Özbek, Nadir. "Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and the Hamidian Regime, 1876-1909."...

Int. J. Middle East Stud. 37 (2005), 59–81. Printed in the United States of AmericaDOI: 10.1017.S0020743805050051

Nadir Ozbek

P H IL A N T H R O P IC A C T IV IT Y, O T T O M A N

PAT R IO T IS M , A N D T H E H A M ID IA N R E G IM E ,

1 8 7 6 – 1 9 0 9

This article aims to explore state–society relations during the reign of SultanAbdulhamid II (1876–1909) through the filter of a unique conjunction of state andsociety—that is, various social groups’ voluntary activities, especially fund-raisingcampaigns with philanthropic and patriotic purposes, often initiated by the palace itself.These campaigns offer fruitful case studies for the study of state–society relations andthe dispositions of the public sphere in the late Ottoman era. In light of these activitiesand their importance for understanding late Ottoman society, the public sphere in thiscontext may be best defined as a dynamic political realm where social and politicalgroups pursued their particular interests; at the same time, it was “the public domainwhere authority is constituted as legitimate and exposed to popular review, both insideand outside the accepted terms of the given discourse.”1 Within the parameters of thisdefinition, which is descriptive of the multiple agencies and fragmented nature of thepublic sphere in this period, this article focuses on how the Hamidian regime soughtto unify this fragmented social and political space by promoting public participation involuntary activities in the broader political arena.

Ottoman historiography, until recently, has produced neither empirically rich northeoretically informed studies on such issues as civic culture, voluntary initiative, orthe public sphere in the late Ottoman context. Nor has it explored the potential thatsuch concepts hold for meeting a political regime’s need for legitimation. One cannotfully explain this negligence by citing the much lamented governmental origins ofmost Ottoman sources. The problem is, rather, with the paradigms and conceptualframeworks that have informed most scholarship. Even today, Ottoman historiography,influenced mostly by a Eurocentric modernization paradigm, has operated within adualistic conception of the state–society relationship and an accompanying conceptualEast–West divide. In broad terms, this historiography has depicted the East, includingthe Ottoman past, as a place where cultural or historical particularities, whether thoseof a strong state in the form of “Oriental despotism” or the peculiarities of Islamicculture, have simply prevented the emergence of civil society and the conditions fora democratic politics based on popular consent.2 Such a Eurocentric modernization

Nadir Ozbek is Assistant Professor in the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bogazici University,Bebek, Istanbul 34342, Turkey; e-mail: [email protected].

© 2005 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/05 $12.00

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paradigm was perhaps not a necessary or inevitable idiosyncrasy of the Ottoman andMiddle East studies field, but it has continued as an epistemological bent informing thehistoriographies of “Eastern societies” long after its most extensive deployments, andeven after its critique.

During the past two decades, the dichotomous conception of the state–societyrelationship, with its accompanying East–West divide, has lost some ground whilenew approaches have gained currency. Revisionist approaches in British, German,Russian, Chinese, and Japanese historiography have drawn attention to the collabora-tions and loose boundaries between the state and civil society and, more important, haveacknowledged the possibility that the state can be an ally and instrument in the processof the emergence of civil society. This new literature has demystified not only an imageof the East as a place where civic culture is inherently weak, state power is strong,and politics is based primarily on coercion. It has also demystified the conception ofa West as characterized by a strong civil society and a weak state, a society in whichstate power is based primarily on popular consent.3 Released from the constraints ofWeberian-modernizationist and Orientalist paradigms, which have implicitly advocatedthe convergence toward modernity of all societies while simultaneously ruling outmost potential for this evolution among “non-Western societies,” revisionist historianshave welcomed the opportunity to engage in a search for indicators of civic culture,intermediary groups, civil society, and the public sphere in these societies’ pasts.4

The major achievement of this revisionist historiography has been the redefinition ofmodernization as a shared trajectory that can be analyzed through a set of sharedconceptual tools, an attempt that aims to avoid both Eurocentrism and particularisticethnocentrisms.

This paradigmatic reorientation, however, does not guarantee a resounding defeat formodernizationist and Orientalist approaches to state–society relations. Indeed, historiansfrom various fields have recently begun to express discomfort with the more generalquest to locate in “non-Western” societies’ pasts any phenomenon identified with thecivil society of the Western discursive tradition and with the search for a single trajectoryof modernization.5 However, it is apparent that such theoretical concerns have producedexperiments with a concept of “multiple modernities” defined mainly in reference toan essentialized conception of cultural difference, an approach that is currently gainingwider academic currency.6 This concern, as part of a broader epistemological critiqueof modernity, finds sophisticated articulations in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s recent depictionof “citizenship, the state, civil society, public sphere, human rights, equality before thelaw, the individual, distinctions between public and private, the idea of the subject,democracy, popular sovereignty, social justice, scientific rationality” as all bearing “theburden of European thought and history.”7

Attempts to reconceptualize state–society relations have recently gained currencyin Ottoman historiography, as well. Especially in the past decade, Ottoman historianshave begun to experiment with concepts such as the public sphere, civil society, andpublic opinion borrowed mainly from European historiography and to question thedualistic understanding of state–society relations. For instance, viewing early-19th-century Ottoman history through the lenses of the public sphere and public opinion hasalready shown potential not only for new insights into the Ottoman history, but alsofor a reconsideration of those concepts from a broader theoretical and world-historical

Philanthropic Activity and Ottoman Patriotism 61

perspective.8 Similarly, studies of the women’s press and other social domains that shedlight on gender relations in the late Ottoman public sphere enable us to critically rethinklate Ottoman history as well as our analytical tools.9

Another inclination in the field concerns redefining the public sphere in such a way asto make the insights it yields relevant to broader Middle Eastern and Islamic historicalcontexts.10 However, one may notice a culturalist tone in such approaches, which givechief explanatory power to cultural and religious understandings—the Muslim context,in particular—and conceive modernity as multiple insofar as it is defined mainly inthe context of cultural or civilizational referents.11 My approach here will be a morepolitically oriented one that conceptualizes modernity as a common and shared largerglobal process and contingent on the historical context of power relations.12 FollowingHarry Harootunian, we can call it a “co-existing” or “co-eval” modernity—that is, “itshared the same historical temporality of modernity found elsewhere in Europe” and inother parts of the world.13 My approach also diverges from recent culturalist tendenciesin historiography that repudiate the validity of the public-sphere concept altogether eitherbecause of its Eurocentric connotations or because it has been overused in ideologicaland teleological perspectives.

Despite these recent attempts to formulate alternatives to dualistic understandingsof state–society relations and to Eurocentric versions of modernity, older paradigmscontinue to inform historical writing on the Ottoman Empire of the 19th century.14

Especially within contemporary Turkish historiography, the state–society dualism con-tinues to maintain pride of place, and one can distinguish within this paradigm twointerpretative inclinations regarding the role of state. The first interpretation reifiesthe modernizing central state as the major agent of historical change, applauding, forexample, centralization efforts carried out during the reign of Mahmud II (1808–39) andthe Tanzimat period (1839–76). Historians of this school do not raise civil society orthe public sphere as conceptual or historical problems. Rather, they consider the cen-tralization and reform efforts of the 19th century as the major instruments responsiblefor progression toward modernity. Thus, the modernizing state laid the foundations for aWestern-style social and political system, paving the way for the emergence of moderncitizenship. Another emphasis within this school, at the opposite pole of the reifiedstate as the agent of modernization and civic/political culture, is the masses, with theirtraditional and Islamic culture, pictured as the main impediment to progression towardmodernity.15

A second approach, conversely, blames the strong centralized state for the obviousweaknesses of Ottoman civil society. According to this approach, early-19th-centuryreform initiatives, particularly those under Mahmud II, weakened popular institutionssuch as the guilds, Sufi lodges, and artisan groups while, at the same time, recentralizationthroughout the century left emerging civil society vulnerable to encroachments by thestate. As a result, the argument goes, “the patrimonial structure remained intact” until thebeginning of the 20th century.16 For example, Serif Mardin recently argued that, duringthe Tanzimat period, “the Ottoman bureaucratic elite, while promoting a government oflaws and facilitating economic enterprise, had not as yet given its own citizens the typeof liberty that one associates with the growth of civil society in the West.”17 Resat Kasabaoffers a slightly different version of this paradigm.18 He locates all the elements of a civicsocial formation in, for example, western Anatolia, a region with commercial ties to the

62 Nadir Ozbek

expanding European economy and which experienced a geographical concentration ofcommercial wealth during the late 18th and most of the 19th century. Kasaba’s argumentis innovative in locating the social and economic foundations of an Ottoman civil societyin a relatively early phase; in this he diverges from Mardin, who categorically denies theexistence of civil society in Muslim and Ottoman cultural domains. However, Kasabaidentifies separate “state” and “non-state” domains and pictures the relationship betweenthe two in a familiarly dualistic fashion.19 Thus for Kasaba, too, the centralizing stateappears as a major impediment to an expanding civil society—or, at the very least, hesees the conflictual relationship between state and society as instrumental in narrowingthe scope and basis of consent in Ottoman and Turkish politics.20

