Yilmaz - Dilemmas of Ottoman Legacy

Middle Eastern Studies
ISSN: 0026-3206 (Print) 1743-7881 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmes20
Fighting the Spectres of the Past: Dilemmas of

Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans and the Middle
East
Şuhnaz Yilmaz & İpek K. Yosmaoglu
To cite this article: Şuhnaz Yilmaz & İpek K. Yosmaoglu (2008) Fighting the Spectres of the Past:
Dilemmas of Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans and the Middle East, Middle Eastern Studies, 44:5,
677-693, DOI: 10.1080/00263200802285369
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200802285369
Published online: 11 Sep 2008.
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Middle Eastern Studies,
Vol. 44, No. 5, 677–693, September 2008
Fighting the Spectres of the Past:

Dilemmas of Ottoman Legacy in the
Balkans and the Middle East
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 08:50 10 January 2016
_
ŞUHNAZ YILMAZ & IPEK K. YOSMAOGLU
‘Ottoman legacy’ is not a term that invokes a positive image in the countries that
remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the Middle
East for varying periods of time. Even the mundane elements of life that people
share across this vast geography, which might hint at a common cultural
denominator or a shared mode of sociability, such as coffee, are now presented and
consumed in a way that ensures any ties with the imperial past are severed once
and for all. A nineteenth-century traveller in the Ottoman Empire would be
welcomed with the same little serving of a dense and rejuvenating concoction
whether s/he be in Monastir or Damascus: a cup of coffee – not a beverage simply
imbibed in order to fuel a caffeine addiction, but a ritual of friendship and
hospitality, and a symbol of social capital in the Balkans and the Middle East. The
same cup of coffee awaits the traveller today, despite the onslaught of insipid mixes
and pseudo-Italian competitors peddled by American conglomerates. There is,
however, an important distinction: the traveller is now well advised to ask for the
coffee by its national name, and avoid calling it ‘Turkish coffee’ except, of course,
in Turkey.
What is the motive in erasing even the slightest association with an Ottoman
past? The obvious answer is in the question itself: it is in the past being qualified as
‘Ottoman/Turkish’ – in other words, foreign, and signifying a period which is
better forgotten than remembered except in so far as commemorating the
hardships the nation had to endure before prevailing over the imperial occupier.
This study argues that denial of a place to the Ottoman past in the nation state’s
historical and cultural legacy, however, serves a larger purpose than distancing the
self from the Turkish other; it also ensures that the complexities and hybridity
contained in that imperial legacy is safely packed away in a place where it cannot
threaten the nation’s genealogical purity. What taints the imperial past is not only
the foreign rulers, but the experience of a communal existence that is anathema to
the nation state’s exigency of clear boundaries and social purity. It is not a
surprise, therefore, that elements that may question the foundations of those
boundaries are externalized as ‘Ottoman anomalies’, rather than becoming
incorporated into the past as part of a historiographical tradition other than that
of the nation state.
ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/08/050677-17 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/00263200802285369
678 S. Yilmaz & I._ K. Yosmaoglu
In the Balkans and the Middle East, where the Ottomans had a long presence,
cities such as Salonika, Sofia, Belgrade, Damascus and Cairo still display vestiges of
Ottoman urbanism despite the ruthless effects of time and national policies of
eradication. Cuisine, popular culture, and even language (with countless examples
of words and expressions borrowed from and into Turkish) reflect a common
cultural heritage and the impact of the Ottoman centuries. Nevertheless, Ottoman
rule, often described as ‘the Turkish yoke’ is blamed for the relative backwardness of
these regions in the past and the present, and ‘the Turks’ for being oppressive rulers
and the source of detested alien domination. The term ‘Turkish domination’ itself is
a testament to the way nationalist historiographies perceive the Ottoman past, since
the Ottoman Empire was by no means a ‘Turkish Empire’, but a genuinely

