Order and Compromise:

Government Practices in Turkey

from the Late Ottoman Empire to
the Early 21st Century

Edited by

Marc Aymes
Benjamin Gourisse
Élise Massicard

LEIDEN | BOSTON

For use by the Author only | © 2015 Koninklijke Brill NV

Contents

List of Tables and Figures vii

List of Abbreviations viii
List of Contributors xi
Introductory Note xiii

1 Order and Compromise

The Concrete Realities of Public Action in Turkey and the Ottoman
Empire 1
Benjamin Gourisse

2 Defective Agency 25
Marc Aymes

3 Is It Time to Stop Speaking about Ottoman Modernisation? 45

Olivier Bouquet

4 The Linguist and the Politician

The Türk Dil Kurumu and the Field of Power in the 1930–40s 68
Emmanuel Szurek

5 An Imposed or a Negotiated Laiklik?

The Administration of the Teaching of Islam in Single-Party
Turkey 97
Nathalie Clayer

6 “The Military Seize the Law”

The Drafting of the 1961 Constitution 121
Nicolas Camelio

7 Institutional Cooperation and Substitution

The Ottoman Police and Justice System at the Turn of the 19th
and 20th Centuries 146
Noémi Lévy Aksu

8 The State without the Public

Some Conjectures about the Administration for Collective Housing
(toki̇) 169
Jean-François Pérouse

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vi CONTENTS

9 Heritage as a Category of Public Policy in the Southeastern Anatolia

Region 192
Muriel Girard and Clémence Scalbert Yücel

10 European Policies to Support “Civil Society”

Embodying a Form of Public Action 219
Claire Visier

11 The Incomplete Civil Servant?

The Figure of the Neighbourhood Headman (Muhtar) 256
Élise Massicard

12 Military Domination by Donations 291

Anouck Gabriela Côrte-Real Pinto

13 Women’s Shelters as State Institutions 317

Berna Ekal

14 The Socialisation of Those Called up for “Training in the Love of the

Motherland” as Part of Military Service in Turkey 333
Sümbül Kaya

15 Officialdom and the Woman Who was “Meant to be Dead”

The Ethnography of an Exfoliation 362
Benoît Fliche

16 Deceptive Agency 376
Marc Aymes

Bibliography 389
Index 427

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 chapter 3

Is It Time to Stop Speaking about Ottoman

Modernisation?

Olivier Bouquet

In 1940 Tanzimat I came out.1 This collection of articles was brought out to mark
the centenary of the inaugural Ottoman reform act, the 1839 Gülhâne edict.
They compared the leading figures of the Tanzimat (“Reforms”) to the founding
fathers of the Republic, emphasising the continuity in the historical experiences
of the Empire and the Turkish nation. For Ottomanists, this offered a way of
building a tomb for Atatürk’s that did not conform to the Republican ideology of
the moment—of erecting a different statue, no longer that of the demiurge
of the new Turkey but instead of the last man of the Reforms. The work offers a
rich overview.2 The historiographical framework put forward by the contribu-
tors was extensively taken up by Ottomanists after the Second World War. It
presented the reforms as a process of modernisation or westernisation carried
out by enlightened actors. It amounted to a new institutionalist school, one that
was strong enough to dominate Turkish academic historiography for the next
half-century. This school comprised such historians as İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı
whose works on the central, religious, and naval institutions acted as a model
for the following generations. The publication of general overviews in Great
Britain and the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s acted as a vital
relay for these perspectives. Bernard Lewis saw the Ottoman Empire as the
matrix for the emergence of modern Turkey; Sir Hamilton Gibb and Harold
Bowen emphasised the Islamic foundations of the Ottoman state3; Niyazi
Berkes, Roderic Davison, and Şerif Mardin presented the Ottoman Empire

1 Istanbul, Maarif Matbaası.

2 I am grateful to Marc Aymes for having reminded me of how decisively important this work
is. I also wish to thank him along with Benjamin Gourisse and Élise Massicard for their useful
suggestions and corrections to this chapter.
3 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed., London, Oxford University Press,
1968 [1961]; Hamilton A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of
the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, vol. 1, 1950, vol. 2, 1957.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004289857_004

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46 Bouquet

during its final centuries as the locus for a major opposition and cultural bifurca-
tion between the artisans of modernity turned towards western influences and
the defenders of Islamic tradition.4
In the 1960s and 1970s the key subject in Ottoman studies was precisely that
which other better-known fields of study were then neglecting—the state,
study of which was divided into three distinct historic periods: a ‘classical’
period (1300–1600) characterised according to Halil İnalcık by the constitu-
tion and consolidation of central institutions5; the decline of the Empire
(1600–1789) corresponding to the devolution of power to autonomous provin-
cial forces; the beginnings of modernity and the time of reforms under the
aegis of bureaucrats and then westernised military officers (1789–1922). And
then inversely, at the time when the state was once again becoming a favou-
rite subject of historical and political study in the 1980s, Ottoman historians
moved on to other areas of enquiry. Monographs about the central adminis-
tration were now superseded by explorations of more provincial forms of
authority (and especially the ayans of the 18th century) and by studies of the
structures and usages of imperial power. Researchers tended to be more
drawn towards the history of demography, monetary history, the history of
social groups, and the study of Sufi brotherhoods. Sources which had previ-
ously been seen as clearly secondary suddenly came to the fore—chronicles,
probate records, endowment deeds. At the same time, researchers who had
studied in the 1980s and 1990s had boldly turned their backs on the theories of
their predecessors.6

4 Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Montreal, McGill University Press,
1964; Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of
Turkish Political Ideas, Princeton, nj, Princeton University Press, 1962; Roderic H. Davison,
Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856–1876, Princeton, nj, Princeton University Press, 1963;
Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,
vol. 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808–1975, Cambridge/New
York, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
5 Halıl İnalcik, The Ottoman Empire, The Classical Age, 1300–1600, London, Weidenfeld and
Nicholson, 1973.
6 Edhem Eldem, “L’écrit funéraire ottoman: création, reproduction, transmission,” Revue du
monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, no. 75–76, 1995, pp. 65; Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and
Young Turks. Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918, Berkeley,
ca, University of California Press, 1997; Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking
Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, Seattle, wa/London, University of Washington
Press, 1997; Benjamin Fortna, Imperial Classroom. Islam, the State, and Education in the
Late Ottoman Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 1–42; Shirine Hamadeh,

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 47

Since then, however, the term ‘modernisation’ has been widely taken up
once again, though admittedly more by the history of techniques, sciences,
and communications than as part of a functional analysis of institutions
(teşkilat).7 It is now coupled to the notion of modernity taken as an agent of
social change and as part of a modified chronological framework in which the
Early Modern Ottomans (1453–1839) were replaced by the Modern Ottomans
(1839–1922).8 But as was the case during the preceding decades, modernisation
is still taken as the axiomatic principle for apprehending social change in the
late Ottoman Empire. It also feeds into political sociology of modern Turkey,
and is intimately bound up with the representation of a society in which
change can only be brought about by the overarching state.9
It is this link that I wish to examine here. I will endeavour to understand why
the reforms have been described by theoreticians of Ottoman modernisation
as a complex conceptual product, combining American institutionalism, neo-
Weberianism, and developmentalism, as well as why this has been fused into

“Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity and the ‘Inevitable’ Question of Westernization,”

