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The article discusses the origin of legal pluralism in personal status disputes in Egypt based on religion and nationality. Topics discussed include the role of the Ottoman millet system in institutionalizing legal pluralism based on religion, the Egyptian judicial system which is composed of several courts including the Consular courts, Sharia courts and national courts, and Egyptian choice of law rules for solving international and interpersonal conflicts of laws relating to personal status.

The article introduces the concept of "milletic secularism" which invokes the Ottoman millet system to refer to divergent and competing transnational collective identities, loyalties, and frames of reference coexisting within the same nation-state. These identities are conceptualized as resembling the way religious communities functioned under the Ottoman millet system but in a reverse, upended way, as today Muslims are the minority in a pluralist society and secular state governed on the basis of non-Muslim procedures and values symbolically overarched by Orthodox Christianity. Foregrounding the case of Bulgaria, the article highlights the role of the Ottoman legacy vis-à-vis Orthodox Christian heritage for the accommodation of diversity. Milletic secularism draws on the implicit social knowledge that evokes differing antecedents and values underlying the shared identities of Christians and Muslims. Since the 1990s, after half a century dominated by the "secular religion" of Communism, the intersection of religion and politics in Bulgaria is reshaped by the reemergence of religion as a structural force. Milletic secularism has both integrative and emancipatory potential, fostered and challenged today by a variety of factors. Among them, this article foregrounds the increasingly transnational Sunnī Muslim identity and the ongoing re-Islamization in the form of Ḥanafism and Salafism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ottoman State, administered non-Muslim citizens in a legal structure called the "Millet System". In the frame of this system non-Muslims were separated as three millets: Jews, Greeks and Armenians. Within this structure, all Christian subjects were divided into two as the Greek and Armenian millets. Christian communities not ethnically belonging to these millets were accepted as one of the Greek or Armenian millets according to their religious beliefs. In short, the Ottoman Millet system was a non-ethnic, religious structure. Hence the state recognized its citizens based on their religious identities. The Bulgarians, who are Orthodox Christians, also belonged to the Greek Patriarchate. This led to the implementation of the oppression and assimilation policies of the Greeks to Bulgarians, who belonged to the Greek Patriarchate. Thus, the Bulgarians has struggled to get rid of this situation and to have their national churches by getting out of the Greek millet. The radical changes in the administration of the Ottoman State regarding non-Muslims after The Imperial Reform Edict have increased the struggle of the Bulgarians. As a result, in 1870 the Bulgarians left the Greek Patriarchate and made their national churches recognized by the state. This article examines the struggle to establish the Bulgarian national church and the developments that have taken place after the recognition of the independent Bulgarian church by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians and social scientists view the Ottoman millet system as a successful example of non-territorial autonomy. The Ottoman rulers recognized the diversity of religious and ethnic communities that made up the empire and also understood that this diversity could not and should not be assimilated into an overarching principle of sameness. Instead, they organized a series of ad-hoc negotiations with the heads of religious communities, resulting in what became known as the millet system. Under these arrangements Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities organized their existence in the empire and survived through a generalized system of imperial toleration and intense negotiation. This article describes the main features of the millet system, and looks at the legacy it bequeathed to certain successor states, notably Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey. It argues that this kind of non-territorial autonomy was best suited to the geographical dispersion of minorities, but also to the strategic goals of the Ottoman Empire. Although this model was subsequently idealised, it had the effect not just of allowing autonomy to minorities but also of ensuring that they remained under the control of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Middle East, with its most widely used meaning, is the region that covers Egypt in the west, Turkey and Iran in the north, Arabian Sea in the east, and Gulf of Aden and Yemen in the south. This region is the one that is thought to have witnessed the dawn of human civilization, which spread from the "Fertile Crescent" via Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile to the shores of Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and beyond. It is the home of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It's the heart of Islamic Civilization, as well as the birthplace of the revealed religions, such as Judaism and Christianity. Islamic unity, which started with the leadership of Prophet Mohammad and established during the reign of Rashidun Caliphs and the reign of Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties, disrupted by the Crusades and Mongol Invasions. Following a struggle of two and half centuries, it was established once again by the Ottoman Empire in 16th Century, after four major military campaigns. This was followed by a four centuries of peace(Pax Ottomana) in the Middle East. Ottoman Empire, paying attention to the local dynamics, established an administrative system. This administative system, united the locals under the "Ottoman Millet System", thus Ottomanized them. Today, in order to achieve peace in the Middle East, it is essential to understand the four centuries of Ottoman experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show how and why Armeno-Turkish, or Ottoman Turkish written in Armenian letters, especially throughout the nineteenth century, was not merely an Armenian phenomenon but rather a cultural reflection of a larger Ottoman history. The article begins with a critique of the literature on the Ottoman millets and the interaction among them. It then presents examples of Turkish statesmen, authors, and journalists who were either aware of or could read Armeno-Turkish, and explores how Armeno-Turkish might have served as a written lingua franca among the members of different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups in the Ottoman Empire. Finally, it concludes with a number of reflections on the possible reasons for Turksʼ interest in the Armenian script. The article thus aims to contribute to the debate over the Ottoman millet system from the perspective of cross-cultural exchanges and encounters among the different peoples of the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article re-opens the discussion