Academic literature on the topic 'Turkey – History – Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918'

The paper considers is the transformation of the image of the Ottoman Empire in the publicistic texts by Ephraim Deinard, outstand ing Jewish writer and journalist of the turn of the 19th and 20th centu ries. The research was based on two Deinard’s works, “Atidot Israel” (“The Future of Israel”, 1892) and “Tzion be’ad mi?” (“Zion for Whom?”, 1918), which deal with a variety of topics, including Deinard’s opinion on the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the radical change of his position from the statements in “Atidot Israel” to those in “Tzion be’ad mi?” is observed. Deinard discusses the following three aspects, each case being a vivid example of this controversy: 1. The Ottoman government’s attitude towards Jews and the pros pects of the collaboration of the Jewish community with the government; 2. The economic situation in the Ottoman Empire and its foreign policy; 3. The culture and cultural policy in the Ottoman Empire. Deinard’s interest in Turkey was initially caused by his Zionist views, as the Land of Israel was part of the Ottoman Empire. Later, after World War I and especially after the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Zionists placed their expectations on Britain, while Turkey, after losing the war and the territory so important for Jews, could no more be praised by Dei nard. In addition, Deinard had lived in the USA for more than 30 years by 1918, and it is merely logical that his publicistic works were aimed against the USA’s enemy in World War I. This shift looks especially interesting when looked at through the context of the history of the Russian Jewish Enlightenment. A very simi lar process occurred in the ideology of the Russian maskilim in the 19th century. Throughout the 19th century, they believed that the Jews should be integrated in the Russian society and viewed the Russian government as their ally. The Russian authorities, correspondingly, tried to assimilate the Jews and to make them an integral part of the society. However, af ter the pogroms of 1880s, the authorities’ attitude towards Jews changed dramatically, and so did that of the maskilim towards the government. Laws regarding Jews were tightened and became openly anti-Semitic, and the maskilim started to criticize the state instead of hoping for col laboration with it. Deinard’s works used for this research date to a later period. More over, the aforementioned events influenced his positive attitude towards the Ottoman Empire: concerning the status of Jews in the both countries, Deinard opposed Turkey to Russia. Eventually, however, Turkey took the same place for Deinard as Russia did for his predecessors, the maskilim. His hopes for collaboration with the state were just as replaced by disap pointment and criticism. To conclude, the above similarity may suggest that the shift in Dein ard’s views might have correlated with the change in the ideology of the Russian maskilim.

The dramatic currents of the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Balkans cannot be seen in a more comprehensive way, separate from the wider European / world context, geopolitical order, influence and consequences of the interesting logics of superpowers, models of de-Ottomanization and Balkanization. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was in a difficult position, pressured by numerous internal problems, exposed to external political pressures, conditions and wars. Crises and Ottoman military defeats in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and the "Great War" (1914-1918), along with the processes of de-Ottomanization and fragmentation of the territories in which they lived and the growth of divisions, disrupted the self-confidence of Muslims. Expulsions and mass exoduses of entire populations, especially Muslims, culminated in the Balkan wars. Bosniaks, as well as Muslims in the rest of "Ottoman Europe", found themselves in the ranks of several armies in the "Great War". Many Muslims from the Balkans, who arrived in the vast territory of the Empire in earlier times as refugees, also fought in the units of the Ottoman army. In that war it was defeated. On its remnants, a new state of Turkey (1923) was created after the Greco-Ottoman war (1919-1922).