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 63, no. 1, 2004, pp. 32–51.
7 Selcuk A. Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839–1908:
Islamization, Autocracy and Discipline, Leiden/Boston/Köln, Brill, 2001; Kemal H. Karpat,
“Ifta and Kaza: The Ilmiye State and Modernism in Turkey, 1820–1960,” in Colin Imber and
Keiko Kiyotaki (eds.), Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State Province and the West, London/
New-York, i.b. Tauris, 2005, vol. 1, pp. 25–42; Odile Moreau, “Les ressources scientifiques
de l’Occident au service de la modernisation de l’armée ottomane (fin XIXe-début XXe
siècle),” Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, no. 101–102, 2003, pp. 51–67;
Enes Kabakçı, “Sauver l’Empire: modernisation, positivisme et formation de la culture
politique des Jeunes Turcs (1895–1908),” unpublished PhD thesis, Paris, Paris I-Sorbonne
University, 2006; Tuncay Zorlu, Innovation and Empire in Turkey: Sultan Selim III and the
Modernization of the Ottoman Navy, London/New-York, i.b. Tauris, 2008; Berrak Burçak,
“Modernization, Science and Engineering in the Early Nineteenth Century Ottoman
Empire,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 44, no. 1, 2008, pp. 69–83; Carter V. Findley, Turkey,
Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789–2007, New Haven, ct, Yale University
Press, 2010.
8 Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman (eds.), The Early Modern Ottomans: Remapping the
Empire, Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
9 This theme is examined in the outline argument for the TransTur programme from
which this volume originates: Élise Massicard et al., “Ordonner et transiger: modalités
de gouvernement et d’administration en Turquie et dans l’Empire ottoman, du XIXe siècle
à  nos jours,” 2008, available online at: http://transtur.hypotheses.org/31 (accessed
8 October 2014).

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48 Bouquet

a fairly simple doxa (the modernisation of institutions is the necessary pre-

condition for the emergence of modern Turkey), that can be broken down
into three parts: no modernisation without westernisation—the two terms
generally being employed interchangeably from the 1950s to the 1980s; mod-
ernisation is primarily an affair of institutions; no positive social change with-
out modernisation by the state.10 In order to do so I will combine two levels of
thought which differ in nature: I will offer an overview of the issue of mod-
ernisation as it is treated in a specific historiographical corpus, and by draw-
ing on the political sciences I will scrutinise Ottomanist ways of thinking of
modernisation. Combining these two levels will lead me to assess whether in
the current state of research it is still appropriate to take modernisation as an
operative framework for apprehending Ottoman political society. I will be
arguing that if we are to speak in terms of modern/isation/ity/ism, then it
would be preferable to encourage an approach that is sociological rather than
paradigmatic and one that is better suited to understanding 19th- and 20th-
century homo ottomanicus, and thereby his relationship to modernity. As part
of this I will be suggesting that we need to think of the sociogenetic frame-
works of state functionaries at a more individual level than hitherto, based on
comparing their acquired and assigned statuses and the way they transpire
depending upon the functions assumed and the spaces within which they
find themselves.

10 N. Berkes, The Development, p. 29, 52, 74; Ş. Mardin, Genesis, p. 170; Metin Heper, “Atatürk
and the Civil Bureaucracy,” in Jacob M. Landau (ed.), Atatürk and the Modernization of
Turkey, Leiden/New York, E.J. Brill, 1984, p. 89; S. Shaw, Between Old and New. The Ottoman
Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807, Cambridge, ma, Harvard University Press, 1971,
p. 180; Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth
to Eighteenth Centuries, Albany, ny, State University of New York Press, 1991, p. 68; L. Carl
Brown, The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth Century Muslim Statesman,
Cambridge, ma, Harvard Middle Eastern Monograph Series, 1967, p. 35; Enver Ziya Karal,
“Obstacles rencontrés pendant le mouvement de modernisation de l’Empire ottoman,” in
Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont and Paul Dumont (eds.), Économie et sociétés dans l’Empire
Ottoman ( fin XVIIIe-début du XXe siècle), Paris, cnrs Éditions, 1983, pp. 11–12; Osman
Okyar, “A New Look at the Recent Political Social and Economic Historiography of the
Tanzimat,” in ibid., p. 43; A. Hourani, “The Changing Face of the Fertile Crescent in the
XVIIIth Century,” Studia Islamica, 8 (1957), pp. 89–122; Engin D. Akarlı, “The Problems of
External Pressures, Power Struggles, and Budgetary Deficits in Ottoman Politics under
Abdülhamid II (1876–1909): Origins and Solutions,” unpublished PhD dissertation,
Princeton University, 1976, pp. 1–10.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 49

The “Impact of the West”11

The vanquished always wants to imitate the victor

in his distinctive mark(s), his dress, his occupation,
and all his other conditions and customs. The reason for this is that the
soul always sees perfection in the person who is superior to it and to
whom it is subservient. It considers him perfect, either because the
respect it has for him impresses it, or because it erroneously assumes that
its own subservience to him is not due to the nature of defeat but to the
perfection of the victor. If that erroneous assumption fixes itself in the
soul, it becomes a firm belief. The soul, then, adopts all the manners of
the victor and assimilates itself to him. This, then, is imitation.12

As of the late 18th century the Ottoman elites, including some high-ranking
members of the ulema class, looked towards western Europe for inspiration for
reform.13 Dignitaries (scientific experts and special envoys) who travelled to
Europe discovered wondrous marvels, and went back to preach the word that
slowly percolated through the social body.14 They were not at all like European
diplomats and observers who were limited by “their inability to look behind
the elaborate ‘official’ facade to non-official realities”:

Outside the realm of official business, there was very little personal con-
tact or even communication between Europeans and Muslims. Most of

11 B. Lewis, The Emergence, p. 40.

12 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, translated by Franz Rosenthal,
3 vols., New York, Pantheon Books, 1958, vol. 1, p. 299.
13 A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983 [1962],
p. 103; Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, Cambridge/New York, Cambridge
University Press, 2000, p. 6.
14 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Ondokuzuncu Asır Türk Edebiyat Tarihi [History of nineteenth-
century Turkish literature], vol. 1, Istanbul, İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi
Yayınevi, 1949, p. 86; D. Quataert, “The Age of Reforms, 1812–1914,” in Halil İnalcık and
Donald Quataert (eds.), An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914,
Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 1997, vol. 2, p. 765; Ercümend Kuran,
Avrupa’da Osmanlı İkamet Elçiliklerinin Kuruluşu ve İlk Siyasi Faaliyetleri, 1793–1821 [The
foundation and first political activities of permanent Ottoman embassies in Europe],
Ankara, Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1968; R. Davison, “Halil Şerif Paşa: The
Influence of Paris and the West on an Ottoman Diplomat,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları, vol. VI,
1986, pp. 161–173.

