The aim of this paper is to analyze the educational views of Young Turks and the “prototype Ottoman” that they aimed to create, through a survey of Tedrisât-? ?btidâiye Mecmuas? (Journal of Primary School Education), which was the official publication of the Teachers’ College and the Ministry of Education. Its purpose was to inform the Ottoman teachers about the modern child-centered pedagogical methods of inculcating the students according to the requirements of the time. The nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman society experienced a long period of modernization, in which traditional social values started to change. The emergence of “child” as an important constructive social agent was a result of a quest for social change as well. Children were perceived as the future of the society, and their education and indoctrination became one of the most important issues of Ottoman modernization. The educational reforms of this period can also be explained with the state’s efforts to defend itself during a period of rising ethnic nationalisms. The state aimed to unite all ethnic and religious communities under the flag of “Ottomanism”, and to create a “prototype Ottoman”, during the Young Turk Era. In order to secure the future of the Constitutional regime, the political elite targeted to inculcate the new generations with the revolutionary ideals of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Justice”. The founder and editor of Journal of Primary School Education, Sât? al-Husri worked as the Director of Education in the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire prior to being transferred to the Teachers’ College in Istanbul. He taught in Manast?r, which was a center of activity for Greek and Bulgarian rebel bands. It was his first encounter with nationalism, and he was highly influenced by the patriotic inculcation and emphasis on linguistic education in the schools of Manast?r. His experiences constituted a basis for the pedagogical methods he developed. Journal of Primary School Education includes articles which aim at introducing the modern pedagogical methods to teachers, as well as sample lessons, short stories, and games. The sample lessons include intense political inculcation against the Hamidian regime. The importance of being an Ottoman citizen, and the rights and duties of the citizens were explained in detail. An analytical reading of this journal in its historical and social context gives important clues about the official state ideology and the ideal “prototype Ottoman” of the Young Turk Era.

In historical retrospective local populations in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, and to a lesser degree in the Czech territories, have had experiences of massive interaction with Turkish Muslims in course of the 16th and 17th century when the Ottomans, as well as the Crimean Tatars, invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and waged numerous wars against Poland and the Austrian lands. The Age of the Ottomans has been reflected in the history textbooks of the four Visegrad countries usually under the headings “Turkish wars or Ottoman expansion.” Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain all four states have been involved in an intense effort to re-write textbooks, although the perception of the Ottomans and Muslims did not change a lot. Without claiming to map the whole of the historical presentation of Turks this contribution aims to demonstrate the polyphony within the textbook sources in the region. By analysing grammar schools and seminaries educational materials in all four languages it is possible to specify stereotypes, prejudicies and distortions concerning the perception of the Ottoman Turks. Besides commenting the results of quantitative analytical techniques stress in my presentation will be given to qualitative methods. The aim of this cross-cultural analysis is for example to identify bias vis-a-vis the Turks and Muslims, to examine words with controversial meanings, representation of images or what actually the authors of those textbooks regard as valuable and important information about the Ottomans. Here symbolic and interpretative uses of textbooks will be critically reviewed in order to make some generalizations. Equally, questions such as “what is included, what is omitted and why” from textbooks are going to be approached.

Is the Ottoman body “abnormal, amorphous and accustomed to slacking?” In 1913, an Ottoman author argued that the Ottomans lost the first Balkan war because of the lack of swiftness and physical infirmity of the Ottoman soldiers. "Because," he claimed, “we have forgotten our duty to strengthen our bodies; we have fallen into laziness so much that even our blood circulates languidly in our veins.” Was this a single articulation, or was it a part of a new discourse on body that had been developing throughout the nineteenth century and was becoming hegemonic in late Ottoman society? What were the effects of wars in general, and the Balkan War in particular, on the emergent discourses? Did the practices that are related to a new conceptualization of the body change after the Balkan defeat? A preliminary research indicates that there was a proliferation of the aforementioned articulations on the theme of body in relation to the nation in the post-Balkan war period. This paper will address the questions above and will trace the transformation of discourses on the body, using various literary genres as sources, such as ethics books, and periodicals, along with published memoirs on the Balkan wars. This is a part of a larger project on how the contents of laziness, productivity, and work ethic changed by becoming social, ‘national’ and political issues in the last century of the empire(1839-1920). The relationship between body and work was reconfigured when modern binaries, such as industriousness vs. laziness, were becoming hegemonic. This paper will look at the Balkan War ‘not as an event, but as a social process’ that allows us to see how war-making and nation-building were interdependent processes, and how the war made the critiques that pitted an ideal Ottoman against the ‘real’ “feeble and lazy” Ottomans increasingly salient. The reformers talked not only about the individual bodies, as in the tradition of the medico-ethics books, but also targeted the entire body politic. As the building block of a nation, the human body became a topos where both physical and mental infirmities ought to be defeated to establish a “productive nation.' The shift that occurred with the Balkan defeat was not only built on a century-long practice that made the productive body part of the nationalist discourse, but also made an emergent narrative visible on the national level in an undisputed way, and hence indicating a new stage.

This paper focuses on the practices of surveillance, censorship and control executed by the Ottoman state- and local authorities, over the charity concerts, the collective singing of foreign national anthems in public and semi-public spaces, and the content of musical plays. It engages the control over entertainment and music – its organized and spontaneous forms in the public space - in fin de siècle Istanbul. The paper tackles these issues, in view of the maintenance of public order –physical security - and public morality, the securing of the legitimacy of the state, and of the stance of the Ottoman ruling elite regarding the plurality of the public sphere and the multiple political allegiances of the empire’s subjects which ran the risk of challenging the ideals of Ottoman patriotism. The functioning of the agents of state control – the police force (zabtiye) – their practices and their discourse concerning the various acts which they considered to be “suspicious” will be investigated. The paper will be based on various documents in the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives (Ba?bakanl?k Osmanl? Ar?ivleri), Istanbul, i.e. the reports of the Police Ministry (Y?ld?z Zabtiye Nezareti Maruzat?), the petitions and spy reports (Y?ld?z Arzuhal ve Jurnaller) both addressed to the Y?ld?z Palace, and also the correspondence of the Interior Ministry (Dahiliye Muhaberat-? Umumiye Idaresi Kalem Evrak?, code: DH. MUI). One of the conclusions of the paper regarding the use of the urban space is the following. The response of the Ottoman authorities to petitions asking permission for the organization of charity concerts in open urban space, e.g. the parks, reveals that the urban space was stratified into areas where official ritual and representation was dominant on the one hand, and other spaces where alternative musical and cultural practices could be exercised on the other. The paper also shows that the central and local authorities dealt differently with the regularized and the spontaneous rituals. The monitoring of events like the Easter ritual and procession which took place every year was well organized and planned ahead and the outcome could almost be predicted depending on previous experience. Whereas, the Internal Ministry and the Police were hesitant in allowing spontaneous rituals like particular funeral masses whose emotional dynamics were not transparent.