The two approaches examined so far—one state-centered and the other society-centered—share a conception of a reified state defined as distinct and above society.Operating within such a paradigm, most scholarship in the field fails to discern howbureaucratization efforts and the accompanying social and political transformations ofthe 19th century constituted state–society relations contingent on power relations. Italso happens that methodological problems engendered by this paradigm are apparentparticularly in the historiography of the Hamidian period (1876–1909). For the majorityof scholars who agree on the absolutist and despotic/autocratic character of the Hamidianregime, the concepts of civil society and the public sphere are considered irrelevant tothe period. Moreover, historiography on the Hamidian period in Turkey is politicized,with scholars divided in support for or opposition to the so-called Islamic policies ofthe sultan.21 Historians with ideological motives for identifying with Hamidian policieslargely lack theoretical concerns and do not make an issue of civil society or the publicsphere. Historians in the other camp portray Hamidian policies, which encouraged apatriarchal-type loyalty of the state’s subjects, as a force of regression from the settrajectory of the construction of modernity and civic culture among Ottoman subjects.22

For historians who subscribe to this paradigm, the Hamidian period represents a perfectmatch between the sultan’s search for popular approval from the masses and the paternal-ist and traditionalist Islamic culture of those masses. According to Niyazi Berkes, “[T]hefoundation of Hamidian rule was the great mass of the people—with all their beliefsand superstitions, and also their sense of honor and decency.”23 To borrow a conceptfrom Jurgen Habermas, this “plebiscitary-acclamatory” form of autocratic politics, a fairdescriptor for the character of the Hamidian regime, was considered to be intrinsicallylikely to engender conservative consequences, thus hindering a democratic politics—that is, an expansion of civil society and the public sphere.24 Only after the overthrowof Abdulhamid II, the argument continues, did the new constitutional regime establish apolitical atmosphere appropriate for the expansion of the public sphere/civil society inthe Ottoman domains by improving civil rights and securing them through constitutionalamendments.25

Such interpretations of Ottoman history risk missing the dynamic character of socialand political life under Abdulhamid II, as well as that regime’s willingness to expandthe public sphere as part of its search for legitimization. Historians are hardly likely toassociate absolutist and autocratic regimes with a vibrant public sphere and an expandingcivil society, since the latter are mostly identified with democratic practices and partic-ipatory politics. This article will argue that serious consideration to the public sphereunder the Hamidian regime could contribute not only to a study of state–society relations


during the late Ottoman Empire, but also to a rethinking of the concept of the publicsphere within a broader world-historical context, specifically within a late-imperial andmonarchical framework.

As mentioned earlier, this extending and reworking of Habermas’s ideas outside thecontext in which he developed them has become possible only since the emergence of acritical body of work on public-sphere concept itself and since the critique of Orientalistepistemology enabled scholars to seek insight beyond the conventional frameworks.There is no doubt that since the 1989 translation into English of Habermas’s earlywork Strukturwandel der Offentlicheit, the public sphere as an analytical tool has hadan enormous influence on history writing. In its classical formulation of the early1960s, Habermas’s concept dealt mainly with the democratic ideal embodied in theearly bourgeois public sphere, which emerged from his search for universal normativeprinciples to undergird a theory of deliberative democracy. For Habermas, the publicsphere is an opinion-shaping zone of rational–critical argumentation. However, socialhistorians have revised Habermas’s concept substantially and ascribed broader meaningsto it, emphasizing multiple and competing forms of public spheres, as well as theirgendered character.26 Such concepts may diverge considerably from the Habermasianoriginal in including the political activities of a variety of social groups, mostly of the“plebian” classes. Geoff Eley’s attempt to merge the “public sphere” with a Gramsciannotion of “hegemony” was innovative in this regard and has inspired social historianssince its formulation.27 In addition, the cultural twist that historians have given toHabermas’s thought during the past decade has drawn attention to new themes to beconsidered as public-sphere activities, such as festivals, parades, rituals, and other formsof public performance.28

While the public-sphere concept has been fruitful in lending visibility to the clearlypublic and civic activities of previously unnoticed groups, one should not omit the publicand civic activities of ruling groups, as in the pursuit of organizing popular consent,renewing and reproducing hegemony, and legitimizing themselves. It is the contentionof this study that defining the public sphere as a realm in which power is manifested insymbolic and discursive forms, as when the ruling elite pursues hegemony through themediation of public performances, may assist historians in integrating the study of “highpolitics” with the study of society and culture at the grass-roots level. Such an approachwould find no particular methodological conflict between an autocratic regime and adynamic public sphere. Rather, in the Ottoman context, a dynamic public sphere was, infact, one of the key elements of the Hamidian regime’s legitimation strategies.

V O L U N TA RY A C T IV IT Y A N D T H E H A M ID IA N R E G IM E :

A P O L IC Y O F C O N T R O L A N D C O N TA IN M E N T

It is customary to describe the Hamidian regime as an autocratic and despotic one becauseof, among other reasons, the sultan’s so-called arbitrary and oppressive policies towardvoluntary initiatives of all sorts. Historians who have examined this period retrospec-tively from the context of the post-1908 constitutional regime share the assumption that,although Abdulhamid might have been a modernizing sultan in the Tanzimat fashion,his despotic policies hindered the liberalization or democratization of Ottoman politics.This surprisingly consistent and single-minded assessment of Abdulhamid and his rule

64 Nadir Ozbek

is belied by the regime’s tolerance for—and, often, direct involvement in—a high levelof voluntary activity for various purposes, especially fund-raising campaigns.

Defined literally, the word “iane” means aid or assistance.29 Interestingly, iane in thelate Ottoman context encompasses a broad spectrum of social and political activities—public assistance, indigence and disaster-relief efforts, and patriotic campaigns for publicprojects—whose initiators may be the local government, the palace, any other socialagent, or a combination of these.30 In the governmental lexicon of the mid-19th century,iane was mostly used for ad hoc taxes of various kinds.31 Although iane retained thismeaning until the end of the empire, as in the case of the educational contribution tax(maarif ianesi), during the late 19th century its association with voluntary philan-thropic activities at the grass-roots level became more widespread. The Hamidian regimetook a flexible approach toward this growing voluntary dynamism and preferred tocontrol and limit it rather than attempt to suppress it. Hamidian policy may thus besummarized as one of tolerating and integrating such initiatives into the regime’s powerstrategies while containing them through strict supervision. This approach demonstratesthe double-edged and contentious nature of the late Ottoman public sphere in that theregime often attempted to mold those “bottom up” initiatives to serve its own politicalconcerns.

While empire-wide campaigns were mostly organized “from above”—that is, by thesultan and his palace bureaucracy—iane campaigns of the late Ottoman period werenot solely the result of government initiatives. Ottoman subjects also organized suchcampaigns: residents of a neighborhood or a provincial town, representatives of variousconfessional communities, or voluntary societies of various sorts. A cursory examinationof the official documents of the Hamidian period reveals a remarkably high volume ofpublic activity with philanthropic aims, with lotteries, concerts, and balls being the majorforms of fund-raising activities among both Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans.32

One can observe incidences of lotteries for philanthropic purposes in Ottoman domainsas early as the mid-19th century. In this early period, the government did not intervenein such activities as long as they retained a purely philanthropic goal. By 1857, asfor-profit lotteries began to multiply, along with disputes between lottery organizersand their customers, the government attempted to prohibit all forms of lottery.33 Towhat extent the government was successful in this attempt at this blanket prohibition isopen to question, especially as regards the small-scale lotteries organized for charity invarious parts of the empire. During the Hamidian period, activities of this sort increasedconsiderably, especially in non-Muslim communities; in response, governments of thisperiod employed various devices to keep such activities under control.

One strategy that Hamidian-period governments employed to control the number ofinitiatives of this sort was the use of bureaucratic application procedures, as in the lotteryorganized by the local Jewish community in Izmir to raise funds for a recently foundedcommunity school. The government’s attitude toward this initiative was typical. TheIzmir Chief Rabbinate (Izmir Haham Bası Kaymakamlıgı) presented a petition to thegovernorship of Aydın requesting permission to organize the lottery in September 1890.Instead of making an immediate decision, the governor passed the petition on to thecabinet of ministers in Istanbul for consideration, showing his reluctance to shoulder thedecision alone. This was a widely used technique to indirectly show muted disapproval ofsuch activities and, perhaps, discourage a number of them through postponement. After


brief deliberation, the cabinet gave the necessary permission but lowered considerablythe amount of money permitted to be raised and ordered close supervision of the activityby the local governor.34 It appears that the government was concerned with the benevolentactivities of the Jewish community in the province of Aydın because local organizationshad been using such activities as a cover for various political goals.35 On anotheroccasion, a lottery was organized for a vocational school on one of the Aegean islands(Sisam Beyligi) mainly populated by Greeks. The Ottoman government discoveredthe activity only when the police detained three individuals in Malkara, a town in theprovince of Edirne, with a large batch of lottery tickets that had been printed in Sisam.However, since Sisam had an autonomous political status, the government did not havethe authority to intervene.36 One can find numerous examples throughout the empire offund-raising campaigns organized to benefit local community schools, such as that of1897 when the governorship of Selanik granted permission for a lottery to be organizedby the local Greek community for the Greek School in Siroz, a subdistrict of Selanik.37

On 31 May 1905, the Ottoman cabinet used the Sisam Beyligi incident in a restatementof its policy toward lotteries.38 The initial policy, enacted on 5 February 1883, delegatedfull responsibility to the local governors, authorizing them to give permission for thelotteries to be held but limiting the amount any lottery could raise to 50,000 Ottomanpiasters. Government permission was required for lotteries that involved amounts greaterthan this.39 Although this moderate policy was reaffirmed in 1905, an imperial decree of16 March 1906, just a year later, brought a greater restriction. This new decree clearlyillustrates the regime’s increasing concern about the popularity of such public activitiesin Izmir and the surrounding regions where the Greek, and to some extent Jewish,populations were concentrated.