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50 Bouquet

the insights about the nature of Ottoman society that Europeans gained
were, at best, second hand and, since they came through non-Muslims
living under Ottoman rule, distorted, to boot.15

It was as if the way things were in Europe were easier to understand than
Ottoman complexities, with the prime instigator of the Tanzimat reforms,
Mustafa Reshid Pasha (1800–1858), being said to have accurately perceived the
nature and the particularities of the European western model.16 It was just the
same for an earlier figure presented as emblematic of the “impact of the West,”
Azmi Efendi, who was named Ambassador to Prussia in 1791–1792. His mission
report (sefaretname) offers a description of what he could observe in the coun-
try: the organisation into separate ministries, the system of salaries and ranks,
and the absence of corruption all made a strong impression on him.17
The historian Carter Findley draws on these various examples to put forward
a Weberian reading of Ottoman reform as seen through the prism of the mod-
ernisation theories developed by Shmuel Eisenstadt.18 To this end he uses the
account of Azmi Efendi to emphasise the distance between a professionalised
European model and a traditional Ottoman model: the Prussian administrative
system is so clear, being one of rational legalism—and hence eminently posi-
tive from the Weberian perspective adopted by C. Findley—that even a “labori-
ous” mind such as that of a novice Ottoman diplomat automatically transcribes
it in obvious terms.19
It seems to me that such an account is open to the objection that period
accounts are made to fit in too neatly with the discourse of the historians.20 In

15 Norman Itzkowitz, “Mehmed Raghib Pasha: The Making of an Ottoman Grand Vizir,”
unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1959, p. 1; cf. S. Shaw, Between Old and
New, p. 191.
16 Bayram Kodaman, Les Ambassades de Moustapha Rechid Pacha à Paris, Ankara, Türk
Tarih Kurumu, 1991.
17 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922,
Princeton, nj, Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 119; Faik Reşit Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri ve
Sefaretnameleri [Ottoman Ambassadors and Their Embassy Accounts], Ankara, Türk
Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992 (3rd ed.), p. 152; Sadık Rifat Pasha also presents on returning
from his embassies a portrait of a stable administration run by honest civil servants
(N. Berkes, The Development, p. 131). For a further list of Ottoman representatives and their
sefaretnames, see Azmi Süslü, “Un Aperçu sur les ambassadeurs ottomans et leurs sefaret-
name,” Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi. 1981–82, vol. XIV, 1983, pp. 233–260.
18 Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Some Observations on the Dynamics of Traditions,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History, vol. 11, 1969, pp. 451–475.
19 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, p. 119.
20 See R. Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, p. 22.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 51

a man who has spent in all eleven months in Prussia (no doubt mainly in
receptions rather than with civil servants),21 Findley detects the formation of a
“concept of bureaucratic professionalism” foreign to the world from which he
issues.22 This does not prevent Findley from viewing the reformists’ adoption
of a mode of development presented here as universal as conterminous to the
modernising conceptualisation conducted by historians a century and a half
later. He thereby projects his own analysis onto their intellectual toolkit:

Obviously unable to verbalize their problems in terms of such modern

concepts as integration into a Europe-centred world system, activism, or
movement away from a traditionalistic order toward a system of rational-
legalism, contemporary Ottomans were nonetheless beginning to formu-
late essential elements of what modern observers understand by such
concepts.23

It is as if European “modern observers” of the late 18th century had been able
to verbalise in rational-legal terms an evolution described by Max Weber in the
early 20th century. Whilst Quentin Skinner has established that in the modern
period ideas did exist which were not for all that clearly formulated concepts
for people of the time, specific textual analysis still needs to be conducted to
identify where the notions employed by the reformers intersect (or otherwise)
with Weberian concepts.24 Not only does C. Findley fail to perform such a task,
in the meantime European historiography has substantially reassessed the
extent to which late 18th-century administrations were rational and unified:
Jürgen Kocka in particular has pointed out how in Germany the introduction of
a civil service was both a recent and an incomplete phenomenon.25 Howard
Brown has shown that the French administration was far removed from
the idea that observers of the period had of it, and that it was characterised by the
complete and deliberate absence of any protected status for its employees, the
general usage of privilege and recommendation, and the remarkable instability

21 F.R. Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri, pp. 151–152; S. Shaw, Between Old and New, p. 191.
22 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, p. 11.
23 Ibid., p. 119.
24 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge/New York,
Cambridge University Press, 1978.
25 Jürgen Kocka, Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte 1850–1980: vom Privatbeamten
zum angestellten Arbeitnehmer, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981; here quoted
after the book’s French translation, Histoire d’un groupe social : les employés en Allemagne,
1850–1980, translated by Gérard Gabert, Paris, Éditions de l’ehess, 1989, p. 110.

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52 Bouquet

of high-ranking and subaltern civil servants, something which was not,

however, incompatible with the rarity of systematic purges26—in short, by
everything Ottomanists have described as specific traits of the Sultan’s admin-
istration. Hence what had been considered as Ottoman perceptions of late
18th-century and early 19th-century European characteristics are, in fact,
a priori projections of theories devised by 20th-century historians on the basis
of what they thought these characteristics were. Since these realities are of a
different historical nature, it is time to move beyond the theories they inspired.

The Ottoman Myth of the Cave

My love is deeper for what my fathers built,

Than the bold fronts of Roman palaces,
Deeper for good slate than hard marble.27

It is said that the experience of travelling to Europe gave rise to a firm belief in
the desirability of reform. Going to Europe amounted to a emerging from Plato’s
cave.28 The Ottoman is said to have been particularly predisposed to western
Enlightenment, due to his awareness of imperial decline and the trauma
inflicted by successive defeats of the state.29 Being converted to the West oper-
ated almost like a form of grace, and those who underwent it became whole-
hearted reformers.30 It is true that their experiences differed. It is true that
Tahtawi, Khayr al-Din, and Bustani (who were all fascinated by the West) did
not develop exactly the same sort of political thought.31 It is true that the extent
of their liberal ideology depended upon their individual predispositions:

26 Howard G. Brown, War, Revolution and the Bureaucratic State: Politics and Army Admini­
stration in France 1791–1799, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995.
27 Joachim du Bellay, “Heureux qui comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,” in Les Regrets, 1558.
28 Amounting to leaving the “closed cultural circle” of the pre-westernised Ottoman Empire
(E.Z. Karal, “Obstacles rencontrés…,” p. 11).
29 B. Kodaman, Les Ambassades, p. 27; “The ambassadors’ reports [such as those of Seyyid
Mustafa and Mahmud Raif or Mustafa Sami and Sadık Rifat in the following generations]
show that they were eager to learn about the countries to which they were assigned and that
they were not at all negatively disposed towards European life. On the contrary, the dominant
note was that of admiration” (N. Berkes, The Development., p. 77; see also pp. 33, 78–80).
30 Edhem Eldem, “Quelques lettres d’Osman Hamdi Bey à son père lors de son séjour en Irak
(1868–1870),” Anatolia Moderna, vol. 1, 1991, pp. 115–136, 122.
31 A. Hourani, Arabic Thought.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 53

Some were Army officers trained in the new schools, conversant with
European languages and acquainted with a modern technique. But there
were others, trained in another way, and who in the event were to have
greater influence: the young diplomats and diplomatic interpreters.32