multilingual, multireligious, and multicultural political system.1
The goal of this article is neither to vilify, nor to glorify the Ottoman past. Its aim
is to question the term ‘Ottoman legacy’ itself by addressing three major
problematics that have shaped and perpetuated its negative perceptions in the
Balkans and the Middle East, and by underscoring the ideological weight this term
still wields. The first one is related to the reinvention and reinterpretation of the
Ottoman past through intensely nationalist historiographies; the second engages the
notion of sectarian violence as an Ottoman legacy, while the final one directs
attention to a successor state where this legacy raises an entirely different set of
concerns mostly having to do with foreign policy, namely the Turkish Republic.
Turkey’s relations with the Middle East and the Balkans have been eclipsed by a
common perception that cuts across nationalist historical narratives, one that
perpetuates the image of ‘the terrible Turk’. Nevertheless, the historical interpreta-
tion of the Ottoman past itself is neither a monolith, nor unchanging.
Rifaat Abou-El-Haj’s extensive study of recent Arab historiography of Ottoman
rule analyses the intricate dynamics of ‘the social uses’ of the Ottoman legacy. He
breaks down the Arab historiography on the Ottoman rule into three distinct
chronological periods: to 1918; 1918–50; and 1950 to the present.2 The first period,
which terminates with the First World War is marked by a more positive perspective
toward the Ottoman Empire as upholder of the Islamic caliphate-sultanate.
However, particularly with the shift from Ottomanism to the Turkification policies
of the Young Turks (combined with the impact of the missionary activities of the
European powers and the increasing weight of their imperialism) in the final years of
the empire, the disassociation of the Arabs from the Ottoman-Islamic identity gained
impetus. North Africa, where Ottoman support against the Italians and the French
was favourably received as a demonstration of pan-Muslim solidarity, formed an
exception in this regard. Hence, the critical historical developments and the
perception of a new era in Arab history inspired a new genre of scholarly production,
which presumed the existence of Arab nationalism that aimed to overthrow Ottoman
domination, and a new historical identity to accompany it.3
The division of the former Ottoman provinces among the victorious European
powers through the mandate system in the aftermath of the First World War gave
way to the quest for a historical justification of the existence of these new states with
often arbitrarily drawn borders. With the strong backing of dominant colonial
Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans and the Middle East 679
powers, the quest for a unified Arab state was soon conveniently replaced by
regional nationalisms, such as Iraqi, Syrian, and Egyptian among many others. In an
area where identities and loyalties had once been locally defined, the recently created
states were associated with previously undifferentiated national identities anachro-
nistically projected back to earlier centuries. This reinvented version of Arab history,
which legitimized political reality, also reached the Arab public through the public
education system, officially sponsored by the colonial powers particularly at the
primary and secondary levels of schooling.4 In this context, the Arab discourse
started to be dominated by the view that the Ottoman Empire had been an
oppressive power which violently suppressed Arab nationalism and was the major
cause of the backward conditions in the Arab world. Despite the appearance of a
number of works by Arab and non-Arab scholars that question the historical
soundness of these arguments, they still form a significant part of the Arab political
worldview as it relates to the Ottoman legacy.5
In this period, the tendency to denigrate the Ottoman legacy also served a
practical purpose for the ruling elite, who wanted to disassociate themselves from
their strong ties with an imperial past as integral parts of the Ottoman administrative
apparatus. In most of these newly created states, the politics were dominated by
elites who were educated in Ottoman schools and colleges and had served the
Ottoman Empire as bureaucrats or soldiers. So, many of them had adopted a
distinctly Ottoman sartorial style, and despite their nationalist proclamations a
significant number of them preferred to speak Turkish. For instance, Subhi Barakat,
the first president of the Syrian federal council, spoke very little Arabic, hence, in
order to accommodate him and a number of other delegates who shared his
background, the Aleppo council declared Turkish as an official language.6 There
were significant aspects of continuity into the post-Ottoman period, since the
Ottoman administrative system constituted the foundation of government in much
of this area, and even the Ottoman codes of law, notably the Mecelle, remained in
force in parts of the region. Nevertheless, in an attempt to forge a new identity for
the local elite, which was confronted with the dilemma of having recently shifted
their loyalties from the Ottoman Empire to yet another external (this time colonial)
power, the aspects of continuity were ignored and the Ottoman legacy was negated.
Finally, in the third period of the Arab scholarly output (since 1950), while these
arguments still persist, there is also the emphasis on a common Arab identity that
coincides with political independence and it is fuelled by Arab nationalism. The
discourse of Arabs as the victims of ‘double imperialism’, first the Ottoman and then
the European, also gain ascendance in this period. As far as the Ottoman legacy is
concerned, the general tendency is to emphasize a common identity and heritage of
the Arab peoples which precedes the four centuries of Ottoman control. While some
exceptions exist, the entire period of Ottoman rule is usually lumped together quite
dismissively as inhitat (decay) without much differentiation pertaining to the realities
of different periods. Instead, the tendency is to focus on the first centuries of Islamic
and ‘purely Arab’ history as the essential source of common Arab identity.7 Hence,
in this period the conscious neglect of the Ottoman legacy for ideological reasons is
more pronounced.
Negative depictions of the Ottoman legacy also prevailed in the Balkans.
Its remarkable detractors notwithstanding, Ottoman rule as an ‘abominable
discontinuity’ in the otherwise natural development of various nations remain a