about the Ottoman millet practice. The best known stereotypes claim that the so-called 'millet system' only offered rights to non-Muslim religious minorities. This article fundamentally challenges this approach. It focuses on how the millet practice was applied to the treatment of Kurds under the early and late Ottoman Empire, and discusses how millet practices were destroyed by the disease of nationalism. The article then considers how practices like those applied by the Ottomans might act as a useful example for modern nation states facing conflicts with national, religious, ethnic or migrant minorities. It suggests that practices like the millet might be beneficial both if minorities gain territorial recognition and also for those minorities who live in non-territorial communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the validity of the strategic killing model proposed by Benjamin Valentino, which underscores the primary significance of elite group interests in the initiation and implementation of genocidal policies against certain ethnic or political groups. I argue that the Armenian genocide was primarily driven by the policies of the Young Turks' regime whose main objective was to rid the Ottoman Empire of the Armenian population and to consolidate a power base. I substantiate the superiority of the strategic killing model over the national upheaval thesis brought forward by Barbara Harff in her study on genocide, and support the main argument that genocide is a well-organized political strategy of power elites which is aimed at transforming a society through the deportation or extermination of a certain ethnic or political group that is seen as a threat to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing postcolonial literature privileges the British and French imperial/ colonial history that mirrors the ongoing debate on the relationship among cosmopolitanism, universalism, and imperialism. These debates take for granted the Kantian and Hegelian hierarchy of European civilizations, hence marginalizing the southern shores of Europe and the broader Mediterranean space. Drawing on Mignolo's notion of "border thinking" and on Isin's account of the city as a "difference machine," I address the issue of how imperialism, colonialism, and cosmopolitanism come together and relate to each other in the context of the Mediterranean (allegedly) cosmopolitan cities. In particular, cosmopolitanism is read as the outcome of the reciprocal adjustment of interior and exterior borders in the making of modernity/coloniality in the Mediterranean. Focusing on the Ottoman millet system, my main claim in this article is that cosmopolitanism worked as a peculiar dispositif within the urban difference machine, enabling the city to sustain the tension between different accounts of citizenship. Keywords: border thinking, citizenship, cosmopolitanism, Mediterranean, millet, Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Millet System in Ottoman Empire. It states that Millet System helped to create a tolerable minority status for different religious groups and the Ottoman Empire's general contribution to it was primarily to regulate and institutionalise it. It notes that the system allowed the state to control communities through religious institutions and allowed religious hierarchies to control internal dissent and fight heterodoxy.

The definition of Turkish nationhood after the founding of the Republic has been evaluated and labelled very differently by various scholars. The classical view paralleled the official representation of Republican policies in describing Turkish nationhood as being based on a civic and territorial understanding of nationality. More recent and much more critical scholarship, which enjoys a near-hegemonic position in the study of Turkish nationalism today, claims that the official definition of Turkish nationhood has a clearly identifiable mono-ethnic orientation, manifest in a series of policies and institutions. This article argues that the definition of Turkish nationhood as manifest in state policies is neither territorial nor mono-ethnic, but rather ironically for the adamantly secular Turkish republic, the definition of Turkish nationhood is mono-religious and anti-ethnic, in striking continuity with the Islamic millet under the Ottoman Empire. The reason critical scholars perceive Turkish nationhood as mono-ethnic might stem from the dichotomous view of nationalisms as civic versus ethnic, a dichotomy that has recently been repudiated by some of its erstwhile proponents. Supremacy of the religious over ethnic categories in Turkey, as a historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system, might be applicable to most post-Ottoman states in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in contrast to the interplay of ethnicity and religion in Western Europe. This view of Turkish nationhood is confirmed by a dozen interviews that the author conducted with members of the political and intellectual elite of different ideological orientations in Turkey. It is then demonstrated how the new efforts at reformulating modern Turkish identity with reference to Ottoman and Islamic conceptions lead to new inclusion-exclusion dynamics with the Kurds and the Alevis, suggesting that a truly inclusive reformulation has to follow secular and territorial principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring interethnic relations in the Ottoman Empire as a form of inter-ethnic peace is almost nonexistent in the literature on ethnic studies, or on a wider scale, in political science. This study, therefore, concentrates on the Ottoman millet practice as a state policy to monitor its multi-ethnic and multi-national people. It argues that an important yet often neglected point about the Ottoman Empire was its ability to maintain 'peace' and order among its multi-ethnic people for a considerable period of time through its millet practice. Rather than dismissing it as an epiphenomenon of state policies aimed at other purposes, this study argues that it is an accomplishment that deserves emphasis. While studying the Ottoman millet practice, this study pursues two related goals. First, it introduces the Ottoman Empire to the relevant bodies of literature on political science and sociology as a case that can provide additional insight about the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations. Second, it contends that even during its decay, the Ottoman center continued to act as a mediator between and within the existing ethnic groups through its millet policy. Consequently, this study offers the millet policy as a factor, which contributed to the long inter-ethnic peace in the Ottoman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Ottoman Empire's millet system with a focus on the Muslim populations in Greece and Bulgaria during the period of 1912 to 1923. The influence of this system on peace treaties, social institutions, and the status of religious minorities, the role of ethnicity and the concept of corporate autonomy in the millet system, the system's effect on assimilationist policies and social norms, the muftis who were considered to be civil servants, and the millet-system model as a way to protect minority rights are discussed.