But western ideology, based on the model of revelation, is supposed to be opera-

tive upon all those who were exposed to it: no du Bellay amongst the Ottomans,
no regret or feeling of exile when exposed to the splendours of European capi-
tals. And yet, if we take other historiographies into account then we may see
things differently. If we refer in particular to studies devoted to religious reform
in 16th-century Europe, then it transpires that the question of ideological sup-
port was a complex one, and that the E. Le Roy Ladurie’s schema according to
which a plowman was a papist and a carder a Huguenot is in fact problematic.33
What is there to say about a form of Ottoman social history which presents young
diplomats as thoroughgoing westerners and old Army officers or men of religion
as hardened stick-in-the-muds? Whilst the diplomat of the contemporary period
was expected to absorb European culture, in accordance with the espionage tra-
dition of the modern period,34 and to observe everything and to note every-
thing,35 his mission was not to identify with what he saw. When Hodja Agop, an
interpreter in the retinue of Ambassador Mustafa Reshid Pasha in Paris, took
advantage of a European tour to develop his ideas about silk farming and learn
new techniques, writing a treaty on the subject to act as the basis for its develop-
ment in Bursa, he was indeed advancing the cause of modernisation.36 But does

32 Ibid., p. 43.
33 Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Les Paysans du Languedoc, Paris, S.E.V.P.E.N., 1966; Didier
Boisson, “La place et le rôle des protestants dans les villes françaises,” in Jean-Pierre
Poussou (ed.), Les Sociétés urbaines au XVIIe siècle: Angleterre, France, Espagne, Paris,
Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007, pp. 225–226.
34 Victor L. Ménage, “The Mission of an Ottoman Secret Agent in France in 1486,” The Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 3–4, 1965, pp. 112–132; Susan
Skilliter, “The Sultan’s Messenger, Gabriel Defrens: An Ottoman Master-Spy of the
Sixteenth Century,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 68, 1976,
pp. 47–60.
35 S. Shaw, Between Old and New, p. 190; Abdurrahman Şeref, Tarih Konuşmaları (Tarih
Musahabeleri) [Conversations in history], Eşref Eşrefoğlu (ed.), Istanbul, Kavram
Yayınları, 1978, pp. 75–76; B. Kodaman, Les Ambassades, p. 73.
36 Richard L. Chambers, “Ahmed Cevdet Paşa: The Formative Years of an Ottoman
Transitional,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1968, p. 102.

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54 Bouquet

that mean that he was entirely “free from formalism and the bonds of tradition,”
as H. Inalcık says of Mustafa Reshid Pasha?37
When a scholar such as Albert Hourani posits the relationship to western
alterity as a process that colours the Ottoman subject, this overlooks the fact that
time spent in Paris or London could in certain cases give rise to a particularly
problematic process of identity reconfiguration. Whilst it is true that Hourani
altered his ideas here, it was only to recognise that he had accorded too much
importance to European influences in comparison to the weight of Ottoman tra-
dition in his work identifying an emergent political society. In no event did he
discuss the impact of these influences on the mental constructs of those elites in
contact with the great European capitals.38 Both for him and for the other histo-
rians mentioned above, the reformers were converted to (borrowing from Nobert
Elias) a “western dynamic.” Their attachment to the “civilisation process” that the
Ottomans needed to embark on was grounded less in any form of “self-constraint”
than in a deep and sincere belief in the need to reform the imperial state.

The Sincerity of Belief in Reform

There is no doubt about the commitment of the reformers—all believed in the

necessity of change.39 Feroz Ahmad describes Mustafa Reshid Pasha, Fuad
Pasha, and Ali Pasha as the habitual “powerful trio” (to adopt the expression
used by Halide Edib in her memoirs), as “convinced Westerners,”40 around
whom the reforming government was organised. Reshid Pasha is quite simply
said to have been “devoted exclusively to the secular interest of the state.”41 But
it is known that there were several conflicts amongst this triumvirate about the
nature of reforms to be implemented, particularly in relation to the budget, that
opposed Mustafa Reshid to Ali and Fuad.42 Nevertheless, numerous historians

37 Halil İnalcık, “The Nature of Traditional Society. Turkey,” in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart
A. Rustow (eds.), Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, Princeton, nj, Princeton
University Press, 1964, p. 55.
38 A. Hourani, “How Should We Write the History of the Middle East?,” International Journal
of Middle East Studies, vol. 23, 1991, p. 128.
39 R. Davison, Reform, pp. 5, 37; Metin Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey, Hull, Eothen
Press, 1985, p. 44; B. Kodaman, Les Ambassades, pp. 26–29.
40 Feroz Ahmad, “The Late Ottoman Empire,” in Marian Kent (ed.), The Great Powers and the
End of the Ottoman Empire, London, Frank Cass, 1984, pp. 5–30, 6.
41 H. İnalcık, “The Nature of the Traditional Society,” p. 55.
42 Halide Edib [Adıvar], Memoirs of Halidé Edib, London, John Murray, 1926, p. 243; See also
R. Davison, Reform, p. 81.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 55

have taken up similar ideas of a close-knit, enlightened elite: “the reforming

group” (R. Davison, A. Hourani), the “reforming pashas” (R. Chambers), “Mustafa
Reshid and his friends” as leaders of the “modernist segment” (C. Findley), an
“enlightened bureaucratic group” (İ. Ortaylı), “the small group of ‘experts’ led by
Âli Pasha” (Ş. Mardin), “a small clique of bureaucrats” (B. Masters).43 All these
descriptive categories take the reforms as the opus proprium of a few Tanzimat
ministers.
This joint rule is said to have been inspired by a profound and sincere belief
in reform, aimed at bringing about greater integration into the international
diplomatic and political system, explains F. Ahmad, even though on the previ-
ous page he presents the fate of the Empire as sealed: “[i]ts chances of survival
now seemed to many observers very small.”44 There are two possibilities here:
either the bureaucrats did not share the belief in the ineluctable collapse of
the Empire as held by those observers with whom they were in regular contact,
in which case the strength and generality Ahmad attributes to this conviction
needs to be attenuated; or else these statesmen were particularly illogical and
undertook reforms knowing that the cause was doomed to failure. The best
way to resolve this dilemma would be to determine what the political inten-
tions of the “reformers” were. The problem is that political sociology informs
us that institutions do not amount to the product of the enlightened inten-
tions of a few individual actors.45 In any case, Ottomanists would be hard-
pushed to decipher the nature of their intentions.
Whilst Stanford Shaw admits as much, this does not prevent him from doing
just this, going so far as to state that the reformers’ programmes were “well
intended.”46 Selim Deringil for his part compares them to the French physiocrats:

43 R.L. Chambers, “The Civil Bureaucracy (Turkey),” in R.E. Ward and D.A. Rustow (eds.),
Political Modernization, pp. 301–327, 302; id., “Ahmed Cevdet Paşa,” p. 16; C. Findley,
Bureaucratic Reform, pp. 153, 158, 166; İlber Ortaylı, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı Mahallî
İdareleri (1840–1880) [Ottoman Local Administrative Bodies during the Tanzimat],
Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000, p. 16; id., Tanzimat’dan Cumhuriyete Yerel Yönetim
Geleneği [The Tradition of Local Administration from the Tanzimat Until the Republic],
Istanbul, Hil Yayınları, 1985, p. 19; Ş. Mardin, Genesis, p. 113; K. Karpat, “The Transformation
of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 3, 1972,
p. 259; Abdurrahman Şeref, Tarih Konuşmaları, p. 73; B. Masters, Christians and Jews,
p. 135; R. Davison, Reform, p. 64; A. Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 67.
44 F. Ahmad, “The Late Ottoman Empire,” p. 5.
45 Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis, Chicago, il/London, Chicago University Press, 1991.
46 S. Shaw, “Some Aspects of the Aims and Achievements of the Nineteenth Century
Ottoman Reformers,” in W.R. Polk, R.L. Chambers (eds.), Beginnings of Modernization,

