estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

The Status of the Non-Muslim Communities

in the Ottoman Empire: A Non-Orientalised

Decolonial Approach

El status de las comunidades no musulmanas en

el Imperio Otomano: un enfoque descolonial no

orientalizadoTítulo em espanhol

O status das comunidades não muçulmanas no Império

Otomano: uma abordagem descolonial não orientalizada

Naif Bezwan

DOI: 10.5752/P.2317-773X.2020v8.n4.p10

Received in: September 21, 2020

Accepted in: September 23, 2020

A

With a focus on the key developments and critical junctures that shaped and

reshaped the relationship between the Ottomans and its non-Muslim subject

communities, this paper seeks to understand the dynamics and the rationale

behind the Ottoman policies and practices vis-a-vis non-Muslim communities.

It will do so by oering a periodisation of Ottoman rule along four major

pathways, each of which also provides the title of the respective section. The

rst period is referred to as structural exclusion by toleration over centuries, from

the conquest of the respective territories to their incorporation into the imperial

domain. The second phase is entitled integration via politics of recognition which

basically covers the Tanzimat era (1838-1876). The third period is put under the

heading of coercive domination and control, roughly corresponding to the Hamid-

ian Period (1876-1908). And nally, the last period is concerned with the Young

Turks regime (1908-1918), discussing its politics and policies towards non-Mus-

lims communities framed under the title of nation-building by nation-destruction.

These section headings act both as hypothesis and structuring elements of the

pe-riodisation presented. As such they shall help identify the dominant para-

digm of each period pertinent to the status and situation of the communities

under consideration, while connecting them in a plausible manner. This paper

is motivated by a non-Orientalised decolonial approach to the study of the Otto-

man empire as well as the nation-states established in the post-Ottoman political

geographies.

Keywords: Non-Muslim communities. Ottoman reforms. Millet System. Deco-

lonial approach.

1. Dr Naif Bezwan, Senior Researcher

at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of

Fundamental and Human Rights, Depart-

ment of Constitutional and Administra-

tive Law, Faculty of Law at University of

Vienna, and Honorary Senior Research

Associate at the Department of Political

Science, University College London

(UCL). Dr Bezwan has worked, con-

ducted research, and taught at diverse

universities in Germany, Turkey, Austria

and the UK.

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

R

Con un enfoque en los desarrollos clave y las coyunturas críticas que dieron for-

ma y remodelaron la relación entre los otomanos y sus comunidades de sujetos

no musulmanes, este documento busca comprender la dinámica y el funda-

mento detrás de las políticas y prácticas otomanas frente a los no musulmanes.

Comunidades musulmanas. Lo hará ofreciendo una periodización del dominio

otomano a lo largo de cuatro vías principales, cada una de las cuales también

proporciona el título de la sección respectiva. El primer período se denomina

exclusión estructural por tolerancia durante siglos, desde la conquista de los re-

spectivos territorios hasta su incorporación al dominio imperial. La segunda fase

se titula Integración a través de políticas de reconocimiento que cubre básica-

mente la era Tanzimat (1838-1876). El tercer período se clasica bajo el título de

dominación y control coercitivo, que corresponde aproximadamente al período

Hamidiano (1876-1908). Y nalmente, el último período se reere al régimen de

los Jóvenes Turcos (1908-1918), discutiendo su política y políticas hacia las comu-

nidades no musulmanas enmarcadas bajo el título de construcción nacional por

destrucción nacional.

Los títulos de los capítulos actúan como hipótesis y como elementos estruc-

turantes de la periodización presentada. Como tales, ayudarán a identicar el

paradigma dominante de cada período pertinente al estado y situación de las

comunidades en consideración, al mismo tiempo que las conecta de manera

plausible. Este artículo está motivado por un enfoque descolonial no orientaliza-

do del estudio del imperio otomano, así como de los estados-nación establecidos

en las geografías políticas post-otomanas.

Palabras clave: comunidades no musulmanas. Reformas otomanas. Sistema

Millet. Abordaje decolonial.

R

Com foco nos principais desenvolvimentos e conjunturas críticas que

moldaram e remodelaram a relação entre os otomanos e suas comunidades

não-muçulmanas, este artigo busca compreender a dinâmica e a lógica por trás

das políticas e práticas otomanas vis-à-vis Comunidades muçulmanas. Ele fará

isso oferecendo uma periodização do domínio otomano ao longo de quatro

caminhos principais, cada um dos quais fornece também o título da respectiva

seção. O primeiro período é denominado de exclusão estrutural por tolerân-

cia ao longo dos séculos, desde a conquista dos respectivos territórios até sua

incorporação ao domínio imperial. A segunda fase é intitulada integração via

política de reconhecimento que cobre basicamente a era Tanzimat (1838-1876).

O terceiro período é colocado sob o título de dominação e controle coerciti-

vos, correspondendo aproximadamente ao Período Hamidiano (1876-1908). E,

nalmente, o último período trata do regime dos Jovens Turcos (1908-1918),

discutindo suas políticas e políticas em relação às comunidades não muçulma-

nas enquadradas sob o título de construção da nação pela destruição da nação.

Os títulos dos capítulos funcionam como hipótese e elementos estruturantes

da periodização apresentada. Como tal, devem ajudar a identicar o paradigma

dominante de cada período pertinente ao status e à situação das comunidades

em questão, ao mesmo tempo que os conecta de maneira plausível. Este artigo

é motivado por uma abordagem descolonial não orientalizada do estudo do

império otomano, bem como dos estados-nação estabelecidos nas geograas

políticas pós-otomanas.

Palavras-chave: comunidades não muçulmanas. Reformas otomanas. Sistema

Millet. Abordagem decolonial.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

Introduction

The Ottoman Empire existed for over six centuries and was both

a land-based and maritime empire, at times ruling indirectly through in-

digenous elites and at times sending out settlers to colonise new areas

(MIKHAIL; PHILLIOU, 2012). It ruled over an ethnically and religiously

diverse population in the Balkans, Asia Minor, Iraq, Syria, the Arab pen-

insula, and Northern Africa. It is considered as the most religiously di-

verse empire in Europe and Asia and was home to large groups of Chris-

tians and a signicant number of Jews (KIESER, 2019, p. 4).

By their very nature empires are large macro-historical entities. An

empire, as Tilly observes, is a large composite polity linked to a central

power by indirect rule whereby,

“[t]he central power exercises some military and scal control in each major

segment of its imperial domain, but tolerates the two major elements of indirect

rule: (1) retention or establishment of particular, distinct compacts for the

government of each segment; and (2) exercise of power through intermediaries

who enjoy considerable autonomy within their own domains in return for the

delivery of compliance, tribute, and military collaboration with the center”

(TILLY, 1997, p. 3).

Despite the diculties involved, historically grounded huge com-

parisons of big structures and large processes can help us “establish what

must be explained, attach the possible explanations to their context in

time and space, and sometimes actually improve our understanding of

those structures and processes” (TILLY, 1989, p. 145).

Before examining each period in some detail, I shall make some

methodological, terminological, and contextual remarks concerning how

the subject matter should be framed. To begin with, this paper will large-

ly avoid using the term “minority” as it is a modern category, which was

adopted by the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat period. More im-

portantly, talking about minorities in imperial settings like the Ottoman

is somewhat problematic because, depending on what criteria is used, the

designation of minority and majority could immediately change

. For

example, in Rumeli, there was a clear Christian majority with substan-

tial portions of Muslim minorities, whereas in Anatolia there was a clear

Muslim majority with substantial portions of Christians, Jews, and other

groups. In the same vein, if one takes nationality as the main criterion for

establishing minorities and majorities, things may even get more compli-

cated, as many national-cultural groups were dispersed across imperial

domains, while retaining some core areas where they make up a majority.

The same applies to the Turks who were an absolute minority

within the empire (Levene 2013, p.24). The centre and capital city of the

Ottoman Empire, Istanbul, is a case in point. As late as the Balkan wars

of 1911-1913, roughly equal portions of Muslim and Christian subjects

lived in Istanbul, but during the twentieth century Christian populations

also diminished, as Sharkey notes, “historic Christian communities per-

sisted but dwindled as a proportion of the population” (SHARKEY, 2017,

p. 2). So, the Ottoman empire was essentially a composite of two core

political geographies: Anatolia (or Asia Minor) and Rumeli (or the land

of the Romans).

The former was regarded by Ottoman ruling elites as

1. Hans-Lukas Kieser has rightly

pointed out that the millet communities

were called “minorities” in Western

terminology, as well as in the Lausanne

Treaty (July 24, 1923) which laid down

the post-Ottoman order in the Middle

East, and led to the proclamation of the

Turkish republic on 29. October 1923.

Since there was no clear majority even

in the imperial core region in ethno-

-religious terms, the term “population

group”, Kieser concludes, is more

accurate, referring that Ottomans them-

selves used the word unsur (“element”)

(KIESER, 2019, p. 2).

