CITIZENSHIP, ETHNICITY, AND RELIGION

A SQUARE PEG IN A ROUND HOLE? CITIZENSHIP, ETHNICITY, AND RELIGION
IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

http://www.clarkecenter.org/content/occasionalpapers/Citizenship.PDF

David Commins, Dickinson College, Department of History

In 1839, the Ottoman Empire began an era of bureaucratic, legal, and military reforms that lasted until the
empire’s defeat in the First World War. During this era, reformist statesmen articulated two concepts
related to citizenship: the nationalist idea of a community whose members share the same political identity;
and the liberal idea of civil and political rights of the individual. The nationalist idea changed the meaning
of the term “Ottoman,” which traditionally referred only to members of the imperial family and the stratum
of military, civil, and religious dignitaries who served the sultan. Subjects of the sultan were considered his
flock (the Turkish term, , literally means a flock). The new sense of the term “Ottoman” was intended
to generate a feeling of solidarity among the various religious and ethnic groups of the Empire, solidarity
that would negate the pull of nationalism for secession. Guarantees of individual rights appeared in the
Ottoman constitution of 1876, but the constitutional experiment was too brief and the Empire was too
preoccupied with threats from abroad for the liberal aspect of citizenship to develop. While the Ottoman
Empire never completed the shift from dynasty to republic, the political culture clearly moved in that
direction, reaching the point where society was envisioned as a composite of various ethnic groups that, as
Ottomans, should have equal standing, but not so far as to focus on the rights of the individual citizen. It is
common to argue that the citizenship model failed to take root because it was poorly suited to a multiethnic
and multi-religious society. On the basis of developments in the Syrian provinces, I propose that
ethnic and religious identities underwent remolding under the force of the “leveling” effects of the efforts
to achieve the citizen model of political community.
Ottoman rule in Syria began with its conquest in 1516. In ethnic terms, the Syrian population
consisted of Arabs, Turkomen, and Kurds; in religious terms, the population included Sunni Muslims,
Twelver and Ismaili Shii Muslims, Druzes, Alawis, Christians of several denominations, and Jews. From the
Ottoman sultans’ perspective, following the historical tradition of Muslim dynasties, the relevant categories
were Muslim and non-Muslim. In the early nineteenth century, there were three factors that affected a non-
Muslims’ status. Muslim rulers since the seventh century had defined non-Muslim subjects as , a
status that entailed the payment of a special tax, restrictions on the construction of new religious buildings
and public religious observances, and exclusion from military functions. By accepting these conditions, non-
Muslims gained the right to the ruler’s protection of their persons and properties and the right to
administer their own ecclesiastical, communal, and personal affairs. A second factor appeared after the
Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, when the sultan recognized the Greek Orthodox Patriarch as
the leader of Greek Orthodox Christians in the Empire. This was the beginning of the system by which
the Ottomans recognized several Christian and Jewish religious communities as corporate entities, each
with its respective ecclesiastical hierarchies that acted as intermediaries between their co-religionists and
the Ottomans.
A third factor that affected non-Muslims’ status stemmed from the growing influence of European
powers in the Empire and their employment of non-Muslims as consular and commercial agents. In such
cases, it was customary for the European power to issue a certificate granting the non-Muslim agent the
privileges of a resident foreigner: exemption from most taxes and jurisdiction under consular courts. This
practice, encoded in treaties of capitulations, dated to the twelfth century, and its original purpose was to
facilitate trade between the Levant and Europe. The capitulations turned into a medium for European
powers to exercise influence over large numbers of non-Muslims after the Russians defeated the Ottomans
in the war of 1768-1774 and claimed the right to act as protector of all Greek Orthodox Christians in the
Empire. In later decades, the Habsburg Empire, France, and Great Britain exploited Ottoman weakness to
assert their own claims to protect other Christian communities. European consuls eagerly extended
protection to non-Muslims as part of the broader European rivalry for influence in and over the Empire. A
growing number of Ottoman Christians sought foreign protection because they could use the economic and
legal privileges it provided to gain an advantage in the growing trade between the Levant and Europe.