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56 Bouquet

“a contented people engaged in peaceful pursuits which would allow them,

and the state, prosperity.”47 This observation makes sense in light of what is
known about the policies (particularly in relation to education and science)
that were implemented by the men of the Tanzimat. But on what could S.
Deringil base his argument when referring to a shared intentionality common
to all the reformers, who are only defined in relation to this intentionality? As
for C. Findley, he finds the spirit of sacrifice shown by the Sultan’s servants
almost moving: “we could cite a long series of often dramatic incidents in
which Ottoman statesmen and their republican successors have risked their
careers and sometimes their lives for the sake of this ideal.”48
Not only does Findley give Grand Vizier Yusuf Kâmil Pasha (1808–1876) as
his sole example of this “long series,” he does not explain how this commit-
ment was related to the factional interest accorded by the reformers to their
undertaking.49 As observed above, for Findley the history of reforms sees the
emergence of a rational-legal form of political domination. But for Weber the
rational nature of this domination is grounded in the belief individuals have
in the legality of the approved legislation.50 So if C. Findley wishes to examine
the hypothesis of legal domination, how can he do so without also examining
the belief of those enacting legislation—the reformers—in the legality of that
legislation? Whilst he does indeed say that this rational-legal model failed to
wholly establish itself, how can he not envisage that one reason accounting for
this failure might have been lukewarm belief in reform? Studies have shown
for that matter that constitutional theories could be defended opportunisti-
cally rather than out of any deep-stated belief, and that they are of less use in
explaining the pace, scale, and nature of bureaucratic progress than in under-
standing factional struggles between elites.51

pp. 29–39; “Sultan Abdülhamid II: Last Man of the Tanzimat,” in Tanzimat’ın 150. Yıldönümü
Uluslararası Sempozyumu (Bildiriler) 25–27 Aralık 1989 [Proceedings of the International
Symposium Held for the 150th Anniversary of the Tanzimat, 25–27 December 1989],
Ankara, Milli Kütüphane Matbaası, 1991, pp. 179–197.
47 Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the
Ottoman Empire. 1876–1909, London/New York, i.b. Tauris, 1998, p. 20.
48 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, p. 163.
49 Id., “Factional Rivalry in Ottoman Istanbul: The Fall of Pertev Paşa, 1837,” Journal of Turkish
Studies, vol. 10, 1986, pp. 127–134.
50 For a criticism of theories that take institutions as the result of positive actions
carried out by purposeful individuals, see P. DiMaggio and W. Powell (eds.), The New
Institutionalism.
51 H.G. Brown, War, Revolution.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 57

The only scholar to put forward a different point of view is Ş. Mardin, when
he considers the intended usage of the main sources on which the thesis of
reforming sincerity is based.52 He points out that the Tanzimat architects did
not leave any theoretical writings justifying their “operative ideals.”53 Of course,
the genre was not a common one in the 19th century. We have at our disposal
abundant material made up of memoranda and reform projects, but far fewer
writings in which statesman discuss their experiences or offer their own point
of view.54 Only a few discuss the link between the need to believe in change
and the possibility of reform.55 One exception to this is Tunuslu Hayreddin
Pasha, Prime Minister in Tunisia under the Regency of Muhammad al-Sadiq
Bey (1859–1882) and Grand Vizier during the reign of Abdülhamid II. Both in
Tunis and in Istanbul he defended his belief that reducing state debt should be
based not only on reducing expenditure, but also on pursuing a policy of eco-
nomic development and better administrative functioning. He was concerned
about preserving the independence of the peoples of the Ummah and their
governments from European powers, and his writings put forward a body of
political thought steeped in his reading of both Enlightenment writers and
Arab political authors. In his outline of what amounts to one of the earliest
models of Muslim constitutionalism, respectful both of sharia rules and the
principle of the balance of powers, he considers that good government cannot
exist without good civil servants “who love and sincerely approve of the system
of institutions.”56 But what the author is putting forward is a reflection on the

52 Ş. Mardin, Genesis, p. 134, on the question of the sincerity of the Young Ottomans’ political
beliefs.
53 Ibid., p. 169.
54 See the various documents published by M. Cavit Baysun, “Mustafa Reşid Paşa’nın Siyasî
Yazıları” [Mustafa Reshid Pasha’s Political Writings], İ.Ü. Ed. Fak. Tarih Dergisi, vol. CXI, no. 15,
1960; id., “Cevdet Paşa’nın İşkodra’ya Me’mûriyetine Âid Vesikalar” [Documents Concerning
Cevdet Pasha’s Appointment to Shkodër], İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih
Dergisi, vol. XVII, no. 22, 1967, pp. 181–193 and following issues. See also R. Davison, “The
Beginning of Published Biographies of Ottoman Statesmen: The Case of Midhat Paşa,” in
Hans Georg Majer and Raoul Motika (eds.), Türkische Wirtschafts und Sozialgeschichte von
1071 bis 1920. Akten des IV. Internationalen Kongress, Wiesbaden, 1995, pp. 59–79.
55 Notably the writings of Sadık Rifat Pasha (Müntehabat-i Âsâr), the political testament of
Ali Pasha (La revue de Paris, vol. XVII, no. 7, 1910, pp. 505–524, and vol. XVII, no. 9, 1910,
pp. 105–124); See also Fuat Andıç and Süphan Andıç (eds.), Sadrazam Ali Paşa, Hayatı,
Zamanı ve Siyasî Vasiyetnamesi [The Grand Vizier Ali Pasha: His Life, Time and Political
Testament], Istanbul, Eren, 2000.
56 Magali Morsy (ed.), Khayr ed-Din : Essai sur les réformes nécessaires aux États musulmans,
Aix-en-Provence, Edisud, 1987, p. 138.

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58 Bouquet

nature of political change—it is a constitutional manifesto for European

readers—rather than a sincere presentation of his own beliefs.
We also have some texts Mustafa Reshid Pasha wrote for Europeans as well
as memoranda detailing his private conversations, in particular with the British
Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.57 But these texts are diplomatic exercises fol-
lowing a logic and rhetoric in which Mustafa Reshid Pasha excelled. As for the
accounts of Europeans, they are tricky to exploit.58 Above all they are dubious
about the reforming zeal of the bureaucrats.59 Using official Ottoman texts
would be even less appropriate. Let us take the example of the 1839 Gülhâne
imperial edict. It was long presented as reflecting the political ideas of Mustafa
Reshid.60 But not only was he not the only person behind the text,61 this edict
also bears the mark of intellectuals associated with the Naqshbandi brother-
hood networks.62 And this means that many questions remain unanswered:
was it the case that the ambitions of the reform men, as they expressed it at
least, if not as described by historians, were as imbued with the ideology of
progress as the Egyptian reformers of the 19th-century were (if we are to believe
G. Alleaume)?63 Did the Ottomans attach value to their new institutions?
The way to respond to this question is perhaps to look for other historical
experiences, in imperial Russia for example. In Anna Karenina Tolstoy offers an
account of a major debate in Russian society on the usefulness of new local
institutions—the Zemtva—in a dialogue between Konstantin Lenin and
Sergei Ivanovitch Koznyshev, with the former observing that: “our district self-
government and all the rest of it—it’s just like the birch branches we stick in
the ground on Trinity Day, for instance, to look like a copse which has grown up
of itself in Europe, and I can’t gush over these birch branches and believe in
them.” In his response Koznyshev defends the value he feels ought to be
attached to institutions if they are to produce any effects: “It’s only those peo-
ples that have an intuitive sense of what’s of importance and significance in
their institutions, and know how to value them, that have a future before

57 Ş. Mardin, Genesis, p. 111.

