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Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine
In its last decade, the Ottoman Empire underwent a period of dynamic reform, and the 1908 revolution transformed the empire's 20 million subjects into citizens overnight. Questions quickly emerged about what it meant to be Ottoman, what bound the empire together, what role religion and ethnicity would play in politics, and what liberty, reform, and enfranchisement would look like. Ottoman Brothers explores the development of Ottoman collective identity, tracing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews became imperial citizens together. In Palestine, even against the backdrop of the emergence of the Zionist movement and Arab nationalism, Jews and Arabs cooperated in local development and local institutions as they embraced imperial citizenship. As Michelle Campos reveals, the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine was not immanent, but rather it erupted in tension with the promises and shortcomings of "civic Ottomanism."
358 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 2010
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March 25, 2015
“This book examines the meaning of liberty, citizenship, and public life in the last Islamic empire. While building on earlier studies of the revolution and the late Ottoman reform tradition, this book is an innovative study of the struggles over the content and contours of imperial citizenship and nationhood on the eve of the end of empire. At the core of the Ottoman revolution is what I call ‘civic Ottomanism,’ a grassroots imperial citizenship project that promoted a unified sociopolitical identity of an Ottoman people struggling over the new rights and obligations of revolutionary political membership. By tracing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews became imperial citizens together, I put forward the view of the Ottoman nation, not simply as an ‘imagined’ or discursive imperial community, but as a shared field of social and political interaction and contestation” (3). The geographic focus of the book is centered on the Istanbul-Palestine axis, which is examined so as to demonstrate the “permeability” of the Ottoman “imperial space” as Ottoman civic ideas and social capital dispersed centrifugally from the capital to backwater regions of the Empire. Discursively, ‘civic Ottomanism’ revolved around French revolutionary slogans like “liberty, equality, fraternity,” and these were often reinterpreted in a manner that was unique to the Ottoman context in which they were articulated. For example, the notion of “liberty” could be reinterpreted with a specifically Islamic bent to its meaning and connotation. Therefore, Ottoman sociopolitical ideals were a synthesis of European Enlightenment thinking and Eastern values. What Campos ultimately seeks to show is that, despite the conventional wisdom that treats the breakup of the Ottoman Empire as a forgone conclusion based on its ‘Balkanization’ along competing ethno-religious lines, the late Ottoman Empire did foster an inclusive imperial identity that was adopted by a great many of its subjects. This generic Ottoman identity was not just an awkward incongruity. It was a viable hypostasis. Campos’ work looks at how religious and ethnic minorities in the Ottoman Empire were able to both “tap into” the Ottoman citizenship project and how they were excluded by it (7).
The first chapter looks at the period of Ottoman history from the suspension of the Ottoman constitution by Sultan Abdulhamid II through to its restoration after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. This was, of course, a period of Ottoman history beset by stagnation and the progressive dismantling of the Empire at the hands of secessionist movements and European imperial powers. After Young Turk army officers in Salonika marched on Istanbul and forced the Sultan to reinstitute the constitution and reconvene a parliamentary assembly, the Ottoman populace – in general, at least – erupted in jubilation. The catchword of the hour was “liberty,” one of four terms that actually had widespread currency at the time and which reflected the synthesis of Ottoman admiration for the ideals of the French Revolution and contemporary Persian revolutionary agitation: “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice”. The Ottomans felt that the events of 1908 portended the end to Ottoman decline and the rebirth of a young, vibrant, dynamic Ottoman nation and identity. This was very much in keeping with European nationalist tropes of the time about the ‘reawakening’ of the once-glorious but now-decrepit, primordial nation and its destiny to rise again.
This revolution in thinking and the optimism it gave rise to was accompanied by a desacralization of the person of the Sultan. The Sultan was maligned in print media and his pretensions of divine commission from God ridiculed. In his place, the ideals of the Young Turk Revolution were transfigured into objects of virtual religious devotion. It was a religion of hurriya! This freedom ‘fetishization’ was not just directed at political institutions; it influenced social organizations like churches. Nevertheless, there were limits to this freedom. The CUP, while ostensibly dispensing freedom to the people of the Ottoman Empire, also used it to manipulate the masses, for whom the CUP leadership actually had contempt as mere sheep. They were but a means to an end.
Campos regards the post-1908 revolutionary Ottoman Empire as being, or at least conceived as by Ottoman intellectuals, an archetypal multicultural state that anticipated twenty-first-century visions of what that means (59). The impetus behind this movement for an all-encompassing ‘Ottoman’ citizenship or ‘civic Ottomanism’ was, first and foremost, the very diverse and multi-ethnic nature of the Empire itself. The presence of territorially avaricious European imperial states encircling the Empire, epitomized by the hated “Capitulations” (extra-territorial privileges given to European expats in the realm), and the manifest discontent and irredentism of the non-Muslim ethno-religious minorities, is what prompted the Sultans of the late Ottoman period to truly broaden the appeal of being ‘Ottoman’ by proffering ‘equal rights’ to all of their subjects regardless of background. However, this hardly worked, as the policy of Ottomanism was schizophrenic in that it tried to make Ottoman identity attractive to non-Muslims in the empire in order to shore up what was ultimately conceived by Istanbul as an irrevocably Muslim, or at least, Muslim-dominated state!
