The politics of unity: Hamidian policy in Eastern Anatolia

Abstract

The era of viewing the Hamidian period in Ottoman history as simply one of reaction has long passed. Writers such as Bernard Lewis, Roderic Davison, Niyazi Berkes, and Stanford Shaw, to name only a few, have demonstrated that most of the changes begun in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century continued throughout the Hamidian period.' Indeed, it has been shown that the reforms, or western-oriented changes, were of such a nature that slowing their pace could be accomplished only with great difficulty and stopping them was virtually impossible. Given the fact that substantive and far-reaching reforms and changes continued to take place throughout Abdulhamid's reign, we must nevertheless recognize that the Hamidian period was in many ways markedly different from the years immediately preceding it. On the one hand it was a logical culmination of seventy five years of change and on the other an apparent reaction against that change. Reform continued yet the regime was notorious for its virulent anti-westernism and despotic government. This paper is concerned with investigating a particular manifestation of the distinctiveness of the Hamidian period; the drive for Muslim unity. The subject will be approached through an examination of relations between the central government and the Asiatic provinces, specifically those in eastern Anatolia, from 1878 to 1908. The Hamidian period has achieved the reputation of being the most despotic and centralized era in modern Ottoman history. That it was despotic and that centralization was a major goal cannot be debated, but upon investigation it becomes clear that centralization, like reform, was subordinate to unity and survival. The centralizing tendencies and the despotic nature of the government were in no way distinctive to the Hamidian regime, being either a continuation of previous policy or a logical development of earlier reforms and changes. What is distinctive to the Hamidian period as opposed to that of Selim III, Mahmud II, or the Tanzimat, is that these aspects of Ottoman government as well as the whole policy of reforms, were consistently subordinated to a higher felt need, that for unity among the Muslim population of the Empire. In terms of policies and priorities, 1878 represents a fundamental shift in the Ottoman self-view.2 It was impossible to reform the Empire along the lines established by the Tanzimat reformers, lines Abdulhamid accepted as valid or at least unavoidable, without a strong central authority. It was impossible to establish this authority in any degree of permanence without some cooperation from the provinces, particularly from the local notables. The latter, however, had never been included to any significant degree in the process of westernization experienced by the bureaucrats in Constantinople