difference, tolerance and the issue of minorities in the pre-modern Ottoman - part I

“(…) Research in the last twenty years has brought into question many of the commonly accepted models used to describe the organization of religious communities in the Ottoman Empire. For example, the studies compiled by Braude and Lewis in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire suggests that the juridical structure of communal organization in the Ottoman Empire was never historically stable and that the ‘millet’ (an internal term of reference for the communities of Jews, Armenians, Greek Orthodox, etc.) in fact came into existence in the nineteenth century rather than, as many historians have believed, in the fifteenth. (…)”, says Nancy Reynolds in the introduction of her interview with the Ottoman historian Aron Rodrigue on the subject of ‘Difference and tolerance in the ottoman empire’ in the Stanford Humanities Review 5:1, 1995.

Rodrigue’s first premise is that in any study of the Ottoman Empire needs to begin by making the distinction between the modern period “where the West becomes a referent” (82) and the period that came before it, the pre-modern period that is. Although this conflicts with the usual division of the history of the Ottoman Empire into the beginning, rise, stagnation and decline phases in accordance with the logic of the nationalist historiography. The traditional approach of the nationalist historiography is actually under attack lately by quiet a few historians, as in this kind of history one needs to reach the end first in order to understand the stages. It is all about stages designed in such a way to justify the end product; it is an agenda history. The Ottoman Empire, according to some historians, whose views are also shared by myself, was not in decline, but became actually something else, which, from the perspectives of groups with certain justificatory agenda and discourses, is perceived as a decline. This modern period of the Ottoman Empire is actually the one that interests us the most, since our Republic is actually the outcome of this modern era, not the Ottoman Empire of the six hundred years.

Rodrigue’s second premise, or the natural conclusion of the first one, is that not only the certain dualities such as “majority versus minority”, “ruler versus ruled” and state versus society” are not applicable for all the periods in the Ottoman history. But, it is important to also to see two different systems at play: one that was accepted Ottoman discourse of how things should be and the other that was about the actual framework of the way things were through day-to-day actions and interactions that continuously shaped and re-shaped the social and cultural life in the empire. Most Ottoman historians up to the latest developments in research, especially in the topics related to the relationships between the Muslim and non-Muslim groups and in the distribution of justice in the empire, mostly concentrated on what the Ottoman discourse on how things should be, rather than how they were; and therefore, came up with a very static version of the history of the Ottoman Empire.

History is, in my opinion, an act of justification, especially in the framework of the nationalist historiography, which is also actually valid for other branches of the social sciences as long as they are practices in the same justificatory framework. For example, in certain past, and even in some present, versions of anthropological studies, similar justificatory efforts can be easily observed. Yet, I also believe that it is possible to get out of this justificatory framework and turn these researches into these stories based on past social and cultural practices and the things that happened into a depository of imaginative thinking to help deal with our present and future problems. There is no reason to think that a past practice that worked just fine in its own context cannot work again in a different context in a modified and re-adapted way. But, they do not have to be applied, either. They may simply serve as ideas. And, I think certain Ottoman practices have the capacity to present us with some new perspectives in certain problems that we have presently, in my opinion, reached at a dead end. The subject of tolerance and distribution of justice are two topics where we can get some new perspectives studying the pre-modern Ottoman period.

“In the period prior to the modern one (roughly the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries)”, says Rodrigue, “ a society existed within this framework where “difference” instead of “sameness” was paramount. The static “mosaic” view, which posits building blocks for Middle Eastern society, in which each group is defined and fixed permanently by its religion or ethnicity, is not particularly useful analytically. I think, however, that one can reinterpret the mosaic notion more dynamically, not stressing “minority/majority” or “ruler/ruled,” but instead emphasizing the recognition of “difference” and, in fact, the near lack of any political will to transform the “difference” into “sameness”. This is not the same as pluralism. The “difference” each group was ascribed, or ascribed to itself in its self-representation, was not articulated on the basis of rights. Rather, nothing in the political system of the Ottoman Empire [prior to the modern era, my words] called for different groups to merge into one. The difference was given and accepted as such” (82).

The minority/majority issue, tells us Rodrigue, is the result of the creation of the concept of the value-free, universalistic public sphere that came with the emergence of the nation-state (83).This newly emerged value-neutral, universalistic public sphere is simply unable to deal with the idea of difference, resulting eventually not in disappearance of difference, but its transformation into the framework of the minority versus majority. Suddenly, what was seen as difference and different previously becomes what is potentially assimilable in the framework of the nation-state in the name of equality in accordance with the discourse of universal rights. So, here, we have the transformation of the different into the problematic of the minority that requires solution.

The Ottoman Empire was not a nation-state, with the Turks ruling over the minority groups, although this mistake is made constantly. However, the Ottoman Empire was not where the equality reigned, either. All the groups were accepted as being different from each other and organized in a hierarchical structure, where all the groups, tough in differing degrees of ease, had access to this hierarchical structure. The foremost requirement for anyone to have complete free access to all the levels of this hierarchy was eventually becoming a Muslim (not a Turk), but this should not be taken as not becoming a Muslim closed all the door; there was a great deal of access to other parts of the structure for those who chose to stay non-Muslims. In fact, the role of Islam as the dominant religion in the system was still not in the sense of universalism we are accustomed with now in our respective nation-states. Whereas Islam was the dominant religion of the empire, by recognizing other religions, and even their individual rights to distribute justice in their own realms according to their own principles, which does still not exist in our so-called democratic and free societies today , it did away with its own universalism. However, with the emergence of the nation-state and the idea of the universalistic public sphere, Islam started moving into the role of the universal language of this public sphere. The similar changes can also be observed in the areas of language and ethnicity with the introduction of this idea of universalistic public sphere, which was predicated in elimination of all differences in the society or in their problematization as minorities.


it will continue

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