From Istanbul’s perspective, the proliferation of non-Muslim presented three problems.
First, the Empire lost fiscal and legal authority over a growing number of subjects, even though did
not necessarily obtain the citizenship of their sponsoring power. Second, often advanced the
interests of their sponsoring power to the detriment of Ottoman interests. For example, in the Balkans,
separatist sentiment was encouraged by Russia and her . Similarly, in Lebanon, Maronite Christians
under French protection would seek autonomy. Third, the Muslim majority increasingly resented the
advantages of non-Muslims; this resentment led to attacks on Christians in Aleppo in 1850, in Nablus in
1856, and in Mt. Lebanon and Damascus in 1860. These events created yet more pretexts for European
intervention in the Empire's internal affairs.
Ottoman statesmen responded to the tendency for Christian subjects to seek European protection
and secession with various measures, including the redefinition of the term “Ottoman” to apply to all
inhabitants of the Empire. Henceforth, all Ottomans, Muslim and non-Muslim, would have equal legal
standing. The historical category of would be abolished, but the continued as corporate
representatives of religious minorities’ interests, while it was hoped that the appeal of European protection
would diminish and that fewer non-Muslims would seek it. This new conception, dubbed ‘Ottomanism’, was
first officially articulated in the Imperial Edict of 1856, which included guarantees that non-Muslims would
have equal access to imperial schools and to public office. ‘Ottomanism’, however, encountered resistance
from both Muslims and non-Muslims. Two considerations gave rise to Muslim resistance. First, they believed
that the Empire was abandoning its very , to uphold Islam and Islamic law, in which the category
of had been a constituent element for centuries. Second, they believed that non-Muslims were
privileged by their ties to European powers; eliminating status would increase the advantage non-
Muslims enjoyed, and Muslims’ economic standing would be further damaged. As for non-Muslims,
embracing ‘Ottomanism’ could entail the relinquishing of communal and ecclesiastical autonomy as well as
the forfeiture of European protection. Furthermore, non-Muslims did not wish to become eligible for
conscription.
Proponents of ‘Ottomanism’ spread the idea through published writings and administrative
measures. In the 1860s, a group known as the Young Ottomans—poets, playwrights, and essayists—sought
to forge a sense of Ottoman identity based on loyalty to a homeland and the existence of a common culture.
Young Ottoman writers also called for a constitutional order to establish institutional controls over the
sultan and high-ranking bureaucrats, but not to create a popular democracy. At the level of official measures,
the nationality and education laws of 1869 represented the impetus to create a foundation for
‘Ottomanism’. The nationality law defined as an Ottoman any individual born to an Ottoman father and
mother or solely to an Ottoman father. The law also defined conditions for the naturalization of foreign
residents and prohibited the acquisition by Ottoman subjects of foreign nationality without an Imperial
Decree. No particular civil or political rights were defined as pertaining to Ottoman nationals. The organic
law for the administration of public education set forth a plan for a system of schools throughout the
Empire. One of the law’s aims was to combat the effects of foreign missionary schools, which frequently
promoted allegiance to the home country of the missionaries. Another objective was to spread
‘Ottomanism’ by teaching Ottoman history and civics. This effort did have some success at inculcating a
common political culture among the relatively small numbers of students who attended Ottoman state
schools. The short-lived Ottoman constitutional period of 1876-1878 represented another advance for
‘Ottomanism’. Article 8 of the 1876 constitution declared that all subjects were to be considered Ottomans,
and Article 17 stated that “All Ottomans are equal before the law.” Furthermore, during the parliamentary
sessions held in 1877 and 1878, deputies’ speeches expressed the sense of shared outlook. Syrian deputies,
for instance, articulated their support for the Empire’s interests, as well as local concerns, in ways that
suggested they considered the welfare of all Syrians to depend on the Empire's overall condition.
