Young Ottomans Research Articles

Turkish Delight: The Ottoman Mysteries of Jenny White

Turkish Delight: The Ottoman Mysteries of Jenny White

Reflections on Justice: A Young Ottoman View of the Tanīmāt

This article deals with the Young Ottomans and their main publication Hüriyyet (Freedom). The scope of investigation includes references to the former Grandvizier Reshad Pasha, the relevance of the Shari'a and the ambiguous attitude towards the Tanzimat laws as well as the question of equality.

From Istanbul to Tabriz: Modernity and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran

Placing the history of social and intellectual movements in the Middle East in a comparative context, this article examines intellectual interactions between the Young Ottomans and Young Iranians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically, it sheds light on the impact of Ottoman reformist and constitutional movements in similar developments in Iran and the role of modernizing bureaucrats, merchants, ulema, and intellectuals in the diffusion of an alternative and indigenous modernist and constitutionalist ideology from Istanbul to Tabriz and the Ottoman Empire to Iran. This article is based on Persian and Turkish newspapers printed in Istanbul, and Ottoman archival as well as Persian and Turkish narrative sources.

The Nation‐Form

It has been said time and again that the paradigm of Third World nationalism is the Hegelian narrative of lordship and bondage – the struggle for recognition. As the hegemonic petty‐bourgeois elite...

Introduction

Introduction

The Turkish Pendulum between Globalization and Security: From the Late Ottoman Era to the 1930s

The primary goal of this article is to understand the historical dynamics which led in Turkey to the emergence of a pendulum between liberalization/ globalization at the time perceived as integration with the modern and popular west, in particular, Europe and national security, seen as the preservation of the Ottoman lands against both external (ironically the large European powers and Russia) and internal enemies (internal in the sense of those nations and ethnic groups which aspired to be independent of Ottoman rule and which were, again ironically, open therefore to the manipulation of the external enemies). To understand these dynamics requires two main missions. First, by looking into the political liberalization initiatives of the late Ottoman era (seen in the most general sense as those attempts to share political power with the Sultan) and their relation with the tremendous public concern over the empire's security, the article explores the genealogy and formation as well as the overwhelmingly shared perception of a dichotomous relationship between security and liberalization.' Second, by carrying out a detailed analysis of the two attempts to introduce multi-party politics during the republican era, I try to show how the previously identified dichotomy between liberalization and security developed into a 'national security syndrome', through which the democratic liberalization process would be systematically administered, managed and, ultimately, contained. It can be argued that the Ottoman state was, by and large, a garrison state, in which the waging of war was one of the main factors behind its construction and resulting structure.2 At a time in history when the rule of the day was conquest, power, alliances and geopolitics, the Ottoman state was a true example of a geopolitical state/empire. This primacy of geopolitics made the Ottoman state a largely centralized and highly hierarchical power apparatus at the hands of the sultans, and for the most part, security issues were able to be handled quite efficiently.