The implementation of the Treaty of Batum on 4 June 1918 signalled the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire in the macro-region between the Black and Caspian Seas. From the very first days it provoked opposition from other imperial actors, including Germany, an ally of Turkey. In June–July 1918, all the contenders for control of the post-imperial spaces of the former Ottoman Empire were forced to combine coercive and diplomatic means to strengthen their positions, recruiting allies and amassing forces. Due to a number of objective reasons, none of the great powers had the necessary resources to achieve their goals, facing a shortage of both military means and the necessary technical conditions. Their interest in the transformation of the region was extremely high: Germany and Soviet Russia sought to incorporate Transcaucasia into the space of the larger Brest system, while the Entente and the Central Powers were still engaged in a decisive campaign of the Great War, and the Young Turks saw their only chance of implementing their nationalist projects. The hostages of these aspirations were the newly emerged limitrophe states, which were in various stages of formation, on both sides of the Caucasus range. The German mission to Georgia, the Ottoman assistance to Azerbaijan and the Mountainous Republic, and Armenia's hopes for assistance from Britain, Soviet Russia or Austria-Hungary all played a decisive role in their fate. The policy of the great powers was complicated by problems of coalition interaction and systemic trends towards the formation of a coherent geopolitical space following the victory of the Central Powers over the disintegrating Russian Empire and Romania. The peace conference in Constantinople failed to resolve the problem, and the Entente's efforts to re-establish the Eastern Front in parts of the former Russian Empire were growing. Interaction and competition between various actors led to the active integration of the macro-region into the logic of the Great War, so that attempts to diplomatically formalise or revise the Batum subsystem were soon replaced by military confrontation between all the imperial claimants around Baku. The article draws on the diplomatic archives of the former Central Powers to reconstruct the formation of a new subsystem of international relations.

For once, the title of a book matches its contents. Criss sets out to describe the conditions of occupied Istanbul immediately upon the surrender of the Ottomans to the Allies at the end of World War I. Acknowledging the contribution of other scholars to the general history of the immediate post-war period, Criss declares her intention to trace the underground resistance movement to British and French occupation in Istanbul. To do so, she has drawn on a tremendous range of secondary sources, English and Turkish, including memoirs, personal interviews, and documentary materials, public and private, from United States, British, French, and Turkish archives, although much archival material for the period is still inaccessible in Turkey. She is particularly to be commended for making information that is found exclusively in Turkish sources available to English-speaking readers.

Academicians A. Y. Krymsky and V. A. Gordlevsky are important figures in the history of Russian classical orientalism and Arab-Muslim studies, in particular the Moscow and Kiev centers of Oriental studies, especially in the field of academic turkology, Ottoman, Arab and Iranian studies, as well as the public life of the Russian Empire and the USSR. They are widely known in the history of humanities in modern Russian Federation and Ukraine. Currently, we are conducting the search, study, systematization and publication of the correspondence by outstanding arabist, semitologist, turkologist, Iranian and Slavic studies scholar A. Y. Krymsky with leading Russian orientalists V. R. Rosen, V. V. Bartold, P. K. Kokovtsov, F. E. Korsch, V. A. Zhukovsky, S. F. Oldenburg, I. Y.Krachkovsky, Н.А. Mednikov, V. A. Gordlevsky, B. V. Miller, V. F. Minorsky and other scholars during the period of 1890s to 1930s. The article is devoted to a brief overview of the activities of A. Y. Krymsky and V. A. Gordlevsky at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental languages (1898 –1918) and their extant personal correspondence. The main attention is paid to the publication of two extant letters, both previously unknown in the history of Russian Turkology and Orientalism, written by V. A. Gordlevsky from Konya (Turkey) to A. Y. Krymsky, from the collections of the Institute of Manuscripts of V.I. Vernadsky Scientific Library of Ukraine (Kiev). This library contains two letters by V. A. Gordlevsky to Professor A. Y. Krymsky from a pre-Revolution period (dated November 7, 1906 and April 20, 1909), both published in this paper

