No abstract

During the process of late Ottoman social transformation, why did the minorities try to separate themselves from the Ottoman state, and the Muslims to alter it? This article analyzes the Ottoman social structure, arguing that it was the preexisting Ottoman ethnic segmentation which, polarized in the nineteenth century by new structural and cultural contexts, led to such disparate political outcomes. Ethnic segmentation is defined as the differential economic and social resource accumulation of social groups. In the Ottoman case, the religious differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims created an ethnic segmentation which favored the former to the detriment of the latter. This segmentation was polarized in the nineteenth century as new structural and cultural contexts, which were introduced to alleviate segmentation, reproduced and reinterpreted it instead. Western-style educational institutions provided the new structural context within which ethnic segmentation was reproduced. The cultural translation from the West to the Ottoman Muslims and minorities created the new context within which social groups reinterpreted ethnic segmentation. Both the Ottoman minorities, who were educated in the foreign and minority schools established in the empire, and the Young Ottomans and Young Turks, who were trained in the Western-style educational system of the Ottoman state, launched political movements. Due to differing cultural interpretations, the political outcome of the first group's efforts took the form of independence movements, while the second group changed Ottoman political rule by deposing the sultan. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of a National Academy of Education Spencer Fellowship in completing this project. Poetics Today 14:3 (Fall 1993). Copyright ? 1993 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/93/$2.50. 1. "Memalik-i Mahrusa-i Sahanede Mevcud olup $imdiye Kadar Tahkik olunabilen Mekatib-i Ecnebiyenin Mevaki'ini Mubeyyin Defterdir-Yildiz Arsivi Vesika Koleksiyonu 1311" (The report on the current situation of the foreign schools in Ottoman domains that have been surveyed, Yildiz Palace Archives, Document Collection 1311 [

The book examines the process of Westernization and social change during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Ottoman Empire. Using empirical analysis of archival documents and historical chronicles, the book questions the prevailing scholarly interpretation that Westernization leads to social change. Rather, it argues that social change precedes and contributes to the process of Westernization.

The resolution of the three major political problems faced by the contemporary Turkish nation-state— namely, the massacres of the Armenians in the past, the treatment of the Kurds at present, and the contested partition of the island of Cyprus—has become increasingly urgent as these problems have started to impede Turkey's chances of joining the European Union and also of becoming more democratic. Yet, since the Turkish nation-state commences its own official historical narrative with either the Independence Struggle in 1919 or the subsequent establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, it subsequently approaches these “Armenian, Kurdish, and Cyprus issues” as totally disparate and mutually independent, and in an ahistorical manner, resulting in increased entrenchment of the conflicts. The article argues that challenging the temporal boundaries of this Turkish official narrative by delving into its “prehistory,” namely, the period preceding 1919 or 1923, reveals not only the common origin of all of these issues but also a possible peaceful solution to them all as well as for a more democratic Turkey.

The traditional postcolonial focus on the modern and the European, and pre-modern and non-European empires has marginalized the study of empires like the Ottoman Empire whose temporal reign traversed the modern and pre-modern eras, and its geographical land mass covered parts of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa. Here, I first place the three postcolonial corollaries of the prioritization of contemporary inequality, the determination of its historical origins, and the target of its eventual elimination in conversation with the Ottoman Empire. I then discuss and articulate the two ensuing criticisms concerning the role of Islam and the fluidity of identities in states and societies. I argue that epistemologically, postcolonial studies criticize the European representations of Islam, but do not take the next step of generating alternate knowledge by engaging in empirical studies of Islamic empires like the Ottoman Empire. Ontologically, postcolonial studies draw strict official and unofficial lines between the European colonizer and the non-European colonized, yet such