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought

This book, originally published in 1962, has now become a classic on the historyof modemTurkish political thought, whose beginning is usually traced back to theT-t period (1836-1878), the most turbulent and crucial period of modemTurkish history. Serif Mardin, the famous Turkish historian and political scientist,is like a household name to those interested in modern Ottoman and Turkishintellectual history. In his numerous books and articles, which followed thepublication of the present work, Mardin took the herculean task of unearthing theparameters of modem Turkish thought with an almost solitary conscience. It issimply impossible to have a discussion about Islam and Turkish society, socialchange, modernization or secularization without referring to Mardin’s work,which is woven around a string of ideas, concepts and analytical tools, all of whichenable him to see the realities of Turkey and the modem Islamic world both fromwithin and from without. His more recent Relwon and Social change in Twkey:’ c irhe of&aYuzaman Said Nuni (New York: SUNY Press, 1989),w hich is thesingle most important book written in English on Said Nursi, the founder of theNurcu movement in Turkey, is the result of the same set of principles Mardin hasadopted throughout his career: diligent scholarship, resistance to fads, and willingnessto understand before passing any judgements on his subject.The present work under review touches upon the most sensitive and crucialperiod of modem Turkish history, viz., the end of the Ottoman era and the establishmentof the modem Turkish Republic. Mardin’s exclusive emphasis is on theTanzirnat period, and the figures that laid the intellectual foundations of it. Thesignificance of this period can hardly be overemphasized, not only for Turkish historybut also for the rest of the Islamic world. It was in this period that a wholegeneration of ottoman intellectuals, from right to left, was faced with the historictask of confronting modem western civilization in the profoundest sense of theterm, and their successes and failures set the agenda for the modem intellectualhistory of Turkey for decades to follow. Their troublesome journey was shaped bythe historical setting, in which they came to terms with such questions as modernism,secularism, westernization, nationalism, Islam, society, science, tradition,and a host of other issues that continue to haunt the minds of the Islamic worldtoday. Their trial, however, was linked to the rest of the members of the Islamicworld in ways, as the present work under review shows, more important than isusually thought, and this issue, namely the place of ottoman intellectual historywithin the larger context of modem klamic thought, has not been resolved. In this ...

Iranian Constitutional Exiles and British Foreign-Policy Dissenters, 1908–9

In recent Middle Eastern history, the experience of political exile has become a prevalent theme, as large numbers of Palestinians, Kurds, Iranians, and Afghans, among others, have sought refuge in various countries. Although the earlier numbers would pale in comparison with the present size of the Middle Eastern diaspora scattered around the globe, it was in the 19th century that the first noticeable groups of exiles from the Middle East began taking sanctuary in European countries, among other locations. Perhaps the best known of these exile communities were the Young Ottomans in France in the late 19th century.

Philology Went down to the Crossroads of Modernity to Meet Orientalism, Nationalism, and... Ottoman Poetry

Ottoman poetry is an empty sign. It floats, unfettered by the correspondence between words and things conventional to the typically modern signification of historical realities. But the sign (under which many of the other written Ottoman humanities—philosophy, literary-critical writing, fine art literature, and thought in general—tend to be subsumed) is not exactly empty. It carries double, or overdetermined, meaning. Though empty of poetry the term Ottoman poetry does not, for most people, call Ottoman poetry to mind—it is full of other things in so far as the sign is “read” as a rhetorical figure, a symbol, an allegory of the national narrative. And since the middle of our century, at the latest, when the first generation born into the Turkish Republic had come of age, it has continued to be read this way. That is, the allegory continually displaces the reality. Either the poetry is not known and there is no poetry in mind to recall, or, if it is known, the experience of recall is overdetermined in ways that can be connected with the poetry only through an analysis of the history of its modern reception, probably beginning with Young Ottoman polemic c. 1860's-1880's.

Economic Bases of Revolution and Repression in the Late Ottoman Empire

Central to late Ottoman history is a series of events that marks a milestone in the emergence of modern forms of political thought and revolutionary action in the Islamic world. The sequence opened with the rise of the Young Ottoman ideologues (1865) and the constitutional movement of the 1870s.It continued with the repression of these forces under Abdülhamid 11 (1876–1909). It culminated with the resurgence of opposition in the Young Turk movement of 1889 and later, and especially with the revolution of 1908. Studied so far mostly in political and intellectual terms, the sequence seems well understood. The emergence of the Young Ottomans—the pioneers of political ideology, in any modern sense, in the Middle East—appears to result from the introduction of Western ideas and from stresses created within the bureaucracy by the political hegemony of theTanzimatelite (ca. 1839–71). The repression under Abdülhamid follows from the turmoil of the late 1870s, the weaknesses of the constitution of 1876, and the craft of the new sultan in creating a palace-dominated police state. The emergence of the Young Turks shows that terror ultimately fostered, rather than killed, the opposition. Too, their eventual revolutionary success shows how much more effective than the Young Ottomans they were as political mobilizers.