Warsaw — Constantinople — Ankara. The Turkish direction in the Promethean activity of Polish diplomacy (on the margin of the book: Iurii Chainskyi, Walka za kulisami dyplomacji międzywojennej. Turcja w polskiej polityce prometejskiej w latach 1918–1932, Studium Europy Wschodniej UW, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2020, ss. 536) The article is an analysis of Iurii Chainskyi’s book Walka za kulisami dyplomacji międzywojennej. Turcja w polskiej polityce prometejskiej w latach 1918–1932 [Behind the Scenes of International Diplomacy. Turkey in Polish Promethean Policy in 1918–1932] (Warsaw 2020). Studies describing the history of Prometheism are still rare. The book under review is an extremely important, perhaps even the most important, study among those devoted to Prometheism. It impresses primarily with its source base. Chainskyi brings to light a number of new, previously unknown archive documents. This has enabled him not only to determine the role of Turkey as a state (Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey) as well as its geographical area in Polish Promethean activities of 1918–1932, but also to present the relations between Poland and the political elites of states and national entities that emerged within the territory of the former Russian Empire, elites who after their countries’ conquest by the Soviet Union emigrated mainly to Turkey and Western Europe. In addition, the author devotes a lot of attention in his book to the internal history of the Promethean movement. Particularly interesting are the author’s findings concerning the impact of Ankara’s and Warsaw’s relations with Moscow on the operation of Caucasian and Ukrainian anti- Soviet organisations.

For most Turks the emergence of the Republic of Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire involved a four-year period of national struggle/milli mücadele. In the version of events canonised by Ataturk's October 1927 Nutuk speech to the Turkish parliament the expression civil war is not used. Yet the range of adversaries he depicts, including the Ottoman Palace suggests that there were many types of wars being fought in Anatolia in those years. This article suggests that the term civil war can be applied to those years and discusses historical research that says so. Not only was the war with the Palace an inchoate civil war over the Ottoman Succession, there are strong European parallels with the Turkish experience of imperial collapse, ethnic conflict, partition and state formation between 1918 and 1923. To draw the connections we need to think of civil war in a ‘layered’ way and the latter part of the article justifies such an approach.

Academicians A.Y. Krymsky and V. A. Gordlevsky are important figures in the history of Russian classical orientalism and Arab-Muslim studies, in particular the Moscow center of Oriental studies, especially in the field of academic turkology, Ottoman, Arab and Iranian studies, as well as the public life of the Russian Empire and the USSR. They are widely known in the history of humanities in modern Russian Federation and Ukraine. Currently, we are conducting the search, study, systematization and publication of the correspondence by outstanding arabist, semitologist, turkologist, Iranian and Slavic studies scholar A.Y. Krymsky with leading Russian orientalists V.R. Rosen, V.V. Bartold, P.K. Kokovtsov, F.E. Korsch, V.A. Zhukovsky, S.F. Oldenburg, I.Y. Krachkovsky, N.A. Mednikov, V. A. Gordlevsky, B.V. Miller, V.F. Minorsky and other scholars during the period of 1890s to 1930s. The article is devoted to a brief overview of the activities of A. Y. Krymsky (1898 –1918) and V. A. Gordlevsky (1898 –1918) at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental languages and the publication of one extant letter by V. A. Gordlevsky from Konya (Turkey) to A. Y. Krymsky, from the collections of the Institute of Manuscripts of V.I. Vernadsky Scientific Library of Ukraine (Kiev)3 .

Abstract Patterns of opium production and distribution shifted immensely over the course of the twentieth century, with output falling by three-quarters, almost nine-tenths of which now takes place in Afghanistan. Supporters of drug prohibition trumpet the success of this long-term decline and hail the withdrawal of the four largest opium producers—India, China, Iran, and the Ottoman empire—from the non-medical market, but this seemingly linear trend conceals numerous deviations of historic significance. Among the most notable and little known is Turkey's prolonged resistance to international restrictions on the narcotics trade and the efforts of state and non-state networks to substitute Turkish opium for the diminishing supply of once-dominant Indian exports to a still opium-hungry China in the first half of the twentieth century. This article uses neglected League of Nations and Turkish government sources alongside international newspapers and diplomatic reports to demonstrate the extent of connections forged by state and non-state actors between Turkey and East Asia, expanding on recent research on trans-Asian connections in commerce and political thought.

The Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First World War between 1914-1918 and signed the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918. The War of Independence actually started with Mustafa Kemal Pasha's landing in Samsun on 19 May 1919. It was not easy to carry out the independence struggle of the Turkish nation, considering the conditions of that day. Various remedies, including internal and external resources, were sought to meet the financial burden of the War of Independence. It was decided to receive assistance from foreign sources in a way that would not overshadow the independence of the Turkish nation. Indian Muslims, one of the external sources, declared to the Ankara Government that they would provide financial support to the War of Independence as the "Indian Islamic Society".Expressing that he came to Turkey on behalf of the Indian-Islamic Society, Tevfik Ubud Efendi stated that he wanted to come to Ankara and meet with Mustafa Kemal Pasha directly. Tevfik Ubud Efendi told the officials of the Ministry of War that he had brought a check for three million rubles with him. He stated that he would donate money in different amounts on behalf of the Indian-Islamic Society in the future. At that time, this support had an important place for the Turkish finance, which was very worn out at the end of the long wars. Mustafa Kemal Pasha gave the necessary orders to the authorities to send Tevfik Ubud Efendi, who had come to Mersin, to Ankara. Tevfik Ubud Efendi did not deliver the three million-ruble check that he said he brought, and none of the other money he expressed, to the Ankara Government. In various sources, it is stated that the Indian-Islamic Society provided financial support to the War of Independence. It is understood that the previously stated amounts were included in the archive documents we examined, but the amounts mentioned in the same archive documents were not delivered to the Ankara Government.Mustafa Kemal Pasha, in his work called Nutuk, which he wrote after the proclamation of the republic, did not include any information or document about the money coming from the Indian Islamic Society, although the documents of what happened from the time he went to Samsun on 19 May 1919 until 1927 were recorded in history. Tevfik Ubud Efendi, who said that he would provide financial aid on behalf of the Indian Islamic Society, admitted that he was spying on behalf of the French at the end of the trials. As a result of the researches, it was understood that Tevfik Ubud Efendi was not a member of the Indian-Islamic Society. In this study, it will be examined whether financial aid was given to the War of Independence from the Indian-Islamic Society by making use of archival documents and first-hand sources. The Tevfik Ubud Efendi file, which we obtained from ATASE archive documents, will form the basis of our study.

Conventionally, the era that begins after the death of celebrated Ottoman sultan Suleyman I in 1566 is seen as the beginning of Ottoman decline. In line with the decline paradigm, late sixteenth century is also accepted as a time of political turmoil. This period is characterized by constant power struggles among Ottoman ruling elite and the deterioration of the classical Ottoman political order. Concerning the rise of new power elite (favourites) in the court and bureaucracy vis-a-vis the decreasing power of the sultans and grand vezirs, "evil counsellors" and the inaccessibility of the Ottoman sultan were chronic themes in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, at the same time, in most of the Ottoman political treatises access to and privacy with the sultan is restricted to a very limited number of the servants of the court and bureaucracy. Especially the communication between the sultan and the grand vezir is advised to be a secret. In view of this important political dictum, in the present study it is argued that the power also came from and built by the monopoly on information about the matters of state by the least number of people. In accordance with this view, the power politics of the late sixteenth century Ottoman political arena is analyzed as struggles over controlling the flow of information about the matters of state.

The main premise of this thesis is to demonstrate how the Gypsies, (Roma)---both Muslim and Christian, both settled and nomadic---were marginalized by the Ottoman State and society in Rumelia (Rumili) and Istanbul during the "Classical Age" of this tri-continental Islamic Empire.
The Ottoman state and the society's attitudes towards this marginal group are analyzed through the examination of the Muhimme Registers of the second half the sixteenth century and four major Kanunnames concerning the Gypsies issued in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Travelers' accounts and Turkish oral traditions have also been used to explore the social status of the Gypsies in Ottoman society, as well as their image in Ottoman popular culture.
The history of people who were marginal and voiceless in their societies is not just important for its own sake but for what it reveals about the nature of the societies in which they lived. Thus, this present work not only sheds light upon the history of the Gypsies but also attempts to open new grounds for further discussions on the functioning of the "Plural Society" of the Ottoman Empire.

