appeal to its Turkish character before the constitutional revolution273.
The draught of 1872 followed by another alerted the Ottomans to the significance of a
homeland, of Anatolia, the land on which the empire had been founded. This was
followed by the claim that all Anatolians were ethnically Turkish stock. “An immediate
272
273
BBA – DH.KMS, no: 65/35, 15/L/1331 – 17/09/1913.
David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism…pp. 50-55.
105
Turkish homeland was thus established with Anatolians as the true bearers of an
uncorrupted Turkish culture”274.
Before the constitutional revolution, the Young Turks looked on this region in the
same way. Symbolized by the name of a Young Turk journal, Anatolia, which was issued
in Egypt, some branches of Young Turks that resorted to Turkism, like the journal of
Suray-i Ummet, incorporated the idea of Anatolia as the homeland of Turks into their
hazy ideology275. Hence the truncation of Macedonia with the Balkan Wars drew more
seriously their attention to the cradle of the empire and its Turkish stock276.
In order to Turkify this region, the Young Turks set in motion numerous
measures. Besides the economic nationalization that went with economic boycotts against
the non-Muslims, among these measures was the modification of the non-Turkish names
of the locals with Turkish names277. But the most important weapon of Turkification
turned out to be the settlement and forced-migration policies. The primary goal that the
Young Turks aimed to achieve by means of demographic measures was to purify
Anatolia from non-Muslim elements, especially Greeks and Armenians. Having strong
national consciousness, they could not be transformed into loyal Ottomans and thus they
faced the dissimilatory policies of the empire, accelerated especially after the beginning
of the World War I. As early as 1910, Cavit Bey, a leading figure of the CUP, made
274
Fatma Muge Gocek, “The Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Greek, Armenian,
Turkish and Arab Nationalism” in Fatma Müge Göçek (ed.) Social Constructions of Nationalism in the
Middle East, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 33.
275
For the Turkist ideas of the Young Turks before 1908, see Serif Mardin, Jon Turklerin Siyasi Fikirleri,
1895-1908, (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2003), especially, pp. 261-275 for the flourishing of the thought of
Anatolia as the homeland of Turks.
276
Fuat Dundar, Ittihat ve Terraki’nin Muslumanlari Iskan Politicasi (1913-1918), (Istanbul: Iletisim
Yayinlari, 2001), pp. 36-38.
277
Ibid, pp. 82-84; Ahmet Yildiz, Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyebilene …, p. 82;
106
apparent the attitude of the Young Turks toward non-Muslims in the assembly of a local
CUP branch.
You are aware that by the terms of the constitution equality of Mussulman and Ghiaur
[non-Muslim] was affirmed but you one and all know and feel that this is an unrealizable
ideal. The Sheriat, our whole past history and the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of
Mussulmans and even the sentiments of the Ghiaur themselves, who stubbornly resist
every attempt to ottomanize them, present an impenetrable barrier to the establishment of
real equality. We have made unsuccessful attempts to convert the Ghiaur into a loyal
Osmanli and all such efforts must inevitably fail… 278
2.2.1
POPULATION EXCHANGE
Based on this outlook, the Young Turks set in motion the settlement and forced
migration policies by which Anatolia was to be purified from the non-Muslims. The
initial method was the exchange of populations. It was first carried out at the end of 1913
and involved the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Formulated by the treaty of peace that
was signed after the second Balkan War, on September 29, 1913, by these two states, the
terms of this treaty assigned a mixed commission in charge of carrying out the exchange
of populations279. As a result, 9714 Muslim families or 48.570 persons from the
Bulgarian territory were exchanged against 9472 Bulgarian families or 46.764 persons
from Ottoman’s Thrace region280.
278
F.O. 371/980/32994/32998/10/38 (no: 371), 6/September/1910, from Mr. O’Beirne to Sir G. Lowther in
British Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, part: II, pp. 208-209.
279
Harry J. Psomiades, The Eastern Question: The Last Phase- A Study in Greek-Turkish Diplomacy,
(Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1968), p. 60.
280
Stephen P. Ladas, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, (New York:
MacMillan, 1932), p. 20.
107
This protocol, indeed, recognized a de facto situation since the population
concerned had almost already migrated during the Balkan Wars281. To a large extent, it
completed and regulated this situation by giving it a legal basis and by exchanging the
remaining minority populations. In this respect, the unrealized exchange protocol signed
between Greece and the Ottoman Empire was more crucial.
Having succeeded in exchanging the Bulgarians of Thrace, the CUP government
sought to reach a similar agreement with Greece. Its primary goal was to expel the Greek
population living in the Aegean coast of Anatolia, who turned out to be intolerable due in
part to the expansion of Greece to the Aegean Islands during the Balkan Wars. These
islands were ominously close to the Aegean coasts of Asia Minor and made the linkage
between around one million Greeks and Greece possible. Thus, they believed that Greeks
must be deported and Muslims were to be settled on their behalf282. On the basis of this
consideration, the CUP government proposed an exchange of population, in May 1914,
similar to the agreement reached with Bulgaria283. By the time, in order to force the
consent of Greek Government to this proposal, the government had already engaged in a
systematic persecution against Greeks living in the Aegean coasts and Thrace284. The
main line of persecution was to forcefully expel Greeks to interior Anatolia. After four
days of the suggestion, the Greek government announced its consent to the exchange of
population notwithstanding on voluntary and simultaneous basis285. A mixed commission
for the exchange was established in June 1914 and it held a number of meetings in Izmir.
281
Y. G. Mourelos, “The 1914 Persecutions and the First Attempt at an Exchange of Minorities between
Greece and Turkey”, Balkan Studies, vol: 26, no: 2, 1985, p. 391.
282
Stephen P. Ladas, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities … p. 20.
283
Y. G. Mourelos, “The 1914 Persecutions … ”, pp. 393-394.
284
F.O. 29137/13439/14/19 (no: 160), 16/June/1914, from Mr. Erskine to Sir G. Lowther in British
Documents on the Origins of the War … Vol: X, part: II, pp. 262-264; see also Harry J. Psomiades, The
Eastern Question: The Last Phase- A Study in Greek-Turkish Diplomacy, pp. 61.
108
But shortly thereafter, the Ottoman Empire entered the World War I on the side of
Central Powers and the work of commission was suspended before implementing the
exchange.
2.2.2
FORCED MIGRATION AND SETTLEMENT POLICY
What had not been accomplished through the exchange of population was carried
out with the policy of forced migration and settlement. The Young Turks initially
endeavored to settle the Muslim immigrants in the regions formerly inhabited by nonMuslims in order to reinforce Anatolia’s Turkish and Muslim composition. After the
Balkan Wars and during the World War I, approximately 435,000 Muslim immigrants
entered the Ottoman domains286. The government sought to settle them in the villages
(karye) of non-Muslims, especially of Greeks. This policy was sharply criticized by the
deputies of the non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Assembly. They stated that they
respected the attempts of the government to promote the economic activities of Muslims
and Turks, which was the reflection of the economical nationalization. However, these
residents beseeched the government to stop the deliberate promotion of Muslim
immigrants in the villages of non-Muslim communities287.