Campos takes issue with Ussama Makdisi’s argument that the Ottomanism project was a completely top-down affair directed, and essentially foisted by Istanbul, on the outer reaches of the Empire. As he points out, this ignores the popular enthusiasm for Ottomanism manifest in various grassroots and quotidian circles, especially the bourgeois intelligentsia (65). To assist himself in this, Campos looks at certain Ottoman intellectuals like Butrus al-Bustani and Muhammad Abduh who seem to have envisioned a new Ottoman nationalism based on love of the watan or homeland – a territorial loyalty – superior to religious allegiances (this is particularly true of Bustani, although in the case of Abduh, I doubt it). Ottoman schooling projects were directed at this design, but Istanbul could never really compete with the pedagogical resources of the European states active in Ottoman lands. Moreover, the rudimentary education the Ottomans did dole out to their subjects actually backfired: it produced the literati who would eventually spearhead the 1908 Revolution.
Even after adopting the ideology of Ottomanism, the Ottoman Empire could never shake the Islamic supremacy that ran through Ottoman culture like a watermark. Indeed, the military remained the purview of the Muslim population. Not only were Muslims still preeminent in the Empire, but Muslim Turks were considered the naturally ruling caste of the Empire and its military. Non-Muslims were not exactly in a rush to embrace the ostensible egalitarianism of Ottomanism either. They often feared that their special privileges as European client minorities might be threatened if they embraced a thoroughly Ottoman identity. They certainly did not wish to see equality extended to the point of conscripting their young men for compulsory military service alongside the Muslim overlords of the Empire. Campos tries to instantiate some of the ways in which grassroots Ottomans from sundry religious backgrounds attempted to foster community cohesion; this was perhaps most evident in various public ceremonies dedicated to ‘common’ social causes and remembrance days. However, Campos cannot seem to escape the fact that these were thoroughly public spectacles, and therefore any pretensions to ‘unity’ – even the exchange of handshakes and kisses by patriarchs and imams and rabbis – can be skeptically received as likely having been contrived and ‘showy’, not genuine. Nevertheless, certain spontaneous acts of Ottoman solidarity are hard to explain away. For example, in the aftermath of the declaration of independence by Bulgaria in 1908, and the annexation of Bosnia by Austria, angry Ottomans of all walks of life participated in a boycott of Austrian products and succeeded in pressuring the Austrians into providing financial compensation to the Ottoman Empire for their forcible seizure of territory. Many Orthodox Christians – who no doubt had affinity for the Balkan peoples, at least religiously – participated in significant numbers in this mass demonstration of protest.
Campos’ book takes an interesting turn once you get past the halfway mark. It becomes clear that “Ottoman Brothers” is more than simply a pseudo-apology for the Ottoman Empire or an attempt to rehabilitate its image; the book is a contemporary argument about Zionism. This design is not immediately apparent in the first chapters of Campos’ monograph, but it eventually becomes clear that he is setting the stage – finding a pretext, if you will – for mounting an offensive against the Zionist movement by crediting it with destroying any chance Jews and Arabs may have had to live in relative harmony in Palestine, sharing a common geographic identity. Hitherto, Campos’ argument has been that the Ottomanist project of the late Ottoman Empire provided a workable template for bringing Jews, Muslims, Christians and various ethnicities together under one roof.
Now at this point I think I would like to point out two problems with Campos’ general train of thought. First, in order to move forward Campos has to assume that he has successfully argued for the viability of the Ottomanist project, that it was a workable theory that was simply deracinated in its infancy by World War One. This, to say the least, is debatable. Although Istanbul appeared to make feigning movements toward drawing up a more inclusive legal definition of an “Ottoman,” the Sultan’s, and later the CUP’s, conception of the Ottoman Empire was essentially an Islamic one. This was quite simply endemic. I really don’t think Campos cogently demonstrates that Ussama Makdisi is incorrect in arguing that Ottomanism was a top-down imposition on the imperial realm. Second, it is all well for Campos to suggest that the Zionist movement eventually proved the mortal wound to would-be Jewish-Arab amity in Palestine, but this is largely a counterfactual argument. We’ll never know, and Campos does not really have to ‘prove’ his thesis, because it is impossible to test it. It’s a bit like a lawyer making an objectionable statement that he knows will be stricken from the record by the judge; just throwing it out to the jury will influence how they feel about it, whether they are instructed from the judge to disregard it or not. Indeed, even in his (I think, unreasonably) sanguine assessment of Palestinian Arab overtures to native Jews in Palestine to reject Zionist immigrants and join Arab Palestinians in a common Palestinian identity, the Arab-supremacist ideals of Arab majority is apparent: native Jews were invited to abandon their language and adopt Arabic. In other words, Jews were being asked to voluntarily allow themselves to be subsumed into the Arab community! Moreover, Arabic is a language deeply associated with Islam, so what would this mean for Jews who wished to remain faithful to their own religion? As Campos observes, Palestinian Christians took up the offer and dropped Syriac for Arabic. Some good it did them! In a nutshell, Campos does not seem to pick up on how the Muslim Arab Palestinian attitude actually belies his argument, that there was a workable model of Jewish-Arab coexistence based on a geographic common identity, rooted in the Ottomanist civic project.
The first chapter looks at the period of Ottoman history from the suspension of the Ottoman constitution by Sultan Abdulhamid II through to its restoration after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. This was, of course, a period of Ottoman history beset by stagnation and the progressive dismantling of the Empire at the hands of secessionist movements and European imperial powers. After Young Turk army officers in Salonika marched on Istanbul and forced the Sultan to reinstitute the constitution and reconvene a parliamentary assembly, the Ottoman populace – in general, at least – erupted in jubilation. The catchword of the hour was “liberty,” one of four terms that actually had widespread currency at the time and which reflected the synthesis of Ottoman admiration for the ideals of the French Revolution and contemporary Persian revolutionary agitation: “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice”. The Ottomans felt that the events of 1908 portended the end to Ottoman decline and the rebirth of a young, vibrant, dynamic Ottoman nation and identity. This was very much in keeping with European nationalist tropes of the time about the ‘reawakening’ of the once-glorious but now-decrepit, primordial nation and its destiny to rise again.
