The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was a revolution of conflicting expectations for different ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the Young Turks regarded the Revolution as an opportunity to start a new era of strengthening state institutions and creating a cohesive union out of the diverse Ottoman communities without losing the upper hand in matters of utmost importance. However, the very idea of keeping the upper hand was at odds with the expectations of some other communities. For them, the Revolution signified the beginning of a new period to acquire a greater role in the Ottoman state. This was especially true in the case of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. A large number of political figures in the Ottoman-Greek community thought that the Revolution could be used to attain a genuine political equality with the Turkish element in the Empire. In light of these conflicting expectations, this paper will highlight the political and intellectual landscape of the post-revolutionary Ottoman Empire. For this purpose, the process of parliamentary elections in the fall of 1908 will be closely analyzed. These elections present an example of a historically illuminating event as Ottoman Greeks perceived it as the first serious occasion to realize their political aims. The relatively free press of the post-revolutionary atmosphere will allow us to follow lively discussions in Greek (published in Greek) and Turkish (published in Ottoman Turkish) newspapers of the Ottoman capital. Primarily based on these accounts, this paper will search for the answers to the following questions: what did political equality mean for Greeks and Turks in the late Ottoman Empire? What were the means to achieve political equality? To what extent did their political projects coincide with each other and what were the main points of disagreement between the two?

Ottoman Zionist Diplomacy: The Repercussions of Abdülhamid-Herzl Correspondence From 1882 onwards, the Ottoman government under the rule of Abdülhamid II pursued a policy of restrictions and prohibitions against Jewish settlement and land purchase in Palestine. In May 1901, Abdülhamid II and Theodor Herzl met at the Y?ld?z Palace in Istanbul to discuss Herzl’s proposal for the consolidation of the Ottoman public debt in return for a charter that would allow Jews to settle in Palestine as a nation. Instead of a charter, Herzl returned from Istanbul with decorations of the sultan as a symbolic manifestation of sultanic munificence. While Abdülhamid-Herzl correspondence marked a fundamental chapter in Zionist diplomacy, it indicated the resoluteness of Abdülhamid’s regime in its objection to any Zionist activity regarding Palestine. From the Ottoman perspective, Herzl offered Abdülhamid to export another national problem, the “Jewish Question”, to his domain that had already been under the threat of disintegration as a result of the national uprisings in the Balkans. The period (1882-1905) discussed in my paper marks the culmination of the Ottoman-Zionist diplomacy. The results of Abdülhamid-Herzl meetings in Istanbul led the political camp in the World Zionist Organization to search for an alternative to Palestine that yielded the Uganda crisis of 1903. In my paper, in addition to examining Herzl’s expectations and motivations, which were fairly well-documented in his diaries, I will primarily focus on the Ottoman side. Why did Abdülhamid admit Herzl to the Palace despite his inveterate opposition to a Zionist settlement in Palestine? What did Abdülhamid know about Zionism and Herzl’s other political activities in Europe? Comparing the differences (if any) in the Ottoman policy before and after the Abdülhamid-Herzl correspondence, first I will highlight whether Herzl’s diplomatic efforts led to changes of any kind in the Ottoman attitude towards Zionism, second I will evaluate the repercussions of this Ottoman-Zionist diplomacy on the process of the Zionist settlement in Palestine and on the internal politics of Zionism. The Ottoman archives in Turkey (Turkish Republic Prime Ministry Archives in Istanbul) constitute the principal primary source base for my paper, especially the documents of Y?ld?z Palace which consist of all official and personal documents and newspapers located in the palace, the residence of Abdülhamid II during his reign. I will support my archival source base with the data in the published memoirs and letters of the leading Ottoman and Zionist figures.

