This paper analyzes the social transformation of the Ottoman Empire by focusing on the Armenian orphans of Istanbul, who were moved to the city particularly after 1896 Armenian massacres. The aim of this paper is questioning the nature of the Hamidian regime by going beyond the traditional Islamist and state-centered arguments by examining the transformation of charity into a contested domain between different actors. During the reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), institutionalization of charity work became one of the crucial policies of the Ottoman state in order to recruit and strengthen the sympathy of people towards the Sultan’s autocratic regime. Abdulhamid II personally involved in the process of enhancing these institutions’ conditions in Istanbul and also in Eastern provinces. After the Armenian massacres of 1896, Ottoman state began to collect the Armenian orphans in state-sponsored orphanages. However, the Sublime Porte was not the only actor interested in orphans. Armenian Patriarchate and also German and American missionaries were also aiming to take these children into their institutions to create the “ideal” adults of the future. Inevitably, the involvement of multiple actors in the politics of benevolence led to the emergence of rivalry and competition among various actors. This transformation of the politics of benevolence into a contested domain also determined the limits of Ottoman state to realize its policies over children entirely. The institutions that involved in the domain of politics of benevolence were not the only actors that need to be considered. Children who tried to survive in these institutions also had their agency to resist or accept the ideological imposition of these institutions. Particularly children in orphanages of patriarchate found various means, such as performing plays and organizing fund-raising campaigns, to resist the suppressive policies of the Sublime Porte through the means that the orphanages of Armenian community provide them. For that reason, this paper will analyze the resistance of orphans by focusing on the Armenian orphanage in Istanbul (Meryemana Ermeni Eytamhanesi) to institutionalized repression of Hamidian regime. The main motive of this paper will be examining redefined incremental importance of orphans in terms of citizenship and identity construction, and the policies of control over children for the realization of Ottoman modernist project. This paper will analyze these issues by using newspapers and Ottoman archival resources.

In 1820, Heinrich Heine defined the Hebrew Bible as the ‘portable homeland’ of Jews while discriminatory acts of the Prussian government against Jews were being implemented. Respectively, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, scholars considered Yiddish as another form of ‘portable homeland’. Formation of the narratives of text and speech as substitutes of the material homeland was a common practice among Ottoman Jews also. On the eve of the dissolution of the territorial integrity, over a quarter of a million of Sephardic Jews lived in the the empire and İzmir was one of the cultural hubs with a lively Jewish literary activity. The imperial restructuring under the influence of modernization and Ottomanist policies to strengthen the central power had decisive results on the usage and depiction of Ladino in this port city where both commodities and ideas were exchanged constantly. Hence, regarding their diasporic condition, Jews conceptualized Ladino as the ‘portable homeland’ in which they wrote and to which they respond to policies of modern citizenship and centralization. How did cultural and political clashes of the period were performed within the realm of linguistics? Can we treat İzmirli Jews’ persistence of using Ladino as a form of resistance through the convoluted interaction between space and language? In terms of their diasporic condition, Jews conceptualized Ladino as an alternative sphere in which they wrote and which they respond to empire’s centralization aims. Hence, İzmirli Jews’ production of texts written in Ladino was peculiar, both at interpretative and behavioral levels since linguistic continuity was an important part of their ethno-religious identity. Through the analysis of shifts in the concepts related to identity politics in this historical community, this study examines how Jews of İzmir appropriated and adapted Ladino as an alternative linguistic space which imitated the material realm to feel belonging towards, on the eve of the trauma od dissolution. In this purpose, this study will focus on the local Ladino periodical Lah Boz del Pueblo to analyze the image of Ladino as a tool of resistance and a repository of sense of belonging and identity without any commitment to a material homeland. The stance of Jewish members of İzmir during dissolution of the territorial integrity of the empire, presents a complex picture of contested versions of modernity of the period and reveals the contradictions between the East and West, center and periphery, self and other.

This paper assumes that the Ottoman Empire was not a passive audience of imperial competition of the nineteenth century, but involved in the imperial struggles by undertaking aggressive measures with an imperialist mind and strategy. Herein, with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Ottoman ruling elites identified the Red Sea as a strategic region. Thus, the Ottomans reoccupied the highlands of Yemen, and San’a by an imperial military expedition to secure Ottoman rule in the Arabian Peninsula. This paper aims to comprehend the governing strategies enforced in the province immediately after the reoccupation, which contradicted the aims of such Tanzimat reforms as general conscription. In particular, using Asakir-i Hamidiye, a local army created in 1880, as a case study, this paper probes the decision made by Ismail Hakkı Pasha, the provincial governor (vali) of Yemen at the time, to organize a native army instead of conscripting Yemenis into the imperial army. Based upon archival research in the Prime Ministry Archives in Istanbul and a survey in the provincial newspaper, The San’a Gazetesi, this paper discusses the establishment of the native army as a part of Islahat (reform) projects of Ismail Hakkı Pasha. It argues that the fear of the vali that the population would shift their loyalties to the British in the south led to his application of integrationist strategies. Ismail Hakkı Pasha aimed to integrate the population into the imperial system; hence he sought governing practices that would be adoptable to local customs and practices. As a response to the resistance of the Yemeni population to the conscription, Ismail Hakkı Pasha sought a strategy to accustom the Yemenis to imperial military institutions and practices. To this end, he initiated the formation of a native army. This paper will show the differences of Asakir- Hamidiye from militia forces organized in the frontiers in terms of its organization, training, and order while suggesting to treat the Asakir-i Hamidiye as part of broader strategies of Ottomanization and of integrating frontier populations into the empire.

During the final decade of its existence, the Ottoman state sought to alter the imperial map by imposing new place names across the territory under its control. Beginning in 1913, committees consisting of local notables and government officials were created in order to expedite the erasure, often in bulk, of village and town names that were deemed inappropriate. In other cases, place name change was carried out by the central bureaucracy on a case-by-case basis. Although not executed systematically, place name change continued through the end of the Ottoman Empire and into the Republic of Turkey where, as in many nation states, it was an integral part of a broader process of homogenization. This study, using lists containing settlement names targeted for removal as well as other related documents found in the Ottoman State Archives, will seek to identify the rationales that led the state to rename hundreds of settlements across the empire throughout the years 1913-1923. I argue that the existence of divergence in the considerations, both ideological and practical, that lay behind these instances of renaming problematizes readings of late Ottoman history that are often too eager to assign an “official ideology” to the period. During this time of trauma and territorial contraction, the character of the much reduced Ottoman state was not a foregone conclusion. The issue of identity, both of the state itself and of its ideal subject/citizen, was one that would be contentious throughout the final years of the empire and into the republic. Examining attempts to inscribe a particular character onto the map contributes to a more developed understanding of how the state sought to create or redefine identity and how conceptions of a particular toponymic order reflected the concerns of those involved in this process. These attempts at place name change serve to defamiliarize our knowledge of governance in the late Ottoman Empire. Toponymical change, rather than being understood as a single Turkification project that began in 1913 and continued throughout the next eight decades, as is the case in previous studies, is analyzed within a broader context of imperial modernization. This study, which aims to move beyond debates that conceptualize the late Ottoman state in terms of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Turkism, or other “official” ideologies, argues that toponymical change was a technique of governmentality through which the map became a focal point in negotiating an Ottoman identity.