Rise
of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire
The rise of the Western
notion of nationalism
under the Ottoman Empire
eventually caused the break-down of the Ottoman millet
concept. Unquestionably, an understanding of the concept of the nationhood prevalent
in the Ottoman Empire, which was different from the current one as it was
centered on religion, helps us to understand what happened during the decline
period of the Ottoman Empire.
The national awakening of each group was very complex and most of the groups
interacted with each other.
Arab nationalism is a nationalist
ideology that arose in the 20th century[1] mainly as a reaction to Turkish
nationalism. It is based on the premise that nations
from Morocco to the Arabian peninsula are united by their common linguistic,
cultural and historical heritage.[2] Pan-Arabism is
a related concept, which calls for the creation of a single Arab state, but not
all Arab nationalists are also Pan-Arabists. In the 19th century however, in
response to Western influences, a radical change took place. Conflict erupted
between Muslims and Christians in different parts of the empire in a challenge
to that hierarchy. This marked the beginning of the tensions which have to a
large extent inspired the nationalist and religious rhetoric in the empire’s
successor states throughout the 20th century [3][4]
A sentiment of Arab tribal solidarity (asabiyya),
underlined by claims of Arab tribal descent and the continuance of classical Arabic
exemplified in the Qur'an,
preserved, from the rise of Islam, a
vague sense of Arab identity among Arabs. However, this phenomenon had no
political manifestations (the 18th-century Wahhabi
movement in Arabia was a religio-tribal movement, and the term "Arab"
was used mainly to describe the inhabitants of Arabia
and nomads) until the late 19th century, when the revival of Arabic literature
was followed in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire by
discussion of Arab cultural identity and demands for greater autonomy for Syria.
This movement, however, was confined almost exclusively to certain Christian Arabs,
and had little support. After the Young Turk
revolution of 1908 in Turkey, these demands were taken
up by some Syrian Muslim Arabs and various public or secret societies (the
Beirut Reform Society led by Salim Ali Salam,
1912; the Ottoman Administrative Decentralization Party, 1912; al-Qahtaniyya,
1909; al-Fatat,
1911; and al-Ahd, 1912) were formed to advance demands ranging from autonomy to
independence for the Ottoman Arab provinces.[citation needed]
Members of some of these groups came together at the request of al-Fatat to
form the Arab
Congress of 1913 in Paris,
where desired reforms were discussed.
Albanians
The 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish
War dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula,
leaving the empire
with only a precarious hold on Macedonia
and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they
inhabited would be partitioned among Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria,
and Greece fueled
the rise of Albanian nationalism.
The first postwar treaty, the abortive Treaty
of San Stefano signed on March 3, 1878, assigned
Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Austria-Hungary
and the United Kingdom blocked the arrangement
because it awarded Russia a predominant position in
the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference
to settle the dispute was held later in the year in Berlin.
Armenians
Armenian national awakening in
the Ottoman Empire was the section of "Armenian national liberation movement"
of the Armenian
effort to re-establish an Armenian state (First
Armenian Republic) in the historic Armenian homelands of
eastern Asia Minor.
The Transcaucasus
Armenian national awakening occurred in the Russian
Armenia.
Until Tanzimat
reforms were established, the Armenian millet was under the supervision of an Ethnarch
('national' leader), the Armenian
Apostolic Church. The Armenian millet had a great deal of
power - they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes.
During the Tanzimat period, a
series of constitutional reforms provided a limited modernization of the
Ottoman Empire also to the Armenians. In 1856, the Hatt-ı
Hümayun promised equality for all Ottoman citizens
irrespective of their ethnicity and confession, widening the scope of the 1839 Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane.
To deal with the Armenian national awakening, the
Ottomans gradually gave more rights to its Armenian and other Christian
citizens. In 1863 the Armenian National Constitution
(Ottoman Turkish:"Nizâmnâme-i Millet-i Ermeniyân") was the Ottoman Empire
approved form of the "Code of Regulations" composed of 150 articles
drafted by the "Armenian intelligentsia", which defined the powers of
Patriarch (position in Ottoman Millet)
and newly formed "Armenian National Assembly".[5]
The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the Kanûn-ı
Esâsî (meaning "Basic Law"
in Ottoman Turkish), written by members of the Young
Ottomans, which was promulgated on 23 November 1876.
It established freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law.
