Download PDF | Ari Şekeryan - The Armenians and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire_ After Genocide, 1918–1923-Cambridge University Press (2023)

Download PDF | Ari Şekeryan - The Armenians and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire_ After Genocide, 1918–1923-Cambridge University Press (2023).

265 Pages 

The Armenians and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire 

The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918 and on the morning of 13 November 1918 a mighty fleet of battleships from Britain, France, Italy, and Greece sailed to Istanbul and dropped anchor without encountering resistance. This day marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire, a dissolution that would bring great suffering and chaos but also new opportunities for all Ottomans, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Drawing upon a previously untouched collection of Armenian and Ottoman Turkish primary sources, Ari ¸Sekeryan considers these understudied post-war years. Examining the Armenian community as they emerged from the aftermath of war and genocide, ¸Sekeryan outlines their shifting political position and the strategies they used to survive this turbulent period. By focusing on the Ottoman Armistice (1918–23), Sekeryan illuminates an oft-neglected period in history and develops ¸ a new case study for understanding the political reactions of ethnic groups to the fall of empires and nation-states.

 ari sekeryan ¸ received his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2018 and has since held positions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, California State University–Fresno, the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, and the University of Cambridge. He is currently a visiting research scholar affiliated to the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. His articles have been published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Turkish Studies, the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, and War in History.

Acknowledgements

Frankly speaking, without the support and encouragement of friends and colleagues over the years, writing this book would have been an impossible endeavour. I have accrued many debts of gratitude over the course of conducting this research. First of all, I must thank several scholars at the University of Oxford, who provided their valuable feedback and mentorship when this project was in its early stages of development in the form of my doctoral dissertation. I am very grateful to Theo Maarten van Lint and Hratch Tchilingirian for their mentorship. From the very first day of my doctorate programme, Theo Maarten van Lint supported me through every obstacle I faced and helped me survive my Oxford journey. Hratch Tchilingirian too was very supportive over the course of three years and challenged and guided me to improve my research. I am thankful to Eugene Rogan, Zeynep Yürekli, Laurent Mignon, Erik-Jan Zürcher, and Marilyn Booth for serving as assessors and giving extensive feedback on the chapters I submitted for the examinations. I am humbled to have worked with them through this process. I embarked on the thesis-to-book journey in the fall of 2018, while I was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I wish to thank the Institute’s director, Steven Nadler, and assistant to the director, Ann Wysor Harris, for providing such a welcoming and engaging scholarly environment. Without doubt, the weekly seminars at the Institute shaped how I came to approach my own topic. This position would not have been possible without the generous postdoctoral fellowship grant of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, for which I am deeply appreciative. In spring 2020, I was the Kazan Visiting Professor at California State University–Fresno, where I continued to work on this book. I thank the Armenian Studies Program for this opportunity and Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Sergio La Porta, and Hagop Ohannessian for their support and friendship during my time in Fresno. The last part of the thesis-to-book journey was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was the Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow during the 2020–1 academic year at the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, where this book emerged in its final form. I thank the Center for Armenian Studies for its generous support. Ronald Grigor Suny was an incredible mentor during my time there. Our conversations on the dissolutions of empires and nationalism pushed me to rethink and reframe my arguments. I am grateful to him for reading the draft version of this book and providing his valuable feedback. The director of the Center for Armenian Studies, Melanie S. Tanielian, very kindly lent her support and meticulously read the entire draft. I thank her for her comprehensive and constructive feedback, which improved the manuscript. Also, I wish to thank the University of Pittsburgh’s World History Center and its director, Ruth Mostern, for hosting me as a visiting scholar in fall 2021, which allowed me to complete the final corrections for this book. I am grateful to Bedross Der Matossian for reading the complete manuscript, providing his feedback, and directing me to read additional Armenian sources. I must also thank the anonymous reviewers from Cambridge University Press for providing their feedback on the book. 