2. For example, the Arabic-speaking

Orthodox Christians called themselves

simply the Rum, a collective noun which

could mean alternatively “Byzantines”,

“Anatolians”, “Greeks or “Orthodox

Christians” in Ottoman Turkish, while in

Syrian Arabic, Rum could also mean `”Ot-

tomans” in addition to the other possible

meanings (MASTERS, 2001, p. 50).

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

constituting the territorial core of the empire where its initial victories

and conquests were achieved, while Rumeli was perceived as possessing

the empire’s most signicant cities and wealthiest stretches of farmland

(GINGERAS, 2016, p.56).

This leads me to my second point, relating to the term “non-Muslim”

which comprises such a large category of diverse peoples and confession-

al groups that are anything but monolithic and homogenous. The term

“non-Muslim” refers to multiple communities composed of Christians,

Jews and others that lived across the imperial domains extending over

dierent geographies marked by signicant cultural, societal and confes-

sional and class dierences (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 16 .). That is why the

turn of phrase non-Muslim should not in any way be understood as as-

signing a primordial, monolithic and unchanging mass of peoples, or as

oppositional to Muslim communities or vice versa. It is therefore neither

about a “clash of civilizations” nor grounded in any assumption that posits

a binary opposition between cultures and civilizations. Cultural distinc-

tions, to paraphrase Said, cannot be seen as “frozen reied set of opposed

essences” to be evoked for the purposes of adversarial knowledge produc-

tion drawn from supposedly irreconcilable things (SAID, 2004, p. 352).

This brings me to my third point: Each period here under consid-

eration is shaped by a set of historical developments and socio-economic

processes that aected the nature of the relations between the Ottomans,

its rivals and as well its subject communities. While keeping in mind that

there were always considerable amounts of overlap between the four

main eras presented here, the periodization is constructed as a heuristic

framework “in which signicant patterns of fact can be identied, causal

relationships investigated and phenomena classied” (LEVENE, 2005, p.

66). As such, it is intended to provide points of reference against which

commonalities and dierences, as well as continuities and variations, in

the conduct of the Ottoman public policies towards non-Muslim minori-

ties/confessional groups can be better assessed.

Put dierently, the periodisation oered here is not taken to mean

that the outcomes were inevitable or the shift from one period to the other

was predetermined at all. Nor is it meant to deny the signicant areas of

overlap between the periods, or the power and agency of the communities

involved to shape their lives under ever-changing and challenging circum-

stances. Even under conditions of structural exclusion there were many

non-Muslim communities across the Ottoman empire, especially those

located predominantly in thriving ports, such as Izmir and Salonica where

“non-Muslim entrepreneurs enjoyed two major advantages: they possessed the

necessary human capital and they were perfectly embedded in local networks.

While the former was a necessary skill to bypass local Muslim groups, the latter

gave them a distinct advantage over Europeans” (EMRENCE, 2008, p.300).

In his masterfully examined study on Christians and Jews in the

Ottoman Arab World, Bruce Masters shows the same trend in the Fertile

Crescent from Aleppo to Beirut and almost as far as Damascus:

“Christian merchants were able to supplant eventually their Jewish rivals for

second place in the trading hierarchy. By way of contrast, Jewish merchants

predominated in the all-important Indian trade with Iraq, although Christian and

Muslim merchants were also active” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 143).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

This trend is most visible during the Tanzimat period. Despite the

fact that during the Tanzimat period the overwhelming majority of Chris-

tians and Jews living in the Ottoman Arab were not merchants - indeed in

the cities of the region, most remained craftsmen or low-skilled workers

- a Christian commercial middle class emerged in every port on the east-

ern Mediterranean seaboard and in Mosul and Damascus as well, while

a parallel Jewish bourgeoisie was present in Baghdad and Basra (MAS-

TERS, 2001, p. 144.). It follows that non-Muslims communities under the

Ottoman rule were not simply passive recipients of a changing world or-

der imposed on them but rather “they took an active lead in devising strat-

egies to cope with change and benet from it, thereby determining their

own futures” (MASTERS, 2001, p 15.). As stated by Makdisi (2002) the

“Christians as a whole were routinely described as indels, yet they were

tolerated; others such as Yezidi Kurds and Druzes were often described as

heretics, but their heresy was often overlooked” (MAKDISI, 2002, p. 774.).

The fourth point is that not all communities were equally aected by

Ottoman policies. For example, as Braude points out in the case of the Ibe-

rian Jews (i.e. Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492)

that of all the dhimmi communities, they alone were Ottoman subjects by

choice, not by conquest, a characteristic that “distinguished them from the

Christian communities and proved a source of suspicion in the eyes of their

fellow subjects and of acceptance in the eyes of their masters” (BRAUDE,

2014, p. 37). In a similar vein, the Greeks’ relationship to the Ottomans is

considered to have been multi-layered, as dierent elements of the popu-

lation had dierent privileges and responsibilities with “varying degrees

of autonomy verging on eective independence” (BRAUDE, 2014, p. 25).

Finally, while trying to understand the factors related to the sub-

ject under review, it is important to emphasize the signicance of the

geographical/regional dimensions. More specically, the geostrategic lo-

cation of the settlement areas in combination with the level of eective

rule by the Ottomans are among the factors that played a signicant role

in the degree of autonomy from, or exposure to, Ottoman governance.

For example, owing to the lack of control and access to their settlement,

the Maronites - one of the most important and inuential Christian com-

munities in the Fertile Crescent - were in a position to challenge the Otto-

man policies. This meant that the leaders and dignitaries of this commu-

nity “could aunt in their mountain redoubts their disregard for many of

the legal restrictions imposed on non-Muslims elsewhere, building new

churches and monasteries, openly carrying arms, and riding horses. What

was unthinkable in the rest of the sultan’s domains could occur almost

seamlessly in Mount Lebanon, with the open conversion to Christiani-

ty by individuals from two politically dominant clans of the Mountain,

the Sunni Shihab and the Druze Abu-Lammac, in the early nineteenth

century without apparent repercussion” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 43-44). This

degree of freedom on the part of the Maronite community resulted from

“the existence of their patriarch and church hierarchy outside the zone of

direct Ottoman control” that gave the Maronites everywhere an oppor-

tunity for freedom of political action not shared by most other Christians

in the Ottoman period (MASTERS, 2001, p. 44).

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

Taken together, the “Ottoman imperial paradigm [was] based on

a hierarchical system of subordination along religious, class, and ethnic

lines” (MAKDISI, 2002, p. 768). The fundamentally subdued and precari-

ous status of communities was dened by the Ottoman policies of accom-

modation and suppression (MAKDISI, 2002, p. 777) on the one hand, and

change and adaptation on the parts of the communities involved on the

other (MASTERS, 2001, p. 13).

Having claried the terminological and methodological under-

standing of this paper, in what follows, I shall discuss the dynamics and

processes that shaped the situation of all communities under Ottoman

rule - Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

An Overview of historical Context

It should be clear from the above that the bulk of the phenomena,

institutions and ideas dealt with in this paper are nothing but modern

occurrences and experiences. Whether it be the industrial revolution or

the rise of capitalism as a global system or the changing rules of colonial

expansionism or the logic of direct rule, the nation-state formation or the

concepts of modernization and national emancipation - all of these were

the features of modernity which emerged over the course of the 18th

century and became ever more relevant to the Ottoman empire during

the course of the nineteenth century up until its dissolution in the wake

of the First World War.

The story, then, is not simply one about a medieval empire caught

in its death throes versus the civilised European Great Powers. Never-

theless, the Ottoman predicament stands and falls with its diminishing

power to expand further. Following a couple of momentous defeats and

interventions during the course of the eighteenth century by the rival

powers, the Ottoman Empire itself, once a fearsome “imperial aggres-

sor”, became subject to a more powerful imperialism (SHARKEY, 2017,

p. 95).

Moreover, from the late eighteenth century onward, it faced an

increasingly disobedient Christian population supported by Russia along

with the other European powers that “increasingly pressed claims for

the protection of entire communities. But unlike all the other powers,

Russia could claim the demographically largest and strategically most

signicant of all, the Rum” (BRAUDE, 2014, p. 43). This state of aairs

was accompanied and reinforced by the combined eects of “European

thought, the Enlightenment, liberalism, and nationalism as well as the

powerful engines of Europe’s capital and industry” (ibid.). All of this un-

dermined the basic assumptions of the Ottoman order, chipped away at

its economy and fundamentally aected its heterogeneous social fabric.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, three major factors can be

identied as causally relevant to the historical context under consider-

ation: the Ottoman drive towards eective rule across imperial domains,

European expansionism in the context of an ever-shifting balance of

power in economical, technological and ideological terms at the expense

of the Ottoman Empire, and the collective aspirations and actions for

emancipation on the part of diverse subject communities under Ottoman

3. Important among these events were

the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699, which

followed an Ottoman defeat by the Habs-

burg Empire and the loss of territories, the

Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, which

provided the Russian with tremendous

inﬂuence over the Orthodox Christian

population in the Ottoman Empire, and

ﬁnally, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in

1798, which inaugurated a French occu-

pation of the country that lasted for three

years (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 95 ff.).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

rule. However, the ways in which this trivalent interrelationship evolved

is anything but straightforward, as it involved a complex and conictual

matrix of power relations with many convergences and divergences of

interests and changing patterns of alliance and hostility.