58 S. Shaw, Between Old and New, p. 191.
59 Frederick Millingen (Osman-Seify-Bey), La Turquie sous le règne d’Abdul-Aziz, Paris, 1968,
p. 192.
60 B. Lewis, The Emergence, p. 107; R. Davison, Reform, p. 38: “it was Reşid’s creation.”
61 Seçil Akgün, “The Emergence of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire,” OTAM (Ankara
Üniversitesi Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi), no. 2, 1991, p. 2.
62 Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript,” Die Welt des Islams, vol.
34, no. 2, 1994, pp. 173–203.
63 Ghislaine Alleaume, “La naissance du fonctionnaire,” Peuples méditerranéens, no. 41–42,
1987–1988, pp. 67–88.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 59

them—it’s only those peoples that one can truly call historical.”64 It seems to
me that this is also an issue for the Ottoman equivalent of the Zemstva, namely
the provincial administrative councils (meclis-i idare) that took place at more
or less the same time. İlber Ortaylı has sketched out a comparison of their
respective election mechanisms.65 These councils have been extensively stud-
ied for their mode of operation and composition. But to my knowledge no
study has been published on the way they were perceived by those sitting on
them. Why should anyone have paid any attention to this until now? Historians
simply drew on a constant foundational and entrenched opposition between
the partisans of received tradition on the one hand, and the champions of
imported modernity on the other.

Ottoman Tradition/Western Modernity

According to the historians referred to above what characterised the Tanzimat

reformer was “a certain knowledge of the modern world and a belief that the
Empire had either to join it or else disappear.”66 Whoever met these criteria was
a modernist, and whoever did not was traditionalist. In the same way as western
influence in 19th-century Russia is said to have opposed Slavophiles and wester-
nisers, it is said to have divided the Ottoman world into reformers and tradition-
alists.67 This turns Ottoman political history into a series of victories of the
reformers over the traditionalists, with the 1807 revolution following on from
setting up of the Nizam-i cedid,68 the suppression of the Janissaries in 1826,69

64 Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, Adelaide, eBooks@adelaide,

2012, url: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tolstoy/leo/t65a/complete.html (accessed
10 September 2013). Mark von Hagen confirms how difficult it was to set up this system
(“The Russian Empire,” in Karen Barkey and M. von Hagen (eds.), After Empire. Multiethnic
Societies and Nation-Building. The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg
Empires, Boulder, co, Westview Press, 1997, p. 70).
65 İ. Ortaylı, Tanzimattan Cumhuriyete Yerel Yönetimi, p. 24.
66 A. Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 43.
67 Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, London, I.B. Tauris, 1997, p. 6.
68 H. İnalcık, “The Nature of Traditional Society,” p. 51: “In brief, the population of Istanbul was,
as our analyst says, split into two camps, partisans of the New Order, and its enemies.”
69 The Janissaries enjoyed the “support of the majority of the reactionary and fanatical popula-
tion” (B. Kodaman, Les Ambassades, p. 4); as he destroyed this “central repository of military
power of the traditional order,” Mahmud II “embarked on a great programme of reforms; in
them he laid down the main lines along which later Turkish reformers, in the nineteenth and
so some extent even in the twentieth century, were to follow” (B. Lewis, The Emergence, p. 80).

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60 Bouquet

the establishment of the Constitution in 1876.70 It establishes a form of deter-

minism in which belonging to a ‘status group’ governs ideological commit-
ment71: all those in the civil bureaucracy (mülkiye) were necessarily in favour
of reform, whilst all those in the ulema class (‘ilmiye) were opposed to it. It is a
watershed running through the entire political structure, materialising notably
in a “cultural bifurcation.”72 This divide does not shift over the course of the
period—N. Berkes does not envisage the possibility that the emergence of
new currents could cause pro-reformers to shift towards the conservative
fringes of the ideological spectrum.73 Whilst Berkes does give room within his
analysis to the breakthrough of the Young Ottomans and subsequently the
Young Turks, he describes them as radical reformers whose radicalism placed
them off the political map, rather than perceiving them as part of an initial
reformist/traditionalist dichotomy they were instrumental in reshaping.
His model of interpretation has thus been criticised, with Engin Akarlı disput-
ing the idea that the political elites were separated into two exclusive groups,
with the “Westernizers, modernizers, reformers, secularizers” on the one hand,
and the “islamicists [sic], traditionalists, conservatives, religious reactionaries”
on the other. R. Chambers has shown how some individuals such as Ahmed
Cevdet could not be placed either on one side or the other of the divide.74
Equally, Uriel Heyd has established that high-ranking members of the ulema
class supported commitment to reform in the reign of Mahmud II.75 Other
Ottomanists have gone further still, declaring outright that the tradition/
modernity opposition does not provide a valid framework for understanding
the evolutions in contemporary society.76
According to Ş. Mardin, various conceptions of reform coexisted within
groups such as the Young Ottomans, giving rise to at least four categories of

70 R. Chambers, “The Civil Bureaucracy,” p. 302.

71 N. Berkes, The Development, p. 4.
72 Ibid., p. 109.
73 Ibid., p. 52.
74 R. Chambers, “Ahmed Cevdet Paşa,” p. 1.
75 Uriel Heyd, “The Ottoman ‘Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and
Mahmud II,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization, Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 1961,
pp. 63–96.
76 E. Akarlı, “The Problems of External Pressures,” p. 2; Ruth Roded, “Tradition and Change
in the Late Ottoman Period: the Urban Notables of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama,
1876–1918,” unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Denver, 1984, p. 1; Edhem Eldem,
“Istanbul: From Imperial to Peripheralized Capital,” in E. Eldem, Daniel Goffman and
Bruce Masters (eds.), The Ottoman City Between East and West. Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul,
Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 198, 200–201.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 61

reformers, with this diversity being the source of the “paradox” in their forma-
tion and the failure of their project.77 Yet it was a close-knit group made up of
very small number of individuals, characterised by a community of thought, a
comparable rejection of Ali’s and Fuad’s mode of government, and a similar
place within the elite.78 As a point of comparison, think of the diverse currents
of thought running throughout the bureaucratic body as a whole, which was
far less close-knit and less ideologically and socially homogenous. It is thus no
longer a matter of taking the modernising elites as an organised group of
enlightened and sincere political actors. It would be better, in my opinion, to
shift the analysis of modernity towards another field of observation—that of
sociogenesis, seeking to observe as closely as possible the individual mecha-
nisms of modernity, the role plays, and the relationships individuals had with
their assigned and acquired statuses.