The constitutional path to the cultivation of ‘Ottomanism’ reached a dead end when Sultan
Abdulhamid II dissolved parliament in February 1878 in the midst of a war with Russia that threatened the
Empire’s very existence. The diplomatic aftermath of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-78 brought about
major territorial losses in the heavily Christian Balkans and the transfer of Muslim refugees from the Balkans
to Asia Minor, thereby diminishing the proportion of the Christian population. Sultan Abdulhamid then
returned to the historical basis of Ottoman political community, loyalty to the dynasty as the guardian of
Islam. At the same time, he extended the development of educational institutions that were instilling a
sense of Ottoman identity, albeit now with a focus on dynastic loyalty. He also undertook an initiative to
imbue Arab nomadic tribal groups, historically outside or on the margins of the Ottoman political
framework, with a sense of belonging to the Empire. In addition, the sultan paid greater attention to
Syrians by recruiting several to his inner entourage and by patronizing the construction and repair of
Muslim religious buildings throughout Syria. These measures succeeded in reinforcing Muslim Syrians’
loyalty to the Ottoman Empire.
During Abdulhamid’s thirty-year reign, constitutional ‘Ottomanism’ took the form of organized
political opposition with the formation in 1889 of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Observers
frequently referred to the movement as the Young Turks, but that is a misnomer because many of its backers
were Arabs, Armenians, Albanians, Kurds, and Greeks of several religious backgrounds. Cooperation among
such varied individuals in this endeavor from 1889 to 1908 strongly suggests the spread of ‘Ottomanism’
within the educated stratum. In Syria, the movement included Muslim religious scholars, Arab (Christian
and Muslim) and Turkish civil servants, and Arab and Turkish army officers. Among this group, the Muslim
religious scholars articulated a modernist version of Islamic beliefs and practices that would suit a
constitutional political order. For example, the leading modernist of Damascus, Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi,
penned an essay on the occasion of the 1908 restoration of the Ottoman constitution to explain the
compatibility of a constitutional order with Islam. He asserted that a constitution provides the individual
with protection from unjust actions of rulers and officials; it establishes a representative assembly to
safeguard the welfare of the people; it creates a mechanism for legislative initiatives; and it guarantees
religious freedom for all. This vision of an equitable constitutional order, that would treat all Ottomans the
same, was at best imperfectly realized. The causes of liberalism’s shortcomings are a matter of sharp
controversy among historians who study the decade 1908-1918, usually referred to as the Unionist period,
after the dominant political force behind constitutional restoration and during the second constitutional
era, the Committee of Union and Progress.
During the Unionist period, ‘Ottomanism’ was the unifying theme of political discourse. In
speeches, newspapers, and decrees, Ottomanist rhetoric held center stage, but it split into two opposing
dialectics: one for a strong central government with firm control over the provinces in order to prevent any
more secessionist movements, such as those that had whittled down Ottoman holdings in the Balkans;
another for a decentralized, federal structure that would ensure the loyalty of provincial inhabitants by
granting them control over local administration and education. Neither faction focused on developing the
rights of the individual before the state; rather, they were concerned with maintaining the Empire’s
territorial integrity and the relationship of the Empire’s various ethnic groups to the state. In boldest terms,
the Empire’s non-Turkish peoples were opposed to domination by the Turkish majority. The mostly Turkish
CUP represented the centralist faction. Members of the CUP’s central executive committee held Turkish
nationalist ideas, but did not publicly express them. They believed that, if only for purposes of
administrative efficiency, all civil servants and military officers should know the Turkish language, and that
Turkish should therefore be taught in state schools. From the perspective of the Empire’s non-Turkish
population, such a practice would entail “turkification” and the slighting of non-Turks’ interests. The
decentralist faction, embodied by the Liberal Entente Party, attracted Turks and most non-Turks, Muslim as
well as Christian, to its platform of provincial administrative and cultural autonomy.