The nature of these power relations with their multiple conicts

and convergences can be captured in what historian Leon Carl Brown

called “the Eastern Question system” i.e. the long process of dismember-

ing of the Ottoman empire without disturbing the European balance of

power from the late eighteenth century until just after the First World

War (BROWN, 1984, p. 5). Out of this process came an “elaborate, multi-

player diplomatic game involving many dierent European states as well

many dierent Middle Eastern states” (BROWN, 1984, p. 5). Continuing

for generations, Brown maintains, “the Eastern Question itself created

a particular attitude toward politics and diplomacy among the players

involved which still exists” (BROWN, 1984, p. 7).

While contingent upon conicting as well as intersecting interests

around the “Eastern question”, this peculiar balance of power with its ev-

er-shifting alliances ultimately determined the character of relations and

interactions among the unequal parties throughout the 19th century up

to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World

War. The late Ottoman period can be seen as an unfolding of the triangu-

lar relationship between the politics of the European Great Powers, the

national aspirations of various nationalist movements, and the Ottoman

politics of centralisation and nation-building. The imperial designs of

the European Great Powers on the Ottoman Empire, however, provided

the Ottomans both with political opportunities as well as a threat to its

domination. Equally, the struggles of the emergent national movements

for autonomy and/or independence provided both justication for inter-

vention by the one or other European power on behalf of the respective

community, and justication for the Ottoman state to more rigorously

impose direct rule, nation-building or reforms, respectively.

Historian Hanioğlu seems to take issue with the fact that national-

ist movements, the aspirations of local rulers, and international encroach-

ments exerted an ever-stronger pull in the opposite direction, as “the im-

perial center took advantage of the possibilities aorded by modern tech-

nology to launch an ambitious attempt to centralize and modernize the

mechanisms of control over the loosely held periphery” (HANIOĞLU,

2008, p.4). Makdisi (2002), in turn refers to a fundamental shift from the

earlier imperial paradigm of accommodation to “an imperial view suf-

fused with nationalist modernization rooted in a discourse of progress”

(2002, p. 769). Accordingly, Ottoman modernization

“supplanted an established discourse of religious subordination in which an

advanced imperial center reformed and disciplined backward peripheries of

a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire which led to the birth of Ottoman

Orientalism” (ibid.).

Referring to the European power politics throughout the nine-

teenth century, Michael Mann suggests that the Great Power diplomacy

was consciously geared to the very opposite of hegemonic stability theo-

ry. All agreements had accordingly two objectives:

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

“to prevent any single Power becoming hegemonic in any region of Europe and

to preserve order, emphasizing that “order” was meant to dierent powers dier-

ently. For the reactionary monarchs, it meant regulating both international and

domestic strife and repressing reform. For the liberal Powers, it meant avoiding

revolution by allowing bourgeois and “national” self-determination” (MANN

2012A, p. 281.).

Diplomats had to preserve peace and order, “including reactionary

class and market order, by avoiding hegemony, while coping “with the

rise of the nation at odds with the existence of many existing states” (ibid.)

What the foregoing makes clear is that there were fundamental dif-

ferences between the interests, perceptions and expectations of the parties

involved - uniquely reected in the ways they approached the reformation/

modernization of Ottoman order. For the Ottomans, “reforms” meant the

restoration of Ottoman power so as to be at least on equal footing with,

if not superior to, the European Powers. Indeed, this was a basic strategy

of the Ottomans that took shape in the early decades of the 19th century

and reached its apogee by the1850s and beyond. This included both mod-

ernisation and “Westernisation” of the central State, as well the imposition

of eective domination and control on the periphery. Many communities

across the Ottoman realm, in turn, regarded reforms as creating conditions

of possibility for their gradual emancipation and provided momentum for

autonomy, a drive that also became more and more eective following the

rst decade of the 19th century. The European Great Powers, on the other

hand, viewed the reforms as a launch pad for territorial expansion, as well

as economic and political penetration, into the Ottoman realm.

The problem was that the Ottoman politics of eective rule played

out under conditions where the rules of the game of power politics began

to change. As masterfully explained by Wilhelm Grewe in an extensive

Study on Epochs of International Law, from the early decade of nineteenth

century, the dynamics of power politics and rivalries began to be regulat-

ed by “the International Legal Order of the British Age 1815 -1919, with its

legal institutions of the new colonial Law of Nations. The age of British

predominance rendered the international legal order of the nineteenth

century its specic character (GREWE, 2000, p. 429 .). The most import-

ant feature of this change was expressed in the assertion of the principle

of eectiveness that gradually became the regulating norm behind the co-

lonial expansion and associated rivalries among the powers involved. In

tracing the origins of this principle during the longue durée of colonisation,

Grewe (2000) demonstrates how the older “right of discovery” was re-

placed by the principle of “eective occupation” that became the standard

legal title for the acquisition of colonial territory in the British age. “The

new wave of European expansion and taking possession of further colo-

nies, which began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century”, Grewe

(2000) maintains, “took place against the background of the generally

recognised validity of this title” (GREWE, 2000, p. 545). As a result, the

law of ‘civilised’ nations only recognised the property and sovereignty

of a nation in unpopulated regions, “if that nation was executing an ac-

tual occupation, i.e. founding a settlement and making actual use of it”

(GREWE, 2000, p. 399.).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

Translated into the code of conduct among the Great Powers, this

shift basically meant either eective rule on the territories claimed or the

loss of sovereignty over them. The requirement of eectiveness posed

a great threat to the Ottoman rule over its possessions, especially over

those territories where military and administrative control was but nom-

inal or where a greater degree of autonomy existed.

To conclude, at ev-

ery critical juncture during the 19th century, the peculiar dynamics of

the said trivalent relationship between the European Great power poli-

tics, the identity politics of subject peoples and the Ottoman policies of

centralising and increasingly nationalising the empire at work. However,

in times where these factors came together to act in a zero-sum game man-

ner, the outcomes were the most devastating. This deadly coming togeth-

er of factors was particularly evident before and during the Russo-Otto-

man War (1877–78), the Balkan Wars (1911-1913), and nally World War

One (1914-1918).

As will be shown in this paper, all of this fundamentally aected

the status and destiny of non-Muslim and Muslim communities alike.

One important outcome of this process was the mass migration on the

part of non-Muslim communities from the Lebanese mountains and else-

where to the Americas, including Brazil

. As will discussed in more de-

tail below, the Russo-Ottoman war ended with the near collapse of the

Ottoman Empire, the Balkan Wars ended with almost complete loss of

the empire’s European dominions, while World War One caused the Ar-

menian genocide, expulsions and extermination of the Greek and other

minorities and, nally, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire itself. In the

remainder of this article, I will outline the contentious status of minori-

ties and its evolution along the proposed line of argumentation and will

conclude by summarising the main points.

1. Structural Exclusion by Toleration

Ruling over a vast amount of territories with a heterogeneous pop-

ulation made up of diverse groups of people can be regarded as one of the

central criteria for the success and survival of any empire. Following the

conquest of foreign territories, including the conquest of Constantinople

in 1453, where a majority Christian population lived, the Ottomans were

faced with the daunting task of having to deal with the sheer diversity

of population, territories and ethno-religious communities in the region.

Out of this process emerged elements of what would come to be

known as millet (BARKEY, 2008, p. 12). The millet system is widely held

as a long-lasting example of a form of non-territorial autonomy and “in-

novation that Ottoman rulers used to organize the empire’s religious

groups from the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 to the nineteenth

century” (BARKEY; GAVRILIS, 2016 p.24).

Before discussing the meaning and implications of the millet as a

politico-administrative system, some terminological clarications would

be appropriate. The term millet is derived from the Arabic word Millah,

meaning ‘nation’ or ‘community’ (AVIV, 2016)

. The idea behind this sys-

tem stems from the Sharia’s (Islamic law) treatment of members of reli-

4. Referring to the establishment of a

French protectorate in Tunisia in 1881,

the British occupation of Egypt in 1882,

and the Bulgarian annexation of Eastern

Rumelia in 1885, historian Hanioğlu

observed that all these drew no more

than formal protests from the Ottoman

government because “Abdülhamid II

carefully evaded direct confrontations

with the Great Powers and studiously

avoided taking risks for regions only

nominally under Ottoman control (HA-

NIOGLU, 2008, p. 130).

5. For example: “Between 1899 and

1914, a total of 86,111 Syrians entered

the United States, 90 percent of whom

are estimated to have been Christians.

Still others went to Latin America where

communities of “Turcos” could be found

in Sao Paulo, Caracas, Buenos Aires,

and Mexico City by the start of the First

World War. Syrian Jews also migrated

both to the US and Mexico, as well as

to Britain. Between 1871 and 1909,

60,653 Syrians entered Argentina, the

largest single destination for Syrian

immigrants in Latin America. But unlike

the pattern of emigration to the US and

Mexico, the stream of migrants going to

the New World’s southern hemisphere

was more evenly divided between Mus-

lims and Christians and even included

Druzes” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 145).

