Abdülaziz (1830-1876), who ascended to the Ottoman throne in 1861 was an absolutist sultan sustaining the emergence of modern institutions that gained momentum with the Tanzimat (1839) and Islahat (1856) Reform Edicts. During his reign, the state dealt with rebellions and economic crises while going through a re-construction process. Although Abdülaziz never renounced his commitment to theocratic rule, he maintained this re-construction process. Therefore, the reconciliation of the contradictions that emerged between the “old” and the “new” governmentalities became the primary issue concerning the administrators. The art-works commissioned by the palace in this period verify this search for a new balance. The sultan who visited European cities in 1867 commissioned many art-works to local and foreign artists. These works prove that he attributed great importance to the creation of an imperial iconography which appealed both to local people and Europeans. Among them, The Ottoman Sultans painted by the Polish artist Stanislaw Chlebowski in 1867 has a special place, since it is the only group portrait of the Ottoman dynasty representing all the sultans in front of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. It is argued in the paper that this portrait has two significances: first, it is arguably the visualization of the transition the Ottoman state was undergoing at the time. The state was stuck in-between the absolutist sovereignty based on Islamic rationality and the emerging modern state power. The use of the mosque in the background with its colossal/encompassing image and centralized planning, the Islamic scripts and the changing outfits of the rulers convey the idea of both the maintenance of absolutist sovereignty claiming the divine right to rule and the institutionalization of a centralized modern state. Secondly, it arguably represents the attempt of the modernizing state for the construction of a visual signifier transmitting the sense of “continuity in change”. The presence of every Ottoman sultan in the composition suggests the idea that the state was transforming but not losing its power because of being based on a powerful and well-established historical legacy. In the paper, the iconography of the portrait will be interpreted by examining the political rationality adopted by Aziz and its impact on the formation of different genres of art-works. A comparison will be made between the portrait and its European counterparts. The paper will be based on sources on the Ottoman political, social, architectural history as well as on the European and Ottoman portrait tradition.

Contrary to common belief, which argues that Bismarck was not interested in a friendship with the Ottoman Empire, this paper argues that Bismarck tried to make the Sultan believe that Germany was a friend and supporter of the Sultan and his policy which was at the time attracting sharp criticism from other European Great Powers. As the two Ottoman reports related to Bismarck’s conversations with Ali Nizami Pasha and Re?id Bey, who were sent by Sultan Abdülhamid II to obtain a commitment on the civil and military advisors and to investigate the possibility of an alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire in December 1881, clearly express Bismarck was not indifferent towards the Ottoman affairs nor was he disinterested in the Sultan’s friendship. On December 19, 1881, Re?id Bey was received by Bismarck in an audience of almost two hour’s duration, of which he submitted a detailed summary-report to Sultan Abdülhamid regarding the conversation. In his eleven page comprehensive report, Re?id Bey demonstrated clearly Bismarck’s dramatically changed approach to Ottoman affairs. During the conversation lasting two hours Bismarck had openly shared his thoughts about the British, Russian, and French government and their interest in the Ottoman Empire and gave some advice to prevent foreign interference in Ottoman internal affairs. Furthermore Bismarck had taken a significant step by offering them some very forceful advice in which he categorized the Sultan’s Muslim/Turk subjects as reliable and the Non-Muslim/Non-Turk subjects (mezahib-i sa’ire efrad?) as unreliable. Additionally, Re?id Bey’s report highlights another impressive fact about Bismarck’s suggestion of Turkification of the late Ottoman Empire. Bismarck’s advice to the Ottoman delegation proved to be something akin to assimilation of the Non-Muslim subjects through a method which he formulated as ‘ruling with lion’s claw hidden in a silken glove’ (harirden ma’mul eldiven ile mestûr arslan pençesiyle idâre-i hükûmet). In fact these advices are in view of the Ottoman Empire’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious character very remarkable. This paper argues that the conversation of 1881 might be regarded as the definitive beginning of the change in Germany’s foreign policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Moreover in this paper, Re?id Bey’s report will be examined within the framework of Bismarck’s forceful suggestions. The basic question of the paper is whether Bismarck’s statements can be considered as a policy suggest for a positive discrimination or an assimilation of the Non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

Various explanations have been given for the first fall from office of Mustafa Reshid Pasha, the initiator of the Tanzimat reform movement. Papers from the French and Austrian archives and the recently catalogued papers of Lord Ponsonby, British ambassador during the time of Reshid Pasha's first period in office (1839-1841)suggest that the British ambassador played a leading role in the Ottoman reformer's fall. Although Lord Ponsonby worked with Reshid Pasha to bring about the military defeat of Mehmet Ali, governer of Egypt, he came to mistrust the minister, particularly for Reshid's efforts to limit the power of Sultan Abdul Mecid. Lord Ponsonby's concern for the power of the Sultan as the only stable institution in the country went hand-in-hand with his suspicion of Reshid Pasha as "too French." As Ponsonby switched his support to the Sultan's chamberlain, Riza, he may have been influjenced by political figures within the Phanariot community on whom he was dependent for information and for access to the Sultan. The intertwining of personality, reform and diplomacy is particularly complex ast this period. Would Riza Pasha have risen to a leadership role wmong the conservative party in the Ottoman government if Lord Ponsonby had not backed him over Reshid? In a rare document we see the British ambassador vowing to protect Riza if, as sof often happened, Reshid, aftr a brief hiatus, returned to power. Reshid Pasha begged in vain for European loans, financial advisors and foreign assistance with his reforms. This paper will argue that a reformer with a limited power base requires not only the right international context in order to succeed, but a happy coincidence of personalities as well.

This paper is an attempt to examine the unpublished memoirs of a late Ottoman and early republican governor, Abdurrahman Pasha (Tanyolaç) as a source for the history of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish republic. (The original text of the memoirs is in the private library of Abdurrahman Pasha’s family.) Abdurrahman Pasha was both a witness to and an active player in the final stages of the Ottoman Empire. Born and raised in multi-ethnic multi-religious K?rkkilise in 1865 and educated in ?stanbul at Mülkiye, Abdurrahman Pasha served as an Ottoman governor (first as a kaymakam, later as a vali) in a number of towns and cities in Ottoman Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Anatolia under the regimes of Abdülhamid II and the Young Turks through World War One and took retirement as a governor of the Turkish republic. He spent his retirement years under the new regime as an ordinary Turkish citizen (publicly no longer as Abdurrahman Pasha, but as Abdurrahman Tanyolaç, although informally he continued to be known as Abdurrahman Pasha). Dictated in 1947, after living through the formative decades of the republic, these memoirs provide rich insights into the transition from Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, into how Ottomans became Turks, as well as into the relations between Ottoman bureaucrats and the people in the Arab and Kurdish dominated provinces of the Empire. These memoirs offer valuable new information about the operation of the Ottoman state, about life in the provinces, and about ethnic, nationalist, tribal and other conflicts in eastern Anatolia and the Arab provinces. This paper will focus, on the one hand, on the insights Abdurrahman Pasha’s account brings to the debates about “Ottoman orientalism” (I use the term in the sense used by U. Makdisi). On the other hand, I will examine these memoirs for what they tell us about the cultural transformations that took place at the individual and family levels from the late 19th century into 1940s. Memoirs, like oral history, present both rich possibilities and challenges for the historian. What Abdurrahman Pasha remembered, how he remembered it, as well as what he forgot or excluded must have been shaped in part by his republican experiences. As I analyze these memoirs, I will also discuss some of the difficulties involved in using memoirs as a primary source, following the recent scholarship of Leyla Neyzi, Esra Özyürek, Arzu Öztürkmen, and Meltem Türköz.