This paper examines Baghdadi-Jewish responses to the 1908 Ottoman revolution from 1908 through the initial months of British occupation in 1917. It argues that while Baghdadi-Jews remained supportive of the revolution’s ideals, the Ottoman government’s inability to follow through on its promises following the empire’s entry into World War I convinced Baghdad’s Jewish elite that it would have to look to other powers in order to guarantee future domestic political equality. Thus, wealthy and politically active Baghdadi-Jews welcomed British rule in 1917, not because it would aid Jewish elite economic interests but rather because it was able and willing to ensure political equality for Baghdad’s minorities. The issue of British-Jewish cooperation in Baghdad haunted Iraq’s Jews during the 1930s and 1940s as certain sections of Iraqi nationalist society began painting Jews as British and Zionist collaborators. My research does not aim to discount the importance of Jewish cooperation with the British, though it certainly fizzled during the 1920s, but rather to better understand the rationale behind it. This paper shows that initial Baghdadi-Jewish support of British rule did not reflect anti-nationalist, anti-Arab communal sentiments. Rather the British offered something that the specter of an independent local government could not guarantee, the realization of equal rights promised by the 1908 revolution. Thus it was the Ottoman government’s failure to follow through on its promises which led Baghdad’s Jewish elite, which was not only thoroughly Ottomanized but also receptive to the ‘westernized’ ideas of the 1908 revolution due to contacts with western European Jews and the local activities of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, that pushed Baghdad’s Jewish elite into accepting British rule in 1917. Methodologically this paper seeks to analyze Baghdadi-Jewish political behavior through the lens of re-imagined political horizons in the wake of the 1908 revolution. It draws from Jewish memoirs, British Foreign Office reports, and the correspondence of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French-Jewish philanthropic and educational society that operated several schools in Baghdad. Finally this paper takes issue with previous studies, which have either attempted to paint British-Jewish cooperation as a result of a confluence of economic interests or to view the cooperation as the only viable political option for Baghdad’s Jews. This study demonstrates that Jews were active, not passive, agents during the transitory colonial period immediately following the cessation of Ottoman rule and just before the beginning of independent Iraqi rule.

Recent studies on the First World War opened new paths to understand the impact of the Great War in the history beyond the battlefields. As the focus moved away from the military operations, the scale of which was disproportionately concentrated on the Western European theatre of the war, geographical areas that were militarily less significant proved to be crucial for the interpretation of the social and political impacts of the Great War on a myriad of countries in the 20th century. One such subject in this recent historiography is the phenomenon of refugees. In my paper I want to analyze the experience of refugees on the Caucasian front. I would like to surpass the nationalist historiographies’ emphasis on the victimization of Muslim or Christian populations and try to handle this phenomenon as a constitutive and transformative experience not only for the people but also for the states and for the host societies. For this purpose I will analyze the Ottoman and Russian state policies and the Russian civilian relief organizations regarding the refugees. The paper will be based on archival documents of Russian, Ottoman and Georgian state archives as well as the memoirs of refugees.

Newly discovered Ottoman documents from the collections of the Ba?bakanl?k Osmanl? Ar??v? in Istanbul can teach us a great deal about fundamental changes in the modes of interaction and communication of Palestine’s population with the central Ottoman government in Istanbul as of the early 1870s. The availability of telegraph lines in Palestine from the mid 1860s and the regularization and expansion of postal services can account for these changes. Thus, numerous petitions were sent as of the early 1870s by all sectors of the population, including urbanites, villagers, Bedouins, and even foreign nationals, directly to the Ottoman Grand Vizier in Istanbul, bypassing the local Ottoman authorities in Palestine. Using the new telegraph services and more widespread postal services which were available at the post offices of major centers such as Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Gaza, Palestine’s residents complained about such varied issues as illegal changes in the status of their lands, the high amount of taxes that they were asked to pay, corruption in the local bureaucracy and unjust treatment by local officials and influential people, discrepancies between the orders of the central government and their implementation on the ground, discrimination vis-à-vis other groups in the population, disregard of longstanding local practices and the like. The paper follows the petitions from the time they were first written and sent, through the way they were handled in Istanbul, including the correspondence between the central government and the local authorities in Palestine regarding the complaints expressed in the petitions, and finally the decisions made about them. The commonality of the petitions and the fact that they were sent by all segments of the population sheds new light on the fundamental changes which the introduction of new technologies and means of communication brought about in the relationships between center and periphery in the Ottoman Empire, the notion of justice as understood by both the Empire’s subjects and the central government, and the subjects' expectations from the central government. At the same time, the paper also explores possible connections between the new avenues opened for the Ottoman subjects to contact the central government and demand justice, on the one hand, and the ongoing changes in the Ottoman bureaucracy and administrative practices in the second half of the 19th century, as they were played out in Palestine, on the other (for instance the establishment of the independent mutasarr?fl?k of Jerusalem which was directly governed from Istanbul).