Protest meetings are generally accepted as the ‘weapons of the weak’ against the authority because weaks have power to challenge power holders in extraordinary periods by upending the bureaucratic hierarchy. People from different ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds come together and raise their voice when they feel a threat from authorities. During the protests/riots, the ordinary people can have different demands and different tactics but as the most crucial part of the event, mounting together opens a road for these people to gain their expectations. Ottoman Empire had faced many social protests in the beginning of the twentieth century after the announcement of two new taxes which were poll tax (sahsi verge) and domestic animal tax (hayvanat-i ehliye rusumu) and after the ordinary people faced with the trauvmatic results of drought in Anatolia. While the ordinary people were looking for the help of local governors for the results of famine and drought, the government’s attempt to collect new taxes resulted with the protests and uprisings of thousands of people. Erzurum and Bitlis uprisings between 1906 and 1908 were the well known examples of these kinds of social movements. This study aims to analyze how ordinary people in the Eastern part of the Ottoman Empire developed collective action to bargain with the state through focusing on the social movements such as protests, riots and tax uprisings in the beginning of the twentieth century. My main concern will be re-searching on the protests by focusing on the petitioning practices, symbolic power of killing of some officials, showing the corpses in the city centers, the incensing of the houses of some state officials, closing the shops, transforming of the sacred places to the meeting halls and chanting as long live the Sultan! Almost all of these rituals are the common practices of the ordinary people who joined the riots, it is my contention that, each of these rituals and symbols should be clarified carefully for two reasons. First, it helps us to understand the demands and the culture of ordinary people in the provinces. Secondly and more importantly, it is the only way to identify the masses as the real agencies in the creation of a collective action.