Opposition and Legitimacy in the

Ottoman Empire

This book looks at opposition to the Ottoman government in the second

half of the nineteenth century, examining a number of key political con-
spiracies and how these relate to an existing political culture. In his detailed
analysis of these conspiracies, the author offers a new perspective on an
important and well researched period of Ottoman history.
A close reading of police records on five conspiracies offers the opportu-
nity to analyse this opposition in great detail, giving special attention to the
different groups of political actors in these conspiracies that often did not
come from the established political elites. Florian Riedler investigates how
their background of class and education, but also their individual life
experiences influenced their aims and strategies, their political styles as well
as their ways of thinking on political legitimacy. In contrast, the reaction of
the authorities to these conspiracies reveals the official understanding of
Ottoman legitimacy.
The picture that emerges of the political culture of opposition during the
second half of the nineteenth century offers a unique contribution to our
understanding of the great changes in the political system of the Ottoman
Empire at the time. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Middle
Eastern history, political history, and the Ottoman Empire.

Florian Riedler is a historian specialising in Ottoman history of the

nineteenth century. His current research interests are social and urban
history of the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly Istanbul, as well as the
history of migration in the Ottoman Empire.
SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East
Series Editors
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6. The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890–1908

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14. The City in the Ottoman Empire

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Edited by Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi and
Florian Riedler

15. Opposition and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire

Conspiracies and political cultures
Florian Riedler
Opposition and Legitimacy in
the Ottoman Empire
Conspiracies and political cultures

Florian Riedler
First published 2011 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Florian Riedler
The right of Florian Riedler to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Riedler, Florian.
Opposition and legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire: conspiracies and
political cultures / Florian Riedler.
p. cm. – (SOAS/Routledge studies on the Middle East ; 15)
“Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada”–T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Turkey–Politics and government–1829-1878. 2. Turkey–History–
Tanzimat, 1839-1876. 3. Political culture–Turkey–History–19th century.
4. Conspiracies–Turkey–History–19th century. 5. Political activists–
Turkey–History–19th century. 6. Social change–Turkey–History–19th
century. 7. Opposition (Political science) –Turkey–History–19th century.
8. Legitimacy of governments–Turkey–History–19th century. 9. Police–
Turkey–Records and correspondence. 10. Turkey–History–Tanzimat,
1839–1876–Sources. I. Title.
DR565.R54 2011
956'.015–dc22 2010026799

ISBN 0-203-83487-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-58044-1 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-203-83487-9 (ebk)
Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations ix

1 Introduction: Political culture of conspiracy 1

2 A sheikh and an officer: the Society of Martyrs and the

Kuleli incident 12

3 New and old forms of opposition: the Young Ottomans

and the Vocation group 26

4 How to exchange Sultans: the successful coup

against Abdülaziz 42

5 War and refugees: Ali Suavi and the Çırağan incident 58

6 Bourgeois conspirators: the Skalieri–Aziz committee 71

7 Conclusion: the Tanzimat and beyond 84

Notes 90
Bibliography 104
Index 111
Acknowledgements

This study took the present form in a process that stretched over several
years and I would like to thank all the people who supported me during this
time, first of all my parents. The DAAD’s (German Academic Exchange
Service) HSP III program as well as additional funding from the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) enabled me to undertake the original
research on the topic. In. Istanbul the staff at the Başbakanlık Arşivi, the
Atatürk Kitablığı and ISAM have been most helpful. For academic
support and reading draft chapters I would like to thank my supervisor,
Ben Fortna, and especially my fellow PhD students at SOAS as well as
Ulrike Freitag and my colleagues at Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in
Berlin. Not to forget Nina, Charlotte and Erik who enriched my life even
more than Ottoman history.
Abbreviations

A.MKT.MHM = Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası. Sadaret Evrakı. Mektubi

Mühimme Kalemi, in BOA
A.MKT.NZD = Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası. Sadaret Evrakı. Mektubi Kalemi.
Nezaret ve Devair, in BOA
A.MKT.UM = Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası. Sadaret Evrakı. Mektubi Kalemi.
Umum Vilayat Kısmı, in BOA
BOA
. =
. Başbakanlık Osmalı Arşivi, Istanbul
ID = Irade Dahiliye, in BOA
FO = Foreign Office, in PRO
HH = Hatt-ı Hümayun, in BOA
HR.MTV = Hariciye Nezareti Evrakı. Mütenevvid Kısmı, in BOA
PRO = Public Record Office, London
Y.A.HUS = Sadaret Hususi Maruzat Evrakı, in BOA
Y.EE = Yıldız Esas Evrakı, in BOA
1 Introduction
Political culture of conspiracy

In a recent book Aykut Kansu attempted to re-establish the Young Turk

revolution of 1908 as the decisive event at the beginning of modern Turkish
history. In creating a democratic parliamentary system the revolution was
much more significant than Mustafa Kemal’s act of founding the Republic
in 1923. As much as this reinterpretation was to correct our understanding
of modern Turkish history, Kansu’s criticism also was levelled against
the common treatment of the late Ottoman period in historiography that
disregarded 1908 as the decisive break and failed to assess its significance as
a popular and democratic revolution. He singled out the focus on the state
and its elites in mainstream scholarship as the reason for this mis-
interpretation. In this picture there was little place for dissenting voices,
conflict or internal struggle over the fundamentals of the political system.1
This study will take up the issue of conflict and opposition in the late
Ottoman Empire and therefore will examine in some detail a string of
conspiracies against the Ottoman government during the Tanzimat era in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, these conspiracies
lack closer scholarly attention. If they were mentioned at all, the older lit-
erature has denounced them either as backwards looking or appreciated
them only as forerunners of the Young Turks. In contrast, this study likes to
examine them in their specific historical context rather than judging them in
hindsight and see how they relate to existing Ottoman political culture of
opposition. The findings will help establish an inventory of politically active
groups in Ottoman society other than the state elites and they will reveal the
contested issues in the Ottoman political system of the Tanzimat. The con-
flicting interpretations of the right way to order society between state and
opposition, but also between different opposition groups, offer the opportu-
nity to review Ottoman political culture and its development in the nine-
teenth century.
In the 1960s political scientists defined political culture in the framework
of comparative research on democracy and democratic values in different
societies. This study adopts a more neutral usage that assigns to the concept
of political culture the role of balancing structural and systemic approaches
to politics. Consequently, I will highlight the subjective factor in the analysis
2 Introduction
of political processes and tend to give perceptions of the political actors a
broader space. Although the concept of political culture is often criticised as
particularly blurry, it helps to thematise at least two interrelated aspects of
politics. The first is the importance of (often unconscious) fundamental
norms defining a group’s basic understanding of politics up to the point of
what is political at all. In this sense political culture signifies a deeply
embedded form of ideology that has its effect on political decisions, on
thinking of legitimacy or authority and on the style of political action.
The latter performative side is the second important aspect the concept of
political culture calls attention to. When examining politics, rituals and
symbols that are expressions of an aesthetics of political action have to be
taken into account.2
A group’s fundamental beliefs about politics also include the ways it
deals with conflict in society. To capture this notion John Foran, a social
scientist working on the causes and outcomes of revolutions (modern as well
as historical), has coined the term ‘political culture of opposition’.3 The
fundamental thinking of a group about opposition, its legitimacy and its
proper forms, define this culture that is fed by a group’s past experiences,
its expectations and emotions as well as its subjective assessment of a poli-
tical situation. In a political system with an established political culture of
opposition revolutionary solutions of conflicts in society are said to be much
more likely than in other political systems. Especially instructive for this
study is Foran’s application of the concept to the case of Iran.4 He examines
different forms of opposition movements in the nineteenth century such as
tribal risings, tax revolts, religiously driven rebellions like the revolts of the
Babis as well as the Tobacco boycott movement of the 1890s. His macro-
sociological approach discerns the different classes of Iranian society
that supported these movements, highlighting outside dependency as an
agent of social change and as a cause for opposition. From the perspective
of the Iranian constitutional movement of 1905–11 that established a
modern political culture in Iran he classifies the earlier events as driven by a
traditional or a transitional culture of opposition. It remains to be seen in
how far these categories also make sense in the Ottoman case.
Scholars have used political culture to examine the roots and trajectories
of revolutions regarding other historical contexts as well. Perhaps in the
most innovative way this has been done in the case of eighteenth century
France credited to be the founding moment of modern political culture per
se. Above all the political culture of the French old regime has attracted
attention as the laboratory of new political symbols and terms that devel-
oped in the framework of the absolute monarchy, ways of seeing and
ordering society, and the development of forms of political contestation like
the political press or parliamentarianism.5
In the case of Russia, research on the political culture in the 1917
revolution has only just begun. However, historians of nineteenth century
Russia were well aware of the changes in the political culture mainly among
 Introduction 3
radical groups that gave rise to revolutionary activities and ideologies that
went along with the delegitimisation of the old regime. In Russia the role of
secret societies was particularly important in shaping pre-revolutionary
political culture of opposition.6
Likewise in the Ottoman Empire we find an old regime that changed
considerably during the nineteenth century, not least where its fundamental
values, political arrangements and symbols were concerned. This study
cannot claim to present an encompassing picture of nineteenth century
Ottoman political culture. It will concentrate on one particular form of
opposition, the conspiracy, that seems to be a natural outgrowth of any
absolutist political system where there is no place for a loyal opposition.
However, conspiracies can serve to thematise different aspects of Ottoman
political culture in general and illustrate its development during the nine-
teenth century. Particularly through the main historical source on con-
spiracies, police records and similar documents produced by the prosecuting
institutions of the Ottoman state, both the political culture of opposition,
but also the political culture of the governing elite come into view.
Small-scale events like conspiracies that, compared to larger social move-
ments of protest, consist of a limited number of participants direct the
investigation in a specific direction. Individual motives and choices as well
as the worldviews of the historical actors come to the foreground that
otherwise would go unnoticed. This can add some important aspects to
larger structural explanations of Ottoman politics. Here lies, I hope, the
potential of the micro-historical approach offered here.
Moreover, the conspiracies investigated below also testify to the multi-
plicity of groups politically active in the nineteenth century Ottoman
Empire. The study will ascertain which elements of Ottoman political
culture they shared and on which fields their different interests and positions
in the political system caused differences in their political behaviour.
The remainder of this chapter will introduce the main developments of
the Ottoman political system as it formed in the first half of the nineteenth
century, paying particular attention to the intertwined issues of power,
legitimacy and political style. It is against the political culture of the ruling
elites that oppositional culture of secret societies has to be placed. Some
general remarks on opposition in Ottoman history and its historiography
will conclude the introduction.
While the end of the nineteenth century political system that was
destroyed by the victorious Young Turk revolutionaries is signified by 1908,
there are at least two dates that are important for its inauguration. The
dissolution of the janissary corps in 1826 by Sultan Mahmud II (1808–39)
completed a first phase in a process of centralisation of power that is one of
the constitutive elements of the nineteenth century Ottoman political
system. Traditionally the janissaries of the capital could muster a decisive
weight to tip the scales in favour of one or the other political faction. A very
important group that could organise opposition to the decisions of the
4 Introduction
central government and that had a long-standing and vital culture of oppo-
sition was thus gone. As a consequence the sultan unlike most of his
immediate predecessors emerged as the sole source not only of political
legitimacy but of real political power. He could start a programme of reform
that was to define Ottoman history in the nineteenth century.
The rise of the civil bureaucracy as a powerful group in the Ottoman state
apparatus was closely connected to this programme of centralisation and
reform. In a long historical process that had already begun in the eighteenth
century the civil bureaucracy (kalemiye, mülkiye), and especially the Sub-
lime Porte with the grand vizier at its head, became an important and
at times dominant power centre in the Ottoman political system of the
nineteenth century.7 This dominant position was expressed on different
levels: in the creation of new ministries such as the ministry of interior or the
foreign ministry that offered job opportunities to the officials from the civil
bureaucracy; in the preponderance of institutions like the Sublime Porte
over the palace or the army (its contenders in the Ottoman central admin-
istration) in determining the general political line of the empire; and last in
the dominance individual politicians from the civil bureaucracy exercised
over Ottoman politics.
Mustafa Reşid Pasha (1800–58) was the first of a string of influential
politicians originating from the Translation office at the Sublime Porte who
dominated Ottoman politics in the middle years of the nineteenth century.
His disciples and successors as main representatives of the process of poli-
tical reforms and modernisation were Mehmed Enim Âli (1815–71) and
Keçecizade Mehmed Fuad (1815–69). Much of the power of this group
of politicians rested on their know-how of diplomacy and their close rela-
tionship to the European powers that became increasingly important for the
empire.
For historians the roughly four decades that the bureaucracy from the
Porte dominated Ottoman politics serve as a further subdivision of
the nineteenth century. This period known as the Tanzimat era begins with
the proclamation of a famous reform edict in 1839 and ends either at the
death of Âli Pasha in 1871 or alternatively with the accession to power of
Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909).
From a general point of view the Tanzimat meant the continuation of the
reforms initiated by Sultan Mahmud II. However, while before reforms had
been closely connected to the person of the sultan and his reassertion of
power, now they were in a sense generalised to become the official policy of
the empire. Previous attempts were brought into a systematic framework,
the scope of reforms was widened and new groups became their main sup-
porters. It was the common goal of all the single steps and measures taken
to render all branches of the governmental apparatus including the Ottoman
army more centralised and professional. Additionally, the reforms aimed at
creating a modern system of education and law more in tune with the needs
of the state and its people. Most fundamentally, the relationship between
 Introduction 5
ruler and ruled, between the state and its subjects was concerned. All
Ottoman subjects were to become more equal with each other and vis-à-vis
the administration putting the state on a broader basis than before.
It is still an open question to what degree the Tanzimat not only affected
the power relations between the different groups in the Ottoman state and
altered the institutional structure, but also changed political culture.
Scholars whose main interest is modern Turkey often attribute the non-
democratic aspects of Turkish political culture to the negative effects of the
Ottoman era. Indiscriminately they speak of one Ottoman political culture
that is described as extremely state-centred and authoritarian.8
As has often been remarked, in such an authoritarian political culture
there was no place for loyal opposition. All acts of opposition against
the government were rebellions (isyan, fesad, fitne) notwithstanding the tra-
dition of co-opting their leaders to government positions. The reason was
the compound nature of Ottoman legitimacy that integrated religious
elements and a patriarchal notion of authority.9
In the Ottoman political system the sultan from the Ottoman dynasty was
the cornerstone of legitimacy. The office was the centre of a rich symbolism
and many rituals of power had been arranged around it over the centuries.
Especially on the occasion of the death of the old sultan and the enthrone-
ment of the new sultan these symbols and rituals came to be displayed.
Questions of succession carried important political implications and irregu-
larities inevitably resulted in the formation of political camps.10
After the seventeenth century most sultans had ceased to play an active
political role, but they remained the ultimate arbiters between the political
factions and local power-holders who effectively ran the country. Despite
these changes the ideal image of an active and powerful ruler who was the
guarantor of a just and well-ordered society remained a stock image of
Ottoman political thought.11
Habituation and the antiquity of the dynasty became the main assets of
the ruler in the face of their periodic loss of real political power which
had never resulted in a formal redefinition of their authority. In the early
nineteenth century local power-holders tried to gain official recognition of
their role in the state.
. Mahmud II was forced to sign the so-called Deed of
Alliance (Sened-i Ittifak), which, however, remained a dead letter because
the sultan would not have his role restricted.
Furthermore, the political elite of the Tanzimat never managed to alter
the structure of authority in the political system. For example, it proved
impossible for them to introduce a Westminster-style cabinet system that
would have stabilised the government. The grand vizier as well as other
ministers remained the absolute delegates (vekil-i mutlak) of the sultan, who
could withdraw office at will.
The only thing that the political elite from the civil bureaucracy could do
was to rid themselves of their traditional status as servants (kul) that gave
their master, the sultan, not only power over their career and the right to
6 Introduction
confiscate their wealth, but also legally sanctioned power over their life and
death. All these prerogatives were abolished by decree in 1839.12
Therefore a recurring question in this study will be how different opposi-
tion groups viewed the role of the sultan and how this defined their aims
and strategy.
Religion was closely entwined with the dynastic aspect as one important
source of sultanic legitimacy. The continuous use the sultans made of such
religious roles and titles as for example that of protector of the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina or gazi, that is the conqueror of infidel lands added to
the lands of Islam (dar ül-Islam), might serve as evidence for using religion
as means for authority. Other titles such as Caliph were fully asserted only
late in the nineteenth century, most vigorously by Sultan Abdülhamid II
who was very consciously trying to manipulate the political culture of Sunni
Muslims. This was particularly important in times when factual legitimacy
flowing from the subject’s prosperity and security were harder to attain,
because of the constant decrease in power the empire suffered. Likewise
symbols such as the standard of the Prophet, his mantle and sword still
played an important role in the ritual of ascension of a new sultan. All
sultans of the nineteenth century made use of these religious symbols and
titles to support their authority. Sometimes this was done consciously; in
most cases religious symbolism was a pervasive undercurrent.13
The reforms of the nineteenth century did not and could not touch on the
position of the sultan; however, the prescribed changes questioned some
other fundamentals of the state’s legitimacy as far as it could be dis-
tinguished from that of its ruler. This mainly concerned the relationship
between Muslims and non-Muslims in Ottoman state and society. In this
regard the reform decree of 1839 itself bears witness to how the legal struc-
ture of the empire moved away from the traditional tenets entrenched in
political culture. The decree singled out three fields on which the sultan’s
subjects could expect new regulations: their personal rights, the empire’s
system of taxation, as well as the military. The new sultan promised to
respect and protect life, honour and property of all of his subjects, Muslims
and non-Mulims alike, to introduce proportional taxation and abolish tax
farms, as well as to restrict military service to five years.
The first of these promises in particular has drawn much attention from
contemporary European commentators as well as modern scholars. The
document has been interpreted as a decisive step away from traditional
Ottoman legitimacy, giving up Muslim preponderance in favour of equality
among the different religious groups of the empire.14 At the same time it has
to be acknowledged that regarding its rhetoric the decree remained a fairly
conservative document. In its introduction it used the traditional theme of
putting the empire’s decline down to the non-observance of the sharia and
the sultanic law (kanun). As a new twist in this old argument, though,
this served as a justification to introduce new regulations resembling
numerous reform proposals of the eighteenth century.15 If there were indeed
 Introduction 7
a fundamental change in the basic legitimation, it constituted a long-term
trend and was not primarily tied to the decree of 1839. In the decades before
its promulgation there had already been very similar statements by Sultan
Mahmud II, which can be understood in the framework of his paternalistic
conception of office.16 Only in the second half of the nineteenth century and
particularly with the second of the great reform decrees of 1856 did this
issue gain a new quality that made it a source for opposition as discussed in
the Chapter 2.
Also other fundamentals of the Ottoman political system only changed
slowly. While the legal system and the administration saw constant reform
during the period, there were few new political institutions that could med-
iate the political process. Politics remained a prerogative of the elite in the
centre; popular participation was at its beginnings and restricted to the
participation of provincial elites in the newly founded administrative coun-
cils until a first Ottoman parliament was created in 1876.17
Constitutionalism was one of the new ideas discussed in the second half
of the nineteenth century by Ottoman intellectuals and politicians. The
study will ask how this idea was integrated in the conventional thinking on
political authority and especially if and how it could become an ideology
that fuelled opposition to the government.
In the second aspect of political culture, the style of politics, continuities
were even stronger on the surface. As in previous centuries, day-to-day
politics revolved around powerful individuals who were eligible for high
offices in the centre. They built political factions around their households
that were locked in constant struggle by the means of office intrigues, slan-
dering and gossiping. These households had lost their earlier military power
since Mahmud II had forbidden them to have a military retinue. Poets who
were protected by influential politicians played an important role in the
political struggle. In this sense also the great politicians of the civil bureau-
cracy, although they were associated with reform, rationalisation and rule of
law, remained patron pashas par excellence. They were regularly criticised
for their favouritism and arbitrary decisions by their contestants.18
The investigation below will show to what extent the conspiracies were
still connected to this form of politics and to what degree they were offering
their members other forms of expressing their political ideals.
The history of opposition in the Ottoman Empire is long and colourful.
For modern historians instances of contestation like rebellions, revolts,
mutinies, urban uprisings or conspiracies are important, because they offer
alternative views on Ottoman history. Contestation exhibits the structures of
power and the interests that supported Ottoman rule and make it seem less
natural and god-given. It puts into perspective the monolithic picture of
Ottoman political culture that contemporary chroniclers liked to display for
their own reasons.19
Rarely has the political culture of opposition concept been used explicitly
to analyse the rich history of Ottoman opposition and contestation.
8 Introduction
While scholars in general have put questions of power in the foreground of
their analysis, questions of legitimacy and political style have always attrac-
ted attention as well. The string of rebellions and mutinies that from the late
sixteenth century onwards shook the empire have been a particular source of
continuing interest and debate regarding their political and social causes and
their significance for the development of the Ottoman state and its institu-
tions. Scholars treated the frequent janissary mutinies, revolts of provincial
governors and factional struggles in the capital of the post-classical age as
examples of a crisis of the elites that resulted in political tensions on three
levels: inside particular elite groups as manifest in factional struggle and
rivalry between grandee households; between different elite groups over
questions of who would have the ultimate decision regarding imperial
policies; and, lastly, between established elites and rising groups that tried to
change their status and participate in the privileges of the former.20
Structurally similar events of political crisis can be encountered in the
eighteenth century when also other groups like ulema and the guilds of the
capital came to play a significant role. Examples of the consistent patterns of
political contestation are the so-called Edirne incident of 1703 as well as the
Patrona Halil rebellion in 1730 and the rebellion of 1807 that ultimately
brought Mahmud II to the Ottoman throne.21
Historians have made reform the main historiographic theme to analyse
the instances of opposition and political contestation in the nineteenth cen-
tury. In this perspective one of the main questions was in how far opposition
meant opposition to the reforms and what vested interests were involved.
In a historiographical tradition that saw the founding of the modern Turkish
nation state in direct continuation of the reform programme of the nine-
teenth century there was a tendency to take the side of the Ottoman autho-
rities and condemn such opposition. In this view above all the janissary
corps on account of its involvement in the rebellions of 1807 and 1826 was
blamed as the ultimate obstacle to progress in Ottoman society.
In a more neutral fashion other instances of opposition to reform have
also been examined. The uprisings in the Balkans in the decade after the
empire’s tax system was reformed in 1839 serve as an example for material
interests that, when threatened, could become a trigger for opposition.
While landowners and tax farmers defended the old tax system, peasants
rebelled to obtain the promises made to them. In the end the peasants’
labour duties were abolished, however, the Ottoman government had to pull
back on its plans to end the system of tax farming, because the new system
proved inefficient. In the relevant decree issued in 1841 it continued its
strategy to wrap reforms in a conservative language highlighting the impor-
tance of the sharia for the empire.22
Other examples for opposition against measures of the Tanzimat come
from the Arab provinces of the empire. Regarding the riots in Aleppo in
1850, in Mosul in 1854, in Nablus in 1856 and most seriously in Damascus
in 1860 scholars have identified an amalgamation of different reasons as
 Introduction 9
causes for unrest. Besides material interests that were at stake opposition
was directed against demands from the centre like the draft or taxation.
Moreover, those active in these incidents defended the preponderance of
Islam in society against the ideology of equality of all Ottoman subjects as it
was proclaimed by the government.23
The issue of slavery in the Ottoman Empire offers a similar example of
entwined material and ideological interests causing contestation. British
abolitionists had inserted this issue into the Ottoman reform debate in the
1840s. In a rebellion in the Hejaz, led by the Sherif of Mecca and supported
by prominent traders, threatened material interests could be linked to ques-
tions of state legitimacy. In a fetva obtained from the head of the ulema of
Mecca the ban on the slave trade was declared unlawful and the Ottomans
were called polytheists (müşrik), who introduced innovations contrary to
Islam.24
The notions of political culture of opposition in the nineteenth century
are best captured in a short article by Şerif Mardin.25 The author stresses
that events like revolts and rebellions, far from being mere riots or machi-
nations of power, were displaying the popular understanding of Ottoman
legitimacy that rested on a tacit contract between the ruler and the ruled. In
this way Ottoman society was defending its freedom as it was understood
mainly in religious terms couched in a religious language. Such ‘popular
rebellions’ as Mardin called them followed a typical pattern from gossip to
demonstrations to armed intervention as a last resort. They brought toge-
ther different groups of Ottoman society, disgruntled merchants and crafts-
men from the bazar, ulema and, in its military phase, the local janissaries,
that united were able to press their demands maintaining their freedom.
According to Mardin the basic elements of this particular political culture
of opposition, its thinking on legitimacy as well as its style were still alive in
the nineteenth century. Other scholars have picked up on this and have
reinterpreted, for example, the role of the janissaries in Ottoman society.
The janissaries were re-established as legitimate spokesmen for the interests
of society vis-à-vis the centralising tendencies of the state under the leader-
ship of an ambitious sultan.26
In a similar way to Mardin this study will re-investigate five conspiracies
in the second half of the nineteenth century, several of which were also cited
in his article as examples of ‘popular rebellions’. The first of these to be
discussed in Chapter 2 is the so-called Kuleli incident of 1859 staged by an
organisation called the Society of Martyrs. Its assumed objective was to kill
the unpopular Sultan Abdülmecid and replace him with the heir apparent.
Because the conspiracy was reported to the government in its planning stage
by a traitor, most of its members were arrested and questioned by the police.
The surviving interrogation documents allow a close look at the political
culture of the involved groups and individuals. The two leaders, a high-
ranking Ottoman officer and a Sufi sheikh, are representatives of two
important sides of Ottoman legitimacy.
10 Introduction
The Chapter 3 will focus on the opposition during the 1860s that grew
from the milieu of the low-ranking civil bureaucracy and was embodied by
the so-called Young Ottomans. Their articles in the Ottoman press as well as
those that were written in European exile offer a picture of established as
well as of new ideologies among the opposition to the government. A very
interesting aspect regarding this well-researched group was that some of its
members originated from a little-known secret society called Vocation. Once
again surviving police records allow some insight into the motives and aims
of its members.
Chapter 4 deals with the only conspiracy that met with success, namely
that of high officials to depose Sultan Abdülaziz I (1861–76). The chapter
will examine the plotters’ attitude to sultanic authority and the mechanisms
of conflict management among the political elite of the empire. Another
focus will be on their interplay with a variety of groups and milieus of the
capital Istanbul, such as the ulema, protesters on the street and the military,
that ensured the success of the enterprise.
The final two secret organisations that are under scrutiny in this study were
both directed against Abdülhamid II who had succeeded Murad V in 1876.
The so-called Üsküdar Society, the subject of Chapter 5, was organised by
the former Young Ottoman Ali Suavi and had close connections to the
political milieu of low-ranking bureaucrats investigated earlier. At the same
time it illustrates how deeply exterior influences, namely the refugee crisis
after the Russian–Ottoman war of 1877/78, could precipitate such events.
The Skalieri–Aziz committee, named after its two leaders, serves as the
last example in Chapter 6. Here again surviving interrogation records allow
an eye-level account of the motives of the plotters, their personal views of
Ottoman legitimacy and the particularities of a political culture that
encompassed not only the bureaucracy of the capital, but also the economic
bourgeoisie represented by a Greek merchant active in freemason circles. In
this opposition group modern as well as traditional forms of political
struggle and participation were mixed.
In the older literature these conspiracies were usually judged as to how far
they ran counter to the reform policy the Ottoman government tried to
implement. However, the nineteenth century conspiracies are hard to bring
into line with the teleologic research agenda scholarship on the Tanzimat
displayed in the past. The work of Tarik Zafer Tunaya, the father of Turkish
political sciences, is a good example of how awkwardly they fit into a picture
that scrutinises the Tanzimat from the viewpoint of the modern, secularist
Turkish Republic. In the first edition of Tunaya’s seminal work on political
parties in Turkey, Türkiyede siyasî partiler, published in 1952, all the above-
mentioned conspiracies were treated in an introductory chapter on the
Tanzimat, though labelled not as parties but as ‘organisations’ (taazzuv).
Probably because of this unclear classification the second edition of the
work appearing 32 years later left them out entirely and started with an
account of the Young Turk groups of the late nineteenth century, namely the
 Introduction 11
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), to which a whole volume
was dedicated, as the forerunner of the political parties of the Turkish
Republic.27
Only when oppositional groups during the Tanzimat were conceived as
real forerunners of the Young Turk movement, could they be appreciated
accordingly. An interesting example is Ahmed Bedevi Kuran’s : book on
revolutionary
: movements in the Ottoman Empire, Osmanlı Imparatorluğunda
Inkılap Hareketleri ve Milli Mücadele, 1959.28 The author who was active in
the Young Turk opposition himself was able to align all opposition groups
on account of their common enemy, the Tanzimat state.
Such a valuation of political groups opposed to the Tanzimat state was
taken up again by scholars like Şerif Mardin, for example in his seminal
work on the Young Ottomans. With his concept of ‘popular rebellion’ he
avoided a state-centred perspective on political opposition in the nineteenth
century and stressed the rootedness of this opposition in the longue durée of
Ottoman political thought and practice.
A valuable hint to a wider framework in which the conspiracies and secret
societies of the Young Turks as well as their antecedents can be analysed has
been given by Thierry Zarcone. Following the diffusion of Freemasonry
in the Middle East in the nineteenth century he stressed the process of
adaptation and assimilation with an Islamic Sufi culture of secrecy.29
The present study will try to situate the five conspiracies under
consideration in this context of research. It will try to clarify the elements in
each of them that belonged to the traditional political culture and those that
annunciated the rupture in the Ottoman political culture and prepared the
revolution. The continuities and discontinuities of different elements such as
thinking on legitimacy and power, style of political action, forms of com-
munication, etc. were mixed in their own special way with contradictions of
their own. Altogether this mélange expresses the unique political culture
of the Tanzimat era.
2 A sheikh and an officer
The Society of Martyrs and the
Kuleli incident

In 1859 in what has become known as the Kuleli incident a group calling
itself the Society of Martyrs (Fedailer Cemiyeti) tried to initiate a coup
against the Ottoman government.
Although this attempt to topple Sultan Abülmecid I (1839–61) was
a complete failure, it gained some attention by the fact that it was the
first major act of political contestation in the Ottoman capital since
the janissary revolt in 1826. Taking place after over thirty years of moder-
nisation of Ottoman institutions and twenty years after the Tanzimat decree
had been issued, almost inevitably contemporaries and modern scholars
alike have seen the conspiracy in the wider framework of how the reform
policy was understood and reacted to from the political elites as well as
the people.
Ottoman dissidents like Namık Kemal, but also nineteenth century
European observers like the Hungarian orientalist and traveller Arminius
Vambéry or Edouard Engelhardt praised the members of the conspiracy for
their liberal attitudes and even attributed constitutionalist thoughts to them.
Writers with a Young Turk background like Yusuf Akçura and Ahmed
Bedevi Kuran recognised in the conspirators the forerunners of their oppo-
sition to the regime.1
Later,
. Kemalist historians came to an opposite evaluation of these events.
Uluğ Iğdemir who was president of the official Turkish History Society
TTK for almost thirty years and who published the police records on the
Kuleli incident labelled the events a ‘reactionary (irticai)’ plot, because one
of its leaders was a sheikh. Scholars like Roderic Davison or Bernard Lewis
principally subscribed to this judgement.2
The following re-evaluation of the Kuleli incident will try to dissolve
these contradictions by showing how the plotters were embedded in a
common political culture of opposition that could bring together men
from different backgrounds. On a number of layers the Kuleli conspiracy
addressed problems of power and legitimacy the Tanzimat had created. The
political developments in the 1850s that gave the reform process a new
direction are important for understanding the motives and goals of the
plotters.
 A sheikh and an officer 13
Together with the progressive involvement of the Ottoman Empire in
international affairs and markets in the second half of the nineteenth century
its political system also changed. One issue that became increasingly pro-
blematic was the position of non-Muslims in the Ottoman state and society.
It was openly addressed only in the second of the famous decrees promul-
gated during the Tanzimat era, the so-called Reform Ferman (Islahat
fermanı) of 1856.3 In contrast to the decree of 1839 the Reform Ferman was
almost exclusively concerned with the rights of the Christian subjects of
the empire. It reiterated the promise of equality given earlier, awarded posi-
tive cultural and religious rights to them, and abolished the remaining
discriminations they suffered.
On the face of it this concern for the Christian subjects of the sultan in
the Reform Ferman of 1856 was a direct reflection of the international
situation, namely the Crimean War (1853–56). This illustrates a recurring
mechanism in nineteenth century history that international questions of war
and peace brought to the fore questions of Ottoman legitimacy. The alliance
of the Ottomans with the European states against Russia fundamentally
altered the empire’s status in the international arena. It dealt the last blow to
the traditional Islamic system of international relations (siyar) that the
empire de facto had left behind since the late eighteenth century. With
the peace treaty of Paris the Ottoman state became an official member of
the Concert of Europe and part of the system of international law.4 The
Reform Ferman that was included into the text of the peace treaty of Paris
was a means of paying off the political debt to this alliance. It was heavily
criticised for this inside the empire being labelled a sign of weakness and
interference from abroad.5 However, from the perspective of the Ottoman
statesmen who drafted it, the decree was to function as an antidote against
the rising sectarian and national feelings inside the empire as well as against
intervention from outside. While from an European perspective the Crimean
War had been fought about the balance of power, for the Ottomans its
principal cause was Russia’s claim to execute an overlordship over the
empire’s Orthodox subjects.
The empire had entered the war in a time of general crisis that had also
had a negative effect on public opinion. Already in the 1840s the high-
ranking Ottoman politicians had become very unpopular and, towards the
end of the decade, even the sultan himself was criticised.6 Rumours of
Abdülmecid’s drinking habits and the incredible waste of money in his
palace began to spread.7 In turn, his younger brother and heir apparent to
the Ottoman throne, Abdülaziz, was styled as the complete opposite to the
sultan with his allegedly corrupted morals. In popular opinion Abdülaziz
was presented as a very religious person, to the point where people believed
that with his reign an era of renovation of Islam would set in.8
This juxtaposition of reigning sultan and heir apparent was also played
out among the empire’s political elites where two camps supporting the one
or the other were building. These factions cannot be differentiated into
14 A sheikh and an officer
reformers and conservatives, but had a purely political function. For exam-
ple, the side of the sultan was supported by men like Reşid who had married
a daughter of Abdülmecid, but also by alleged conservatives like Rıza
Pasha, a long-time minister of war, as well as the sultan’s mother. The main
supporter of Abdülaziz’s cause proved to be the long-time minister of
marine Mehmed Ali Pasha who had also married into the family of the
sultan. Apart from rumours about assassination plans against the heir
apparent the biggest threat to Abdülaziz’s right to the Ottoman throne was
the idea to change the law of succession in favour of the sultan’s eldest
son Murad. It is not clear whether the sultan himself was part of this
project, but as so often in Ottoman politics the resulting rumours were as
effective as any concrete steps undertaken. There is one contemporary
observer who ascertains that the Kuleli conspiracy was in fact organised by
high-ranking partisans of Abdülaziz. In general, the project of changing the
law of succession remained a source of disturbance in the Ottoman political
system.9
Especially in the tense atmosphere of the 1850s during the war with
Russia there were frequent counter-rumours that a coup against the sultan
was imminent. When Mehmed Ali in March 1855 shortly fell from grace
and was sent to exile to Kastamonu this was not only due to a financial
affair, but also because he was accused of being in contact with a group of
dissatisfied ulema with connections to the harem and perhaps even with
Abdülaziz himself. With the deterioration of the sultan’s health and his
rising unpopularity as the war drew on many people, among them the
British ambassador, expected a violent resolve of the succession crisis.10
In 1857/58 the tense political situation apparently even led to an inter-
vention of the British, French and Austrian ambassadors. In a joint note
they pointed out the inappropriate behaviour of the sultan and the bad
mood among the ulema and the people. Also in the Ottoman cabinet the
rumours of an imminent revolt ran high. A similar mood prevailed in
summer 1858 when a rumour emerged of a conspiracy being hatched either
by the ‘fanatical party’ or by a group of Hungarian and Polish officers being
engaged by Greek circles in the capital.11 A real conspiracy actually was
discovered in mid September 1859 that was connected in many ways to the
political developments of the preceding decade, although not always exactly
as the rumours of the time suggested.
According to the rules of political secrecy in the first few days the public in
the Ottoman capital was left in the dark about the importance of this
conspiracy. People had to rely on the European press that reported the arrest
of up to 200 plotters. Only later on an official communiqué in the Ottoman
press corrected these earlier reports as having been blown out of proportion.12
In all newspapers it was stated that the goal of the conspiracy was
to overthrow the Ottoman government. Only The Times which was not
subjected to the Ottoman censor could spell this out. According to its
correspondent this would have meant surrounding the sultan on the street,
 A sheikh and an officer 15
ordering him to abdicate and, if he did not comply immediately, to kill him.
As for the motives of the plotters the same article alluded to ‘the abuses of
Administration’ and named as the main groups of participants in the plot
the ulema, theological students as well as the army as represented by two
officers. The Ottoman press naturally avoided such graphic descriptions, but
instead tried to convey the impression that the government had everything
under control.13
The European diplomatic missions in the capital in general were kept better
informed than the public. Already on 17 September, the day when most of the
plotters were arrested, the British dragoman had his first of a series of inter-
views with the Ottoman foreign minister. In the reports he wrote for his
ambassador the dragoman mentioned for the first time a third ringleader, a
certain Sheikh Ahmed, and also added a personal evaluation of the incident.