The response of the government was, in contrast, to accelerate the process of
Turkification by resorting to the policy of forced migration. Although the small-scale
migrations of Greeks and Armenians from Anatolia to Russia had occurred in the 19th
285
Stephen P. Ladas, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities … , pp. 21-22.
Cem Behar (ed.), Osmanli Imparatorlugu’nun ve Turkiye’nin Nufusu, vol.: 2, (Ankara: Devlet Istatistik
Enstitusu Matbaasi, 1996), p. 62.
287
MMZC, Devre: III, Cilt: 1, Ictima: 26, 23/06/1330 – 23/06/1914, pp. 606-614.
286
109
century, the serious mass exoduses of the Christian population began with the World War
I288. In May 1915, approximately one year after the beginning of World War I, the CUP
government passed a law to regulate the relocations of the groups that were considered as
the potential betrayers, a method to justify deportations.
Although the actual content of this law did not target directly Armenians, they
were the first group that was expelled289. More than 810.800 Armenians fled to the Soviet
Union, Greece, France, the United States and neighboring Arab lands at the execution of
the decision290. This was perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the 20th century
because the Armenian deportation practically resulted in the massacre of thousands of
people.
Greeks were the other group to be relocated. The government did not issue any
special instruction for their relocation. A number of them were transferred to the inner
regions of Anatolia and some of them were driven to Greece. According to the estimation
of Stephen Ladas, in 1914, 115,000 Greeks were driven out of Eastern Thrace and sought
refugee in Greece. 85,000 Greeks from the same region were deported to the interior of
Anatolia. And 150,000 of them were ejected from the coastal region of Western Anatolia
and they fled to the shores of Greece291.
On the other hand, the settlement of Muslim immigrants in the regions from
where the non-Muslims were deported came to be a significant dimension of the
288
Ahmet Akgündüz, “Migration to and from Turkey, 1783-1960: Types, Numbers and Ethno-Religious
Dimensions”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol: 24 no: 1, January 1998, p. 112.
289
Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası (1913-1918), (İstanbul: İletişim
Yayınları, 2001), p. 64.
290
Justin McCharty, Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the
Empire, (New York and London: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 124-130.
291
Stephen Ladas, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities…, p. 16.
110
Turkification policy292. For the same goal, the CUP government also resorted to the
“celp” policy, a method that attempted to bring the Muslims living outside the boundaries
to settle in those regions in order to increase the number of Muslim population in
strategic regions. In November 1917, for example, the government resolved to bring
Turks and Muslims from Bulgaria to settle in Catalca region. Moreover, in December
1917, the Muslims of Nis region were also settled there293.
2.2.3
GEOGRAHICAL NATIONALIZATION AND THE
ASSIMILATION OF MUSLIM COMMUNITIES
Evidently, the nation building policies of the Young Turks targeted to a certain
degree non-Muslims. The nationalization of economic activities went with the attempts to
exclude Greek commercial class from the economic sphere. Moreover, having been seen
as perfidious elements, the government set off on the harsh measures of cleansing
Anatolia from Armenian and Greek populations. In fact, this device coincided with the
similar policies implemented in Russia. The Russian Empire attempted to nationalize the
various dimensions of its polity during World War I. The wartime policies embarked
upon the nationalization of the commercial and industrial economy. Almost
simultaneously with the Ottoman Empire, Russia deployed forced migration by which it
sought to homogenize the demographic composition of the population294.
292
Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası (1913-1918), p. 65.
Ibid., pp. 71-72.
294
Eric Lohr. Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I,
(Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003).
293
111
In the context of the Ottoman Empire, however, it is still controversial to term the
aforementioned policies as Turkification. The position of the Young Turks vis-à-vis the
non-Turkish ethnic Muslims is the most critical point in order to apprise whether the
influence of Turkish nationalism brought about the policy of Turkification.
This position is critical for two reasons. First of all, it is important to distinguish
wartime measures from the deliberate policy of nation building in Anatolia. The deported
Greeks and Armenians had inhabited in very critical regions. Eastern Anatolia where the
Armenians inhabited was crucial in the face of the Russian expansion during the war.
Likewise, the expelled Greeks resided mainly in the western coasts of Anatolia, which
was ominously close to Greece’s sphere of influence. Seen from this aspect, the
relocation of these two communities had strategic importance for the Ottoman military
goals. Therefore, it is not easy to distinguish whether their deportation was motivated by
the nationalist objective of homogenizing Anatolia or whether they were strategic
military acts. Second of all, putting aside the military objectives, the deportation of nonMuslim communities and the settlement of Muslims on their behalf served to the
Islamization more than Turkification of Anatolia. It would have been difficult to term the
Young Turks’ polices as Turkification if only this policy had been carried out.
In this respect, the relationship between the Young Turk regime and the nonTurkish ethnic Muslims reveals the influence of the Turkish consciousness on the
practices of the Young Turks. The Turkification measures were not confined to the nonMuslim elements. Rising Turkish nationalism during the Young Turk rule was bound up
with the increasing sensitivity to the ethnic, religious and linguistic peculiarities of the
Muslim subjects. For this reason, the expulsion of the non-Muslims was accompanied by
112
the efforts of assimilating the non-Turkish Muslim communities. But the working of this
process was a complicated one. On the one hand, what the Young Turks had inherited
from the Hamidian era retained its place in their mind-set. The condescending attitude
continued to characterize the way in which they saw the periphery, i.e. backward and
uncivilized parts of the empire. On the other hand, however, conflated with the
backwardness that they attributed to the peripheral subject was the objective of
Turkifying Anatolia. The merger of these two outlooks resulted in the different
treatments of non-Turkish ethnic Muslims, which had a lot to do with the geographical
dimension of Turkification.
The process operated perhaps most smoothly in the case of Balkan immigrants.
The influence of assimilation policies found strong reflection in their settlement. The
CUP government did not view the newcomers as a homogenous group of people.
Different linguistic and ethnic groups were subject to different settlement policies. The
major aim of this strategy was to promote their assimilation in Turkish culture on the one
hand, and not to allow the clustering of the same ethnic group in the same region on the
other.
In locating Albanian emigrants, for example, the government was cautious to
place them in the areas far away from the Balkans. For this reason, some regions, such as
Catalca, Edirne, Istanbul, Izmir and Karesi, were forbidden to the settlement of Albanian
immigrants295. Furthermore, the government endeavored to scatter them among the
Turkish population of Anatolia due to the assimilatory goals296. Similar measures were
taken up for the settlement of Bosnian immigrants. There was no regional restriction for
295
296
Ibid., p. 114.