One also notices in this decree evidence of the increasing use of a discourse ofmorality. In writing that “the use of lotteries to raise money for philanthropic purposesis in principle illegitimate, and since it is a way of cheating the people, the governmentshould find a way to prohibit Ottoman subjects from resorting to this avenue,” thegovernment labels the lottery a form of gambling and, as such, immoral.40 One canfind signs of a similar way of thinking among the Ottoman literati in earlier periods.According to Ebuzziya Tevfik, for instance, the lottery was an open form of gambling,a social disease that caused numerous harms to the social body.41 The centrality of thismorality or ethics-based argument in Hamidian policy suggests that the government didnot have the need or desire to employ direct means of repression. Yet this is not an issueof incapacity in policing. Rather, as will grow clearer through the examples cited later,it appears that the regime was aware of the effectiveness of more complex and nuancedtechniques of social control. This is apparent in the fact that these techniques were usedto mold the initiatives to serve the sultan’s ruling strategy.

While a disapproving tone continued to dominate the elite’s attitudes toward lotteries,government policy remained flexible, especially regarding those activities organized bynon-Muslim community leaders on behalf of their communities.42 For example, the localgovernors of Izmir continued to organize lotteries for the local vocational school. From1887 until 1906, Hamidian governments granted permission for various such lotteries.43

It would appear that the Hamidian regime’s careful balance of cordiality and oversightin its relations with these communities’ representatives contributed to making possiblethe regime’s policy of tolerance toward their philanthropic activities. In this sense, the

66 Nadir Ozbek

Armenian patriarchate’s fund-raising campaign for the community hospital at Yedikulein Istanbul is revealing. Throughout the 1890s, the patriarchate organized annual publicfund-raising concerts at the Municipal Concert Hall at Beyoglu-Tepebası. While theregime did not find this activity suspicious and usually granted permission, it did notstop monitoring the concerts. Between 1904 and 1906, for instance, the sultan allowedsuch concerts on the condition that the events be held under the supervision of the mayor(sehremini); the mayor was even ordered to attend in person.44

Along with this close surveillance, the sultan was careful to portray himself as thepatron of this and similar philanthropic activities, enhancing this image with the custom-ary practice of imperial gift giving to religious communities during their holidays. Thesegifts were distributed as charity to indigent non-Muslim subjects of the empire.45 Thesultan appears to have been aware that the expansion of philanthropic activity amongnon-Muslim Ottomans could weaken his authority in the field of social assistance. Yethe was willing to take this risk while seeking to influence the expansion of the “philan-thropic public sphere” in such a way as to fit his own power strategies, which includedportraying himself as the protector of Muslim and non-Muslim Ottomans alike.46 Atthe same time, the Ottoman government’s cautiousness in its policy toward voluntaryinitiatives among non-Muslim communities was consistent with its anxiety about sep-aratist political activities within those communities, since such humanitarianism, fromthe government’s point of view, could easily turn into seedbeds of separatist nationalism.Regardless of the role that this concern might have played in the shaping of the Ottomanpolicy, what is important here is the Hamidian regime’s consistency in controlling andcontaining voluntary activities among all sectors of Ottoman society.

The Hamidian government’s political discourse of proper moral conduct was char-acterized by both flexibility and extensiveness. The fact that one can observe moralarguments directed also at Ottoman Muslims is indicative. In fact, the regime’sapproach to such fund-raising activities among Muslims sometimes seems more rigidthan that employed for non-Muslims. In 1893, the general director of the Tobacco Regiearranged a fund-raising party for the poor residents of Buyuk Ada, an island in theMarmara Sea. Archival documents reveal that the prospect of this event was greetedwith great excitement among the Muslims of the capital, which aroused the sultan’sconcern. He sent strict orders to the cabinet to prohibit it, citing a cholera epidemicin the capital as justification. However, another imperial decree shows that the sultan’smain concern was the popularity of this and similar social activities among the Muslimsubjects of the empire.47 As this decree makes clear, the regime’s anxiety regarding itsMuslim subjects’ inclinations toward a Western lifestyle, as shown in their enthusiasmfor balls and similar social events, was in line with its policy of strengthening the“moral character” of the empire’s Muslim subjects.48 The immediate intention of thegovernment was to check the influence of foreign missionaries and Western culture ingeneral among Muslim subjects.49 This and similar government actions functioned toenhance the “moral regulatory capacity of the state,” especially in the field of voluntaryactivities.50

Despite its restrictive, moralistic political discourse, the Hamidian regime was sur-prisingly tolerant of philanthropic activities organized by, or under the control of, theeducated sectors of Muslim society. Examples of this were numerous such activitiesarranged by popular periodicals of the time, most of which were under the sultan’s


patronage. In the pages of Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete (Ladies’ Own Gazette) andCocuklara Mahsus Gazete (Children’s Own Gazette), for example, one could find ex-amples of philanthropic voluntary activities, if modest in scope. In 1895, for example,Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete initiated a fund-raising campaign for contributions to thetrousseau expenses of poor orphan girls.51 Donors’ names and donation amounts werepublished in subsequent issues of the journal. These lists reveal that the campaign wasnot simply an upper-class phenomenon; women from non-elite sectors of society andlow-ranking civil servants and their wives constituted a majority of the participants.This fact is consistent with a general tendency of the women’s press during the late1890s, when that sector was “taken over by hundreds of professional journalists andschool teachers drawn from non-elite sectors of society.”52 A certain Remziye Hanım,for example, once vice-director of the Besiktas Girls’ School, then appointed as ateacher to a school in Izmit, donated 100 Ottoman piasters in cash. Another donor wasSadık Efendi, a doorman at the Ministry of Finance.53 In another initiative, HanımlaraMahsus Gazete called on its readers to fund journal subscriptions for girls’ schools invarious districts of the capital or for indigent girls in such schools. Since the journal’ssubscription fee was very low, even women of modest means were able to participate.Another example of popular-journal–based philanthropy was the campaign of January1897 to purchase clothing for poor orphans organized by Cocuklara Mahsus Gazete andsupported by Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete.54 The intended audience of the campaign wasobviously the youthful readers of the journal; subsequent issues show that nearly all theparticipants were young readers.55

The sultan’s policy of flexibility toward grass-roots philanthropic activity, whichcould be described as less repressive than selective, was also noticeable in the areaof voluntary organizations. In most cases, Abdulhamid II employed a lenient thoughcautious approach while simultaneously seeking to establish his patronage over thesesocieties. Through this strategy, he aimed to turn the expanding philanthropic fieldto good advantage by disseminating an image of himself as a caring monarch.56 Aslong as the sultan was convinced that the societies’ leadership was in safe hands, hetolerated them and even, at times, encouraged them by providing imperial gifts.57 ThePhilanthropic Sisterhood Society (Beyne al-Nas Fukaraperver Uhuvveti), founded bya group of Christian women some years before 1887, is a case in point. The societyapparently had a close relationship with the chief imperial physician, Mavroyani Pasha,who convinced the sultan of the loyalty of the society’s founders and secured for thema substantial quantity of imperial donations, totaling 50 liras.58 As we learn from oneof the society’s petitions to the sultan, dated 16 April 1887, its purpose was to provideassistance to indigent Christian women; this included setting up a sewing atelier toprovide work relief.59 Among other societies established during the Hamidian periodwas the Greek Women’s Philanthropic Society of Beyoglu (Beyoglu Rum Cem↪iyet-iHayriye-i Nisvaniyesi),60 and the Kadıkoy Philanthropic Society (Kadıkoyunde MuessesFukaraperver Cem↪iyet-i), established in 1886 by four Armenians.61 Most of thesesocieties were organized at the local or district level and often boasted surprisinglyhigh membership figures. A document from 1896 mentions a dispute between two suchsocieties—one in Haskoy, a neighborhood mostly populated by Jewish subjects, and theother in neighboring Piripasa—regarding encroachment on each-other’s territory.62 Theirclaimed membership levels are indeed remarkable, with the Haskoy society claiming

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1,000 members and the Piripasa society, 600. The document notes that the governmentwas expected to play the role of arbiter in their dispute. In addition, there were societiesfounded by Muslim women. One of these was called Women’s Compassion (Sefkat-iNisvan), a society founded in Selanik in 1898 by Emine Semiye, daughter of the famoushistorian and statesman Ahmed Cevdet Pasha.63

These modest but numerous fund-raising campaigns, along with the societiesestablished by both non-Muslim and Muslim Ottomans of the Hamidian period, are con-stituent elements of a stronger and more extensive public sphere, introducing a new dy-namic of social and political transformation. While it would be unrealistic to attempt herea summary of the dispositions of the Ottoman public sphere prior to the Hamidian periodto trace a larger historical context for this trend, the following example may offer a com-parative insight into the general direction of these changes. In 1875, Ayine, a women’sjournal, organized an iane campaign whose purpose was to collect clothing for theOttoman Reserve Army in Selanik.64 Donors were the wives and daughters of high civilofficials or notables, demonstrating the largely upper-class composition of the Ottomanpublic sphere at that time. The cases examined earlier, from the later Hamidian period, il-lustrate that the public sphere by then had expanded to include non-elite sectors of society.