The proposed thesis deals with Beirut's urban development from a maritime town to a provincial capital in the 19. and early 20. centuries. It does so in the context of physical, politico-administrative and socio-cultural inscriptions on the city by a centralizing Ottoman state. The center-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire are examined in terms of the forces of political integration and social cohesion as well as challenges to them. The empire-city nexus that is maintained throughout this thesis posits Beirut both as the site of Ottoman imperial discourses and practices and as the site of local appropriation of- and resistance to - them. Local power was articulated in arenas of negotiation between Istanbul and Beirut (e.g. municipal councils, bureaucratic and personal networks, production of space, practices of urban management). At the same time, the quality of the city's growth and wealth created discontent and resistance among these sectors of society that were excluded from, or threatened by, Beirut's development as a port city and provincial capital (e.g. strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, riots). The condition of Beirut at the turn of the century was commented and reflected upon in contemporary Arabic journal editorials, newspaper articles, poems and speeches whose transformative power, it will be argued, affected the very physical form of Beirut's urban fabric.

My study covers the period from the initial establishment of English representation at the Ottoman Porte with the capitulations of 1580 which established trading and diplomatic rights for English merchants, and the formal establishment of an embassy in 1583. I explore the development of the English embassy at Constantinople from its vulnerable first years through its growth in prestige during the 1620s and 1630s, to the zenith of its influence in the 1660s before the French began to dominate diplomatic business at the Porte. I examine English policy at the Porte from its first tentative attempts to secure a strategic alliance against the Spanish with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, through the Thirty Years War in which both Ottoman and English authorities found themselves reluctantly embroiled and the domestic troubles which both suffered in the 1640s, culminating with the execution of Ibrahim I in 1648 and Charles I in 1649. I conclude with the period of stabilization in the 1650s when the English authorities reasserted coherent policies at home and abroad during the Protectorate and the Restoration. This was mirrored by a stabilisation of the Ottoman Empire after the first of the Köprülü Grand Viziers took the reins of power in 1656 and reasserted central control over the provinces and over Ottoman vassals on the peripheries of Ottoman territory. The thesis builds on work done on the English commercial expansion in the Levant and the commercial role of the embassy in the Constantinople. I seek to complement existing studies of particular embassies and personalities and to give a broader over-view of the development of Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations. I intend to open debate on the development of Ottoman foreign policy and the implementation of Ottoman diplomacy during the seventeenth century well before the Ottoman bureaucracy underwent the westernization which led to it being absorbed into the European diplomatic system during the late eighteenth century. In the introductory chapters I explore the development of diplomacy during this period to establish the different attitudes of the English governments who conducted a largely adhoc diplomacy until the late sixteenth century when they began to open a few key residences abroad, and the Ottoman authorities who maintained a strictly non-reciprocal form of policy with western nations which lay outside the Dar al-Islam or Muslim lands. I discuss the question of the duality of the embassy at Constantinople as both a commercial agency and a state department and examine the potential for conflict between the controlling interests of the Crown and the Levant Company. In two chapters on the domestic situations in England and the Ottoman Empire I assess the priorities of policy and the domestic and financial constraints on an active foreign policy. Both the Ottoman Empire and the English sought to secure their own state through internal stability and external alliances. Both states faced the same problems of hostility from their neighbours, internal rebellion and the need to provide for growing government expenditure. However, England and the Ottoman Empire differed in the way they approached their problems and had different resources to help them carry their policies through. The most notable contrast was that the Ottomans possessed a growing standing army while England relied on ad hoc levies until Cromwell's new model army. These chapters are intended to open the subject to two audiences: the Ottomanist and the Early Modern European/English Historian, and to place the Anglo-Ottoman relationship within a broader diplomatic context. I have divided the thesis into three parts, each exploring a different aspect of diplomatic relations between Whitehall and the Porte, centring on the role of the embassy at Constantinople. The opening of direct