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The Conscription of Greek Ottomans into the Sultan's Army, 1908–1912

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2020

Uğur Z. Peçe Open the ORCID record for Uğur Z. Peçe [Opens in a new window]
Uğur Z. Peçe*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 18015, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: uzp218@lehigh.edu
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Abstract

With the reinstatement of the parliament in 1908, the Ottoman state faced new challenges connected to citizenship. As a policy to finally make citizens equal in rights as well as duties, military conscription figured prominently in this new context. For the first time in Ottoman history, the empire's non-Muslims began to be drafted en masse. This article explores meanings of imperial citizenship and equality through the lens of debates over the conscription of Greek Ottomans, the largest non-Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire. In contrast to the widespread suggestion of the Turkish nationalist historiography on these matters, Greek Ottomans and other non-Muslim populations enthusiastically supported the military service in principle. But amidst this general agreement was a tremendous array of views on what conscription ought to look like in practice. The issue came to center on whether Greek Ottomans should have separate battalions in the army. All units would eventually come to be religiously integrated, but the conscription debates in the Ottoman parliament as well as in the Turkish and Greek language press reveal some of the crucial fissures of an empire as various actors were attempting to navigate between a unified citizenship and a diverse population.

Keywords

Ottoman EmpireconscriptioncitizenshipGreeks
Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 433 - 448
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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22 Ibid., 64–65.

23 Gülsoy, Cizyeden Vatandaşlığa, 133–34. As required by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), the Ottoman state, especially during the 1890s, made attempts at employing Armenians of the Eastern Anatolian provinces in the gendarmerie corps. For a discussion about why these reforms fell short of the treaty's expectations see Özbek, Nadir, “Policing the Countryside: Gendarmes of the Late 19th Century Ottoman Empire (1876–1908),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (2008): 59–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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25 Tunaya, Tarık Zafer, Türkiye’de Siyasi Partiler, 1859-1952 (Istanbul: Arba Yayınları, 1995), 209Google Scholar. For a discussion of the practice of conscription and changes in the system of recruitment in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, see Çadırcı, Musa, Tanzimat Sürecinde Türkiye: Askerlik (Istanbul: Imge Yayınları, 2008)Google Scholar. On conscription during World War I and the militarization of Ottoman public life, see Aksakal, Mustafa, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beşikçi, Mehmet, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Akın, Yiğit, When the War Came Home: The Ottomans’ Great War and the Devastation of an Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Ali Seydi, “Askerliğin Milel-i Gayrimüslimeye Teşmili,” Tanin, 23 August 1908.

27 “Dēlōsis tou en Tourkia Ellēnikou Typou,” Proodos, 25 August 1908. Istanbul newspapers represented in the statement were Proodos, Neologos, Kōnstantinoupolēs, Prōia, N. Efēmeris, Tachydromos, and Patris. Izmir newspapers were Armonia, Amaltheia, N. Smyrnē, and Ēmerēsia Smyrnē.

28 Born in Greece, Souliotis had an eventful career in the Greek foreign ministry. Before 1908 he mostly worked to check Bulgarian military and cultural influence in Ottoman Macedonia and later was transferred to Istanbul. For a discussion of his political activities in the Ottoman Empire as the founder of the Society of Constantinople, see Athanasios Souliōtēs-Nikolaidēs, Organōsis Kōnstantinoupoleōs, edited by Thanos Veremis and Caterina Boura (Athens: Dodoni, 1984), 47–49; and Thanos Veremis, “The Hellenic Kingdom and the Ottoman Greeks: The Experiment of the ‘Society of Constantinople,’” in Gondicas and Issawi, Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, 181–91.

29 Veremis and Boura, Athanasios Souliōtēs-Nikolaidēs, 61–63.

30 Hüseyin Cahid, “Millet-i Hakime,” Tanin, 7 November 1908. For two more examples of Cahid's perception of Greek Ottomans as a disloyal Ottoman population, see the following articles: “Rum Matbuatı,” Tanin, 10 November 1908; and “Yaşasın Asker,” Tanin, 23 November 1908.

31 “Yper Patridos: Pros tous Adelfous Neotourkous,” Proodos, 10 November 1908.

32 “Turkey for the Turks,” Jamanak, 11 October 1908, quoted in Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams, 56. For an insightful discussion of the political positions among the Armenian population at the time, see Kılıçdağı, Ohannes, “Ottoman Armenians in the Second Constitutional Period: Expectations and Reservations,” in The Ottoman East in the Nineteenth Century: Societies, Identities and Politics, eds. Cora, Yaşar Tolga, Derderian, Dzovinar, and Sipahi, Ali (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016), 199–220Google Scholar.

33 Hüseyin Cahid, “Gayrimüslimlerin Askerliği,” Tanin, 18 September 1909.

34 “Gayrimüslimlerin Askerliği,” Sada-i Millet, 29 October 1909, excerpt from Neologos.

35 “Ē Stratologia tōn mē Mousoulmanōn,” Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, 3 November 1909. I would like to thank the Library of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul for permitting me to use their collections, which include Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia. A long excerpt was published in Sada-i Millet's 12 November 1909 issue with the title “Tecnid-i Anasır-ı Osmaniye.” Demonstrating the influence of Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia's article, another Greek-language daily from Istanbul, Tahydromos, also published it on 5 November 1909. Regarding the early examples of the presence of Christian soldiers in the Ottoman armies, see Şâmî, Nizamüddin, Zafername (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1949), 305Google Scholar; and Neşrî, , Kitâb-ı Cihan-nümâ (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1949), 266–67Google Scholar.