This revolution in thinking and the optimism it gave rise to was accompanied by a desacralization of the person of the Sultan. The Sultan was maligned in print media and his pretensions of divine commission from God ridiculed. In his place, the ideals of the Young Turk Revolution were transfigured into objects of virtual religious devotion. It was a religion of hurriya! This freedom ‘fetishization’ was not just directed at political institutions; it influenced social organizations like churches. Nevertheless, there were limits to this freedom. The CUP, while ostensibly dispensing freedom to the people of the Ottoman Empire, also used it to manipulate the masses, for whom the CUP leadership actually had contempt as mere sheep. They were but a means to an end.
Campos regards the post-1908 revolutionary Ottoman Empire as being, or at least conceived as by Ottoman intellectuals, an archetypal multicultural state that anticipated twenty-first-century visions of what that means (59). The impetus behind this movement for an all-encompassing ‘Ottoman’ citizenship or ‘civic Ottomanism’ was, first and foremost, the very diverse and multi-ethnic nature of the Empire itself. The presence of territorially avaricious European imperial states encircling the Empire, epitomized by the hated “Capitulations” (extra-territorial privileges given to European expats in the realm), and the manifest discontent and irredentism of the non-Muslim ethno-religious minorities, is what prompted the Sultans of the late Ottoman period to truly broaden the appeal of being ‘Ottoman’ by proffering ‘equal rights’ to all of their subjects regardless of background. However, this hardly worked, as the policy of Ottomanism was schizophrenic in that it tried to make Ottoman identity attractive to non-Muslims in the empire in order to shore up what was ultimately conceived by Istanbul as an irrevocably Muslim, or at least, Muslim-dominated state!
Campos takes issue with Ussama Makdisi’s argument that the Ottomanism project was a completely top-down affair directed, and essentially foisted by Istanbul, on the outer reaches of the Empire. As he points out, this ignores the popular enthusiasm for Ottomanism manifest in various grassroots and quotidian circles, especially the bourgeois intelligentsia (65). To assist himself in this, Campos looks at certain Ottoman intellectuals like Butrus al-Bustani and Muhammad Abduh who seem to have envisioned a new Ottoman nationalism based on love of the watan or homeland – a territorial loyalty – superior to religious allegiances (this is particularly true of Bustani, although in the case of Abduh, I doubt it). Ottoman schooling projects were directed at this design, but Istanbul could never really compete with the pedagogical resources of the European states active in Ottoman lands. Moreover, the rudimentary education the Ottomans did dole out to their subjects actually backfired: it produced the literati who would eventually spearhead the 1908 Revolution.
Even after adopting the ideology of Ottomanism, the Ottoman Empire could never shake the Islamic supremacy that ran through Ottoman culture like a watermark. Indeed, the military remained the purview of the Muslim population. Not only were Muslims still preeminent in the Empire, but Muslim Turks were considered the naturally ruling caste of the Empire and its military. Non-Muslims were not exactly in a rush to embrace the ostensible egalitarianism of Ottomanism either. They often feared that their special privileges as European client minorities might be threatened if they embraced a thoroughly Ottoman identity. They certainly did not wish to see equality extended to the point of conscripting their young men for compulsory military service alongside the Muslim overlords of the Empire. Campos tries to instantiate some of the ways in which grassroots Ottomans from sundry religious backgrounds attempted to foster community cohesion; this was perhaps most evident in various public ceremonies dedicated to ‘common’ social causes and remembrance days. However, Campos cannot seem to escape the fact that these were thoroughly public spectacles, and therefore any pretensions to ‘unity’ – even the exchange of handshakes and kisses by patriarchs and imams and rabbis – can be skeptically received as likely having been contrived and ‘showy’, not genuine. Nevertheless, certain spontaneous acts of Ottoman solidarity are hard to explain away. For example, in the aftermath of the declaration of independence by Bulgaria in 1908, and the annexation of Bosnia by Austria, angry Ottomans of all walks of life participated in a boycott of Austrian products and succeeded in pressuring the Austrians into providing financial compensation to the Ottoman Empire for their forcible seizure of territory. Many Orthodox Christians – who no doubt had affinity for the Balkan peoples, at least religiously – participated in significant numbers in this mass demonstration of protest.
Campos’ book takes an interesting turn once you get past the halfway mark. It becomes clear that “Ottoman Brothers” is more than simply a pseudo-apology for the Ottoman Empire or an attempt to rehabilitate its image; the book is a contemporary argument about Zionism. This design is not immediately apparent in the first chapters of Campos’ monograph, but it eventually becomes clear that he is setting the stage – finding a pretext, if you will – for mounting an offensive against the Zionist movement by crediting it with destroying any chance Jews and Arabs may have had to live in relative harmony in Palestine, sharing a common geographic identity. Hitherto, Campos’ argument has been that the Ottomanist project of the late Ottoman Empire provided a workable template for bringing Jews, Muslims, Christians and various ethnicities together under one roof.