diplomatic relations with the Porte was the first sustained diplomatic contact the English had established with a non-Christian nation and formed the model for later diplomatic contacts with non-European nations. As a whole, my study contributes to an understanding of how England adapted to the non-reciprocal diplomacy of the Ottoman Porte and to the operation of diplomacy by a Christian nation in a non-Christian state. I also explore the development of English policy in the Mediterranean and place the Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relationship in its European context. In part one I examine the function of the etiquette system at the Ottoman Porte and assess the importance of protocol conventions and the extent to which they affected the status of the ambassador and the progress of negotiations. I explore the status of western ambassadors within the Ottoman system and illustrate the adaptability and sophistication of the Forte's ceremonial system. I address the problem of the Forte's attitude to western states, recognising that there was ambiguity over whether such states were treated as representatives of tributary states or as honoured guests. I also explore the role which gift-giving, both official and unofficial, played in assessments of status and the complicated issue of diplomatic precedent, where western ambassadors attempted to assert their own concepts of status on the Ottoman system. In a further chapter I demonstrate how the English ambassador fitted into the English Court system and contrast English diplomatic ceremonial with that of the Porte. I provide an outline of the development of the conflict between the Crown, which endorsed the ambassador, and the Levant Company, which paid for him, to resolve the question of whether the embassy in Constantinople was indeed an embassy in the true sense. In this chapter I also explore the position of the few quasi-official Ottoman representatives who attended the English Court despite the official non-reciprocal diplomatic stance of the Porte. I examine the ceremonial which was provided for them and illustrate how the English system adapted to deal with this new phenomenon. This first part does not stand in isolation from the sections dealing with actual negotiations at the Porte but I intend it to place the diplomatic representatives in the framework in which they operated and establish the principles of status through which they proceeded to negotiations. In part two I consider the development of the administrative structure of the embassy in Constantinople. I include an assessment of both English and local staff, and attempt to resolve questions of the experience and efficiency of administrative personnel and of the ambassadors whom they served. I also explore the function of the embassy and establish the chains of command and channels of communication which the embassy involves. I explore the development of chancery practice during this period and give an outline of the Ottoman petition system through which all negotiations were initiated. I confront the problem of prompt authorization of documents and examine the use of a possible 'deputed Great Seal' by the embassy. The roles of Ottoman officials, especially the role of the Grand Vizier and the developing role of the Reisūlkūttab (Chief Scribe to the Divan) in foreign affairs are also discussed. Finally, in this section I consider the problems of security and communications within the region and examines the importance of the English consular network. The purpose of this section is to build up a picture of the operation of the embassy on a day to day basis to from a background to the various negotiations discussed in the final section. The final section forms the bulk of the thesis where I assess policy development in Anglo-Ottoman diplomatic relations. In the chapters of this section I explore the various types of negotiations conducted at the Porte by English ambassadors.

Starting from the final decades of the sixteenth century, Ottoman intellectuals were deeply concerned with what they perceived to be the decline of their traditional order. This decline consciousness, which later crystallized into a reform literature, is reflected in the works of this period's major historians.
Chapter I surveys the development of Ottoman historiography prior to the late sixteenth century, with the aim of highlighting the novelty of the critical perspectives developed by historians of the era like Ali, Lokman and Selaniki. The attitudes and analyses of these historians concerning disturbing economic processes such as monetary turbulence and price movements constitute the focus of Chapters II and III respectively. These chapters argue that Ottoman decline consciousness grew partly in response to a keen awareness of newly emerging social and economic forces that Ottoman reform literature chose not to understand and accomodate but to resist and suppress. The failure of Ottoman intellectuals to come to terms with the new market forces of the early modern world was not due to an anti-mercantile bias, but to the primacy of politics in the Ottoman order. Chapter IV traces the international commercial activities of Ottoman Muslims in the context of a comparison between Ottoman decline consciousness and European mercantilism.

