Abstract
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 offering a periodisation of Ottoman rule along four major pathways, each of which also provides the title of the respective section. The first 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 Hamidian Period (1876-1908). And finally, the last period is concerned with the Young Turks regime (1908-1918), discussing its politics and policies towards non-Muslims communities framed under the title of nation-building by nation-destruction.
 The chapter titles act both as hypothesis and structuring elements of the periodisation presented. As such they shall help identify the dominant paradigm 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 Ottoman empire as well as the nation-states established in the post-Ottoman political geographies.
Highlights
The last period is concerned with the Young Turks regime (1908-1918), discussing its politics and policies towards non-Muslims communities framed under the title of nation-building by nation-destruction
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 homogenisation 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 periods have been defined as structural exclusion by toleration, Integration by a politics of recognition of difference (Tanzimat Phase, 18381876), coercive domination and control (Hamidian Period, 1876-1908), politics of nation-building by nation-destruction
Summary
At the turn of the nineteenth century, three major factors can be identified as causally relevant to the historical context under consideration: the Ottoman drive towards effective 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. The ways in which this trivalent interrelationship evolved is anything but straightforward, as it involved a complex and conflictual 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 conflicts and convergences can be captured in what historian Leon Carl Brown called “the Eastern Question system” i.e. the long process of dismembering of the Ottoman empire without disturbing the European balance of power from the late eighteenth century until just after the First World War In the remainder of this article, I will outline the contentious status of minorities and its evolution along the proposed line of argumentation and will conclude by summarising the main points
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