Now at this point I think I would like to point out two problems with Campos’ general train of thought. First, in order to move forward Campos has to assume that he has successfully argued for the viability of the Ottomanist project, that it was a workable theory that was simply deracinated in its infancy by World War One. This, to say the least, is debatable. Although Istanbul appeared to make feigning movements toward drawing up a more inclusive legal definition of an “Ottoman,” the Sultan’s, and later the CUP’s, conception of the Ottoman Empire was essentially an Islamic one. This was quite simply endemic. I really don’t think Campos cogently demonstrates that Ussama Makdisi is incorrect in arguing that Ottomanism was a top-down imposition on the imperial realm. Second, it is all well for Campos to suggest that the Zionist movement eventually proved the mortal wound to would-be Jewish-Arab amity in Palestine, but this is largely a counterfactual argument. We’ll never know, and Campos does not really have to ‘prove’ his thesis, because it is impossible to test it. It’s a bit like a lawyer making an objectionable statement that he knows will be stricken from the record by the judge; just throwing it out to the jury will influence how they feel about it, whether they are instructed from the judge to disregard it or not. Indeed, even in his (I think, unreasonably) sanguine assessment of Palestinian Arab overtures to native Jews in Palestine to reject Zionist immigrants and join Arab Palestinians in a common Palestinian identity, the Arab-supremacist ideals of Arab majority is apparent: native Jews were invited to abandon their language and adopt Arabic. In other words, Jews were being asked to voluntarily allow themselves to be subsumed into the Arab community! Moreover, Arabic is a language deeply associated with Islam, so what would this mean for Jews who wished to remain faithful to their own religion? As Campos observes, Palestinian Christians took up the offer and dropped Syriac for Arabic. Some good it did them! In a nutshell, Campos does not seem to pick up on how the Muslim Arab Palestinian attitude actually belies his argument, that there was a workable model of Jewish-Arab coexistence based on a geographic common identity, rooted in the Ottomanist civic project.
August 23, 2018
1908 Revisited
More than the title indicates, the book's actual coverage is the greater Levant, extending from Salonica and Egypt in the west, through Istanbul , Bilad Al Shams (greater Syria) and as far east as Iraq. and illuminates the general euphoria surrounding the liberal democratic atmosphere of the 1908 CUP revolution. Grounded in the Tanzimat reforms of 1839 and 1856, the CUP reduced the Sultan Abdulhamid II to a figurehead and, for a brief 4-5 year span, offered a rejoinder to European critics that the Ottoman Empire was incapable of modern government. It was a glorious idea, widely embraced but built on shakey foundations.
The Palestinian material focuses mainly on Jerusalem with a minor emphasis on Jaffa and Hebron as Campos admits that more widespread data just isn't available. She describes some of the rivalry between the Arab and Greek speaking factions of the Orthodox Christian Church, which lead to riots and the slow embrace of Zionism by members of the Jewish community, especially Sephardic Jews. Notable is the growth of infrastructure covered by the Jerusalem civic government in areas such as as policing, electrification, market regulation, health and safety, though more could have been said about the structure and activities of community councils. There were forays into the establishment of a hospital and schools but most of this was still run by confessional and private groups. Another interesting development discussed was the sudden interest in Free Mason societies, apparently for the usual reason of expanding business contacts, but surprising given the hard line often taken against Masons in popular conspiracy theories.
However Campos also mentions a number of factors working against change:
1. Vested interests of those most advantaged by the old millet system, notably clergy who faced a reduced role as intermediaries between their communities and the State. To many Muslims equality of Christians and Jews was seen as a heresy that denied the belief that Islam superseded its parent faiths.
2. The secession of Bulgaria and the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1909 which, by removing a large Christian population gave greater emphasis to Islamic identity as core to the empire.
3. The wholesale massacre of Armenians in Cilicia, also in 1909. While eliciting a great deal of sympathy for the Armenians from all communities in Jerusalem this highlighted distrust between Muslims and Christians as well as a breach of trust as to the good will of the State to all it's members.
4. The failure of minority groups to obtain proportional representation and excluding workers, agricultural labourers and nomads. Using the Jerusalem city council as a microcosm the problem was that voters were limited to males 25 and over who paid property tax, as opposed including those who paid rent, a majority of Christians amd Jews, or a merchant's tax or the tax on military exemption. Another problem. Historically only Muslims were allowed to acquire property until 1856 leading to an imbalance. Another factor was the legal protection offered to Christians and Jews under the capitulations to European trading partners which accounted for approximately 25% of a population of 40,000, but categorized these individuals as non-citizens. In larger centres such as Istanbul, Salonica and Izmir that proportion was still a substantial 15%.
5. The failure to establish Turkish as a widely used unifying language in the school, though one could take this either as a symptom or a cause. While Turkish language instruction was a requirement of all schooling where it was offered, in practice it was rarely done.
6. A perceived lack of commitment to a policy of decentralization in favour of Turkification.
The book also contains an extensive look at attitudes towards Zionism which was not seen as a security threat to the same degree as was Balkan separatism or other nationalist movements. Zionists did encourage their adherents to adopt Ottoman citizenship and indeed this was a requirement on the Rothschild estates and promoted by Zionist organizations where it was argued that Jewish immigration would add to the Ottoman mosaic. Said Riza Bey, President of the Ottoman Parliament: (pp209) "If the Jews are moderate, the government will not oppose bringing them into the empire. But we should not forget that if the Jews make out of Zionism a political question... then a Jewish question will be created in Turkey [sic] and its outcome will be very bitter." That message was mixed however with the imposition of laws against Jewish land ownership and immigration. Nor was Zionism without controversy both within and outside the Jewish community. A much briefer look is given to pan-Arabism as an ideology in the final chapter, aptly titled, "Unscrambling the Omelet". Campos concludes that neither contributed to the failure of Ottomanism, but were able to take root as a result of its demise.