Ibid., pp. 114-116.
113
them. But facilitating their assimilation in Turkish culture was the major concern of the
government297. For the settlement of both Albanian and Bosnian immigrants, the
government resorted to a condition according to which, in a region, the total number of
the immigrants should be below ten per cent of the total Turkish inhabitants298. Besides,
the government put certain restrictions to the migration of Roma population to the
Ottoman territories. In some cases, they were not allowed to enter the Ottoman
domains299.
Regarding the Asian subjects of the empire, however, the functioning of
Turkification process was much more complicated. It is true that the assimilative
measures were not pursued only for the immigrant communities of the Balkans. The
Young Turks also desired to homogenize Kurds, Arabs and other subjects of the empire
on the basis of Turkishness. Nevertheless, only those who immigrated to or resided in the
blurred boundaries of Anatolia concerned the Young Turks’ Turkifying device. This
concern paved the way for the different treatment of, say, Kurdish refugees who fled to
Anatolia and the Kurdish inhabitance of the regions that were seen as part of Anatolia,
and the Kurds of, say, Iraq and Syria. While the former category was to be Turkified, the
latter category retained its peripheral status, whose assimilation was not desired in the
eyes of Young Turks
Illustrating this policy pattern is the shift that the interest of the imperial center in
the Kurdish tribes underwent. In June 8, 1914, a questionnaire was sent to the provincial
administrative units, asking information about the Kurdish tribes. This was a very
297
Ibid., p. 124.
H. Yıldırım Ağanoğlu, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyete Balkanlar’ın Makus Talihi: Göç, (Istanbul: Kumsaati
Yayinlari, 2001), p. 117.
299
Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası …, pp. 127-128.
298
114
detailed survey involving questions from the language spoken among the tribes to the
framework of their relations with Turkish neighbors and the organization of the tribal
structure. The government was meticulous in gathering information. It was emphasized
that the surveys must be filled in very carefully and completely300. Apparently, the CUP
rule was concerned with the prospect of assimilating the Kurdish tribes. Hence their
settlement was in accordance with this viewpoint. The Kurdish refugees were to be
dispersed among the Turkish population of inner Anatolia301.
It is striking that the settlement of the Kurdish refugees in the “vicinity of
southern regions, such as Urfa, Zor, was strictly forbidden”302. In addition, in order to
“make them appropriate (mufid) elements”, the Kurdish refugees that existed in
Diyarbekir, Sivas, Erzurum and Elazig must have been sent to the inner of Anatolia303.
These were the regions in which Arabs and Kurds were abundant. Therefore, the
settlement of Kurdish refugees in those regions would have resulted in their Arabization.
Or they would have preserved their nationality and continued to live “as a detrimental
element”304.
This last point reveals very important dimension of the nationalization policy
pursued by the CUP rule. In a sense, it struggled with the Arab influence on the nonTurkish Muslims. It sought to re-settle the Kurds and other non-Turkish Muslim groups
in inner Anatolia that was far from the Arabic sphere of influence. This was the case for
the Arab refugees as well. Although the overall Turkification of Arabs did not concern
300
BBA – EUM.MTK, no: 77/52, 08/Ş/1332 – 02/07/1914.
Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası …, pp. 127-128
302
Quoted in ibid., p. 141.
303
Quoted in ibid., p. 144.
304
Quoted in ibid., p. 141.
301
115
the Young Turks, those refugee Arabs who were exiled from Syria or Musul were
dispersed in Anatolia305.
As a matter of fact, the aforementioned policy patter reveals the geographical
dimension of nation building worked out in the last years of the empire. The policy guide
of the imperial center was to get rid of non-Muslims from Anatolia and Turkify those
Muslims on the basis of ethnic and cultural category of Turkishness. Built on this device,
the Young Turks endeavored to homogenize Kurds Arabs, Lazs, Circasians and other
non-Turkish Muslim communities resided in or immigrated to the area that was regarded
as the core of Turkish nationality.
Nevertheless, Turkification was in the making only within this region. Outside of
the borders of Anatolia, the Young Turks did not try to nationalize Muslim nationalities.
Quite the contrary, identities were taken as given. This was accompanied by the
identification of the Turkish pools that existed in the periphery as the most reliable
element of the empire. In the Sincar district of Musul Province, for example, the CUP
rule struggled to end up the blood feud among the Turks. They were “very valiant (ceri)
and courageous (cesur) Turks … who have hitherto maintained their nationality and at
the same time number (adat) as well as customs, even though they were surrounded by
Arabs, Kurds and Yezidis … they have one race, one language and one creed …”. The
enduring vendetta among the Turkish subjects was considered to the detriment of the
state’s interests in Musul306.
While the subjects of Turkish origin was viewed in this way, the Young Turks
continued to regard the other communities of the periphery backward and uncivilized. In
305
Quoted in ibid., pp. 100-104.
116
a report that was addressed to the central government, the administrative problems
existing in Musul were attributed to the “ignorance” of the local people who were
assigned to the local administration and military service. The category of reference in this
report was the wisdom of Anatolian people that was compared to this “remote and savage
neighborhood” (havali ba’id ve vahsetgah). In order to overcome the administrative
problems in the region, it was emphasized that the officials must be of Anatolian origin
and they should govern this underdeveloped and backward region by replacing the
natives307.
Accordingly, determining the nationality policy of the Young Turks was the
construction of a national core in Anatolia and maintaining the loyalty of the peripheries
(which were kept out of the national core) to the imperial center. As was mentioned
before, decentralization in the Arab provinces served to this latter purpose. Lacking the
sufficient material basis to impose the authority of central power, the Young Turks were
obliged to the delegation of power. Yet the mentality of civilizing mission was still
strong, as the last example has demonstrated.
2.2.4
WHERE IS KURDISTAN? THE EXPANSION OF ANATOLIA
However, a significant question arises at this juncture. Where was Anatolia in
which the Turkish national core was supposed to be established? Indeed, the answer to
this question was blurred in the minds of the Young Turks. A debate took place in the
306
BBA – DH. H, no: 43/323117, 16/L/1332 – 07/09/1914 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … p.
337.
307
BBA – DH.IUM, no: E-40/1, 14/Za/1335 – 01/09/1917 in Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri … p.
353-379.
117
Ottoman Assembly is quite edifying regarding the moot boundaries of Anatolia. In the
context of a debate on the Kurdistan region of the empire, none of the deputies could
answer the question of where Kurdistan was.
After some discussion, the deputies
decided to delegate the duty of finding out the answer of this question to a commission
that was concerned with the reform in the area308. Given the fact that Kurdistan was an
adjacent province to Anatolia, the confusion came after this question speaks for itself.
The borders of Anatolia were ambivalent.
As a region in a multinational empire wherein Turkish national core was to be
constructed, its actual boundaries would emerge as a result of the expansion of the
imperial center. In this regard, the purging of the Armenians from Eastern Anatolia
resulted in the incorporation of this region unequivocally into a Turkish national core.