The real object of the conspirators, as confessed by some of the prison-

ers, was to get rid of the Sultan by violent means and to replace him by
his brother. The present Ministers were also to be sacrificed and parti-
cularly Aali Pasha and Fuad Pasha. Their successors were to be men of
the fanatical party and belonging to the old school. The motive alleged
is the little regard shown by the present Govt. to the Holy law, the
prescriptions of which according to them are trampled under foot.14

This was the first in a long line of interpretations that see the 1859
conspiracy as a decidedly anti-Tanzimat plot stressing the religious motiva-
tion of the plotters. In a later statement, however, the dragoman added the
profligacy of the palace as well as the pay arrears for the troops as causes for
the conspiracy.15
The main source of information on the plot and the conspiracy behind it
is the official report produced by the commission of investigation called the
interrogation document (istintakname).16 This report was compiled from the
statements of the alleged members of the conspiracy after they had been
cross-examined for almost two weeks. All information about internal mat-
ters of the conspiracy comes from these interrogations that are included in
the report, although in an abridged and heavily edited form.17 These state-
ments reveal that a commander of the Bosporus fortifications had been
approached by the plotters, but had preferred to announce the existence of
the conspiracy to the minister of war who acted immediately and had the
plotters arrested.18 Forty-one prisoners were put under custody at the Kuleli
barracks on the Asiatic shores of the Bosporus. One of the leaders of the
conspiracy, the military officer Cafer Dem Pasha, drowned on the way to
the designated place of confinement when trying to flee. Two days after the
arrests, the interrogation of the suspects began, carried out by a special
commission consisting of the grand vizier, the minister of war (serasker), the
şeyhülislam and several other high-ranking officials. From the name of
the barracks where the trial took place the affair derived its name: the
16 A sheikh and an officer
Kuleli incident. The plotters, however, called themselves the Society of
Martyrs (Fedailer Cemiyeti).
According to the official report the society had been founded five or six
months earlier by a certain Sheikh Ahmed. Together with him four other
members, Hüseyn Daim Pasha, Cafer Dem Pasha, Rasim Bey and Arif Bey,
three officers and a scribe in the Ottoman military, formed the inner core
of the conspiracy. For their leading role all five were awarded the death
sentence. The other members of the society, altogether about 20 people, got
off with lighter sentences mostly consisting of hard labour (kürek) or
internment (kalebend). They had taken an oath by signing a document in
Arabic stating that they were entering a pact with Ahmed and thus became
a fedai, i.e., someone who is willing to sacrifice himself for the common
cause. It remains unclear in what relation the remaining 15 prisoners stood
to the conspiracy. Since the list of fedais along with other documents of the
conspiracy had been burned before the police could lay hands on them the
question as to who was a member of the conspiracy and who was not relied
entirely on the evidence given in the cross-examination by the arrested
themselves. Some of them successfully claimed that they were in private
relation to the sheikh or, at least, that they were not told about the real aims
of the society they joined.19
From the perspective of the government the conspirators’ aims were
described as purely criminal. Throughout, the interrogation document uses
the traditional political language of order that displays the Ottoman state’s
view of its own legitimacy. Like in other contexts secular and religious ter-
minology were employed side by side for the maximal effect of condemning
the enemy.20 The Society of Martyrs was labelled the seditious society
(cemiyet-i fesadiye) that was to raise the people and soldiers against the
state and to change its principles (usul) and laws (kavanin) by means of
bloodshed. In contrast to the public statements mentioned above the report
frankly admitted that the sultan himself was to be the aim of an assassina-
tion attempt. To mark the seriousness of this ‘biggest of all crimes’ as well as
to prepare the announcement of the death sentences of the five main culprits
the tone of disapproval and contempt once again was stepped up by taking
recourse to a highly moralistic language:

The harm and dangers cannot be enumerated that the sedition they
tried to stir up was causing to religion and state (din ü devlet), although
this sedition was totally opposed to the sharia, which they wanted to
put forward hypocritically and falsely to advocate their vicious personal
purposes.21

The judges fundamentally denied the plotters the ability and authority to
meddle in politics: They did not have the intellectual capabilities to under-
stand the sharia and the administration of government, but were just a gang
of thugs who could use their weapons.22 This argument especially was
 A sheikh and an officer 17
brought forward against the officers in the conspiracy amounting to half of
the arrested suspects and the largest group among the fedai and especially
against Hüseyin Daim their leader and highest in rank:

Although Hüseyin Pasha obtained the rank of a general of division by

the great favour of the sultan and he had to know more than others
about the condition of state and country and was obliged before every-
one else to guard order (nizam) and law (kanun), he assembled in his
house some of the members of the plot [ … ] and he worked and per-
suaded against the established orders of the rank and honour of the
Ottoman state, which was offered to him by the sultan.23

As to be expected the plotters themselves described their goals somewhat

differently. Both leaders of the conspiracy, Ahmed and Hüseyin Daim, did
not cooperate with their interrogators, denied all charges and claimed not to
remember anything.24 The sheikh’s stock phrase, ‘My aim was not assassi-
nation (suikast) but to carry out the statutes of the sharia!’, apparently made
it unchanged from the protocol into the edited report. The report, however,
added its own interpretation as to Ahmed’s reason for founding the society
and its aims:

According to his unfounded opinion about the matter of equality of

rights, which the subjects of the Ottoman state had acquired at the time
of necessity for justice and need for judgements, [ … ] he started to
establish such a society with the illusion to protect the glorious statutes
of the sharia. He said that the aim of this society was not to assassinate
anyone, but to introduce the ulema to this society and let them express
their thoughts.25

In a similar vein the second in command, the officer Hüseyin Daim

Pasha, answered that the society was ‘about realising the statutes of the
sharia and reforming politics (ıslahat-ı umur-u umumiye)’.26 In the tran-
scripts of the interrogations he added as a motive the squandering of the
treasury (beyt-ül malın israfı).27
All these bits of information about the programme of the society and the
motives of the plotters are heavily filtered by the official perspective the
judges were projecting. At first sight this programme seems to have consisted
merely of a slogan, i.e., the implementation of the sharia (icra-ı şeriat) that
Sheikh Ahmed, Hüseyin Daim Pasha, but also other members of the con-
spiracy were referring to in their interrogations.28 Biographical data regard-
ing some of the plotters especially its two leaders can give a hint as to the
intellectual roots of this programme and how it was connected to the other
motives mentioned above. Such a biographical perspective will give an
example of the heterogeneity of the society and its aims. It will also show the
connection of the Kuleli conspiracy to the immediate political situation of
18 A sheikh and an officer
the 1850s as well as to the longer reaching developments in the Ottoman
political system during the Tanzimat.
According to his interrogation Sheikh Ahmed, the founder and president
of the Society of Martyrs, was born around 1813 in Süleymaniye in the
province of Mosul. His life was the story of an increasing involvement in
politics that at one point switched from supporting the Ottoman Empire
into opposition against the sultan and his government. The keystone of
Ahmed’s biography including his later ‘political career’ was his membership
in the Naqshbandi order of dervishes where he attained the rank of a sheikh.
Regarding his place of birth, Süleymaniye, then the principal place of a
small semi-independent Kurdish emirate in the strategic border region
between Persia and the Ottoman Empire, this choice comes as no surprise.
One of the town’s most famous descendants, Sheikh Abu’l-Baha Ziya al-Din
Khalid al-Shahrizuri, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, established
in his hometown his own branch of the Naqshbandiya that he had
embraced in India.29 This branch, named the Khalidiya after its founder,
established itself in the wide stream of religious reform movements that
began to form in the Islamic world from the end of the seventeenth century.
Although sometimes these movements were at odds with the parallel
developments of political and social reform, nonetheless they have to be
considered inherent parts of the modernisation process in the Islamic world.
The Naqshbandi order believed in the periodic regeneration of religious
life through the implementation of Islamic law in its original form. It was
the central position they awarded to the sharia that distinguished the
Naqshbandis from most other sufi orders.
In its beginnings the biggest rival for the Khalidiya was the traditional
Kadiri order whose sheikhs managed to oust Khalid al-Shahrizuri from
Süleymaniye several times. Khalid had to go to Baghdad where he won
many followers and later to Damascus where he died in 1828. By then,
however, the Khalidiya had been firmly established in Kurdistan. The secret
of its success lay mainly in its superior organisation. Likewise its rise was
also connected to the political and social changes the region underwent from
the 1830s onwards. One aim of the centralisation policy of Sultan Mahmud II
had been to submit the semi-independent Kurdish emirates of Eastern
Anatolia to the imperial centre. Sufi sheiks in general and especially the ones
from the Khalidiya were arbitrating these changes and sometimes could
assume outright political power that could turn against Ottoman supremacy.
One of the last and most pertinent examples is the revolt led by sheikh
Ubaydullah of Nehri against the central government in 1880.30 In the
neighbouring Caucasus we also encounter this phenomenon in the figure of
Sheikh Shamil resisting Russian conquest from the 1830s.
Far from remaining a purely regional tarikat, the Khalidiya also managed
to establish itself in the rest of the empire and especially in the capital. In the
1820s its first deputies (khalifa) arrived in Istanbul where the Naqshbandiya
was already the most successful order regarding the number of convents
 A sheikh and an officer 19
and followers. Many of the adherents of the Naqshbandiya were state offi-
cials who were also involved in planning the reforms during the reign of
Selim III (1789–1807) and Mahmud II (1807–39). One of them, the tutor of
sultan Abdülmecid, apparently was involved in the drafting of the Tanzimat
charter. At this stage political reformism was still compatible with Islamic
revivalism of the Naqshbandis. The teachings of the order supported the
empire against European imperialism and Shiism for being the most
powerful Sunni state and as that a guarantor of the implementation of
Islamic law.31
Unfortunately we have almost no information about Ahmed’s rise in the
Khalidiya. According to his interrogation he descended from an old and
prominent family of Süleymaniye, which owned land and a tekke there.32 He
was probably too young to be taught by Sheikh Khalid himself, but even
after the founder of the order had been ousted from Süleymaniye the town
remained a Khalidi stronghold. Two contemporaries claimed that Ahmed
acquired his immense classical learning he was later credited with in
Baghdad that was another centre of Naqshbandi teaching.33 The only
information we get from his own interrogation statement is that he arrived
in Istanbul 13 years before his arrest and became a calligrapher at Osmaniye
Mosque and later a teacher at one of the religious schools attached to
Bayezid Mosque. Additionally he spent some time with the Ottoman army
of Anatolia and Batum during the Crimean War.34 This episode is most
interesting for it not only reveals Ahmed’s activist character, but also has to
be regarded as laying the immediate ideological and personal foundations
for organising the Society of Martyrs.
Ahmed’s involvement in the Crimean War was part of a broad patriotic
movement that supported the war against Russia on account of a religious
interpretation of Ottoman legitimacy. At its highest level the şeyhülislam,
who allegedly held sympathies for the Naqshbandis, expressed this view. He
not only reminded the sultan in several fetvas in a general fashion of his
duty to lead the jihad. He also managed to explain the Ottoman alliance
with Christian states by labelling the latter as vassals rendering their due
service to their overlord, the Ottoman sultan.35
More significant, however, was the popular protest movement that reacted
to the mounting political tensions between the Ottoman Empire and Russia
in spring 1853. It was fuelled by patriotic as well as religious feelings, and
apparently the political factions in the capital also used this movement for
their own purposes. While Reşid Pasha advocated a reconciliation with
Russia as advised by the European powers, the war faction was headed by
the minister of war Mehmed Ali. Protests reached a first peak in May when
the ulema, medrese students and guild members started a campaign in
favour of war. A poster on the wall of Şehzade Mosque called for the jihad
against Russia and, on a somewhat more official level, a petition signed by
35 ulema voiced the same demand. A sheikh of the Rifai order of dervishes
demanded to be handed the standard of the Prophet stored at Eyüp to lead
20 A sheikh and an officer
his followers into battle. During the protests the rumour that the sultan soon
would be deposed in favour of his brother re-emerged. The Porte distanced
itself from these initiatives and even sent some of the ulema and medrese
students into exile.36
More serious and disrupting were the protests the Ottoman capital
witnessed in December 1853. The medrese students went on strike and
demanded a tougher response against Russia that had destroyed the Ottoman
fleet at Sinope. At the same time, in some Istanbul barracks there was unrest
among soldiers who threatened to join the students. To restore order the
Porte had 160 students arrested. They were offered the chance to join the
army, but most of them rejected it and were exiled to Crete.37
Ahmed together with another alleged member of the Kuleli conspiracy,
Hoca Nasuh, was involved in this pro-war movement. The sheikh addressed
a petition to the Ottoman government to be allowed to take part with 3,000
of his followers (mürid) in the war. His request was granted in spring 1854
by the authorities which, at the same instance, promised to provide provi-
sions for the men on their way to the Anatolian front.38 Ahmed was not the
only Khalidi sheikh who actively joined the war efforts, as the example of
the head of the Khalidiya in Erzincan shows.39 Sheikh Shamil, the most
famous of all political leaders from the Khalidiya, who was also present on
the eastern front of the Crimean War is another example.
Shamil had been most successful in realising the ideological and political
goals of his order in his fight against the Russian conquest of the Caucasus.
From the 1830s onwards he was able to organise parts of Daghestan into
a veritable Naqshbandi state that resembled an extended tarikat. He
collected taxes, settled Muslim refugees from other parts of the region and
interpreted and implemented sharia law. The most important task, however,
was to lead the fight against Russia with an army composed of his personal
followers whom he led under the title commander of the faithful (amir
al-muminin).40
Following Khalidi doctrine initially Shamil seems to have accepted the
leading role of the Ottoman sultan. However, his relations to the empire
were marked by disappointments. None of his requests for assistance was
ever heard, because the Porte would not risk endangering its good relations
with Russia during the 1830s and 1840s. The Ottoman government even
expelled one of Shamil’s lieutenants preventing the recruitment of fighters in
the empire. After the declaration of war contacts were re-established and the
sultan even issued a ferman making Shamil governor of all the lands he
could conquer. But apart from such symbolic gestures a real cooperation
never materialised. By then Shamil’s position was much too weak to help
the Ottomans by attacking the Russian army from behind the front. More-
over, until the end both sides did not trust each other entirely.41
Contemporaries saw Ahmed’s role parallel to these examples. Most pro-
minently the orientalist and traveller Arminius Vambéry stated this in a
romantic characterisation of the sheikh:
 A sheikh and an officer 21
[Ahmed] had taken part in the whole of the Crimean war as a Gazi
(a warrior for religion), bareheaded and barefooted, and clad in a garb
whose austere simplicity recalled the primitive ages of Islam. His sword
never left his lean loins, nor his lance the firm grasp of his clenched fist,
either by day or by night, except when he said his prayers, five times a
day. Through the snow, in the storm, in the thickest of the fight on the
battlefield, during toilsome marches, everywhere could be discovered the
ghost-like form of this zealot, his fiery eyes scattering flames, and
always at the head of the division, under the command of my chief
[Hüseyin Daim].42

Likewise, a member of the conspiracy said that he met Ahmed in Batum

in September 1854 as a participant in the jihad. Another member, a medrese
student, directly compared Ahmed’s group with that of Sheikh Shamil and a
private from the artillery reported that Ahmed commanded 50,000 soldiers
and worked for the reform of the world (ıslah-ı âlem).43
For Ahmed the war offered the opportunity to sharpen and pursue his
Naqshbandi ideology and actively support the empire. Furthermore, he
enlarged his personal network and became acquainted with many of the
later members of the conspiracy. The most important person in this matter
was Hüseyin Daim, the highest ranking officer in the plot.
Like Ahmed, Hüseyin Daim also originated from the periphery of the
empire, a fact that shaped his life and career. By birth a Circassian he fol-
lowed a classical pattern being bought as a slave for one of the big Istanbul
pasha households, being educated there and then becoming part of the
ruling elite of the empire. Of this pattern that since classical times had run
parallel to the devşirme system Hüseyin was one of the last examples.
According to the European adventurer Frederick Millingen employed in the
Ottoman army Hüseyin, at a young age, became a page in the palace of
Mahmud II and from there entered a military career. Maybe he was among
the servants of Mahmud who manned the new army after the janissaries had
been abolished in 1826.44 During the 1830s and 1840s he rose in the ranks,
probably helped by Hafız Mehmed, the Ottoman officer who lost the
famous battle at Nizip against the Egyptian army in 1839 and reportedly
was his brother (or a patron with the same ethnic background).45
In the Crimean War Hüseyin distinguished himself in the battle at
Kurudere in Eastern Anatolia in 1854 and, in the following year, was part of
the army under the command of the British general Fenwick Williams
that defended Kars against the Russians. Many of the other European
generals employed in Kars described him as a brave soldier and a honest
man in contrast to some of the other Ottoman generals who saw in
their deployment only a nuisance distracting them from their careers in the
capital. Just before the town had to be handed over to the Russians in
autumn 1855 Hüseyin was promoted to the rank of general of division
(ferik).46
22 A sheikh and an officer
Apart from his advancement in the army the war was also the occasion
when Hüseyin met Sheikh Ahmed. The exact circumstances of this encoun-
ter are unknown. The orientalist Arminius Vambéry, who worked as the
tutor of Hüseyin’s son in 1859, claimed that it was the sheikh’s activist
stance and warlike faith that attracted the officer. Possibly Hüseyin was also
initiated into the sheikh’s order, because the same source later, in 1862,
called him ‘an enthusiastic religious mystic’ with connections to the
Naqshbandi order of dervishes. We know nothing about Hüseyin’s relation
to religion or any Sufi affiliation before he became acquainted with the
sheikh.47
Another source of spiritual influence may have been the Hungarian offi-
cers in the Ottoman army which again Vambéry claimed. After the sup-
pression of the revolution in 1848 thousands of Polish, Hungarian and
Italian revolutionaries had fled to Ottoman territory and some had
found employment in the Ottoman army. Their political influence is dis-
puted; probably it was their anti-Russian stance that most attracted their
Ottoman colleagues.48
After the war Hüseyin Daim was deployed to the border of Montenegro
where he was charged to repel Montenegrin militias from Ottoman territory.
The larger question behind these quarrels at the Ottoman border was
Montenegro’s independence from the empire already under discussion
during the peace negotiations at Paris. In May 1858 an Ottoman advance
unit led by Hüseyin was ambushed by the rebels and lost up to 700 men.
The Porte had to accept European arbitration so that the border was fixed
according to the military status quo. As a consequence of this defeat
Hüseyin had to give back a decoration (ikinci derece nişan), which was
newly assigned to him only about a year later.49 Again it is possible that the
experience of defeat and degradation deepened Hüseyin’s willingness to join
Ahmed’s group which must have been forming at the same time. The
frustration may not have derived solely from the humiliation of the Ottoman
army in confrontation with a band of rebels. The result of the affair may
also have been a personal grudge against the minister of war Rıza Pasha,
who is said to have been partly responsible for the lack of troops in the
troubled region on the Montenegrin border, but who did not have to face
the consequences because of his palace connections.50
In contrast to Hüseyin Daim, information about Ahmed’s life in the cru-
cial years between the end of the Ottoman–Russian war and his arrest in
September 1859 is scarce. The only explanation for his turning to militancy
against the government is connected to his Naqshbandi ideology. As he
stated in his interrogation: ‘I became cold inside the minute the ferman
about the equality of Muslims and non-Muslims was issued.’ Further he
voiced his frustration that he would not have participated in the war, if he
had known earlier that ‘the war was not for religion, but for the state’; a
statement that he then partially took back.51 It is unknown if Ahmed had
any particular grievances or any concrete experience in connection to this
 A sheikh and an officer 23
rather abstract event that made him determined to move against the sultan
and his government.
The personalities and life stories of its two founders, that are so important
to understand the political culture that nourished the Kuleli conspiracy, are
also reflected in its structure and membership. Ahmed who personally
recruited half the members of the Society of Martyrs clearly emerges as its
heart and brain. The society was organised around him like a small tarikat
consisting of a group of followers (mürid), who were personally dependent
on their sheikh and spiritual leader (mürşid) to whom they owed unques-
tioning obedience. Moreover, in the case of the conspiracy, like in a tarikat,
besides the initiated members there existed an amorphous circle of followers
(muhibban) accounting for approximately half the 41 suspects arrested
in connection with the plot. The tarikat was clearly the form of ‘secret
sociability’52 at hand to protect the plans of the plotters and recruit new
members.
With this form of organisation and ideology it comes as no surprise that
Ahmed was successful in recruiting members from the religious milieu of the
capital to his conspiracy. There was a group of four medrese students as well
as two other Sufi sheikhs, whose task was to give support to the plot with
their followers and students. One of them was the Naqshbandi Sheikh
Feyzullah from Hezargrad/Razgrad in present day Bulgaria (number 22 on
the list of culprits), who claimed to have a thousand followers. He was
recruited with the help of the müftü of the council of Tophane (no. 6), who
functioned as a bridge between the members with a military background .
and the ones coming from the religious side. The other Sufi sheikh, Ismail
from Kütahya (no. 23), perhaps a Naqshbandi, too, who is said to have had
as many as 6,000 followers, was approached by Ahmed himself after a
sermon in Aya Sofya. A last member from the religious side we have already
met in connection with the pro-war protest movement was the hodja Nasuh
Efendi (no. 21). Because he did not become a fedai he could not be sen-
tenced for membership of the society, but nonetheless was banned from
Istanbul for a couple of years.53
Most members of the conspiracy, however, had a military background.
The army officers constituting the largest group of fedai were the arms and
bones of the conspiracy. Besides the general of division (ferik) Hüseyin
Daim (no. 2) there were four captains (yüzbaşı) and three majors (binbaşı),
and a few non-commissioned officers. The officers from the inner circle
mostly recruited members for the society from among their colleagues
and kin. Some of the military men also were old acquaintances of the
sheikh such as, for example, a lieutenant from Daghistan (no. 16) and
a captain, who like the sheikh himself came from Süleymaniye and was a
son of the ruling family of that city (no. 8). A sergeant from the Tophane
supply regiment (no. 15), who was recruited personally by Ahmed explic-
itly claimed in the interrogation to be his mürid. He became an especially
zealous member and brought five new followers from different artillery
24 A sheikh and an officer
units in Istanbul to the conspiracy, two of whom signed the pact with the
sheikh.
Arif Bey (no. 4) represented a third milieu present in the conspiracy. As a
scribe he did not directly belong to the military, but to a social class of low-
ranking civil officials with a reforming agenda that was to pick up opposi-
tion to the government in the next decades. Like Hüseyin Daim he was
interested in European affairs, knew some French and even wrote a treatise
on how the Ottoman system of administration, finance and government
should be reformed to conform to modern standards and be more just and
efficient.54
The rest of the suspects were people from different or unclear back-
grounds. There was a poor confectioner (muhallebici), who seems to have
been a client of one of the alleged leaders in the inner circle of the con-
spiracy, and in this way got involved in the conspiracy. Last to mention was
a group of four Circassians who were supposed to carry out the sultan’s
assassination. There were a lot of Circassian refugees in Istanbul at the time,
but the allegation that a large number of them actually was included in the
secret society is doubtful.55
The conspiracy’s diverse membership gave rise to the contradicting eva-
luations as to its aims and overall character described in the introduction to
this chapter. At the same time this diversity also attests to the integrative
power of its leader and his political culture. It has been shown how Ahmed’s
understanding of Ottoman legitimacy as well as his political style was
shared by other members of the conspiracy from diverse backgrounds. This
political culture provided the Society of Martyrs with all its characteristic
elements beginning with its secret tarikat-like structure, its terminology and
slogan and so on. While in the Ottoman context it had been traditionally
the Bektashis who stood accused of plotting and secrecy, in the case of the
Society of Martyrs the Naqshbandis served as the model. It is a sign of the
changing political climate that a sheikh from an order that was a champion
of Islamic reformism and originally had been near to the state organised this
opposition. Not only the state used an Islamic language to support its poli-
cies; also the opposition could employ it to highlight the contradictions of
the reform process. Many of the grievances the conspiracy’s members were
nursing could be addressed in this language, too. The dependence of the
empire on foreign powers was one the members from the military felt most
directly. Most important was the demand for a more open distribution
of power in the political system of the country and the control of the all-
powerful elite of statesmen. According to the traditional ideal of the auto-
cratic state the plotters saw the exchange of sultans as the key to their
success. In this way they were very traditional and not against the regime
per se, but only against the current government including the sultan.
Hüseyin Daim and his colleagues can be evaluated as forerunners of
a new political culture of opposition in the Ottoman army that, after
the destruction of the janissaries, had not yet re-emerged as a milieu
 A sheikh and an officer 25
for opposition in the political system. Their worldview contained some
elements that European observers described as liberal, but that at the same
time were understandable in the traditional religious discourse of political
justice.
The war had created the situation that enabled and accelerated the
formation of the conspiracy that was the natural form of opposition. It can
be seen as symptomatic for the failure of the conspiracy that its leader,
Sheikh Ahmed, was not part of the political establishment. Hüseyin Daim’s
position was not high enough to secure success and despite all the discontent
and factional struggle among Ottoman politicians this did not translate into
their participation in the plans of the Society of Martyrs.
In this sense the judgement of the French ambassador to Istanbul, Thou-
venel, is right that the conspiracy was special in that it deviated from the
traditional palace revolutions, because it was initiated by ‘subaltern actors’
and, for the first time after fifty years, actually planned to lay hands on the
person of the sultan.56 The Ottoman authorities either did not see this or
preferred to ignore it. In the end, for all the condemnatory rhetoric that was
used in the official report on the Kuleli conspiracy the treatment of the
plotters was very lenient. The death sentences of the five main culprits were
commuted and most of the convicts were reintegrated into the political
system after some years. This lenient treatment can be understood as an
expression of the elite’s traditional thinking on order. Its breaking and res-
urrection was part of a perpetual circle, which recurring nature made such
acts of contestation less grave.57
On a political level, as an immediate limitation of damage the authorities
tried to appease Muslim public opinion. After anonymous posters had
appeared calling for the liberation of the plotters, the government issued a
decree concerning public drinking and women’s dress. However, it was much
harder to find a suitable response to the dissatisfaction with the general
political situation. For once, the sultan promised to set in order the finances
of the empire and reduce the spending of the palace. Also the replacement
of Âli Pasha as grand vizier with Kıbrılslı Mehmed Pasha at the end of
October 1859 can be seen as a reaction to the public mood; his replacement
had been the demand of an anonymous petition sent to the palace some
time after the detection of the plot.58
These, however, were only temporary measures and in the following years
the influence of Âli and Fuad even increased. Basically the fundamental
problems of the empire stayed the same so that new opposition groups were
formed. Not even the individuals sent to exile after the Kuleli conspiracy
could be confined for long. When Abdülmecid died in 1861 and his brother
Abdülaziz finally came to the throne, most of them were allowed to return
to Istanbul except for Ahmed, who had to stay in his place of exile, Cyprus.
The Kuleli incident was remembered for a decade or so as a viable attempt
to change the policy of the state and was referred to by succeeding groups
and individuals.
3 New and old forms of opposition
The Young Ottomans and the
Vocation group

With the Young Ottomans a decade after the Kuleli conspiracy saw the
emergence of one of the most famous opposition groups in the history of the
Tanzimat. This small group of intellectuals forming in European exile has
been credited with many ‘firsts’ in the political history of the Ottoman
Empire like the introduction of constitutional thought, the use of news-
papers for the dissemination of political ideas and the formation of a
modern public opinion based on a political press. Its members have been
seen as the intellectual antecedents of the later Young Turks in introducing
elements from European political culture to the empire and adapting it to
their needs. In their writings the Young Ottomans for the first time came
close to developing what might be called ‘political theory’. Here the ques-
tion of Ottoman legitimacy was posed in a much more articulated manner
than before and new political ideas were openly discussed. This also inclu-
ded hints towards a new legitimisation of opposition against the authorities.
Such a view has sometimes obscured the fact that the Young Ottomans
were deeply entangled with the power structure and political culture of the
empire under Sultan Abdülaziz (1861–76). The description and analysis of a
small secret society called Vocation (Meslek) in which some of the Young
Ottomans took part will be an example for the political milieu out of which
the opposition of the 1860s grew as well as for the style of their opposition.
Likewise the configuration of the political system in general is important to
understand this opposition. Given the fact that many problems the empire
faced were still the same it is not surprising that there were many resem-
blances and even personal connections to be found to the Society of Mar-
tyrs. While historiography has treated the two opposition groups as
fundamentally opposed regarding their members, their ideology and their
political culture, from within the political system they resembled each other
considerably. As has been noted earlier many contemporary dissidents with
a Young Ottoman and Young Turk background regarded the plotters of
Kuleli as their antecedents.
One of the main goals of the men of the Kuleli conspiracy had been to
exchange Abdülmecid for his brother, who, it was generally believed, would
have a better grip on his ministers and the problems the empire was facing.
 New and old forms of opposition 27
When the sultan died in 1861 and succession brought Abdülaziz to the
Ottoman throne the high hopes that were held in the new sultan were
frustrated. In terms of the foreign and internal political situation the 1860s
remained a decade of an ongoing crisis for the empire. Russia, the big threat
to Ottoman sovereignty, had been contained by the Treaty of Paris, but
the growing national movements in the Balkans remained a problem. The
unification of the two principalities Moldowa and Valachia under one king
and the cessation of most Ottoman rights to the new country, Romania,
were fought out entirely in the diplomatic arena. In other cases, however,
ancient Ottoman rights were disputed more hotly. In Serbia where there
were still small detachments of the Ottoman army it came to clashes with
the local population. In the beginning of the 1860s there were also minor
revolts in Herzegovina, Montenegro and on Crete, all of which could be
suppressed. Likewise, in Mount Lebanon the clashes between Druzes and
Maronites that spilled over to Damascus provoked French intervention.
Unfortunately there is little historical evidence as to the effect these
political developments had on public opinion in Istanbul. The only time
popular discontent was voiced openly was during the financial crisis of
November 1861. After a dramatic devaluation of the kaime, the Ottoman
paper money, there were bread shortages and for a short time it looked as if
riots could break out in the capital. With a new loan from Europe, however,
confidence could be restored and the kaime was withdrawn from the money
market.1
What kind of damage this as well as the military and diplomatic defeats
meant for the prestige of the sultan can only be guessed. For sure, the
damage must have been huge for the Ottoman politicians who tried to deal
with the constant crisis. From the end of the 1850s onwards Ottoman poli-
tics were dominated almost exclusively by Mehmed Emin Âli (1815–71) and
Keçecizade Mehmed Fuad (1815–69), who had risen from the translation
office of the Porte as protégés of Reşid. During the time of the Crimean War
they had become independent of their mentor, who had died in 1859;
apparently they had used the Kuleli conspiracy to consolidate their power.2
Also under the new sultan Abdülaziz Âli and Fuad remained in their
supreme positions, because of their diplomatic skills and their ability to rally
European support for the empire. Abdülaziz, who was eager to widen his
influence on day-to-day political decisions, had to learn how indispensable
the two politicians were during a cabinet crisis in December 1862/January
1863. After quarrels over the question of financing the army and navy grand
vizier Fuad together with the other ministers handed in their resignation,
but had to be reinstated some months later.3
In this situation a group of intellectuals and poets from the milieu of the
low-ranking civil bureaucracy for the first time began to use privately owed
newspapers as a medium of political opposition. .The founding figure of an
independent Ottoman press was the intellectual Ibrahim Şinasi (1826–71),
also a protégé of Reşid Pasha, who edited the successive papers Tasvir-i Efkar
28 New and old forms of opposition
(Description of Opinions) and Tercüman-ı Ahval (Translator of Conditions).
The articles in Şinasi’s papers mainly touched on educational and cultural
subjects, but they also entered the field of politics from time to time. This
seems to have been the reason why Şinasi had to leave Istanbul in 1865 and
decided to go into voluntary exile to Paris. How much his alleged involve-
ment in a conspiracy against Âli Pasha organised by one Said Sermedi
might also have played a role is not clear. Likewise unproven was the
rumour that Şinasi had connections to the Society of Martyrs, because he
had been employed as a scribe in the same office as one of its leaders.4
His closest supporter and disciple, the young official in the translation
bureau and poet Namık Kemal (1840–88), took over the paper of his mentor
and successively together with other journalists began to include more poli-
tically minded articles. The occasion for conflict with the government
derived from the revolt on the isle of Crete that broke out in 1866 and
proved hard to contain for the Ottoman army. In this critical situation the
Ottoman government was very susceptible not only to outside pressure from
the European powers, but also to interference in its policy by the press at
home. The articles Kemal printed in autumn 1866 on the Cretan question
and especially his campaign to help the Turkish population of the island
were anxiously watched by the government. The authorities interfered
openly when in October Kemal wrote a column about Greek Orthodox
inhabitants of Istanbul singing anti-Turkish songs and thus endangering
public order in the capital. The Tasvir-i Efkar was ordered to print an offi-
cial statement by the ministry of police that everything was under control.5
The relations between the small Ottoman press and the government
further deteriorated in the following year when the Tasvir-i Efkar began to
take part in a campaign against the government led by Mustafa Fazıl Pasha,
a former Ottoman minister and brother of Ismail, the governor/viceroy of
Egypt. After he had lost the struggle with Fuad Pasha for the grand vizier-
ship and the Egyptian succession had been altered and conferred to his
brother’s son, Mustafa Fazıl had chosen Europe as a place of exile. In the
beginning of 1867 by means of articles in some European papers he con-
tinued his criticism of the Ottoman government claiming he was at the head
of a large party called, in imitation of other European reform movements,
Young Turkey (la Jeune Turquie).6 The independent Ottoman press, namely
Namık Kemal’s Tasvir-i Efkar and the Muhbir (Reporter) edited by one Ali
Suavi, who would become one of the most interesting figures of Ottoman
opposition, took up the issue (probably without any direct contact to the
pasha) and published translations of the article.
In March 1867 as a next step in this campaign against the government an
open letter by Mustafa Fazıl to Sultan Abdülaziz reached the Ottoman
public.7 This letter that had been published in the European press before
and in the empire was distributed as a pamphlet was written in the time-
honoured form of a petition to the sultan. In deferential language it raised
some of the issues, which can be regarded as the conventional points of
 New and old forms of opposition 29
criticism of the Ottoman political system of the time. Most obviously this
was the condemnation of the tyrannical and corrupt system of government
that especially afflicted the Muslims. Responsible for this were the sultan’s
ministers – ‘these subaltern tyrants’ – who were neither checked by the
sultan’s good intentions nor by a public opinion that did not yet exist in the
empire. As an immediate remedy, as opposed to more long-term measures
such as improving the educational and economic framework of the empire,
Mustafa Fazıl urged the sultan to adopt a constitution. This would result in
the total equality of Muslims and Christians and would improve the image
of the empire in Europe.
The publication of the letter added the last element to a constitutional
debate mainly orchestrated by Mustafa Fazıl that had been going on
in Istanbul for some time. Already in February a certain Halil Şerif, an
Egyptian, too, who would later become Mustafa Fazıl’s son-in-law, had
presented a draft constitution for the empire to the public. The Courrier
d’Orient, whose editor was in contact with Mustafa Fazıl in Paris, also took
part in this discussion.8
By way of this press campaign Mustafa Fazıl had become a recognised
figure of opposition against the Ottoman government led by Âli Pasha
since February 1867. A clampdown on the Istanbul press in March 1867
subsequently made him its leader. Since the beginning of the year it had
been especially the Muhbir and its main writer Ali Suavi who had
openly criticised the way the government handled the rebellion in Crete
and the situation in Serbia where the local government demanded a
complete withdrawal of the remaining Ottoman troops from the territory of
the autonomous province. This paper as well as Kemal’s Tasvir-i Efkar were
closed and their editors together with Ziya Bey, a journalist and rival of
the grand vizier, were sent to serve as officials in remote provinces of the
empire.9
It was at this moment that Mustafa Fazıl stepped into the picture and
offered his assistance to the three exiled journalists inviting them to come to
Paris where they arrived at the end of May. Kemal, Ziya and Ali Suavi were
only the first of a small group of men who began to assemble around
Mustafa Fazıl and subsequently formed the Young Ottoman Society.
The remaining members of the Young Ottoman Society followed a more
conventional style of political contestation in forming a conspiracy to topple
the Ottoman government. It resembled in many ways the Society of
Martyrs, but because of the social origin of its founders its style of organi-
sation and the political ideals it was advocating were slightly different.
When this conspiracy was detected in June 1867 its three leading members,
Mehmed, Nuri and Reşad Beys who were friends of Kemal, fled to Paris
and joined the men around Mustafa Fazıl.
Similar to the Kuleli incident at first there were only rumours in the
European press giving information about this conspiracy. In the second
week of June 1867 papers in Europe broke with the news that an uncertain
30 New and old forms of opposition
number of people had been arrested in Constantinople, because a plot
against the government had been detected. According to several papers
Hüseyin Daim Pasha as well as a secretary of Mustafa Fazıl were among
the arrested. As claimed by one article the plan of the plotters had been to
invade the Porte with a mass of people on 5 June and assassinate the grand
vizier Âli and other ministers assembled there to attend the council of
ministers. Afterwards the crowd was to march to the palace to force the
sultan to implement a reform plan. This would have included the signing of
‘a sort of charte’, the creation of a parliamentary assembly as well as the
adoption of financial reforms putting an end to the extravagant spending of
the palace. The author of the conspiracy was said to be Mustafa Fazıl, who
would have returned to Istanbul immediately if the plot had succeeded. Its
president was said to be Ziya Bey, its vice president Mehmed Bey, both of
whom had been able to flee before they could be arrested. The plot appar-
ently had 400 members, whose names were found on a list seized by the
police in the house of Mustafa Fazıl’s secretary; 120 of those had been
arrested.10
Once again a look at the Ottoman investigation documents offers more
credible information about the extent and the aim of the conspiracy as well
as the political culture of its members. These documents consist of an offi-
cial report (mazbata), a summary of the oral interrogations as well as the
sentence for each of the suspects. In addition there was a memorandum
(arz tezkeresi) to the sultan making him acquainted with the findings of the
trial and asking him to confirm the sentences in a decree (irade).11
The introduction to the official report recounted the events in the
following manner:

When the news was heard that some people had established a secret
society (cemiyet-i hafiye) to cause sedition (fitne ve fesad) against the
vigorous administration of the state, these people were arrested
in groups of one or two in the quarters where they lived and were
brought [ … ] to the ministry of police where they were imprisoned and
interrogated alone or, if necessary, by confronting them with each
other.12

The report went on, saying that some of the arrested had to be released
again, but 25 stayed in custody. The instigators of this organisation, which
was called Vocation (Meslek), were Mehmed, Reşad and Nuri Beys, who
had not yet been arrested. Until 20 days before the arrest of their members
the aim of the society was said to be the promotion of civilisation, humanity
and prosperity (medeniyet, insaniyet, umraniyet). Only after that date it
turned against the government and tried to recruit new members. Apparently
for each member a booklet with writings of the society was produced
(Meslekname) and they held meetings in their houses, in various medreses
and one on a field outside Istanbul.
 New and old forms of opposition 31
Regarding the group’s plan of action the introduction stated:

On a day that the Privy Council (meclis-i has) was to meet they wanted
to finish off the members of that council before attacking the Porte
and then, as they had written it down in the circulating documents,
wanted to conclude the matter by making [new] appointments. In short,
they tried to undertake their treasonous assassination attempt in order
to find a way to their vile hope to obtain rank and office for each
of them.13

After thus defining the aim of the society the introduction of the report
concluded by stating that the suspects were to be classified in five categories
according to their degree of involvement in the conspiracy, i.e., if they knew
about the plans to overthrow the government. Then the report turned to the
individual interrogations of the suspects.
As had been the case with the Society of Martyrs the composition of the
Vocation group depended heavily on the social environment of its three
leading figures, Mehmed, Nuri and Reşad. Mehmed Bey (1843–74), born a
descendant of a well-known family of Ottoman officials, had been a pupil of
the Mekteb-i Osmanî, the Ottoman school that had been founded in Paris in
1858, before he was employed in the translation office (tercüme odası) of
the High Council at the Porte.14 Nuri Bey (1840–1906) and Reşad Bey
(1844–1901/2) were colleagues of Mehmed in the same institution. Like
them, nine of the 25 interrogated suspects were employed directly by the
government, seven in the central bureaucracy of the capital and three in
the local administration. Furthermore, there were four people with profes-
sions related to the administration, two writers of petitions (arzuhalcı) and
two tax farmers (mültezim). In most of the cases it seems to have been pro-
fessional contacts with the three leaders that brought these officials to the
secret society.
More of a surprise were the four men with a religious background who
joined the group. One sheikh, two hodjas and one student of theology were
arrested, interrogated and found guilty. Like the government officials they
were recruited by Mehmed and Reşad, who apparently had connections to
the religious milieu. In one of the interrogation protocols it was stated that
the two came to the Aya Sofya Mosque one day and proclaimed ‘that the
commands of the sharia were worthy and that the time of their realisation
will come and also showed the statutes of the Vocation group (Meslekname)’.
From another source we know that Mehmed sometimes went to the medreses
attached to Fatih Mosque to share his opinions with the ulema.15
Unfortunately there is no information as to whether these religious
professionals had any influence on the group’s ideology. It seems to have
been the task of the hodjas to have their students ready at the Aya Sofya
Mosque on the day of the attack on the Porte following the classical pattern
of popular unrest in the capital.
32 New and old forms of opposition
The rest of the 25 members of the Vocation group came from different or
unclear backgrounds. Among them was an astrologer (number 9 on the list
of suspects) and two tradesmen (nos. 21 and 22), who, however, played no
important role in the society. The near total absence of any members from
the army – there was one retired major, who was already in his sixties
(no. 23) – perhaps marked the most striking difference to the Society of
Martyrs.
Another specific feature of Vocation clearly was the structure of the
group. Rather than a charismatic individual it had three leaders at its top
and instead of the tarikat it chose another model of organisation. On the
outside the Vocation group operated as a charity promising financial help to
its members. In this way it attracted people before its real purpose was
revealed to them. Small stipends were paid to at least four of the poorer
suspects, among them one of the hodjas (nos. 8, 12, 16, 18). One of the
tradesmen was asked to contribute to the funds of the society (no. 21).
As claimed by the introduction of the official report, another strategy to
tie the members to the group had been to promise them offices for the time
after the coup. Indeed, there seems to have been a list of future appoint-
ments (tevcihat pusulası) (no. 2), but in only three cases is there more
detailed information as to what posts the suspects were promised.
Another common strategy the leaders employed to strengthen the trust in
the conspiracy was to exaggerate its dimensions. Many of the suspects
claimed that at the time they were recruited they were told that high
Ottoman politicians as well as thousands of soldiers and medrese students
were involved in the plot and that armed fedai were at its disposal. One
statement (no. 4) explicitly mentioned Hüseyin Daim Pasha, but there is no
further hint in the whole report as to what his involvement really was. His
name might just have been mentioned to show that the conspiracy had the
backing of an experienced officer.
The same applies to the alleged connection of the Young Ottomans to the
plot. One of Mustafa Fazıl’s ex-secretaries, Azmi Bey, who was on position
one in the list of suspects, said that there was a plan to bring back his
former chief from Paris and that also another of the latter’s servants was
involved in the matter. Once again it remains unclear how much Mustafa
Fazıl himself knew about the conspiracy. Likewise, the truth of another
suspect’s statement (no. 13) that the group tried to realise the conspiratorial
ideas that Kemal and Ziya also held is dubious. Most probably such an
allegation was to calm down members of the group when confronted with
the violent aims its leaders developed. Ziya himself vehemently denied a
connection between the plotters and the Young Ottomans already assembled
in Paris in an article to a French newspaper.16
Apart from offering financial help or posts in the administration the lea-
ders of Vocation clearly wanted to bind its members ideologically to the
group. The introduction of the report had already mentioned the so-called
Meslekname, which seems to have contained the programme of the group.
 New and old forms of opposition 33
It seems that every member was handed a numbered copy of this piece of
writing, although there is no specific information about its content to be
found in the report (nos. 2, 9, 18).
Nonetheless, the ideology of Vocation partly can be reconstructed from
the suspect’s statements. Only one of them (no. 2) actually seems to have
used the terms humanity and civilisation (insaniyet, medeniyet) found in the
introduction to describe the goals of the society. Two suspects said it was
about reform (ıslahat dair bir şey, no. 10) or about the reform of the
administration (idare-i devletin ıslahatı, no. 17). According to another
statement the rights of the Muslim community (millet) was the object of the
group’s endeavours (no. 20).
A clearer picture of the ideology of Vocation emerges when looking at the
description of one of the last meetings that was held in one of the hodjas’
room. In this meeting Mehmed Bey demanded a national assembly (millet
meclisi), which he also repeated in other circumstances (cf. statements of
nos. 8, 15, 19). One of the other members present (no. 25) propagated
parliamentarianism with the argument that now that even the Armenians
had a national assembly the Muslims could not wait any longer.
This reformist and constitutional programme of Vocation seems to have
been the uniting element especially in the initial phase of the society, before
the plans for the violent overthrow of the government were hatched. It may
well be that
. Vocation in this phase was identical with the so-called Patriotic
Alliance (Ittifak-ı Hamiyet), a secret society that, it has been claimed, was at
the basis of the political engagement of the individuals later called the
Young Ottomans. According to Ebüzziya Tevfik, a contemporary writer and
journalist who made the Young Ottomans’ acquaintance in the 1860s, the
Patriotic Alliance was founded by six young men at a picnic in a forest near
Istanbul in June 1865 as a debating club that discussed constitutional ideas
and their promotion in the empire.17 Reportedly among them were not only
Mehmed, Reşad and Nuri, but also Namık Kemal, a certain Ayetullah Bey,
the son of the host of one of Istanbul’s most important literary salons, as
well as Refik Bey, the editor of the short-lived journal Mir’at (Mirror).18
The so-called Patriotic Alliance is said to have been inspired by the Italian
Carbonaria that promoted liberal and constitutional ideas in the form of a
secret organisation since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Like the
Hungarian and Polish revolutionaries many of its members who had been
persecuted in Italy used Istanbul as a place of exile. There may even have
been a continuing influence on the Vocation group. Its organisational form
as a charity may have been inspired by the Italian Society of Mutual
Assistance (Società Operaia Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso) that exiled Italian
carbonari had founded in Istanbul in 1863.19
That the Vocation group was a continuation of the Patriotic Alliance is
possible, however, was never acknowledged by the main informant on the
latter group, Ebüzziya Tevfik, who also had first-hand information of
Vocation and its detection.20 That the two groups were identical is very
34 New and old forms of opposition
likely since also Vocation started as a secret debating club of constitutional
ideas before the society switched to putsch plans against the government as
its main goal. One member (no. 13) stated that he tried to leave the group
when a change in its programme occurred that ‘did not correspond to
Vocation’s just and moderate principles and regulations’. At the beginning
of the new phase the leaders seem to have tried hard to recruit new mem-
bers. From the statements of at least seven suspects it can be inferred that
they joined the conspiracy at that point. One of them (no. 18) claimed
that in the middle of March he saw 15 names on a membership list. Most
of the other members (nos. 4, 6, 16, 17, 23) were recruited in May 1867, in
the weeks when the planning for the attack on the Porte was underway.
Whereas it is doubtful that there were any real contacts between the
plotters and the journalists assembling in Paris like Namık Kemal and Ziya,
there still may be an indirect connection. The change in attitude regarding
violence in the leadership of the Vocation group seems to have been taking
place at the same time as the Porte began its crackdown on the press in
Istanbul. This might have convinced Mehmed that a debating club was not
an adequate means to change the politics of the empire any more.
As compared to Vocation, the Young Ottoman Society that was founded
in Paris in August 1867 adhered to a very different style of opposition.
Because of their exile the Young Ottomans could entirely concentrate on
political journalism as a form of opposition. With them a very successful
type of dissent emerged in the Ottoman Empire: the political émigré. At the
same time it becomes apparent that the individuals who constituted
the Young Ottoman Society remained heavily connected to the Ottoman
political system and to its political culture of opposition in general.
The society that had been brought together and was entirely financed by
Mustafa Fazıl consisted of the two groups of fugitives Kemal, Ziya and
Suavi as well as Mehmed, Reşad and Nuri who were joined by one Agah
Efendi, a former scribe in the translation office, minister of post and owner
of the Tercüman-ı Ahval, Şinasi’s old journal. The eighth member of the
society was a defector from the Ottoman embassy in Paris and an old friend
of Kemal.21 The aim of the society was to propagate the reforms Mustafa
Fazıl had advocated in his open letter to the sultan by publishing a journal,
which was to figure as the continuation of the Muhbir with Ali Suavi as its
chief editor. Ziya was chosen president of the society, because he was the
oldest member.22
For a time the Young Ottoman Society focused entirely on the press as a
means of opposition and moved away from the conspiratorial means
as employed earlier by some of its members. The background of its founders
as well as the circumstances of its establishment were clearly responsible for
this development. From Paris it was impossible to organise the overthrow of
the government, but the European environment proved ideal for editing
newspapers. Because of the liberal British press law it was decided to pro-
duce the Muhbir in London rather than in France. The Muhbir as well as
 New and old forms of opposition 35
later Young Ottoman publications could then easily be smuggled into the
empire to be circulated among friends. Usually they were simply sent
through the foreign postal services – a fact that the Porte was well aware of,
but could not prevent.23
Being in exile, however, also had its disadvantages. Not only had some of
the young men problems adapting to life in Europe, which further pro-
nounced the existing differences among them.24 Also the fact that they were
totally dependent on Mustafa Fazıl’s money was to cause difficulties for
the group. As it turned out, even before the establishment of the group the
mentor of the Young Ottomans had begun to prepare his return to Istanbul
to resume his activities in Ottoman politics. In June and August Mustafa
Fazıl had several audiences with Abdülaziz, at that time on a state visit to
France and Britain. The ex-minister and his sovereign seem to have come
to some kind of agreement and in September Mustafa Fazıl returned to the
empire. At a last meeting with Kemal he apparently told the latter that
he could pursue their common goal much better from inside the Ottoman
administration. We do not know if Mustafa Fazıl really thought he could
influence the sultan to move in the direction of the open letter or if, from the
beginning, he only had used the dissidents from Istanbul to put pressure on
the Porte to let him return. Neither his goals nor his strategies to attain
them were very clear.
Back in Istanbul Mustafa Fazıl considered the Muhbir much too radical,
but nonetheless did not cut his support immediately. Also the other Young
Ottomans were not content with the paper, which was more and more run
exclusively by Ali Suavi. The latter’s political views, to be examined in
Chapter 5 in greater detail, were developing into a different direction from
those of the other Young Ottomans. Also the personal relationship between
Ali Suavi and the rest of the group continuously deteriorated. For these
reasons in spring 1868 Mustafa Fazıl finally ordered the Muhbir to stop
its publication and allowed Kemal and Ziya to establish their own paper,
Hürriyet (Freedom), which first appeared on 29 June of the same year.
However, the inherent conflict of the Young Ottoman Society between its
cautious financial backer in Istanbul and the quarrelling individuals in
Europe continued to pose problems. After a short while Mustafa Fazıl also
broke with Ziya for his bitter articles against grand vizier Âli Pasha in
Hürriyet. After prosecution in England the paper had to move to Geneva
and later ceased to exist.25
In the meantime the other Young Ottomans had also engaged in their
own publications independent of their original mentor. In July 1869 Ali
Suavi had started a paper
: called Ulum (Science) in Paris. At the same time
Mehmed edited the Ittihad (Union) in Paris defending constitutionalism and
featuring articles in Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Armenian.26 Later, in: April
1870, he issued the most radical of all Young Ottoman papers, the Inkılab
(Revolution) in Geneva of which only five numbers appeared. This paper
featured personal attacks on the sultan and his administration calling for
36 New and old forms of opposition
a revolution in the empire to achieve political change. For that reason it was
quite exceptional among the Ottoman exile-papers of the time.27
Apart from his journalistic activities Mehmed also claimed to have
been involved in a further attempt to overthrow the sultan. According to his
own statement he travelled secretly to Istanbul actively to pursue a
revolution. The journey, which probably took place in April or May 1869,
however, seems not to have shown any results.28 Since there are no other
witnesses to it, it is hard to say whether it ever took place, and what plan-
ning it might have involved. There is a possibility that it has to be seen in
connection with the arrest of Hüseyin Vasfi Pasha, an officer in contact with
the Young Ottomans.
Hüseyin Vasfi (1835–78), who had graduated from the Ottoman military
academy and who was the son-in-law of Mütercim Mehmed Rüşdi, a high
official who was to play a role in the deposition of Abdülaziz (examined in
Chapter 4), became military attaché in Paris and director of the Mekteb-i
Osmanî in 1867. There he apparently came in contact with the Young
Ottomans and perhaps even joined their group. In the end of February 1869
he returned to Istanbul where he was arrested for an unknown reason. He
was released again in April with an official assurance of his innocence
: and
then went back to Europe and helped Mehmed to produce the Inkılab.29
Like Mehmed Hüseyin Vasfi seems to have been a radical accepting
violence as a means to attain his political goals. He remains a shadowy
figure, because there is little information available about the nature of his
political ideas. There have been attempts to connect him to other plots
against Abdülaziz during the 1860s. One account asserts that Hüseyin Vasfi
and Mehmed organised a conspiracy among the officers of the Istanbul
guard regiment to kill the sultan in the mosque of Beylerbey in June 1865. If
this account is not completely fictitious in the first place – the author
claimed to have heard it in Young Turk circles in Brussels in 1870 – it might
actually refer to activities or rather plans connected with Mehmed’s secret
visit to Istanbul in spring 1869.30
Equally unproven is the claim made by Ebüzziya Tevfik that Hüseyin was
part of the so-called Konduri–Altıncı plot involving a Russian tradesman
and the son of a Greek banker who at the end of September 1868 were
charged to have conspired to murder Sultan Abdülaziz. Apart from the fact
that the plot rested on a false denunciation at the time of the events Hüseyin
Vasfi probably was on his way back to Europe from his last assignment as
commander of a military unit. It is thus very unlikely that he had anything
to do with the episode, which offers a good example of the political climate
of the time that could lead to false arrests. Not every investigation of
rumours by the Ottoman police turned up a real plot.31
In accordance with their
: revolutionary ideals Mehmed and Hüseyin Vasfi
stopped publishing the Inkılab when the Franco–Prussian war broke out to
give support to the French side. After the war, in late 1871, Hüseyin Vasfi
under conspiratorial circumstances took residence in Athens from where he
 New and old forms of opposition 37
corresponded with the opposition against Abdülaziz, among others with the
heir apparent Murad. He returned after the deposition of the sultan and
eventually died in the Russian–Ottoman war in 1878.32 Mehmed already
had returned in 1874 to the empire after an amnesty had been proclaimed,
but had died in the same year. Regarding their radical ideas and their stress
on action to attain their political goals the two had been exceptions com-
pared to most of the other Young Ottomans.
With the exception of Ali Suavi the editor of the Muhbir (who will be
considered in Chapter 5), Namık Kemal and Ziya were most elaborate
about their political ideas. They could express them relatively freely in their
paper Hürriyet, because they were not subjected to any form of censorship
except for their dependence on some sort of external financial backing.
Conforming to their writings in Istanbul many articles of the two were
about the political situation in the empire since the beginning of the Tanzimat.
In general they criticised the interference of the European states in Ottoman
affairs and the influence of their representatives in the empire. As one of the
gravest effects of this interference Kemal and Ziya singled out the changing
position of the Christian subjects in the empire, who in the eyes of the two
journalists had attained a privileged position. That this had been a relatively
recent development matched their veneration, which especially Ziya showed,
for Reşid Pasha in contrast to his successors Âli and Fuad. As had been the
case for Sheikh Ahmed, the leader of the Kuleli conspiracy, the Reform
ferman of 1856 was seen as the watershed between good and bad reforms.33
As one of the innovative features of their political ideas Kemal and Ziya
propagated a constitutional system (usul-ı meşveret), which they tried to
explain to their readers in their articles. At the basis of such a system they
saw a written constitution that would replace all the existing secular laws
and particularly the two reform decrees of 1839 and 1856. The political
institutions of the French Second Empire were to serve as a model for a new
institutional framework for the Ottoman Empire. An elected legislative
chamber would be complemented with an appointed senate and a council of
state. The sultan would keep his prominent position, but would be subjected
to the law.34
It may seem more of a surprise regarding the background of the Young
Ottomans that throughout their articles in Hürriyet Ziya and Kemal awar-
ded religion and especially Islamic law an important position. Not only did
they reject the split the Tanzimat administration had introduced between the
new secular courts and codes of law and the original Islamic administration
of justice. For Kemal in particular the sharia was the general foundation of
reform and freedom. As a consequence the constitution would also depend
on it.35
This respect for Islamic content and concepts was also reflected by the
more theoretical articles Kemal wrote for Hürriyet. Although he was
acquainted with Western political philosophy and took some ideas like the
separation of powers or the social contract from it, he tried to integrate
38 New and old forms of opposition
them into an overall Islamic framework. For example, whereas Kemal’s
theory on the origin of society resembled the classical European social
contract theories, his explanations regarding the origin of government
altogether relied on classical Islamic thinking. With an oath of allegiance
(biat) the Islamic community delegated power to an imam or caliph, whose
task it was to oversee the correct implementation of the sharia in the Muslim
community.36
The relationship of the Young Ottomans towards their own opposition
was still very much entrenched in traditional political culture. Beginning
with Mustafa Fazıl’s open letter, one of its characteristics was that it tried
hard to efface its own oppositional stance. The conventional form Mustafa
Fazıl chose, informing an ignorant ruler about the true circumstances in his
country, made it possible for him to criticise the government without ques-
tioning the legitimacy of the sultan. A direct confrontation would have been
unhelpful since it would have made Mustafa Fazıl’s return to office unlikely.
In the beginning the letter describes a political utopia set in the times of
the early Ottomans where the subjection to one ruler was freely accepted
and an expression of the high moral and religious values of the Turks. The
letter contrasts this form of government with the ‘secular despotism’ of the
Byzantines – an only thinly veiled allusion to the Tanzimat administration
cleverly putting Abdülaziz in the position of the morally impeccable early
Ottoman sultans.
That the present-day empire did not resemble this utopia any more was
the fault of a class of clerks, who interfered in the harmonious relationship
of ruler and ruled. Whereas the Christian subjects of the sultan had the
option to engage in rebellion against these oppressors, the original political
pact between the Turks and their sultan prevented the Muslims from doing
so. They suffered patiently except for some ‘badly suppressed murmurs’
against such oppression. These were the only forms of opposition in the
absence of a public opinion, which Mustafa Fazıl also seems to count
among the legitimate means to react to the oppression of the administration.
Under these circumstances even a legitimate form of political action,
i.e. petitioning the monarch, an activity in which Mustafa Fazıl clearly saw
himself engaged in, became dangerous.
Mustafa Fazıl was able to integrate even his call for a constitutional
system into this traditional model of politics. Like in Piedmont, Austria or
Prussia he wanted the constitution to be imposed by the monarch and not
demanded by the people. The limits it would pose to the absolute power of
the sultan would be the limits set by himself.37
Naturally the Young Ottoman journalists were not under the same
restraints as their mentor and had a different agenda. However, it is inter-
esting to note that most of them maintained the distinction Mustafa Fazıl
had made between the authority of the sultan and his administration.
Only the latter was criticised as tyrannical while there were no attacks
on Abdülaziz personally. The most striking example of how this distinction
 New and old forms of opposition 39
worked was made by Ziya Bey. Born in 1825 – and thus belonging to the
same generation as Âli and Fuad – he became part of the circle of young
officials who were sponsored by Reşid Pasha. Ziya’s rivalry with Âli first
broke out in 1861 when he sided with the new sultan against Âli’s dominant
position in the administration. But his subsequent attempt to intrigue
against the latter backfired and he was first dismissed from his post in the
palace bureaucracy and then sent to administrative posts further and further
away from the capital.38
In exile in Europe Ziya remained one of the fiercest critics of the
government. The apogee of his personal hatred against Âli was a satirical
poem called Zafername (Account of Victory) on the crisis in Crete in 1867.
Moreover, many of the grievances against his government were retro-
spectively treated here making it a source for the mood prevailing in the
journalistic circles in Istanbul throughout the 1860s.39
However, as much as Ziya criticised the government and the grand vizier
in particular he tried very hard not to appear in opposition to his sovereign
Abdülaziz. Already in summer 1867 when the sultan was on his visit to
Britain Ziya had managed to hand over a petition to Abdülaziz explaining
his association with the Young Ottomans. Likewise he abstained from any
direct criticism of the sultan in his articles for the Hürriyet. Even when he
advised reform of the political institutions of the empire, the position and
the power of the sultan remained untouched. In one of his articles Ziya
relates a conversation he had with the sultan in a dream on the topic of
introducing a national assembly. Ziya assured the sultan that his power
would be curtailed only in so far as it was now curtailed by the precepts of
the sharia.40
The general tendency by Young Ottomans like Ziya or Kemal to see
European political institutions as a modern expression of Islamic law in this
case also forbade any alteration of the role of the ruler. But it was not only
for this ideological reason that opposition to the sultan was not a possible
option. For Ziya as for Mustafa Fazıl it also made no sense from a profes-
sional standpoint. Belonging to the highest class of functionaries for them it
was important to get from the sultan the additional power to be able to
defeat their enemies with whom they were competing for office.
Regarding people like Kemal, who were never part of the highest class of
officials, the reason for upholding the distinction between the sultan and his
government is perhaps to be found on a more abstract level. It is interesting
to note that Kemal, although he was the most advanced of all Young
Ottomans in developing a political theory, never dealt theoretically with the
topic of opposition. This probably was due to the fact that he relied very
much on classical Islamic political philosophy. His ideal of politics, for
example, was a state of harmony, which also was a characteristic of classical
Islamic political thinking where there was never a strong tradition of the
right of rebellion. Likewise Kemal never felt the necessity to think about
mechanisms to divest the ruler of his power and legitimacy.41
40 New and old forms of opposition
In this respect Kemal’s attitude to earlier opposition movements is inter-
esting. There is an article by Kemal in Hürriyet about the Kuleli conspiracy
disapproving of the means employed in this rebellion (isyan). At the same
time, however, he remarked that the group also made some constructive
proposals how to save the state from its present condition and asked whether
the authorities had the right to judge them in the manner they did.42 In
another article about the promise made by the state in the Gülhane decree
not to put anyone to death without a trial, Kemal invoked the death of
Cafer Pasha, one of the leaders of the Society of Martyrs, surmising that it
was improbable that he threw himself from the boat that was to bring him
to the Kuleli barracks into the Bosporus.43
Calling for fairness in the behaviour of the state vis-à-vis the opposition,
even if it planned to use violence to accomplish its objective, was perhaps
the most modern attitude of Kemal. He himself, however, always seems to
have kept away from violence and preferred the press as a means to propa-
gate his political views. These fundamental political convictions Kemal
upheld when he managed to return to Istanbul in August 1870 after he had
publicly laid down his editorship of the Hürriyet. History seems to repeat
itself: because of his criticism of the government a new paper he was editing
was closed two times and Kemal together with the other writers of the
paper, among them Nuri from the Young Ottomans as well as their later
biographer, Ebüzziya Tevfik, was sent to Cyprus until he profited from an
amnesty on the occasion of the deposition of Abdülaziz.
During his exile in Magosa (Famagusta) Kemal encountered Sheikh
Ahmed, who like other religious dissidents had been exiled to the island. In
his letters Namık Kemal expressed veneration for the sheikh and his plight
and helped him petition the government to be released from his exile. Kemal
said nothing about his attitude to the sheikh’s radical past. However, that he
must have been somewhat impressed with his opposition showed in the fact
that he called him ‘imam-ül ahrar’ (imam of freedom).44
The Young Ottomans shared many elements of the political culture that
was displayed by the Society of Martyrs. Without the direct link to the
Naqshbandi milieu of the latter, nonetheless many Young Ottomans saw
Ottoman legitimacy in religious terms. They displayed reverence for religion
and the sharia as the ultimate arbiter of justice in society. Likewise the
empire’s dependence on the European powers was seen as a problem leading
to the discrimination of Muslims.
Another parallel was the hatred towards the leading statesmen of the time
most notably Âli Pasha. To get rid of the Tanzimat politicians the more
radical among the Young Ottomans advocated the exchange of sultans
like the Society of Martyrs had done. These members also pursued a tradi-
tional style of opposition creating a secret society that attempted to stage a
coup involving the traditional groups of the capital. Contact to the ulema and
their students was established, however, the group failed to involve the army.
The majority of the Young Ottomans displayed a traditional reverence to
 New and old forms of opposition 41
the sultan’s person and the office that was a result of their class origin. This
origin and the particular circumstance of exile also made them choose
journalism as the main oppositional activity after having experimented with
the traditional form of a debating society. Here lies the Young Ottomans’
innovative contribution to Ottoman political culture of opposition. Together
with the new form, European-style newspapers, European content of poli-
tical philosophy and theory also began to be discussed among them
and their readership.
The Ottoman state could easily reintegrate these former bureaucrats
especially after Âli Pasha had died in December 1870 and thus an important
reason for their opposition was gone. Agah came back to Istanbul in
November 1871; Ziya in the following year after a panegyric poem together
with a petition to the sultan had been successful. Also Nuri and Reşad
returned in 1872 when they had been granted an amnesty for their implica-
tion in the activities of the Vocation group.
None of these individuals played an important political role after their
return from exile except for Namık Kemal and Ziya. In 1876 after the
deposition of Sultan Abdülaziz the two were first appointed secretaries to
the new Sultan Murad and later, after the ascension of Abdülhamid, inclu-
ded in the commission that was to draft a constitution for the empire.45 This
came as no surprise for perhaps the most important and lasting result of the
Young Ottomans’ publications in exile had been the propagation of certain
political concepts such as that of a constitution or a parliament. In 1867 the
function of a constitution had been to curb the power of the Tanzimat
administration embodied by Âli Pasha. Choosing originally European insti-
tutions was an expression of the Young Ottomans cultural background
being part of the Tanzimat bureaucracy, although these institutions were
being justified by them in an Islamic framework.
Ten years later the task of the constitutional commission was very differ-
ent. A political development, which will be the focus of the next chapter,
had eradicated the sharp distinction the Young Ottomans had made
between the sultan and his administration. Now it was the sultan himself
who was to be controlled. This notion was a consequent step towards a
modern understanding of a constitutional system, but a notion diametrically
opposed to the traditional framework in which the Young Ottomans
had fitted.
4 How to exchange Sultans
The successful coup against Abdülaziz