M O N A R C H Y A N D C O N S T R U C T IN G A P U B L IC S P H E R E

As seen so far, the Hamidian regime kept an eye on voluntary dynamism at the grass-roots level and employed flexible policies to control and contain it in an expanding publicsphere. In addition to this reactive strategy, the Hamidian regime also engaged in morepro-active attempts to encourage late Ottoman civic life and shape it to its own politicalneeds. A major instrument here was fund-raising campaigns organized on the initiativeof the sultan and his immediate palace bureaucracy. These empire-wide campaigns weredesigned for a variety of purposes, such as poverty and disaster relief, projects in theareas of public services and the military, and those fostering patriotism. Through suchactivities the Hamidian regime provided Ottoman subjects with social-welfare services,over time endowing the regime with some of the functions of a welfare state, but a“surrogate” one in the sense that it fulfilled some of the functions of a welfare state withalmost no supportive institutional infrastructure.65 Most of these campaigns, plannedand executed in an ad hoc fashion, also clearly served as orchestrated manifestations ofmonarchical power in the public sphere. Thus, while many understand the public spherein the sense proposed by Habermas in Strukturwandel der Offentlicheit—as a retreat ofthe state from certain fields, as with the abolition of press and theater censorship—thecontext examined here presents a strong argument, almost to the contrary, for admittingthe possibility that in-place power structures can facilitate the evolution of a publicsphere. Perhaps for now, at least, the somewhat paradoxical phrase “monarchical publicsphere” can suffice to identify this particular historical context.

The sultan’s fund-raising campaigns were of two major kinds: social-assistance–type,to be discussed later, and support for the military and war-related relief efforts such ascaring for war orphans and disabled soldiers, and other public works. A well-known ex-ample of the second type was the Hejaz Railway Campaign (Hicaz Demiryolu I↪anesi).66

This railroad had symbolic significance because it was to connect the Anatolian railwaysystem to the Muslim holy places in Hejaz Province. The campaign for it, which was


carried out throughout the Muslim world, aimed to build the Hejaz railway with onlydomestic or Muslim financial sources—that is, without borrowing from the Europeanmarket. With this project, Abdulhamid also aimed to boost his public profile not onlydomestically but throughout the Muslim world.67 The campaign thus served to promotethe sultan’s Pan-Islamic policy and to generate feelings of solidarity among Muslimsworldwide while emphasizing the sultan’s role as the spiritual leader of all Muslims.With its political message, this particular campaign had a greater chance of success insecuring the loyalty of the masses to the monarchical regime, in addition to encouraginga participatory public sphere.

Sultan-initiated fund-raising campaigns in the area of social assistance such as poorand disaster relief were in most cases orchestrated as public performances of sultanicgenerosity. Sultanic generosity toward indigent subjects was certainly not an inventionof the Hamidian period. What are new in the Hamidian period are the sultan’s efforts toexpand imperial philanthropy and integrate it with more modern and popular concep-tions of rulership.68 As mentioned earlier, through these philanthropic performances thesultan’s bureaucracy sought public loyalty by propagating the image of the sultan as abenevolent monarch and familiar paternal figure. Throughout the sultan’s long reign, heand his bureaucracy exercised various forms of munificence, both traditional and inno-vative, to create a rich repertoire of acts of imperial giving. While a detailed examinationof the complex system of Hamidian gift giving is beyond the scope of this study, thefollowing example of a disaster-relief effort may serve to illustrate how Abdulhamid IIdealt with the realm of social welfare in line with the objectives described earlier.69

Following the earthquake of 1898 in Balıkesir, a provincial town in the Marmara region,the sultan immediately took the initiative. With an imperial decree, he first establisheda special private commission headed by one of his personal advisers, Vehbi Pasha. Thiscommission immediately departed for the disaster area with 50,000 piasters providedby the sultan.70 Simultaneously, another aid commission was established within theIstanbul municipality to solicit donations throughout the capital.71 The sultan’s com-mission returned to Istanbul after about two months of relief work in the region andpresented the palace with its report and a special letter from the victims expressing theirgratitude to the sultan for his generosity.72 It is noteworthy that, rather than empoweringthe local authorities to deal with the crisis, Abdulhamid preferred the more personallyaggrandizing method of taking the emergency-response planning and implementationinto his own hands. One can easily glean from newspapers of the period how skillfullythe sultan orchestrated the relief campaign as a demonstration of his direct, personalconcern with the problems of his needy subjects. His closest aides’ presence in theearthquake region; his assuming personal command of the operation; and his immediatecash donations all contributed to putting the sultan’s own signature on the relief effort,thus linking the figure of the sultan to the well-being of his people.

In addition to their impressiveness as acts of a generous individual, the successof sultanic benevolence also depended on the extent of public involvement, throughwhich this image of the sultan found a broader audience. To stimulate participation infund-raising campaigns, the Hamidian bureaucracy saw to it that the daily newspaperspublished the list of donors and their donations on their front pages. Such lists publishedafter the Balıkesir earthquake show that this campaign, as with numerous other, similarefforts, provided the opportunity for Ottomans from widely different sectors of society to

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join the rest of the population in efforts for the public good. At the same time, it is fair toassume that individuals participating in these campaigns also had motives rooted in theirlocal social and political settings, each “local public” incorporating various individualor group interests. These “local publics” in the Ottoman Empire are, of course, vast andvarious. Of interest for this article is the Hamidian bureaucracy’s attempt to integratethem into an overarching imperial political realm, with the fatherly and compassionatesultan as its unifying symbol.

Part of this venture has to do with creating the fantasy of a single public sphereout of the fragmented, empire-style political and social landscape. The multiple localpublic spheres and newspapers and periodicals of the time played a crucial role in thisendeavor. However, newspaper coverage of Abdulhamid II’s philanthropic performancesmay be misleading in at least one respect: while they consistently represented thesultan’s philanthropic performances as success stories, these strategies of power did notalways run smoothly, as dissatisfaction with the fund-raising campaigns was not lackingamong his subjects. However, to find evidence of this dissatisfaction—on which thepress remained silent—one must go to the archival sources. They show that discontentemerged when Ottoman subjects with lower income levels—urban workers and artisansand state employees with low salaries—were obliged to participate in campaigns withcash donations.

The winter relief campaign of 1891 is one example. Assistance in the form of fuelto the poorer residents of Istanbul during the winter months was a familiar element ofthe Hamidian repertoire of imperial gift giving, repeated almost every year. In 1891,the sultan’s chief staff at the palace established an aid commission (iane-i siteviyyekomisyonu) to solicit donations. As usual, Abdulhamid was the first and largest donor.However, participation in this particular campaign, archival sources show, was not alwaysvoluntary. For example, a group of artisans petitioned the palace to complain aboutthe amount of the contributions the commission was asking of them. This complaintresulted in a minor investigation to determine whether the commission had used excessivecoercion in its solicitations. In fact, one can find many examples in the archival sourcesof popular discontent with various iane campaigns. Yet while even carefully plannedinitiatives may have soured some of his subjects, as in this case, the sultan was oftenprudent enough to take matters into his own hands and decree that the officials stoppressuring the poorer artisans for donations.73

W A R , PAT R IO T IS M , A N D T H E H A M ID IA N P U B L IC S P H E R E

Constructing a public sphere with patriotic overtones, an important aspect of the sultan’sstrategy of power, manifested itself as an ambiguous venture at various moments of theHamidian period, such as that following the Ottoman–Greek war of 1897. The “ThirtyDays” war of 1897 had its cause in a long-simmering conflict between the OttomanEmpire and the Greek state over Crete. Exploited by Greek irredentism, the conflictultimately turned into an open military clash between the Greek state and the OttomanEmpire.74 This was the only major military encounter of the Hamidian period other thanthe war with Russia in 1877–78, and it contributed to the need to refashion Ottomanpublic opinion along patriotic and militarist lines.


While the press censorship of the period is well known, it appears that the newspapersand periodicals showed a certain degree of initiative and played a crucial role in thisprocess. Even a quick survey gives the impression that writers and editors took theirroles very seriously, acting almost as if they were part of an organized public-relationscampaign. With the apparent intention of improving the self-esteem and dignity ofthe Ottomans, who were felt to be in need of restoration after the disastrous Russo-Ottoman war of 1877–78, the newspapers emphasized Ottoman military prowess intheir detailed accounts of developments from the war front. Coverage of the home front,however, was aimed at integrating it with the war, turning the two fronts into a single“national” one. Servet-i Funun, a major illustrated literary journal, featured reports onthe enthusiasm of Istanbul residents as they greeted the arrival of wounded soldiersen route to hospitals in the city. According to one such report, thousands of Ottomansgathered at the railroad station to welcome the soldiers with great excitement, shouting,“Long live my padisah!”75 Thus, such coverage had the effect of representing the unityof the military and the wider population with the sultan as its commander in chief.