6. For a very instructive synopsis

along with comments on annotated

bibliography see AVIV, Efrat. Entry

Millet System in the Ottoman Empire.

Oxford Islamic Studies, last modiﬁed:

28 November 2016. DOI: 10.1093/

OBO/9780195390155-0231

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

gions regarded as People of the Book (Ahal-al-Kitab), that is, followers of

religions who believe in the presence of the Almighty. Under the Sharia,

the Ahal-al-Kitab could be granted the political status of Dhimmis, where-

by they entered into a pact, or Dhimma with the Muslim ruler to accept

subordination to Islam, and the requirement to pay a special tax, the Jizya

(AVIV, 2016). In Koranic tradition thewere considered as protégés who had

to pay additional poll taxes (KIESER, 2019). In short, non-Muslim minori-

ties were tolerated “provided that they accepted their inferior status vis-

à-vis Islam and that they regularly paid their taxes” (LORY, 2015, p. 371).

There is, however, an interesting debate about the initial use of

the term Millet, and its application as a ruling technique over subject

communities, as well as the scope of the ‘system’, notably whether or not

it was solely restricted to non-Muslims or if it was also applicable to Mus-

lims (TAŞ, 2014, p. 498-526 .)

. Whilst some scholars show a very recep-

tive disposition towards the merits of the millet (QUER, 2013, p. 79 .)

others have problematised the sole use of the “millet system paradigm” to

describe Ottoman rule over non-Muslim communities (BRAUDE, 1982,

p. 70; PAPADEMETRIOU, 2015, p. 22). The latter have argued that the

millet system was not at all in circulation during the fteenth and six-

teenth centuries, implying that it is rather a late Ottoman conception

and can therefore be considered as a “foundation myth” of the Ottoman

Empire (BRAUDE, 1982, p.77; DASKALOV; VEZENKOV, 2005, p.6 .).

However, others maintain that there are earlier references to the millets

in the Ottoman tax registers, which indicate that non-Muslim subjects

were part of the political-religious vocabulary of the Empire long before

they were recognised as autonomous corporations in terms of public law

in the 19th century (URSINUS, 1989, p. 202-207).

On a more abstract level, the millet system can be seen as an Otto-

man response to the imperative to make heterogeneous populations both

legible and governable (BARKEY, 2008, p. 21). Accordingly, the Ottomans

were not interested in conducting systematic purication of ‘unwanted el-

ements’ or indigenous communities of conquered territories. Tolerance,

assimilation, and intolerance were thus all on the menu of strategies de-

signed to squeeze resources out of minorities and to enforce allegiance

to the imperial state (BARKEY, 2008, p.18). The system allowed rulers

“to eciently organize the empire’s population into communities by de-

volving power to trusted intermediaries and community leaders who in

turn were held responsible for governing the community and resolving

conicts both within the community and with other millets” (BARKEY;

GAVRILIS, 2016, p. 24). Equally, by giving a degree of recognition as a

community with tangible autonomy in the religious and legal realms,

irrespective of their place in the empire, the millet system allowed the

leaders of communities to act with a sense of condence, (ibid.). Accord-

ingly, each Millet (the Greek Orthodox, the Catholic, Jewish, and Arme-

nian Millet) was granted autonomy to set its own laws, and to collect and

distribute its own taxes (AV IV, 2016).

Placing the treatment of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire with-

in the context of Islamic law, Masters maintains that Muslim authorities

recognized “the rights of believers in the monotheistic faiths to remain at

7. Contrary to the scholars conside-

ring the millet as related only to the

non-Muslim communities, Taş (2014)

maintains that the Kurds as majority

Muslim community used the millet

practice as form of ﬁscal, judicial and

administrative autonomy over their

region and applied their customary laws

over disputes between their members,

concluding that the millet practice

can be a potential source for plural

modern nation-states to draw on in

understanding how diversity in a plural

society might peacefully be managed

as it “offers a unique blend of territorial

and non-territorial rights for different

communities” (TAS, 2014, p. 498).

8. For example, according Giovanni M.

Quer (2013), although the millet system

originates from a different legal and po-

litical tradition with aspects that may be

incompatible with the Western democra-

tic tradition, it can be seen “as a model

of diversity management offers available

solutions to contemporary multicultural

Europe in terms of both collective rights

accommodation and formulation of

minority and majority groups’ interests”

(QUER, 2013, p. 79 ff.).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

peace within the umma, as long as they recognized Islam’s political author-

ity over them. In the process, this understanding became embodied in the

concept of the ahl al-dhimma (“the people of the contract”). This guaran-

teed the rights of the non-Muslims to property, livelihood, and freedom

of worship in return for extra taxes (the jizya) and the promise not to help

Islam’s enemies” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 20). This understanding gradually

became prevalent, and developed into a “concrete legal form in a docu-

ment known as the “Pact of Umar”, a religious code of conduct, indicating

both the social marginalisation and political subordination of non-Mus-

lims along with their protection to that eect (MASTERS, 2001, p. 22).

As far as its application to non-Muslim minorities was concerned,

the millet was constructed in non-territorial terms. The ‘autonomy’ was

then granted on the basis of religious aliation and not on a regional or

territorial basis. The leader of each religious community was obliged to

undertake responsibility for the actions of his community and was direct-

ly answerable to the government. It is maintained that in the case of the

Greek (Rum milleti), for example, the Ottomans saw the Greek Orthodox

ecclesiastical hierarchy as a resource for generating cash income. They

primarily became known as tax farmers (mültezim) for cash income de-

rived from the Church’s widespread holdings. The Ottoman state grant-

ed individuals the right to take their positions as hierarchs in return for

yearly payments to the state (PAPADEMETRIOU, 2015, p. 3). On that

view, the Church was considered by the Ottomans as a scal institution

within the larger Ottoman economic and social context (PAPADEME-

TRIOU, 2015, p. 6). Accordingly, the organisation of millet was designed

to act as an eective way of tax collection, as well as an instrument for

shaping intra-communal power relations and reproducing subordina-

tion and hierarchies: “Time and again, the Ottoman state responded to

requests from petitioning clergy by coming to their aid, and using the

state’s coercive authority, to make sure that the payments were made”

(PAPADEMETRIOU, 2015, p. 4).

The millets as constituted in the nineteenth century were hierarchi-

cally organized religious bodies with a decidedly political function. Each

millet was headed by a cleric, otherwise known as the patriarch or chief

rabbi, or in Ottoman Turkish, the millet başı. Although the millet başı were

appointed by the sultan, and were required to be resident in Istanbul, they

were largely free to order the aairs of their community as long as they

remained loyal to the sultan (MASTERS, 2001, p. 61). As the millet in-

volved a “series of arrangements, varying in time and place, that aorded

each of the major religious communities a degree of legal autonomy and

authority” (BRAUDE, 2014, 16). it can be concluded that the millet was

not a rmly established structure endowed with binding and predictable

norms, but rather it was a variable technique of governance, premised

on a set of arrangements that were periodically negotiated, renewed and

enacted, and were always subject to shifting dynamics of power between

the respective leaders of each community and the imperial state. What

rendered the millet regulation both striking and unstable was its combi-

nation of elements of indirect rule with elements of direct rule. Bearing

in mind the inherently contradictory nature of both modes of rule, the

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

millet formation by and large oered a viable scheme of protection under

the Muslim rule, to be sure, at the expense of structural inequality, mar-

ginalisation and exclusion from the central areas of the imperial polity.

Though important in its historical context, the millet can hardly be seen

as a normative exercise in tolerance and recognition with enduring and

inspiring features for the present-day quest for conict resolution. If any-

thing, the millet needs a very critical reconstruction, and reappropriation

in light of the development of international law and democratic principles.

However divergent the views on the origins, meanings and implica-

tions of the millet are, one thing is certain: it rst rose to prominence during

the Tanzimat period. It was during this period that the millet became es-

tablished as way of addressing the rights and legal status of non-Muslim

confessional groups, while simultaneously giving rise to the formation of

new communities in the mode of the millet organisation. The immediate

causes and outcome of this process are the subject of the next section.

2. Integration through Politics of Recognition (Tanzimat Period)

In the Ottoman studies Tanzimat (lit. reorganization) era is com-

monly referred to as the “westernisation” and “modernisation” of the ed-

ucational, military and political structures of the Empire (THE OXFORD

DICTIONARY OF ISLAM, 2003, Tanzimat entry). It was during this pe-

riod that major reforms were enacted calling for equality for all Ottoman

subjects. These reforms resulted in the codied millet autonomy in re-

lation to non-Muslim minorities for the rst time. In terms of the status

of non-Muslim minorities, two major imperial edicts are of signicant

importance. The rst was the Gülhane Prescript of 1839, named after the

park where it was rst read, and second the Reform Edict of 1856 (Hatt-ü

Humayün). In general, both documents are often cited as a hallmark of

the religious pluralism within the Ottoman Empire, demonstrating the

protection of the rights of all subjects, regardless of religious creed, de-

spite the state’s aliation with Islam (THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF

ISLAM, 2003, Tanzimat entry). In what follows, I shall examine the sig-

nicance and implications of both documents in some detail.