The year 1876 that many scholars in their periodisation of nineteenth

century Ottoman history see as the end of the Tanzimat era was marked by
some extraordinary political events. The deposition of two sultans, some-
thing that had not happened since the early nineteenth century, as well as
the promulgation of the first Ottoman constitution offer the possibility of
looking at Ottoman political history from different perspectives.
Constitutionalism was a new element in Ottoman political culture that
was first introduced by the Young Ottomans to the public. To some of its
adherents it offered a new way of thinking on authority and legitimacy and,
most importantly, the possibility to limit the authority of the sultan. In
1876, among the advocates of a constitution there was a group of young
army officers who were the harbingers of an increasing role of the military in
Ottoman politics and the modernisation of its political culture.
The promulgation of the first constitution was made possible by a series
of events that started with the deposition of Sultan Abdülaziz (1861–76)
for Sultan Murad V who, within a month, was in turn exchanged for
Abdülhamid II (1876–1909). The speed of these exchanges attest to the fact
that, under special circumstances, the legitimacy of a ruling sultan could
become extremely precarious. The easy success stands in marked contrast to
earlier examples when opposition had started with the same objective.
Mainly responsible for this success was the cast of characters involved in
these events. The conspirators that organised the coup came from within the
political elite. Introducing the individuals planning and executing this coup
and scrutinising their aims and motivations, this chapter will offer a view on
elite political culture. Their way into opposition to their sovereign was a
long-term process which was caused by the contradictions inherent in the
Tanzimat political system. Likewise important was the way these individuals
orchestrated the coup in conjunction with other groups in society. This
illustrates the mechanisms with which a traditional political culture of
opposition could be activated and manipulated successfully.
In the 1870s the political system of the Ottoman Empire underwent a
change, which prepared the basis of the coup in 1876. From the death of
sultan Mahmud II in 1839 onwards officials from the Porte had dominated
 How to exchange Sultans 43
and guided Ottoman politics. One of the main objectives of the reform
decree of 1839 had been to secure the position of the bureaucracy vis-à-vis
the sultan. As a result, first Reşid and then from the mid-1850s onwards Âli
and Fuad Pashas had dominated the central administration of the empire.
The Kuleli conspiracy as well as the opposition of the Young Ottomans were
attempts to challenge the exclusive position of the two statesmen and the
reforms they had initiated. When Fuad and Âli died in 1869 and 1871
respectively they left no apparent successor who could fill their dominant
position in the Ottoman administration. Sultan Abdülaziz who longed for a
more independent political role appointed ministers from various factions
shifting them at an increasing speed. The office of the grand vizier as well as
the various councils that had been created during the Tanzimat lost much in
importance during this time.1
The first grand vizier Abdülaziz chose after he had gained the freedom to
act independently was Mahmud Nedim Pasha (1818–83). From the same
generation as Fuad and Âli, Mahmud Nedim had also been among the
young bureaucrats protected by Reşid. After some years in the administra-
tion of the provinces Mahmud Nedim returned to Istanbul in 1858, but his
hopes of gaining a high position in the government did not materialise; he
became minister of commerce for a short time before he was removed again
after the Kuleli affair. The fact that Mahmud Nedim’s father was a sheikh of
the Khalidiya might have aroused suspicion or, at least, furnished an excuse
for his enemies to oust him from the government.
In 1860, apparently discouraged, he asked to be transferred to Tripoli in
North Africa and spent the following seven years there as governor of the
province. The fact that he returned to the capital in summer 1867 at a time
when the conspiracy of his nephew Mehmed with the Vocation group had
just been discovered, led some people to conclude that Mahmud Nedim had
been part of it. There was, however, no proof for this allegation and this
time Mahmud Nedim was able to win the favour of Âli, was appointed
minister of marine and managed to stay in office for the next three years.2
From the treatise Mirror of State (Ayine-i devlet) that Mahmud Nedim
wrote during his time in Tripoli we know a lot about his political ideals,
which were also the reason why he later became grand vizier. The treatise
looked back to the glorious past of the empire when its rulers still had
absolute power and their will was only limited by the precepts of religious
law. Only when the sultans lost touch with their people and officials
increasingly began to manage the affairs of the country was it that the
decline of the empire set in. The first signs of this decline were the numerous
revolts of the janissaries that shook the Ottoman state. The decline became
fully apparent in the nineteenth century and was symbolised by the imitation
of Europe that started during the Tanzimat. Like the Young Ottomans
Mahmud Nedim also condemned the fact that the sharia was replaced by
new codes and that a new class of bureaucrats, large in number, inefficient
and expensive, ruled the country. He also criticised the idea to give equal
44 How to exchange Sultans
rights to the Christian inhabitants of the empire. In contrast, he stressed the
importance of justice for every subject of the sultan. According to his pic-
ture of the golden age of the Ottoman Empire Mahmud Nedim’s remedy for
these ills was to give back the political initiative to the sultan.3
Like in the case of the Young Ottomans (and other examples of mirrors of
princes from earlier centuries), the author of the treatise criticised the
Tanzimat bureaucracy and threw his lot in with the sultan to gain favour
and office. After this strategy had been successful during his time as grand
vizier Mahmud Nedim acted according to these principles and followed
the lead of his sovereign. Abdülaziz’s increasing power corresponded to the
personal hatred some high officials began to cultivate for the ruler and his
grand vizier. One of the first measures Mahmud Nedim undertook, appar-
ently in concert with the sultan, was to purge the administration of all fol-
lowers and clients of Âli and Fuad. From among the grand vizier’s enemies
the organisers of the coup of 1876 emerged. While the fear for their personal
careers brought these men together their ideas and their political style
differed significantly.
War minister Hüseyin Avni Pasha (1820–76) who was sent into exile by
Mahmud Nedim became perhaps the most ardent enemy of the sultan and
his chosen grand vizier. In the course of the years revenge for this exile
became an obsession, as assured by Mahmud Celaleddin, a somewhat hos-
tile Ottoman commentator on the events.4 Born as the son of a poor family
in Western Anatolia, after a medrese education in Istanbul he had entered
the newly founded military academy from where he graduated in 1849 as
part of the first generation of Ottoman generals who obtained a professional
European-style military education. In the following decade Hüseyin
Avni rose rapidly in his army career. Entering the general staff during the
Crimean War, afterwards he became president of the Military Council (dâr-ı
şura-ı askerî). In 1867 he was sent to Crete as governor and two years later
he was officially nominated minister of war for the first time – an office he
had effectively run for Fuad when the latter combined it with his grand
vizierate from 1863 to 1866 and beyond until he was sent into exile to his
hometown by Mahmud Nedim.5
Midhat Pasha (1822–84), the other prominent member in the alliance of
high officials against the sultan, was also an established politician, but from
a different background with different political ideas. Born in Istanbul he had
entered the Ottoman administration as an apprentice, eventually becoming a
clerk in the office of the grand vizier in 1840. In the next twenty years
Midhat advanced in the central administration, occasionally charged with
special missions to the provinces to check on the local governors and oversee
the implementation of administrative reforms. In 1859 he was president
of the High Council and part of the special commission investigating the
conspiracy of the Society of Martyrs.
After 1861 when Midhat was promoted to the rank of vizier his career
shifted fully to the administration of the provinces, finally being appointed
 How to exchange Sultans 45
governor of the Danube province, the first model province administered
according to the new provincial code of 1864. Brought back to the capital
for a short time as president of the newly founded state council (şura-ı devlet),
in 1868 Midhat got in conflict with Âli, who was grand vizier at that
time, and he was again transferred to the provincial administration of
Baghdad.6
When Midhat came back to Istanbul in summer 1872 he caused Mahmud
Nedim’s downfall. Sensing the unpopularity of the grand vizier, with the
support of the alienated officials, who had remained in the capital, he
obtained an audience with the sultan. As a result Abdülaziz who was dis-
illusioned with Mahmud Nedim sacked the grand vizier and appointed
Midhat instead.7
As grand vizier Midhat tried to get a grip on the problems in the central
administration with the means and attitude of a provincial governor. He not
only prosecuted the followers of Mahmud Nedim severely but also showed
little regard for the wishes of the sultan. Moreover, he opposed the influence
of the Egyptian viceroy Ismail and the Russian ambassador Ignatiev, who in
turn hatched intrigues against him. After just 80 days in office Midhat was
dismissed again.
Midhat’s sudden downfall as well as that of his successors – Abdülaziz
managed to use six grand viziers in three years – may be seen as a symbol of
the general conditions of Ottoman politics during this time. To secure their
offices against the vagaries of the sultan Midhat, Hüseyin Avni and a third
high official, the former minister of justice Şirvanizade Mehmed Rüşdi,8
formed an alliance and initiated what in retrospect looks like a rehearsal of
the coup of 1876.
In 1873 the three politicians, who meanwhile had found their way back to
power and office, held regular meetings to discuss the situation of the
empire. Midhat especially spoke in favour of a constitution and a national
assembly to control the sultan, who, if he were to decline to give his consent,
had to be deposed. Apparently there already were detailed plans of how to
realise this deposition. But these plans were given up when Midhat suddenly
was removed from Istanbul and appointed governor of Salonica. To make
the best of the situation Hüseyin Avni informed the sultan about the exis-
tence of the plot and subsequently was appointed grand vizier in February
1874. Apparently conspirators at such a high level in the hierarchy did not
have to face the same consequences as others.9
Clearly, this episode of 1873 shows that the sultan’s personal legitimacy
was badly damaged and that he was no longer perceived as standing above
the political factions, but as a contestant for power like everybody else.
Particularly Abdülaziz’s habit of shifting his ministers as often as possible in
order to let none of them grow too strong was regarded as detrimental to
the country and had to be a thorn in the side of any ambitious politician.
The strategies of those in opposition to the ruler varied. There were
those like Midhat Pasha who wanted to restrain the power of the sultan by
46 How to exchange Sultans
a constitution. Hüseyin Avni and others wanted to check Abdülaziz in a
more traditional way, by deposing him and controlling his successor.
In the 1870s criticism of the sultan and his government was not only
confined to the high-ranking officials of the Porte, but was also growing on a
popular level. This was due to a crisis in the empire, which was caused by a
series of natural catastrophes that were worsened by the administration’s
mismanagement. In summer 1873 a drought destroyed much of the harvest
in parts of Anatolia and Europe and frost and heavy rain during the
following winter caused conditions to deteriorate for the population of the
affected regions. The diminishing revenue added to the strain on the treasury
leading to a financial collapse in October 1875. The government had to
announce that for four years it would only pay half the interest on Ottoman
bonds – a measure that not only destroyed Ottoman credit on the inter-
national financial markets, but also hit the small bondholders inside the
empire.10
Entwined with the agricultural and economic downturn were political
events adding to the atmosphere of crisis in the empire and particularly in
Istanbul. In June 1875 a rebellion broke out among the Christian peasants
of Bosnia–Herzegovina inspired by socio-economic grievances as much as
nationalistic aspirations. The Ottoman government, since August 1875
headed again by Mahmud Nedim, who had been recalled from his post as
governor in the provinces, lacked the will and the financial means to put a
quick end to the rebellion. Thus the European powers started to take
matters into their hands in what came to be known as the Great Eastern
Crisis, which, eventually, would result in another Russian–Ottoman war.
Austria and Russia were foremost in the diplomatic attempts to dissolve
the problems in Bosnia–Herzegovina and urged the Porte in a conventional
fashion to implement reforms in the rebellious provinces under the super-
vision of the powers. However, the revolt continued, because the rebels as
well as certain circles in the Russian administration obstructed a peaceful
solution.
Also the Porte had to avoid a solution that would be too damaging
regarding its sovereignty and territorial rights in the European parts of the
empire. More than ever before the government had to take into account
public opinion and therefore could not make too many concessions, either to
the rebels or to the European powers. In the 1870s a critical press had
become a normal feature of political life in the capital and the authorities
had their difficulties
: in keeping it under control. A regular victim of sus-
pension was the Ibret, the journal Namık Kemal started publishing after
he had returned from Europe. In 1875 the government imposed a strict
censorship regarding news about the insurrection to avoid any awkward
discussion of its conciliatory stance that was dictated by its military
weakness.11
In general, Ottoman public opinion in the 1870s seems to have grown
more self-conscious and hostile to European influence in the Islamic world.
 How to exchange Sultans 47
Ideas already voiced by the Young Ottomans found a wider audience and
were reiterated in the press. It was the time of nascent pan-Islamic feelings
that were taken up by the sultan and his government, but which in turn also
created political obligations.12 The fact that much of this new ideology
developed in reaction to the Russian expansion in Central Asia and
the public perception that Mahmud Nedim was working together with the
Russian ambassador Ignatiev, directly linked the international with the
domestic situation. This made the sultan and his government, both of them
already affected by the crisis at home, even more unpopular.13
In spring 1876 the contempt the population, especially in the capital, felt
vis-à-vis the sultan and his government slowly reached boiling point. In
Istanbul the sultan was openly scolded, because the government had
defaulted on the interest payments for the bonds due in April. Additionally
there was talk of a looming insurrection in Bulgaria, which, indeed, broke
out around 5 May. Despite the swift military response and total control of
any news concerning the events in Bulgaria this caused considerable anxiety
in Istanbul.14
The diffuse opposition in Istanbul against the government found its
expression in the demonstrations medrese students (softa) staged in the first
half of May 1876. For centuries such demonstrations had been a typical
characteristic of political unrest in the capital and also late nineteenth
century contemporaries regarded the medrese students as the natural
embodiment of popular opinion.15 At the same time there are also claims
that their protest was organised by Ottoman politicians like Midhat or even
the grand vizier himself. It is very likely that all Ottoman politicians tried to
use the student movement for their own purposes. But regarding its pro-
gramme the movement seems to have incorporated into its demands many
genuine popular grievances that surpassed factional politics.16
In the beginning the students at the medreses attached to Fatih Mosque
followed by their fellows of Bayezid and Süleymaniye suspended their
lessons as a sign of opposition to the regime – behaviour that the court his-
torian Ahmed Lütfi compared to the ancient example of the janissaries
turning over their soup cauldrons. The students then began roaming the
streets of Istanbul and were reported to be supplying themselves with
weapons in the local shops. There were several big meetings where patriotic
speeches were held. Alluding to the situation in Bosnia and Bulgaria,
speakers denounced the suppression of Muslims by Christians and stressed
the religious duty for each Muslim to oppose any statesman who tolerated
such conditions. To ensure the reform of the state and the nation (ıslah-ı
mülk-ü millet) they demanded the deposition of the grand vizier and the
şeyhülislam accused of favouritism. Less than a week after the beginning of
the agitation these demands were granted and in Mahmud Nedim’s stead
Mütercim Mehmed Rüşdi was appointed.17
After this sudden victory the mass meetings subsided, but the student
movement stayed intact for a while. That might be an indication that now
48 How to exchange Sultans
there was an organising spirit behind it, which was generally believed to be
Midhat. In fact, the latter did not become part of the cabinet until the end
of May, despite the initial demand of the students. Their programme in this
second phase of the movement, however, gives no clear indication as to any
outside influence.
First on the agenda was the old demand to limit the sultan’s civil list. This
step was to be accompanied by the creation of a General Council (şura-ı
ümmet) where notables of all the provinces of the empire would be repre-
sented. On top of everything the students asked for measures against
oppressive officials. According to another source popular demands like an
employment guarantee for officials and the augmentation of the latter’s
wages were also included in this list.18
The very mixed nature of these demands makes it likely that the student
movement did indeed represent public opinion. Regarding the excitement
about the insurrections in the Balkans the students’ reaction was very similar
to that at the beginning of the Crimean War. Demands like the control of
the sultan’s expenses or the convocation of a representative body sounded
more recent and would not have been possible twenty years earlier. The idea
of a General Council, however, was much more conservative than the
parliament Midhat tried to implement subsequently. It was probably an
expression of the generally vague understanding of constitutionalism in
Ottoman public opinion at the time.19 If Midhat really took part in orga-
nising the student movement, his influence on its ideology was thoroughly
watered down by the general political culture. In fact, in August 1876 when
Midhat was earnestly preparing a constitution a group of medrese students
opposed his draft on the ground that it was to give equal rights to the
Christians in the empire.20
The particularity of the student movement was that it was able to incor-
porate so many of the public grievances into its opposition against the
regime. Its success clearly relied on its capability of mustering a mass of
armed young participants at a time when the regime had no soldiers at hand
to quell the demonstrations. It was certainly for fear and not for a sudden
appreciation of public opinion that Abdülaziz almost immediately granted
the more technical demands of the students. But as easy as it was for the
students to cause a change of ministers, they needed leaders in higher posi-
tions to put into reality the demands that reached deeper into the Ottoman
political system. This was the point when the alliance of ministers around
Hüseyin Avni and Midhat took over again and, switching to a more clan-
destine style of opposition, deposed Sultan Abdülaziz.
When in August 1875 Mahmud Nedim had become grand vizier for a
second time the factionalism among Ottoman high officials was again
exposed. Hüseyin Avni, who was minister of war at that time, was pushed
out of the cabinet in October and appointed governor of Bursa to keep him
away from the capital. Midhat, in an unprecedented and provocative step,
handed in his resignation as minister of justice in late November, justifying
 How to exchange Sultans 49
his behaviour in a memorandum with the lack of initiative of the grand
vizier in the face of the internal crisis. Like Hüseyin Avni, Midhat also
advocated the use of force against the rebels in Bosnia as well as a firmer
stance against the interference of the European powers.21
In an interrogation five years later Midhat gave a very lively description of
the period when Mahmud Nedim was grand vizier.22 The fact that he had
been removed from power under similar circumstances as in 1872 brought
Hüseyin Avni’s hatred for the sultan to a peak. Midhat himself watched the
aggravating crisis from his country house near Istanbul to where he had
retired. But all his attempts to influence the political situation failed.
Through an emissary he was in contact with the sultan’s mother, who asked
for his advice on how to overcome the present crisis. His proposals, however,
to check the rebellion militarily, to govern the country in a lawful way
and to introduce true equality between Christians and Muslims, were
deemed too radical to be related to the sultan.
Among the other contacts Midhat maintained during his time out of office
probably were Hüseyin Avni and other Ottoman politicians and ulema as
well as the British ambassador Elliot. The latter claimed that from December
1875 he knew of Midhat’s constitutional plans to limit the absolute power
of the sultan especially in financial matters and to create a parliament
constituted of delegates from all parts of the Ottoman population.23
It is not likely that during winter 1875/6 either Hüseyin Avni or Midhat
undertook any concrete steps to plan for the forthcoming coup against
Abdülaziz. But Midhat’s opposition against the sultan was growing more
and more pronounced, as shown by an anonymous memorandum issued
on 9 March 1876. The document was written in French and signed by a
group of ‘Muslim patriots’, but probably had been composed by Midhat
himself. The main aim of the memorandum was to influence international
public opinion in favour of Midhat’s faction and to ask for support from the
European ambassadors for his political programme. Quite frankly the author
of the document played with the possibility of deposing Abdülaziz, who was
called a ‘miserable fool’. A deposition was not only wished for by the general
public, but would also be legitimate, because the sultan was not in possession
of his full mental capacities any more and violated the sharia that gave him
the duty to work for the public good. According to the document Abdülaziz’s
officials plundered the country and were responsible for its catastrophic
financial situation. Like Mustafa Fazıl’s open letter, the memorandum of the
Muslim patriots also advocated a representative assembly as a solution to
the empire’s problems. This assembly would act as a counterweight not
solely to the administration, but to the absolutism of the sultan.24
After the fall of Mahmud Nedim’s government because of the student
protest the deposition of Abdülaziz as imagined and legitimised in the
memorandum came a step closer to realisation. Hüseyin Avni was recalled
from Bursa and took over the war ministry again, Midhat became minister
without portfolio and the new grand vizier Mütercim Mehmed Rüşdi
50 How to exchange Sultans
replaced his namesake Şirvanizade, who had died in 1874, as one of their
principal allies. Now all the main leaders of the future coup were assembled
in the government and their motivation to oust Abdülaziz seems to have
been intensified by the rumour that after the excitement subsided Mahmud
Nedim would be made grand vizier again.25
According to all available information it was Hüseyin Avni who first
urged his colleagues to take the final step, and it was he who then undertook
much of the actual planning for the realisation of the coup. Midhat, in
the interrogation already mentioned, said that at first he had warned the
minister of war and only had consented to the deposition plan when he
realised that it had become so general a topic – he said that there was no
one among the ministers and ulema who was not pleased with the thought –
that he could not resist any longer. Midhat also claimed that, while he was
again negotiating with the sultan’s mother about the implementation of a
reform programme, Hüseyin Avni started to organise the details of the coup
and created a fait accompli.26
Surely Midhat exaggerated his opposition to the deposition plan in order
not to incriminate himself in the interrogation. He seems to have opposed
the way the deposition was to be carried out rather than the plan itself.
Midhat envisioned a huge popular demonstration to give some democratic
credentials to Abdülaziz’s deposition.27 Maybe it was also his idea to obtain
a fetva from the şeyhülislam in order to keep the coup within the formal
limits of Islamic law and the traditional understanding of how to exchange
a sultan. Hüseyin Avni apparently did not care for this.28 In accordance
with his background he stressed the military side of the operation and
he introduced a couple of young officers to the plot, who proved vital for
its success. To one of these officers, Süleyman Hüsnü Pasha (1838–92), we
owe the most detailed account of the coup, entitled Feeling of Revolution
(Hiss-i inkılab).
Approximately at the time of the beginning of the student strike Süleyman
Pasha, the director of the Ottoman military academy, together with some
friends developed a plan of his own to depose the sultan. Apart from the
sultan’s ministers and the medrese students these officers around Süleyman
Pasha formed the third group that was necessary for the successful realisation
of the coup against Abdülaziz. Their leader, Süleyman Pasha, was an inter-
esting figure in that he combined a military background with strong liberal
and constitutionalist convictions. Born in Istanbul in 1838 Süleyman entered
the military preparatory school and graduated from the military academy in
1859. Subsequently he started active duty in Bosnia, Albania and Crete
and advanced through the ranks. Upon his return to the capital he was
appointed teacher for literature to the military academy and, in 1873, being
promoted to the rank of a brigadier general (mirliva) became its director.
As director Süleyman first of all brought the curriculum of the
military academy in line with similar European institutions and founded
a military advanced elementary school (rüşdiye) as a preparation for the
 How to exchange Sultans 51
academy proper. Additionally he introduced new textbooks, some of them
written by himself. He also tried to extend his educational reforms to other
parts of society. Therefore he wrote several works of general interest, among
others a history of the world, an Islamic catechism for children and a
Turkish grammar, and pursued the project of introducing the teaching of
sciences to the medreses.
Süleyman was known for his liberal views – he frequented the salon of
Abdurrahman Sami Pasha, the grandfather of the Young Ottoman
Ayetullah – and was a supporter of constitutional rule for the empire.
Stressing education as a means to progress for the Muslim peoples
Süleyman’s views were in line with that of the Young Ottomans; it is, how-
ever, very doubtful if he really was a member of the Young Ottoman Society
as was sometimes claimed.29
Officers like Süleyman were examples of a new social type in the ranks of
Ottoman opposition, which in future would dominate that field. The new
army that had been founded in 1826 replacing the janissaries, on the one
hand, entertained a special relationship of personal loyalty to the sultan.
Mahmud II had staffed the new army with his followers and courtiers and
also his successors saw in the military a natural ally against the encroachment
on their power by the civil bureaucracy. On the other hand, the army like the
Porte became an distinct institution in the state apparatus and therefore
could develop an independent ethos and a political culture of its own. One of
the most important features of the new army was its educational efforts. After
a phase when students were sent to Europe to acquire military knowledge, at
the end of the 1830s a couple of schools, the military academy, a military
engineering school and a medical school were established to produce the
professional staff the military needed to keep up with modernisation. On the
initiative of Süleyman the system of military schools was gradually expanded.
The first students started graduating from these special schools in the late
1840s. In the beginning they were a minority and according to one report
they were mocked and not employed as to their abilities by their tradition-
ally minded officers still from the old system.30 This probably was the first
observation of the rivalry between the traditional officers risen from the
ranks (alaylı) and those educated in the new schools (mektebli), which was
to become a serious rift in the Ottoman officer corps and was partly
responsible for the so-called counter-revolution of 1909 against the Young
Turk government.
Apart from their professional military knowledge the education in the
new schools also induced the new officers with new political ideals. It was no
longer the person of the sultan to whom they owed their loyalty, but the
fatherland and the nation. As Süleyman Pasha’s account of the deposition
of Abdülaziz remarked:

In any case, nationalist ideas were well established among the

Academy’s officers and students. In short, neither the War Minister nor
52 How to exchange Sultans
a commander called these battalions and students into action; rather,
they were ordered and aroused by the patriotic sentiments that filled the
consciences of all. And Süleyman Pasha was the living personification
of those patriotic sentiments.31

In the following decades there would be many more examples of this new
political consciousness especially from the side of the students of the
military schools of the capital. As part of the Young Turk movement these
students directed their opposition against Abdülhamid and his neo-
patrimonial understanding of authority. They recurred in the political
culture of opposition in the army that first emerged in the coup against
Abdülaziz.
After having been introduced to the group of ministers around Midhat
and Hüseyin Avni, Süleyman Pasha took an active part in planning the
coup. At a meeting with the war minister he scattered the last doubts about
the feasibility of such an undertaking, voicing the opinion that many army
officers, not only those with a background in the military academy, but also
those trained in the palace, were no longer loyal to Abdülaziz.32 Together
with the minister of marine, Süleyman and Hüseyin Avni took the final
decisions to proceed with the coup. It was agreed that on the following
Wednesday, 31 May, Prince Murad would be escorted from his quarters to
the war ministry, while Süleyman and his battalions would surround
Dolmabahçe Palace where Abdülaziz was staying. In the war ministry in
Istanbul the oath of allegiance (biat) to the new sultan would then be sworn
by the members of the cabinet.
Before this plan could be carried out there were complicated negotiations
that involved the former Young Ottoman Ziya as to how Prince Murad
should be given notice of the coup and how he should behave. The crown
prince had been put under house arrest because of serious rumours regard-
ing a forthcoming coup, so ideally Murad had to sneak out of his palace
without causing a great sensation. Murad and his councillors, however,
insisted that it was necessary that he would be taken by a unit of soldiers
from his quarters. In case the coup failed, the prince would then be able to
claim that he had participated only under compulsion.33
At the last minute the plotters decided to move forward the date, because
they had serious reasons to believe that they had been discovered. After an
emergency meeting on Monday, Süleyman went back to the military acad-
emy and, at two o’clock in the morning, ordered the officers perform their
prayers. Then the students of the academy were called out and given
ammunition, and they took position in front of Murad’s palace. Next, the
four battalions under the command of his friends were despatched to
Dolmabahçe Palace, barring anybody from entering or leaving the place.
Neither the cadets nor the soldiers of the four battalions were told what they
were involved in. Many thought that Abdülaziz had suddenly died and they
were guarding his palace.
 How to exchange Sultans 53
There was a moment of confusion when Süleyman entered Murad’s
palace in the early morning hours – the two men did not know each other
personally – but when Hüseyin Avni arrived the future sultan consented to
go to the war ministry. Until then nobody had noticed that there was
something unusual going on. Some of Abdülaziz’ servants, who had seen
Murad been taken away by soldiers, thought that he had been arrested.34
When Hüseyin Avni arrived with Murad at the war ministry almost
the whole cabinet was assembled there. Midhat, the grand vizier and the
şeyhülislam had come directly from Hüseyin Avni’s villa where they had
been informed that the coup had been brought forward to the early morning
hours. In the ministry the deposition fetva was read by Hayrullah stating
that Abdülaziz was wasting the resources of the country and that he had lost
his common sense and was no longer fit to rule. Then the biat was made and
Murad V was declared the new Ottoman sultan.35
Abdülaziz only learned of his deposition together with the inhabitants of
the capital when the warships on the Bosporus, which had been guarding
the seaside of the palace, began firing their canons. According to all
accounts the sultan immediately grasped the meaning of the noise and
resigned to his fate. Together with his two sons, his wives and his mother he
was taken to Topkapı Palace by Süleyman.36
In contrast to their ruler the inhabitants of the quarters along the
Bosporus were thrown into panic when they first heard the sound of guns in
the early morning hours. They assumed the Russian fleet was attacking
Istanbul, but in the course of the morning the news of the exchange of sul-
tans transpired. At first the public seems to have been very careful with any
display of emotions, but as the day wore on a feeling of relief and joy took
over. There was a general hope that now a new era of peace and liberty
would begin.37
Meanwhile the transition of power was completed with Murad moving
into Dolmabahçe Palace. Upon arrival the new sultan was hailed by the
soldiers, who had brought him to the throne, and a second biat ceremony
was held in the palace. Also new appointments for various government
offices were made; among others Ziya became chief secretary of the palace.38
There had been no immediate problems in the transition of power from
the old to the new sultan, but already in the first week after Murad’s
enthronement the different agendas of the officials who had brought him to
office came to light. The decree traditionally issued on the occasion of a new
sultan’s ascension did not mention a constitution as Midhat had wished for.
The other minsters had been against such a project and had prevented any
step in this direction. Regarding the more general issues on which the
opposition against Abdülaziz had rested only the financial problems of
the empire were addressed.
Then, on 15 June 1876, a bloody incident suddenly altered the balance of
power in the cabinet. Çerkes Hasan, an army captain, ambushed a cabinet
meeting and managed to kill among others Hüseyin Avni. The details of this
54 How to exchange Sultans
assassination never were cleared up sufficiently and it remains dubious
whether it was a political murder at all or rather an act of private revenge.
For all its doubtful circumstances the consequences of the murder were
considerable. On the one hand Midhat was able to push through his con-
stitutional project without any significant opposition. On 15 July the Grand
Council took the decision to prepare the draft of a constitution for the
empire against the doubts of some ulema.39
On the other hand the violent disruption of Ottoman politics did pro-
foundly disturb the new sultan. The suicide of his uncle Abdülaziz just six
days after his deposition for the first time had exposed Murad’s mental
instability, which grew even more severe after the attack on the cabinet.
When Murad’s state of mind did not alter in the following weeks this began
to pose a real problem for the running of the state. The precedent
of Abdülaziz’s deposition made it easier to come to the conclusion that also
Murad had to be exchanged for his half-brother and heir apparent
Abdülhamid. Before a final decision was taken and Murad like his uncle
Abdülaziz was declared unfit to rule, Midhat tried to ensure that Abdülhamid
would consent to his plans. The prince duly assured that he would work for
the implementation of a constitution and was declared sultan on 1 September
1876.40
Midhat’s constitutional project offers the opportunity to review the
Ottoman political system at the beginning of the reign of Abdülhamid II
(1876–1909). On the one hand, drawing up a constitution was an attempt to
alter the structure of authority and set limits to the political role of the
sultan. Changing the empire into a constitutional monarchy and making the
sultan dependent on a written set of rules was unprecedented in Ottoman
history, but for the plan to work it would have required a less independent
and power-conscious ruler as Abdülhamid turned out to be. Indeed, when
the constitution was abandoned after only two years there followed a time of
unprecedented personal power of the sultan.
On the other hand, the constitutional project had also an external aspect.
Russia that had already demanded reforms to end the revolt in Bosnia–
Herzegovina in 1875 had reiterated these demands and issued an ultimatum.
After British mediation it was agreed to hold a conference in December
1876 in Istanbul to discuss the issue of reforms and rights of the Christian
population. In this context the Ottoman government announced its
constitutional project that would make such a conference obsolete.
Mainly because of these external implications and not for liberal convic-
tions Abdülhamid kept his promise and created a commission to draw up a
draft of the future constitution. Therefore the first voices of dissidence
during his reign untypically came from the conservative side. When Midhat
investigated the origin of a series of posters speaking against the constitution,
a small but high-ranking conspiracy was detected at the end of October.
Because many of its members came from the class of ulema, at first the sultan
seems to have been reluctant to act tough as the cabinet demanded.
 How to exchange Sultans 55
Only when his ministers threatened to resign did the sultan agree to deal
with the plotters. Less than 20 people were arrested, stripped of their rank
and then summarily exiled.41
All that is known about the goals of this conspiracy are rumours, since
there was no formal trial of the suspects and no other documents seem to
have survived. However, that its ideology was based on religious opposition
to the constitution, as was also voiced again and again in the drafting
commission, can be inferred from the persons involved in it. The main
instigators were two high-ranking former Islamic judges (kazıasker), one
Muhyiddin and one Şerif Efendi. In the beginning, together with Ramiz
Pasha, another high official, they had openly opposed the idea of a
constitution and only later had switched to their conspiratorial methods. If
we believe the report of the British dragoman, these men additionally
wanted to prevent a conciliatory stance in the war against Serbia and
Montenegro, fearing the government would yield to the demands of the
European powers. The same report .claimed that especially Muhyiddin
wanted to bring his former pupil Yusuf Izzeddin, the eldest son of Abdülaziz,
to the throne and thus advance his career.42
Also other high functionaries like Kamil Bey, a former steward of Kıbrıslı
Mehmed Pasha, and Rıza Bey, connected to Abdülaziz’s last grand vizier
Mahmud Nedim, may have joined the conspiracy to improve their career
prospects by an exchange of sultans. Şerif Efendi might have had such a
motive, too. In the crisis of May 1876 caused by the student protests he had
been Mahmud Nedim’s candidate for the office of şeyhülislam.43
While such opposition was foiled and the international situation worked
in favour of the creation of the first Ottoman constitution, the sultan and his
conservative supporters in the cabinet and the drafting commission were
able to alter it in accordance with their wishes. These ministers, palace offi-
cials and counsellors, most notable Cevdet and Damat Mahmud Pashas,
who were personally appointed by the sultan, opposed Midhat’s project as
much on ideological grounds as from fear it would enlarge the power of the
constitution’s main supporter. Therefore the plan to introduce the office of a
prime minister who would appoint ministers and be responsible to the sultan
was blocked. Also those articles that enumerated and circumscribed the
powers of the sultan had to be abandoned to suit more the traditional role
of the all-powerful sultan that was propagated by Abdülhamid and his offi-
cials. After a drafting process of three months, literally at the last moment
this group was able to insert the famous article 113 that allowed the sultan
to exile anyone posing a danger to the state.44
In the final version of the constitution that was promulgated on 23
December shortly after Midhat had been made grand vizier the sultan
retained much of his traditional powers. In his person much of the legislative
and executive powers of the state were combined and above all an article
stated that he could not be held responsible for his acts. He had the right
to nominate his ministers and his decrees remained an important element
56 How to exchange Sultans
of legislature. He was the one who had to sanction the bills the Ottoman
parliament issued. The parliament was one of the new creations of the con-
stitution, but its role was much diminished regarding the original intentions
of the liberals. Apart from giving a vote on the budget all it could do was to
discuss bills brought in by the ministers.
Besides these structural questions the constitution addressed many issues
that had been already discussed during the Tanzimat and in a way assem-
bled them in one document. In numerous articles it guaranteed the rights of
the Ottoman subjects who were to be equal before law. Also other personal
rights such as the security of person and property, the freedom of the press
and association as well as the prohibition of confiscation and forced labour
and the levying of taxes not sanctioned by law, some of them already con-
tained in the older reform decrees, were again stated.45
With the exception of the parliament that was in fact a new institution,
the first Ottoman constitution did not radically transform the political
system of the empire. The constitution clearly was not a liberal constitution,
but resembled the imposed constitutions known from several European
monarchies that introduced modern political forms, but retained royal
power and ideology. Also the second objective of the constitution, to act as
a shield against outside interference and a substitute for other reform pro-
posals, was not realised. When it was publicly announced at the Istanbul
conference it was received coolly by the delegates of the European powers
who continued to draw up a new programme of reforms to defuse the
situation in the Balkans. The demands of the powers were rejected by an
assembly of Ottoman dignitaries – a parliament was not yet in session – at
the end of January 1877, which opened the way for war. It was this war that
not only made the workings of the constitution and the parliament difficult,
but also provided the background for the opposition in the focus of the next
chapter.
The example of the coup against Abdülaziz and the deposition of Murad
shows that in the political culture of the elite the individual sultan was dis-
pensable. Tanzimat politicians were extremely confident they knew best how
to run the state according to their newly acquired specialist knowledge;
Abdülaziz’s wish for more political influence was clearly seen as a nuisance.
However, for all the personal hatred that Abdülaziz incurred, the conspiracy
of ministers like all others before never thought of abolishing the monarchy
completely. All they hoped for was that a new sultan could be controlled
more easily. Constitutionalism that offered the chance to redefine the role of
the sultan quite radically was the closest that political culture came to a
revolutionary solution of the question of sultanic authority. However, this
was the ideology of a minority as the rift that such a solution produced
among the plotters shows. Still the next generation of statesmen grappled
with this problem. Many of Adülhamid’s grand viziers tried to formalise
their position vis-à-vis the ruler, which was interpreted by the sultan as an
act of insubordination.46
 How to exchange Sultans 57
Popular political culture was more varied and less easily defined. While
previously opposition had blamed the Tanzimat statesmen for the political
crisis of the empire, in the 1870s Abdülaziz was made responsible. Therefore
it was easy for the coalition of ministers to find support from among
the public as represented by the movement of the medrese students.
The demonstrations as expressions of a popular culture of opposition by the
plotters were seen as a welcome support to their clandestine methods.
However, this coalition was short-lived as would become clear in the course
of events. In popular political culture an active and powerful sultan was
still seen as the most important bulwark against oppression from the
bureaucracy. Abdülhamid understood this much better than his predecessors
and was able to capitalise on it.
5 War and refugees
Ali Suavi and the Çırağan incident