War medals performed a similar function. The sultan awarded the “Greek War Medals”(Yunan Harbi Madalyası) to 190,000 individuals, military and civilian, who had con-tributed to the war effort.76 Press coverage of the award ceremonies seems intent onenhancing feelings of confidence in and familiarity toward the sultan, represented asa combination of father figure and commander in chief. Abdulhamid is reported asaddressing the soldiers in the first person singular, just as a father would address hischildren, during the ceremonies, and newspapers published full texts of speeches inwhich the sultan described the Ottoman populace as a large family with himself as thefather.77 He went further to declare that his feelings for each Ottoman who had beenwounded or killed were no different from what he would feel toward his own sons. Thisprojection of a paternal bond between the sultan and his subjects, one of the centralthemes of the Hamidian political discourse, encouraged the manifestation of this monar-chical public sphere as an imagined familial community. Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhiidentifies a similar process in late-19th-century Iran, where, as in the Ottoman Empire,this “familialization” of political discourse should not be confused with patrimonialismin the Weberian sense. In Tavakoli-Targhi’s words, “[T]he metaphoric refiguration ofthe [sultan] as familial father was a corollary to the nineteenth-century centralization ofstate and publicizing of royal authority.”78

One of the most important instruments used by the sultan’s bureaucracy to recruitthe masses for the war effort along the lines of a patriotic, participatory mobilizationwas the fund-raising campaign for war orphans and the families of wounded soldiers(Evlad-ı Suheda ve Malulin-i Guzzat-ı Sahane Inanesi). The campaign was organizedas an exhibition for which Ottomans were encouraged to donate cash or items to bedisplayed and then sold. To encourage donations, newspapers published the campaignregisters showing donors’ names and donation amounts. These registers, a public dis-play of the generosity of the participants, also shed light on the social topography ofthis evolving public sphere. The empire-wide campaign attracted participation from abroad spectrum of Ottomans, providing opportunities for those from far-flung provinces,administrators, high- or middle-ranking public servants, and influential local figures toparticipate collectively in a patriotic action. The Hamidian bureaucracy used the oc-casion to promote Ottoman patriotism; the war had been won, and now it was time

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for Ottomans to express their gratitude by honoring the war orphans and the familiesof disabled soldiers who had made sacrifices for the fatherland (vatan). This cam-paign was thus of the kind to foster feelings of unity between the people and the stateand of belonging to an imagined imperial community. The Hamidian state used thisopportunity to promote the notions of a harmonious state–society relationship, of apatriotic Ottoman identity, and of the sultan as symbolically embodying the unity of theOttomans.

It appears, then, that this fund-raising campaign simultaneously performed twointer-related functions. First, by involving even the distant provinces of the empire,it helped to expand the territorial boundaries of what I am calling the monarchicalpublic sphere. Second, while disseminating an image of a political community thatincluded the broad masses, it also served to demonstrate public approval and supportfor the regime. Of course, how deep or extensive this support was is less importantthan the virtual effect that such a staging appeared capable of creating within the widerpopulation. In reality, as mentioned earlier, what the sultan and his bureaucracy wereaiming at in constructing this paternalistic yet participatory public space around suchcampaigns was a unification of the widely diverse local communities throughout theempire.

The lists of thousands of Ottoman donors from all corners of the empire, togetherwith their donation amounts, published as part of the relief campaign for orphans andfamilies of the wounded, shed light on the characteristics of the public sphere thatthe Hamidian regime was attempting to construct and consolidate. A significant aspectof the campaign was that Abdulhamid II himself was the major contributor, almost 6percent of all funds raised coming from the Privy Purse.79 After the sultan, the nextmajor contributors were his close associates, high-ranking ministers, and the Ottomanconsuls. Indeed, these lists provide a kind of profile of the political community ormonarchical public sphere that the Hamidian regime aimed to establish in an imperialcontext, since they represent a new form of unity of Ottoman society in spite of its verydiverse socio-economic and ethnic-religious constituents. The twenty-sixth register, forexample, includes the names of high-ranking Ottoman military and civil officials andconsuls along with those of ordinary civil servants, together with their widely differingdonation amounts.80 Another list published in Sabah on 18 January 1898 reflects thesame diversity: Bagdadi Samizade Mehmed Hamid Efendi, a student at the MilitaryAcademy and apparently the son of a notable from Baghdad; Ekrem Beg, the owner ofa philatelic journal in Istanbul; Ali Efendizade Halil Efendi and Haydar Efendi, son ofHacı Ahmed Efendi, Ottoman merchants at Rustov; and the wife of the director of SaintJoseph High School were among the participants listed.81

Another significant feature of the war-relief campaign was its administrativegeographical extent, with donation-collection committees located in all of the Ottomanprovinces. Moreover, local government offices played an important role in administer-ing the campaigns in the provinces. Participation levels were noteworthy in the majorprovinces of Edirne, Syria, and Mosul,82 while Kayseri, Maras, Zeytun, and Sinopare examples of smaller districts where the level and amount of donations were alsosignificant.83 Campaigns were even organized in a number of small villages.84 Thesecases appear to show a correlation between the presence of an administrative infrastruc-ture and the emergence of a public sphere in the provinces. Far from substantiating the


notion of the state–society relationship as an innately dichotomous one, a public sphereappears to be capable of developing in the context of an extensive, robust, and evencentralized administration.

The campaign in Sinop, a small subdistrict on the Black Sea, provides a snapshotof what we might call a typical Ottoman provincial public sphere at the end of the19th century. The list of Sinop contributors published by Sabah on 15 February 1898resembles a catalogue of the many departments and positions in local governmentin the region and of civil professional sectors such as artisans, small retailers, bank-branch managers, merchants, and respected residents of every neighborhood.85 Thisparticular register lists 91 individuals, with donations ranging from 2 to 108 piasters,for a total of 2,052 piasters, a remarkable figure for a provincial subdistrict such asSinop. Among those 91 individuals, 15 account for almost half the total (each giving40 piasters or more). Ali Vehbi Efendi, the chief secretary at the office of the provincialtreasury; Hacı Huseyin Efendi, a judge at the local court; and Suleyman Efendi, anaccountant at the treasurer’s office, were singled out for their contributions of about 100piasters each, while Ekmekci Salih Usta, a baker, could afford only 2 piasters. Amongindividuals who gave 5 piasters, one can see the names of Rasim Efendi, an artisan;Kadir Usta, another baker; Hacı Mustafa Usta, a locksmith; and Mustafa Efendi, themufti of Meydan, a neighborhood of Sinop. Most of the other contributors who werelisted with donations of 20 piasters were mid-ranking public servants or employees inthe private sector, such as Mithat Efendi, police lieutenant; Abdullah Efendi, policeofficer; municipal physician Kamil Efendi; post-office director Abdulkadir Efendi; andBurhaneddin Efendi, an employee at the local branch of the Public Debt Administration.Thus, the provincial public sphere as manifested through this campaign was not limitedto a specific group or stratum. Instead, it reflected the social diversity of the localpopulations.

Another feature of the campaign in Sinop is that it was carried out in several neighbor-hood of the town, with, for example, ten individuals representing Cami↪-i Kebir Mahallesiand fifteen individuals from Meydankapı Mahallesi. Most of the donors from Cami↪-iKebir Mahallesi were small artisans who made relatively small contributions, whiledonation amounts suggest that Meydankapı Mahallesi was a mixed neighborhood ofprosperous and humble residents. Most likely coordinated and promoted by the electedneighborhood leaders (muhtar), the campaign brought rich and poor Ottomans together,even at the neighborhood level, thus unifying them for a patriotic cause as loyal subjectsof the sultan.

The fund-raising campaign for war orphans and the families of wounded soldiers thusappears to have made a major contribution to the Hamidian bureaucracy’s attempt tolend a patriotic color to the sultan’s ruling strategies and political discourse. Moreover,the masses were mobilized for a common goal of special significance: the soldiersand their families who sacrificed their lives for the sake of the fatherland (vatan).Vatan in the Hamidian context had definite territorial connotations and was imaginedas a political community with the paternal figure of the sultan as its symbolic center.The Hamidian bureaucracy carefully merged this patriotic imagination with the currentpatriarchal political discourse, creating an association between the patriotic duty ofeach individual toward the homeland and his or her fellow citizens with loyalty to thefatherly figure of the sultan. Hamidian political language was personalized to such an

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extent that it can be characterized as expressing a “patriarchal patriotism.” Hasan Kayalımakes a helpful distinction between the patriotism of this period, for which the focus ofloyalty was the Ottoman sultan, and what he calls the “state patriotism” of the SecondConstitutional Period (1908–18).86 Patriotism, as is true for any identity-based ideology,is socially redefined on a continual basis, and the Hamidian regime appears to havebeen remarkably successful in the design and implementation of the charitable activitiesexamined here, which gathered momentum for “war patriotism” while propagating andenhancing the public profile of the sultan.