Overall an enjoyable and informative read of an era which did not have the luxury of time to achieve it's goals. There is extra information in the footnotes and the bibliography which covers sources in French, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish as well as English is most impressive.
More than the title indicates, the book's actual coverage is the greater Levant, extending from Salonica and Egypt in the west, through Istanbul , Bilad Al Shams (greater Syria) and as far east as Iraq. and illuminates the general euphoria surrounding the liberal democratic atmosphere of the 1908 CUP revolution. Grounded in the Tanzimat reforms of 1839 and 1856, the CUP reduced the Sultan Abdulhamid II to a figurehead and, for a brief 4-5 year span, offered a rejoinder to European critics that the Ottoman Empire was incapable of modern government. It was a glorious idea, widely embraced but built on shakey foundations.
The Palestinian material focuses mainly on Jerusalem with a minor emphasis on Jaffa and Hebron as Campos admits that more widespread data just isn't available. She describes some of the rivalry between the Arab and Greek speaking factions of the Orthodox Christian Church, which lead to riots and the slow embrace of Zionism by members of the Jewish community, especially Sephardic Jews. Notable is the growth of infrastructure covered by the Jerusalem civic government in areas such as as policing, electrification, market regulation, health and safety, though more could have been said about the structure and activities of community councils. There were forays into the establishment of a hospital and schools but most of this was still run by confessional and private groups. Another interesting development discussed was the sudden interest in Free Mason societies, apparently for the usual reason of expanding business contacts, but surprising given the hard line often taken against Masons in popular conspiracy theories.
However Campos also mentions a number of factors working against change:
1. Vested interests of those most advantaged by the old millet system, notably clergy who faced a reduced role as intermediaries between their communities and the State. To many Muslims equality of Christians and Jews was seen as a heresy that denied the belief that Islam superseded its parent faiths.
2. The secession of Bulgaria and the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1909 which, by removing a large Christian population gave greater emphasis to Islamic identity as core to the empire.
3. The wholesale massacre of Armenians in Cilicia, also in 1909. While eliciting a great deal of sympathy for the Armenians from all communities in Jerusalem this highlighted distrust between Muslims and Christians as well as a breach of trust as to the good will of the State to all it's members.
4. The failure of minority groups to obtain proportional representation and excluding workers, agricultural labourers and nomads. Using the Jerusalem city council as a microcosm the problem was that voters were limited to males 25 and over who paid property tax, as opposed including those who paid rent, a majority of Christians amd Jews, or a merchant's tax or the tax on military exemption. Another problem. Historically only Muslims were allowed to acquire property until 1856 leading to an imbalance. Another factor was the legal protection offered to Christians and Jews under the capitulations to European trading partners which accounted for approximately 25% of a population of 40,000, but categorized these individuals as non-citizens. In larger centres such as Istanbul, Salonica and Izmir that proportion was still a substantial 15%.
5. The failure to establish Turkish as a widely used unifying language in the school, though one could take this either as a symptom or a cause. While Turkish language instruction was a requirement of all schooling where it was offered, in practice it was rarely done.
6. A perceived lack of commitment to a policy of decentralization in favour of Turkification.
The book also contains an extensive look at attitudes towards Zionism which was not seen as a security threat to the same degree as was Balkan separatism or other nationalist movements. Zionists did encourage their adherents to adopt Ottoman citizenship and indeed this was a requirement on the Rothschild estates and promoted by Zionist organizations where it was argued that Jewish immigration would add to the Ottoman mosaic. Said Riza Bey, President of the Ottoman Parliament: (pp209) "If the Jews are moderate, the government will not oppose bringing them into the empire. But we should not forget that if the Jews make out of Zionism a political question... then a Jewish question will be created in Turkey [sic] and its outcome will be very bitter." That message was mixed however with the imposition of laws against Jewish land ownership and immigration. Nor was Zionism without controversy both within and outside the Jewish community. A much briefer look is given to pan-Arabism as an ideology in the final chapter, aptly titled, "Unscrambling the Omelet". Campos concludes that neither contributed to the failure of Ottomanism, but were able to take root as a result of its demise.
Overall an enjoyable and informative read of an era which did not have the luxury of time to achieve it's goals. There is extra information in the footnotes and the bibliography which covers sources in French, Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish as well as English is most impressive.
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November 19, 2023Bluntly, I do not like this book and I think it emblematizes some worrying tendencies in Ottoman and Jewish historiography. The first is an Ottoman imperial nostalgia; the second a revision of minority history (and particularly Jewish history) dogmatically seeking an alternative to the violent ethnic sorting of the twentieth century. As is often the case, the book includes a great deal of genuinely interesting information, shaped strangely by fidelity to the genre: extreme credulity towards state dogma; temporal and geographic selectivity; formulaic references to historical contingency and human agency; and an aversion to broader theories on minoritization, assimilation, exclusionary nationalism, and so on. Lyn Julius writes in a review of Orit Bashkin’s New Babylonians (another new standard of the genre): “It is the failure of postmodern academic research that in an effort to be non-judgmental all facts are given equal weight. Politics and ideology are de-emphasized.” The failure of Ottomanism comes as an eternal disappointment to writers like Campos, frustrated that their historical subjects – particularly national minorities – are less credulous than they.
