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Nation and Migration in Late-Ottoman Spheres of (Legal) Belonging: A Comparative Look at Laws on Nationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2021

A. Ebru Akcasu Open the ORCID record for A. Ebru Akcasu [Opens in a new window]
A. Ebru Akcasu*
Affiliation:
Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ebru.akcasu@gmail.com
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Abstract

The last century of the Ottoman state’s existence witnessed the transformation of the term “Ottoman” from an elite, class-based, and exclusive designation to one including and identifying all whose allegiances were tied to the state. Despite this semantic shift, the verdict is still out on the question of late-Ottoman inclusivity. Indeed, exclusivist is a term more frequently coupled with policy and law. Though the former can be considered exclusivist in many instances from the late 19th century through the dissolution of the empire, the designation does not fit the legal framework and terminology that articulated belonging. To recognize this, it is imperative to approach the 1869 Ottoman Nationality Law from a comparative perspective, especially, though not strictly, with reference to Great Power laws, since these legalities are the yardstick by which Ottoman rational modernity has been measured. This article considers access to actual and potential membership in various nationality laws in relation to their Ottoman counterpart and concludes that the exclusivist designation is questionable. Instead, Ottoman law does not present an anomaly and was in many instances both more expansive and more inclusive than others—even if it has been subjected to a different vocabulary than contemporaneous laws with similar stipulations.

Keywords

Ottoman Empiremigrationnational identityGreat Powersterritorialization
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 49 , Issue 6 , November 2021 , pp. 1113 - 1131
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities

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