I especially owe a great deal of gratitude to the library staff of Hertford College, the Faculty of Oriental Studies, the Radcliffe Camera, and the Social Science Library in Oxford, the National Library of Armenia in Yerevan, the Library of Mekhitarist Congregation in Vienna, and the Bayazid and Ataturk libraries in Istanbul. Travel grants awarded by the Hrant Dink Foundation and the Oriental Institute of Hertford College, University of Oxford provided me with the opportunity to visit these libraries. Without the financial support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Luys Foundation, Armenian General Benevolent Union, and Nubar Pacha Foundation, I would not have been afforded the chance to attend Oxford and embark upon researching and writing the history of the Armistice period in the Ottoman Empire, and for this I thank them. I would like to thank Christopher McLaren for his vigilant editing of the entire text and Melis Nur Koyuncu for drawing the maps. Sincerest thanks must go to Gizem Tongo Overfield Shaw, the late Ani King-Underwood, Ararat ¸Sekeryan, and Rober Kopta¸s for their encouragement and continuous support over the years. Any expression of gratitude is bound to be insufficient, and any failings that remain are mine alone. A version of Chapter 2 was published as ‘Reactions of the Armenian Community to the Emergence of the Turkish National Movement (1919–20)’, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 4(2) (November 2017), 381–401.

 A version of the second section of Chapter 3 was published as ‘Rethinking the Turkish-Armenian War in the Caucasus: The Position of Ottoman Armenians’, War in History, 27(1) (2020), 81–105. Parts of Chapter 4 appeared in ‘The Transformation of the Political Position of the Armenian Community in Istanbul vis-à-vis the Declaration of the Republic of Turkey’, Turkish Studies, 21(2) (2020), 297–323. I would like to thank the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, War in History, and Turkish Studies for permission to reprint these parts. Without the support of my wife and her constant encouragement and patience and the lovely smile and squishy cheeks of our newborn son, I would not have been able to complete this book. This has been our shared voyage. Finally, I dedicate this book to my yaya (grandmother) and to the memory of my dear mama.

Introduction

On the morning of 13 November 1918, a mighty fleet of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and dreadnoughts carrying the flags of the British Empire, France, Italy, and Greece sailed to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. While they passed through the Dardanelles, where they had met an unexpected defeat three years prior, the Ottoman coastal artillery remained silent. The fleet sailed through the Marmara Sea and dropped anchor without encountering resistance upon its arrival at the gates of Istanbul. While the capital’s Ottoman Armenians and Romioi (Greek Orthodox Christians)1 rushed to the shore to celebrate the Allied fleet’s arrival, it was a ‘black day’ for the Muslim population, which saw the parading Allied fleet as another humiliation for a Muslim empire that had ruled vast tracts in south-east Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Minor for centuries. While Christian Armenians hugged and proclaimed ‘Krisdos Haryaw I Merelots!’ (‘Christ is risen!’) in the streets of the Pera neighbourhood to celebrate the arrival of the Allied fleet – equating its arrival with their own survival, after witnessing the deportations and massacres during wartime – there was silence and grief among the Ottoman Muslims. 

When the French General Louis Franchet d’Espèrey marched ceremonially on the Grande Rue de Péra (now I˙stiklal Caddesi) in February 1919, as if he had conquered the city, famed Ottoman author Süleyman Nazif, who witnessed the ceremony, wrote in the Ottoman Turkish paper Hadisat (The Events) the day after that it was a ‘black day’ for the Ottoman Muslims and criticised the gloating of nonMuslim Ottomans.2 For the first time in six centuries, there were foreign troops in the streets of the capital. This day marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire, a dissolution that would bring great suffering and chaos but also new opportunities for all Ottomans, both Muslim and non-Muslim. ... This book will focus on a non-Muslim community in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians, to understand how it survived through the stormy post-war years, as an empire heaved its final breaths. From the beginning of the Armistice years, an atmosphere of insecurity shaped the political position of Ottoman Armenians. Policymakers – political party leaders, the press, elected members of the Armenian National Assembly, and prominent opinion leaders – together with the Armenian Patriarchate devised a collective political strategy to ensure the survival of their community. Initially, Ottoman Armenians developed a nationalist approach that sought unification with their compatriots in the Caucasus. However, following the defeat of the Greek army by Turkish Nationalist troops in Anatolia in 1922, the collective strategy among those Ottoman Armenians who stayed in Istanbul and Anatolia was revised significantly. 