The Gülhane Prescript was a declaration of intention, outlining a

regime of political and legal equality between Christians and Muslims

(GINGERAS, 2009, p. 19)

. The Hatt-ü Humayun draws on the rst but took

a more radical step towards equal treatment and civil rights by granting

non-Muslim minorities the right to constitute themselves as self-govern-

ing entities with its own constitution (nizâmnâme) and an elected assembly.

This represented a major change that aected the Rûm millet (Greek-Or-

thodox), the Armenian millet, the Christian millet (both Protestant and

Catholic), as well as the Jewish millet. Excluded from this scheme, howev-

er, were the Nestorian Syriacs (Asuri), Syriac Christians (Süryani), Yezidis

as well as other non-Muslim minorities (KIESER, 2019, p. 3).

The internal rules of the millets were subject to periodic review by

the central government and an assembly to be composed of the commu-

nity’s clerics and laity, creating a potential for future democratization of

millet governance, seeing by some clergy as undermining their authori-

9. Hatt-i Şerif (the Noble Prescript of

Gülhane) made as part of Ottoman re-

forms protected the rights and property

of subjects, afﬁrmed the restoration of

Sharia as law; instituted protections of

life, honor, and property; ﬁxed taxation

according to wealth; granted all sub-

jects the right to public trial and verdict;

promised an even distribution of military

service across the population; and

extended rights to all subjects, whether

Muslim or non-Muslim.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

ty” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 138 .). This politics of millets was also motivated

by a ne-tuned policy of divide and rule, aimed at augmenting the ex-

traction of resources and keeping the communities manageable, whilst

counteracting the growing Tsarist Russian inuence over the Orthodox

Christian communities across the Balkans and elsewhere.

The reform edicts led to the formation of new millets, and “further

encouraged Christian elites to articulate and rene religious identity as a

means to obtain political power” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 61). Alongside the

already existing millets mentioned above, new millet structures, namely

the Uniate Armenian (1831) and Melkite Catholics (1848) and Protestant Mil-

let (1847), were established and recognised, leading smaller and formerly

less active Christian sects to take their success as a model.

The declaration of Muslim–Christian equality created confusion

and discontent, resulting in gradual replacement of the millet system by

a more uniform code of law and civic responsibility (GINGERAS, 2009,

p. 19). Faced with the challenge of nationalism and ensuing disintegration

of the Empire, Istanbul attempted to defuse them by creating a new patri-

otic identity, that is, the Ottoman identity based on dynastic and imperial

allegiance. For this purpose, in January 1869 a law entitled “nationality or

citizenship law” (Tabiiyet Kanunu) was passed, stating that “all individuals

born of an Ottoman father and an Ottoman mother, or only an Ottoman

father, are Ottoman subjects” (AHMAD, 2014, p. 3-4).

Although prerogatives and privileges seen as the preserve of Mus-

lims communities remained largely unchanged (GINGERAS, 2009, p. 19),

the reforms nonetheless resulted in the empowerment of national-reli-

gious communities, and gave rise to the assertion of communal aspira-

tions towards more emancipation which was in turn deemed by many as

a threat to the predominant pattern of relations. Both reform edicts were

perceived as “dismantl[ing] the legal hierarchy governing the relations

between Muslims and non-Muslims established by the Pact of Umar with

the blunt justication that such steps were necessary to save the empire”

(MASTERS, 2001, p. 137). Indeed many saw the reforms as exacerbating

the economic crisis of the Ottoman empire, fostering its dependency on

European loans, while failing to stie ethnic and religious separatism en-

couraged by Great Britain and France, and provoked unrest among Mus-

lims (HANIOĞLU, 2008, p.110). A large number of people also viewed

the reforms as empowering the non-Muslim communities, at the expense

of their own situation. The growing sectarian antagonism led to violent

outbursts across the imperial domains. The most tragic among them oc-

curred in Aleppo 1850 and in 1860 with the civil war in Lebanon and the

subsequent Damascus riot.

The violent nature of these clashes has been

described by historian Sharkey who notes that “the 1860 Maronite-Druze

skirmishes escalated into massacres, including one that killed 5,000 peo-

ple on a single day in July” (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 150)

Sharkey (2017) also emphasizes how the intercommunal violence

sprang “from the collapse of the feudal order, changes in Ottoman pol-

icies, shifts in the local economy, and the rising tide of sectarianism as

factors that mixed together and exploded” (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 150).

However, despite the situation ‘exploding’ it is important to note here,

10. “The spark that set off the Aleppo

riot of 1850”, according to Sharkey,

“was a report that spread among

Muslims of the eastern quarters, to

the effect that Ottoman authorities

were about to impose a new military

draft. Making matters worse was the

new Ottoman policy of taxing Muslims

directly” (SHARKEY, 2017, p. 147).

Similarly, Masters (2001) notes how, the

“[v]iolence targeting foreign or domestic

Christians took place in Aleppo in 1850,

Mosul in 1854, Nablus in 1856, Jeddah

in 1858, and Egypt in 1882. Muslim

anger could also be directed at Jews, as

occurred in the Mosul riot or in Baghdad

in 1889. But across the region, the

descent into sectarian violence served

to segregate Muslims from Christians,

rather than pit Muslims against all

non-Muslims indiscriminately as the

Christians had become associated with

the most obvious manifestations of

change” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 130).

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

as Masters (2001) suggests that “it was not so much equality with the

non-Muslims, that the Muslims were protesting, but their perception that

the Christians were now in the ascendancy” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 132).

Moreover, the communal empowerment and the increasing visibil-

ity of communities in terms of building new churches, holding public re-

ligious processions, and vaunting their connections to the militarily dom-

inant Europeans that had once existed largely outside the public gaze of

Muslims “rubbed salt into the Muslims’ psychological wound” (ibid.). The

result was an increasing politicisation of religion and promotion of sec-

tarianism. This was elevated to a basic strategy of the Ottoman politics

once the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–78 broke out. This war once more

changed the entire geopolitical landscape of the empire in fundamental

ways, and fateful eects on the fortunes of non-Muslims and Muslims

alike. One important outcome of the war was the ascendancy of Sultan

Abdülhamid II (1842-1918) to power.

3. Control and Coercive Domination (Hamidian Period, 1876–1909)

If reactions against granting equal treatment and equality before

the law were still somehow manageable throughout the Tanzimat pe-

riod, the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877–78 not only led to the reversal of

the reform legislation, but also to the rise of a deeply suspicious and hos-

tile politics, especially towards Orthodox communities. The war indeed

marked a watershed moment in the last quarter of 19th century of the

Ottoman empire, creating new geopolitical realities, while shifting the

balance of power on an unprecedented scale.

In April 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire following

an agreement, signed in mid-January, with Austria-Hungary that allowed

Russia freedom of movement in the Balkans in exchange for Austro-Hun-

garian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina (FORTNA, 2008, p. 46). The war

took place against a background of a peasant rebellion against Ottoman

rule in the Balkans in 1875. In July 1885, Slav peasants revolted against

their Muslim landowners in Herzegovina followed by a fresh rebellion in

Bulgaria that took place in April 1876. In July 1876, Serbia and Montenegro

declared war on the Ottoman state (HANIOĞLU, 2008, p. 111). Of course,

Russia, keen to exploit the weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire, as it had

done for centuries at many critical junctures in the empire’s history, was

quick to support the rebellion by taking the lead in the war.

The Russo-Ottoman war of 1877–78 turned out to be a disaster for

the Ottomans. The San Stefano Treaty of March 3, 1878 marked the high

point of Russian expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. “Not

only did the treaty award Russia certain territorial gains, it granted in-

dependence and additional territory to the ostensibly Ottoman states of

Montenegro, Rumania, and Serbia” (HANIOĞLU, 2008, p. 121). The trea-

ty also sanctioned

“internal reforms in various Ottoman areas, including Armenia; and a massive -

nancial indemnity to Russia causing continuing exodus of Muslim refugees from

lost territory into the shrunken borders of the Ottoman Empire, forcing the state

to use scarce funds to feed and shelter them” (FORTNA, 2008, p. 46).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

In defeat, the Ottomans were forced to make major concessions

to Bulgaria in March 1878 as part of the Treaty of San Stefano, which

established a “greater Bulgaria” that extended from the Black Sea to the

Aegean Sea. Alarmed by these Russian gains, Britain, Austria-Hungary,

and Germany intervened in favour of the Ottomans and compelled Rus-

sia to revoke some of the concessions imposed on the Ottomans, which

forced Russia to withdraw from Ottoman territories. As Mann notes, “[s]

ome were declared independent states, and others were given to Austria

in order to preserve the Balkan balance of power” (MANN, 2012A, p.

281). Although Bulgaria became autonomous, it was reduced in size and

divided into two parts. Macedonia remained within the connes of the

Ottoman Empire, whereas Serbia and Montenegro were recognized as

sovereign states (AHMAD, 2014, p. 5).