This dissertation examines the origins and development of ethno-national mobilisation amongst the Kurds of the Ottoman Empire in the decades leading up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It argues that, like other elements of Ottoman community, over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the idea that the Kurds constituted a 'nation' gradually proliferated amongst Kurdish intellectual and political leaders. This nascent 'national consciousness' found concrete expression in the establishment of a series of newspapers, journals and organisations claiming to represent the views and interests of the Ottoman Kurdish community. However, while a growing number of Kurds began to see themselves as part of a 'Kurdish nation', the political implications of Kurdish 'nationhood' remained controversial. Indeed, from its inception the Kurdish movement contained within it a number of factions which held very different opinions on what precisely constituted the Kurds' national interests. This included some who attempted to secure the advancement and development of their people within the framework of the empire (accommodationists) and others who sought national independence (separatists). This study seeks to highlight the diversity within the Kurdish movement and, more importantly, shed light on the reasons behind it. In doing so, it will become possible to create a more nuanced historical narrative of the origins and nature of the Kurdish question, a question which remained a major political issue facing Middle Eastern leaders and statesmen today.

The Ottoman Empire, an imperial power that existed from 1299 to 1923, was one of the largest empires to rule the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. Ottoman Turkish was used especially between the 16th and 19th centuries during the Ottoman Empire. This ornamented, artificial language separated the general population from intellectual and palace elite and a communication problem followed. Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish. This thesis explains these language differences and the resulting problems they created during the Empire. Examples of original correspondence are used to highlight the communication differences and the difficulties that ensured. From this study, the author concludes that Ottoman Turkish was not a separate language from Turkish; instead, it was a variation of Turkish in inexistence for approximately 600 years.
Prof. B. Hendrickx Dr. A. Dockrat

Defence date: 3 June 2013
Examining Board: Professor Anthony Molho, European University Institute (Supervisor) Professor Edhem Eldem, Boğaziçi University (External Supervisor) Professor Antonella Romano, European University Institute Professor Gilles Pécout, Ecole Normale Supérieure
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The dissertation is about the genesis of the Ottoman Constitution, which was promulgated on December 23, 1876. The main objective is to reconstruct the nineteenth-century Ottoman constitutional movement in relation to Europe and international politics without neglecting the internal administrative developments that affected the process. The dissertation traces the transcultural and transnational dimension of the internal process of the genesis of the Ottoman Constitution and shows that the Ottoman constitutional movement developed beyond the control of Ottoman bureaucracy and state apparatus, through a web of relations that exceeded the boundaries of the Ottoman territory. The movement incorporated, from domestic authorities to foreign powers, a plurality of formal and informal agents of different ethno-religious, cultural and ideological backgrounds and of different legal norms. The dissertation investigates how Ottoman reformers synthesised different legal traditions, imported from the West to the Ottoman context through various human channels, and how the Ottomans' constitutional thought was shaped and negotiated by the encounter of European models with the imperial political culture as well as by the encounter of foreign actors with domestic draftsmen.

