Minorities

Chapter 27 The Ottoman Empire was not a “multicultural heaven,” as Turkish nationalist nostalgia often portrays it. According to the Sharia law, non-Muslims were second-class subjects, and this did not change until the Tanzimat years. The very existence of the millet system as an organizational principle and founding block of the Ottoman Empire has sparked considerable controversy among historians.2 On the other hand, without being tolerant in the contemporary meaning, the Ottoman Empire was more tolerant toward religious minorities than Christian empires and states contemporary with it. It is worth remembering that refugee waves were crossing the Mediterranean in both directions. While a part of the Byzantine Greek elite fled to Western Europe following the collapse of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, thousands of Sephardic Jews of the Iberian peninsula found safe haven in the Ottoman Empire, following their expulsion in the late fifteenth century. Certain segments of Ottoman administration and trade were open to non-Muslims. For generations, Phanariot (prominent Istanbul) Greeks manned key positions in the Danubian provinces and the foreign service of the Ottoman Empire. Greeks, Armenians, and Jews controlled large parts of Ottoman trade. The advent of the Enlightenment would transform the empire forever. Nationalism and republicanism spread first among non-Muslims, who enjoyed a closer link with Western and Central European ideological trends due to their commercial relations and large diaspora communities. While early revolutionaries like Rigas Velestinlis envisioned the replacement of Ottoman despotism with a republican “commonwealth” inclusive of all ethnic and religious communities, their project was soon scaled down to liberation from Ottoman despotic rule and the carving out of republican nation-states (Grigoriadis, 2011: 168-69). The outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the recognition of the independence of a Greek nation-state in the southern Balkans and the Aegean in 1830 were big shocks and milestone events. Nationalism shook the foundations of the ailing empire. Although it had been losing territory to the Russian and Habsburg Empires for more than a century, this was the first time one of its subject populations succeeded in gaining its independence. This led to the intensification of Westernization reform efforts. The comprehensive Westernization reform program, which took the name Tanzimat, aimed to strengthen the ailing empire, as well as win the loyalty of non-Muslims, who would for the first time be treated as equal subjects. The 1839 Imperial Rescript of the Rose Garden (Hatt-ı S¸erif-i Gülhane) and the 1856 Imperial Rescript (Hatt-ı Hümayun) were path-breaking documents. In the Hatt-ı S¸erif-i Gülhane, the Sharia-based discrimination of non-Muslims was abolished, and equality for all Ottoman subjects regardless of religious and ethnic affiliation was proclaimed. In the Hatt-ı Hümayun, protection of fundamental human rights and civil liberties and their extension to non-Muslims were specified. The administrative authority of non-Muslim religious institutions was reinforced, and all Ottoman bureaucratic positions became accessible to non-Muslims-at least on paper3-while preferential links between non-Muslim and Western European entrepreneurs allowed for the flourishing of a powerful non-Muslim bourgeoisie (Issawi, 1982). Meanwhile, as Enlightenment ideas were rapidly spreading within Ottoman Muslim elites, three alternative state ideologies were adopted at different times. Ottomanism, which gained appeal between 1839 and 1876, promoted a civic version of Ottoman identity, devoid of any religious and ethnic underpinnings. Pan-Islamism, which grew in popularity in the era of Sultan Abdülhamid II, aimed to unite all Muslims under the rule of the Ottoman sultan, who had meanwhile reclaimed his title as caliph.4 Pan-Turkism aimed to unite all Turkic populations dispersed in the Balkans, the Middle East and Central Asia, and gained impetus in the very last years of the Ottoman Empire, following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in 1912. While Ottomanism appeared to be the choice of liberal reformers such as Midhat Pas¸a, the growing appeal of irredentist nationalism among non-Muslims and consecutive military defeats contributed to the derailment of the reform process and the rise of Hamidian autocracy. When pan-Islamism was turned into the official ideology of the Ottoman Empire, interethnic tensions began to rise. The 1894-96 Armenian massacres were the harbinger of a violent “unmixing” of Muslim and non-Muslim populations. While the 1908 Young Turk Revolution raised brief hopes for a restoration of Ottomanism and peaceful coexistence of different religious and ethnic groups on the basis of equal rights,5 the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and World War I led to the growing appeal of pan-Turkism. Non-Muslims were collectively seen as the “enemy within,” willing collaborators to the partition of the Ottoman Empire and obstacles to the establishment of a Turkish nation-state. The tragic events between 1911 and 1923 that sealed the end of the Ottoman Empire dramatically changed the ethno-religious map of Anatolia. While hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees were killed or fled from lost Ottoman territories in the Balkans, hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were either killed or forced to flee Anatolia as a result of military operations and atrocities. The 1915 Armenian massacres and the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange agreement were milestone events in that process. While non-Muslims represented more than 20 percent of the overall population of Anatolia in the early twentieth century, their numbers had fallen to approximately 2.5 percent as of 1923 (Aktar, 2003: 87). Nonetheless, their sharp demographic decrease failed to appease fears about the loyalty to Republican Turkey of those who remained. While Republican Turkey attempted to extricate itself from its Young Turk legacy, in effect it followed the Young Turk paradigm when it came to non-Muslims. Non-Muslims were not deemed fit to become full-fledged citizens of Republican Turkey. They were seen as “foreign citizens,” “local foreigners,”6 or “fifth columnists,” ready to collaborate with foreign powers to partition Turkey. Hence state policies aimed to socially and economically marginalize non-Muslims and eventually force them into emigration.7 The establishment of a Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie was considered as critical for the success of Turkish state building.