The Congress of Berlin in 1878 “created a Bulgaria that was auton-

omous but tributary and an Eastern Rumelia that was semi-autonomous,

with a Christian governor who was to be appointed by the Ottoman gov-

ernment” (KASABA, 2004, p. 46). Historian Todorova notes that not only

were the size, shape, stages of growth of the dierent Balkan states al-

most exclusively regulated by great power considerations with regards to

“the rules of the balance-of-power game” but so too was their very exis-

tence. (TODOROVA, 2009, p. 169). The impact of the war and subsequent

treaty for the Ottomans was huge as Keyder (1997) observes,

“Balkan nationalism culminated in a massive loss of territory following the 1877-

78 war with Russia. The empire lost more than a third of its lands, especially

the provinces where its non-Muslim population had constituted the majority.

Social and economic conditions shifted radically, as did the causes of the empire’s

dismantling” (KEYDER, 1997, p. 33).

One important outcome of the war was the dissolution of the new-

ly established Ottoman parliament in February 1878. Sultan Abdülhamid

used the war with Russia as a pretext to suspend the constitution, intro-

duced on 23 December 1876, for the next thirty years. Under the constitu-

tion all Ottomans would become equal before the law, enjoying the same

rights and obligations regardless of ethnicity or religion, though Islam

remained the religion of the state (AHMAD, 2014, p. 5). Following the dis-

solution of the parliament, the sultan began to construct new methods of

administration by promoting an ecient bureaucracy in control of the pe-

riphery, reinstating an old Ottoman emphasis on personal loyalty on the

parts of bureaucrats “as an indispensable qualication for employment in

the civil service” (HANIOGLU, 2008, p. 123 .). During his reign Pan-Is-

lamism became established as a guiding strategy which transformed “a

religio-political instinct into a politico-religious policy” (BRAUDE, 2014,

p. 47). The aim was twofold: rst, to mould the Muslim elements of the

empire into a cohesive whole in order to build a core identity, a policy

that was also facilitated by enormous demographic change brought about

by the loss of territory heavily populated by Christians, and the inux of

Muslim refugees, which increased the Muslim proportion of the Ottoman

population to 73.3 percent. The second aim was the “use of Pan-Islamic

propaganda as a wild card directed against colonial powers who ruled

over substantial Muslim populations” (HANIOĞLU, 2008, p. 130).

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

Sultan Abdulhamid embarked on an ambitious set of policies to-

wards centralising and regularising the control of the central govern-

ment, modernising the armed forces and education system, and creating

a loyal elite (FORTNA, 2008, p. 48). He was particularly concerned with

strategic infrastructure projects, such as internal communications and

the railway infrastructure “that would improve the eciency of the Ot-

toman army and facilitate greater control over the imperial peripheries as

well as investment in a widespread intelligence network” (BLOXHAM,

2005, p.46). Conicts in the Balkans and the consequent Ottoman-Rus-

sian War led to dramatic territorial losses for the Ottoman Empire in

the Balkans, the Caucasus and the entirety of Cyprus. As a consequence,

Abdülhamid considered the political principles of the preceding reform

period a failure and instead implemented policies designed to empower

the (Sunni) Muslims and to assimilate the Alevis, Yezidis and Shiites. This

was because “the empire increasingly considered Asia Minor its core land

given the territorial losses of previous decades” (KIESER, 2019. p. 3).

One crucial development during the Hamidian regime was the

emergence of the Armenian national movement, namely the two revolu-

tionary parties, Hunchak (“The Bell”) and Dashnaktsutyun (the Armenian

Revolutionary Federation, ARF) (FORTNA, 2008, p. 54). The Armenian

nationalist political parties were established “in the late 1880s in the com-

parative safety of Russian Armenia at about the same time as organized

constitutionalist Muslim groups were being formed in opposition to Ab-

dulhamid’s autocratic rule” (BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 49). As Bloxham indi-

cates in the early 1890s, “the parties, particularly the Hunchaks, inltrat-

ed Ottoman Armenia to coordinate revolutionary activity and import

arms. Following the model of Bulgarian nationalists, the Huncak led the

movement to recapture the attention of the powers, sometimes by osten-

tatious, terrorist methods and assassinations that also reveal a debt to the

Russian populists” (BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 50). Thus, we can see how at

this time, in order to divert attention to the Armenian plight “Armenian

revolutionaries stepped up acts of violence and sabotage in the hope of

provoking European intervention” (HANIOĞLU, 2008, p. 131).

The overall situation led to the “Hamidian massacres”, a series of

atrocities carried out by Ottoman forces and Muslim irregulars against

the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1896. The Ot-

toman authorities increased their repression of Armenians, raised taxes

on Armenian villages, and aroused nationalistic feelings and resentment

against Armenians among the neighbouring Kurds. When, in 1894, the

Armenians in the Sasun region refused to pay an oppressive tax, Otto-

man troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of them and burned

their villages. Another wave of killing began in September 1895, when

the Ottoman authorities’ repression of an Armenian protest in Istanbul

turned into a massacre. The incident was followed by a series of massa-

cres in towns with Armenian communities that culminated in December

1895, when nearly 3,000 Armenians who had taken refuge in the cathe-

dral of Urfa (modern Şanlıurfa) were burned alive (BLOXHAM, 2005, p.

67). “Tragically for the Armenians’’, Braude concludes, “their hopes for

national independence arose at the end of a century-long succession of

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

Christian uprisings in the Balkans. And their aspirations were centered

in Anatolian territory that the leaders of the Ottoman Empire in its last

decades came to regard as the last bastion of what remained of their em-

pire” (BRAUDE, 2014, p. 36).

Thus, the Russo-Ottoman War created the conditions under which

Armenian aspirations for communal emancipation was responded to

with state-organised mass violence. The violence was organised by an

Empire that was continuously in pursuit of a more centralising, homo-

genising and nationalising form of Pan-Islamist politics, and was accom-

panied by increasingly radicalised national movements, with the Europe-

an Powers unwilling to take eective diplomatic and political initiatives

in order to stop the plight of the Armenian community or to prevent

the escalation of the conict. Such was the background against which

the İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress, CUP),

otherwise known as the Young Turks, took over the state power in 1908.

4. Politics of nation-building by communal extermination and expulsion

(CUP Rule, 1908-18)

Tilly’s dictum “war made the state and the state made war” pro-

vides a powerful metaphor to think about the post-World War I geopo-

litical constellations in the post-Ottoman geography in general, and for

the geopolitical situation of minorities in particular. The European Great

Powers’ politics towards the Ottoman empire, the ever increasing level of

national conicts in the Balkans, and the Ottoman politics of centralisa-

tion and homogenisation entered into a completely new era with the as-

cendancy of the Turkish nationalist movement, the Committee for Union

and Progress (CUP), culminating in a military coup in 1908.

For a while, the removal of the Abdülhamid regime and ensuing

reinstitution of the constitution, which was suspended in February 1878

on the pretext of the Russo-Ottoman war, was met with hope and a sense

of optimism. But the constitution that was supported by all in the days

of the revolution was soon “used against many to eradicate traditional

privileges in the name of equality before the law, and to threaten the

very fabric of millet communities amid the denigration of the the millet

institutions as “government within the government” (SOHRABI, 2018, p.

844 .). Contrary to its promises for more democratic and inclusive gov-

ernance, the CUP proceeded to reinforce a nationalist politics based on

“eradication of dierence”, pushing a multiethnic state towards becom-

ing “an imperial nation-state” (SOHRABI, 2018, p. 844).

The more the Young Turks established their power grip on the Ot-

toman state apparatus, the less they were inclined to introduce reforms

and to address the aspirations of other nationalities. The dictatorial rule

of the CUP was then confronted with an upsurge in national insurgencies

initially from the Balkan peoples. The overall situation was exacerbated

by the interventions of the Great Powers on behalf of one or another

party to the conicts. The key ingredients of this conict escalation - the

politics of the Great Powers, the politics of the nationalising elite of the

Ottoman state, and the politics of national independence of subject peo-

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

ples – were once again at work, coming together to produce the most

disastrous consequences. The murderous dynamics of conict escalation

worked to their fullest on the cusp of the Balkan Wars (8 October 1912

– 18 July 1913). Just one year after Italy’s invasion of Libya, the armies of

Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman forces in

a concerted eort to gain independence from the Ottoman empire. The

rst of the Balkan Wars led to the partitioning of Ottoman Macedonia

and Thrace by the Balkan States, further causing Albania’s declaration of

independence (GINGERAS, 2016, p.56).

The outcomes of these events were immeasurably devastating. The

Ottomans suered huge losses in the Balkan Wars, losing 83 percent of

its territory, and 69 percent of its population in the European provinces.

Most of its Muslim population was left behind, and many ed to Anatolia.

Muslims were the majority community in the Ottoman Balkans before

the war began, and were the largest single religious community (AH-

MAD, 2014, p. 46; GINGERAS, 2016, p. 56). The loss of Rumeli, seen as

the empire’s keystone and the cradle of the CUP, radicalized and scarred

the country’s leadership permanently. The Balkan Wars brought about

“the greatest mass migration in the empire’s history and produced lega-

cies of the conict that would continue to linger well into the Great War

and beyond” (GINGERAS, 2016, p.56).