In the initial phase of Abdülhamid II’s (1876–1909) long reign the main aim
of opposition groups was to restore the sultan’s predecessor Murad who was
confined in Çırağan Palace on the Bosporus. Because the sultan had mana-
ged to extinguish all opposition from the higher ranks of his administration
the representatives of this early opposition again were small groups relatively
unconnected to power. Already in early December 1876 there had been an
attempt to abduct Murad and remove him from Istanbul. Four men, a
former Greek employee of the British embassy, a Pole and two Turks, were
arrested. According to rumours it was either the British, the Russians or
Sultan Abdülhamid himself who had backed this incident, which was never
cleared up sufficiently.1
Another sensational attempt to reinstate Murad was the riot that took
place in front of Çırağan Palace in May 1878. A small conspiracy was
successful in calling together a large body of Muslim refugees and stormed
the palace before they were arrested by the police. It is the aim of this
chapter to explain this event in the historical context of the ongoing war with
Russia that had serious implications for the legitimacy of the Ottoman state.
Especially important is the role of the conspiracy’s leader who was
none other than Ali Suavi, the journalist and Young Ottoman political exile,
whose life had taken a rather different course than that of his fellows.
The incident at Çırağan Palace, from which he acquired the epithet of a
‘revolutionary’ in historiography,2 offers the opportunity to review Suavi’s
political thinking that underwent a remarkable development during his
lifetime and resulted in different forms of political action of which the
attempt to overthrow the sultan was the last and most radical.
The Russian–Ottoman war of 1877/78 that was so crucial for the political
fate of the empire resulted from the rejection by the Ottoman government of
the reform proposals the European powers had drawn up after the pro-
mulgation of the constitution. After several fruitless attempts of mediation
Russia returned to its ultimatum of the previous year and declared war in
late April 1877. However, the Russian army crossed the Danube only at the
end of June, but was halted by the resistance of Osman Pasha at Plevna, a
fortress in northern Bulgaria.
 War and refugees 59
Like earlier conflicts between the two contestants, the Russian–Ottoman
war of 1877/78 had serious ideological implications. The tsar declared his
‘sacred mission’ in this war, invoking pan-Slavism, the ideology of a group
of his advisers that combined Orthodox religion with an ethno-nationalist
thinking about the unity of all Slavs, for support. Likewise, the sultan tried
to mobilise additional forces with a new pan-Islamic ideology – a political
strategy, which, for example, resulted in an Ottoman diplomatic mission to
the emir of Afghanistan. At home traditional elements of Ottoman religious
legitimacy were reactivated to sustain the war effort and bolster the sultan’s
authority. The şeyhülislam legitimised the war by means of a fetva and, after
a couple of Ottoman victories, awarded the title gazi (warrior of faith) to
Abdülhamid, henceforward to be used publicly in Friday prayer.3
However, a reverse in the fortunes of war also could reflect back on the
government. As in previous years the most visibly active element in the
capital were the medrese students. In the run up to the war they staged
demonstrations denouncing the conciliatory stance of the Porte and
demanding a return of Midhat Pasha from his exile in Europe.4 In May,
after the fall of the town of Ardahan in Eastern Anatolia, a crowd of up to
3,000 students invaded the parliament building and called for the dismissal
of the minister of war, who, according to them, was unable to handle the
situation. The sultan gave in and dismissed his minister, but at the same
time took the event as an opportunity to arrest the ringleaders of the pro-
test. Also some of Midhat’s followers, who had remained in office, were
discharged.5
When eventually in December 1877 the Russian army overcame the
Ottoman defence at Plevna the war quickly turned into a military and
political catastrophe for the empire. The Russians soon were advancing into
southern Bulgaria, in the beginning of January 1878 Sofia was taken, some
weeks later Edirne fell. On 23 February after a near confrontation with the
British fleet the Russian advance came to a halt at San Stefano (Yeşilköy)
south of Istanbul. There a treaty was signed ratifying the terms of peace,
which the Porte had already been forced to accept at the end of January. Its
actual implementation would have meant the end of Ottoman rule over the
Balkans, one of the oldest and most integral parts of the empire.
Besides these military and political aspects the war also brought about a
human catastrophe that had immediate and longer term effects on Ottoman
politics. When the advance of the Russian army entered southern Bulgaria
many of its Muslim inhabitants fled from the countryside to the cities.
During the winter 1877/78, under most difficult conditions, these refugees
continued their flight and tens of thousands of them, mostly women and
children, tried to reach Edirne by train to travel on to Istanbul.6
These refugees (muhacir) were a symbol of the decline of the empire’s
military power, as it was unable to defend its subjects. In the ideologically
charged atmosphere of the war the fact that they were Muslims carried
special significance for the empire’s political legitimacy. In Islamic legal
60 War and refugees
theory the issue of migration from a land falling back to the non-Muslim
side (dar ül-harb) was an old problem. Orthodox scholars never had come
to a conclusion regarding the question, whether it was a duty for Muslims
to leave such a country. However, it was never in doubt that it was an obli-
gation to shelter and feed a muhacir, who chose to leave his or her home
rather than to live under a non-Muslim ruler.7
The Ottoman state had been first confronted with the problem of Muslim
refugees in the last quarter of the eighteenth century when, in 1774, it had to
renounce its sovereignty over the Crimean Khanate in the treaty of Küçük
Kaynarca. The annexation of the khanate by Russia ten years later brought
a first wave of Muslim refugees to the empire. Parts of the Tartar ruling
elite as well as the religious establishment, who had lost their privileged
position and had preferred to emigrate, joined the war faction in Istanbul,
which called for a renouncement of the treaty.8
This was the first occurrence of a political mechanism which was to affect
the Ottoman state in the next century. Russian expansionism resulted in the
loss of Ottoman territory and produced waves of refugees, who brought
political instability to the empire. It may be seen as a historical irony that
the same defeats in war also inspired reforms in the administration and the
foreign relations of the empire, which, over time, seriously put in question
one of the key stones of the empire’s traditional legitimacy structure, i.e., its
Islamic character.
Apart from Crimean Tartars who continued to arrive after the Russian–
Ottoman war of 1828/29 and after the Crimean War, it was Circassians who
represented the other large group of Muslim refugees in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Like the Crimean Khanate, Circassia had been loosely subjected to the
Ottoman empire until Russia systematically started to conquer the region
from the late 1840s. Most of the millions of Circassian refugees came to the
Ottoman Empire in the last phase of the conquest between 1862 and 1864.
But already in the 1850s and after the end of the Crimean War a constant
stream of refugees was trickling into the empire. Leaving their homeland the
Circassians usually went by boat along the Black Sea coast and many
of them eventually were stranded in Istanbul, which already had a large
Circassian community. The opposition of Sheikh Ahmed may have been
inspired by their fate. However, it remains unproven that a large number of
them was connected to the Society of Martyrs.
In the beginning the Ottoman authorities had difficulties in coping
with such an influx of people, most of them ill and impoverished. In the
1850s the administration began to set in place the necessary infrastructure.
Subsequently, the Ottoman government used the refugees for its own
demographic politics. Tartars and Circassians were settled in the Balkans to
increase the Muslim element there. Additionally, the Circassians, in their
homeland mostly pastoral nomads, were used as an irregular police force
and caused much trouble among the local farmers, Christians and Muslims
alike.9
 War and refugees 61
The Balkan refugees of the Russian–Ottoman war of 1877/78 in general
were easier to integrate due to their relative affluence and skills; many of
them returned home after the war. Like other groups of refugees before
them they became a political symbol in the eye of the public. Their own
political activities were rather limited, however, as the detailed discussion of
the Çırağan incident will show.
On 20 May 1878 the officer in charge of the police at Beşiktaş was
informed that a mass of refugees, who had assembled in front of nearby
Çırağan Palace, had broken the gate and entered the palace gardens. When
the police arrived at the scene they were directed by frightened servants to
the second floor where they came across ex-sultan Murad surrounded by a
group of men shouting ‘Long live Sultan Murad!’ The policemen killed the
leaders of the party, attacked the other men in the room and arrested those
present in the garden.10
It became clear only in the course of time that the incident at the palace
was much more than a riot by disgruntled and desperate refugees as the
above eye-witness account describes it. The foreign and domestic press
revealed that the refugees had been merely called to the scene by the real
instigator who was Ali Suavi, the former Young Ottoman activist, who was
killed in the mêlée with the police.11 The government’s official statement
carefully avoided mention of Suavi’s goal to restore Murad as sultan and
instead spoke somewhat vaguely only of his ‘long established wickedness’
(minelkadim caygir-i zamir-i habâset) as being the motive for his actions.
Additionally a further investigation and the trial of the members of the
‘seditious society’ (cemiyet-i fesadiye) which was said to be behind the
events was announced.12
The report the investigative commission produced is the main source of
information about the group around Suavi that had met for some months
in his house in Üsküdar and hence was called the Üsküdar Society. The
refugees, who had made up the bulk of the participants in the riot at
Çırağan, in general had not been members of this group and claimed not to
have known of Suavi’s aims at all. The group’s members rather were drawn
from among Suavi’s friends and admirers. Three of them had been killed in
the fighting at Çırağan. There were, however, a handful of other suspects,
whose names were mentioned on a list found in Suavi’s pocket after his
death. The commission extended its investigations to these persons, but since
no other incriminating documents could be found either at Suavi’s house –
apparently his wife had burned all papers before the police could lay hands
on them – or in the houses of the other suspects, all findings of the com-
mission remained uncertain and entirely rested on the credibility of the
statements given in the interrogation.
The seven members of the so-called Üsküdar Society who were not killed
in the riot at Murad’s palace came from different backgrounds. Two origi-
nated from families of the Ottoman bureaucracy, such as the poet Süleyman
Asaf Bey. About three of these followers we know even less, except that their
62 War and refugees
names indicate that they originated from the Filibe region in southern
Bulgaria. It remains unclear if they were refugees at all, but probably they
were in contact with the refugees from their home region.
Another important member of Suavi’s circle seems to have been one
Üsküdarlı Nuri, who, as a former servant of Murad, stood accused of
having acted as an intermediary between Suavi and the ex-sultan. According
to the statement of the other suspects there had been an exchange of letters
between the two in which Suavi had informed Murad about his aims. It is
hard to say whether there were really any direct contacts between Suavi
and Murad, since the witnesses had to admit that they had never seen the
letters in question. Officially the Ottoman government suppressed this grave
accusation and the sultan personally assured the British ambassador that his
brother had been ignorant of the plot. Likewise, the affirmation of the
suspects that Suavi entertained contacts with the British government is
dubious. If there had been any such contacts, no traces of them were left in
the official correspondence.13
As had been the case before, the government used the incident for more
general purges and accused a range of people of being associated with the
conspirators. The most prominent victim was the grand vizier Sadık Pasha.
Apart from the fact that he had not been able to detect Suavi’s conspiracy in
advance he had not reacted quickly enough when it occurred and, as a
consequence, Abdülhamid suspected him of being part of it.14 Likewise the
minister of marine, who at the time of the riot was on board a ship cruising
in front of the palace, was accused of assisting the conspirators. However,
the minister as well as some other officials who were named in the report
could not directly be linked to the conspiracy.15
Another group of people questioned by the commission about their
contacts to Suavi were Murad’s palace servants. But also in their case no
certain connection to Suavi could be established. Nonetheless they were
summarily dismissed from service and sent back to their provinces of origin.
Also Ali, the editor of the newspaper Basiret (Insight), a paper that in the
1870s had helped to popularise pan-Islamic ideas, was suspected of helping
the conspirators. As the commission found out, Ali had printed in his paper
a letter from Suavi the day before the events at Çırağan. Apparently this
letter had served as a secret message to Suavi’s followers to strike the next
day. Although Ali claimed to be innocent he was fined and the Basiret was
closed down for an indeterminate time.16
After these investigations into the background of the events and its per-
petrators those found guilty were handed over to a court martial, which was
responsible to deal with any disturbances of public order since Istanbul had
been put under the state of siege in May 1877.17 One of Suavi’s inner circle,
Hafız Nuri, was condemned to death, because he was believed to have been
involved in the planning of the coup and on the day of its execution he had
been seen disguised as a refugee in the vicinity of Çırağan. Three people
were sent into exile for a lesser degree of involvement. They had not been
 War and refugees 63
present at Çırağan, but had known about Suavi’s plan and had not informed
the government about it. The former palace servant Üsküdarlı Nuri as well
as two others were sentenced to serve three years in prison in some remote
place of the empire, because they had some knowledge of the plot and on
the day of the events had walked around in the vicinity of Çırağan Palace.
The refugees who had been arrested, some of them wounded, were
sentenced to various punishments according to their degree of implication in
the plot and its planning. Except for one of them who belonged to the
Üsküdar Society and therefore was exiled to Bolu, the others, in their
majority from Filibe, Hasköy and Pazarcık were awarded sentences between
ten and three years of hard labour (kürek). Two or three confessed know-
ledge of Suavi’s goal, the others stated that they had been called to the
palace under the pretext of collecting weapons to fight the Russians.
This story is credible, because there already existed refugee committees in
Istanbul to support an insurrection in the Rhodope mountains. It is unclear,
however, if there was any real connection between Suavi and the Muslim
insurgents. This was mooted by the British ambassador, but denied by one
of the insurgents’ leaders, the British adventurer St. Clair.18
A great number of other suspects had to be released, because neither
a connection to Suavi nor knowledge of the plot could be proven. Later a
group of 16 and 34 suspects respectively, most of them refugees from various
places in the Balkans, was acquitted.19
Summing up, the group organising the opposition against Abdülhamid in
the Çırağan incident was structurally very similar to groups that we have
encountered in the case of the Kuleli incident and the Vocation group.
A circle of devoted followers around a leader tried to change politics by
exchanging the sultan in a violent coup. Only the charisma of the leader as
well as the front of secrecy could cover up the fact that the group was lar-
gely unconnected to the mainstream of Ottoman politics. In the case of the
Üsküdar Society the personality of Ali Suavi managed to lead his followers
into action; although we do not know much about this handful of followers
and what motivated them to take part in Suavi’s attempt. The lack of
sources regarding the society makes it hard to ascertain the motives for the
opposition of the group. A decisive element, for certain, must have been
the desperate situation of the empire at the beginning of Abdülhamid’s reign
and the resulting legitimacy crisis that was projected on the person of
the ruler. A closer look at the intellectual development of the leader of the
society, Ali Suavi, can illustrate the genesis of his opposition. This develop-
ment covers twenty years, from Suavi’s early employment in the Ottoman
administration to the years of his exile in Europe to the time after his return
to Istanbul as late as 1876.
In contrast to some of the other leaders of opposition the life of Ali Suavi
in general is well documented. Because he was part of the group of Young
Ottomans, who went into self-imposed exile in Europe, scholars were inter-
ested in Suavi from the beginning.20 Furthermore, Suavi himself was an
64 War and refugees
active writer who, besides numerous articles and books on political ques-
tions and topics like education and science, published an account of his own
life. In this account he stressed his oppositional role claiming that from the
beginning of his career in the Ottoman administration he had constantly
protested against misuse of power and general injustice.
Born in 1839 in Istanbul Ali studied in one of the new advanced elemen-
tary schools (rüşdiye) before he entered the Ottoman bureaucracy as a scribe
in the war ministry. Despite his schooling and his chosen profession he also
had strong connections with the religious milieu. Parallel to his employment
in the central administration he completed his traditional education in the
local medrese and began to write on religious topics before he went on the
pilgrimage to Mecca at the age of 17.
Upon his return Ali first taught at a medrese in Anatolia and then, for a
short time, was director of the rüşdiye of Bursa. In 1861 he was recalled
to Istanbul because he had got into trouble with the local authorities. Sub-
sequently he was transferred to the court of commerce in Sofia and later, in
1864, he worked in the local administration of Filibe. There, again, he cla-
shed with the local governor and had to return to Istanbul in 1866.21
Back in the capital he became popular for his criticism of the government.
Paralleling his experience in the religious and the bureaucratic world Ali had
two places of agitation. The first was the Şehzade Mosque where he
was a preacher. His sermons were famous, because they were delivered in a
fervent style in the language of the common people and did not exclude
political topics. Also people like Namık Kemal and Fuad Pasha were said to
have attended them.22
As a second forum for his ideas Ali chose journalism and founded
his own newspaper, the Muhbir (Reporter). Before, Ali had been writing
mostly small essays on religious subjects, which circulated among his
students. With his newspaper articles, however, he gained a new audience.
The Muhbir, first appearing in January 1867, like Namık Kemal’s Tasvir-i
Efkar (Description of Opinions) for a major part covered educational
topics. But like the other papers the Muhbir also very soon started to spon-
sor more politically minded articles. There was, for example, a column
where Ali, who was the main contributor to the paper, explained general
political terms to his readers. He also wrote articles on domestic and foreign
policy, especially on the events in Crete and personally initiated a campaign
to help the Muslims of Crete who were affected by the insurrection on the
island. Also the famous open letter by Mustafa Fazıl that kicked off
the Young Ottoman movement was reprinted in the paper. As it turned
out, the Muhbir took a lead in openly addressing political matters. After a
hostile article against the policy of the Porte in general and the person of
the grand vizier Âli Pasha in particular the authorities banned the paper
and sent Ali into exile. This article protested against the fact that the
fortress of Belgrade was left by its Ottoman garrison and handed over to
the Serbs.23
 War and refugees 65
With his exile in Europe a second phase began in the life of Ali, who at
some point acquired the byname Suavi, ‘the active and industrious one’. On
the one hand Suavi’s life story developed similarly to that of his fellow
Young Ottomans, who went into exile, founded journals and eventually
returned to the empire. Also intellectually at the beginning he shared many
of their basic political beliefs, like the importance of religion regarding the
political order or the personal hatred towards Âli Pasha. On the other hand
Suavi was different, not least because he was the last of the Young Ottomans
to return to Istanbul. His political thinking especially as it may be gleaned
from the three journals and several books he wrote in Europe reveal that he
was the one Young Ottoman thinker most conscious of his dissident role,
styling himself a ‘political martyr’.24
The first of his journals was a new version of the Muhbir, which Suavi
started publishing in London from September 1867. The paper was financed
by Mustafa Fazıl and was intended to diffuse the latter’s views. Although the
articles generally were not signed, regarding their style many of them can
be attributed to Namık Kemal. According to the editorial its task was to
‘cause the progress of education and civilisation of the eastern people and
to bravely give expression to the reform opinion and to try to correct the
opinions of Europe about Orientals’.25 Although Suavi’s views in general are
associated with political radicalism, this programme was considerably dif-
ferent from and politically more modest than that which other members of
the Young Ottoman Society were drafting at the same time in Paris.
Suavi only adopted a more overtly political stance later, especially after
the break with the Young Ottomans’ benefactor Mustafa Fazıl. A first step
was the cessation of the Muhbir after which Suavi from July 1869 onwards
started to publish a new paper, the Ulum (Science), appearing every two
weeks in lithograph print. Besides education and science in the paper he
frequently touched on political questions. Being his own master and not
dependent on anybody he could use the Ulum to fight out political and
personal quarrels, e.g., against Namık Kemal. Perhaps the most important
step during this time was the final break with Mustafa Fazıl announced by
Suavi in a series of articles during February and March 1870.26
What were the political ideas Ali Suavi treated in his writings in exile and
in what way do they help understand the nature of his opposition? Of
immediate interest are, of course, utterances that touch directly on the
notion of opposition towards the state or its represantatives. Concerning this
topic Suavi seems to have held two opinions, which are not easy to reconcile.
On a very general level he was defending the right of rebellion within an
Islamic framework. On several occasions in the Muhbir as well as in the
Ulum he put forward that it was not the duty of any Muslim to show obe-
dience to a tyrannical government. Like the other Young Ottomans in
defending their notion of constitutionalism, Suavi in his defence of the right
of resistance drew on examples from the Koran, the life of the Prophet
Muhammad as well as the early Caliphs. He was perhaps the first Muslim
66 War and refugees
thinker in modern times to invoke the well-known Koranic obligation to
‘command right and forbid wrong’ to legitimise his stance.27
Suavi’s radical theory, however, was restrained by practical considerations
and the political culture prevalent among Ottoman officials. Suavi never
invoked the right to revolt against the Ottoman sultan of his time, Abdülaziz,
whom he always treated respectfully. As had been the case with the other
Young Ottomans the target of his polemic were the Tanzimat politicians
rather than the sultan. In one of his most radical articles Suavi issued a fetva
ordering the killing of the grand vizier. This fetva published in the Hürriyet
by Ziya was the main reason why Suavi, unlike some of the other Young
Ottomans, could not return to the empire until Âli Pasha’s death.
In regard to the Ottoman past Suavi defended opposition against the
central government and tyrannical ministers. In one article in the Muhbir
he chose the janissaries as an example of an intermediary body defending
the right of the people against absolute government (hükumet-i mutlaka). In
the present situation ministers had become so powerful because there was no
institution that could take the janissaries’ place.28
The fact that Suavi never actually called for the overthrow of the Ottoman
dynasty or attacked the sultan personally reveals a political conservatism
that was becoming more and more pronounced during his years in Europe.
In the beginning and under the influence of the other Young Ottomans
he defended their model of a constitutional system (usul-ı meşveret).29 Like
Namık Kemal he presented the need for consultations in the affairs of the
state to be deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition and rejected firmly any
form of arbitrary government. This line of argument, however, made Suavi
neither a supporter of a Western-style parliamentary system nor a con-
stitutionalist in the modern sense of the word. In his political thinking
the sharia was to take the place of a modern constitution and the sultan was
to retain most of his powers. Suavi assigned to him the traditional tasks of
a Muslim ruler, i.e., guarding religion, protecting the state’s borders, dis-
pensing justice and choosing the right officials.30
This political conservatism regarding the actual political system of the
empire became even more pronounced during the time Suavi published the
Ulum. Although he ascertained that historically speaking democracy was
the natural political system in Islam, Suavi was very sceptical about the
contemporary democratic regimes. Alluding to the events that shook Paris
under the rule of the Commune in 1871, he maintained that in Europe this
form of government had brought godless people to power who were reject-
ing religion as the basis of: society. In contrast to Mehmed Bey, who at the
same time in his paper Inkılab (Revolution) had embraced revolutionary
principles, Suavi displayed a very traditional attitude to revolution similar to
that of Ottoman contemporaries to the French revolution of 1789.31
Moreover, Suavi was concerned about the export of the modern concept
of democracy to the Muslim world. He expressed doubt whether people in
the Ottoman Empire were educated enough for this sort of government,
 War and refugees 67
which only would lead to sedition and rebellion (fitneengiz olacaktir).
Instead he promoted the monarchy as the ideal form of government for his
own country: ‘According to our understanding the government, which is
suitable to a situation and a society we find for example in the Ottoman
state, must be a monarchy (padişahlık).’32
Suavi again pronounced his scepticism vis-à-vis European-style parlia-
mentary systems in an article in the Istanbul paper Vakit (Time) as late as
September 1876. Writing under the shadow of Gladstone’s campaign con-
cerning the so-called ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ Suavi directly condemned the
system of parliamentary opposition and its tendency to influence public
opinion. In contrast he depicted the Ottoman Empire as a polity that
knew no changes and revolutions and thus stood for internal and external
stability.33
The reason why Sultan Abdülhamid finally allowed Suavi to return to
Istanbul in November 1876 might have been this endorsement of a tradi-
tional political culture that stressed loyalty to the empire and its ruler. Back
in the capital a third phase in the life of the Ottoman official, Islamic
preacher, journalist and political exile began in an environment very close to
power. Even before his return Suavi had been appointed a member of the so-
called Translation Society, a group founded by the sultan to influence public
opinion abroad and inside his realm. It seems that Suavi also began to build
a personal relationship with Abdülhamid for he was invited to the palace on
several occasions and ultimately was appointed tutor of the princes as well
as head librarian.34 At the peak of success, in February 1877, Suavi became
director of the Mekteb-i Sultanî, the school at Galata Saray where he set
about reorganising the curriculum according to his own ideas.
Suavi was also a valuable political ally for the sultan in his struggle to
become independent from the Porte and especially from the faction around
Midhat. Although Abdülhamid formally complied with the conditions
under which he had assumed his office, above all to promote a constitution,
he did everything not to have his personal power limited by such a docu-
ment. In this struggle Suavi was on Abdülhamid’s side for several reasons.
First of all, it was his personal enemies like Namık Kemal and the British
ambassador Elliot who supported Midhat’s ideas. Moreover, in agreement
with his earlier political writings Suavi did not think that a constitution
would be a solution for the problems of the empire.35 Like others Suavi
feared that Midhat could dominate the sultan and become a figure like
Âli Pasha had been. For this reason he wrote a supporting article when
Abdülhamid finally sent Midhat into exile using article 113 of the constitu-
tion allowing the sultan to remove any person from the empire whom he
deemed dangerous to public security. Suavi applauded the active stance of
the new sultan, who, in accordance with his understanding of the duties of a
Muslim ruler, was exerting his authority.36
At the time of the riot at Çırağan Palace Suavi’s spell close to power was
already over. In December 1877 he was dismissed from his office as director
68 War and refugees
of the Galata Saray School on the intervention of the British ambassador
Layard. Suavi’s reforms at the school had been directed mainly against the
foreign staff and its non-Muslim pupils. Additionally he had provoked
Layard with a series of anti-British newspaper articles. When the ambassa-
dor demanded Suavi’s dismissal the sultan agreed in order to keep good
relations with Britain.37
Little is known about Suavi’s state of mind and his activities afterwards.
Unfortunately he did not publish any articles, probably due to an informal
ban. For sure, his loyalty towards Abdülhamid was badly damaged. The
Russian advance on Istanbul must have stirred up his patriotic feelings and
enticed him to political action. For Suavi, well aware of the political myth
attached in Russia to the possession of Constantinople, the war fulfilled his
earlier warnings against Russia’s political intrigues and aggressive designs.38
In the same manner Suavi most certainly was opposed to the treaty of San
Stefano considering the fact that it meant the end of Ottoman rule in the
Balkans. The signing of the treaty by the Ottoman government delivered a
further impetus to Suavi’s decision to topple the sultan, whom he must have
held responsible for the defeat in war. That he was not to accept this situa-
tion is shown in an episode from some time before the riot at Çırağan.
Suavi, together with a certain Sheikh Ahmed and one Necib Bey, was
arrested because he had incited the population. The circumstances of this
event remain unclear for the only source of information is a short note by
the minister of war to the minister of police.39 Nonetheless, his arrest may
have been the last incentive for Suavi to seek allies and strike sooner rather
than later.
Suavi’s plan to involve the refugees from the Balkans depended on the
political significance this group held in his eyes as well as his personal ties to
the region where most of them came from, i.e., the area of Filibe and adja-
cent towns in the Maritsa (Meriç) valley like Hasköy or Pazarcık. It is pos-
sible that members of the Üsküdar Society who originated from the region
were old acquaintances of Suavi from the time he was working in Filibe
before 1867. Probably these men persuaded the other refugees to come to
Çırağan Palace on 20 May, otherwise it would be hard to explain why they
almost entirely came from this particular area.
At first glance the refugees in Suavi’s eyes must have appeared as a ready
mass of people to give momentum to his attempt. He might have thought
that they would support him once the plan to seize Murad and declare him
sultan was successful. The plotters seem to have been well aware that it
would not have been wise to tell the refugees the truth about their designs.
Being small townspeople and peasants they had little revolutionary spirit. In
fact, most of them stayed outside after Suavi and his followers had crashed
the gates of the palace. In general the political activity of the refugees in
Istanbul had been peaceful, consisting mainly of petition-writing. To this
time-honoured means of political participation they returned after the
events to protest their innocence in front of the sultan.40
 War and refugees 69
Despite the fact that Suavi tricked most of the refugees to take part in
his scheme, he showed great concern for their fate and it was their suffering
that first encouraged him to act. When in summer 1877 the first refugees
arrived in the capital, in his sermons and articles in the press Suavi tried to
rally support for them and founded a relief organisation as he had done ten
years earlier for the Muslims of Crete.41 Since then one of the recurring
themes in Suavi’s articles had been the suppression and discrimination of the
Muslims in the empire. With the outbreak of the crisis in 1876 this role
was passed on to the Muslims of Bosnia. Later in 1876 during Gladstone’s
campaign of the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ his support switched to the Muslims
of Bulgaria.42
Additionally, the fact that the Muslim refugees from the Balkans were
victims of Russian military expansion awarded them a special status. Since
his early political writings Suavi like many of his contemporaries in opposi-
tion and in the government had exposed Russian imperialism. While in exile
in Europe he wrote two books connected with this topic, one on Khiva
attacking the Russian conquest of Central Asia, the other on Bosnia criti-
cising the pan-Slav policy in the Balkans. Also his connections with David
Urquhart and the Foreign Affairs Committees, a British anti-Russian and
pro-Ottoman pressure group with its own journal, the Diplomatic Review,
underlines this strand in Suavi’s political thinking.43
Suavi was part of a rising number of Ottoman intellectuals perceiving the
international environment in terms of a Muslim–Christian rivalry. In 1878
this opinion could still be used as a motive for opposition against the
government. Later Abdülhamid managed to bring this line of thinking
under his control and used it for his own political purposes in his notorious
pan-Islamist policy. It may have been the experience in the early years of his
reign that taught him the importance of this matter regarding the damaged
legitimacy of the empire.
The key political question of the 1870s, as the high officials in the focus of
the last chapter posed it, was how to limit the political influence of the
sultan. Dominating the sultan, in the way that the Tanzimat politicians had
done so successfully for nearly three decades, damaged the legitimacy of the
state and conjured up opposition. Some thought that a constitution could
strengthen the state’s legitimacy and would offer a way out of this impasse.
These were not Ali Suavi’s questions at all. He defended a type of sultanic
authority that went along with political power. The justification for this
model he found in the political tradition of the empire as well as in a
modern political interpretation of Islam.
Suavi would follow any sultan who would assume this ideal role. In his
case, as well as in the case of the other Young Ottomans, this attitude also
served the self-interest of their class. As petty officials they were very much
dependent on a powerful patron who would support their careers. Therefore,
choosing one of the most powerful patrons, the sultan himself, was a con-
sequence not only from a standpoint of political theory.
70 War and refugees
At the same time Suavi is also a good example of how this traditional
approach to legitimacy could lead to opposition. Very similar to Sheikh
Ahmed, who organised the Society of Martyrs, Suavi shows how dis-
appointment of an ideal could lead to political action. The political culture
of conspiracy offered an established means to both of them to put their
political ideals into reality.
That Suavi chose Murad who had been his enemy Midhat’s candidate to
replace Abdülhamid can only be explained by the historical circumstances.
It is true that Murad’s claim to the throne
. was the most legitimate compared
to other contenders such as Yusuf Izzeddin, Abdülaziz’s son, and possibly
Murad was more accessible to Suavi and his followers. It is not likely that
Murad who, for all that we know, was of a very different character and held
different ideas from Suavi, had anything to do with this. As the next chapter
will show other people had a much more realistic chance to put Murad’s
reinstatement back on the agenda.
6 Bourgeois conspirators
The Skalieri–Aziz committee

