The Role of Mass Education in Nation-Building in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1870–1930

Abstract

Throughout the long nineteenth century, the chimera of the Eastern Question never failed to remind the Ottoman statesmen that the empire owed its existence to the dictates of a fragile and temporary balance of power in Europe and that as a ‘sick man’ whose days were otherwise numbered they should apply some Western-origin remedies to lengthen its life. ‘In the Ottoman Empire, as in so many regions of the contemporary globe, the state’s educational initiative [was] a part of a larger attempt to reform society in order to render it modern.’1 As the Ottoman reformist elite fought their way into building a ‘modern state with infrastructural power’ in Michael Mann’s terms,2 they believed that educating future generations in the ‘sciences’ would bring about progress, industrial development and ‘civilisation’, which in turn would save the empire from an untimely death. Another dimension of the Eastern Question which posed even a greater threat to the existence of the empire than the imperialistically driven ambitions of the Great Powers was the nationalistic aspirations of her large group of ethno-religious minorities. Therefore in her struggle to survive, the Ottoman state unsuccessfully tried to use education, along with promoting industrial development, to create an Ottoman brotherhood and patriotism among her Muslim and non Muslim subjects and to generate political unity. Nevertheless this did not lead to the development of a secular national elementary education system. The government, observing the ancient rights that ruled the relationships between the state and the communities on the basis of the *‘millet’ system, continued to let the minority communities educate their own children at the elementary level in their own language and in accordance with the precepts of their religion. Thus left alone, the ‘millets’ were free throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century to educate their own as they saw fit with almost no interference from the civil bureaucracy.