The Society for the Ottoman Navy was set up in the aftermath of the 1908 coup that brought the Young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress to power in the Ottoman Empire. Faced with imperial encroachment and nationalist competition, a significant injection of cash was needed to transform the Ottoman Navy into a force capable of meeting its many commitments and yet, within this unity of purpose, there was a plurality of motivation, direction, and signification. The Society for the Ottoman Navy established committees across the Ottoman heartland and into eastern Anatolia. From Edirne to Trabzon it worked alongside CUP governors and often within state structures to raise large amounts of money for the cause, primarily identified as the ongoing struggles against Greece in the Aegean Sea. Outside of Thrace and Anatolia, however, the messaging was different. Across broad swathes of the Islamic world from South-east Asia to the Indian subcontinent to Sudan and the east coast of Africa, the Society for the Ottoman Navy presented itself as the defender of the Red Sea, of the Hijaz, of the Holy Cities. The message of national defense in a struggle between nations changed to one of religious duty in a struggle between religions. I shall use the example of the Society for the Ottoman Navy to complicate our understanding of what the Ottoman Empire was. Viewed from the centre, the Ottoman Empire in its final decades resembles the nascent nation-state that we recognize from modernization theory. Viewed from the fringes, however, the scene is quite different. The Ottoman Empire is more imperial, colonial even, and gesturing towards a pan-Islamic solidarity that fits poorly with modern ideologies of nationalism. By consulting the archives and publications of the Society for the Ottoman Navy, the Cumhurba?kanl??? Osmanl? Ar?ivi, and the various praiseworthy accounts of the society in Ottoman newspapers alongside records kept by the British India Office, who assiduously monitored the actions of Ottoman agents in India, and the writings of Indian Muslims themselves, I shall reconstruct the various political communities imagined, animated, and then exploited by the Society for the Ottoman Navy to argue that the Ottoman Empire cannot be understood either at its center or at its periphery but instead in dialogue between the two.