Hamidian patriotism, however, presented a certain number of uncertainties andambiguities. The sultan promoted a patriotism backed by dynastic and imperial motives,advocating it as an alternative ideology to various sorts of particularist nationalisms thenin developing stages in the empire. This alternative basis for unity may indeed havebeen critical especially during the war with Greece, when the Ottoman Empire includeda significant Greek Orthodox population, since it appears that in encouraging a largerrole for a unified public sphere, the Hamidian government sought in particular to notantagonize its Orthodox subjects. A Sabah news item on the Greek Orthodox Patriarchof Jerusalem’s contribution to the war-relief campaign, with its special symbolic signif-icance, is a case in point. The Sabah article seeks to make the important distinction that,while a war was being waged against the Greek state, all Ottoman subjects—regardlessof their ethnic and confessional identity—were united behind the sultan.87 There hadbeen earlier examples of the sultan’s concern with the sensibilities of Greek-speakingOttoman subjects, as shown, for instance, in his prohibition of celebrations of Istanbul’sconquest in the early stages of his reign.88 Despite these thoughtful attempts, however,the Hamidian regime was hesitant to take radical measures—for example, as regardsnon-Muslim Ottomans in the military. Despite various legislative attempts starting in1855, no serious effort appears to have been made to include non-Muslims in the armedservices before 1909.89 While the government drafted thousands of volunteers amongMuslims and non-Muslims to counter the Serbian uprisings in 1876 and to fight in theRusso-Ottoman war of 1877–78,90 no attempt appears to have been made to accept non-Muslim volunteers during the Ottoman–Greek war of 1897. And while Albanian notablesvolunteered to support the Ottoman army with their own troops in the war of 1897,91

these troops were “organized more on the model of mercenaries than citizen-soldiers.”92

Although the imperial government might have benefited from a more inclusive patri-otic policy, the war with Greece aroused public sentiment and made the Muslim massesmore vulnerable to political agitation with nationalist overtones.93 Thus, a redefinitionof patriotism with a more nationalist coloring and with Islamic content became a realpossibility. There are indications that the Ottoman literati of the time worked ener-getically toward reshaping public opinion and redefining patriotism along these lines.Poems by well-known poets such as Tevfik Fikret, Nigar Hanım, Mehmet Emin, andAli Ekrem are illustrative in this regard.94 This body of poetry had great influence on theOttoman youth as well as on the public at large, and it doubtless strengthened nationalistsentiments among the public, encouraging people to volunteer for military service or toparticipate in patriotic campaigns at home. Mehmet Emin’s poetry is instructive in thisregard. He wrote in simplified Turkish and took the wider public as his audience. Mostof his poems have patriotic and nationalist tones. One of his best known is titled, “Benbir Turkum! (I am a Turk!).” In 1898, he collected these poems into a volume titled,


Turkce Siirler (Poems in Turkish).95 Such cases demonstrate the complexity and rapidlychanging contours of different political imaginations.

C O N C L U S IO N

New light on late Ottoman social and political dynamics shed by the philanthropicactivities examined here can open the way to qualitative rethinking of the conceptualtools that historians have employed in their examination of politics in late-19th-centuryimperial and monarchical contexts. This study has been undertaken in the hope ofcontributing to the literature on the public sphere as a conceptual tool produced by socialand cultural historians of the past two decades, literature that has radically modifiedHabermas’s original concept and broadened the scope of “the political” in definitionsof the public. The discussion here, however, diverges from tendencies among the socialand cultural historians in one major respect: the emphasis has not been put on thedemocratic connotations of the public sphere in its multiplicity. Instead, the publicsphere is conceived as a site of contention among divergent and particularistic intereststhat is subject to appropriation for powerful social and political interests. This becomesapparent only when viewing the public sphere as a political realm that gave the ruling elitenew opportunities to show their power and hegemony through the mediation of publicperformances. As these emphases indicate, the major concern here has been not simply tosignal the presence of an incipient but apparently dynamic public sphere or civil societyin the late Ottoman Empire, in particular, and the need to be alert to the possibilityof such formations in imperial and monarchical contexts more generally. Rather, theconcern has been to show how a monarchical and autocratic regime manifested andlegitimized itself in the public sphere.

It is true that the public sphere and civil society are concepts open to misuse whenthey are weighted with various historiographical and epistemological preferences sothat the terms become “not merely descriptive but prescriptive: terms of a discourse that[seeks] to produce its object in accordance with varying social interests and ideologicalorientations.”96 In view of this, the public sphere, as defined here, allows us to repudiateboth state- and society-centered teleological narratives of Ottoman modernity and toevaluate how authority is constituted as legitimate and exposed to popular view in thelate Ottoman imperial and monarchical context. As a new perspective on the pictureprovided by Ottoman and modern Turkish historiography, the domain of philanthropicactivities has revealed a lively field of voluntaristic behavior during the Hamidian period.This example of Abduldhamid II’s efforts in encouraging voluntary activity demonstratesthat the expansion of the late Ottoman public sphere was contingent not only on socialchange in the so-called non-state arena, but also on the dynamics of high politics—thatis, the strategy of power and legitimation needs of the ruling elite and that elite’s vision ofthe kinds of concepts that would most usefully unify and lend identity to the populationswithin its jurisdiction.

One can argue that there are discrepancies on many levels between the analytical useof the public-sphere concept and the actual socio-political configurations of imperial–dynastic regimes such as that of the Hamidian-period Ottoman Empire. In his study onnationalism and the public sphere, for example, Craig Calhoun dismisses the possibility

76 Nadir Ozbek

that there can be a unified public sphere within an imperial context. Using the Austro-Hungarian and, to some extent, the Ottoman empires as historical examples, he describeshow the institutionalization of the public sphere can occur only within the context ofa national imagination. For Calhoun, only “parts of empires can be transformed intonations by the creation of quasi-autonomous public spheres.”97 It is true that throughoutthe 19th century both empires were overwhelmed with the problems posed by separatistnationalist movements. The Ottoman government’s response to these challenges wasOttomanism, which could be considered a variant of “official nationalism” in BenedictAnderson’s sense, or “state-patriotism” in Eric Hobsbawm’s sense.98 Imperial visionssuch as Ottomanism may not appear to be viable political projects in retrospect. Yetregardless of its feasibility, the Ottoman Empire, like other imperial regimes of the late19th century, was engaged in constant attempts to integrate and configure its dominionsinto one all-encompassing modern national state. “Ottomanism”—which displayed,among other inclinations, Islamic overtones during the Hamidian period—should beconsidered as a corollary to this attempt.99 The failure of imperial “imaginations” asalternatives to particular nationalisms was less a matter of lack of initiative in integratingdominions than of the administrative capacities of the states and the relative power ofseparatist nationalisms and interstate rivalries. Contrary to the implications of Calhoun’sline of thought, I have argued here that constructing a public sphere with monarchicalbacking, resulting in a monarchical public sphere and fulfilling some of its goals,proved to be a viable project. Indeed, the public sphere described here was the onlypossible domain in which imperial objectives—such as a Hamidian Ottomanism, withits overtones of fatherly and imperial largesse together with Islamic values—could bemanifested. This is apparent especially in the voluntary philanthropic activities promotedmainly by the sultan and his bureaucracy that followed the Ottoman–Greek war of 1897,along with other philanthropic campaigns of the period. Yet given the reality of the“quasi-autonomous public spheres” in which separatist nationalisms were imaginedand organized, constructing a public sphere at the imperial level with monarchical andpatriotic dispositions appears to be an ambiguous project. For one thing, the prospectsof such a project were obviously rapidly being undermined, both within and aroundthe empire, by the spread of the doctrine of the nation-state, with its constitutional andplebiscitary form of government. In addition to the growing tension between nationand empire-based politics, Abdulhamid’s ambitions to unify the empire’s diverse politythrough this unique combination of directed mobilization and paternalistic policy werealso weakened by other more general political dynamics, such as the “discrepancybetween a phantasy of a unified political subject and a reality of particular socialgroups.”100

N O T E S

Author’s note: I am indebted to Tracy Lord for her assistance in preparing this article. I also thank fiveanonymous readers for IJMES for their useful comments.

1Geoff Eley, “Edward Thompson, Social History and Political Culture: The Making of a Working-ClassPublic, 1780–1850,” in E. P. Thompson, Critical Perspectives, ed. Harvey J. Kaye and Keith Mcclelland(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 12–49, 17.


2For a critique of the “Oriental despotism” concept, see Huri Islamoglu-Inan, “Introduction: ‘Orien-tal Despotism’ in World-System Perspective,” in The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy, ed. HuriIslamoglu-Inan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1–24.

3Articles in the following study are helpful in this context: Frank Trentmann, ed., Paradoxes of CivilSociety: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000).

4For a summary of such literature on China, see Frederic J. R. Wakeman, “The Civil Society and PublicSphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture,” Modern China 19 (1993): 108–38. OnRussia, see the articles in Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West, ed., Between Tsarand People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1991). See also Joseph Bradley, “Subjects into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society,and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia,” American Historical Review 107 (2003): 1094–1123; Adele Lindenmeyr,Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 1996).

5See the 1993 special issue of Modern China (vol. 19, no. 2 [April 1993]), which includes a paper presentedat the “Public Sphere”/“Civil Society” in China? Conference, University of California, Los Angeles, 9 May1992. For a critique of this scholarship on China, see Arif Dirlik, “Civil Society/Public Sphere in ModernChina: As Critical Concepts Versus Heralds of Bourgeois Modernity,” Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly(Zhongguo She Hui Ke Xue Ji Kan) 3 (1993): 10–22.