"Sinop, has witnessed the struggles of domination of various nations throughout the history since it has hosted the only natural harbor in the region. Because of this, it became one of the first places conquered by the Turks, after they entered Anatolia with the Manzikert Victory. In the following period, Sinop, became the capital of different Turkish principalities such as Pervaneogullari and Candarogullari, and came under Ottoman rule in 1461. Under the Ottoman rule, Sinop, was governed administratively as a judgeship affiliated to the Kastamonu Sanjak. But after the administrative regornizations of the Tanzimat period the city gained the status of a sanjak affiliated to the Kastamonu Province. Then, finally, in June 1920, it was separated from Kastamonu and became an independent province itself. The Entente Powers assumed that they had subjugated the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros signed on October 30, 1918. Based on this assumption, they were trying to put pressure on the local administration and to take the region under their control by using minority elements, under the pretext of supervising the implementation of the armistice provisions in Sinop. Being aware of the intentions of the Allied Powers, the Istanbul Government was trying to take measures to prevent the occupation of the region which would violate the terms of the armistice. The government decided to send Mustafa Kemal Pasha as the 9th Army Inspector to the region with an extensive authortiy in order to establish public order. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who left Istanbul on May 16, 1919 to go to Samsun, stopped in Sinop on May 18, 1919. During his meeting with the notables of the city, he received information about the activities of the Pontus Society branch in Sinop and warned people he met. After that, the national organization gained a momentum in Sinop, and regional resistance organizations were established in the city-center and districts of Sinop. In this context, protest rallies were held in Sinop and its districts against the occupation of Izmir by the Greeks, and protest telegrams were sent to the representatives of the Entente Powers in Istanbul and the Istanbul Government. More effective measures have been taken against the activities of the Allied Powers in the region and the Pontus movements. In line with the directives of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, delegates were sent to the Sivas Congress, and elections were held for the Parliamentary Assembly and the First Grand National Assembly of Turkey. It has been struggled against disorder and banditry in Sinop. Sinop ports and piers performed important services in the supply of weapons, ammunition and materials needed by the army in the struggles against the Greeks on the Western Front. The people of Sinop also supported the National Struggle financially with their aid to the Tekalif-i Milliye Commissions and the Red Crescent Society. The victories on the Western Front, the Treaty of Lausanne and the proclamation of the Republic were celebrated with enthusiasm in Sinop."

"The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire from the XIXth century onwards was accompanied by territorial losses. In the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878, which is known as the 93 War in history, a large geography in the Balkan geography was lost. With the defeat in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the Ottoman Empire was left with only Eastern Thrace. Starting in 1914, World War I was supposed to stop the downward trend and take back the lost territories, but the opposite happened and Eastern Thrace, the last remaining territory in the Balkan geography, was also occupied. After the October 30, 1918 Armistice of Mudros, the French, who stepped into Eastern Thrace, evacuated the region after January 1919 and turned their attention to Istanbul, the Straits, Cilicia and Syria. After the French, Greece began to settle in the region on January 18, 1919. However, the actual occupation operation of Greece started on July 20, 1920 and soon the territory of Eastern Thrace up to Istanbul came under the sovereignty of Greece. In this study, the joint report prepared by the British Military Delegation and the Greek General Staff on the Greek army's occupation of Thrace in June and July 1920 will be discussed. Within the framework of the report, headquarters operations, supply, transportation, infantry, artillery and cavalry units, health, administration and management will be covered. In the preparation of the study, the British National Archive (TNA) was mainly utilized and the British newspaper The Times was also used. When necessary, the study has also been supplemented with local sources to ensure the integrity of the subject."

"Niğde, which has been home to many civilizations throughout history, came under Seljuk rule in the 11th century and maintained its importance as an administrative unit with the status of a sanjak during the Ottoman period. Rather than being a temporary armistice treaty that ended World War I for the Ottoman Empire, the Armistice of Mondros de facto abolished the independence of the state with its political, military and economic provisions and opened the Anatolian lands to occupation. After the Armistice, the Entente states put into effect the distribution plans they had made during the war. British, French, Italian and Greek occupations started in Anatolia. Niğde is one of the settlements that were not occupied in this process. In the face of the occupations, upon the Istanbul Government's surrenderist policies, Mudafaa-i Hukuk Societies began to be established throughout the country, and protests and rallies were organized against the occupations. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha moved to Anatolia, the resistance that started regionally gained a national character and turned into the National Struggle. In this process, the Mudafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti was established in Niğde and the occupations were protested. Starting from May 16, 1919, the day after the occupation of Izmir, protest telegrams were sent to the Istanbul Government against the occupations. Three representatives were sent from Niğde to the Sivas Congress, and Mustafa Bey (Soylu) took part in the delegation. The people of Niğde supported the National Struggle and made all kinds of sacrifices by actually taking part in the wars on the Southern and Western fronts. Especially in the liberation of Pozantı on the Southern Front, volunteers from Niğde and its surroundings were effective."