Although detected only in July 1878, the last secret society to be examined
in this study, called the Skalieri–Aziz committee after its two leaders, was
older than Ali Suavi’s group. The committee was founded by friends of the
ex-sultan Murad as a reaction to his deposition and aimed at reinstating
him to the Ottoman throne. The Skalieri–Aziz committee was not the only
group with such an agenda, but the last that concluded the pro-Murad
phase in the opposition against Abdülhamid.
The committee carries on many of the characteristics of earlier opposition.
An important part of its membership were petty officials in the civil
bureaucracy whose involvement in opposition attests to a trickle down of
Young Ottoman ideas. However, compared to the other conspiracies the
committee also had some peculiar aspects beginning with the wealth of
information that is available about it. The verbatim interrogation protocols
of the police investigation give insight into the history of the group and its
plans as it was explained in the words of its members.1
Another peculiarity is the fact that the founder and leader of this com-
mittee was a Greek Ottoman subject, while most other members were Turks.
In none of the conspiracies examined so far have non-Muslims played any
significant role. In the nineteenth century their political activity usually took
place in the framework of revolts for autonomy or national independence
from the empire. In 1905 Armenian nationalists undertook an assassination
attempt on Sultan Abdülhamid that involved conspiratorial methods. The
question is in how far the exception the Skalieri–Aziz committee presents us
with can be explained by a common political culture among both the
Muslim and non-Muslim members of the group.
On the night of 8 July 1878 the Ottoman police raided a house in the
historic centre of Istanbul belonging to Aziz Bey, a scribe in the ministry of
religious foundations (evkaf nezareti). The authorities had been informed
that a secret society working against the government would meet on that
evening. Apart from the owner of the house and his son the police arrested
two other people on the spot. An unknown number of suspects was able to
flee through the back door, but in the course of the following days altogether
28 people were apprehended and questioned.2
72 Bourgeois conspirators
One of the most important statements made on the first day of the inter-
rogations undoubtedly came from Aziz Bey, the vice president of the com-
mittee, in whose house its last meeting took place.3 Aziz fully cooperated
with the police and revealed the basic facts about the group that had been
founded by a man named Kirlandi a while after Murad’s deposition in order
to win back the throne for him. The committee usually met once or twice
a month and it seems that its membership was rather fluid. Aziz gave
altogether 18 names and much of the work of the police subsequently
concentrated on finding these people and establishing their real involvement
in the plot.
According to Aziz’s statement the committee planned to block
Abdülhamid’s palace with the help of Muslim refugees – obviously here he
echoed the Çırağan incident – and an officer of the palace guards or other
high military commanders, who had to be won over. At the same time the
conspirators wanted to free Murad from his confinement so that first
the people and later the members of parliament could take an oath of
allegiance, the biat, and reinstate the deposed sultan.
Aziz claimed that these steps were coordinated with Murad with whom
the plotters had been in regular contact. At first, letters were sent through
the freshwater canals running under the palace and after these had been
closed some guards and servants were bribed to deliver them. According to
Aziz there were letters from Murad himself and from his mother ascertain-
ing that the ex-sultan was well and that he wanted to leave the palace.4
Obviously to minimise his own involvement he described the person
named as Kirlandi as the active force who held the committee together
while he himself became more and more sceptical about its aims.
Starting from these bits of information furnished by Aziz and five other
suspects on the first day of the interrogation, the police tried to reconstruct
the activities of the committee as a whole. By comparing the suspects’
statements and confronting them personally the interrogators tried to find
out each suspect’s involvement in these activities. More important than the
plotters’ motives were the technicalities of their participation in the plot on
the basis of which they would be judged by the court.
It is impossible to present in detail all the statements made by the
28 suspects during a period of over one month. Instead focusing on some
key issues like the committee’s membership structure and its development
over time, its way of recruiting new members as well as its activities and
plans will reveal a great deal about its members’ thinking on legitimacy
and their style of opposition. Like in other cases it is important to decon-
struct the group’s image as a monolithic organisation that the police was
looking for.
In all statements to the police – except for one, which maintained that Aziz
was the president (reis) and grand vizier (sadrazam) of the committee5 – a
man named Kirlandi or Kirlanti was said to be the initiator of the plot. His
full name was Kleanti Skalieri, born in 1833 to an old family of Istanbul
 Bourgeois conspirators 73
Greeks; he was a stockbroker and businessman and spoke and wrote Greek
and French and was able to speak Turkish.6
Some members of the plot like Aziz knew Kleanti because in the past
they had done business with him.7 His job as a stockbroker seems to have
made him a considerably wealthy man – or at least taught him how to get
hold of money – so that, on several occasions, he was able to offer large
sums of money to members of the committee in order to entice them to
action or buy their silence.
Kleanti’s friendship with Murad was mentioned by several former ser-
vants of the ex-sultan among the suspects. In the time before Murad became
sultan on several occasions they had seen Kleanti with the heir apparent in
the unofficial environment of the latter’s country house.8 This friendship
prevailed after Murad’s deposition, which was one of the main driving
forces for Kleanti to establish the committee.
Regarding Kleanti’s long-standing contacts to Murad it is only natural to
find many of the latter’s servants among his acquaintances. Because of their
situation they either actively supported Kleanti’s plans or at least did not
report him to the government. While the British ambassador Elliot remarked
that Sultan Abdülhamid treated the members of his family honourably,9
nonetheless there were heavy encroachments on Murad’s entourage. All his
servants, who were questioned by the police, had been temporarily dismissed
or exchanged with employees more favourable to the regime.10
One of the most interesting of these former palace servants, who got
involved with Kleanti, was one Nakşfend or Nakşbend Kalfa. A woman in
her sixties, she had been raised in the palace in the time of Sultan Mahmud II
and later had become part of Murad’s household until she had been
dismissed after his fall.11 Afterwards she lived in the houses of several of her
colleagues and for a time she also stayed with Kleanti. She had many con-
tacts and, being a woman, she could enter places where men could not go in
order to collect information or approach people. On several occasions she
invited future members to the sessions of the committee in Kleanti’s or
Aziz’s house.12
More than any other person from the group of palace servants Nakşfend
can be described as a full member of the committee. Apparently she stood in
close relationship to Kleanti and Murad and was present when the discus-
sions about the future of the ex-sultan took place. All the suspects insisted
that on such occasions she wore a headscarf to stress her moral integrity.13
Like Kleanti she had remained in contact with the palace and received let-
ters from Murad’s mother, which she answered personally in Turkish.14
Since she had not been at Aziz’s house when the police carried out the raid,
she was able to flee together with Kleanti and the police never got hold
of her.
Like Nakşfend two other of Murad’s servants were fully involved in
Kleanti’s activities; two or three others were only loosely connected to the
group. As it appears from one suspect’s statement the group of palace
74 Bourgeois conspirators
servants formed the nucleus of what Kleanti later attempted to organise as
the committee. At the time they had been dismissed from service, in the
second half of 1876 and the first half of 1877, they began to frequent
Kleanti’s house where they engaged in discussions turning around Murad’s
state of health.15 Later, when other people became part of this circle and
Kleanti began to press for action, most of the servants stopped playing a
significant role. Their most important task was keeping up communications
between Murad and Kleanti, which over time became more difficult because
Murad’s palace was guarded more strictly than before.
Apart from Murad’s former servants a number of lower-ranking officers
from the civil bureaucracy, altogether around ten men, formed a second
distinct group in Kleanti’s circle. Most of them were personal friends of
Kleanti or colleagues of Aziz. Scribes and petty officials from many different
ministries and government councils in the capital were among them. Some
of them at the same time held jobs as teachers, which was common practice
for Ottoman officials to augment their pay.16 Two, Esad Efendi and Ali Bey,
were also known journalists. In the last section of this chapter the sig-
nificance of their participation in the conspiracy will be discussed in greater
detail.
The remaining suspects were relatives, friends or clients of other members.
Among them was Kleanti’s nephew Mihal and Aziz’s son Kadri, the family
doctor and two of Kadri’s former classmates now studying at the
Darülmuallim, the teachers’ college. Both of them originated from Filibe
and one wonders if this is just by chance or if the refugee question
made them join the group.17
Only two of the suspects had a religious background, a hatib and a müezzin,
which once again stresses the bourgeois character of the conspiracy. It is not
clear if they had been at any of the meetings of the committee at all, or if
they had just acquired some knowledge of the plot.18
As already suggested by the initial statement made by Aziz and exempli-
fied by Murad’s servants the group assembling around Kleanti was rather
fluid. There is neither a founding date recorded nor do we know of any
membership list. The group evolved in different stages over a span of almost
two years and the various individuals presented above played changing roles
at different times.
On the one hand this fluid nature offered a perfect defence strategy to the
suspects. Old friends of Kleanti in particular claimed that they were only
visiting his house as friends and were ignorant of the plot. On the other
hand this rather loose structure had been a problem regarding the work of
the group. Kleanti and maybe also Aziz recognised this and made at least
two attempts to bind the individuals more closely to the group and widen its
appeal.
A common strategy was to promise positions in the future government in
exchange for the support of the members. Although Aziz strongly denied
such methods, it seems that a list was drawn up containing the offices each
 Bourgeois conspirators 75
member of the committee would be awarded with after a successful
exchange of sultans.19
Moreover, Kleanti started an advertising campaign preparing a couple of
booklets that carried on top of the first page the slogan: ‘I agree to make an
effort working as much as possible for the security of the nation (Milletin
selameti için elden geldiği kadar çalışmağa gayret etmekliğe taahhüd
ederim).’ The idea was that each member who was supplied with such a
booklet should first sign or seal the above statement and then show it to his
friends and let them do the same. However, when a week later Aziz collected
the booklets there was not a single signature and later they were destroyed.20
This timidity of the members to identify with the committee also had
serious consequences regarding its activities. While in the beginning Kleanti
was just discussing Murad’s situation in his circle of friends, soon he devel-
oped the plan to free and reinstate him. The last and most radical of these
successive plans was the assassination of the ruling sultan.
As a first measure after Murad had been declared unfit to rule in 1876
Kleanti hired a psychologist from Paris specialised in magnetism to treat the
ex-sultan. When he received a couple of letters from Murad, apparently
demanding justice and calling for help, his commitment deepened.21 At first
together with Nakşfend he tried to gather support from the high officials in
the capital. Under a pretext Nakşfend entered the harem of Mehmed Rüşdi
Pasha, grand vizier under Murad and dismissed by Abdülhamid, but his
wife would not let her through to explain her reasons. Next, Kleanti tried to
deliver letters by Murad directly to him as well as to a couple of high
Ottoman officials like the sherif of Mekka, the military commander Osman
Pasha as well as some religious officials. In none of these cases, however, was
Kleanti successful.22
As a last resort, Kleanti looked for support beyond the circle of high
Ottoman officials. As was related in the interrogations he sent a letter in the
name of the Ottoman nation (millet-i osmanî) to the British ambassador to
which, however, he received no reply. The story of this letter may well cor-
respond with Kleanti’s visit to Layard in June 1877. On this occasion, as we
know from the ambassador’s report to the Foreign Office, Kleanti produced
a letter by Murad and implored the ambassador to save the ex-sultan from a
plot to murder him.23
Despite the fact that all these attempts had been fruitless, on several
occasions Kleanti claimed in front of his friends that some pashas and even
European statesmen were supporting his plans. However, none of the sus-
pects’ statements gives any evidence that these were more than rumours in
order to attract new followers and give a false image of the extent of the
conspiracy.24
The fact that in reality the committee had no such high-ranking members,
in turn, seems to have been hard to accept for the interrogators. In almost
all the interrogations they enquired about the implication of Ottoman poli-
ticians or outside help for the committee. They rightly insisted that the plan
76 Bourgeois conspirators
to bring Murad back to power was doomed without any such support.
Obviously it was beyond the interrogators’ imagination that low-ranking
officials could meddle in politics without backing from the political factions
in the capital.
Without help from outside Kleanti got to the point where he took matters
into his own hands. It was in the second half of 1877 that the variety of
plans to reinstate Murad by abducting him from Çırağan Palace were taking
shape. As it appears from the interrogation protocols it was mainly Kleanti,
perhaps supported by Nakşfend and Aziz, who pushed ahead with these
plans. Some of the suspects who became involved in Murad’s abduction
reported that they were taken by surprise with the scheme and were tricked
into giving their assistance to it.
The most realistic of all the plans to free Murad was to get him out of the
palace using the freshwater canals also used for communication. During
September 1877 Kleanti and Ali Bey had visited Murad using this way and
thus had established the feasibility of such a plan.25 However, when Kleanti
wanted to take action four months later everything went wrong. On the
designated day he returned to his friends who were waiting at his
house without Murad, because the canal workers, despite a huge bribe of
one thousand lira, had not been willing to cooperate.26
It remains unclear from the information given in the suspects’ statements
whether the workers had agreed to a deal in the first place. Possibly Kleanti
only pretended they had in order to keep up the commitment among
his friends. Most likely one of Kleanti’s friends dissuaded the workers.
Immediately after, the same individual informed the authorities about the
committee, but they did not take the information very seriously. Only about
six months later they reacted by raiding Aziz Bey’s house.27
After the canals had been blocked there seems to have been two other
attempts to free Murad. It was one idea that Murad should climb the palace
walls with a rope, which the ex-sultan declined for unknown reasons.28 In a
second attempt Kleanti tried to enter the palace from the seaside by night.
He was, however, detected by the guards and had to pretend that the wind
had blown his boat to the quay accidentally.29
Despite all these difficulties, the plotters had detailed plans in case they
were successful in bringing Murad to Aziz Bey’s house. There were some
suspects who claimed that Kleanti wanted to smuggle Murad out of the city
to bring him to Europe, more specifically to England.30 All the others
related that Murad was to remain in the capital to be reappointed sultan by
acclamation and taking the traditional oath of allegiance (biat).31 There
were different opinions regarding the question by whom and where this
acclamation should be performed. These different opinions give an image of
the different forms of legitimacy the Ottoman sultan could possess. Aziz Bey
remembered a discussion turning around this question at the night of the
expected abduction of Murad.32 It was proposed to bring him either to the
Hırka-ı Şerif, the place the mantle of the Prophet was stored, to the war
 Bourgeois conspirators 77
ministry or to parliament. The first option clearly stressed the traditional
religious legitimacy of the sultan with special regard to the traditional ritual
for an Ottoman prince to become sultan. Murad, when he was made sultan
in 1876, had neglected this step and whoever proposed this proceeding
might have acted out of the feeling that this time the ritual should be
performed in the right order.
The second suggestion, to bring Murad to the war ministry, was more
conscious of the fact that the ex-sultan first of all had to gain a power basis
among the Ottoman military in order to challenge his brother Abdülhamid.
Since earlier attempts by Kleanti to recruit individual commanders had
failed it was up to Murad himself to gain the necessary support. This opi-
nion seems to have appealed to most members of the committee present at
the discussion and was also mentioned in other suspects’ statements.33
There were other variants to this pragmatic and power-oriented approach.
According to one, Murad was to be brought to the council of state (kubbe
altı), according to another to the privy council (meclis-i has) where loyal
members of Abdülhamid were to be arrested and the others were to take the
oath of allegiance to Murad.34
The proposal to bring Murad to parliament displayed yet another and
more recent notion of the sultan’s legitimacy. It was Esad who admitted
having been in contact with some members of parliament, among them its
president Hasan Fehmi Efendi; but he denied having talked with them about
the committee.35 Also Kleanti as a constitutionalist probably followed this
line of thinking. He and others who stressed this kind of legitimacy seem
to have perceived parliament as a place of opposition to Abdülhamid’s
absolutist rule.
Yet another proposal came from Kleanti’s nephew, who compared the
ex-sultan to Napoleon III. Like the latter he should be made sultan by the
people and therefore he should be brought to a popular quarter like Fatih.36
That there was to be some sort of popular acclamation was also echoed in
another statement suggesting that medrese students and the people had to
take the oath of allegiance to Murad.37 These opinions clearly reflect the
political role the students in the capital had played in the downfall of
Abdülaziz in spring 1876.
Given all the eventualities of these plans and particularly the lack of real
support by any Ottoman politician, it was very unlikely that Murad would
have been able to supersede his brother. Therefore sometime between
December 1877 and May 1878 Kleanti also came up with a plan to assas-
sinate Sultan Abdülhamid while performing the Friday prayer in public.
At first there was some anxiety among the plotters about the consequences
such an attempt on the life of the sultan could have at a time when the
Russians were at the gates of Istanbul. But then, with the strong approval of
Nakşfend, Kleanti started to develop the plan. One of his followers agreed
to hire an assassin and he boasted he was in contact with Gürcü Şerif
Efendi, the alim, who had been sent into exile in autumn 1876 after
78 Bourgeois conspirators
organising a plot against Abdülhamid. In the following days, however, this
emerged as empty talk and the assassination attempt was not pursued.38
Summing up the examination of the investigation protocols so far, the so-
called Skalieri–Aziz committee emerges as a loosely knit circle of indivi-
duals, which was held together by the connection to Kleanti Skalieri and his
determination to help his friend Murad. This determination strengthened
with the news that Murad apparently had recovered from his illness. It cul-
minated in the plan to free the ex-sultan from his palace or assassinate the
current sultan – a plan made by Kleanti and one or two of his closest friends
who formed the core of the committee.
Obviously Kleanti Skalieri was the driving force behind the conspiracy
and an exception compared to all other leaders of opposition as he was the
only non-Muslim among them. Another exception was that he was a dedi-
cated Freemason – a fact that never came up in the investigation, but helps
to explain many of the particularities of his opposition.
Up to the second half of the nineteenth century Freemasonry in the
Ottoman Empire was solely confined to the circle of expatriates in the
capital and other large port cities. As a consequence the lodges did not want
and could not exert any influence on Ottoman internal affairs. It was only
long after the beginning of the Tanzimat that some lodges tried to act as a
bridge to Ottoman society by first admitting members from the non-Muslim
communities and later Muslims into their numbers. Only then they became
a political factor. Many of the Tanzimat statesmen, like Reşid, Fuad and
Âli, are said to have been Masons. For Ottoman liberals the Masonic lodge
was a suitable place to socialise and to exchange new ideas – an opportunity
that earlier had been solely offered by the Sufi orders that, however, exclu-
ded non-Muslims.39
One of the first lodges that took on this function as a bridge between
Europe and the empire was the Union d’Orient, a lodge of French obedi-
ence founded in 1863 in Istanbul.40 Its members were mainly Ottomans of
Jewish, Greek and Armenian extraction and its programme endorsed
Ottomanism, i.e., the equality and peaceful coexistence of all peoples in the
empire. The fact that Skalieri was initiated into this lodge and, in 1868, was
admitted into its chapter for higher grades is a clear indicator of his liberal
political views. In 1865 the president of the Union d’Orient, Louis Amiable,
decided to make an attempt to attract Muslims to the lodge and therefore
translated its rituals and its constitution into Turkish. The success was
immediate; the number of Muslim Masons was constantly growing up to
1869 when more than one-third of the brethren were Turks. Most of them
came from the army, but also palace and government officials could be
found. Among them was Mustafa Fazıl Pasha, the sponsor of the Young
Ottoman exiles in Paris.
The end of the Union d’Orient came when a new president in the begin-
ning of the 1870s abandoned the pro-Muslim stance, because the lodge
was coming under stricter police observation. In 1873, with many others
 Bourgeois conspirators 79
Skalieri withdrew his membership and the lodge officially ceased to exist in
February 1874.
By that time Skalieri’s Masonic activity had already shifted to Proodos
(Progress), founded in 1868 as a lodge of French obedience and, like the
Union d’Orient, promoting progressive and liberal values as well as peace
and fraternity among all Ottoman subjects.41 In 1870 Skalieri became pre-
sident of the hitherto predominately Greek lodge and opened up its mem-
bership for the other communities of the empire following the example of
Amiable. In 1872/73 among the 68 members of the lodge there were
19 Turks. Most of them were government officials, including some future
members of the committee; also Namık Kemal was a member of Proodos.
Not figuring on the official list of members but undoubtedly the most
prominent of all Turks was Murad, the heir apparent. He probably first got
interested in Freemasonry during his visit to Paris with his uncle Abdülaziz
in 1867. Upon his return he received a letter from the central lodge in Paris,
the Grand Orient de France, that was handed over to him by Skalieri.
This was the starting point of the friendship between the two men in that
Skalieri, who was just seven years older than Murad, seems to have acted as
a intermediary, relating to the prince European culture as well as the liberal
ideas discussed in his lodge.42
When Murad himself was initiated into the lodge in October 1872 this
was seen as a personal success for Skalieri. The initiation had to take place
under strict secrecy in the house of Amiable, because, as Skalieri mused in a
letter to the Grand Orient in Paris, the information that the heir apparent to
the Ottoman throne was a Freemason would have been highly unpopular
with the conservative Muslim milieu and would have delivered a pretext to
Abdülaziz
. to change the line of succession in favour of his son Yusuf
Izzeddin.43
With the initiation of Murad Ottoman Freemasonry clearly entered a new
phase regarding its political role in the empire. There might have been hopes
from the side of the mother lodge in Paris of deeper political influence in the
empire once Murad became sultan. As for men on the spot like Skalieri and
Amiable, they clearly tried to influence the prince to eventually transform
the Ottoman Empire according to their political ideals. Their strategy
mainly seems to have been to encourage Murad’s liberal ideas. It was said
that Amiable drew up a draft constitution for the empire at the prince’s
demand. Through his Mason connection Murad was also brought in contact
with Midhat Pasha. Skalieri, in turn, was busy lobbying the British ambas-
sador Elliot and kept him informed about Murad’s ideas.44
With such a prominent member Proodos was directly affected by the
events in summer 1876. After Murad had been declared unfit to rule the
work of the lodge was suspended for a couple of weeks because everybody
expected reprisals by the new sultan. To get rid of the pro-Murad image, in
November 1876 a faction among the brethren forced Skalieri to abandon his
office as president. As a consequence most of the friends and supporters of
80 Bourgeois conspirators
the ex-sultan left the lodge. The next blow for its membership came in 1878
when Skalieri had to flee Istanbul and several of its long-standing members
were arrested. The remaining Turks especially deemed it too dangerous to
be associated with the lodge and by the end of 1878 all of them had left.
Afterwards Proodos continued with a mainly Greek membership until
1901.45
Freemasonry was Skalieri’s initiation into a very special political culture
of secrecy, which he tried to continue in organising his friends and followers
into a structure similar to that of a lodge. This suggested his idea to collect
signatures under the document mentioned above.
It is also likely that Skalieri used his Mason contacts to rally outside
support for Murad. For years he ran a campaign to influence international
public opinion in favour of the cause of the ex-sultan. One of the most
important addressees were successive British ambassadors in Istanbul.46 The
most concise product of this campaign was a booklet Skalieri issued in 1881
on the occasion of the trial of Midhat Pasha, who stood accused of being
implicated in the death of Abdülaziz in 1876.47 The text adds nothing of
importance to the events already described here apart from the story
of Skalieri’s adventurous flight to Athens together with Nakşfend Kalfa.
Skalieri went so far as to deny the existence of a secret society to conspire
against Abdülhamid altogether.
While neither the suspects nor the interrogators in the trial against the
Skalieri–Aziz committee made any mention of a link between opposition
and Freemasonry, this changed in the following years. In the case of a con-
spiracy to kill Abdülhamid that was detected in September 1879 at least one
of the six members, who were all of Ottoman Greek origin, admitted to have
been a member of Proodos. The group had formed around a former servant
of Murad named Sokrat and had hired a killer, who was caught when he
tried to climb the walls of Yıldız Palace hiding a dagger in his clothes. The
real motives of the plotters remain unknown – one suspect claimed that
Sokrat made Abdülhamid personally responsible for the fact that he was out
of work since the deposition of Murad.48
Now an increasing number of rumours about Mason conspiracies led by
Midhat Pasha or even Edward, Prince of Wales, to overthrow Abdülhamid
began to appear.49 By the 1890 Masons were counted among the usual sus-
pects and were branded ‘a habitual source of sedition’ by the Ottoman
authorities.50
To sum up, Skalieri’s way into opposition is easily understandable from
his friendship with Murad that grew in the space of the Mason lodge.
Skalieri’s opposition activities after Murad’s deposition were still connected
with this Masonic framework, but to realise his plans to bring Murad back
to the throne by abducting him from his palace or assassinate the ruling
sultan he had to find other allies.
The last section of this chapter will examine more closely the motivation
of the rest of the members of the committee to join the opposition
 Bourgeois conspirators 81
against Abdülhamid. This is obvious for the ex-servants of Murad, who
were materially affected by the deposition of their former master, owed him
loyalty and, in some cases, felt personal affection towards him. The partici-
pation of the other distinct group in the committee, the members from the
civil bureaucracy of the capital, suggests a more general perspective. This
group, that was also present in other conspiracies we have examined, can
serve as an example of the loss of legitimacy the state and its representatives
had suffered among its own officials.
Ottoman civil bureaucracy had undergone a remarkable development
during the Tanzimat, because it had been among the first objects of reform.
Especially after 1850 its high functionaries had acquired a dominant posi-
tion in the state that they were able to maintain for roughly twenty years.
However, these high officials were only the tip of the iceberg of a newly
emerging class in Ottoman society, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie as it has
been called.51 Its characteristic was its formation in the modern European-
style schools that enabled this group to reproduce as a distinct social
class independent of the favour of the sultan or other patrons, unlike the
old scribal service. As a result this bureaucratic bourgeoisie was develop-
ing a new political culture with new ideals that called for new styles of
articulation.
The vanguard and intellectual elite of this class were the Young
Ottomans, who first articulated many of these political values and pioneered
new forms of discussion in newspapers, etc. They did not only protest
against the general conditions in the empire and the failure of reform, but
were especially critical vis-à-vis their own superiors pointing to the stark
discrepancy between the promise of a rational-legal administration and the
real behaviour of the high functionaries of the civil bureaucracy that was
still entrenched in traditional Ottoman political culture.52
Two members of the Skalieri–Aziz committee can be included in this
milieu of critical journalists and intellectuals. One was Ali Şevkati
(1843–96), scribe in: the council of state, member of Proodos and regular
contributor to the Istikbal (Future). For his articles he was reprimanded by
the sultan and when the police investigation against the committee started as
a precaution he left for Europe. There he started producing some small exile
papers against Abdülhamid until he died in Paris without having ever
returned home. Ali can count as the clearest example of the continuity
between the early opposition against Abdülhamid and the Young Turk
opposition of the 1890s.53
Also Esad Efendi (d. 1899), a clerk in the High Council and later chief
secretary in the commercial court of appeal, fits the Young Ottoman model
of opposition. Esad mainly wrote for the Basiret (Insight), the Hayal (Idea)
and the Vakit (Time), to which Ali Suavi also contributed articles. Maybe for
this reason he was arrested in the course of the investigations of the Çırağan
incident. Two booklets Esad wrote. in the 1870s
. attest to the range of his
political ideas. Union of Islam (Ittihad-ı Islam, 1873) was one of the
82 Bourgeois conspirators
first contributions to the discussion around a pan-Islamic policy for the
Ottoman Empire. The treatise promoted Islam as the central ideology to
strengthen the Ottoman Empire in the way of the national states of Europe.
In Constitutional Government (Hükumet-i meşruta, 1876) Esad tried to
justify a constitutional government for the empire on the basis of the sharia
to prevent the abuse of power by the administration.54
About the other suspects from the civil bureaucracy who had been arres-
ted for their association with Skalieri, we know considerably less than about
Ali and Esad. They were not engaged in journalism, so that it is hard to
judge their political ideas. However, because of their anonymity they might
be even more typical examples of the Ottoman bureaucratic bourgeoisie and
its relation to opposition against the sultan.
Aziz Bey, aged 42 at the time of the interrogation and an official
(mukabeleci) in the ministry of religious foundations, may serve as a case in
point. His political ideas may only be inferred indirectly by the fact of his
friendship with Kleanti Skalieri and his membership in the Proodos lodge.55
Unfortunately we have no direct comment by Aziz as to what motivated him
to join Ottoman Freemasonry, but at the time it offered an ideal place to
discuss modern political ideas. It was also one of the places where members
of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie could meet members of the commercial
bourgeoisie who came from the minorities like Skalieri.
Interestingly, at the same time Aziz followed a sheikh of the Mevlevi
order, Kadirallah Efendi, although this affiliation had, as he affirmed, no
political implication.56 It is known from other examples that the world of
Freemasonry and Sufism did not exclude each other. Contemporaries fre-
quently pointed to the parallels in both organisations’ rituals and mystical
contents. But first of all both were voluntary organisations outside the con-
trol of the state where individuals could socialise with like-minded people.57
Moreover, the life of Aziz and that of other committee members from the
civil bureaucracy underlines the importance of modern education for their
class. We do not know anything about Aziz’s own schooling, but he sent his
son to a rüşdiye, probably to enable him to start a career in the central
administration. Also some of the other suspects were involved in the modern
education system of the empire, e.g. as teachers and students at the teachers’
college; one was a member of the council of education.
Finally, apart from political ideas, the material situation of the officials
also has to be taken into account as a reason for the loss of legitimacy of the
state in their eyes. The salary system that had been introduced for the civil
bureaucracy at the beginning of the Tanzimat never worked smoothly and
usually salaries were in arrears for several months. It has been calculated
that, in the 1870s, a government official needed a nominal salary of 1,500 to
2,000 kuruş to support a small family. The majority of officials in the com-
mittee were well below this threshold as the interrogation documents show.
For these individuals surely this financial hardship meant that the pecuniary
promises made by Skalieri on several occasions were the more tempting.58
 Bourgeois conspirators 83
The Skalieri–Aziz committee gives the opportunity to observe the new
political culture of a milieu that had come into being in the second half of
the nineteenth century and was interested in new ideas. This political culture
mainly spread among the civil bureaucracy of the capital, but as the case of
Kleanti Skalieri shows had also entered the commercial bourgeoisie of the
non-Muslim communities. It included new political ideas that may be called
Young Ottoman ideas like liberalism, constitutionalism, but also a new ver-
sion of Islam, in specific Ottoman interpretations that sometimes excluded
each other. Apart from the press or the Freemason lodge private circles such
as that around Skalieri offered the opportunity to discuss these new ideas. In
the political system of the empire a certain degree of secrecy was necessary
and was honoured by the tradition of older models of secret organisations
like Freemasonry or the Sufi orders.
Discussing politics was one thing, acting on the new ideas was another.
Like all other leaders of opposition Skalieri had difficulties realising his
aims, because his friends and followers were reluctant to fully engage in
opposition. The difficulties of the committee that Skalieri formed were tan-
tamount, starting from the lack of support from any of the influential
Ottoman politicians. On the other hand the ideas people like Skalieri and
Aziz engaged in had no mass basis either.
What remained important for political action was the personal relation-
ship among people rather than abstract ideas. One gets the impression that
it was rather the friendship with Murad that enticed Skalieri to act and his
personality that held the committee together. Through the interrogation
where suspects had to defend themselves and tried to minimise their roles it
is hard to reconstruct how deeply they were ideologically involved.
7 Conclusion
The Tanzimat and beyond

The investigation of opposition to the Ottoman government in the

second half of the nineteenth century has allowed for a special perspective
on the political history of the Tanzimat. Apart from the class of high func-
tionaries, who pretended to run the state in an exclusive manner, other
groups have come into view that were politically active during this period.
By participating in secret societies and opposition groups (as well as by
other activities that have not been in the focus of this study) they tried to
protect public interest as they understood it and influence the political
process accordingly. Secret societies opened a way to politics in a system that
excluded many on account of their low rank or their group’s standing in the
political system.
Most active in the conspiracies were the low-ranking officials, officers
from the military and, to a lesser degree, religious officials. Especially the
officials from the civil bureaucracy and the military men were the products
of the reform process. Both had been educated in modern schools and
looked for a way to express their political ideas. While the civil bureaucracy
acted as the vanguard, individuals from the military only entered politics
later, perhaps because of their closer connection to the person of the sultan.
Only in opposition to Abdülhamid at the end of the century did they come
to play a dominant role. Religious officials who likewise had lost much of
their political influence at the beginning of the reform era were important
in the conspiracies as connectors to the people and especially the medrese
students.
The issues of legitimacy that fuelled opposition and the political style that
it used offered an opportunity to thematise key aspects of Ottoman political
culture in the second half of the nineteenth century. Two of the main ques-
tions of legitimacy at stake concerned the redefinition of the sultan’s role in
the political system and that of religion for the empire’s legitimacy.
Although for much of the Tanzimat period the real influence the sultan had
on politics was very limited, this restriction hardly touched upon the ideal of
sultanic authority that remained deeply embedded in political culture.
Groups like the Society of Martyrs or the Young Ottomans supported
this authority against the Tanzimat politicians who were their main target
 Conclusion 85
of opposition. Paradoxically, in doing so they had to exchange the ruling
sultan for his successor for they hoped that a new sultan would not be under
the tutelage of his ministers any longer. This underlines that it was rather
the Ottoman dynasty than the individual sultan that was the focus of loyalty
and legitimacy. All the conspiracies were in one way or another connected to
the question of succession, which remained a political issue throughout the
nineteenth century.
The Tanzimat politicians adhered to this logic as well, but in the opposite
way: a sultan under their tutelage was just what they wanted. However, even
from among the officials who deposed Abdülaziz and who clearly felt they
had a right to rule only Midhat Pasha wanted to restrict sultanic authority
by way of a constitution. This amounted to a radical understanding of what
purpose a constitution should serve. Such an interpretation was usually not
followed by all those who promoted constitutionalist thought. For the
Young Ottomans and their successors constitutionalism remained tied to
the religious legitimation of Ottoman rule and acted as a modern cipher for
political justice.
This example shows that religion was still an important medium of
political legitimacy during the Tanzimat, but one that by no means was
static or could be used only in reference to the past. That the opposition
groups that took the Tanzimat politicians as their main target invoked this
legitimacy comes as no surprise. These officials’ reforms were interpreted as
concessions to the European powers that were detrimental to the Muslim
population of the empire. In the most traditional way the dominant position
of Islam was defended by Sheikh Ahmed, who in many ways was an out-
sider to the political system. However, likewise important was an inter-
pretation of Islam as a source of social justice against the government as
it was made popular and expressed in modern language by the Young
Ottomans a few years later. This issue was so deeply felt that under the
special circumstances of the refugee crisis people like Ali Suavi could seize it
to justify opposition against Abdülhamid whose adoption of the cause of
Islam had only just begun.
The political style of opposition groups in the second half of the nine-
teenth century displayed some general characteristics of Ottoman political
culture. One is the importance of personal relationships that take precedence
over questions of ideology. All conspiracies formed around a charismatic
individual who was able to support and assist his followers. In some instan-
ces opposition groups tried to widen their appeal with modern means of
communication like leaflets and some of their members were active in the
press, but on the whole personal and face-to-face relations were more
important as a means of political propaganda. The cultural background of
their leaders left a deep imprint on the conspiracies that sometimes emulated
other institutions, e.g. the Sufi order as in the case of the Society of Martyrs,
the charity organisation as in the case of Vocation or the Freemason lodge
as in the case of the Skalieri–Aziz commitee.
86 Conclusion
Additionally, particularly the conspiracies with a Young Ottoman back-
ground, such as Vocation, the Skalieri–Aziz committee and maybe also the
Üsküdar Society, started as discussion circles of new ideas before they began
to pursue more overtly political goals. Thus they also may be seen as part of
a growing civil society in the Ottoman Empire that offered a new bourgeois
milieu space to express their political ideas. Like in coffee-houses, the tradi-
tional place for such discussions, in secret societies people from different
groups of Ottoman society could interact, but express themselves more
freely. Conspiracies assembled Ottoman subjects that looked for a way to
become modern citizens.1
The conspiracies relied on an old political culture of opposition that they
had to adapt to suit their circumstances. Until the beginning of the nine-
teenth century this political culture of opposition had produced what
Mardin has termed ‘popular rebellions’ that followed a typical pattern –
gossip, co-optation of the janissaries, agitation in the bazaar and among
medrese students – and rested on a specific understanding of Ottoman
legitimacy.2 In the second half of the nineteenth century these examples were
still vivid in collective memory and most opposition groups tried to start a
similar sequence of events. They thought it essential for their success to link
up with the important groups in the capital like military officers and reli-
gious officials. However, despite the fact that they invoked popular values
they never were able to activate a mass basis, because they could not reach
beyond the circles that the leaders of these groups could control.
In the end all the conspiracies were denounced by one of their own
members. In the long run no charismatic individual was able to control all
of his followers and thus the authorities got the chance to break the secrecy
surrounding the groups.
As the conspiracies seem to fit into an older pattern of popular rebellion
so does the uniform and stereotypical reaction by the authorities vis-à-vis
the opposition. All conspiracies were designated as sedition (fesad, fitne),
which underlined the monopoly the Ottoman government claimed over
all political activity that went beyond politicising in the coffee-houses.
Generally the political intention of the various plotters was played down
and they were treated as mere criminals.
This stance also becomes apparent in the juridical process to deal with
these opposition groups once they had been detected. On the one hand this
process showed some elements typical for the Tanzimat like the ministerial
commissions judging the culprits according to the newly introduced criminal
codes. The contents of the judgements, on the other hand, were quite
traditional. Exile to a remote corner of the empire for the more important
members of the groups, or for the lesser members to the galleys (kürek),
which usually meant hard labour in the nineteenth century, were conven-
tional Ottoman punishments.
The few death sentences the Ottoman government dispensed usually were
commuted and the state officials from among the opposition members were
 Conclusion 87
very quickly reintegrated into the Ottoman administration. In general the
Ottoman government in the Tanzimat era seems not to have felt threatened
too much by this kind of opposition, which, indeed, was minimal compared
to other problems the empire had during this time. All the conspiracies
accepted the traditionally circumscribed borders of Ottoman legitimacy,
most importantly the rule of the Ottoman dynasty; they were not revolu-
tionary. This only changed during the reign of Abdülhamid (1876–1909) and
with it the cavalier attitude the state displayed towards conspiracy, as a short
preview of the period following the Tanzimat will show.
Until the turn of the century the opposition to Sultan Abdülhamid
in many ways resembled the types we have already encountered during
the Tanzimat. Most of the groups and individuals in the Young Turk
movement (the umbrella term for all those opposing the sultan’s regime)
stood in the tradition of the liberal-constitutional movement of the 1870s
and they represented groups that had been politically active before like the
students of the modern schools, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie as well as the
military. Also other groups like Freemasons, high-ranking Ottoman politi-
cians or the medrese students continued their tradition of opposition.3
For several reasons the relations between the opposition groups and the
sultan became more tense and charged with hatred than before. First of all,
Abdülhamid’s personality and past experiences may have shaped his reaction
to political opposition. The events at Çırağan Palace in May 1878 apparently
had a considerable impact on him. The British ambassador reported that
the sultan was afflicted by sleeplessness and headaches as well as a general
suspicion that his functionaries and the army including the ambassador
himself had been part of the plot. Abdülhamid seriously feared his immedi-
ate overthrow and was already painting his expected exile in dark colours.4
After one week this depression vanished from the sultan’s mind, but
subsequently the same symptoms returned in a more permanent manner.
For fear of assassination Abdülhamid completely isolated himself at Yıldız
Palace and very rarely appeared in public. He became pathologically suspi-
cious of everyone and everything and built up a network of spies reporting
on the activities of real and imagined opponents.
Apart from these psychological reasons that should not be considered
unimportant it was Abdülhamid’s understanding of office which influenced
his reaction to opposition. The sultan seems to have been convinced of his
divine right to govern the Ottoman state and his personal mission to save
the empire, so that every means seemed appropriate to him to fulfil this
task. The earliest outcome of this attitude was the closing of the parliament
and the suspension of the constitution both of which limited his personal
rule. Subsequently, Abdülhamid centralised power in the palace to an extent
unknown in Ottoman history and made every decision dependent on his
personal approval.5
Given these facts it comes as no surprise that Abdülhamid was very sus-
ceptible to the question of legitimacy. He actively looked for new ways to
88 Conclusion
counter the legitimacy crisis of the state using all the available modern forms
of image control. Very often traditional Islamic symbols were cast into new
forms to legitimise state policies.6
The sultan was able to remain in office longer than any other Ottoman
ruler in the nineteenth century because of this profound understanding of
modern politics paired with ruthlessness in dealing with opposition to his
regime. The need to present the Ottoman state tradition as an unbroken
chain was the reason why he was concerned not only by present but also
past opposition. This can be observed most clearly in the persecution of the
men implicated in the coup against Abdülaziz. The sultan was eager to
eradicate any notion that this event could be used as a precedent to end his
own rule.
The most prominent victim of persecution was Midhat Pasha. After he
had been allowed back from exile in Europe and had worked for a short
time in the administration of the provinces, in 1881 he was arrested and
condemned to death for the implication in the alleged murder of Abdülaziz.
The death sentence was commuted and Midhat was sent into exile to Arabia
where he was assassinated on the orders of the sultan in 1884.
The fate of exile was shared by Hayrullah Efendi, the şeyhülislam,
who had issued the two fetvas to depose Abdülaziz and Murad. Likewise
Süleyman Pasha, the director of the military academy, who became com-
mander-in-chief of the Balkan armies in the Russo–Ottoman war, was put
on trial after the war, accused of having disobeyed orders. He was sent into
exile to Baghdad where he died in 1892. Even the lower ranking officers
and military students taking part in the coup seemed to have been watched
closely. Their names can be found on a list in the Yıldız Palace archive,
which might have been used to incriminate them.7 Also a report about the
Society of Martyrs prepared at some point after the death of Abdülaziz,
perhaps in 1880/81, might have been used for such a purpose. Apart from
the five leaders in the inner circle of the conspiracy it contained the name of
a certain general Hidayet Pasha, who at the time of the plot had been
Hüseyin Daim’s aide-de-camp. In the general atmosphere of mistrust during
the reign of Abdülhamid any implication in a conspiracy was ideal for a
denunciation by a rival.8
In the end Abdülhamid’s regime was swept away by the revolutionaries of
the Committee of Union and Progress that had become dominant in the
Young Turk movement at around the turn of the century. There is an old
and recurring debate as to whether their coup against the sultan might
legitimately be called a revolution in the modern sense of the word or
whether it was a revolt against the regime of Abdülhamid. The judgement
on this question largely depends on the evaluation of how far the new
regime could effect a rupture with the past regarding the material and
ideological structure of society and state.9
As far as political culture is concerned the Committee offers a mixed
picture: It clearly represents a break with the earlier opposition against
 Conclusion 89
Abdülhamid for it was guided by a very different set of ideas like materi-
alism and nationalism which determined their approach to politics.
However, on a deeper level the members of the Committee were deeply
engrained in the political elitism that also the Tanzimat politicians had
displayed. Likewise they inherited secrecy as the central characteristic of
other opposition groups.
Notes