6For a recent articulation of the concept, see Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Alternative Modernities(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001). The special issue of Daedalus (vol. 129, no. 1, 2000) on “mul-tiple modernities” can also be consulted. For an extensive critique of the multiple-modernities paradigm, seeArif Dirlik, “Modernity as History: Post-Revolutionary China, Globalization and the Question of Modernity,”Social History 27 (2002): 16–39. Harry Harootunian provides another critique of the concept of alternativemodernities and considers it “an outrageous classification”: Harry D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity:History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), xvi.

7Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, PrincetonStudies in Culture/Power/History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 4.

8See, for example, Cengiz Kırlı, “Coffeehouses: Public Opinion in the Nineteenth Century OttomanEmpire,” in Public Islam, ed. Dale Eickelman and Armando Salvatore (Leiden: E. J. BriIl, 2004),75–97.

9See, for example, Elizabeth B. Frierson, “Unimagined Communities: Women and Education in the LateOttoman Empire, 1876–1909,” Critical Matrix 9, 2 (1995): 55–90.

10Dale F. Eickelman and Armando Salvatore, “The Public Sphere and Muslim Identities,” EuropeanJournal of Sociology 43 (2002): 92–115.

11See, for example, Dale F. Eickelman, “Islam and the Languages of Modernity,” Daedalus 129 (2000):119–35; Nilufer Gole, “Snapshots of Islamic Modernities,” Daedalus 129, 1 (2000): 91–117.

12For such a concept of modernity as a shared process, see Huri Islamoglu, “Modernities Compared: StateTransformations and Constitutions of Property in the Qing and Ottoman Empires,” Journal of Early ModernHistory 5 (2001): 353–86.

13Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, xvi.14For a recent critique of the dichotomous conception of state–society relations and “nationalist and statist

historiography” as dominant paradigms within modern Ottoman Turkish history, see Engin Deniz Akarlı,“Stately Narratives on Turkey’s Ottoman Past,” paper presented at the 115th Annual Meeting of the AmericanHistorical Association, Boston, 4–7 January 2001.

15One could name Niyazi Berkes’s The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill UniversityPress, 1964); and Bernard Lewis’s The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press,1968) as the best examples to this type of scholarship, which continues to retrace these traditional parametersof Ottoman Turkish historiography even today.

16Nader Sohrabi, “Historicizing Revolutions: Constitutional Revolutions in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, andRussia, 1905–1908,” American Journal of Sociology 100 (1995): 1383–447, 1391–92.

17Serif Mardin, “Civil Society and Islam,” in Civil Society, Theory, History, Comparison, ed. John A.Hall (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 278–300, 292. See also idem, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in theOttoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11 (1969): 258–81.

18Resat Kasaba, “A Time and a Place for the Nonstate: Social Change in the Ottoman Empire During the‘Long Nineteenth Century’,” in State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third

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World, ed. Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994),207–30. See also idem, “Economic Foundations of a Civil Society: Greeks in the Trade of Western Anatolia,1840–1876,” in Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy, and Society in the NineteenthCentury, ed. Dimitri Gondicas and Charles Issawi (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1999): 77–87.

19Kasaba’s conceptualization of the “non-state arena” in terms of mainly ethnic and confessionalcommunities—the Greek community of the Izmir region, the Armenians, and the Kurds—needs furtherconsideration: Kasaba, “A Time and a Place for the Nonstate,” 227.

20Ibid., 226.21For an overview of scholarship on the Hamidian period, see Selim Deringil, “New Approaches to the

Study of the Ottoman Nineteenth Century,” in Abdullah Kuran Icin Yazılar, ed. Cigdem Kafescioglu andLuciene Thys-Senocak (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1999), 345–48. See also Gokhan Cetinsaya, “CıbanBası Koparmamak: II. Abdulhamid Rejimine Yeniden Bakıs,” Turkiye Gunlugu 58 (1999): 54–64.

22It is not surprising that the title Berkes uses for the section covering the Hamidian period is “TheReaction, 1878–1908”: Niyazi Berkes, Development of Secularism, 253–322. As an article title from the late1980s suggests, recent scholarship has modified this prejudiced approach to Abdulhamid II. Stanford Shaw,“Sultan Abdulhamid II: Last Man of the Tanzimat,” in Tanzimat’ın 150. Yıldonumu Uluslarası Sempozyumu(Bildiriler) (Ankara: Millı Kutuphane, 1989), 179–97.

23Berkes, Development of Secularism, 258.24For how Habermas employs the concept “plebiscitary-acclamatory form of regimented public sphere” for

both dictatorships in highly developed industrial societies and Bismarckian policy of inclusion of the universalfranchise in the newly founded German empire, see Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of thePublic Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), xviii,145. Habermas’s reasoning here resembles Berkes’s analysis of the popular aspect of Hamidian politics.

25Viewing the Hamidian period and the Second Constitutional Era as presenting an absolute dichotomyregarding the state and society relationship is still a persistent methodological habit of established scholarship.See, as an extreme example, Aykut Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997).

26Geoff Eley, in his now classic article, provides an assessment of a body of literature that has emergedsince the publication of Habermas’s work, which “sometimes confirms, sometimes extends, and sometimesundermines” Habermas’s argument: Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermasin the Nineteenth Century,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass.: MITPress, 1996), 289–339. Harold Mah’s recent article provides a critical examination of how historians haveapplied Habermas’s theory in their work: Harold Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking theHabermas of Historians,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 153–82.

27Eley, “Edward Thompson.” See also Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, “Why Does Social History IgnorePolitics?” Social History 5 (1980): 249–71.

28The following review article is most helpful in delineating the contributions of cultural historians to theapplication of Habermas’s theory in historical studies: John L. Brooke, “Reason and Passion in the PublicSphere: Habermas and the Cultural Historians,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (1998): 43–67.

29See Sir James W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Constantinople: H. Matteosian, 1921).30A brief survey of the Ottoman newspapers of the 1890s, for instance, yields the following: Hicaz

Demiryolu Ianesi, Tesisat-ı Askeriye Ianesi, Girid Muhtacini Ianesi, Mecruhin-i Askeriyeye Iane Serqisi,Hindistan Ianesi, Iane-i Siteviyye, Iane-i Umumiye.

31For example, through iane-i umumiye the Ottoman governments in the mid-19th century imposed anextra tax on the population to overcome financial difficulties: see Ali Akyıldız, Para Pul Oldu: Osmanlı’daKagıt Para, Maliye ve Toplum (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayınları, 2003), 83–103. In 1834, Mahmud II issued iane-icihadiye as a compulsory contributory tax to finance the newly established reserve army in the provinces:Musa Cadırcı, Tanzimat Doneminde Anadolu Kentleri’nin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Yapıları (Ankara: Turk TarihKurumu Basımevi, 1991), 144–45. For various iane cases as tax, see also Tevfik Guran, Tanzimat DonemindeOsmanlı Maliyesi: Butceler ve Hazine Hesapları (1841–1861) (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1989).

32The lottery (lotarya) was a widely used form of philanthropic activity during the Hamidian period. Fora detailed study of its origin and uses in different social and political contexts, see Mete Tuncay, Turkiye’dePiyango Tarihi ve Milli Piyango Idaresi (Ankara: Milli Piyango Idaresi Yayını, 1993).

33Ibid., 29–50.34Basbakanlık Osmanlı Arsivi/Prime Ministry Archives (hereafter, BOA), Meclis-i Vukela Mazbataları

(hereafter, MV), 57/52, 1308.S.6 (21 September 1890).


35BOA, Yıldız Esas Evrakı, Sadrazam Kamil Pasa (hereafter, YEE), 86-6/590, 15.6.1314 (11 November1897); 86-8/767, 2.7.1316 (18 October 1898); 86-8/785, 29.7.1316 (13 December 1898).

36BOA, MV, 111/41, 1323.Ra.26 (31 May 1905).37Cuneyd Okay, Osmanlı Cocuk Hayatında Yenilesmeler, 1850–1900 (Istanbul: Kırkambar Yayınları,

1998), 38.38BOA, MV, 111/41, 1323.Ra.26 (31 May 1905).39Tuncay, Turkiye’de Piyango Tarihi ve Milli Piyango Idaresi, 51–52.40BOA, Irade Hususi, 70/1324.M.20 (16 March 1906).41Ebuzziya Tevfik’s article was published in Mecmua-i Ebuzziya in 1882. For the full text of this article,

see Tuncay, Turkiye’de Piyango Tarihi ve Milli Piyango Idaresi, 53–55.42Ibid., 81–82.43The Izmir Vocational School (Izmir Sanayi Mektebi), as was the case with most other vocational schools,

was in reality a reformatory. For more on these vocational schools, see Bayram Kodaman, “Tanzimat’tanII. Mesrutiyet’e Kadar Sanayi Mektepleri,” in Birinci Uluslarası Turkiye Sosyal ve Iktisat Tarihi Kongresi(Ankara: Meteksan Limited Sirketi, 1980), 287–96.