Iran: Change in Islam; Islam and Change

In discussing the intellectual and religious history of the modern Muslim world, the attention of both Western and Middle Eastern scholars has hitherto focused on those who were, directly or indirectly, heavily influenced by Western thought and practices. For Egypt, the center of Arab intellectual life, we have studies of at-Tahtawi, Abduh, Rida, Mustafa Kamil, Lutfi as-Sayyid, and those close to them; for Turkey studies of the Young Ottomans, the Young Turks, Zia Gökalp, and those influenced by Ataturk's Turkish nationalism; and for Iran of Malkum Khan, Afghani, various Babis, Al-e Ahmad, Shariati, and other Western-influenced thinkers. Naturally, there are large differences in the thought of those qualified here as Western-influenced; even the most traditional aiim usually reflects Western influence in a mediated way. The point is, however, that there has been little analysis of thinkers and leaders who appear to beprimarilytraditional, whether they be ulama educated entirely in madrasas and carrying out primarily traditional functions, or heads of Sufi orders operating mainly within their own traditions. This concentration by Western and Middle Eastern intellectuals on leaders who were able to a large degree secularized and Westernized has been based on certain generally unspoken assumptions about progress and development. The assumptions are that progress and development include Westernized, secularized educational systems and an increasingly Western lifestyle with a decreased role for both ulama and Sufis, whom it is not particularly important for one concentrating on trends with a viable future to study or understand. Even those who did study “traditionalist” movements such as the Egyptian Muslim Brethren tended to see them as a trend with no future.

Küçük Said Paşa (1840–1941) as a Turkish Modernist

For many historians, liberalization and modernization are parallel and complementary concepts. Any trend to liberalization is accepted by them as a pledge to modernization whereas any restrictive measure is seen as an expression of traditionalism. Scholars in Turkey and the West who have studied the history of Turkish modernization with such a pre-conceived approach have praised the Tanzimat (1839–76), the Young Ottoman (1876–78) and the Young Turk (1908–18) periods-as modernist while they have condemned Abdulhamid II's reign traditionalist, even backwardist.

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Serif Mardin

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Serif Mardin Sydney Nettleton FisherSydney Nettleton Fisher Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 36, Number 1Mar., 1964 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/239292 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1964 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Şerif Mardin: The genesis of Young Ottoman thought: a study in the modernization of Turkish political ideas. (Princeton Oriental Studies, Vol. 21.) ix, 456 pp. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. (Distributed in G.B. by Oxford University Press. 80s.)

Şerif Mardin: The genesis of Young Ottoman thought: a study in the modernization of Turkish political ideas. (Princeton Oriental Studies, Vol. 21.) ix, 456 pp. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. (Distributed in G.B. by Oxford University Press. 80s.) - Volume 26 Issue 2

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas.Seref Mardin

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Seref Mardin Marshall G. S. HodgsonMarshall G. S. Hodgson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 68, Number 5Mar., 1963 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/223435 Views: 4Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas

The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:The Crown and the Establishment. By Kingsley Martin.The Nature of Politics. By J. D. B. Miller.The French Revolution From ITS Origins TO 1793. By G. Lefebvre. Translated from the French by E. M. Evanson.Public Administration Welfare Public for a State. By Paul H. Appleby.The Ecology Public Public Administration By F. W. Riggs.Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics. Edited by Herbert J. Storing.The State and Society IN Our Times. By Theodor Schieder.The Passing of the Whigs. By Donald Southgate.Industrial Relations. Contemporary Problems and Perspectives. Edited by B. C. Roberts.The Genesis of Young Ottoman. A Study in the Modernisation of Turkish political ideas. By Serif Mardin.Political Control of Literature in the U.S.S.R., 1946–1959. By Harold Swayze.In Defence of Politics. By Bernard Crick.SHORTER NOTICEWilkfs, Wyvil AND Reform. By Ian R. Christie.