It would be tempting to view the Unionist period as one during which the centralist tendency
alienated the non-Turkish peoples, thereby killing the prospect of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious political
community of citizens. But in fact, many Arabs of Syria, Muslim and Christian, supported the centralist CUP
and its version of ‘Ottomanism’. Two factors may be cited to explain this.
First, by 1908, the educational and bureaucratic institutions created since the 1860s had shaped the
outlook of provincial elites and upwardly mobile men from humbler backgrounds: there was a common
culture of bureaucratic and military service among men who could communicate in the official language of
Ottoman Turkish. In Syria, for instance, after 1860, wealthy families frequently prepared their sons for
careers in the imperial civil and military institutions by sending them to local state schools and to higher
academies in Istanbul. These means of launching careers in Ottoman institutions through state schools was
also adopted by Syrian townsmen from middle strata: merchants, artisans, and teachers. Syrians who passed
through the Ottoman educational system were fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, and often in French as
well. Their language skills qualified them for participation in a centralized regime, and indeed gave them an
advantage over Syrians who lacked such training.
The second factor is political opportunism. In the immediate aftermath of the constitutional
restoration, the Syrian provincial elite, whose power rested on absentee ownership of rural lands and officeholding,
sullenly opposed the new order, and many were heartened by the April 1909 counter-revolution.
After that movement’s defeat, however, the provincial elite achieved a rapprochement with the CUP,
calculating that it would remain the dominant political force in the Empire. This political alliance of the
Syrian elite and the CUP would remain unshaken right until the end of Ottoman rule in Syria in 1918. This
phenomenon is a clear indication of the successful integration of Syria, the province with the largest Arab
population, into the Ottoman framework on the basis of common Ottoman identity.
But there is another dimension to Ottoman Syrian politics in the Unionist period. This is the
persistence of the decentralist tendency, one that increasingly took on an ethnic hue, not as Arab
nationalism, but as the assertion of Arab interests, usually referred to as Arabism, within an Ottoman
framework. Explanations of Arabism vary. Some historians consider its proponents to be men whose careers
in the imperial bureaucracy and military were blocked by Turkish favoritism. In the frequently cited words of
a Turkish contemporary political adversary and leading member of the CUP, Jamal Pasha, the Arabists were
“a few persons who were hankering after offices and dignities.” Other historians regard the Arabist
tendency as a reaction against Turkish chauvinism. The point is still debated in the most recent works on the period. From the perspective of a consideration of the prevalence of ‘Ottomanism’, the debate is beside the point. Before the First World War, the Arabists did not call for Syria’s secession from the Ottoman Empire; instead, they sought to promote the interests of Syrians within the Empire through provincial autonomy. They argued that such autonomy should be applied to all provinces and that only through autonomy would Istanbul win the allegiance of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, and Albanians, and thereby prevent further territorial loss through secession. During the war, the Arabist camp split into those who buried their
political quarrels with the CUP and strongly supported the Empire’s war effort on one hand, and those who
participated in secessionist activities. The number of the latter, however, was quite few, and they utterly
failed to generate popular support. Jamal Pasha, the civil and military governor of Syria during the early war
years, rounded up, tried, and executed twenty-one secessionists after the discovery of documents in the
British and French consulates that implicated them in conspiring with the Empire's enemies.
Would Syrian provincial restlessness under a centralist regime inevitably have led to an Arab
nationalist movement along the lines of so many Balkan secessions of the nineteenth century or would
‘Ottomanism’ have successfully integrated Syria and other provinces? The evidence from Ottoman Syrian
history leads to no clear verdict. The notion of a political community comprised of individuals belonging to
groups with equal political and legal standing had gained ground among the educated urban stratum. This
notion’s ability to incorporate broader social strata, urban and rural, was never tested.