The Armenian National Assembly
formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the aristocratic dominance
(Amira) of the Armenian nobles by development of the
political strata among the Armenian society.[6]
Bosniaks
The Ottoman Sultans attempted to implement various
economic reforms in the early 19th century in order to address the grave issues
mostly caused by the border wars. The reforms, however, were usually met with
resistance by the military captaincies of Bosnia. The most famous of these
insurrections was the one by captain Husein
Gradaščević in 1831. Gradaščević felt that giving
autonomy to the eastern lands of Serbia, Greece and Albania would weaken the
position of the Bosnian state, and the Bosniak peoples. Things got even worse,
when the Ottomans took 2 Bosnian provinces and gave them to Serbia, as a
friendly gift to the Serbs. Outraged, Gradaščević raised a full-scale rebellion
in the province, joined by thousands of native Bosnian soldiers who believed in
captain's prudence and courage, calling him Zmaj od Bosne (dragon of
Bosnia).
Despite winning several notable victories, notably at the famous Kosovo polje,
the rebels were eventually defeated in a battle near Sarajevo in 1832 after
Gradaščević was betrayed by Herzegovinian nobility. Husein-kapetan was banned
from ever entering the country again, and was eventually poisoned in Constantinople.[7][8]
Bosnia and Herzegovina would remain part of the Ottoman empire until 1878.
Before it was formally occupied by Austria-Hungary, the region was de facto
independent for several months.
Bulgarians
The rise of national conscience in Bulgaria led to the Bulgarian revival
movement. Unlike Greece and Serbia,
the nationalist movement in Bulgaria did not concentrate initially on armed
resistance against the Ottoman Empire
but on peaceful struggle for cultural and religious autonomy, the result of
which was the establishment of the Bulgarian
Exarchate on February 28, 1870. A large-scale armed
struggle movement started to develop as late as the beginning of the 1870s with
the establishment of the Internal Revolutionary Organisation
and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee,
as well as the active involvement of Vasil Levski in
both organisations. The struggle reached its peak with the April Uprising
which broke out in April 1876 in several Bulgarian districts in Moesia, Thrace
and Macedonia. The barbaric suppression of the uprising and the atrocities
committed against the civilian population increased the Bulgarian desire for
independence. They also caused a tremendous indignation in Europe, where they
became known as the Bulgarian Horrors.[1]
Consequently, at the 1876–1877 Constantinople
Conference, European statesmen proposed a series of
reforms. However, the sultan refused to implement them and Russia
declared war. During the war Bulgarian volunteer forces
(in Bulgarian опълченци) fought alongside the Russian army. They earned
particular distinction in the epic battle for the Shipka Pass [2].
Upon the end of the war the Treaty
of San Stefano was signed and Bulgaria was granted
autonomy.
Greeks
With the decline of the Eastern
Roman Empire the pre-eminent role of Greek
culture, literature and language became more apparent. From the 12th century
onwards with the territorial reduction of the Empire to strictly Greek speaking
areas the old multiethnic tradition, already weakened, gave way to a
self-consciously national Greek consciousness and a
greater interest in Hellenic culture evolved. Byzantines
began to refer to themselves not just as Romans (Rhomaioi)
but as Greeks (Hellenes).
With the political extinction of the Empire it was the Greek
Orthodox Church and the Greek speaking communities in the
areas of Greek colonization and emigration that continued to cultivate this
identity through schooling as well as the ideology of a Byzantine imperial
heritage rooted both in the classical Greek
past and in Roman Empire.[9]
The position of educated and privileged Greeks
within the Ottoman Empire
improved in the 17th and 18th centuries. As the empire became more settled, and
began to feel its increasing backwardness in relation to the European powers,
it increasingly recruited Greeks who had the kind of academic, administrative,
technical and financial skills which the larger Ottoman population lacked.
Greeks made up the majority of the Empires translators, financiers, doctors and
scholars. From the late 1600s Greeks began to fill some of the highest offices
of the Ottoman state. The Phanariotes, a
class of wealthy Greeks who lived in the Phanar district of Constantinople,
became increasingly powerful. Their travels to other parts of Western Europe as
merchants or diplomats brought them into contact with advanced ideas of the Enlightenment
notably liberalism, radicalism
and nationalism,
and it was among the Phanariotes
that the modern Greek nationalist movement matured. However, the dominant form
of Greek nationalism (that later developed into the Megali Idea)
was a messianic ideology of imperial Byzantine restoration, that specifically
looked down upon Frankish culture, and enjoyed the patronage of the
Orthodox Church.[10]
- In
1821 the Greek revolution, striving to create an independent Greece, broke
out on Romanian ground, briefly supported by the princes of Moldavia and Muntenia.