36 “Rum Efradının Müracaatı,” Tanin, 5 April 1910.

37 “Stratologia Christianōn,” Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, 9 April 1910. Sada-i Millet published a translation of the article on 11 April 1910.

38 See Gülsoy, Cizyeden Vatandaşlığa, 166.

39 Even though the cartoon seems to be ridiculing all non-Muslim Ottomans, Karagöz’s regular readership would recognize that the satirical magazine derided Greeks more often than other groups in its general coverage. See, for instance, its issue dated 11 February 1911.

40 It is worth noting that Tanin wrote frequently about the enthusiasm of non-Muslims regarding conscription when it involved Armenians. For example, see “Ermeni Kiliseleri ve Askerlik,” 1 February 1910; and “Askerliğe Davet,” 13 March 1910. In the latter, Tanin reported that Armenians in an Anatolian village addressed a letter to an Armenian newspaper published in the United States and urged their fellow villagers to return to the country. They added that their failure to heed the call would deprive them of their property rights in the village. Tanin's selective reporting reflected its editor's general attitude toward Greeks and Armenians. Hüseyin Cahid had claimed in an earlier editorial that “in the previous regime it was Greeks who suffered least, whereas Turks and Armenians suffered most”; “Rum Matbuatı.”

41 “İzah-ı Maksat ve Meslek,” Sada-i Millet, 17 January 1910.

42 “Anasır-ı Gayrimüslimenin Askerliği,” Sada-i Millet, 3 November 1909.

43 “Rum Efradı ve Patrik Efendi’nin Nutku,” Sada-i Millet, 14 March 1910. The original Greek text of the speech was published in Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia on 18 March 1910. Emphasis is mine.

44 Hüseyin Cahid, “Rahat Bırakalım,” Tanin, 20 March 1910; “Hıristiyanların Askerliği,” Sada-i Millet, 27 March 1910.

45 “Bir Rum Neferin Mektubu,” Sada-i Millet, 1 April 1910.

46 “Bir Rum Neferin Beyanatı,” Sada-i Millet, 1 May 1910.

47 “Enantion tēs Isotētos,” Ekklēsiastikē Alētheia, 10 June 1910.

48 Meclis-i Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 4 (Ankara: TBMM Matbaası, 1986), 149–58 (session on 16 April 1910).

49 Ibid., 159 (session on 16 April 1910).

50 Ibid., 159–63 (session on 16 April 1910).

51 Boussios, or Boşo in Turkish, was one of the most controversial figures in the Ottoman parliament, so much so that in one of Ziya Gökalp’s most famous poems, entitled Vatan (Homeland), the poet described the ideal national home for the Turks as a country “whose deputies are pure and where the Boussioses have no place.” Feroz Ahmad claimed that “[Greek deputies’] contempt for Ottomanism may be illustrated by Boussios Efendi's remark ‘I am as Ottoman as the Ottoman Bank!’” Although Ahmad admitted that this remark was probably apocryphal, he still argued that “it catches the spirit of the time”; “Unionist Relations with the Greek, Armenian and Jewish Communities of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. 1, eds. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), 409. I have not come across such a remark in my examination of the parliamentary minutes.

52 Meclis-i Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 1, (1991), 105 (session on 25 October 1911).

53 Ibid., 106–10 (session on 25 October 1911).

54 “To peri Stratologias Nomoschedion,” Politikē Epitheōrēsis, 11 April 1910.

55 “Patrikhane ve Askerlik Meselesi,” Tanin, 2 December 1910.

56 Veremis and Boura, Athanasios Souliōtēs-Nikolaidēs, 118–20.

57 “Asker Kaçakları,” Sada-i Millet, 10 April 1910. Similar familial attitudes about military service were corroborated by later examples. Writing about the time of World War I, a Christian officer from Jerusalem related his father's stance on conscription: “My father could have easily sought an exemption from service for my brother Khalil—by marrying him off to a foreign resident, or by claiming him as an artisan, but he chose to have him join the army in the prime of his life, in devotion to the state and the defense of the country.” Quoted in Salim Tamari, Year of the Locust: A Soldier's Diary and the Erasure of Palestine's Ottoman Past (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 86.

58 Gülsoy, Osmanlı Gayrimüslimlerinin Askerlik Serüveni, 147–48.

59 Athanasios Souliotis, “Mē Feugete! ” Politikē Epitheōrēsis, 18 September 1911.

60 Cahid, “Millet-i Hakime.”

61 “Yper Patridos.”

62 Souliotis, “Mē Feugete! ”

63 Eldem, “A Shameful Debate?” 268.

64 For more on labor battalions during World War I, see Zürcher, Erik Jan, “Ottoman Labour Battalions in World War I,” in The Armenian Genocide and the Shoah, ed. Kieser, Hans-Lukas and Schaller, Dominik J. (Zurich: Chronos, 2002), 191–92Google Scholar; and Akçam, Taner, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan, 2006), 149–52Google Scholar.