The way in which the Greeks were treated in Western Anatolia can be considered in
relation to the expansion of national core as well.
In fact, the similar process was underway during the war in today’s Southeastern
Anatolia, Syria and Iraq. The CUP rule sought to expand the boundaries of the region in
which Turkish national core was constructed. Under the war conditions, the settlement of
Turks in some regions was put into the service of the aim of geographical Turkification.
While non-Turkish Muslims were located into the inner of Anatolia, the government
much effort to strengthen the Turkish composition of some Kurdish and Arabic areas by
placing those people who were seen ethnically and culturally Turkish. Urfa, Maras and
Ayintab were among this sort of regions. It was resolved that “Turk” refugees and other
“Turkified” elements must be settled in these cities, where Arabs and Kurds constituted
308
MMZC, Devre: I, Cilt: 6, Ictima: 133, 01/08/1325 – 01/08/1909, pp. 396-398.
118
the majority309. Some Turkish refugees, who had been settled in Syria, were transferred to
Halep and Adana although the former one was excluded from being a Turkish settlement
region in 1916310, which practically meant that the government gave up the aim of
Turkifying this city. Besides, with a decree addressed to the cities located in southern
borders, Bagdat, Bedre, Horasan, Hanikin, Mendeli and Divaniye, the center required
information about the percentage of Turkish population in comparison to Arabs and
Kurds, as well as about the spoken languages, educational and economic conditions of
those districts. Apparently, the goal was to find out whether the Turkish population could
be made the majority311.
The expansionary nature of Turkification found its expression in the educational
policy conducted in Van. The government resolved to open three or four schools
(medrese-i ibtidadiye) in this city in order to educate the boys of Kurdish tribes. As was
mentioned in the previous part of this chapter, schooling had been used as a way of
Ottomanizing and “civilizing” the tribes. But, in this case, the aim was “to give a national
and Islamic training [or culture: terbiye] to the children of tribes”312. (evlad-i asaire bir
terbiyeyi milliye ve Islamiye verilmek).
Accordingly, the CUP rule endeavored to expand the borders of Turkish national
core that was in the making. In this regard, the policies of settlement and forced
migration turned out to be the major instruments that served to the Turkification device.
The deportation of non-Muslim communities brought about the religious homogeneity of
Anatolia, which was firmed up by the settlement of Muslims on behalf of the expelled
309
Quoted in Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikasi … p. 141.
Ibid., pp. 171-172.
311
Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikasi … p. 171.
312
BBA – DH.KMS, no: 20/49, 29/Ca/1332 – 25/04/1914.
310
119
population. At the same time, with the settlement policy, the central rule attempted to
assimilate non-Turkish ethnic communities on the one hand, and to Turkify some regions
on the other.
2.2.5
TURKIFICATION AND RUSSIFICATION
This policy pattern differed definitely from the previous period of the empire.
Throughout the first years of the second constitutional era, the Young Turks remained
within the limits of the official ideology of Ottomanism. They inherited this from the
previous era of the empire and endowed it with an interpretation that gave a dominant
position to the Turkish nationality. The roots of this interpretation lied in the growing
ethnic awareness of the Hamidian reformers. But the Young Turks carried this to its
logical results and their Turkish consciousness reflected clearly in their understanding of
Ottomanism. Yet this did not go with the Turkification policy. Aside from their Turkish
consciousness, the Young Turks also inherited the civilizing mission of the Hamidian
reformers, which was intermingled with gradually more stress on the superiority of
Turkish subjects.
The aftermath of 1913, however, witnessed the deliberate policy of creating a
Turkish national core in the borders of the empire. As mentioned above, this policy
embodied the prominent pattern of nation building in the multinational empires. The
geographical nationalization of specific regions and the cultural assimilation of specific
Muslim communities characterized the basic components of this process.
120
Apprising this in the light of nation building project of the Russian Empire, the
nationalization in the Ottoman Empire was a latecomer. The Young Turks sought to
compress into a short period of time what had been underway in Russia since the latter
half of the 19th century. For this reason, they wanted to take advantage of wartime
conditions by deploying the harshest measures of nationalization.
There is no doubt that Turkification differed from Russification in many other
respects in addition to the time gap. Ironically, the project of Turkification went hand in
hand with the delegation of central authority to the local power centers. In the Russian
Empire, however, the Russification project found its reflection in the strong imposition of
Russian central domination on the borderlands. This difference resided definitely in the
gap between the material capacities of Russia and the late Ottoman Empire, which was
mentioned in the second section of the present study. The ideological background of the
Young Turks required infliction of central domination on the periphery and in this sense
they were not different from their Russian counterparts. But they lacked the power to do
so.
Another difference lied in the official ideologies. Russification was accompanied
by the embodiment of a specific type of state nationalism in the official ideology.
However, the CUP rule did not declare its adherence to Turkish nationalism and refused
all the claims that it resorted to Turkification. Ottomanism retained its predominant place
in the official discourse of the Young Turks up to the last days of the empire.
As a matter of fact, this was partially true given that Turkish nationalism evolved
out of Ottomanism. The Islamic interpretation of Ottomanism had built on an unalterable
distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims during the Hamidian period. The absolute
121
exclusion of non-Muslims from the category of Turkishness reveals the influence of this
interpretation of Ottomanism on the Turkification project. What was at issue was the
intermingling of the traditional form of identification with the modern one. In other
words, the Young Turks combined the modern ethnic identification of Turkishness with
the older pattern of Islamic interpretation of Ottomanism. While the effect of the latter
led to the exclusion of non-Muslims from the emerging Turkish nation, the former
necessitated the assimilation of non-Turkish Muslim communities in Turkishness, being
an ethnic and cultural category.
With all the other essential differences in mind, this indicates a common
dimension of nationalization polices in Russia and the Ottoman Empire. As has been
demonstrated in the previous chapter, the old and new forms of identity were merged in
Russia as well. In Russia Orthodoxy functioned significantly in the similar way Islam did
in the Ottoman Empire. In different contexts and under different conditions, the previous
religious identifications turned out to be the denominators of the modern forms to the
construction of which Russification and Turkification aimed. Just as it was too difficult
to imagine a catholic Russian in the Russian Empire, so the category of a Christian Turk
was inconceivable to the Young Turks.
122
CONCLUSION
The most appropriate way to conclude this paper is to return to my research
questions and the introductory comments on the historiography of the cases at hand, in
the light of what has been discussed so far. The paper’s departure question was to what
extent the nationality policies of the late Ottoman and Russian Empires can be perceived
as nation building projects. As corollary questions, it was also asked to what extent it
would be reasonable to apply the terms Turkification and Russification to the nationality
policies of the late Ottoman and Russian Empires, respectively, and to what degree they
were molded by Turkish and Russian nationalism.