- A
secret Greek nationalist organization called the Friendly Society (Filiki Eteria) was formed in Odessa during 1814. On March 25 (now
Greek Independence Day) 1821 of the Julian Calendar/6 April 1821 of the Gregorian
Calendar
the Orthodox Metropolitan Germanos of Patras proclaimed the national
uprising.[11][12] Simultaneous risings were
planned across Greece, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The
revolt began in March 1821 when Alexandros
Ypsilantis,
the leader of the Etairists, crossed the Prut River into Turkish-held
Moldavia with a small force of troops. With the initial advantage of
surprise, the Greeks succeeded in liberating the Peloponnese and some
other areas.
Kurds
The system of administration introduced by Idris remained
unchanged until the close of the Russo-Turkish
War of 1828–29. But the Kurds, owing to the remoteness of
their country from the capital and the decline of Ottoman Empire, had greatly
increased in influence and power, and had spread westwards over the country as
far as Angora.
After the war the Kurds attempted to free themselves from
Ottoman
control, and in 1834, after the Bedirkhan clan uprising, it became necessary to
reduce them to subjection. This was done by Reshid Pasha. The principal towns
were strongly garrisoned, and many of the Kurd beys
were replaced by Turkish governors. A rising under Bedr Khan Bey in 1843 was
firmly repressed, and after the Crimean War
the Turks strengthened their hold on the country.
The Russo-Turkish
War of 1877–78 was followed by the attempt of Sheikh
Obaidullah in 1880–1881 to found an independent Kurd principality
under the protection of the Ottoman Empire. The attempt, at first encouraged by
the Porte,
as a reply to the projected creation of an Armenian state under the suzerainty
of Russia, collapsed after Obaidullah's raid into Persia, when various
circumstances led the central government to reassert its supreme authority.
Until the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 there had been little hostile feeling
between the Kurds and the Armenians, and as late as 1877–1878 the mountaineers
of both races had co-existed fairly well together.
In 1891 the activity of the Armenian Committees induced
the Porte to strengthen the position of the Kurds by raising a body of Kurdish irregular cavalry,
which was well-armed and called Hamidieh after the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II.
Minor disturbances constantly occurred, and were soon followed by the massacre
of Armenians at Sasun and other places,
1894–1896, in which the Kurds took an active part. Some of the separatist
Kurds, like the separatist ultra-nationalist Armenians, aimed to establish a
separate Kurdish state.
Jews
Zionism is an international political
movement, although started outside the Ottoman
Empire, Zionism regards the Jews as a national entity and seeks to preserve
that entity. This has primarily focused on the creation of a homeland for the Jewish People in
the Promised Land,
and (having achieved this goal) continues as support for the modern state of Israel.
Although its origins are earlier, the movement became
better organised and more closely linked with the imperial powers of the day
following the involvement of the Austro-Hungarian
journalist Theodor Herzl in
the late 19th century. The movement was eventually successful in establishing
Israel in 1948, as the world's first and only modern Jewish State.
Described as a "diaspora nationalism,"[13]
its proponents regard it as a national
liberation movement whose aim is the self-determination of
the Jewish people.
Macedonians
The national awakening of the ethnic Macedonians can be
said to have begun in the late 19th century; this is the time of the first
expressions of ethnic
nationalism by limited groups of intellectuals in Belgrade, Sofia, Thessaloniki
and St. Petersburg.
The “Macedonian
Question,” became especially prominent after the Balkan wars in
1912–1913 and the subsequent division of the Ottoman
Macedonia between three neighboring Christian states,
followed by tensions between them over its possession. In order to legitimize
their claims, each of these countries tried to 'persuade' the population into
allegiance. The Macedonist ideas grew in significance after the First World
War, both in Kingdom of Yugoslavia and among the left-leaning diaspora in
Kingdom of Bulgaria, and were endorsed by the Comintern.
Romanians
The movement, which was started about the same time by
the Pandur leader Tudor
Vladimirescu, as a mainly anti-Phanariote
revolt encouraged by local boyars and the Filiki Eteria,
soon acquired an anti-Greek tendency. The Eteria had
occupied Moldavia
and shared in Wallachia's administration with Tudor himself; Vladimirescu was
assassinated after a major disagreement with his upper-class supporters,
including Eterists.
The Ottomans intervened to reestablish tutelage,
effectively destroying the Eterist structure in the Danubian
Principalities; faced with the betrayal of Phanariote
rulers, who had identified with the cause of Greek nationalism,
and assured that an administration by locals would remain loyal vis-a-vis Imperial Russian
intervention, Sultan Mahmud II
consented in 1822 to the nomination of two native boyars, Ioan Sturdza
and Grigore IV Ghica as
hospodars of
Moldavia and Wallachia.