Once it was clear that the Turkish Nationalists would claim victory, they sought reconciliation and peace with the Turkish majority. This reconciliation was only possible through the acceptance of Turkish superiority by the Turkish Armenians – to choose to remain within the lands of what would become the Republic of Turkey was to pledge loyalty to the newly established Nationalist government in Ankara, as a means of guaranteeing personal safety. A comprehensive analysis of newspapers of the period illustrates this evolution of public opinion among Ottoman Armenians. This transformation of the political position among Ottoman Armenians is at the core of this book. I analyse the transformation of the Ottoman Armenian political position and the impacts of social and political developments of the period on the Ottoman Armenian community by examining primary sources from the Ottoman Turkish and Ottoman Armenian press. I argue that Ottoman Armenians struggled to reorganise their political and social lives after the wartime genocide, choosing to establish alliances with the Allied Powers to create an independent ‘Western Armenia’ to ultimately unite with the existing Armenian state in the Caucasus. This shared vision among Ottoman Armenians crystallised a new political agenda, which I call the collective political position of Ottoman Armenians. I argue that the Armenian press as an instrument of the public sphere played a crucial role in the subsequent transformation of Ottoman Armenians’ political position. In this atmosphere of insecurity, the Ottoman Armenian community shifted its policy towards rehabilitating the Turkish–Armenian relationship, especially following the defeats of the Armenian state in the Caucasus in 1920 and the Greek army in Anatolia in 1922. In the process of reorienting their political position, the Armenian newspapers played a vital role as the most influential policy-making vehicles of society. Two theoretical concepts, ethnic bargaining and the security dilemma, provide a rational framework to better understand the process of political transformation. In the recent literature on ethnic conflicts, especially ‘ethnic bargaining’, scholars have argued that minority groups may be radicalised by the signals of behavioural intent from the host state or from a third state.3 Accordingly, if the host state demonstrates an aggressive approach towards an ethnic minority group, the radicalisation of that group is more likely. Furthermore, if there is an intervention by a third state on behalf of the ethnic minority’s rights, the possibility of the radicalisation of the group further increases.4 Erin K. Jenne, in her authoritative study, utilises the theory of ethnic bargaining in understanding the reasons behind minority mobilisation. 

As she describes, minorities update their beliefs and political positions periodically over time, following signals they receive from host states or kin states.5 Hungarian minority groups in Slovakia and Romania, for instance, became more vocal in calling for their rights when Hungary showed patronage and sent signals of protection in the 1990s.6 In 1992, when the Hungarian government called on Slovakia to agree to the principles of minority self-government, the Hungarian community in Slovakia increased its demands. In Romania as well, before the Hungarian government intervened on behalf of the minority in 1992, Hungarian representatives had pursued more moderate goals. However, after recognising the Hungarian state’s support, the Hungarian community in Romania also raised its expectations.7 The Hungarian leadership’s secessionist demands in Romania came to an end after Romania and Hungary signed a bilateral agreement. Thus, when the ‘external support’ disappeared, Hungarians in Romania accommodated the host state.8 I argue that the collective behaviour of the Armenian community during the Armistice years can be better contextualised by utilising the theory of ethnic bargaining. Third states – the Allied Powers, in this case – intervened in the conflict on behalf of Armenians during the Armistice years when the Ottoman state enacted its various oppressive policies, thus meeting the ‘external support’ criteria. In applying the ethnic bargaining theory to the case of Ottoman Armenians in 1918–23, however, one should avoid anachronistic mistakes, especially when using the term ‘minority’. In the case of Ottoman Armenians, it is important to note that Armenians were tolerated as dhimmis (non-Muslims) within the Ottoman millet (religious community) system and the concepts of ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ did not exist until the 1920s. Even though the Ottoman state granted certain rights to the Ottoman Armenians – such as religious freedom, the right to have Armenian schools, as well as the right to publish books and newspapers in Armenian – Ottoman Armenians still remained a tolerated, subordinated, non-dominant group within the Empire, not because they were accepted as minorities but because they were non-Muslims.9Thus, naming the Ottoman Armenian community as a minority group and the Ottoman Muslims as a majority group would be an anachronistic mistake when discussing the communities in the Ottoman Empire, especially before the twentieth century. However, this book analyses the Ottoman Armenian community within a post-World War I context, at a time when nation-states were being formed around the world and the League of Nations, which for the first time introduced the notion of minority rights, was established. The Armenians were seen by the world community as a ‘nation’ which deserved to establish a nationstate, so it would not be a totally anachronistic mistake to use the notion of ‘minority’ in reference to the Ottoman Armenians during the Armistice period (1918–23). Keeping this in mind, throughout the book, when referencing Ottoman Armenians, I use the concepts ‘non-dominant group’ and ‘minority’ interchangeably, still using the latter only in quotes. 