One egregious example comes in the section on the first constitutional elections. Regarding the tying of election rights to citizenship, Campos writes, “the result was the effective and disproportionate disenfranchisement of large numbers of non-Muslims” (110). Redundancy (“the result was the effective […]”) betrays Campos’ effort to avoid attributing any political function to the CUP’s election decisions. Likewise, taxpaying requirements for election rights “would have a disproportionate impact on the empire’s non-Muslims” (111). Once again, the active political dimension is left to the reader’s inference. Contrast this with how Campos describes minority political actions in the period: “Rather than solely relying on their geographically designated representatives, non-Muslim groups imposed a neo-millet structure onto the parliament” (125). So, the CUP stumbles onto minority disenfranchisement, perhaps entirely by accident; when minorities respond by continuing to organize along communal lines, they have imposed sectarian boundaries onto the elections.
Campos’s discussions of Zionism are marked by a similar tunnel-vision. Here the reader is expected to believe that conversations in the Jewish press happened essentially independent of outside pressures. The nervousness within the Jewish press, palpable even in the sections quoted by Campos, somehow never enters her analysis of the interaction between Zionism, anti-Zionism, and Ottomanism. Fresco, for example, warns “to take refuge from the catastrophe that can fall on our heads” (216). Moreover, while Fresco insists from Palestine that “the land belongs to the Muslims, to the Christians, to the Jews, all of them partners” (Fresco, 216), the editor of the Salonican Judeo-Spanish newspaper writes that “Palestine belonged to the Arabs” (216) (Campos does not note the discrepancy). Certainly, some Ottoman Jews in the period were firm and sincere anti-Zionists. Yet the evidence presented by Campos points to a precarious Jewish community seeking desperately to prove its loyalty in a period of growing xenophobia. Campos’s claim that “the cumulative effect of the anti-Zionist expressions in the Sephardi Jewish press” caused Jewish members of parliament to promise to “oppose with all their abilities the Zionist movement” (214) seems to follow an entirely naïve and depoliticized ‘marketplace of ideas’ paradigm.
A further problem with the book is structural. In the period discussed by Campos, Palestine was an economic, political, and cultural backwater. Ottoman citizenship within Palestine was subject to constant pressures from the more contentious areas of the Ottoman periphery, which Campos can only discuss briefly. By reading the situation in Palestine outwards onto the Ottoman Empire, Campos inadvertently inflicts the pathologies of post-Zionist Jewish studies onto the Empire’s other minorities. She attempts to walk back some of the more problematic implications in the conclusion, emphasizing the structural barriers to successful Ottoman liberal citizenship; yet it is difficult to read sections on how “non-Muslim groups imposed a neo-millet structure” without hearing an echo of Turkish nationalist historiography.
One egregious example comes in the section on the first constitutional elections. Regarding the tying of election rights to citizenship, Campos writes, “the result was the effective and disproportionate disenfranchisement of large numbers of non-Muslims” (110). Redundancy (“the result was the effective […]”) betrays Campos’ effort to avoid attributing any political function to the CUP’s election decisions. Likewise, taxpaying requirements for election rights “would have a disproportionate impact on the empire’s non-Muslims” (111). Once again, the active political dimension is left to the reader’s inference. Contrast this with how Campos describes minority political actions in the period: “Rather than solely relying on their geographically designated representatives, non-Muslim groups imposed a neo-millet structure onto the parliament” (125). So, the CUP stumbles onto minority disenfranchisement, perhaps entirely by accident; when minorities respond by continuing to organize along communal lines, they have imposed sectarian boundaries onto the elections.
Campos’s discussions of Zionism are marked by a similar tunnel-vision. Here the reader is expected to believe that conversations in the Jewish press happened essentially independent of outside pressures. The nervousness within the Jewish press, palpable even in the sections quoted by Campos, somehow never enters her analysis of the interaction between Zionism, anti-Zionism, and Ottomanism. Fresco, for example, warns “to take refuge from the catastrophe that can fall on our heads” (216). Moreover, while Fresco insists from Palestine that “the land belongs to the Muslims, to the Christians, to the Jews, all of them partners” (Fresco, 216), the editor of the Salonican Judeo-Spanish newspaper writes that “Palestine belonged to the Arabs” (216) (Campos does not note the discrepancy). Certainly, some Ottoman Jews in the period were firm and sincere anti-Zionists. Yet the evidence presented by Campos points to a precarious Jewish community seeking desperately to prove its loyalty in a period of growing xenophobia. Campos’s claim that “the cumulative effect of the anti-Zionist expressions in the Sephardi Jewish press” caused Jewish members of parliament to promise to “oppose with all their abilities the Zionist movement” (214) seems to follow an entirely naïve and depoliticized ‘marketplace of ideas’ paradigm.
A further problem with the book is structural. In the period discussed by Campos, Palestine was an economic, political, and cultural backwater. Ottoman citizenship within Palestine was subject to constant pressures from the more contentious areas of the Ottoman periphery, which Campos can only discuss briefly. By reading the situation in Palestine outwards onto the Ottoman Empire, Campos inadvertently inflicts the pathologies of post-Zionist Jewish studies onto the Empire’s other minorities. She attempts to walk back some of the more problematic implications in the conclusion, emphasizing the structural barriers to successful Ottoman liberal citizenship; yet it is difficult to read sections on how “non-Muslim groups imposed a neo-millet structure” without hearing an echo of Turkish nationalist historiography.
