Institutionalized migrant solidarity in the late Ottoman Empire: Armenian homeland associations (1800s–1920s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Yaşar Tolga Cora
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Information Networks ◽  
Demographic Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Community Administration

By focusing on the Armenian homeland associations (hayrenakts‘akank‘) established in Istanbul in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article examines the migrants’ activism and their achievements—facilitated by affective bonds based on shared origins. It outlines the Istanbul-based homeland associations’ development chronologically and discusses their cultural and economic goals in their home regions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article then focuses on their durability and ability to adapt to the needs of the communities in the series of great political and demographic changes in the late Ottoman Empire from mid-1890s to their reconstruction after the end of World War I. The homeland associations established in the post-genocide period reflect the persistence of local belonging as a basis of solidarity and they fulfilled important functions as information networks and intermediaries between the survivors and the community administration. The article argues that Armenian homeland associations constituted a space in which agency of the migrants and their interaction with broader social and political developments could be observed in the late Ottoman Empire. They were one of the most durable and institutionalized forms of migrant solidarity which render migrants’ agency visible in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire.

scholarly journals SHINY THINGS AND SOVEREIGN LEGALITIES: EXPROPRIATION OF DYNASTIC PROPERTY IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND EARLY TURKISH REPUBLIC

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-463
Author(s):  
Ceyda Karamursel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
To Come ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractThis article probes the legal expropriation of dynastic property in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Focused on the period from Abdülhamid II's deposal in 1909 to the decade immediately following the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, it takes parliamentary debates as entry points for exploring how this legislative process redefined the sovereign's relationship with property. Although this process was initially limited only to Yıldız Palace, the debates that surrounded it heuristically helped to shape a new understanding of public ownership of property that was put to use in other contexts in the years to come, most notably during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide, before establishing itself as the foundation of a new ownership regime with the republican appropriation and reuse of property two decades later.

ATROCITY PROPAGANDA AND THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MASSES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912–13)

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Doğan Çetinkaya
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Turkish Language ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractDuring the Balkan Wars (1912–13), the mobilization of the home front became significant for the belligerent states, which initiated propaganda activities demonizing their enemies and galvanizing the emotions of their publics. This paper explores one type of such mobilization efforts from above, atrocity propaganda, through which states sought to invoke hatred and mobilize public support for war by focusing on the atrocities (mezalim) that their coreligionists had suffered at the hands of enemies. Although the term “atrocity propaganda” has been used exclusively in the context of World War I in the historiography, the practice it describes was effectively utilized during the earlier Balkan Wars. In the Ottoman Empire, both state and civil initiatives played crucial roles in the making of atrocity propaganda, which was disseminated through intense coverage in the Turkish-language press. The imagery it employed shifted with the onset of the wars, becoming increasingly shocking. Atrocity propaganda contributed to the well-known radicalization of nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire.

The Politics of Poor Relief in the Late Ottoman Empire 1876-1914

1999 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadir Özbek
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
World War ◽  
Second Constitutional Period ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article examines the Ottoman state's increasing involvement in caring for the poor and the needy and the emergence of modern relief institutions and hospitals throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The particular focus will be on the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) and the second constitutional period (1908-14) up until World War I.Rather than presenting the emergence of poor-relief institutions in the Ottoman Empire as a function of increasing poverty and need, or as a function of the state's desire to control and regulate the urban population for various concerns, I concentrate on the dynamics of the political sphere. I will focus particularly on the political conflict between the sultan and the new political elite, whose identity was defined in relation to newly structured state functions and services.

“Twisted Desires,” Boy-Lovers, and Male–Male Cross-Generational Sex in the Late Ottoman Empire (1912–1918)

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Tuğçe Kayaal
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Sexually Abused ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Interaction ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Heterosexual Sex ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article explores the condemnation of male–male cross-generational sexual practices in the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914–1918) through a sexual harassment case that took place in an orphanage in Konya. Relying on the police registers and incorporating individual testimonies of orphan boys who were sexually abused by the headmaster, Münir Bey, I explore the wartime political and sexological discourses on cross-generational homoerotic sexual practices against the backdrop of the institutionalization of heterosexual sex. I argue that, rather than the act of sexual abuse itself, in the wartime ideological climate it was the sexual interaction between same-sex individuals that alarmed Ottoman state and society and forced them to take action against it. Male–male cross-generational sex and homoeroticism itself became bigger crimes than the act of sexually abusing underage individuals.

