Thank you for the answer, something like that is what I imagined to be!
So it is the dreaded “it depends”.
Comment on Yup, another Ottoman Empire classic
Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 1 day agoLike most things in history, the Ottoman legacy in the Middle East is a very mixed bag.
If you look at modern Middle Eastern countries, you’ll find people who admire the Ottoman Empire and others who absolutely don’t. A lot depends on which community (Kurds/Syrians/Lebanese - Christian/Muslim (Sunni vs Shia)/Druze/Jewish) and which period you’re talking about.
The Ottomans built the administrative and legal systems that governed much of the region for centuries. Some people argue that this provided a level of stability and local autonomy that helped different groups coexist under a common framework.
At the same time, there are plenty of accounts from places like Lebanon and Syria describing repression, unequal treatment, corruption, and crackdowns on dissent. How much of that was official Ottoman policy versus the actions of local governors or specific periods is still debated. That’s a different question from things like the Armenian genocide, which is much more clearly documented as a state-directed policy.
The Arab nationalist movement is a good example. A lot of early Arab nationalists weren’t necessarily trying to leave the empire—they wanted more representation and autonomy within it. Sometimes the Ottomans accommodated that, and sometimes they cracked down on it. Several countries in the Levant still have Martyrs’ Squares named after Arab activists the Ottomans executed during World War I. It can be argued that this repression and then later European colonialism completely (and purposefully) fragmented the Middle East until today.
So depending on who you ask, and the story continues to change even today (sometimes to fit a nationalist narrative), the Ottoman period was either a relatively stable imperial system that kept the region together or an empire that suppressed emerging national movements. There’s evidence for both views, but not one side fully.
Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 1 day ago
tetris11@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Is it true that many different cultures and religions were permitted under the Ottomans, but the British divide-and-rule started to empower these groups too much, causing the Ottomans to crack down hard on them?
i.e. Was it Britain’s fault?
Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 21 hours ago
I don’t know if “permitting different cultures” is how I’d phrase/frame it.
There always existed different cultures in the region and the Ottomans knew that. So they didn’t outlaw any culture or religion, but applied a dhimmi status - something nationalistic identities today try to misconceptualize - which actually translates to ‘protected persons’ who paid taxes to benefit from the Ottoman Muslim state protection and governance (not to be confused with full equality though). If you were happy to be under the Ottoman empire and pay tax, then you’re a part of it.
The primary influencers from Europe were Britain and France (they carved up the ottoman empire post WW1). They definitely had a hand in applying ‘soft power’ through minority groups such as those wanting more autonomy or who were disenfranchised by the Ottoman empire’s sub-par reforms and modernization (like pug mentioned).
But it wasn’t really one thing/person/imperial’s fault.
The Ottomans often benefited from limiting the development of competing political identities because maintaining imperial cohesion was important to the survival of a multi-ethnic empire. At the same time, there were competing factions within the Ottoman political establishment, each with different ideas about how the empire should be preserved and governed. So there were proponents who wanted to oppress, and others who didn’t.
The Europeans benefitted by carving it up because that was their colonial model (tried and proven in Africa and Asia). Whatever influence they exerted was generally part of the normal great-power competition of the era rather than direct control, and not necessarily of a kind that forced the Ottomans to respond with repression.
tetris11@feddit.uk 17 hours ago
that’s super interesting, thanks for the extra context
PugJesus@piefed.social 23 hours ago
No, Britain’s “Divide and rule” policy was largely implemented after WW1 and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, when Britain thought it could hold onto those regions themselves (de facto, if not de jure). Before that, the Brits (and French) actually went through pains to ensure that the Ottoman Empire didn’t fall apart, because it would damage the balance of power in Europe.
The crackdowns of the Ottoman Empire had two essential causes, basically relying on which period one is looking at. For most of the Empire, it was the same cause that every empire cracks down on regions and cultures for - insufficient loyalty to the central government. And very often, this was dependent on the relationship of central government officials with local magnates. Essentially clientistic relationships more than anything - questions of “You are taxing too much” or “You are offering too little.”
In the last few decades of the Ottoman Empire, both the rise of 19th century nationalism and the increasing realization of the Ottomans that the former despotic-clientistic structure could not compete with modern states caused the Ottomans to reform considerably. Unfortunately, these reforms, while nominally in-line with the ideals of the European Enlightenment and French Revolution, also were accompanied by notions of a Turkish nation, and increased distrust of minorities in the Ottoman Empire (who, to be fair, were themselves adopting 19th century notions of nationalism and getting ‘dangerous’ ideas about independence).
As the Ottoman Empire weakened, losing control over several minority Christian populations either to outright separatism (thus reducing the role and influence of Christians in the empire) or ‘safeguarding’ from European colonial empires claiming to be the ‘protector’ of Christians in a region (thus creating distrust towards Christians, even in the occasions when the safeguarding was legitimate), the Muslim character (always strong, mind you) of the Ottoman Empire intensified even as the formal legal position of Islam became less supported.
So in the late Ottoman Empire, you have a multiethnic, multifaith empire that essentially has adopted notions of being a Turkish, Muslim empire, and all the… unrest that comes with that level of cultural-religious chauvinism.
tetris11@feddit.uk 17 hours ago
Huh, I always thought Divide+Rule was a day 1 British Empire policy.
I wonder if Ataturk tried to overcome the failure of the Ottoman nationalistic ideals by (ineffectually, and selectively) putting forward the idea of an “anatolian identity”
PugJesus@piefed.social 17 hours ago
Sure, but, you know, day 1 of when the British Empire starts to actually rule the territory.
Well, the thing about the very late Ottoman nationalism just before WW1 was that it was… very much Turkish nationalism. Enver Pasha and many of his fellows in the CUP were outright ‘scientific’ racists of the European sort, only with the Turkish people on top and all others as half-cultured barbarians. Funny enough, the idea of an Ottoman identity was arguably stronger (and more effective) before the rise of 19th century nationalism, as the Ottoman Empire, like the Roman Empire before it, previously allowed and accepted a broad range of ethnicities and religions as common (and high-ranking) participants in the government.
Ataturk’s attempts to make an ‘inclusive’ Turkish identity was almost certainly influenced by the genocide-mad failures of the CUP. “Ne mutlu Türküm diyene” became so central precisely because of what it implied: “How happy is he who calls himself a Turk.” A civic nationalism that welcomed all who were willing to claim to be a part of the national community. Ataturk, funny enough, would be part of the CUP coup (if only a minor one) in 1908, but his loud blathering about “democracy” ended getting him reassigned to
AntarcticaLibya while the coup worked out their political assignments, to prevent him from interfering.Of course, Ataturk still had some ethnonationalist leanings - particularly the insistence on the Turkish language - but he cast off the biological essentialism and most of the pan-Turkic ideals (especially in emphasizing the supposed antiquity and continuity of Anatolian Turkiye, instead of the shared nomadic roots) of the CUP.
I would argue that Ataturk’s nationalism was actually extremely effective - Ataturk’s conception of Turkishness was the conception up into the modern day. The issue is that his own conflicts* and contradictory policies with the Kurds meant that that particular wound never healed itself.
*Ataturk was MUCH less hostile towards the Kurds than later Turkish governments - but the Kurds were, at the time, largely conservative and traditionalist, and Ataturk was busy, you know, banning clothing for being too feudal and trying to sort out a government that WOULDN’T be filled with Islamist or Ottoman throwbacks. So there was a certain level of expedience there in being willing to shift policy on them as-needed - rarely a recipe for lasting solutions, or trust between government and governed.