When I use the term ‘minority’ for Ottoman Armenians, I am implying their post-genocide numerical inferiority to the Empire’s Ottoman Muslim population in Anatolia. Reactions similar to those of the Ottoman Armenians can be seen in studies of other ethnic conflicts in recent decades. For instance, ethnic Hungarians in the Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia accelerated their demands to unite the region with Hungary in the 1990s when the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević increased the level of aggression towards them; in return, the Hungarian government declared that it would defend the rights of the Hungarian population in Vojvodina.10 However, in 1999 when the Hungarian government declared its noninterventionist stance regarding the Hungarian minority issue in Yugoslavia, the Hungarians in Vojvodina refrained from radicalising against the central authority.11 When considering this case in relation to the Ottoman Armenians, it can be argued that when there was external support from foreign states, the secessionist movement among the Ottoman Armenian community crested; conversely, when the external support dissipated following military defeats on the battlefield by the Turkish National Movement, members of the Armenian community recalibrated their political position and acquiesced to the Turkish National Movement, repressive as it was. As the theory puts forward, ethnic minority groups pursue separatist, pro-independence strategies when there is repression from the host state and external support from third-party states; yet, when the external support disappears, the minority groups, left in a ‘state of vulnerability’, accommodate the majority, even under oppression.12 What is absent in this theory is that it does not sufficiently take into consideration the possibility of genocide and collective violence, which can significantly influence and shift the attitudes of non-dominant, ‘minority’ groups, as in the case of the Ottoman Armenians. The genocide affected the demographic composition of the community and reduced the numbers of the political elite and intellectuals, resulting in the loss of any powerto leverage. Yet, the political shifts are still visible within the community from 1918 to 1923, when the political leaders of the Allied Powers signalled strong support for the Armenian cause. In addition to ethnic bargaining, I would add that the atmosphere of insecurity played a pivotal role in the alteration of the Armenian political stance, as its rapid transformation can be conceptualised within the framework of what has been referred to as the security dilemma. Rogers Brubaker argues that a national minority is not merely based on ethnic demography but also a dynamic political position, which is constituted by numerous viewpoints that emerge within the group. In the case of Ottoman Armenians during the Armistice years, I argue that the majority of the community was unified for common political goals, as will be demonstrated throughout this book.13 Barry Posen describes how the presence of a power vacuum during the collapse of an imperial power may create fear among different minority ethnic groups. In cases of disintegration of the state and lack of security, minority ethnic groups might perceive the neighbouring groups as a threat.14 Stephen M. Saidemen similarly argues that even if it is not a collapsing state, minority ethnic groups might suffer security threats because of the state’s inability to ensure their protection.15 If there is such a security dilemma within the state, minority ethnic groups either seek secession to create a new state over which they have complete control or they seek to join a state where their ethnic group is more secure.