April 8, 2015
In Ottoman Brothers, Michelle Campos argues that while Ottomanism, in the wake of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, has been portrayed historically as hollow, state-supported discourse with limited public support, the reality was that calls for an interconfessional conceptualization of Ottoman citizenship indeed found popular resonance throughout the empire. While delineating the ways in which individuals attempted to make this vision a reality, she attempts to explain why, if this ideology did possess legitimate backing, it failed ultimately and the situation during the war devolved into one of ethnic conflict and violence. In other words, she rejects the idea that an Ottoman collective identity was doomed from the start and that this intrinsic misguidedness is the reason for its collapse. Instead, she argues for a more nuanced vision of what the concept meant to the citizens and why they were, in the end, unable to see it realized. Late Ottoman subjects, therefore, were not all merely groups of nationalities yearning to break free from the Ottoman yoke, but engaged genuinely with attempts to draw different communities together. It was only when these ventures failed that they perceived breaking away to be a worthwhile endeavor.
Following an introduction that highlights the need to engage complexity when dealing with the study of intercommunal relationships and warns against arriving at overly broad conclusions, Campos begins with a chapter that examines the people’s first reactions to the emerging discourse on Ottoman citizenship. Focusing particularly on the concepts of “liberty” and “freedom”, she argues that the way in which different groups interpreted these words based on their own contexts determined how they would work towards their particular vision of an Ottoman collective identity. Furthermore, even in these initial stages, it was evident that there were gaps between the message of Ottoman collective unity and equality and its reality. She emphasizes, for example, the disparity between the city and the countryside, noting that the latter was more reserved at first about the new constitution and that they were expected to support the constitution in name while still remaining subservient to the local notables. Similarly, there was little discussion regarding a transformation of gender roles, a realm where ideas of “liberty” did not appear to apply.
Chapter two examines how Greek nationalism inspired Ottomanism to be promulgated as a supra-national identity by the state and investigates the ways in which it trickled downwards and was internalized by individuals. The migration of Muslim refugees following the Balkan Wars, meanwhile, strengthened calls for Ottoman citizenship because it created a need to delineate boundaries between foreigners and “citizens”. From the beginning, however, individuals felt that “Ottoman” really meant “Turk” or “Muslim”, since the state remained Muslim and many nationalist separatist movements were already in full force by the time that “Ottoman” discourse came to the fore, thus reducing its core to a target audience that was more Turkish and Muslim. Still, there was hope that the constitution could solve the problems of sectarian conflict, the severity and frequency of which was often blamed on the sultan. The third chapter, meanwhile, delves into public politics, active participation in which people believed would be a key factor in engaging the difficult work needed to create an Ottoman collective identity. Local CUP branches, therefore, grew powerful as citizens flocked to them in support of the state’s Ottoman discourse. When it came to elections, however, Campos is able to document obstacles and discrimination encountered by non-Muslims that permitted skepticism and sectarianism to creep into political life, yet also highlights some of the genuine drives towards Ottomanism and community building espoused and enacted by the candidates (even if family and political connections ended up being the best indicators of political success).
Chapter four takes a look at the press during this era and argues that, following the dismantling of Abdulhamid II’s censorship policies, newspapers became important channels through which Ottomanism was promoted. These publications created ties between the newly educated class and those who were illiterate or could not afford to engage the press, turned citizens into critical commentators, empowered and inspired communities by highlighting those that had been successful in negotiating Ottomanism, documented failures and intercommunal abuses, helped resolve tensions through channels other than violence, and became a locus for discussion. The fifth chapter, meanwhile, examines the role of urban institutions that aided Ottomanization “as sites of interconfessional sociability and cooperation, through their commitment to the revolutionary ideals of reform, democratization, and a modern vision of progress, and under the banner of Ottoman imperial patriotism”. Municipalities were one such venue, as they were able to promote and support local social and economic development that drew different communities together to benefit from cooperative projects, while Masonic Lodges provided a safe space for interconfessional and intercommunal gatherings.
Campos’ penultimate chapter examines that ways in which Jewish identities fit into Ottomanism, which grew to be less attractive than Zionism as the former’s failures became more evident. She notes, however, that being “Jewish’ was not a monolithic concept and some groups, such as Sephardi Jews, perceived the Ottoman Empire as being their best chance at protection. Her chapter, therefore, focuses on those Jews who were shaped by “cultural Hebraism” and believed that a Jewish revival would benefit the empire as a whole by strengthening communities and encouraging intercommunal relationships. Although political Zionism could be a threat to authority, most in the government believed that the majority of the Zionists were more cultural than political and thus posed no problem for an Ottomanization project. The final chapter looks at the Arabist side of the equation, which supported Ottomanism yet was concerned about its Turkifying elements, particularly in regards to the language. The Balkan Wars galvanized Arabists to overcome their concerns and demonstrate their support for the empire, but this was made easier by the fact that the state was more “Muslim” than ever by the conflict’s end and the CUP could pursue a more explicitly “Islamic” program.
The author places the blame of the final disintegration of Ottomanism on World War I, because it brought massive Arab conscription, communal war suffering, and marital law, thus weakening desires to identify with the state. Ultimately, however, it was Ottomanism’s failure to live up to its promises and the inability of individuals’ best efforts to save it that led to increasing disillusionment with, and abandonment of, the notion of an Ottoman collective identity. In particular, the state was unable to commit itself wholeheartedly to the pragmatic empowerment of non-Muslims, which dampened enthusiasm for the project. Individuals then began to pursue paths that strengthened individual communities and subverted spaces that had been used previously to champion Ottomanism (such as the press) in order to promote individual and communal agendas. Overall, Ottoman Brothers can be dense and complicated at times, but does a good job of providing a new perspective and engaging Ottoman discourse from a popular level. While her work is probably too dense and insufficiently signposted to be of valuable to a casual reader, scholars of all types could benefit from reviewing this fresh and nuanced vision of imperial intercommunal relationships and citizenship discourses.