44BOA, Irade Dahiliye, 16/2.Z.1322 (7 February 1905); BOA, Yıldız-Sadaret, Resmi Maruzat (hereafter,YARES), 134/103, 1323.12.7 (2 February 1906); BOA, YARES, 135/18, 1324.1.8 (4 March 1906); BOA,Irade Hususi, 87/25.M.1324 (21 March 1906).

45Official documents on this issue are available in print format in Vahdettin Engin, Sultan Abdulhamid veIstanbul’u (Istanbul: Simurg, 2001), 74–80.

46I borrowed the term “philanthropic public sphere” from Jean H. Quataert, Staging Philanthropy: PatrioticWomen and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 2001).

47BOA, Yıldız Mutenevvi Maruzat (hereafter, YMTV), 82/117, 28.2.1311 (10 September 1893); BOA,Irade Hususi, 43/1311.Ra.8 (19 September 1893); BOA, Irade Hususi, 47/9.Ra.1311 (20 September 1893).

48Benjamin Fortna, “Islamic Morality in Late Ottoman ‘Secular’ Schools,” International Journal of MiddleEast Studies 32 (2000): 369–93, 379.

49For an evaluation of the Hamidian regime’s concern with the missionary activities in the Ottomandomains, see Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in theOttoman Empire, 1876–1909 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 112–34.

50I borrowed the concept “moral regulatory capacities of the state” from Felix Driver, Power and Pauperism:The Workhouse System, 1834–1884 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

51Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, no. 31, 4 Kanun-ı Evvel 1311/16 December 1895.52Elizabeth B. Frierson, “Mirrors Out, Mirrors In: Domestication and Rejection of the Foreign in Late-

Ottoman Women’s Magazines (1875–1908),” in Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Soci-eties, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 177–204, 181.

53Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, no. 31, 4 Kanun-ı Evvel 1311/16 December 1895. For the remaining part ofthe list, see also Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete, no. 55, 14 Mart 1312/26 March 1896.

54Cocuklara Mahsus Gazete, no. 46, 6 Ramazan 1314/8 February 1897.55Ibid., no. 47, 9 Ramazan 1314/11 February 1897; no. 48, 13 Ramazan 1314/15 February 1897; no. 49,

16 Ramazan 1314/18 February 1897; no. 50, 20 Ramazan 1314/22 February 1897.56Nadir Ozbek, Osmanlı Imparatorlugu’nda Sosyal Devlet: Siyaset, Iktidar ve Mesruiyet (Istanbul: Iletisim

Yayınları, 2002).57According to one estimate, more than forty philanthropic societies were established between the years

1876 and 1908: see Mehmet O. Alkan, “Olculebilir Verilerle Tanzimat Sonrası Osmanlı Modernlesmesi”(Ph.D. diss, Istanbul Universitesi, 1996).

58BOA, YMTV, 26/25, 22.7.1304 (16 April 1887).59Ibid.60Serpil Cakır, Osmanlı Kadın Hareketi (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1994), 45.611886 Senesinde Kadıkoyunde Muesses Fukaraperver Cemiyetinin Ana Nizamnamesi (Istanbul: Fazilet

Basımevi, 1940).62BOA, Irade Hususi, 5/1314.B.1 (7 December 1896).63Cakır, Osmanlı Kadın Hareketi, 43–46.64Ayine, no. 5, 30 Tesrin-i Sani 1291/12 December 1875; and Ayine, no. 6, 7 Kanun-ı Evvel 1291/19

December 1875.

80 Nadir Ozbek

65For a detailed study of social-welfare practices during the Hamidian period and the concept of “monarchi-cal forms of Ottoman welfare system,” see Nadir Ozbek, “The Politics of Welfare: Philanthropy, Voluntarismand Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1914” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton,2001).

66William Ochsenwald, The Hijaz Railroad (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980). UfukGulsoy, Hicaz Demiryolu (Istanbul: Eren Yayınları, 1994), 57–105. Murat Ozyuksel, Hicaz Demiryolu (Istan-bul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2000), 81–111.

67There is an extensive body of literature and debate on the Pan-Islamic policies of the sultan. I will note onlytwo: Selim Deringil, “Osmanli Imparatorlugu’nda Gelenegin Icadi ve ‘Muhayyel Cemaat’ ve Panislamizm,”Toplum ve Bilim, no. 54–55 (1991): 47–64; and Cezmi Eraslan, II. Abdulhamid ve Islam Birligi (Istanbul:Otuken Yayınları, 1992).

68See Ozbek, “The Politics of Welfare.”69Idem, “Imperial Gifts and Sultanic Legitimation During the Reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, 1876–1909,”

in Poverty and Charity in the Middle Eastern Contexts, ed. Mine Ener, Amy Singer, and Michael Bonner(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 203–20.

70Sabah, no. 3009, 7 April 1898.71From 4 February to 8 March 1898, the newspaper Sabah published, on its front page, a long list of

contributions by civil servants and the Istanbul public.72Sabah, no. 3009, 7 April 1898.73BOA, YMTV, 47/177, 23.6.1308 (3 February 1891).74For the history of this particular conflict, see Ayse Nukhet Adıyeke, Osmanlı Imparatorlugu ve Girit

Bunalımı (1896–1908) (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 2000). See also Bayram Kodaman, ed., 1897 Turk-YunanSavası (Teselya Tarihi) (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1993); and M. Metin Hulagu, Turk-Yunan IliskileriCercevesinde 1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savası (Kayseri: Erciyes Universitesi Yayınları, 2001); Colmar FreiherrVon Der Goltz, Osmanlı-Yunan Harbi (Osmanlı-Yunan Seferi 1313/1897), ed. Ibrahim Yilmazcelik and AhmetAksin (Izmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 2001). See also Theodore G. Tatsios, The Megali Idea and the Greek TurkishWar of 1897 (Chicago: East European Monographs, 1984).

75Servet-i Funun, no. 322, 1 Mayis 1313/13 May 1897. On the enthusiasm of the population and the massdemonstrations cheering the Ottoman army, see Sadri-Sema, Eski Istanbul Hatıraları, ed. Ali Sukru Coruk(Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2002), 193.

76Hulagu, Turk-Yunan Iliskileri Cercevesinde 1897 Osmanlı-Yunan Savası, 123.77The sultan was not present at the ceremony. His first secretary, Tahsin Pasa, read the speech. For the full

text of the speech, see Servet-i Funun, no. 336, 24 Temmuz 1313/5 August 1897.78Mohammad Tavakoli-Targhi, “From Patriotism to Matriotism: A Tropological Study of Iranian Nation-

alism, 1870–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 217–38, 223.79BOA, YMTV, 194/100, 24.CA.1317 (30 September 1899).80Sabah, no. 2973, 2 March 1898.81Ibid., no. 2930, 18 January 1898.82Ibid., no. 2982, 11 March 1898; no. 3014, 12 April 1898.83Ibid., no. 2979, 8 March 1898; no. 2982, 11 March 1898.84On 11 March 1898, Sabah featured the amount of contributions for the villages of Elbistan and Pazarcık,

two subdistricts of Maras Province: see ibid., no. 2982. Similar examples are available in issues of this andother newspapers.

85Ibid., no. 2958, 15 February 1898. Although it is only a partial list, it includes the names of nintyindividuals from the town.

86Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire,1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 13. With this distinction Kayalı aimed to empha-size both continuities and changes between the two periods separated by the revolution of 1908.

87Sabah, no. 3103, 10 July 1898.88Engin Deniz Akarlı, “The Problems of External Pressures, Power Struggles, and Budgetary Deficits in

Ottoman Politics under Abdulhamid II (1876–1909): Origins and Solutions” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,Princeton, N.J., 1976), 39.

89Carter Findley, “The Acid Test of Ottomanism: The Acceptance of Non-Muslims in the Late OttomanBureaucracy,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Volume 1:


The Central Lands, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc.,1982): 339–68.

90Ufuk Gulsoy, Osmanlı Gayri Muslimlerinin Askerlik Seruveni (Istanbul: Simurg, 2000), 115–24.91Goltz, Osmanlı-Yunan Harbi, 25–29.92Craig Calhoun, “Nationalism and the Public Sphere,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice:

Perspectives on a Grand Dichtotomy, ed. Jeff Weintraub and Kumar Krisha (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1994), 75–105, 96.

93For a detailed study of Selanik during the Ottoman–Greek war of 1897, and particularly the Jewishcommunity, see Noemi Levy, “Salonique et la guerre greco-turque de 1897: le fragile equilibre d’une villeottomane” (Memoire maitrise, Universite Paris 1, 2002). Levy demonstrated how the elite of the Jewishcommunity exploited the sultan’s fund-raising campaign for the war orphans. The local Jewish elite stimulatedOttoman patriotism in Selanik to improve its relationship with the Ottoman center while ensuring its authorityin the city.

94Sadri Sema, Eski Istanbul Hatıraları, 196–99.95Fevziye Abdullah Tansel, Mehmed Emin Yurdakul’un Eserleri-ı, Siirler (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu,

1989), 3–42.96Dirlik, “Civil Society/Public Sphere,” 14.97Calhoun, “Nationalism and the Public Sphere,” 96.98Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

(London: Verso, 1983). E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality,2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 80–100.

99In his latest book, Karpat broadly articulates such a view: Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam:Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2001), 323.

100Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere,” 155.

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