Furthermore, during this process, ethnic groups seek external assistance to bring international attention to their situation and demands.16 Even though there is a burgeoning literature on the conceptualisation of the security dilemma by scholars of political science and sociology, each particular case possesses unique characteristics.17 What can be drawn from the security dilemma theory in the case of Ottoman Armenians during the Armistice years is that there was mutual distrust and fear in the Ottoman Muslim and Armenian communities of the Ottoman Empire, and this mutual fear, a key component of the security dilemma, then generated a climate of insecurity. To consider the conditions of Ottoman Armenians within the framework of the security dilemma, I argue that there was a power vacuum – most notably following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I to the Allied Powers – and the state was not in a position to provide security for Ottoman Armenians. During the war, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) government orchestrated the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the annihilation of the majority of Armenians. The Turkish Muslim population feared that Ottoman Armenians would divide their country by establishing alliances with the Allied Powers in seeking retribution. Ottoman Armenians, on the other hand, feared that they could be yet again the subject of Turkish Muslim aggression. Therefore, the remaining Ottoman Armenians could not place faith in the newly established Turkish government to provide security and protection for them in Anatolia. Given this atmosphere of insecurity, the majority of Ottoman Armenians, validating the Ottoman Muslims’ fears, entered into friendship with the Allied Powers to establish their own state during the first four years of the Armistice period (1918–22). However, following the defeat of the Greek, French, and Armenian forces against the Turkish Nationalist forces in western, southern, and eastern Anatolia respectively, Ottoman Armenians – now unable to pursue separatist aims in the newly established Republic of Turkey – reoriented their political position and pursued the path of reconciliation with the Ottoman Muslims. The security concerns at the time forced Ottoman Armenians to declare their loyalty to the Turkish National Movement in order to protect the physical and cultural existence of the community. Thus, I contend that Ottoman Armenians changed their political position as the Armistice period drew to a close in order to protect their existence in the atmosphere of insecurity. The purpose of the analysis throughout this book, however, is not to demonstrate the strengths, weaknesses, or applicability of these theories to the case of the Ottoman Armenians during the Armistice period. Instead, this book is a historical analysis of the Ottoman Armenian community amid the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. These two theories inspired my understanding as I approach the historical material to better contextualise the subject matter at hand; without falling into the trap of anachronism, I believe they are useful in conceiving the political reactions of a non-Muslim community while the Empire collapsed. Throughout the book, while analysing the political position of the Ottoman Armenian community, I focus on the statements of the community’s mainstream policymakers, such as political party leaders, the press, elected members of the Armenian National Assembly, prominent opinion leaders, and the Armenian Patriarchate. While I acknowledge that all Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire did not embrace the same political approach and that it is not possible to gauge the opinions of all community members based on archival sources, I argue that one is able to comprehend mainstream/widely accepted political stances within the community through an analysis of Armenian papers. Therefore, rather than claiming that all Armenians maintained the same political stance at a given time, I utilise ‘the majority of Armenians’ to reflect the mainstream tendencies.

Sources of Knowledge

The primary sources utilised in preparing this work are the Armenian and Ottoman Turkish press published during the years of the Armistice. The research relies on a collection of twenty-two Armenian and Ottoman Turkish papers (listed in Tables I.1 and I.2), which are unquestionably invaluable sources for mapping the inner dynamics of the Armenian and Turkish communities in a period of transition. At the onset of World War I in 1914, more than thirty Armenian newspapers, journals, and periodicals were being published in Istanbul. After the Empire’s entry into the war, the CUP government embarked upon a campaign of censorship, prohibiting much of the Armenian press and closing twenty-five papers and journals. Only Piwzantion (Byzantium), Zhamanag (The Times), and Verchin Lur (The Latest News) remained, for these Armenian papers were not affiliated with any Armenian political organisations, making them essentially ‘neutral’ in the eyes of the state.18 Besides newspapers in Istanbul, authorities shuttered more than eighteen Armenian publications from various cities in Anatolia including Van, Harput (Kharpert), Sivas, Tokat, Erzurum, and Trabzon.19 The majority of Ottoman Turkish papers shared the same fate, with only a small number of media outlets allowed to remain as organs of propaganda.20 From 1915 to the signing of the Armistice of Mudros in October 1918, the Armenian and Ottoman Turkish press were completely silent vis-à-vis political developments. With the signing of the Armistice, however, the political and cultural life of Ottoman Armenians started to re-emerge in Istanbul and Izmir. In 1918, eight journals (some newly established, others previously established papers resuming operation) were published in Istanbul. The following year, more than twenty literary journals, newspapers, and satirical magazines were published in Istanbul and Izmir.21 News items, reports, editorials, and political discussions in these revitalised Armenian as well as Turkish papers, published by a spectrum of political and cultural institutions, provide deep insight into the sociopolitical developments of the period and call for a comprehensive analysis. Detailed information about the press sources is provided in the Appendix.