The Study of the Armenian Crisis of the late Ottoman Empire, or, “Seizing the Document by the Throat”

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 35-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selim Deringil
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Second World

For a Turkish historian of the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century, venturing into the Armenian crisis is like venturing into a minefield. It is fraught with dangers, the least of which is to be labeled a traitor by one's countrymen, and the worst of which is to be accused of being a “denialist” by one's Armenian colleagues. Even “balanced” analysis seems to have become politically incorrect of late, at least in some circles. The basic problem in the Armenian-Turkish polemic is that the sides do not actually address each other. They seize upon various capsule phrases, clichés and assumed political positions to heap opprobrium and abuse upon one another, to the point where we are confronted by something resembling a blood-feud. Thus Richard Hovanissian's obsession is to have the “Turkish side” admit, in a great ceremony of mea culpa, the claim of Genocide. On the other hand, Turkish historians and their like-minded foreign colleagues, at best, do contortionist acts to show that what happened to the Armenian people in 1915 does not fit the UN definition of genocide, which was fashioned after the Second World War to account for the Jewish Holocaust.

scholarly journals WOMEN'S VISIBILITY IN PETITIONS FROM GREATER SYRIA DURING THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 765-781 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fruma Zachs ◽  
Yuval Ben-Bassat
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
World War ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractThis article focuses on petitions by Ottoman women from Greater Syria during the late Ottoman era. After offering a general overview of women's petitions in the Ottoman Empire, it explores changes in women's petitions between 1865 and 1919 through several case studies. The article then discusses women's “double-voiced” petitions following the empire's defeat in World War I, particularly those submitted to the King-Crane Commission. The concept of “double-voiced” petitions, or speaking in a voice that reflects both a dominant and a muted discourse, is extended here from the genre of literary fiction to Ottoman women's petitions. We argue that in Greater Syria double-voiced petitions only began to appear with the empire's collapse, when women both participated in national struggles and strove to protect their rights as women in their own societies.

The First Stage of the Ottoman Modernization Viewed through the Prism of Walt Rostow’s Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Plamen Nanov
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Economic Growth Model ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
First World

The Modernization is a process conceived in the heart of the Western European world, which subsequently finds ground for its deployment in some non-Western societies also. The main goal of the present article is to clarify the logic, specifics and fluctuations in the genesis of the Ottoman modernization through the prism of historical sociology and Walt Rostow’s stages of Economic Growth model. Above all else, the focus of the research falls on the socio-economic, political, and military condition of the late Ottoman Empire. The mechanisms through which the Empire sustains its existence are illustrated, as well as the fundamental reasons for its fall. Secondly, the research accentuates the attempts of integrating the “Western” model of modernization done by the Ottoman Empire from the period of the “Tanzimat” to the end of the First World War, as well as the results of the said endeavour.

“NATIONALISM” AND KURDISH NOTABLES IN THE LATE OTTOMAN–EARLY REPUBLICAN ERA

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakan Özoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
World War ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
Hard Data ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Late Ottoman

The era culminating in World War I saw a transition from multinational empires to nation-states. Large empires such as the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman searched for ways to cope with the decline of their political control, while peoples in these empires shifted their political loyalties to nation-states. The Ottoman Empire offers a favorable canvas for studying new nationalisms that resulted in many successful and unsuccessful attempts to form nation-states. As an example of successful attempts, Arab nationalism has received the attention that it deserves in the field of Middle Eastern studies.1 Students have engaged in many complex debates on different aspects of Arab nationalism, enjoying a wealth of hard data. Studies on Kurdish nationalism, however, are still in their infancy. Only a very few scholars have addressed the issue in a scholarly manner.2 We still have an inadequate understanding of the nature of early Kurdish nationalism and its consequences for the Middle East in general and Turkish studies in particular. Partly because of the subject's political sensitivity, many scholars shy away from it. However, a consideration of Kurdish nationalism as an example of unsuccessful attempts to form a nation-state can contribute greatly to the study of nationalism in the Middle East.

Ottoman Turkey and Qing China

2021 ◽  
pp. 1058-1081
Author(s):  
Michael A. Reynolds ◽  
Rana Mitter
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Western World ◽  
Government Structure ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Relative Closeness ◽  
Tanzimat Reforms ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Unequal Treaties ◽  
Late Ottoman

The late Ottoman Empire and Qing China were both imperial states that were weakened by their relationship with the changing Western world. In 1839, the Ottoman Empire embarked on the Tanzimat reforms which sought to change ideas about education, technology, and government structure. In the same year, China experienced the first Opium War, and its defeat led to the signing of “unequal treaties” which would force China to deal on unfavorable terms with the West for the best part of a century. In the end, the empires met different fates. Qing China was replaced by a republic in 1912, but its territory remained mostly intact. The Ottoman Empire was split up after World War I. One reason for the split of the Ottoman Empire was the variegated nature of its population, compared even to the multiethnic Qing. Another was Turkey’s relative closeness to the other European powers, which made it easier for them to divide it up.

Genocide at the Twilight of the Ottoman Empire

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilmar Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
World War ◽  
Relief Work ◽  
Ottoman History ◽  
Security Measure ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article considers the development of the genocide in the context of wider Ottoman demographic policies and late Ottoman history. World War I saw the almost complete annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians. The Armenian deportations were not the result of an Armenian rebellion. On the contrary, Armenians were deported when no danger of outside interference existed. Thus Armenians near front lines were often slaughtered on the spot and not deported. The deportations were not a security measure against rebellions but depended on their absence. The initial deportations resembled earlier measures against Greeks, Nestorians, and Zionists. The assimilation of Armenian children and women overwhelmed the state's resources and local Muslim initiative became decisive. Nevertheless, far too many Armenians still survived and reached the lower Euphrates. Armenian resilience and a series of survival strategies as well as undercover relief work made this survival possible.

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