Homo Ottomanicus

Choosing a scale of terms in this way such that attitudes blur into a hazy
cloud of dots from which only the most trenchant attitudes diverge—
collaborationism, on the one hand, armed resistance on the other—[…]
amounts to privileging a judgemental posture based on simplistic binary
pigeonholing (collaborator or member of the Resistance? guilty or inno-
cent?) over a desire to understand. By definition, this posture is unable to
handle the complexity of successive loyalties (moving from the Vichy
regime to resistance) or, worse still, simultaneous loyalties (playing a double
game) and it becomes lost in the inextricable arithmetic of redemption.79

Historians who take up the modernist/traditionalist typification do not only

apply it to the domain of ideas and opinions to develop post hoc rationalisations
of a range of behaviours or to analyse the modes of interaction between the vari-
ous actors concerned. They also use it to define social being in its entirety, on the
basis of the objectification of a single segment of the self—the presence of a
piano or of central heating in a pasha’s residence means this pasha was a thor-
oughgoing reformist, his knowledge of the French language predisposed him to

77 Ş. Mardin, Genesis, pp. 78–80.

78 R. Davison, Reform, pp. 188–189.
79 Marc Olivier Baruch, “Négocier la contrainte. Les ‘administrateurs polytechniciens’ face à
l’occupant,” in Marc Olivier Baruch and Vincent Guigueno (eds.), Le Choix des X. L’École
polytechnique et les polytechniciens 1939–1945, Paris, Fayard, 2000, pp. 97–144, 106.

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62 Bouquet

subscribe wholeheartedly to importing European institutions as models lock,

stock, and barrel.80 As Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann put it, such an
approach leads to the reification of roles and identities—in other words a total
identification between the individual and his socially determined typification,
the individual being apprehended as this type and nothing else.81 Max Scheler
describes it as a “Gesinnung” (moral intention of a being), used at the individual
level (to designate the set of actions of an individual) and collectively (to explain
political and social events as shaped by the group of reformers):

As spectators we have a global image of the others, with such-and-such a

one coming across as noble, such-and-such a one as vulgar. But the
Gesinnung, if we suppose it to correspond to the moral character […],
never emerges totally and univocally. It is defined as an impulse, love, or
will, tending towards a certain hierarchy of values. But you can never
reach a final impulse and analysing ends is in essence an indefinite
undertaking. Moral intention as we can conceive it, and which differs
both from motives and motivations in implying an appreciation, cannot
be perfectly understood. And in the same way as the subject as a whole or
in his free decisions is not given to the spontaneous intuition of the
observer or the patient reconstruction of the historian […], the moral
quality is beyond motives and motivations.82

In other words the actions of the reformists cannot be interpreted solely in

the light of some global intention motivating them (awareness of decline, belief
in the necessity of reform). In the century in which Victor Hugo and other
European intellectuals were covering extensive areas of ideological space
within the course of their lifetime, adhering to the most complex sets of ideas,

80 In C. Findley’s view İbrahim Hakkı Pasha incarnates full modernity. Everything he does is
modern: “Ibrahim Hakkî Paşa: New Ideas, New Roles, a New Man” (Ottoman Civil Offi­
cialdom. A Social History, Princeton, nj, Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 195). For dis-
cussion of the Westernisation of material culture, see Ş. Mardin, “Super Westernization in
Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century,” in
Peter Benedict, Erol Türmertekin and Fatma Mansur (eds.), Turkey: Geographic and
Political Perspectives, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1974, pp. 403–446. On demography and family prac-
tices, see Cem Behar, Alan Duben, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility.
1880–1940, Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
81 Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, ny, Doubleday, 1966, pp. 106–107.
82 Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire. Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité
historique, Paris, Gallimard, 1981 [1938], p. 190.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 63

the Ottomans are said to have avoided any comparable form of mobilisation.
We return again to the issue of grace—on coming back from his first trip to
Paris Mustafa Reshid is said to have been wholly formed ideologically.83 And yet
Ada Shissler has shown that intellectuals do not follow this sort of trajectory,
that the personality of the nationalist Ahmet Ağaoğlu (1869–1939) was formed
via the various spheres in which he found himself: Azeri Shi’ite culture, Muslim
reformism, the ideas of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1880s, Ernest Renan’s
positivism, and Turkish nationalism all continually fed into and influenced his
political thought.84 In the same way, ought we not to envisage the possibility
that Ottoman reformers experienced successive and even simultaneous loyal-
ties to contemporary ideologies? Could we not emphasise that whilst these ide-
ologies may have been viewed as antithetical by regimes, by western diplomats,
and by the reformists themselves, they were not necessarily considered this way
by the men who considered and included them within their modes of action?
After all, the Ottomans frequented places within social and political space in
different respects,85 as actors who had to change role each time they moved from
one stage play to the next. If they were careful to display constant sincerity in
their adherence to reform, I do not see why they should not have secretly, within
their own conscience, modulated the extent of their commitment depending
upon their appreciation of each role they assumed.86 If the truth be told, the
problem of the modernist/traditionalist typification is that it neglects “the set of
stylistic variations arising from the production of behaviour suited to the posi-
tions,”87 the possibility of a given state functionary taking his “distance from the
role,” irrespective of the position that he would wish to adopt as a modernist or
traditionalist within a specific field.88 This at least is what is suggested by research
in the political sciences studying the room for manoeuvre state functionaries
have in carrying out their functions and in applying binding sets of rules.89

83 B. Kodaman, Les Ambassades.

84 Ada H. Shissler, Between Two Empires: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey, London/New
York, i.b. Tauris, 2003.
85 Luc Boltanski, “L’espace positionnel. Multiplicité des positions institutionnelles et habi-
tus de classe,” Revue française de sociologie, vol. XIV, 1973, pp. 3–26, 9.
86 Erving Goffman, “Role Distance,” in Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction,
Indianapolis, in, Bobbs-Merrill, 1966, p. 90; P. Berger and T. Luckmann dwell on the same
idea: such a typification leaves no room for the subjective distance that each individual
may establish between oneself and one’s role play (The Social Construction, pp. 106–107).
87 L. Boltanski, “L’espace positionnel,” p. 16.
88 E. Goffman, “Role Distance,” p. 90.
89 Bernard Lacroix and Jacques Lagroye (eds.), Le Président de la République. Usages et genèses
d’une institution, Paris, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1992; Jay
Rowell, Le Totalitarisme au concret : les politiques du logement en rda, Paris, Economica, 2006.

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64 Bouquet

In modern societies the individual has firstly an ‘assigned status’, one received
at birth. For the Ottomans someone was for example the son of a notable, the
son of an ‘alim, the son of a military officer. But he also had ‘acquired statuses’,
that is to say ones which changed over time.90 In other words, if a pasha was
defined as such by the state, he could also belong to other institutions: family,
religious community, brotherhood, and so on. But as each institution confers a
different status on the individual and expects him to play a particular role, and
as there are possible distortions between current and latent statuses, there
exists the possibility of conflict between all these various roles, and of sanc-
tions should the individual not manage to harmonise the roles associated with
a given status into a coherent whole.
Let us take the case of Constantin Musurus Pasha (1807–1891), the ambas-
sador to London from 1851 to 1885. As a brilliant diplomat who enjoyed the
recognition of his peers, he was the Ottoman embodiment of the civil servant,
obeying a rational-legal mode in the exercise of his functions. Musurus was a
modern man, but not in the way in which Ottomanist historiography presents
him, that is to say as the reforming, anti-traditionalist statesman par excellence,
ideally situated on the upper levels of the modernity scale thanks to all his vari-
ous attributes (as a diplomat, a neo-Phanariot, a francophone, a lover of the
classics and close acquaintance of leading western figures).91 If he was a mod-
ern man it is more in the sense that he knew how to intervene, act, and com-
municate at various scales, manipulate several networks at the same time, pass
from one world to another with ease, and sometimes even without appearing
to be aware of it, talking as readily to Samiot villagers as to British ambassa-
dors, equally at home leafing through the European press as deciphering clas-
sical epigraphs, writing in Greek to his father-in-law and in French when
requesting instructions from his superiors.92 It is this ability to move within
different worlds which, in my opinion, characterises the modernity of the
Ottomans, both in the use they made of it and in the limits they encountered.