Organisation of the Book Chapter 1 presents the aspirations of Ottoman Armenians towards the establishment of a Miatsyal Hayastan (‘United Armenia’). The Armistice of Mudros ended what had been considered by Ottoman Armenians to be a perpetual state of insecurity, finally granting them liberty. They started to campaign and lobby for the establishment of an Armenian state in the Vilayât-ı Sitte (six provinces). These provinces, covering contemporary eastern Anatolia, were Sivas, Diyarbekir, Bitlis, Erzurum, Van, and Mamuretülaziz. It was crucial that Ottoman Armenians prove that they constituted a majority of the population in those regions or that there were enough Armenian survivors to relocate into the region to produce a majority. Campaigning around the Wilsonian principles was a major political goal during this period. Chapter 2 analyses the implications for Ottoman Armenians of the emergence of the Turkish National Movement. It is significant that before the defeat of the Armenian military by the Turkish Nationalists in 1920 and the French retreat from the Cilicia region in 1921, influenced by the Ottoman Armenian press, the Ottoman Armenian public considered the Nationalist forces as ‘bands’ who were another incarnation of the CUP. As the Nationalist forces worked to unite the Muslims of the Empire to fight against the occupation in Anatolia, Ottoman Armenians lived in fear of a coming second genocide, as they were the obvious and assumed targets of the increasing hatred of Anatolian Muslims towards the native Christians of Anatolia. This chapter deconstructs the political position of Ottoman Armenians before the French, Greek, and Armenian defeats to Nationalist forces and presents the various dimensions of the ethnic conflict, fear, and insecurity gripping Anatolia. Chapter 3 elaborates on the sustained support of Ottoman Armenians for the establishment of a United Armenia. Firstly, during the FrancoTurkish War (1919–21), Ottoman Armenians served as legions within the French occupation forces. Nevertheless, when the French government secured its economic interests from the Nationalist Turks andwithdrew from the Cilicia region, the remaining Armenian population found itself under threat of massacre and was thus forced to flee to the deserts of northern Syria. Furthermore, the chapter addresses the ramifications of the Turkish–Armenian War (1920) in the Caucasus and the aid campaign of Ottoman Armenians in support of the Armenian government. 

The political position of Ottoman Armenians is explicated through two case studies in this chapter: the French–Armenian friendship and the support of Ottoman Armenians for the Armenian state. Chapter 4 explores the transformation of the Armenian political position from a pro-Allied position to a pro-Kemalist one. From 1918 to 1922, the Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire supported the Allied Powers in the hope that an independent Armenian state would be established in the Vilayât-ı Sitte. This expectation was shared by all Armenian political parties and was reflected as a common goal in Armenian papers of all political leanings. Nevertheless, as the Nationalists accumulated victories on the battlefield, the Armenian community in Anatolia, as well as in Istanbul in particular, began to adapt themselves to the newly established Nationalist rule, under which minorities were not considered to be truly ‘Turkish’. This significant turning point in the Armenian public sphere demonstrates the developing opinions of the Armenian community during the Republican years. I illustrate how Ottoman Armenians came to support the Turkish National Movement after realising they were left with no alternative following the defeat of the Armenian government in the Caucasus and the Greek and French forces in Anatolia. The Conclusion widens in scope from the case of the Armenians, revisiting the collapse of the empires and the reactions of minority groups in comparison with the Armenians in order to situate the main argument of the book within this broader context. An Interlude: Armenians and the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries The arrival of the Ottomans’ fate was neither sudden nor unexpected. It was the eventual outcome of periods of reform, wars, and revolutions. 