Turning our gaze from the past to the present, we could pose the question of whether a multiethnic,
multi-religious polity claiming to rest on a community of citizens can endure among the Ottoman
successor states: Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. The last seventy years have shown the
staying power of these states. It is not clear, however, that they have integrated the model of a community
of individual citizens of equal legal standing. The modern experiences of Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria;
Arabs in Israel; the several religious communities in Lebanon; and Jews in the Arab countries suggests that
proponents of citizenship and its benefits for the individual and the collectivity continue to strive against
inherited categories of ethnicity and religion.

NOTES:

I wish to thank Steve Weinberger for reading an early draft of this paper and raising some important questions about Ottoman notions
of citizenship. I also want to thank Elaine Mellen for proofreading drafts and for her editorial suggestions. Naturally, any deficiencies or errors in this
paper are mine.
For example, Kemal Karpat, “ and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and State in the Post-Ottoman Era,” in
: The Central Lands, Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., 2 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982),
1:141-169; Roderic H. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century,” in
, 1774-1923. , idem., (Austin: Texas University Press, 1990).
A concise description of status is provided by Ronald L. Nettler, “Dhimmi,”in , 1:374-374.
That this claim rested on a spurious interpretation of the treaty ending the war is demonstrated by Roderic H. Davison’s “‘Russian Skill
and Turkish Imbecility’: The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji Reconsidered,” in .
The Ottomans continued the practice of exempting non-Muslims from military service in exchange for a special tax.
A French translation of the nationality law is in George Young, , 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905) 2:222-229;
the education law is also in Young, 2:352-375.
Roderic H. Davison, “Ataturk's Reforms: Back to the Roots,” in , pp. 246-247.
Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks. , 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of
California, 1996), has a discussion of the Syrian deputies’ performance in the two sessions; on expressions of Ottomanism on the part of Greek,
Armenian, and Bulgarian deputies, see Enver Ziya Karal, “Non-Muslim Representation in the First Constitutional Assembly, 1876-1877,” in Braude and
Lewis.
Millets
Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire
Essays in Ottoman and Turkish
History The Impact of the West
dhimmi The Oxford Encyclopedia
Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History
Corps de droits ottomans
Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History
Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire

An Imperial School for Tribes was established in Istanbul in 1892 and lasted until 1907; its graduates went on to careers in imperial civil and military
institutions. Eugene Rogan, “ : Abdulhamid II’s School for Tribes,” 28:1 (1996): 83-107.
Engin Akarli, “Abdulhamid II’s Attempt to Integrate Arabs into the Ottoman Empire,” in , David
Kushner, ed. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1986); David Commins, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 108110.
The most detailed and recent English-language study of the constitutional movement during Sultan Abdulhamid II’s reign is by Sukru
Hanioglu, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Commins, pp. 89-95.
Ibid., pp. 126-128.
See Hanioglu on the Committee of Union and Progress from its founding in 1889 until 1902; Kayali’s work on the Unionist period; and
Feroz Ahmad, , 1908-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).
Hanioglu, “The Young Turks and the Arabs Before the Revolution of 1908,” in , Rashid Khalidi ed., (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 31 32, 43; idem., , pp. 215-216.
Greek and Armenian support for the Liberal Entente Party is discussed in Feroz Ahmad, “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian,
and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1914,” in Braude and Lewis, , 1 :407-423.
Philip S. Khoury, : (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Commins, pp. 128-133.
Djemal Pasha, , 1913-1919 (London, n.d.), p. 59.
Zeine N. Zeine, (Beirut: Khayats, 1958).
Hasan Kayali, , defends the Committee of Union and Progress against the charge of ethnic chauvinism; Hanioglu in
both his book and article cited above upholds the thesis of ethnic chauvinism; so does Mahmud Haddad, “Arab Nationalism Reconsidered,”
26:2 (1994): 201-222.