1 Introduction: Political culture of conspiracy

1 A. Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey, Leiden: Brill, 1997, p. 18.
2 L. Dittmer, ‘Political Culture and Political Symbolism: Toward a Theoretical
Synthesis’, World Politics 29, 1977, 552–83; K. Rohe, ‘Politische Kultur und
ihre Analyse: Probleme und Perspektiven der politischen Kulturforschung’,
Historische Zeitschrift 250, 1990, 321–76.
3 J. Foran, ‘Discourses and Social Forces’, in J. Foran (ed.), Theorizing Revolutions,
London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 203–26; J. Foran and Reed, J.P. ‘Political Cultures
of Opposition: Exploring Idioms, Ideologies’, Critical Sociology 28, 2002, 335–70.
4 J. Foran, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the
Revolution, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993, pp. 152–215.
5 K.M. Baker, The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture:
Volume 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime, Oxford: Pergamon, 1987;
R. Chartier, Les origines de la Révolution française, Paris: Seuil, 2000.
6 O. Figes and Kolonitskii, B. Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language
and Symbols of 1917, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999; F. Venturi,
Roots of Revolution. A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in 19th
Century Russia, London: Phoenix, 2001.
7 N. Itzkowitz, ‘Eighteenth Century Ottoman Realities’, Studia Islamica 16, 1962,
73–94; C.V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime
Porte, 1789–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 106–11.
8 E. Özbudun, ‘State Elites and Democratic Political Culture in Turkey’, in
L. Diamond (ed.) Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries,
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993, pp. 189–210; E. Özbudun, ‘The Continuing
Ottoman Legacy and the State Tradition in the Middle East’, in L.C. Brown (ed.)
Imperial Legacy. The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East,
New York: Columbia University Press, . 1996, pp. 133–57. :
9 B. Eryılmaz, ‘Osmanlı Devletinde Iktidar ve Muhalefet’, Ilim ve Sanat 35–36,
1993, 55–59; A. Ayalon, ‘From Fitna to Thawra’, Studia Islamica 66, 1987,
145–74.
10 N. Vatin and Veinstein, G., Le sérail ébranlé. Essai sur les morts, dépositions et
avènements des sultans ottomans (XIVe–XIXe siècle), Paris: Fayard, 2003;
H. Karateke, ‘Legitimizing the Ottoman Sultanate: A Framework for Historical
Analysis’, in H. Karateke and M. Reinkowski (eds) Legitimizing the Order: The
Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 13–54.
11 P. Fodor, ‘State and Society, Crisis and Reform, in 15th–17th Century Ottoman
Mirror for Princes’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 40, 1986,
217–40.
 Notes 91
12 Ş. Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1962, pp. 149–55; Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, pp. 113–50.
13 H. Karateke, ‘Opium for the Subjects? Religiosity as a Legitimizing Factor for
the Ottoman Sultans’, in Karateke and Reinkowski (eds) Legitimizing the Order,
111–30; S.T. Buzpınar, ‘The Question of Caliphate under the Last Ottoman
Sultans’, in I. Weismann and F. Zachs (eds) Ottoman Reform and Muslim
Regeneration, London: Tauris, 2005, pp. 17–36; S. Deringil, ‘Legitimacy
Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of Abdülhamid II (1876–1909)’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, 1991, 345–59.
14 E. Engelhardt, La Turquie et le Tanzimat, 2 vols, Paris: Cotillon, 1882, vol. I,
p. 36; R. Davison, ‘Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian–Muslim Equality in
the Nineteenth Century’, American Historical Review 59, 1954, 844–64, p. 847.
15 V. Aksan, ‘Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808’, International Journal of
Middle East Studies 25, 1993, 53–69.
16 H.v. Moltke, Briefe über Zustände und Begebenheiten in der Türkei aus den Jahren
1835–1839, Berlin: Mittler, 1891, p. 130 (05/05/1837), p. 141 (21/05/1837); H.
Temperley, England and the Near East. The Crimea, London: Cass, 1964, pp. 40–1.
17 R. Davison, ‘The Advent of the Principle of Representation in the Government
of the Ottoman Empire’, in W.R. Polk and R.L. Chambers (eds) Beginnings
of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1968, 93–108.
18 Findley, Bureaucratic Reform, pp. 163–5; Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, 4 vols,
Ankara: TTK, 1953–67, vol. I, pp. 19–20, 26–7; B. Abu-Manneh, Studies
on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century, Istanbul: Isis, 2001,
pp. 115–24; T. Erdoğdu, ‘Civil Officialdom and the Problem of Legitimacy in the
Ottoman Empire (1876–1922)’, in Karateke and Reinkowski (eds) Legitimizing
the Order, 213–32.
19 For a larger study that focuses on this theme cf. C. Finkel, Osman’s Dream. The
Story. of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923, London: Murray, 2005.
20 H. Inalcık, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire
1600–1700’, Archivum Ottomanicum 6, 1980, 283–337; M. Zilfi, The Politics of
Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600–1800), Minneapolis,
MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988, pp. 81–127; R. Dankoff, The Intimate Life of an
Ottoman Statesman, . Albany: SUNY Press, 1991; S. Faroqhi, ‘Crisis and Change,
1590–1699’, in H. Inalcık and D. Quataert (eds) An Economic and Social History
of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994, 411–636, pp. 414–20.
21 R. Abou-el-Haj, The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics,
Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1984;
R. Olson: ‘The Esnaf and the Patrona Halil Rebellion of 1730: A Realignment in
Ottoman Politics?’, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 17,
1974, 329–44; S.J. Shaw, Between Old and New. The Ottoman Empire under
Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971,
pp. 378–95.
.
22 H. Inalcık, ‘Tanzimat’ın uygulanması ve sosyal tepkileri’, Belleten 28, 1964,
623–49.
23 B. Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World. The Roots of
Sectarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 130–68.
24 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. I, p. 111; E.R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade
and Its Suppression: 1840–1890, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982,
pp. 129–35.
25 Ş. Mardin, ‘Freedom in an Ottoman Perspective’, in M. Heper and A. Evin (eds)
State, Democracy and the Military. Turkey in the 1980s, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988,
23–35.
92 Notes
26 C. Kafadar, ‘Janissaries and Other Riffraff of Ottoman Istanbul: Rebels without a
Cause?’, in B. Tezcan and K.K. Barbir (eds) Identity and Identity Formation
in the Ottoman World, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007, 113–34;
K. Üstün, ‘Rethinking Vaka-i Hayriye (the Auspicious Event). Elimination of the
Janissaries on the Path to Modernization’, Ankara: unpublished MA thesis,
Bilkent University, 2002; D. Quataert, ‘Janissaries, Artisans and the Question of
Ottoman Decline’, in D. Quataert, Workers, Peasants and Economic Change in
the Ottoman Empire, 1730–1914, Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993, 197–203.
27 T.Z. Tunaya, Türkiyede siyasî partiler. 1859–1952, Istanbul: Doğan, 1952 and
T.Z. Tunaya, Türkiye’de siyasal partiler (genişletilmiş ikinci baskı), 3 vols,
Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı,
: 1984–89. :
28 A.B. Kuran, Osmalı Imparatorluğunda Inkılâp Hareketleri ve Millî Mücadele,
Istanbul: Çeltüt, 1959.
29 T. Zarcone, Secret et sociétés secrètes en Islam. Turquie, Iran et Asie centrale.
XIXe–XXe siècles. Franc-Maçonnerie, Carboneria et Confréries soufies, Milano:
Archè, 2002.

2 A sheikh and an officer: the Society of Martyrs and the Kuleli incident
.
1 On the changing evaluation of Kuleli see U. Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası hakkında bir
Araştırma, Ankara: TTK, 1937, pp. 9–28; Y.A. Pedrosyan, ‘1859 yıllındaki
“Kuleli vakası” nın karakterine ve bunun Türkiye tarihindeki yerine dair’,
Belleten 33/132, 1969, 587–93, as well as recently B. Onaran, ‘Kuleli Vakası
hakkında
. “başka” bir araştırma’, Tarih ve Toplum 5, 2007, 9–39.
2 Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, pp. 35, 38; R.H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire.
1856–1876, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 100–3; B. Lewis,
The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London: Oxford Uuniversity Press, 1960,
p. 148.
3 Cf. Davison, Reform, pp. 52–113.
4 H.M. Wood, ‘The Treaty of Paris and Turkey’s status in International Law’,
American Journal of International Law 37, 1943, 262–74.
5 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, 4 vols, Ankara: TTK, 1953–67, vol. I, pp. 67–68.
6 C. Kırlı, ‘Coffeehouses: Public Opinion in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman
Empire’, in A. Salvatore and D.F. Eickelman (eds) Public Islam and the Common
Good, Brill: Leiden, 2004, 75–98.
7 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. II, p. 8; FO 78/894, no. 72, Rose to Malmesbury,
Therapia, 04/09/1852; ibid., no. 84, 23/09/1852.
8 [F. Millingen] Osman Bey/Maj. Vladimir Andrejevich, Les Imams et
les Derviches. Pratiques, Superstitions et Moeurs des Turcs, Paris: Dentu,
1881, p. 202; FO 78/819, no. 120, Stratford to Palmerston, Constantinople,
05/04/1850.
9 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. I, p. 38 and vol. II, p. 54, pp. 134–6; Millingen, Les
Imams, pp. 200–7; H. Karateke, ‘Who is the Next Ottoman Sultan? Attempts
Towards Changing the Rule of Succession in the 19th Century’, in I. Weismann
and F. Zachs (eds) Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration. Studies in Honor
of Butrus Abu-Manneh, London: Tauris, 2005, 37–54.
10 PRO, FO 78/938, no. 272, Stratford to Clarendon, Therapia, 15/09/1853; ibid.
78/1077, no. 292, Stratford to Clarendon, Constantinople, 16/04/1855; ibid.
78/1086, no. 675, Stratford to Clarendon, Therapia, 10/09/1855.
11 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. II, p. 52; FO 78/1366, no. 106, Bulwer to Malmesbury,
Therapia, 04/08/1858; ibid. FO 78/1367, no. 196, 08/09/1858; FO 195/585, Philip
Saule to Bulwer, Pera, 31/08/1858.
12 Times, 19/09/1859, p. 7; Journal de Constantinople, 21/09/1859, Intérieure. There
are no editions of this paper on the 18, 19 and 20/09. Also cf. the article of the
 Notes 93
.
Ceride-i Havadis, 24 Safer 1276 in Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, pp. 9–10 and Times,
21/09/1859, p. 8 and 30/09/1859, p. 6.
13 Times, 01/10/1859, p. 10 (the article apparently was written on 21/09) and ibid.,
03/10/1859, p. 8; Journal de Constantinople, 24/09/1859, Intérieure.
14 FO 195/627, Pisani to Bulwer, Yenikioy, 17 and 19/09/1859, also included in FO
78/1435, no. 164, Bulwer to Russell, Therapia, 20/09/1859.
15 FO 195/627, Pisani to Bulwer, Yenikioy 27/09/1859.
16 BOA, Divan-ı Hümayun Defteri, Mühimme-i . Mektume Defteri no. 10. In the
following the published transcripts in Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, pp. 43–76, are used.
17 Recently the original transcripts of the cross-examinations have been located in
the Ottoman archives by Burak Onaran. Unfortunately I had no opportunity to
consult
. them.
18 Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, p. 50, statement no. 4, p. 72, no. 40, p. 56, no. 10.
19 Ibid., p. 44.
20 M. Reinkowski, ‘The State’s Security and the Subjects’ Prosperity: Notions of
Order in Ottoman Bureaucratic Correspondence (19th Century)’, in H. Karateke
and M. Reinkowski (eds) Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State
Power,
. Leiden: Brill, 2005, 195–212.
21 Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, p. 45.
22 Ibid., no. 1, p. 47.
23 Ibid., no. 2, p. 49.
24 Onaran,
. ‘Kuleli’, pp. 13–14.
25 Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, no. 1, p. 47.
26 Ibid., no. 2, p. 48.
27 Onaran,
. ‘Kuleli’, p. 13.
28 Cf. Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, nos. 8, 10, 11, 16 and 32.
29 On Khalid and the Khalidiya cf. C.J. Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan,
2 vols, London: Duncan, 1836, vol. 1, pp. 320–1; A. Hourani, ‘Shaikh
Khalid and the Naqshbandi Order’, in S.M. Stern, A. Hourani and V. Brown
(eds) Islamic Philosopy and the Classical Tradition, Oxford: Cassirer, 1972,
89–103.
30 M. van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State. The Social and Political Structures
of Kurdistan, London: Zed, 1992, pp. 222–34; J. Blau, ‘Le rôle des cheikhs
Naqshbandi dans le mouvement national Kurde’, in M. Gaborieau (ed.) Naqsh-
bandis. Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman,
Istanbul and Paris: Isis, 1990, 371–7; R. Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish
Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925, Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1989.
31 B. Abu-Manneh, ‘The Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman Lands in
the Early 19th Century’, Die Welt des Islams 22, 1982, 1–36; H. Algar, ‘Political
Aspects of Naqshbandi History’, in M. Gaborieau (ed.) Naqshbandis, 123–52,
pp. 136–43.
32 Onaran, ‘Kuleli’, p. 17.
33 Cf. A. Vambéry, His Life and Adventures. . Written by Himself, London:
. Fisher
Unwin, 1884, pp. 24 and Abanlı Hacı Ibrahim’s statement in Iğdemir, Kuleli
vakası,
. no. 17, p. 60.
34 Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, no. 1, p. 46.
35 Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century,
Istanbul: Isis, 2001, p. 106.
36 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. I, pp. 23–24; Fatma Aliye, Ahmed Cevdet ve Zamanı,
Dersaadet, 1332, pp. 99–103; a translation of the poster in FO 78/938, no. 255,
Stratford to Clarendon, Therapia, 01/09/1853; see . also ibid. no. 259, 05/09;
no. 272, 15/09; no. 284, 29/09; no. 286, 30/09; BOA, ID 17634 (15 M 1270); Journal
de Constantinople, 470, 19/05/1853, Intérieur; A. Pottinger Saab, The Origins
94 Notes
of the Crimean Alliance, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977,
pp. 81–4.
37 FO 78/941b, no. 396, Stratford to Clarendon, Constantinople, 23/12/1853, which
forwards Reshid to Stratford, Beshik Tashe, 23/12; see also ibid. no. 400, 24/12;
Journal de Constantinople, 489, 24/12/1853, Intérieur; and A. Pottinger Saab,
Crimean . Alliance, pp. 124–5.
38 BOA, ID 18697 (18 . B 1270) and A.MKT.MHM 58/60 (10 Ş 1270). On Hoca
Nasuh cf. M.K. Inal, Osmanlı Devrinde Son Sadrıazamlar, 3 vols, Istanbul:
Maarif, 1940–52, vol. I, p. 65. :
39 M.L. Bremer, Die Memoiren des türkischen Derwischs Aşçı Dede Ibrâhîm,
Walldorf: Verlag für Orientkunde, 1959, p. 16, 121b.
40 M. Gammer, Muslim Resistance to the Tsar. Shamil and the Conquest of
Chechnia and Daghestan, London: Cass, 1994, pp. 225–35; A. Knysh, ‘Shamil’,
Encyclopaedia of Islam, sec. ed., IX, 283–7.
41 Gammer, Muslim Resistance, pp. 250–72; FO 195/410, no. 60, Brant to Stratford
de Redcliffe, Erzeroom, 14/10/1853; ibid., no. 64, 28/10/1853; ibid., no. 2, Brant
to Raglan, Erzeroom, 30/05/1854.
42 Vambéry, Life and Adventures, pp. 24–5.
43 Cf.
. Mehmed’s statement .that survived in its original,
. unedited form in BOA,
ID 29258; Abanlı Hacı Ibrahim’s statement in Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, no. 17,
p. 60.
44 A. Levy, ‘The Officer Corps in Sultan Mahmud II’s New Ottoman Army,
1826–39’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 2, 1971, 21–39.
45 F. Millingen, La Turquie sous le règne d’Abdul-Aziz (1861–1867), Paris: Librairie
Internationale, 1868, pp. 157–8. That Hüseyin and Mehmed were brothers was
claimed by Ebüzziya Tevfik in a note to Vambéry’s article ‘Osmanlı Hükumeti
Meşrutasının
. istikbalın’ in Yeni Tasvir-i Efkar 14 (14 Ca 1327) as quoted in
Iğdemir, Kuleli vakası, pp. 18–19. Unfortunately, no other contemporary source
confirms this fact, not even Millingen who got to know both during his service in
the Ottoman army. Cf. [F. Millingen] Osman-Bey/V. Andrejevich, Les Anglais en
Orient, 1830–1876, Paris: Sagnier 1877, pp. 300–9. In any event the relationship
between the two seems to be a typical case of ethnic solidarity, cf. M. Kunt,
‘Regional (Cins) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies 5, 1974, 233–9.
46 Cf. FO 195/400, no. 37, Williams to Stratford, Camp near Kars, 16/10/1854;
C. Duncan, A Campaign with the Turks in Asia, 2 vols, London: Smith, 1855,
vol. I, p. 188; H. Sandwith, A Narrative of the Siege of Kars, London: Murray,
1856, p. 113; G. Kmety, A Narrative of the Defence of Kars on the 29th September
1855, London: Ridgway, 1856, p. 13; and Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. II, p. 82.
47 Vambéry, Life and Adventures, p. 23 and Vambéry, The Story of My Struggles.
The Memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, 2 vols, London: Fisher Unwin, 1904,
vol. I, p. 165.
48 K.H. Karpat, ‘Kossuth in Turkey: The Impact of Hungarian Refugees in the
Ottoman Empire’, in ibid. Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History,
Leiden: Brill, 2002, 170–84; D.M. Goldfrank, The Origins of the Crimean War,
London: . Longman, 1994, pp. 62–72.
49 BOA, ID 28213 (4 Ş 1275). Also cf. BOA, A.MKT.UM. 313/21 (13 N 1274) and
314/29 (29 N 1274); FO 881/760, No. 217 enclosure 1, Hecquard to Walewski,
Ragusa, 14/05/1858; ibid., no. 219, Churchill to Malmesbury, Trebigne, 17/05/
1858; ibid., no. 297 inclosure 2, Rumbold to Loftus, Vienna 14/06/1858; and
Millingen, La Turquie, pp. 158–9.
50 Cf. Times 01/06/1858, p. 10; 03/10/1859, p. 8 and FO 881/760, no. 219, Churchill
to Malmesbury, Trebigne, 17/05/1858.
51 As quoted in Onaran, ‘Kuleli’, p. 31.
 Notes 95
52 T. Zarcone, Secret et sociétés secrètes en Islam. Turquie, Iran et Asie centrale.
XIXe–XXe siècles. Franc-Maçonnerie, Carboneria et Confréries soufies, Milano:
Archè, 2002. .
53 Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam, p. 126; I. Gündüz, Osmanlılarda Devlet–Tekke
Münasebetleri, Istanbul: Seha, 1984, p. 247; Ahmed Lütfî, Vak’a-nüvis Ahmed
Lütfî Tarihi, M.M. Aktepe (ed.), parts 9–15, Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi and
Ankara: TTK, 1984–93, part IX, p. 49a (113).
54 Onaran, ‘Kuleli’, pp. 24–9.
55 Cf. Times, 22/12/1859, p. 10. The article was later published in W. Thornbury,
Turkish Life and Character, London: Smith, 1860.
56 Thouvenel to Walewski, 21/09/1859 as quoted in Onaran, ‘Kuleli’, p. 23.
57 Reinkowski, ‘The State’s Security’, p. 205.
58 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. II, pp. 84–8; BOA, A.MKT.NZD 293/77 (30 Ra
1276).

3 New and old forms of opposition: the Young Ottomans and the Vocation group
1 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, 4 vols, Ankara: TTK, 1953–67, vol. II, tez. 19,
pp. 226–7; R.H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 110–13.
2 B. Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century,
Istanbul: Isis, 2001, pp. 120–1.
3 Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, vol. II, pp. 259–62; cf. also PRO, FO 78/1732, no. 20,
Erskine to Russell, Constantinople, 05/01/1863 and ibid. no. 28, 08/01/1863.
4 Ş. Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1962, pp. 252–5; K.H. Karpat, ‘The Mass Media’, in:
R.E. Ward and D.A. Rustow (eds) Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964, 255–82, pp. 258–9. On Şinasi’s
alleged
. connection to the Society of Martyrs cf. Z. Ebüzziya, Şinasi, Istanbul:
Iletişim, 1997, pp. 155–64. :
5 M.C. Kuntay, Namık Kemal. Devrinin Insanları ve Olayları Arasında, 2 vols,
Istanbul: Maarif, 1944–57, vol. I, pp. 59–63; Mardin, Genesis, p. 27.
6 For the text of the letter and a discussion of the circumstances of its publication
cf. M.K. Bilgegil, Yakın çağ Türk kültür ve edebiyatı üzerinde araştırmalar. I.
Yeni Osmanlılar, Ankara: Baylan, 1976, pp. 5–11. An English translation
appeared in Levant Herald, 22/02/1867, cf. Mardin, Genesis, pp. 34–5.
7 Davison, Reform, pp. 207–8; The text of the letter in M. Colombe, ‘Une Lettre
d’un Prince Égyptien du XIXe Siècle au Sultan Ottoman Abd Al-Aziz’, Orient 5,
1958, 23–38; Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 14–30 and FO 78/1958, no. 101, Lyons to
Stanley, Constantinople, 20/03/1867.
8 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 32–4; R.H. Davison, ‘Halil Şerif Paşa, Ottoman Diplomat
and Statesman’, Osmanlı Araştırmaları II, 1981, 203–21.
9 Mehmed Memduh, Tanzimattan Meşrutiyete 1. Mir’ât-i Şuûnaât, . Istanbul:
Nehir, 1990, p. 50; H. Çelik, Ali Suavî ve Dönemi, Istanbul: Iletişim, 1994,
pp. 75–80; Davison, Reform, pp. 208–9; Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. I, pp. 63–4.
On Ziya see Mardin, Genesis, pp. 337–9.
10 Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 309–37. Of the 20 articles mainly from the French press
reproduced here esp. cf. the one in Le Nord, 25/06/1867, pp. 326–30. Also cf. FO
195/887, no. 145, Pisani to Lyons, Pera, 05/06/1867 and FO 78/1961, no. 245,
Lyons to Stanley, Constantinople, 13/06/1867.
11 BOA, Mühimme-i Mektûme Defteri 10, pp. 47–57 published in Bilgegil, Yakın
çağ, pp. 372–96.
12 Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, p. 372.
13 Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 373–74.
96 Notes
14 Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. I, pp. 381–93 and pp. 414–26.
15 Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, p. 392 and the account of Mehmed’s daughter in Kuntay,
Namık Kemal, vol. I, p. 358, n. 4.
16 Liberté, 18/06/1867, as reproduced in Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 342–5.
17 For an evaluation of the account by Ebüzziya that was serialised in 1909 over 40
years after the events in the Yeni Tasvir-i Efkar cf. Mardin, Genesis, pp. 10–11;
Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. I, pp. 357–8 and Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, p. 356.
18 Cf. Mardin, Genesis, pp. 232–3; Davison, Reform, pp. 181–2.
19 T. Zarcone, Secret et sociétés secrètes en Islam. Turquie, Iran et Asie centrale.
XIXe–XXe siècles. Franc-Maçonnerie, Carboneria et Confréries soufies, Milano:
Archè, 2002, pp. 29–31.
20 Cf. Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 396–8. On Ebüzziya’s: credibility cf. Z. Ebüzziya,
‘Ebüzziyâ Mehmed Tevfik’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Islam Ansiklopedisi 10, 374–8.
21 Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. I, 394–413.
22 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 44–5; Davison, Reform, p. 213.
23 Cf. FO 195/893, Sublime Porte, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères to British
Embassy, note verbale, 05/10/1867 and ibid., no. 369, Savfet to Elliot, Con-
stantinople, 14/10/1868.
24 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 106–7.
25 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 46–56; Davison, Reform, p. 216–18.
26 Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 106–37.
27 Cf.
: Bilgegil, Yakın çağ, pp. 138–281, who reproduces many of the articles of
Inkılab.
:
28 Inkılab, 28/04/1870, as quoted in E. Koray, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’e karşı girişilen bir
suikast olayı ve Hüseyin Vasfi Paşa’, Belleten 51, no. 199, 1987, 193–204, p. 200.
29 Sicill-i osmanî, Mehmed Süreyyâ, 4 vols, Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Amire, 1308–11,
vol. II, pp. 229–30; Koray, ‘Hüseyin Vasfi’ pp. 197, 202.
30 A. Frhr. Schweiger von Lerchenfeld, Serail und Hohe Pforte, Wien, Pest and
Leipzig: Hartleben, 1879, pp. 201–6.
31 Koray, ‘Hüseyin Vasfi’ pp. 196–8. Also see the interrogation protocols of Konduri
and Altıncı in BOA, HR.MTV 232/1 and 2.
32 Koray,
. ‘Hüseyin Vasfi’ pp. 202–4.
33 I. Sungu, ‘Tanzimat ve Yeni Osmanlılar’, in Tanzimat, Istanbul, 1940, 777–857,
pp. 81–99.
34 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 308–13, referring to Kemal’s article ‘Usul-ı meşveret’ in
Hürriyet, 14/09/1868.
35 Sungu, ‘Tanzimat ve Yeni Osmanlılar’, pp. 800–7; Mardin, Genesis, pp. 313–19.
36 Cf. Mardin, Genesis, pp. 293–5, referring to Kemal’s article ‘Wa shâwirhum fî’l-
’amr’ in Hürriyet, 20/07/1868.
37 Cf. Colombe, ‘Lettre’, pp. 29–38.
38 Sicill-i osmanî, vol. III, 238–9; E.J.W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, 6 vols,
London: Luzac, 1900–09, vol. V, pp. 41–61; Mardin, Genesis, pp. 337–9; Kuntay,
Namık Kemal, vol. I, pp. 425–35. For the events in 1861 cf. Mehmed Memduh,
Mir’ât-i Şuûnaât, pp. 41–2.
39 Gibb, Ottoman Poetry, vol. V, pp. 69–77 and 96–111.
40 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 347–50; Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. I, p. 436; B. Lewis, The
Emergence of Modern Turkey, New York: Oxford University Press, 1960,
pp. 139–40.
41 Mardin, Genesis, pp. 295–6 and 305–7..
42 Hürriyet 30, 18/01/1869
. (old style?), ‘Innallahe ye’mürü bil’adli vli’ihsan’, partly
reproduced in U. Iğdemir, Kuleli Vak’ası hakkında bir Araştırma, Ankara: TTK,
1937, pp. 13–14.
43 Hürriyet 45, 3 Mayıs 1869, as quoted in Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. II.1,
p. 690 n. 3.
 Notes 97
44 Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol. II.1, pp. 689–93.
45 R.E. Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period, Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins, 1963, pp. 46–59.

4 How to exchange sultans: the successful coup against Abdülaziz

1 C.V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime
Porte, 1789–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 222–4 and
242–5.
2 Sicill-i osmanî, Mehmed Süreyyâ,. 4 vols, Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Amire, 1308–11,
vol. IV, pp. 336–7; M.K. Inal, Osmanlı Devrinde Son Sadrıazamlar, 3 vols,
Istanbul: Maarif, 1940–52, vol. I, pp. 259–68; B. Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam
and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century, Istanbul: Isis, 2001, pp. 163–7 and
172–3.
3 A résumé of the treatise, which was printed only in 1909, in Abu-Manneh,
Studies on Islam, pp. 168–72.
4 Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, 3 vols, Dersaadet: Matbua-ı Osmaniye,
1326,
. vol. I.2.6, pp. 102–3. :
5 A.I. Gencer, ‘Hüseyin Avni Paşa’, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Islam Ansiklopedisi
18, 526–7; Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.2.6, pp. 100–1.
6 R.H.Davison, ‘Midhat Pasha’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, sec. ed., VI, 1031–5; Ali
Haydar Midhat, The Life of Midhat Pasha, London: Murray, 1903, pp. 32–66.
7 R.H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1963,
. pp. 287.
8 Sicill-i osmanî, vol. II, 385; Inal,
. Son Sadrıazamlar, vol. I, pp. 436–44.
9 Davison, Reform, pp. 293–5; Inal, Son Sadrıazamlar, vol. I, pp. 451–3; Ahmed
Cevdet, Tezâkir, 4 vols, Ankara: TTK, 1953–67, vol. IV, pp. 124–5.
10 Davison, Reform, pp. 301–10; H.O. Dwight, Turkish Life in War Time,
New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1881, p. 391.
11 Cf. Times, 07/08/1875, : p. 5 and 22/09/1875,
: p. 10. .
12 M. Türköne, Siyasî Ideoloji Olarak Islâmcılığın Doğuşu, Istanbul: Iletişim, 1994,
pp. 145–95.
13 Davison, Reform, pp. 312–14.
14 Dwight, Turkish Life, pp. 1–6; Times, 18/05/1876, p. 10 (this article later was
published in A. Gallenga, Two Years of the Eastern Question, 2 vols, London:
Tinsley, 1877, vol. II, pp. 67–71); Davison, Reform, pp. 323–5.
15 Dwight, Turkish Life, p. 11; PRO, FO 78/2458, no. 539, Elliot to Derby, Therapia,
25/05/1876 and Süleyman Pasha as quoted in R. Devereux, ‘Süleyman
Pasha’s “The Feeling of the Revolution”’, Middle Eastern Studies 15, 1979, 3–35,
p. 12.
16 For Midhat’s implication see FO 78/2458, no. 492, Elliot to Derby,
Constantinople, 12/05/1876 and Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.2.6,
p. 104. For the theory that Mahmud Nedim was behind the demonstrations to
discredit Midhat and get rid of the şeyhülislam see FO 78/2458, no. 543, Elliot to
Derby, Therapia, 27/05/1876. Also cf. B. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern
Turkey, New York:. Oxford University Press, 1960, pp. 160–1.
17 Lütfi as quoted in I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz vâk’asına dair vâk’anüvis
Lütfi efendinin bir risalesi’, Belleten 7, no. 28, 1943, 349–73, p. 354; Mahmud
Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.2.3, pp. 91–4; Times, 18/05/1876, p. 10;
Dwight, Turkish Life, pp. . 7–11.
18 Cf. Lütfi as quoted in I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’, p. 356; FO 78/2458,
no. 512, Elliot to Derby, Constantinople, 18/05/1876, who confirmed that the
medrese students demanded a ‘modified constitution’ and ibid., no. 534, Elliot to
Derby, Therapia, 25/05/1876.
98 Notes
19 FO 78/2458, no. 492, Elliot to Derby, Constantinople, 12/05/1876; ibid., no. 512,
18/05/1876; ibid., no. 534, 25/05/1876; ibid., no. 539, 25/05/1876.
20 R.E. Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period, Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins, 1963, pp. 39–40.
21 Cf. Ali Haydar Midhat, Midhat Pasha, pp. 67–8. The official court historian
Ahmed Lütfi . Efendi called the memorandum a ‘varaka-i şeytaniyye’, cf. Lütfi as
quoted in I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’, p. 357. .
22 Cf. Midhat’s statement of 8 Mayıs 1297 (1881) as quoted in I.H. Uzunçarşılı,
Midhat Paşa ve Rüştü Paşaların Tevkiflerine dâir vesikalar, Ankara: TTK, 1987,
pp. 52–5.
23 H. Elliot, ‘The Death of Abdul Aziz and of Turkish Reform’, Nineteenth Century
23, 1888, 276–96, pp. 279–80.
24 On the question of authorship cf. Davison, Reform, p. 320. The text of the
memorandum is in Staatsarchiv 30, 1877, no. 5642, pp. 213–19.
25 Süleyman Pasha as quoted in Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, p. 14;
Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.2.6, pp. 105–6.
26 Uzunçarşılı, Midhat Paşa, pp. 54–5.
27 Ali Haydar Midhat, Midhat Pasha, p. 83.
28 Süleyman Pasha as quoted in Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, p. 16.
29 Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, pp. 5–8 and Süleyman in ibid., pp. 13 and
15. The Young Ottoman connection is claimed by Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı
Hakikat, vol. I.2.6, pp. 109–10.
30 FO 195/440, no. 39, Williams to Stratford de Redcliffe, Camp near Kars,
23/10/1854.
31 Süleyman Pasha as quoted in Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, p. 27.
32 Ibid., pp. 12–14 and 16.
33 FO 78/2458, no. 535, Elliot to Derby, Therapia, 25/05/1876; Süleyman Pasha as
quoted in Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, pp. 17–18 and 27.
34 Ibid., pp. 19–26.
35 Ali Haydar Midhat, Midhat Pasha, pp. 82–5; Lütfi as quoted in Uzunçarşılı,
‘Sultan Abdülaziz’, pp. 359–60.
36 Süleyman Pasha as quoted in Devereux, ‘Feeling of the Revolution’, pp. 29–30;
Lütfi as quoted in Uzunçarşılı, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’, pp. 363–4.
37 Dwight, Turkish Life, pp. 17–19.
38 Lütfi as quoted in Uzunçarşılı, ‘Sultan Abdülaziz’, p. 364.
39 Devereux, Constitutional Period, pp. 37–8.
40 Ibid., pp. 38–42. .
41 Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.3.3, pp. 190–4; Inal, Son Sadrıa-
zamlar, vol. I, p. 367. Cf. also the notice in the press Stamboul, 23/10/1876;
Levant Herald, 23/10/1876; Times, 26/10/1876, p. 3.
42 FO 78/2466, no. 1194, Elliot to Derby, Therapia, 25/10/1878.
43 Cf. Times, 12/05/1876, p. 5 and Mahmud Celaleddin, Mirat-ı Hakikat, vol. I.2.4,
pp. 93–4.
44 Davison, Reform, pp. 358–80; Devereux, Constitutional Period, pp. 34–59.
45 Devereux, Constitutional Period, pp. 60–79; B. Tanör, Osmanlı-Türk Anayasal
Gelişmeleri (1789–1980), Istanbul: Yapı Kredi, 2001, pp. 135–49.
46 E.D. Akarlı, ‘Friction and Discord within the Ottoman Government Under
Abdülhamid II (1876–1909)’, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Dergisi 7, 1979, 3–26.