The Balkan disasters in combination with the CUP’s decision to

take part in the First World War fundamentally altered the parameters of

the imperial politics and polity. This shift was reected both in mindset

and in the public policies of the CUP leadership. The war was seen as op-

portunity by the CUP leadership (AKSAKAL, 2008, p. 179.), especially

the alliance with Germany which was regarded “as a desirable path to re-

claiming the empire’s independence and economic stability” (AKSAKAL,

2008, p. 190). In March of 1914, the Young Turks then entered World War

One on the side of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and

Bulgaria). They attacked to the east, with the aim of capturing the city of

Baku as part of the Caucasus campaign against Russian forces in the Cau-

cuses. “The whole of the war in the Near East and the Balkans”, observes

Bloxham, “was drawn along ethnic-national lines and every imperial

power was seeking advantage in their opponents’ territory by oering

incentives to nascent ethnic/religious/nationalist movements therein”

(BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 94). Accordingly, the locus of ethnic conict spread

fully into the Caucasus, where it had long been simmering. Germany

coveted the mineral resources of the Caucasus for the sustenance of its

war eort, while the door had reopened in an unlikely fashion for the

pursuit of the CUP’s expansionist ambitions (BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 100.).

The pan-Turanian and pan-Islamic campaigns conducted in the

Caucasus, in Persia, and the Arab lands respectively “miscalculated the

eect of Ottoman propaganda on other Turkic and Muslim peoples”

(BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 69). The politics of expansion led to a disastrous de-

feat at the battle of Sarikamish (December 1914/January 1915). “In early

1915”, notes historian David Fromkin, “Enver, as Minister of War, and Ta-

laat, as Minister of the Interior, claimed that the Armenians were openly

supporting Russia. In reprisal they ordered the deportation of the entire

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

Armenian population from the northeastern provinces to locations out-

side of Anatolia” (FROMKIN, 2001, p. 212). The treatment of the Arme-

nians was particularly brutal as “[r]ape and beating were commonplace.

Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and

deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Arme-

nians eventually succumbed or were killed” (FROMKIN, 2001, p. 212).

The systematic killings and deportations during the War led to the to-

tal destruction of the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire (MELSON,

1992, p. 29.). Referring to the politics of the CUP, the Austro-Hungarian

Ambassador Johann von Pallavicini in a diplomatic dispatch, dated 7 Nov.

1915, described the policy of the CUP as a means of ‘creating a national state

through the annihilation of foreign elements’ (PALLAVICINI apud BLOX-

HAM, 2005, p. 94). Many scholars have explained how the mass killing in

the late Ottoman empire, and the Armenian genocide as causally related to

the logic of nation-building, the national security strategies of nationalising

and homogenising elites, and the politics of national and cultural homo-

genisation in the context of world war marked by rivalries among the great

powers (MYLONAS, 2012, p. 48; AKÇAM, 2004, p. 44; GÖÇEK, 2011, p. 52).

The CUP increasingly saw “the Ottoman entity as ethnically single

rather than as a diverse multiplicity of peoples while dening loyalty to

the state as function of supposed ethnic reliability” (LEVENE, 2014, p.

4, Volume). With the outbreak of the First World War, the Great Pow-

ers’ designs on the Ottoman Empire intensied, as was “the Ottomans’

ambition to create a homogeneous state on the basis of either ethnicity

or religion, through a Pan-Turkic and Pan-Islamic expansionist policy”

(AKÇAM, 2004, p. 21). Accordingly, as long as Anatolia remained ethni-

cally pluralistic, “it would be vulnerable to subversion and partition”, a

mindset leading the CUP to conclude that the “homogenization of Ana-

tolia was the surest solution to the dilemma they faced” (REYNOLDS,

2011, p 150). This led to both the extermination of the Armenians and the

state-guided demographic transformation of Eastern Anatolia which in-

cluded Muslim Kurds, Albanians, Circassians (REYNOLDS, 2011, p. 149).

Bloxham (2005) has emphasised how “the complexities and contin-

gencies of state policy-making in a period of prolonged wartime crisis” are

more relevant to the understanding of the Armenian genocide than a prior

genocidal intent. The Armenian case is thus best understood as “a process

of cumulative radicalization towards a policy of genocide, a radicalization

with its roots in the interaction of great power imperialism, Near East-

ern nationalism, and the decline of the Ottoman Empire” (BLOXHAM,

2005, p. 96). The cumulative use of mass murder was maintained by “the

intimate relationship between intention and contingency” (ib. 2005, p. 63).

The genocide is then explained as emerging “from a series of more limit-

ed measures implemented regionally that developed into an empire-wide

programme through a process of cumulative policy radicalization which,

in the early summer of 1915, culminated in an policy of general killing and

death by attrition” (BLOXHAM, 2005, p. 69). The Armenian Genocide,

along with the killing of Assyrians and the expulsion of the Anatolian

Greeks, laid the groundwork for the more homogeneous nation-state that

emerged from the ashes of the empire (SUNY, 2011, p. 41).

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

Taken together, the Balkan Wars and World War One provided

the conditions, opportunities and expediencies for the CUP regime to

execute its politics of state transformation and nation-building through

national, religious and cultural homogenisation of a multicommunial

and multicultural Empire by genocidal violence. I refer to this particular

politics and its outcomes as “nation-building by nation-destruction”

indicate the processes and policies of extermination and expulsion of

communities by state-organised political violence, a violence that result-

ed from the generation of new forms of state power seeking to homo-

genise societies, if deemed necessary, by resorting to ethnic cleansing

and genocide (BLOXHAM; GERWARTH, 2011, p.3; BLOXHAM; MO-

SES, 2011, p. 138 .).

The concept of “nation-building by nation-destruction” is intend-

ed to combine the contrasting aspects, namely the “regenerative” and

destructive nature, of this process of nation-building in an instructive di-

alectical concept. My argument is that this conceptualisation may shed

some light on the complexities of this matter, and lead to a better under-

standing of some of the processes and policies of state formation and na-

tion-building in many other places. If that is the case, this concept would

allow us to study the dual character of the process without being trapped

into armative positions or reducing the inherently destructive features

of such policies to the level of intended consequences along an unavoid-

able path of national modernization and regeneration.

Conclusions and Discussion

This essay has examined the situation and status of non-Muslim

communities within the Ottoman Empire by oering a periodisation to

examine commonalities and dierences as well as changes and continu-

ities. The periods have been dened as structural exclusion by toleration,

Integration by a politics of recognition of dierence (Tanzimat Phase, 1838-

1876), coercive domination and control (Hamidian Period, 1876-1908), politics

of nation-building by nation-destruction (the CUP period, 1908-1918). This

periodisation has proven to be of explanatory value in terms of identi-

fying the dominant mechanism within each period, while establishing

relationships among the periods as they shifted from one to another.

The periodisation, however, is not meant to suggest that outcomes were

inevitable and that the shift from one period to another was predeter-

mined. Rather, it is referred to as an heuristic device to more precisely

understand the salient features of Ottoman policies towards the subject

non-Muslim communities.

My focus has been on non-Muslim minorities, yet the elements of

this framework can equally be applied to the non-Turkish but Muslim

peoples such as the Kurds and others. The post-Ottoman Turkish state,

the “Republic of Turkey” (1923), did not only emerge out the ashes of the

Ottoman Empire, but more fundamentally founded on the institutional

and ideological framework together with its core military, bureaucratic

and administrative sta as well as policy paradigmas laid out by the CUP

regime (BEZWAN, 2008, p. 138 .).

11. The idea of “nation-building by

nation-destruction” draws its inspiration

from Connor Walker’s argument that

reads as follows: “Since most of the

less developed states contain a number

of nations and since the transfer of

primary allegiance from these nations

to the state is generally considered the

sine qua non of successful integration”,

Walker maintains, “the true goal is not

‘nation-building’ but ‘nation-destroying’”

(WALKER, 1994, p. 42.). I am para-

phrasing this idea as “nation-building

by nation-destruction”, widening its

scope to include not just less developed

states, but developed ones too.

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

Since its inception in 1923, the successive governments of the Turk-

ish republic (i.e. thelegal and political successors of the dissolved Otto-

man Empire)

have, to varying degrees, adopted elements of CUP politics

of nation-building by nation-destruction. With the extermination and ex-

pulsion of Christian communities from Anatolia, except for a small Jew-

ish community and tiny Christian groups in and around Istanbul, there

were non-Muslims left to be targeted. There were instead mainly Muslim

communities, such the Kurds and others, to them the politics of negation

and forced assimilation through the use of state-organised mass violence

turned. It is beyond the scope of this article to address this question but

suce it to say that this fact lies at the roots of many fundamental prob-

lems of which Turkey is today faced.