Being concerned with these questions, the primary goal of the paper was to
interrogate the commonly held views running through much of the existing
historiography. As the inquiry of the introductory section demonstrated, two main
directions exist in this respect. The first is identifiable with the argument that nationalism
did not characterize the nationality policies of these empires and thus Turkification and
Russification are inaccurate terms to depict their practices. On the other hand, the second
is notable for the over-extension of the meanings of the terms, which are used to portray
centralization policies with a slight consideration given to the influence of nationalism.
As shown in the introduction, these two directions underlie the basics of considerable
number of works though it is simplistic to generate this observation to each and every
study.
123
What this research has demonstrated differs from both of these directions. The
paper has suggested that Russification and Turkification should be taken as the terms that
refer to the nation-building projects of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Above all, they
were the attempts of creating Turkish and Russian national cores within the imperial
conglomerates. In this sense, they differed from the other imperial policies but
concurrently existed with them since they were not implemented in the whole body of the
empires.
Regarding this last argument, the key point missing in the historiography is that it
is analytically moot to conceptualize the different dynamics of imperial policies
implemented in different periods and in different regions in reference only to the
concepts of Russification or Turkification, in order to decide whether they existed or not.
Over the second half of the 19th century, the imperial centers deployed a range of policies
from centralization to de-centralization, assimilation to dissimilation and integration to
homogenization. The paper has shown that the relative weight of these different devices
changed not only in time but also in space. But they were at the interplay in molding the
direction of the imperial polices. From time to time, two (or more) ostensibly
contradicting policies simultaneously operated in different regions, e.g. de-centralization
and Turkification went together in the domains of the Ottoman Empire. In this respect,
the matter is not just whether Turkification or Russification existed or not. Being more
important is that they were two of the central policies and they functioned alongside the
others when they began to take part on the agenda of the empire’s central policies as a
result of the rise of nationalism.
124
The main components of nation building in these empires were geographical
nationalization and cultural assimilation. As shown in the third chapter, over the course
of the second half of the 19th century, these two components were put into the service of
Russian nationalism. For the Ottoman case, Turkification policy came to characterize the
state policies quite late, at the last years of the empire. The last section has shown that the
Young Turks deployed a device of nation building in Anatolia after the devastating
impact of the Balkan Wars. But this came about gradually. The period preceding the
second constitutional revolution witnessed the consolidation of center-periphery relations
not in the form of nation building but in the form of an integrationist project of IslamistOttomanism. Subsequently, the emerging ethnic consciousness of the Hamidian reforms
found expression in the Young Turks’ motto of Turkish nationality is the dominant
nationality of the empire. But this did not bring Turkification policy. The practices of the
previous period in terms of the civilizing mission of the center towards periphery
continued to mark the CUP rule’s centralization measures. The rising Turkish nationalism
reflected in the policies of the Young Turks not as Turkification but as the strict
implementation of the already existing stipulations on Turkish language. Only after the
Balkan Wars and Albanian’s gaining independence, Turkification began to be
implemented. In Anatolia, its primary mechanisms were the assimilation of the Muslim
communities and the purge of the Armenians and Greeks, by means of the settlement and
deportation policies.
Although they emerged in two different frameworks and although they were
implemented by different mechanisms, the Turkification and Russification processes
shared an important common point. That is, they were meant to construct a national core
125
within the empire and to retain the congruence of this national core with a culturally,
ethnically and religiously homogenous population. Therefore, the answer to the departure
question of whether Russian and the late Ottoman nationality policies can be perceived as
nation building is affirmative to a degree. It is affirmative only for specific periods and
only for specific regions and subjects, as discussed in the previous chapters. Besides
these regions and communities, the imperial domination was to be continued in the
regions that were left out of the national cores in the making. Furthermore, the imperial
grip on this last category of regions was performed under a novel form having origin in
the transformation of the empires. It is this sort of policy that is inaccurately
conceptualized as Turkification or Russification. The problem of the most part of the
existing historiography is its inability to distinguish this novel form of centralization from
the nation building policy.
As a matter of fact, this misinterpretation looms large in an analytical and
theoretical problem of conceptualizing the relationship between the continental empires
and the nation building. To sum up the main subject of the first chapter in one sentence,
the problem stems from the wrong address that is taken as a reference point to decide
whether the continental empires resorted to nationalization policies. This wrong address
is the European nation state that is isolated from its imperial ties. Comparing the
continental empires en bloc to the European national cores of the industrial, overseas
empires, the existing historiography pursues the implementation of what was carried out
in the latter category in Russia and the Ottoman Empire as a whole.
However, the present paper has demonstrated that the reference point must be the
overall imperial domains of, say, Britain and France rather than their national cores that
126
emerged in the 19th-century Europe. It is only in this way that the characters of the
nationality policies of the Russian and Ottoman Empires can be properly approached. In
this respect, the research has shown that the confluence in the maritime empires between
nationalization (in the European cores) and colonialism (in the overseas territories) had
parallels in the continental empires of Russia and Ottoman.
The first and second sections of the paper argued that they underwent a parallel
transformation with the industrial empires from predatory to developmental empire in the
second half of the 19th century. Putting aside the uneven material capacities of the
empires that has been stressed earlier, the most important development was the increasing
infrastructural power of the states, which necessitated the penetration of the peripheral
societies more intensively compared to the previous era. Accompanied by this
transformation was the increasing interest in the loyalties and the attachment of the
subjects to the polity. As noted in the first chapter, in the colonies of the industrial
empires, this concern reflected in the implementation of the subtle forms of power and
the civilizing mission of the colonial rules that aimed to create docile, loyal bodies out of
colonial subjects. But the transformation towards developmentalism was accompanied by
national economy and nation state at home and colonialism abroad.
The research has demonstrated in this respect that parallel processes emerged in
Russia and the Ottoman Empire in different forms. The aforementioned centralizing
measures, which are generally regarded as Russification or Turkification, embodied the
novel concerns of the dynasties with the souls and minds of their subjects rather than the
measures of cultural assimilation. In the Hamidian period, the attempt of Ottomanizing
the peripheries was the manifestation of this similar concern. To certain extent, the
127
Young Turks continued to implement the same policy in the periphery. Despite different
forms, however, the motivations were similar, i.e. ensuring the attachment and loyalty of
the peripheries in a modern form that built on a direct relationship between the subject
and the state. However, this was by no means Turkification or Russification. Rather than
the cultural assimilation, these policies served to the penetration of the states to the
peripheries. In this respect, they existed alongside the nationalization measures exercised
on the regions that were counted as the parts of the emerging national cores. This pattern
was the appearance of the combination of nation building and colonialism, which came
up in the industrial empires of Europe, in different forms in the continental empires.