The nineteenth century brought significant political and social developments in Ottoman society. Under Sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807), a reform process was initiated, which would continue throughout the nineteenth century. Sultan Selim’s primary concern was to modernise the Ottoman military in order to compete with the Russian and Habsburg empires, two long-standing rivals who defeated the Ottomans in multiple wars at the end of the eighteenth century. To effectively reform the military, reforms in taxation and bureaucracy were required as well. Sultan Selim III also saw the importance of building diplomatic relations with European states, understanding the danger of isolation, which he feared could lead to the Empire’s collapse. To improve communication with the European powers, he appointed permanent diplomatic missions to major European cities such as London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin.22 The final decades of the eighteenth century witnessed the gradual penetration by European technology of the Ottoman domestic economy through local branches of European manufacturers, as well as urban non-Muslim entrepreneurs, who had greater fluency in European languages. An increase in newspaper circulation, the construction of telephone lines and street lighting, and the advancement in municipal services significantly improved the daily lives of Ottomans during the nineteenth century.23 Outside of the capital, throughout the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, power in the Ottoman provinces was concentrated in the hands of ayan families (those of great wealth and reputation), powerful tribal leaders, tax farmers, and janissaries, who acted as the official representatives of the state in the provinces.24 The effective collection of taxes necessary to fund the military’s modernisation remained a challenge for Ottoman sultans. Sultan Selim III identified these chronic problems, but he was deposed, imprisoned, and subsequently assassinated by the janissaries. Nonetheless, his successor Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) continued with reforms. He, like Selim III, believed that the Empire should foster its diplomatic relations with European states and established a Translation Office as part of this effort. Initially, the staff working at the Translation Office mainly consisted of Romioi. However, after the Greek independence movement in the 1820s, those still living within the Empire were seen as untrustworthy, and Muslims and Armenians especially, whose schools emphasised French language instruction, were increasingly recruited. Many Ottoman bureaucrats and diplomats received their higher education while working at the Translation Office and eventually a new class of educated Ottoman bureaucrats emerged.25 The reforms conducted during the rule of Mahmud II widely affected Ottoman society. The abolition of the janissaries was a major step in accelerating the military’s modernisation, as they had been considered an ‘obstacle’ that steadfastly opposed the introduction of new weapons and technology.26 Following the abolition of the janissaries, Mahmud II directed the opening of European-style educational institutions in the capital, including the Imperial Medical School (1827), the Imperial Music School (1831), and the School of Military Sciences (1834).27 The Sultan and his advisers came to recognise the importance of education in competing with the European states.28 Even though Mahmud II enthusiastically continued the reform process, the reforms were implemented primarily in the capital.

 For instance, until the 1840s, there was no postal network throughout the wider Ottoman Empire. Without the distribution of newspapers in the provinces, menzilhanes (post stations), located in towns where horseback messengers would rest, were relied upon to disseminate news between the capital and periphery.29 Following the death of Mahmud II in 1839, his son Sultan Abdülmecid I (r. 1839–61) announced the Tanzimat Fermanı (The Imperial Edict of Reorganisation), also known as Tanzimat-ı Hayriye (Auspicious Reorganisation), heralding a new period of reforms in public and political life in which he assured the life, property, and honour of all Ottoman subjects, fair taxation, and reforms in military recruitment.30 Indeed, the Tanzimat Fermanı was a strategic effort to win the European powers’ support against a major rival, Mehmed Ali Pa¸sa, the governor and later ruler of Egypt.31 The Tanzimat reforms announced during the nineteenth century were attempts to both decrease the level of the European powers’ meddling in Ottoman domestic affairs on behalf of the non-Muslim populations and to modernise the idea of Ottoman citizenship based on the equality of all subjects.32 The importance of creating an ‘Ottoman nation’ was highlighted in the reports written for the sultan by the educated Ottoman bureaucrats of the Tanzimat period (1839–76), who imagined an Ottoman umbrella identity which embraced all subjects living in the Ottoman Empire, regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds.33 While the Tanzimat reforms aimed to create a shared, equal Ottoman identity, the Ottoman millet system undermined this attempt, as it was rooted in the notion of Muslim supremacy and the subordinate semi-autonomy of non-Muslim communities. Non-Muslims were obliged to pay a poll tax and obey social rules such as building houses of worship in designated areas only. In return for accepting this subordinate status, non-Muslims were granted limited autonomy in their religious and civil affairs under the millet system.34 Prohibited from bearing arms or working in government administration, legal affairs, or the military, the non-Muslims mastered skills in trade and commerce. The Muslim population, in turn, was primarily employed in government administration, legal and religious affairs, and the military. As the Industrial Revolution in western Europe accelerated the development of trade and commerce through the improvement of international trade routes, non-Muslims, clustered in port cities in the Ottoman Empire, amassed great wealth.35 Though this non-Muslim merchant class profited through trade and commerce with the European merchants, the promised legal reforms for equality in social life were never completely realised. Furthermore, Muslims became resentful of the non-Muslim merchant families’ wealth, significantly impacting intercommunal relations in the Ottoman state. 