In Remapping the Ottoman Middle East, a meritorious and nicely

framed study, Cem Emrence (2011) suggests that the Ottoman Middle

East is essentially dened by three historical trajectories during the nine-

teenth century:

“the coast, the interior, and the frontier. The coastal framework represented the

port-cities and commercial hinterlands of western Anatolia and the eastern Medi-

terranean littoral; the interior path marked the inland experience of Anatolia, Syria

and Palestine; and the frontier incorporated the contentious borderland regions of

eastern Anatolia, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula” (EMRENCE, 2011, p. 4).

These trajectories produced long-term outcomes, with “economy

on the coast, politics in the interior, and contention in the frontier served

as primary processes that initiated regional paths in the late Ottoman

Empire” (EMRENCE, 2011, p. 4). While the coast became the spatial seat

of modernity, embodying middle-class values, global interactions, and

a broad public sphere, state-led transformation and conservative values

dominated the inland regions where the legitimacy of the state and mor-

al values of Sunni Islam characterized the interior. In the frontiers, in

turn, geopolitical competition blocked the path to successful state-build-

ing, allowing the local interests to bargain eectively with the central

state for autonomy (EMRENCE, 2011, p. 7). This state of aairs is then

expressed in socially and materially distinct political geographies during

the nineteenth century with dierent developmental and institutional

outcomes. This ranges from thin rule in the arid frontiers where rural re-

ligious networks operating on protection rents clashed with the Ottoman

state over centralization, to contested rule on the coast where non-Muslim

middle classes enjoyed the spoils of foreign trade and European services,

but with limited political leverage with the Ottoman state, to consensual

rule in the interior “where the unrivalled hegemony of the late Ottoman

state was backed up by bureaucratic institutions, domestic markets, and a

powerful Sunni bloc” (EMRENCE, 2011, p. 6-7).

This paper has demonstrated that Ottoman policies and practices

towards dierent subject communities were ultimately determined by

the coercive capacity of the state and its intersectionality with exigencies

and expediencies of the balance of power under each prevailing and ev-

er-shifting geopolitical circumstances at a given historical juncture. In

other words, a general reference to the ‘thinness’ and ‘thickness’ of the

Ottoman rule in a given region is not self-explanatory, and indeed can be

12. Referring to the argument of the

state continuity between the Ottoman

Empire and the Turkish Republic,

ÖKTEM maintains that the concept of

the continuing state differs from that of

the successor state, emphasising that

the former is not only “entitled to the

predecessor’s rights, but is also bound

by the predecessor’s obligations” (2011,

p. 581). The Ottoman legacy, he laconi-

cally adds, “is a Pandora’s box that may

unveil all kinds of surprises” (ibid.)

Naif Bezwan The Status of the Non-Muslim Communies in the Ooman Empire: A Non-Orientalised Decolonial Approach

misleading when it comes to explaining both the rationale behind Otto-

man policies and its historical outcomes. The article has shown that the

majority of the cases of mass violence, for example, was planned and exe-

cuted by the Ottoman authorities along with the power of mass mobiliza-

tion of the distressed, loyal or potentially very inuenceable segments of

the mainly Muslim population. This occurred not because the region in

question was thinly ruled, but because of an interplay of factors - among

them the coercive capacity of the state, the mobilisational of power and

the opportunity structures provided by the context of war - which have

always been determinant. As has been shown, even in instances where

the lack of authority seems to have played a role in intercommunal con-

icts, notably the mass violence in the Fertile Crescent, Aleppo (1850) and

in Mount Lebanon and Damascus (1860), the real, or perceived eects of

state consolidation and policies are strikingly present (MASTERS, 2001,

p. 132; SHARKEY, 2017, p. 150.).

By state coercive capacity, I mean the sanctioning power of man-

aging military conscription, collection of tax revenues, collective actions

on the part of the subject communities and communal relations between

them, while counteracting the encroachments of the rival European pow-

ers

. Bearing in mind that the balance of power produced both constrain-

ing and enabling eects on the Ottoman politics, this paper highlights

the importance of focusing on the ways and means by which the state

coercive capacity was put into action, the specic historical circumstanc-

es under which it was enacted, and nally, the opportunity structure, as

provided by the balance of power among the external and internal actors

involved in the process, under which it was executed.

In an article on The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans historian Bernard

Lory (2015) has rightly emphasized that rather than producing a discourse

of identity and/or discourse of rejection history as a discipline of the mind,

and historical narrative should be more inclusive (LORY, 2015, p. 405). Bear-

ing that in mind, I believe that one way of promoting an inclusive perspec-

tive on the Ottoman history is a non-Orientalised and yet critical, reective

and relational approach towards the Ottoman legacies and the politics of

nation-states emerging out of the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, be

they in the Balkans or in the Middle East. In this study, I have attempted

to establish a case for a non-Orientalised decolonial approach to the study

of the Ottoman empire, and the nation-states constructed in the post-Otto-

man political geographies. I use the term “decolonial” both in the sense of

political and societal emancipation, and of deconstructing state-engineered

ocial historiographies/ideologies that arm or justify the authoritarian

legacies, injustices and oppressions in the past and present. It is thus best un-

derstood as a epistemic disobedience against what Spivak called “epistemic

violence” that constitutes “the colonial subject as Other” and “the asym-

metrical obliteration of the trace of that Other in its precarious Subjectivity”

(SPIVAK, 2010, p. 35). It is this violence that is “exerted against or through

knowledge” by means of using epistemic frameworks that legitimise and

enshrine the practices of domination (GALVÁN-ÁLVAREZ, 2010, p.12).

I therefore hope that this paper has been able to provide some ideas

and arguments for an approach towards a non-Orientalised decolonial un-

13. Having said that, this is not to suggest

that the Muslim communities (Turks,

Kurds, Arabs, Circassians and others) are

to be excused from committing violent

actions and or taking part in massacres

conducted against various non Muslim

communities over the course the Tanzimat

period to the Hamidian to the Young Turks.

“The spark that set off the Aleppo riot of

1850, Historian Sharkey, “was a report

that spread among Muslims of the eastern

quarters, to the effect that Ottoman

authorities were about to impose a new

military draft. Making matters worse was

the new Ottoman policy of taxing Muslims

directly “(SHARKEY, 2017, p. 147). Violen-

ce targeting foreign or domestic Christians

took place in Aleppo in 1850, Mosul in

1854, Nablus in 1856, Jeddah in 1858, and

Egypt in 1882. Muslim anger could also be

directed at Jews, as occurred in the Mosul

riot or in Baghdad in 1889. But across

the region, the descent into sectarian

violence served to segregate Muslims

from Christians, rather than pit Muslims

against all non-Muslims indiscriminately

as the Christians had become associated

with the most obvious manifestations of

change” (MASTERS, 2001, p. 130).

14. In the recent literature the concept of

state capacity is taken to mean “extracti-

ve, coercive, and administrative capacity”

(WHITE, 2018, p,130), which is built

on the works of two scholars, Michael

Mann and Theda Skocpol. The latter had

argued that general components of state

capacity can be identiﬁed as “the stable

administrative-military control of a given

territory”, “loyal and skilled ofﬁcials” and

“plentiful ﬁnancial resources” (1985, p.

16). Mann in turn makes distinction be-

tween two basic forms state power with

different combinations of strengths: ﬁrst,

“despotic power, the range of actions

that the state elite is empowered to make

without consultation with civil society

groups; and second, infrastructural power,

the capacity of the state to actually

penetrate civil society and implement

its actions across its territories (MANN,

2008, p. 355). Despotic power refers to

the ability of state elites to make arbitrary

decisions without consultation with the

representatives of major civil society

groups. Infrastructural power in turn is

the capacity of a state, whether despotic

or democratic, to actually penetrate so-

ciety and implement logistically political

decisions throughout the realm and thus

enabling states to diffuse their power

through or penetrate their societies, while

the exercise of despotic power is by a

state that has a degree of authoritative

“power over” society. So states may be

strong in either of two quite different

ways (MANN, 2012B, p.13).

estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v. 8, n. 4, (dez. 2020), p. 10-34

derstanding of the Ottoman legacies. If so I shall conclude by highlighting

the importance of studies which oer colonial and postcolonial approaches to

the analysis of the Ottoman empire (AHMAD, 2014, p.1.; DERINGIL, 2003;

KÜHN, 2003; MAKDISI, 2002; ELDEM, 2015)

, as well as the signicance of

decolonial knowledge production and epistemic disobedience in challenging

dominant ideologies (MIGNOLO, 2011, p. 119, p. 17 ; 2009 p. 160).

While emphasizing the importance of a non-Orientalised decolo-

nial approach to the study of the Ottoman Empire and as well as the suc-

cessive nation-states in the Middle East and beyond, I have embraced the

emancipatory, critical and deeply humanistic potentials and intellectual

legacy of “Orientalism”. The purpose of keeping alive its powerful and

inspiring critique of imperial and colonial politics, and their discourses of

justication across the globe is twofold: rst, to expand and further devel-

op the conceptual frames provided by “Orientalism” in order to facilitate

decolonial thinking and knowledge production. And relatedly, second, to

take a rm position against attempts to use “Orientalism” as a protective

shield for the defense of colonial and cruel policies and practices wherev-

er they occur and whoever commits them.

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