Accordingly, the gist of the nation building policies of the continental empires
resided in the geographical dimension of nationalization. Only by taking this dimension
into consideration, the crucial difference between the attempts of ensuring the loyalty of
periphery and the nationalization (or Russification and Turkification) of specific regions
and communities can be apprised. And only in this way, the confluence of different, even
conflicting policies, in different areas can be explained.
In the light of the geographical dimension of nationalization, the distinct routes
taken by Russia and the Ottoman Empire are easier to identify as well. The most
important difference was that in the former, the colonial grip on the borderlands was
bound up with the attempts at constructing a national core. Therefore, over the latter half
of the 19th century, the Russian imperial policy came to approach the confluence of
colonialism and nation building manifested in the industrial empires more than the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman “borrowed colonialism” had not coincided with nation
128
building policy until the last years of the empire when the Young Turks resorted to
Turkification of Anatolia.
A significant point should be noted once more at this juncture. Ironically, in the
Young Turks era, the imposition of central power came closer than the Hamidian era to
the pattern of imperial policy that existed in Russia and in the maritime empires although
the Ottoman historiography tends to place the Young Turks’ policies to the beginning of
the emerging Turkish nation state. The Young Turks’ colonialist state of mind towards
the periphery was coupled with the construction of a national core in Anatolia. Despite
the lack of sufficient power to induce the central power, which became obvious with the
concessions given in the Arab Provinces, the periphery still seemed to them as backward
and uncivilized part of the empire. The last section of the paper has revealed that after the
second constitutional revolution they continued the implementation of civilizing mission
in the periphery. However, accompanying this, after 1913, was the desire of creating
Turkish national core in the ambivalent boundaries of Anatolia.
The boundaries of Anatolia were blurred because, as mentioned in the last part,
the Young Turks desired to expand it as much as possible towards east just like their
Russian counterparts, who added Siberia to Russian national core and sought to
nationalize Volga-Kama region. Unlike the European Empires whose imperial cores were
easier to distinguish from the colonies by virtue of the natural border of water masses, for
both Russia and the Ottoman Empire the line demarcating center and periphery in
geographical terms was not clear. For this reason, they both resorted to the expansion of
developing imperial centers. However, as the last sections demonstrated, the duality of
national domains and imperial borderlands unquestionably existed in political field. In the
129
Ottoman Empire, this duality came to the surface in the imperial practices after the
Young Turks began to nationalize and expand the borders of Anatolia.
Thus, it becomes apparent that one ought to be cautious in placing the Young
Turks’ nationalism to the beginning of the emerging nation-state. It is, of course, true that
Turkey as a nation state had its roots in the developments of the years of the second
constitutional period. However, the Young Turks, after all, ruled a polity having an
imperial structure though truncated and powerless. The nationalist policies advanced by
the Young Turks took the empire rather than the emerging national state into
consideration. For this reason, their nationalism was not developed to create a nation
state. Rather, it was a project aiming to keep the unity of the empire, of course, under the
domination of Turkish national core.
130
PRIMARY RESOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
UNPUBLISHED PRIMARY RESOURCES
Basbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi (The Archive of Prime Ministry) (BBA), Istanbul
Dahiliye Nezareti Evraki
Idare (DH.ID)
Kalem-i Mahsus Muduriyeti (DH.KMS)
Muhaberat ve Tensikat (DH.EUM.MTK)
Muhaberarat-i Umumiye Idaresi (DH.MUI)
Tahrirat Kalemi (DH.EUM.THR)
PUBLISHED PRIMARY RESOURCES
British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914, Vol. V, The Near East. The
Macedonian Problem and the Annexation of Bosnia, London: 1928.
Meclis-i Mebusan Zabit Cerideleri (The Registers of the Ottoman Grand Assembly)
(MMZC), Ankara: TBMM Basimevi.
Musul –Kerkuk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri (The Archive Documents related to MusulKerkuk) (1525-1919), T.C. Basbakanlik Devlet Arsivleri Genel Mudurlugu
Osmanli Arsivi Daire Baskanligi, Yayin No: 11, Ankara: 1993.
131
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ağanoğlu, H. Yıldırım, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyete Balkanlar’ın Makus Talihi: Göç
(From Ottoman to Republic the Unfortunate Destiny of the Balkans: Migration),
Istanbul: Kumsaati Yayinlari, 2001.
Ahmad, Feroz, Ittihat ve Terraki, 1908-1914 (Union and Progress, 1908-1914), Istanbul:
Kaynak Yayinlari, 1995.
Ahmad, Feroz, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian and Jewish Communities”
in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.) Christian and Jews in the Ottoman
Empire. The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. II. New York: Holmes & Meier,
1982.
Akgündüz, Ahmet, “Migration to and from Turkey, 1783-1960: Types, Numbers and
Ethno-Religious Dimensions”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol: 24
no: 1, January 1998, pp. 97-131.
Akşin, Sina, Jön Türkler ve İttihat Terakki (Young Turks and Union-Progress), Ankara:
İmge Kitabevi, 2001.
Alkan, Mehmed, “Modernization from Empire to Republic and Education in the Process
of Nationalism” in Kemal Karpat (ed.) Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey,
(Leiden, Boston and Koln: Brill, 2000), pp. 47-132.
132
Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, London, New York: Verso, 1992.
Arai, Masami, Jon Turk Donemi Turk Milliyetciligi (Turkish Nationalism in the Young
Turk Era), Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2003.
Bassin, Mark, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of
Geographical Space”, Slavic Review, Vol: 50, No:1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 1-17
Bayly, C. A., “ Returning the British to South Asian History: The Limits of Colonial
Hegemony”, South Asia, Vol. XVII, no: 2 (1994), pp. 1-25.
Bedri. M., Kirmizi Kitap: Ittihat ve Terakki – Adem-i Merkeziyet (Red Book: Union and
Progress – Decentralization), Dersaadet [İstanbul] : Artin Asaduryan ve
Mahdumları, 1330 [1914].
Behar, Cem (ed.), Osmanli Imparatorlugu’nun ve Turkiye’nin Nufusu (The Population of
the Ottoman Empire and Turkey), vol.: 2, Ankara: Devlet Istatistik Enstitusu
Matbaasi, 1996.
Birch, Anthony H., Nationalism and National Integration, London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.
Brower, Daniel, “Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan” in Daniel R.
Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Borderlands and
Peoples, 1700-1917, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1997, pp. 115-135.
Bruinessen, Martin van, Agha, Shaykh and State: The Social and Political Structure of
Kurdistan, London: Zed Books, 1992.
Cannadine David, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British
Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820-1977” in E.J. Hobsbawm and
133
Terenge Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983, pp. 101-164.
Cohn, Bernard S., “Representing Authority in Victorian India” in E.J. Hobsbawm and
Terenge Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983, pp. 165-209.
Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837, New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 1992.