Following an introduction that highlights the need to engage complexity when dealing with the study of intercommunal relationships and warns against arriving at overly broad conclusions, Campos begins with a chapter that examines the people’s first reactions to the emerging discourse on Ottoman citizenship. Focusing particularly on the concepts of “liberty” and “freedom”, she argues that the way in which different groups interpreted these words based on their own contexts determined how they would work towards their particular vision of an Ottoman collective identity. Furthermore, even in these initial stages, it was evident that there were gaps between the message of Ottoman collective unity and equality and its reality. She emphasizes, for example, the disparity between the city and the countryside, noting that the latter was more reserved at first about the new constitution and that they were expected to support the constitution in name while still remaining subservient to the local notables. Similarly, there was little discussion regarding a transformation of gender roles, a realm where ideas of “liberty” did not appear to apply.
Chapter two examines how Greek nationalism inspired Ottomanism to be promulgated as a supra-national identity by the state and investigates the ways in which it trickled downwards and was internalized by individuals. The migration of Muslim refugees following the Balkan Wars, meanwhile, strengthened calls for Ottoman citizenship because it created a need to delineate boundaries between foreigners and “citizens”. From the beginning, however, individuals felt that “Ottoman” really meant “Turk” or “Muslim”, since the state remained Muslim and many nationalist separatist movements were already in full force by the time that “Ottoman” discourse came to the fore, thus reducing its core to a target audience that was more Turkish and Muslim. Still, there was hope that the constitution could solve the problems of sectarian conflict, the severity and frequency of which was often blamed on the sultan. The third chapter, meanwhile, delves into public politics, active participation in which people believed would be a key factor in engaging the difficult work needed to create an Ottoman collective identity. Local CUP branches, therefore, grew powerful as citizens flocked to them in support of the state’s Ottoman discourse. When it came to elections, however, Campos is able to document obstacles and discrimination encountered by non-Muslims that permitted skepticism and sectarianism to creep into political life, yet also highlights some of the genuine drives towards Ottomanism and community building espoused and enacted by the candidates (even if family and political connections ended up being the best indicators of political success).
Chapter four takes a look at the press during this era and argues that, following the dismantling of Abdulhamid II’s censorship policies, newspapers became important channels through which Ottomanism was promoted. These publications created ties between the newly educated class and those who were illiterate or could not afford to engage the press, turned citizens into critical commentators, empowered and inspired communities by highlighting those that had been successful in negotiating Ottomanism, documented failures and intercommunal abuses, helped resolve tensions through channels other than violence, and became a locus for discussion. The fifth chapter, meanwhile, examines the role of urban institutions that aided Ottomanization “as sites of interconfessional sociability and cooperation, through their commitment to the revolutionary ideals of reform, democratization, and a modern vision of progress, and under the banner of Ottoman imperial patriotism”. Municipalities were one such venue, as they were able to promote and support local social and economic development that drew different communities together to benefit from cooperative projects, while Masonic Lodges provided a safe space for interconfessional and intercommunal gatherings.
Campos’ penultimate chapter examines that ways in which Jewish identities fit into Ottomanism, which grew to be less attractive than Zionism as the former’s failures became more evident. She notes, however, that being “Jewish’ was not a monolithic concept and some groups, such as Sephardi Jews, perceived the Ottoman Empire as being their best chance at protection. Her chapter, therefore, focuses on those Jews who were shaped by “cultural Hebraism” and believed that a Jewish revival would benefit the empire as a whole by strengthening communities and encouraging intercommunal relationships. Although political Zionism could be a threat to authority, most in the government believed that the majority of the Zionists were more cultural than political and thus posed no problem for an Ottomanization project. The final chapter looks at the Arabist side of the equation, which supported Ottomanism yet was concerned about its Turkifying elements, particularly in regards to the language. The Balkan Wars galvanized Arabists to overcome their concerns and demonstrate their support for the empire, but this was made easier by the fact that the state was more “Muslim” than ever by the conflict’s end and the CUP could pursue a more explicitly “Islamic” program.
The author places the blame of the final disintegration of Ottomanism on World War I, because it brought massive Arab conscription, communal war suffering, and marital law, thus weakening desires to identify with the state. Ultimately, however, it was Ottomanism’s failure to live up to its promises and the inability of individuals’ best efforts to save it that led to increasing disillusionment with, and abandonment of, the notion of an Ottoman collective identity. In particular, the state was unable to commit itself wholeheartedly to the pragmatic empowerment of non-Muslims, which dampened enthusiasm for the project. Individuals then began to pursue paths that strengthened individual communities and subverted spaces that had been used previously to champion Ottomanism (such as the press) in order to promote individual and communal agendas. Overall, Ottoman Brothers can be dense and complicated at times, but does a good job of providing a new perspective and engaging Ottoman discourse from a popular level. While her work is probably too dense and insufficiently signposted to be of valuable to a casual reader, scholars of all types could benefit from reviewing this fresh and nuanced vision of imperial intercommunal relationships and citizenship discourses.
May 23, 2019
Really well written, very interesting, but not the history I was looking for. I was looking for something about interfaith activities in the Ottoman era, and this was about being united in the identity of "Ottoman" rather than in the individual religious groups.
October 3, 2021
it's a history book i had to read for class what am i supposed to say
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