5 War and refugees: Ali Suavi and the Çıraǧan incident

.
1 I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Beşinci Murad ile oğlu Salâhaddin efendiyi kaçırmak için
kadın kıyafetinde Çırağana girmek isteyen şahislar’, Belleten 8, no. 32, 1944,
589–97; Times, 11 and 12/12/1876; BOA, Y.EE 22/85, 18 Za 1293; FO 78/2467,
 Notes 99
no. 1336, Elliot to Derby, Constantinople, 06/12/1876 and ibid., no. 1342, 07/12/
1876. :
2 M.C. Kuntay, :Sarıklı Ihtilâlci Ali Suavi, Istanbul: Ahmet Halit, 1946; F. Rıfkı,
Baş Veren bir Inkilapçı, Istanbul, 1954.
3 A. Sinno, ‘Pan-Slawismus und Pan-Orthodoxie als Instrumente der russischen
Politik im Osmanischen Reich’, Die Welt des Islams 28, 1988, 537–58; Levant
Herald 17/05/1877.
4 Times 16/03/1877, p. 5.
5 Levant Herald 25, 28, 29/05 and 02/06/1877; Times 31/05, p. 5; 12/06/1877, p. 10;
BOA, Y.EE 23/1 (14 Ca 1294).
6 Cf. J. McCarthy, Death and Exile, Princeton, NJ: Darwin, 1995, pp. 59–81 and the
reports of the British and French consuls and the Ottoman authorities collected in
B.N. Şimşir (ed.) Rumeli’den Türk göçleri, 3 vols, Ankara: Türk Kültürünü
Araştırma Enstitüsü, 1968–89, nos. 41, 42, 46, 51, 63, 105, 107, 114, 117, 121
incl., 125, 126, 128, 129, 133, 137, 138, 140, 142, 143, 144, 153 incl. 1.
7 M.K. Masud, ‘The Obligation to Migrate. The Doctrine of Hijra in Islamic Law’,
in D.F. Eickelman and J. Piscatori (eds) Muslim Travellers. Pilgrimage, Migration,
and the Religious Imagination, London: Routledge, 1990, 29–49; A. Toumarkine,
‘Sécularisation du concept d’émigration et “ethnicisation” chez les immigrés
caucasiens de Turquie’, in M. Bozdémir (ed.) Islam et Laïcité. Approches globales
et régionales, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996, 405–14.
8 A.W. Fisher, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea 1772–1783, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 58–63 and 91–4.
9 M. Pinson, ‘Ottoman Colonization of the Circassians in Rumili after the Crimean
War’, Études Balkaniques 8.3, 1972, 71–85; A.W. Fisher, ‘Emigration of Muslims
from the Russian Empire in the Years After the Crimean War’, Jahrbücher
für Geschichte Osteuropas 35, 1987, 356–71, pp. 366–9; K.H. Karpat, ‘The
Status of Muslims Under European Rule. The Eviction and Settlement of the
Çerkes’, in ibid. Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History, Leiden: Brill,
2002, 647–75.
10 Cf.
. police officer Hasan’s report three days after the events, Y.EE 23/26 and
I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Ali Suavi ve Çırağan sarayı vak’ası’, in Belleten 8.29, 1944,
71–118, pp. 111–12.
11 Levant Herald 21/05/1878; Times 22/05, p. 7; 24/05, p. 5 and 29/05/1878, p. 5.
12 Quoted in Uzunçarşılı, ‘Ali Suavi’, pp. 90–1. A French version appeared in La
Turquie cf. FO 78/2788, no. 657, Layard to Salisbury, Therapia, 21/05/1878.
13 FO 78/2789,
. no. 688, Layard to Salisbury, Therapia, 30/05/1878.
14 M.K. Inal, Osmanlı Devrinde Son Sadrıazamlar, 3 vols, Istanbul: Maarif,
1940–52, vol. 2, pp. 781–5; Times 27/05/1878, p. 5; FO 78/2590, no. 1299, Layard
to Derby, Therapia, 05/11/1877; FO 78/2789, no. 696, Layard to Salisbury,
Therapia, 30/05/1878.
15 Cf. Hasan Hüsnü’s report of 9 Mayıs 1294 in Y.EE 23/37 and Uzunçarşılı, ‘Ali
Suavi’, pp. 111–13. :
16 Ali’s own account in Ali (Basiretçi), Istanbul’da yarım asırlık vakayi-i mühimme,
Dersaadet: Hüseyin Enver, 1325, p. 58; cf. also Levant Herald 23 and 24/05/1878;
on the role of the Basiret cf. A. Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the
Ottomans and Britain, 1877–1924, Leiden: Brill, 1997, pp. 35–6.
17 Cf. FO 78/2571, no. 448, Layard to Derby, Constantinople, 14/05/1877, the law of
state of siege, Art 16: ‘Tous les comités secrets, fussent-ils formés avant la
proclamation de l’état de siége, sont justiciables des conseils de guerre.’ Also
cf. Levant Herald 25/05/1877.
18 FO 195/1199, Sandison to Layard, Therapia, 02/05/1878; FO 78/2789, no. 667,
Layard to Salisbury, Therapia, 24/05/1878; FO 78/2792, no. 822, Layard to
Salisbury, Therapia, 24/06/1878.
100 Notes
19 All the judgements are collected in Y.EE 23/14. Also cf. Uzunçarşılı, ‘Ali Suavi’,
pp. 107–9.
20 The most . recent and concise biography is H. Çelik, : Ali Suavî ve Dönemi,
Istanbul: Iletişim, 1994. Cf. also Kuntay, Sarıklı Ihtilâlci and Ş. Mardin,
The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press,
: 1962, pp. 360–84 and A. Uçman, ‘Ali Suâvi’, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı
Islam
. Ansiklopedisi, vol. 2, 445–8. There is even a theatre play on Suavi by
I. Tarus.
21 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 43–64.
22 Ibid., pp. 65–6.
23 Ibid., pp. 71–80.
24 Ali Suavi, A Propos de l’Herzegovine, Paris: Goupy, 1875, dedication to the
reader.
25 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 97–8: ‘Ahali-i şarkiyyenin terakki-i ma’ârif ü medeniyetlerini
mucib olacak efkâr-ı cedîdeye serbazlık vermek ve şarkılar hakkında Avrupa’nın
efkârını tashihe çalışmak.’
26 Ibid., pp. 229–40 referring to Ulum 13, 15 Za 1278 (16/02/1870) and 14, n.d.
(01/03/1870).
27 Ibid., pp. 557–62, referring to Muhbir 14 (28/11/1867) and 17 (25/12/1867), :
Ulum 9,: 522. Cf. Mardin, Genesis, .pp. 377–9; M. Türköne, Siyasî Ideoloji
Olarak Islâmcılığın Doğuşu, Istanbul: Iletişim, 1994, pp. 124–7. For the formula
of ‘Commanding right … ’ cf. M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidd-
ing Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000,
p. 511.
28 Muhbir 10, 02/11/1867,
: ‘Hakikat-ı hal’.
29 Türköne, Siyasî Ideoloji, pp. 107–10.
30 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 570–1,
. referring to Muhbir 36, 27/05/1868, ‘Umûr-ı âmme’.
31 Z. Arikan, ‘Fransız Ihtilâli ve Osmanlı Tarihçiliği’, in J-L. Bacqué-Grammont
and E. Eldem (eds.) De la révolution française à la Turquie d’Atatürk, Istanbul/
Paris: Isis, 1990; F. Yeşil, ‘Looking at the French Revolution through Ottoman
eyes: Ebubekir Ratib Efendi’s observations’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 70,: 2007, 283–304.
32 Türköne, Siyasî Ideoloji, pp. 302–10: ‘Bizim anlayacağımız, mesele, meselâ
devlet-i Osmaniye bulunduğu mevkiine ve haline ve cemaatine sâlih bir devlet ki
pâdişahlık olmalı.’ Ulum 18, ‘Demokrasi: Hükümet-i Halk, Müsavât’. Also cf.
Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 575–9. :
33 Vakit 323, 1 N 1293 (19/09/1876) as reproduced in M.C. Kuntay, Sarıklı Ihtilâlci,
pp. 90–7.
34 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 291–9.
35 Diplomatic Review, July 1876, p. 162, ‘Reform in Turkey’.
36 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 301–3, referring to Sadakât 63, 12 Kanun-ı Sâni 1877 and
Vakit 460, 8 Ş 1877.
37 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 339–42 and 347–63. On Layard’s role cf. FO 78/2586,
no. 1157, Layard to Derby, Therapia, 01/10/1877 and FO 78/2590, no. 1290,
Layard to Derby, Therapia, 02/11/1877. 763, 07/12/1877 (old style).
38 Cf. Ali Suavi, Herzegovine.
39 Y.EE 23/35 (n.d.).
40 BOA, Y.A.HUS 159/42 (1 C 1295); also cf. L.T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and
Legitimacy. Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire,
1560–1660, Leiden: Brill, 1996.
41 Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 342–4, referring to Ceride-i Havadis 3517, N 1294 and Vakit
644, 11/08/1877.
42 Diplomatic Review 24 (10/1876), pp. 270–4, ‘Letters by Ali Suavi Effendi’.
43 About Suavi’s relationship with Urquhart cf. Çelik, Ali Suavî, pp. 112–32.
 Notes 101
6 Bourgeois conspirators: the Skalieri–Aziz committee
1 The interrogation protocols, 81 folded A3 or single A4 sheets, can be found in
Y.EE 23/5. Originally they were arranged in thirteen small booklets. In the pro-
cess of cataloguing their original order was destroyed and the individual sheets
were given random numbers 1 to 81. In quoting I will qualify the sheet numbers
with ‘a’ for the page on that the number was written and ‘b’, ‘c’ and ‘d’ for the
following pages. There are almost no European sources on the conspiracy except
for a fantastic account in A. Frhr. Schweiger von Lerchenfeld, Serail und Hohe
Pforte, Wien, Pest and Leipzig: Hartleben, 1879, pp. 218–24.
2 BOA, Y.EE 23/3, Mahmud to Mehmed Arif (26 Haziran 1294); Y.EE 23/4, Bab-ı
Zabtiye (26 Haziran 1294). Y.EE 23/6, 1, no date, gives a list of the persons
arrested. Cf. also the rest of. the official correspondence between the police and
the palace in this folder and I.H. Uzunçarşılı, ‘V. Murad’i tekrar padişah yapmak
isteyen K. Skaliyeri-Aziz Bey komitesi’, Belleten 8.30, 1944, 245–328, pp. 280–4.
3 Y.EE 23/5, Aziz (9 B 1295), 21b.
4 Aziz (9 B 1295), 17d.
5 Agah (9 B 1295), 12a.
6 Mihal (14 B 1295), 31a, b; cf. C. Svolopoulos, ‘L’initiation de Mourad V à la
franc-maçonnerie par Cl. Scalieri: aux origines du mouvement libéral en
Turquie’, Balkan Studies 21, 1980, 441–57, p. 445.
7 Aziz (9 B 1295), 19d; Esad (21 B 1295), 60b; Üsküdarlı Nuri (23 B 1295), 53b.
8 Akif (20 B 1295), 45a; tütüncübaşı Hüseyin (18 B 1295), 42c; Kavasbaşızade
Tevfik (28 B 1295), 69b.
9 Cf. PRO, FO 78/2464, no. 1010, Elliot to Derby, Therapia, 14/09/1876.
10 For a list of the dismissed servants cf. Y.EE 23/5, Akif (24/25 B 1295), 75d, c. In
the beginning of November 1877 there seems to have been a raid on Çırağan
Palace by the government to enforce such an exchange of personnel, cf. Times
19/11/1877, 5.
11 Aziz (18 B 1295), 38a; Uzunçarşılı, ‘K. Skaliyeri-Aziz Bey komitesi’, pp. 251–3,
with additional information.
12 Nakşfend invited Vacid Bey, cf. Vacid (14 B 1295), 28a, 4a, and also stayed at his
house, cf.
. Vacid (14 B 1295),. second statement, 30a. She stayed for two nights at
kurena Ismail’s house,
. cf. Ismail
. (16 B 1295), sec. statement, 32b and one month
with kahvecibaşı Ibrahim, cf. Ibrahim (28 B 1295), 65b. She also lived for some
time with Hacı Bekir, cf. Tevfik (29 B 1295), 72a.
13 Kadri (10 B 1295), 22a; Ahmed Rıza (15 B 1295), 33b; Mihal (15 B 1295), 34b;
Hacı Hüsnü (23 B 1295), 50b.
14 Aziz (9 B 1295), 17d; Hacı Hüsnü (23 B 1295), 52a; Tevfik (29 B 1295), 72a.
15 Muhtar Bey (17 B 1295), 39d, c.
16 Cf. C.V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 302.
17 Abdullah (11 Ş 1295), 79d, c; ibid. (11/12 B 1295), sec. st., 81c.
18 Mehmed (14 B 1295), 27b.
19 Üsküdarlı Nuri (24 B 1295), 53b; Abdullah (12 Ş 1295), 81d.
20 Ahmed Rıza (11 B 1295), 22c.
21 Aziz (16 B 1295), 35b.
22 Abdullah (11 Ş 1295), 81d, c; Aziz (16 B 1295), 40d; Aziz (20 B 1295), 77a.
23 Aziz (16 B 1295), 40d; FO 78/2574, no. 635, Layard to Derby, Therapia, 19/06/1877.
24 Cf. Mehmed Nuri (27 Haziran 1294), 15a; Muhtar (23 B 1295), 56d; Hüseyin
(25 B 1295), 60d; Muhtar (27 B 1295), 69c.
25 Akif (25 B 1295), 75c; Muhtar (27 B 1295), 71c. According to Aziz (10 B 1295),
20d, Kleanti boasted he could enter the palace at any time like flying into the
window like a balloon.
102 Notes
26 Muhtar (13 B 1295), 23a; Aziz (14 B 1295), 29d, c; Aziz/Vacid (14 B 1295),
26a; Muhtar (24 B 1295), 51c, 56d; Hüseyin (25 B 1295), 56c, 60d; Muhtar
(27 B 1295), 69d; suyolcu Ahmed (27 B 1295), 65d, c; Tevfik (28 B 1295), 69a;
Ahmed (28 B 1295), 71b.
27 Hüsnü (21/22 B 1295), 52d, 48b; Aziz (22 B 1295), 48d; Muhtar (13 B 1295), 23a;
Y.EE 23/5; Y.EE 23/11, Hüsnü’s petition to Abdülhamid (n.d.).
28 Mihal (15 B 1295), 33d.
29 Ahmed Rıza (15 B 1295),. 32a.
30 Kadri (10 B 1295), 17b; Ismail (16 B 1295), 37b; Mihal (26 B 1295), 61a.
31 On the history of the ceremony cf. N. Vatin and Veinstein, G., Le sérail ébranlé.
Essai sur les morts, dépositions et avènements des sultans ottomans (XIVe–XIXe
siècle), Paris: Fayard, 2003, pp. 269–305.
32 Aziz (14 B 1295), 29c.
33 Mehmed Nuri (27 Haziran 1294), 15b; Mustafa, ibid., 15d; Agah (9 B 1295),
24a; Vacid (14 B 1295), 4b.
34 Aziz (20 B 1295), 46a; Hüsnü (21 B 1295), 48b; Aziz (22 B 1295), 48d.
35 Esad (21 B 1295), 56a, 51b.
36 Mihal (20 B 1295), 44b.
37 Agah (9 B 1295), 24a.
38 Agah (11 B 1295), 20b and ibid. (7 Ş 1295), 47d, c, 77b, c.
39 This is the overall thesis of T. Zarcone, Mystiques, philosophes et francs-maçons
en Islam, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1993, showing the functional similarities of these
institutions.
40 P. Dumont, ‘La Turquie dans les archives du Grand Orient de France: les loges
maçonniques d’obédience française à Istanbul du milieu du XIXe siècle à la veille
de la première guerre mondiale’, in J.-L. Baqué-Grammont and P. Dumont (eds)
Économie et sociétés dans l’empire ottoman, Paris: CNRS, 1983, 178–83.
41 Dumont, ‘La Turquie’, pp. 188–94.
42 E. de Kératry, Mourad V. Prince – Sultan – Prisonnier d’État, Paris: Dentu, 1878,
pp. 58, 61.
43 Cf. Svolopoulos, ‘L’initiation de Mourad V’, pp. 446–7, 450–1; Dumont,
‘La Turquie’, pp. 191–2.
44 Svolopoulos, ‘L’initiation de Mourad V’, pp. 452–3; Kératry, Mourad V, pp. 59,
86–7.
45 Dumont, ‘La Turquie’, pp. 192–4.
46 Cf. FO 78/2574, no. 635, Layard to Derby, Therapia, 19/06/1877; FO 195/1332,
no. 504, Scalieri to Goschen, Athens, 21/06/1880; FO 195/1384, no. 490, Scalieri
to Dufferin, 06/07/1881.
47 C. Scalieri, Appel à la justice internationale des Grandes Puissances par rapport au
grand procès de Constantinople par suite de la mort du feu Sultan Aziz, Athens:
Union Scalieri, 1881.
48 A résumé of the investigations is to be found in Y.EE 106/6, the interrogation
protocols in Y.EE 106/7–13. The member of Proodos was a certain Haccar or
Nikolas Haggiar, cf. Svolopoulos, ‘L’initiation de Mourad V’, p. 442.
49 Y.EE 141/15, n.d.; Uzunçarşılı, ‘K. Skaliyeri-Aziz Bey komitesi’, p. 245, n. 1.
50 Cf. M.Ş. Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995, p. 35.
51 F.M. Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996, pp. 80–6.
52 C.V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte,
1789–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, pp. 212–18; Göçek,
Rise, pp. 125–33.
53 The list of the Proodos members in Svolopoulos, ‘L’initiation de Mourad V’,
p. 442, gives his name slightly distorted as Safaati Ali, employé de gt. Also cf.
 Notes 103
K.S. Sel, ‘Masonluk Aleminin Meşhur Meçhulleri’, Mimar Sinan 18, 1975,
pp. 34–44.
54 Osmanlı Müellifleri, Bursalı Mehmed : Tahır (ed.) Istanbul:
: Matbaa-ı Âmire, 1333,
vol.
. II, p. 85; M. Türköne, Siyasî Ideoloji Olarak Islâmcılığın
. Doğuşu, Istanbul:
Iletişim, 1994, pp. 208–9 and pp. 234–7; T.Z. Tunaya, ‘Ilk Osmanlı Anayasa
Kitabı: Hükümet-i Meşruta’, Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi
I, 34–5.
55 Haccar (Haggiar), who was arrested for his implication in the Sokrat affair,
named Aziz as a member of Proodos in his interrogation of 18 (Za?)1296, Y.EE
106/11, p. 14. In the Proodos membership list of 1873 there is listed one ‘Aziz
Mahmoud, empl. de gt.’ which, if he did not join later, probably was Aziz Bey.
56 Y.EE 23/5, Aziz (16 B 1295), 40c.
57 Zarcone, Mystiques, pp. 301–26.
58 T. Erdoğdu, ‘Civil Officialdom and the Problem of Legitimacy in the Ottoman
Empire (1876–1922)’, in H. Karateke and M. Reinkowski (eds) Legitimizing the
Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, Leiden: Brill, 2005, 213–32,
pp. 215–18; C.V. Findley, ‘Economic Bases of Revolution and Repression in
the Late Ottoman Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 28, 1986,
81–106.

7 Conclusion: the Tanzimat and beyond

1 A. Salzmann, ‘Citizens in Search of a State: The Limits of Political Participation
in the Late Ottoman Empire’, in M. Hanagan and C. Tilly (eds) Extending
Citizenship, Reconfiguring States, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, 37–66.
2 Ş. Mardin, ‘Freedom in an Ottoman Perspective’, in M. Heper and A. Evin (eds)
State, Democracy and the Military. Turkey in the 1980s, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988,
23–35.
3 Ş. Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition, New York: Oxford University Press,
1995, pp. 33–70.
4 PRO, FO 78/2789, no. 692, Layard to Salisbury, Therapia 27/05/1878; ibid.,
no. 693, 31/05/1878; ibid., no. 752, Therapia, 08/06/1878.
5 K.H. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam. Reconstructing Identity, Faith, and
Community in the Late Ottoman State, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001,
pp. 161–8.
6 Cf. S. Deringil, ‘Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of
Abdülhamid II (1876–1909)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 23,
1991, 345–59 and Deringil, The Well Protected Domains, London and New York:
Tauris, 1998.
7 BOA, Y.EE 20/26 (n.d.).
8 Y.EE 94/1 (n.d. 1298?) and Sicill-i osmanî, Mehmed Süreyyâ, 4 vols, Istanbul:
Matbaa-ı Amire, 1308–11, vol. IV, p. 627.
9 Ş. Mardin, ‘Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution’, International
Journal of Middle East Studies 2, 1971, 97–211; A. Ayalon, ‘From Fitna to
Thawra’, Studia Islamica 66, 1987, 145–74, pp. 163–5.
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Index

Abdülaziz 13–4, 27, 43–5, 50–3; Cafer Dem Pasha 15–16, 40

assassination plans against 14, 36 Carbonaria 33
Abdülhamid II 54, 67; assassination Cevdet Pasha 55
plans against 71, 77–8, 80; and Christians see non-Muslims
opposition 87–8 Circassia, Circassians 21, 24, 60
Abdülmecid: assassination plans civil bureaucracy 4–6, 81; lower
against 16; unpopularity of 13 ranking 24, 69, 74, 81; salaries 48, 82
Abdurrahman Sami Pasha 51 civil society 86
Agah Efendi 34, 41 Çırağan incident 61–3
Ahmed Lütfi 47 Committee of Union and
Ahmed, sheikh 68 Progress 11, 88
Ahmed, sheikh, Süleymaniyeli 15–17, constitution of 1876 54–6, 67
22–3; early life 18–21; in constitutionalism 7; Esad's treatise
exile 25, 40 Hükumet-i meşruta 82; of Midhat 45,
Akçura, Y. 12 49; of Murad 79; of Süleyman Pasha
Ali, Basiretçi 62 51; of Young Ottomans 29–30, 33–4,
Âli Pasha 4, 27; assassination plans 37–8, 66
against 28, 31; hostility towards 15, Crete 20, 27–9, 39, 64, 69
39, 64, 66 Crimea 60
Ali Şefkati 74, 76, 81 Crimean War 13, 19–21
Ali Suavi 28–9, 34–5, 64–5, 68–9; and
Çırağan incident 61–63; Daghestan 20
collaboration with Abdülhamid Davison, R. 12
67–8; political ideas 65–7 democracy 66
Amiable, L. 78–9
Arif Bey 16, 24 Ebüzziya Tevfik 33, 36, 40
Austria 14, 38, 46 education: in army 51; in bureaucratic
Ayetullah Bey 33, 51 bourgeoisie 81–2; topic in
Aziz Bey 71–6; and Freemasonry 82 newspapers 28, 64–5; see also
Azmi Bey 32 schools
Elliot, H.G. 49, 67, 73, 79
Beylerbey plot 36 Engelhardt, E. 12
biat 38, 52–3, 72, 76–7 Esad Efendi 74, 77, 81–2
Bosnia-Herzegovina 27, 46, 49,
54, 69 factionalism 7–8, 13–14, 19, 25, 48–9
bourgeoisie: bureaucratic 81; fedai 16–17
commercial 82–3 fesad 5, 16, 30, 61, 86; see also
Britain 14, 54, 59, 62, 68–9 rebellion
Bulgaria 47, 58–9 Feyzullah, sheikh 23
112 Index
Filibe 62–4, 68, 74 Layard, H. 68, 75
fitne 5, 16, 30, 67, 86; see also legitimacy: and material conditions 46,
rebellion 81–2; and military defeat 13, 59–60,
Foran, J. 2 63; and religion 5–6, 19, 59, 77, 84–5;
France 2, 14, 37 see also sultan
Freemasonry 11, 78–80, 82, 87; see also Lewis, B. 12
Masonic lodges
Fuad Pasha 4, 15, 27–8, 78 Mahmud Celaleddin 44
Mahmud II 5, 7, 18–19, 21
gazi 6, 21, 59, Mahmud Nedim Pasha 43–50; his
Gladstone, W. 67, 69 treatise Ayine-i Devlet 43–4
grand vizier 4–5, 43, 56 Mahmud Pasha, Damat 55
Mardin, Ş. 9, 11, 86
Halil Şerif 29 Masonic lodges: Proodos 79–82;
Hasan Fehmi Efendi 77 Union d'Orient 78–9; see also
Hasan, Çerkes 53 Freemasonry
Hayrullah Efendi 53, 88 medrese students 15, 21, 23, 31–2, 77;
Hidayet Pasha 88 demonstrations in 1853 19–20;
Hungarians 14, 22, 33 demonstrations in 1876 47–8;
Hüseyin Avni Pasha 44–6, 48–9; and demonstrations in 1877 59
coup 50, 52–3; murder of 53–4 Mehmed Ali Pasha, minister 14, 19
Hüseyin Daim Pasha 16–17, 21–3, Mehmed Bey 29–31, 33–6, 37
24–5; alleged member of Young Mehmed Emin Âli Pasha see
Ottomans 30, 32 Âli Pasha
Hüseyin Vasfi Pasha 36–7 Mehmed Fuad Pasha, Keçecizade see
. Fuad Pasha
I. brahim Şinasi 27–8 Mehmed Pasha, Hafız 21
Iğdemir, U. 12 Mehmed Pasha, Kıbrılslı 25
Ignatiev, N.P. 45, 47 Mehmed Rüşdi Pasha, Mütercim 47,
international relations 13 49–50, 75
Islam: as political ideology 37–9, 46–7, Mehmed Rüşdi Pasha, Şirvanizade
62, 81–2, 85, 87–88; religious 45, 50
language 9, 16, 24, 37–8; religious Midhat Pasha 44–5, 47–50, 88; and
symbols 6, 19, 76–7, 88; see also 1876 constitution 54–5, 67; his
Muslims, pan-Islamism memorandum of Muslim Patriots 49
Islamic law see sharia Mihal 74
Ismail,
. viceroy of Egypt 28, 45 military academy 36, 44, 50–1
Ismail, sheikh 23 military officers 17, 23; alaylis vs.
isyan 5, 40; see also rebellion mekteblis 51; new political ideas
Italians 22, 33 51–2
Millingen, F. 21
janissaries 3–4, 8–9, 43, 47, 66 Montenegro 22, 27, 55
jihad 19, 21 muhacir 59–60; see also refugees
Muhyiddin Efendi 55
Kadirallah, sheikh 82 Murad V 14, 37, 52, 54; abduction plot
Kadri 71, 74 in 1876 58; alleged contact with Ali
Kamil Bey 55 Suavi 62; contact to Skalieri-Aziz
Kansu, A. 1 committee 72–6; and
Khalid al-Shahrizuri, sheikh, 18–19 Freemasonry 79
Konduri-Altıncı plot 36 Muslims 6, 33, 59–60, 69, 78; oppressed
Kuleli conspiracy see Society of 29, 40, 47, 85; see also refugees
Martyrs Mustafa Fazıl Pasha 28–30, 32, 34–5,
Kuran, Ahmed Bedevi 11–12 65, 78; his open letter 28–9, 38, 64
Kurdistan 18 Mustafa Reşid Pasha see Reşid Pasha
 Index 113
Nakşfend Kalfa 73, 75–7, 80 rebellion 5, 40, 67, 86; right of 39, 47,
Namık Kemal 28–9, 33–5, 41, 46, 79; 65–6; see also fitne, fesad, isyan
his political ideas 37–40 Refik Bey 33
Nasuh, hodja 20, 23 reforms 4–5; 1839 decree 6–7, 19, 40;
national assembly see parliament 1856 decree 7, 13, 22, 37; in
Necib Bey 68 historiography 8; opposition
newspapers: Basiret 62, 81; Courrier to 8–9
d'Orient 29; Diplomatic Review 69; refugees: from Balkans 59, 61–3, 68–9,
Hayal
: 81;: Hürriyet 35, 37,
: 39, 40, 66; 72; from Circassia 24, 60; from
Ibret
: 46; Inkılab 35–6; Istikbal 81; Crimea 60; settlement in
Ittihad 35; Mir'at 33; Muhbir 28–9, Daghestan 20
34–5, 64–6; Tasvir-i Efkar 27–9, 64; Reşad Bey 29–31, 33–4, 41
Tercüman-ı Ahval 28, 34; Times 14; Reşid Pasha 4, 14, 19, 27, 39, 78
Ulum 65–66; Vakit 67, 81; see also revolution 2–3, 36, 66–7, 88
press Rıza Bey 55
non-Muslims 6–7; equality demanded Rıza Pasha 14, 22
29, 49; opposition to equality of 9, Russia 13, 20, 46–7, 58–60, 68–9;
17, 22, 37, 43–4, 48; political activity political culture in 2–3
of 38, 71 Russian-Ottoman War of 1877/78
Nuri Bey 29–31, 33–4, 40–1 58–9, 68
Nuri, Hafız 62
Nuri, Üsküdarlı 62–3 Sadık Pasha 62
Said Sermedi 28
opposition: Young Ottoman's St. Clair, S.G.B. 63
understanding of 38–9, 65–7; schools: Darülmuallim 74, 82; Mekteb-i
see also rebellion Osmanî 31, 36; Mekteb-i Sultanî 67,
Osman Pasha 58, 75 68; rüşdiye 50, 64, 82; also see
education
palace servants 62, 73–4, 81 Serbia 27, 29, 55
pan-Islamism 47, 59, 62, 69, 82 Şerif Efendi, Gürcü 55, 77
pan-Slavism 59, 69 Shamil, sheikh 20–21
parliament: of 1876 56, 77; Ali Suavi sharia 6, 8, 15–20, 31, 37–8, 43, 49;
opposed to 66–7; demanded by as basis of constitution 37,
Young Ottomans 30, 33, 37, 39, 41; 66, 82; limiting sultan's powers
demanded by Midhat 45, 49; general 39, 43, 66
council 48 . Skalieri–Aziz committee 72–8, 80
Patriotic Alliance (Ittifak-ı Hamiyet) Skalieri, K. 72–3, 75–7; and
33–4 Freemasonry 78–80
patronage 7, 69, 81 slavery 9, 21
petitions 19–20, 25, 28, 38, 68 Society of Martyrs (Fedailer Cemiyeti)
Poles 14, 22, 33 16–17, 28, 40, 44, 88; structure of
political culture 1–3, 24, 85–6; in army 23–4
24–25, 51–2; authoritarian 5; in Sokrat 80
bureaucracy 83; of elite 7, 56; of Sufi orders: Kadiri 18; Khalidi 18–20,
opposition 2, 9, 41, 86 43; Mevlevi 82; Naqshbandi 18–20,
political system 3–7, 42–3 22–4; Rifai 19; see also Sufism
press: domestic 27–9, 40, 46; in exile Sufism 11, 82; see also Sufi orders
34–6; see also newspapers Süleyman Asaf Bey 61
public opinion: domestic 13, 25, Süleyman Hüsnü Pasha 50–3, 88;
27, 29, 38, 46–8, 67; international alleged member of Young Ottoman
49, 67, 80 Society 51
Süleymaniye 18–9, 23
Ramiz Pasha 55 sultan 5–6, 84–5; religious legitimacy of
Rasim Bey 16 6, 59, 77; rights under 1876
114 Index
constitution 55–6; spending of 13, 15, Vambéry, A. 12, 20, 22
17, 25, 48–9; succession of 5, Vocation group (Meslek) 30–4
14, 79, 85; Young Ottomans and
37–9, 66 Williams, W. Fenwick 21

Tanzimat see reforms Young Ottoman Society 34–5, 51, 65

Thouvenel, E. 25 Young Turk revolution 1, 88
Tunaya, T.Z. 10 Young .Turks 11, 52, 81, 87–8
Yusuf Izzeddin 55, 70, 79
Ubaydullah, sheikh 18
ulema 14–15, 17, 19–20, 31; conspiracy Zarcone, T. 11
against Abdülhamid 54–5 Ziya Bey 29, 34–5, 41, 52–3, 66; alleged
Urquhart, D. 69 member of Vocation 30, 32; political
Üsküdar Society 61–3, 68 ideas 37, 39