Colonna, Fanny, “Educating Conformity in French Colonial Algeria” in Ann Laura Stoler
and Frederick Cooper (eds.) Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a
Bourgeois World, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997,
pp. 346-372
Cooper, Frederick and Ann L. Stoler, “Introduction. Tensions of Empire: Colonial
Control and Visions of Rule,” American Ethnologist, no: 16, 1989.
Davison, Roderic H., Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774-1923. The Impact of
the West, London: Saqi Books, 1990.
Deringil, Selim, “The Invention of Tradition in the Ottoman Empire 1808-1908”,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol: 35, 1993, pp. 3-29.
Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in
the Ottoman Empire 18776-1909, London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998.
Deringil, Selim, “‘There Is No Compulsion in Religion’: On Conversion and Apostasy in
the Late Ottoman Empire: 1839-1856”, Comparative Study of Society and
History, vol: 43, (July 2000), pp. 547-575.
134
Deringil, Selim. “They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman
Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate”, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, vol: 45, no: 2, 2003, pp. 311-342
Dowler, Wayne, Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia’s Eastern
Nationalities, 1860-1917, Montreal &Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill –
Queen’s University Press, 2001.
Duguid, Stephen “The Politics of Unity: Hamidian Policy in Eastern Anatolia”, Middle
Eastern Studies, vol.: 9, no: 2, May 1973, pp. 139-156.
Dundar, Fuat, Ittihat ve Terraki’nin Muslumanlari Iskan Politicasi (1913-1918) (The
Union and Progress’ Policy of the Settlement of Muslims (1913-1918)), Istanbul:
Iletisim Yayinlari, 2001.
Erdem, Hakan, "Recruitment for the 'Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad' in the Arab
Provinces, 1826-1827, in Gershoni, Erdem and Wokoek (eds.) Histories of the
Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO. Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 189-206.
Findley, Carter V., Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte,
1789-1922, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Finer, Samuel E., “State – and Nation – Building in Europe: The Role of the Military” in
Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 84-163.
Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalisms, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
Georgeon, Francois, Turk Milliyetciligi’nin Kokenleri. Yusuf Akcura (1876-1935) (The
Roots of Turkish Nationalism. Yusuf Akcura (1876-1935)), Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi
Yurt Yayinlari, 1999.
135
Geraci, Robert P., Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist
Russia, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Geyer, Dietrich, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy
1860-1914, Leamington Spa, Hamburg and New York: Berg Publishers Ltd.,
1987.
Göçek, Fatma Müge, “Osmanli Devleti’nde Turk Milliyetciliginin Olusumu: Sosyolojik
Bir Yaklasim”(“The Constitution of Turkish Nationalism in the Ottoman State: A
Sociological Approach”) in Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekingil (eds.), Modern
Turkiye’de Siyasi Dusunce: Milliyetcilik, (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2002), vol:
4, pp. 63-76.
Göçek, Fatma Müge, “The Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Greek,
Armenian, Turkish and Arab Nationalism” in Fatma Müge Göçek (ed.) Social
Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East, New York: State University of
New York Press, 2002, pp. 15-83.
Guibernau, Montserrat, Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth
Century, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996.
Habermas, Jürgen , “The European Nation-state-Its Achievements and Its Limits. On the
Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship” in Gopal Balakrishian (ed.)
Mapping The Nation, New York: Verso, 1996, pp. 281-294.
Haddad. Mahmoud, “The Rise of Arab Nationalism Reconsidered”, International Journal
of Middle East Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, May, 1994, pp. 201-222.
Hanioglu, Sukru, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
136
Hanioğlu, Şükrü, “Turkish Nationalism and the Young Turks, 1889-1908” in Fatma
Müge Göçek (ed.) Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East, New
York: State University of New York Press, 2002, pp. 85-97.
Hechter, Michael, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National
Development, 1536-1966, Berkley: University of California Press, 1975.
Hobsbawm, E. J., “Mass Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1915” in E.J. Hobsbawm
and Terenge Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983, pp. 263-307.
Hobsbawm, E. J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Programme, Myth, Reality,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Hobsbawm, E. J., “Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today” in Gopal Balakrishian
(ed.) Mapping the Nation, London, New York: Verso, 1996, pp. 255-266.
Hopkins, A. G., “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History”, Past
and Present, no: 164, Aug 1999, pp. 198-243.
Hosking. Geoffrey, “Empire and Nation-Building in Late Imperial Russia” in Geoffrey
Hosking and Robert Service (eds.) Russian Nationalism Past and Present,
London: Macmillan, 1998, pp. 19-33.
Jersild, Austin Lee, “From Savagery to Citizenship: Caucasian Mountaineers and
Muslims in the Russian Empire” ” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini
(eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917,
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997, pp. 101-114.
Kappeler, Andreas, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, Harlow, England:
Pearson Education, 2001.
137
Karpat, Kemal, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908”, Internal Journal
of Middle East Studies, 3 (1972), pp. 243-281.
Karpat, Kemal, Osmanlı Modernleşmesi. Toplumsal, Kuramsal Değişim ve Nüfus (The
Ottoman Modernization, Social, Theoretical Change and Population), Ankara:
İmge Kitabevi, 2002.
Karpat, Kemal, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and
Community in the Late Ottoman State, Oxford, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Kayali, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the
Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1997.
Keddie, Nikki R., “Pan-Islamism as Proto-Nationalism”, The Journal of Modern History,
Vol. 41, No. 1. (Mar., 1969), pp. 17-28.
Keyder, Caglar, Turkiye’de Devlet ve Siniflar (State and Classes in Turkey), Istanbul:
Iletisim Yayinlari, 1995.
Khalidi, Rashid, “Arab Nationalism in Syria. The Formative Years, 1908-1914” in
William W. Haddad and William Ochsenwald (eds.) Nationalism in a NonNational State. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Columbus: Ohio State
University, 1977, pp. 207-237.
Khodarkovsky, Michael, “’Ignoble Savages and Unfaithful Subjects’: Constructing NonChristian Identities in Early Modern Russia” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J.
Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Boderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917,
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997.
138
Kırımlı, Hakan, National movements and national identity among the Crimean Tatars,
1905-1916, Leiden : E. J. Brill, 1996.
Kymlicka, Will , Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and
Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Kumar, Krishan, The Making of English National Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Kuran, Ercument, The Impact of Nationalism on the Turkish Elite in the Nineteenth
Century, Presented to the Conference of Modernization in the Middle East in the
Nineteenth century, Chicago, October 3 –6, 1966, Ankara: 1966.
Kushner, David, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876-1908, London, Worcester: Billing
& Son Limited, 1977.
Ladas, Stephen, The Balkan Exchanges of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, New
York: MacMillan, 1932.
Landau. Jacob M., Pan-Turkism in Turkey: A Study of Irredentism, London : C. Hurst,
1981.
Lieven, Dominic. “Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918. Power, Territory, Identity”, Journal
of Contemporary History, vol. 34, no. 2. Apr. 1999, pp. 163-200.
