This project seeks to examine the dynamics of state-society relations in the late Ottoman Empire in a crucial and formative historical period by focusing on a significant yet rather ignored topic, military conscription. Its main objective is to understand the response of multi-religious and multi-ethnic Ottoman society to the introduction of universal conscription throughout the second constitutional period during which the Ottoman society experienced a series of major wars and mass mobilizations before the break-up of their empire. Universal compulsory military service was a principle component of modernization and nation-building efforts in the late Ottoman Empire. It was a project to serve both the defense and the construction of the Ottoman nation. Yet, it remained far from accomplishing any of the ascribed tasks, military or civic. Neither could the new citizen army produce an effective defence like the armies of France or Germany, nor did it contribute to the creation of a societal cohesion and a unifying attachment to the empire. The Ottomans lost all the wars they fought between 1909 and 1918 and societal cleavages kept deepening. The failure of universal conscription has mostly been explained by ethno-religious factors and linked to the failure of Ottomanism. Notably, with regard to non-Muslim minorities, the resistance to join the colors has largely been associated with their weakened loyalty to the empire or weaning belief in the CUP and Ottomanism as a unifying ideology. However, in this paper, I argue for the need to consider military service and conscription as a distinct phenomenon from Ottomanism with its unique dynamics. It is my claim that empire-wide strong resistance to conscription cutting across ethnic and religious lines and significant variation in responses within each millet implied the importance of socio-economic factors, and indicated that ethnic, religious, and ideological accounts fall short in explaining the complex nature of societal response to universal compulsory military service and its eventual demise. With its intention of exploiting temporal, spatial variations within and across religious communities, my research employs a dynamic comparison research method. It is a historical comparative case study in which the response of different religious communities to the call to military service under Ottoman rule during three consecutive wars will be examined. In analysis and interpretation of the society’s pro- or anti-conscription attitude, such socio-economic factors as wealth, education, and place of residence along with ethnicity and religion will take precedence.

This study explores the role of Edirne as a symbol of Ottoman territorial integrity and sovereignty during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Edirne had always been an important Ottoman urban center, especially in the European territories of the Empire, because of its proximity to the (later) capital, Istanbul, and its strategic location on the overland trade routes. It became a more significant urban center during the 19th century as the Ottoman Empire lost many of its European territories due to frequent wars and the rise of new nation-states in the Balkans. This experience gradually put the city at the western frontier of the Empire, and the city was occupied by the Russian army in 1829 and during the Turco-Russian wars of 1877-78. During the Balkan Wars, Edirne was placed under siege by the newly established Balkan states and subsequently occupied by the Bulgarian army in March 1913 after a five-month long siege. The Balkan Wars resulted in a major and a final territorial loss for the Ottoman Empire in Europe, which included the Eastern Thrace. Edirne was recaptured by the Ottomans during the Second Balkan War and, after the loss of Salonica (Thessaloniki), became the only remaining significant urban center in the Ottomans’ European territories and western borderlands. Throughout this turbulent time, first the loss and then the recapture of the city became a focal point of the public discourse. The members of the Young Turk Movement and the CUP leaders rallied for the recapture of Edirne after the city was retained by Bulgarians following the London peace treaty that ended the First Balkan War. The eventual recapture of the city in July 1913 provided them with further support. This study explores how this process was experienced in the public domain through archival materials covering contemporary printed sources such as periodicals, newspapers, maps, and postcards, both European and Ottoman. The diverse population of the city presents a unique case to investigate how intercommunal relations played a role in the manifestation of the symbolic role Edirne came to acquire. In addition, official correspondence from Hariciye Defterleri is analyzed to understand the official government point of view on the importance of Edirne for Ottoman territorial integrity and sovereignty. In particular, we observe how reclaiming the city by pushing west of the Midye-Enez line set by the European powers at end of the First Balkan War became a priority for the Ottoman state.

This presentation is part of my work on the Ottoman settlement of Muslim Caucasian refugees in the empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My work focuses on ways in which the Ottoman Empire deployed refugee populations to the desert frontiers of the empire in North Africa and Syria to “civilize” both the land and local nomadic populations as part of the ongoing centralizing project of the Ottoman state. Specifically, I will present part of a chapter on the settlement of Quneitra, a town in southern Syria that became a major node for Caucasian settlement after 1878. The refugees that ended up in Quneitra had first settled in the Balkans after being expelled from the Caucasus by Russia in the early 1860s.and had only just begun to become integrated into Balkan politics and society when the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War forced them to move again. They arrived destitute in ports such as Beirut and Haifa only to be moved almost immediately to the harsh climates near the edge of the Syrian desert. Once there, they had to negotiate the challenging interface between state and citizen, settled and pastoral, and arid and steppe all with almost no knowledge of Arabic and only sporadic material support from the Ottoman government. Slowly but surely, the Caucasian settlers built towns, safeguarded Ottoman telegraph lines, and transformed their area into a new outpost of Ottoman modernity at the edge of the desert. In analyzing how the settlement of Muslims from a distinct diaspora were settled among other Muslims, I hope to interrogate the relationship between the new arrivals and the unfamiliar environmental and human landscape in which they were settled by using materials collected from the Prime Minister’s Archive in Istanbul and the Center for Documents, Manuscripts and Bilad al-Sham Studies in Amman.

Scholarship today argues that the “Ottoman way” denotes the centralization of the ʿilmiye education and employment system under government patronage and the development of qanun to regulate the hierarchy and promotion of these protectors of the Shariʿa.” In this presentation, branching out from this analysis, I will examine the development of and responses to the “Ottoman way” within the context of sixteenth century Egypt. What was the “Ottoman way” and how was it implemented in Egypt? Following the region’s conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, a series of administrative-religious/judicial changes were introduced to the existing system that marked departures from the customary and religious laws in practice under Mamluk rule. Local representatives of Ottoman judicial bureaucracy played a major role in implementing the “Ottoman way”. In the narrative sources and chronicles of the period (Ibn Iyas’s Bada’i‘ al-Zuhur fī Waqa’i‘ al-Duhur and Diyarbekri’s Nevaridu’t-Tevarih) references underline the limits of the “Ottoman way” and the negative reactions of the people of Egypt. The resistance by the Egyptian ʿulama and ehl-i Mıṣr, for instance, were directed against what they perceived as ill-defined Ottoman innovations, customary laws, and the gradual forced ascendancy and application of the Hanefi law over the Shafiʿi one. The available studies focus briefly on the ad hoc changes made to the Mamluk system and its immediate results, showing how the Ottoman system gradually replaced the Mamluk one after the promulgation of the Law Code of Egypt in 1525. However, as evidence from chronicles and other narrative sources reflect, the administrative-judicial and social dynamics portray a far more complicated picture than what has been assumed. This presentation will explore this critical and complex transitional Mamluk/Ottoman period (1517-ca.1566) to show how the “Ottoman way” was negotiated in Egypt by various actors. It will also argue that rather than being implemented by the imperial “center” in Istanbul as a product of a well-defined and clearly articulated Ottoman imperial vision, the “Ottoman way” was a work-in-progress during the rule of Sultan Süleyman.