90 Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality, New York, D. Appleton, 1945.
91 R. Davison, “Halil Şerif Paşa, Ottoman Diplomat,” p. 221; C. Findley, Ottoman Civil
Officialdom, p. 131; Ş. Mardin, “Super Westernization”; R. Davison, “Westernized Education
in the Ottoman Empire,” The Middle East Journal, vol. 15, no. 3, 1961, pp. 289–301; Benjamin
Fortna, “Islamic Morality in Late Ottoman ‘Secular’ Schools,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies, vol. 32, no. 3, 2000, pp. 369–393.
92 On the modernity of Musurus, see Olivier Bouquet, “Un Rum aux pays des Hellènes.
Constantin Musurus, premier représentant permanent de la Sublime Porte à Athènes
(1840–1848),” in Nathalie Clayer and Tassos Anastassiadis (eds.), Society and Politics in
South-Eastern Europe during the 19th Century, Athènes, Alpha Bank, 2012, pp. 337–370.

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 65

In the way that Musurus went to Istanbul at the unexpected request of the
sovereign,93 remained there for many a long month without having the slight-
est idea of the fate in store for him, he was in his ancient Ottoman civility a true
“pasha of the Sultan” obedient to traditional domination, whilst at the same
time his status as a diplomat94—and Greek Orthodox diplomat to boot—
makes him an emblematic figure of administrative modernity. The same is true
of his son Étienne, even though he was educated in the most advanced
European schools, trained in the social graces of polite London society, and
perfectly abreast of the political and scientific theories of his time. For the clas-
sical historiography of reform he was a modern man through and through. And
yet he was also the archetypal servant submitted to the whims of Sultanic tra-
dition, since on 25 November 1884, when posted as ambassador to Rome, he
was summoned instantly back to Istanbul. He duly went and six months later
was still in the Ottoman capital. He did not know what to do and was con-
sumed with worry lest he be relegated to a subaltern position. He wrote to his
father who knew nothing of what was planned for his future. He was unable to
obtain an audience at the Chancery of the Sultan. The only information he had
came from rumours circulating about him. He did not know if he should still
consider himself to be occupying his post or not. In June he finally learned that
he had been appointed to sit on the Commission of Public Works.95
And so this one man found himself torn between various worlds, various
statuses that he sought to link up over the course of his career. Equally a pasha
with an ethnic belonging, possibly a commitment to a brotherhood, a family
situation, a Masonic commitment, and a local identity could find himself with
a number of statuses that he was not always able to combine into an overall
social system, in an Ottoman society hit by the globalisation of trade, the emer-
gence of new social professional categories, and the emergence of ideologies
of political protest.96

93 “By order of His Majesty the Sultan, you shall pack your bags within two or three days, and
you shall without delay leave London for Constantinople” (Musurus Archives, Gennadios
Library, Athens, 10/238, Nevres Pasha to Musurus Pasha, 30 August 1862). No explanation
was given for this order.
94 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, p. 126.
95 Musurus Archives, Gennadios Library, Athens, 14/54, 14/55, 14/57, 14/58, 14/63, 14/64.
96 One example: Halide Edib underlines the difficulty her father experienced in being polyga-
mous whilst being open to new practices and ideas: “And father too was suffering in more
than a way. As a man of liberal and modern ideas, his marriage was very unfavorably regarded
by his friends, especially by Hakkı Bey, to whose opinion he attached the greatest impor-
tance” (H.E. [Adıvar], Memoirs, p. 145). The Hakkı Bey in question was the future Grand Vizier
İbrahim Hakkı Pasha whose resolutely “westernised” practices are emphasised by C. Findley.

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66 Bouquet

Conclusion

It strikes me that such an approach examining the identity construction of

state functionaries has a part to play in a political sociology of the Ottoman
reforms. Adopting such an approach does not oblige us to leave wholly to one
side the theories of modernisation developed by Ottomanists of the previous
century. It encourages us to approach institutions less as the result of reform-
ing intentions and beliefs and instead see them as the product of sociogenesis
involving actors in varying relationships to modernity. I would also add that
comparing the Ottomans’ assigned and acquired statuses would enable us to
reformulate our analysis of identity construction, and better understand why
an individual such as Yusuf Akçura became one of the founders of Turkish
nationalism even though he was not of Anatolian origin, why an individual
such as Moiz Cohen, a Jew from Salonica, Turkified his name to become Tekin
Alp, and why notables from the Arab provinces in the early 20th century were
able at one and the same time to be committed to defending Ottomanism,
promoting the history of Arab peoples, and in defending Palestine against
what they perceived as a process of “Zionist colonisation.”97
Such an approach would enable us to dispel what may be called the ethnic/
denominational determinism of Ottoman modernity, in which being Armenian,
Greek, or an Istanbul Jew means being “invariably Westernist in cultural orien-
tation,”98 being more favourably predisposed to western culture than if you are
a Muslim from Antep. What happens to this understanding of the differential
relationship to modernity on the basis of ethnic and urban belonging if the
Muslim from Antep also happens to be a leading notable from the Cenanî fam-
ily? What happens to it if the Antep Muslim presents those attributes of
modernity generally conferred by historians on urban minorities, if he speaks
four languages including French and English, if his general cultural is particu-
larly vast, if he has studied law, political economy, and geography?99 Is he really
so much closer to some Muslim peasant from Antep than to a member of a
leading family of Istanbul Armenians, to the point where the first two are seen
as traditionalists and the third as modernists?
In the same way as the late Donald Quataert criticised a certain form of insti-
tutional determinism with regard to social positions in his study of professional
categories in the closing decades of the Ottoman period, Edhem Eldem wishes

97 Ibid.
98 C. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, p. 207 (italics added).
99 I am referring here to Mehmed Kadri Pasha (Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office in
Istanbul, Sicill-i Ahval 1/12).

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Is It Time To Stop Speaking About Ottoman Modernisation? 67

to do away with what he identifies as an ethnic/denominational determinism

with regard to modernity. He proposes paying greater attention to the involve-
ment of Muslims in the constitution of a middle-class generally described as
made up entirely of modernist minority segments.100 But his criticism does not
prevent him in turn from grounding his study of Ottoman society on categories
whose effect he is seeking to combat, but which ultimately reintroduce a form
of counter-determinism which is of limited help for the form of social history he
envisages. For my part, I believe it would be better to replace the classificatory
enterprises generally deployed with a sociogenesis of state functionaries viewed
with regard to their roles and to their functions. It is this approach which will
enable Ottomanist historians to contribute to the political sociology of Turkey
as it is envisaged in this book.

100 D. Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, p. 141; Edhem Eldem, “Istanbul 1903–1918: A
Quantitative Analysis of a Bourgeoisie,” Boğaziçi Journal, vol. 11, no. 1–2, 1997, pp. 53–98.

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