Lohr, Eric. Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign against Enemy Aliens
during World War I, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Makdisi, Ussama, “Ottoman Orientalism”, The American Historical Review, vol: 107,
2002, pp. 768-796.
139
Mann, Michael, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and
Results” in John A. Hall (ed.) States in History,Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986,
pp. 109-136.
Ma’oz, Moshe, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine 1840-1861. The Impact of the
Tanzimat on Politics and Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968.
Mardin, Serif, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” in S. N.
Eisenstadt (ed.) Post-Traditional Societies, (New York: Norton, 1972, pp. 169190.
Mardin, Serif, Jon Turklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 1895-1908 (The Genesis of the Young
Turks, 1895-1908), Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlar, 2003.
McCharty, Justin , Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the
End of the Empire, New York and London: New York University Press, 1983.
Miller, Alexei I. “Shaping Russian and Ukranian Identities in the Russian Empire during
the 19th Century: Some Methodological Remarks”, Jahrbucher fur Geschicte
Osteuropas, 2001, H.2, p. 4.
Miller, Alexei I.. The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the
Nineteenth Century, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003.
Miller, Alexei, “Between Local and Inter-Imperial. Russian Imperial History in Search of
Scope and Paradigm”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and European History 5,
1 (Winter 2004), pp. 7-26.
Miller, Alexei, “The Empire and the Nation in the Imagination of Russian Nationalism.
Notes on the Margins of an Article by A.N. Pypin” in A. Miller and A. Rieber
(eds.) Imperial Rule, forthcoming in Fall 2004 with CEU Press.
140
Mourelos, Y. G., “The 1914 Persecutions and the First Attempt at an Exchange of
Minorities between Greece and Turkey”, Balkan Studies, vol: 26, no: 2, 1985, pp.
389-413.
Quataert, Donald, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000.
Psomiades, Harry J. , The Eastern Question: The Last Phase- A Study in Greek-Turkish
Diplomacy, Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1968.
Rieber, Alfred J., “Struggle Over the Borderlands”, in S. Frederick Starr (ed.) The Legacy
of History in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe,
1994, pp. 61-89.
Rodkiewicz, Witold. Russian Nationality Policy in the Western Provinces of the Empire
(1863-1905), Lublin: Scientific Society of Lublin, 1998.
Rogan, Eugene L., “Asiret Mektebi: Abdulhamid II’s School for Tribes (1892-1907)”,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, Feb., 1996, pp. 83107.
Rogan, Eugene L., Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire. Transjordan,
1850-1921, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Rowley, David G., “Imperial versus National Discourse: The Case of Russia”, Nations
and Nationalism, vol: 6, no: 1, 2000, pp. 23-42.
Shaw, Stanford Jay and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern
Turkey vol: 2, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991-1992.
Shisller, A. Holly, Between Two Empires. Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey, London
and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003.
141
Slocum, John W., “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the category
of “Aliens” in Imperial Russia”, The Russian Review, no: 57, April, 1998, pp.
173-190.
Skendi, Stavros, The Albanian National Awakening, 1878-1912, Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1967.
Smith, Anthony D., Nationalist Movements, London, Macmilian /New York: St. Martin
Press, 1976.
Somel, Selcuk Aksin, “Osmanli Reform Caginda Osmanlicilik Dusuncesi (1839-1913)”
(“Ottomanist Thought in the Age of Ottoman Reform (1839-1913)”) in Tanil
Bora and Murat Gultekingil (eds.) Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Dusunce Mirasi:
Tanzimat ve Mesrutiyet’in Birikimi, Modern Turkiye’de Siyasi Dusunce, Volume
I, Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2001.
Stoler, Ann Laura and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony. Rethinking a
Research Agenda” in Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper (eds.) Tensions of
Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, (Berkeley, Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1997), pp. 1-56.
Sunny, Ronald Grigor, “The Empires Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, “National” Identity,
and Theories of Empire” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin (eds.) A State
of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 23-66.
Thaden, Edward C., Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1964.
142
Thaden, Edward C. (ed.). Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855-1914,
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Thomas, David S., “The First Arab Congress and The Committee of Union and Progress,
1913-1914” in Donald P. Little (ed.) Essays on Islamic Civilization. Presented to
Niyazi Berkes, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), pp. 317-328.
Tilly, Charles. “Reflections on the History of European State-Making” in Charles Tilly
(ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975, pp. 3-83.
Toprak, Zafer, Turkiye’de Milli Iktisat 1908-1918 (National Economy in Turkey),
Ankara: Yurt Yayinlari, 1982.
Tunaya, Tarik Zafer Turkiye’ de Siyasi Partiler (Political Parties in Turkey), vol:1, Ikinci
Mesrutiyet Donemi, Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1998.
Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 18701914, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992.
Weeks, Theodore R., Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and
Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914, De Kalb, Illinois: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1996.
Weeks, Theodore R., “‘Us’ or ‘Them’? Belorusians and Official Russia, 1863-1914”,
Nationalities Papers, vol. 31, no: 2, June 2003, pp. 212-226.
Weeks, Theodore R., “Religion and Russification: Russian Language in the Catholic
Churches of the ‘Northern Provinces’ after 1863”, Kritika: Explorations in
Russian and European History, vol: 2, no: 1, Winter 2002, pp. 87-110.
143
Werth, Paul W., At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional
Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827-1905, Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 2002.
Werth, Paul W., “From Resistance to Subversion: Imperial Power, Indigenous
Opposition, and Their Entanglement”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and
Eurasian History 1 (1), (Winter 2003), pp. 21-43.
Wortman, Richard S., Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy,
From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I, Volume I, Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Wortman, Richard S., “National Narratives in the Representation of Nineteenth-Century
Russian Monarchy” in Marsha Siefert (ed.) Extending the Borders of Russian
History. Essays in Honor of Alfred J. Rieber, Budapest: Central European
University Press, 2003, pp. 51-64.
Yaroshevski, Dov, “Empire and Citizenship” in Daniel R. Brower and Edward J.
Lazzerini (eds.) Russia’s Orient, Imperial Boderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917,
Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997, pp. 58-79.
Yasamee, F. A. K., Ottoman Diplomacy. Abdulhamid II and the Great Powers 18781888, Studies on Ottoman Diplomatic History VII, Istanbul: The ISIS Press,
1996.
Yildiz, Ahmet, Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyebilene: Turk Ulusal Kimliginin Etno-Sekuler
Sinirlari (Happy is the One Who Can Say I am Turk: The Ethno-Secular Borders
of Turkish National Identity)(1919-1938), Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2001.
144
Zeine, Zeine N., Arab – Turkish Relations and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism,
Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press-Publishers, 1981.
Zurcher, Erik Jan, “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists: Identity
Politics 1908-1938” in Kemal H. Karpat (ed.) Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey,
Leiden, Boston, Koln: Brill, 2000, pp. 150-179.
145