Serbs
Serbian national movement represents one of the first
examples of successful national resistance against the Ottoman rule. It
culminated in two mass uprisings at the beginning of the 19th century, leading
to national liberation and establishment of the modern Serbian state
and Montenegro.
One of the main centers of this movement was the Belgrade Pashaluk (Turkish: Belgrad Paşalığı), which became the core of
the reestablished Serbian national state.
A number of factors contributed to its rise. Above all
the nucleus of national identity was preserved in the form of the Serbian
Orthodox Church which remained in one form or another
autonomous throughout the period of Ottoman occupation. Adherence to Orthodox
Christianity is still considered an important factor in ethnic self
determination. Both of these entities preserved links with medieval
Kingdom of Serbia keeping the idea of national liberation
alive.
The other group of factors stem from regional political
events during the period of Ottoman rule, 17th and 18th century in particular.
At the turn of 19th century the region of Belgrade Pashaluk had a relatively
recent experience of Austrian
rule, as a result of Treaty
of Passarowitz. Although the territory of northern Serbia
was reverted to Ottoman rule according to the Treaty
of Belgrade, the region saw almost continuous warfare
during the 18th century. As a result, the Ottomans never established full
feudal order in the Belgrade Pashaluk. Free peasants owning small plots of land
constituted the majority of population. Furthermore, most of the leaders of
future armed rebellions earned valuable military knowledge serving in Austrian
irregular troops, Freikorps.
The proximity of the Austrian border provided the opportunity of getting the
needed military material. Serbian national leaders could also count on
financial and logistic support of fellow Serbs living in relative prosperity in
Austrian Empire.
The immediate cause for the start of the First
Serbian Uprising was mismanagement of the province by
renegade Janissary
troops which managed to seize power in Belgrade.
However fueled by initial success the rebellion quickly grew to a fully fledged
war of national liberation, with clear aim to spread armed struggle to other
Ottoman regions inhabited by Serbian population.
Though ultimately unsuccessful, this First
Serbian Uprising paved the way for the Second
Serbian Uprising of 1815, which eventually succeeded in
Serbia.
Resurrected Serbia would eventually become a center of
resistance to Ottomans, actively supporting liberation movements in neighboring
Christian lands, especially Bosnia, Bulgaria
and Macedonia.
Serbia would go on to fight a series of, largely successful wars with Ottoman
empire culminating in the First Balkan War of
1912.
Turks
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Turkish nationalism began with the Turanian Society
founded in 1839, followed in 1908 with the Turkish Society, which later
expanded into the Turkish Hearth[14]
and eventually expanded to include ideologies such as Pan-Turanism
and Pan-Turkism.
With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire,
the Turkish populations of the empire which were mostly expelled from the newly
established states in the Balkans and the Caucasus formed a new national
identity under the leadership of Mustafa
Kemal along the Kemalist
ideology.
Turkish
revolutionaries were patriots of
the Turkish
national movement who rebelled against the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire by
the Allies
and the Ottoman government in the aftermath of the Armistice
of Mudros which ended the Ottoman Empire's
participation in World War I;
and against the Treaty
of Sèvres in 1920, which was signed by the Ottoman
government and partitioned Anatolia
among Allies and their supporters.
Turkish revolutionaries under the leadership of Ataturk
fought during the Turkish
war of independence against the Allies
supported by Armenians (Democratic Republic of Armenia),
Greeks (Greece)
and the French
Armenian Legion, accompanied by the Armenian militia
during the Franco-Turkish
War. Turkish revolutionaries rejected the Treaty
of Sèvres and negotiated the Treaty
of Lausanne, which recognized the independence of the Republic
of Turkey and its absolute sovereignty over Eastern Thrace
and Anatolia.
References
1. Charles
Smith,The Arab-Israeli Conflict,in International Relations in the Middle
East by Louise Fawcett,p22O
2. Christians
and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, Bruce Masters, Cambridge
4. Richard
G. (EDT) Hovannisian "The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern
Times" page 198
6. The
Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol.7, Edited by Hugh Chisholm, (1911), 3; Constantinople,
the capital of the Turkish Empire...
7. Britannica, Istanbul:When
the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara,
and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.
8. Encyclopædia
Britannica, Greece during the Byzantine period (c. AD 300–c. 1453) >
Population and languages > Emerging Greek identity, 2008 ed.
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