State officials monitored non-Muslims’ economic activity and ensured that their newfound economic power would not be transformed into political power. The example of the Armenians in Sivas illustrates the increasing entrance of non-Muslims into the fields of trade, science, and manufacturing. In 1877, the Armenian silversmiths working in the city had developed the capacity to produce ammunition and arms, including a European revolver. Additionally, the great majority of physicians, dentists, and pharmacists in the region were of Armenian origin.36 While the reforms appeared beneficial for the Ottoman Armenians and other religious communities, not only Muslims but also nonMuslims had reservations. The religious leadership of the non-Muslim confessional groups was reluctant to support the reforms proclaimed by the Ottoman state; if the reforms were to deliver on their promise of equality in law, the existing hierarchy within these communities – the church’s authority – might be destabilised. The Ottoman ulema (Muslim religious scholars), on the other hand, protested on the basis that such reforms would be detrimental to Muslims’ superior position in society. Sultan Abdülmecid furtherissued the Islahat Fermanı (Reform Edict) of 1856, in which the Ottoman state, in a manner similar to the Tanzimat Fermanı, assured the equality of all subjects in the eyes of the state, regardless of their religion, language, or ethnic background. This equality entailed the equal taxation of both Muslims and non-Muslims and access to public employment for all subjects. Even though the edict proclaimed non-Muslims were required to serve in the military, many non-Muslims chose to pay a new tax, the Bedel-i Nakdi, in order to avoid conscription. The nineteenth century also witnessed reforms in the education system. In 1869, the Maarif-i Umumiye Nizamnamesi (Regulation of Public Instruction) ordered the opening of four-year state schools in every town and district throughout the Empire, where boys and girls aged between six and eleven years were to follow a standardised curriculum.37 The state established the first European-style schools in the capital. In addition to secular schools focused on particular subjects such as medicine and administration, military academies were established in the Balkans and Anatolia to train cadets for war.

 Tribal schools were opened in the provinces to educate the sons of Arab, Druze, and Kurdish notables. Even though the enrolment of Muslim students increased with the introduction of these state schools, the number of schools opened by nonMuslims greatly exceeded that of schools established by the state. Thus, non-Muslim students had access to schools more readily than Muslims.38 This point further increased anger among traditional Muslims towards their non-Muslim neighbours, who, from their perspective, already had better opportunities in trade, commerce, science, and technology. The nineteenth century witnessed riots and massacres against the Ottoman Empire’s non-Muslim populations. The major reforms introduced by the sultans did little to de-escalate the persisting tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims. For instance, following the emergence of the Greek rebellion in the 1820s in the Peloponnese, which resulted in Greek independence, the religious ulema attacked and murdered Romioi in Istanbul’s streets. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch was hanged on Easter Sunday, with his body left on display for three days to ‘give a lesson’ to the Romioi.39 Additional examples include the Damascus massacre of 1860, which was an anti-Christian riot, and the inter-communal war in Mount Lebanon, in which thousands of Christians were attacked by Muslim mobs. During the Damascus massacre, European sources estimated that around 3,000 Christians were murdered and eleven churches plundered.40 What is clear from these instances is that when non-Muslim communities increased their calls for autonomy, violence ensued. The introduction of reforms was not primarily for the good of the people but was intended to preserve the existence of the state itself; bearing the pressure of a weak military and economy, the Ottoman sultans introduced the reforms to prevent the dynasty’s collapse.

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