cornerstone of common perceptions of the Ottoman past.8 Moreover, in the context
of the Balkans where the Ottomans ruled over a majority Christian population, the
notion of alien oppression is compounded by the presumed ‘Islamic’ nature of the
Ottoman state. As the Ottomans expanded their domains – principally in the
Balkans, and later to the east – from the fifteenth into the sixteenth century, they
were not motivated by a religious zeal that aimed to replace Christianity with Islam
or implementing the rule of a privileged ethnic group. Nevertheless, religious
oppression by the swift sword of the ruthless Turk is a forceful image in describing
the sufferings of a captive Christianity. Historical record, however, suggests that the
‘Christian experience’ – for lack of a better term – under the Ottomans was neither
uniform nor indiscriminately oppressive. In fact, it would not be misleading to state
that Ottoman rule even offered a degree of freedom and flexibility in religious
practice unparalleled in other parts of Europe, which experienced violent purges of
religious difference well into the eighteenth century. The sacking of Constantinople
by Mehmed II’s victorious army is certainly well noted. It is important to remember,
however, that an earlier and arguably more devastating sacking of Byzantine
Constantinople had been executed in 1204 by the Crusaders, and the relations
between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity were quite far from amicable when the
Byzantine Empire was finally replaced by that of their Ottoman neighbours.
There were, nevertheless, crucial differences between the nature of Ottoman rule in
the Balkans and the Middle East that contributed to variations in the perceptions of
an Ottoman legacy in these regions. One of the most significant and enduring
socioeconomic legacies of the Ottomans has been the particular agrarian-social
structure they maintained throughout their rule in the Balkans and Anatolia in the
form of small peasant holdings – a pattern which proved to be influential well into
the twentieth century over most of this area. Halil Inalcık’s empirical studies support
the argument that the Ottoman state’s control of agricultural land, as well as peasant
labour, was indeed a significant factor in its resistance to change both economically
and socially. Nevertheless, Inalcık maintains that it would be too reductionist to
state the problem, which is common to all non-western traditional societies, simply
as part of the Ottoman legacy without taking into consideration the broader
economic and historical dynamics.9 Moreover, it is hard to overlook the stability the
pax ottomana provided, especially during the period of unchallenged Ottoman rule in
the Balkans, which improved economic conditions and alleviated the economic
burden on the population. Even in the nineteenth century, when security was a
serious issue, Ottoman rule guaranteed access to a unified commercial outlet for the
Balkan peasantry. This advantage disappeared with the foundation of new nation
states, and, according to Michael Palairet, had a negative influence on the economy
as a whole.10
The landholding structure in the Arab lands displayed a different pattern than
what held true for most of the Balkans and Anatolia. The Ottomans generally
refrained from interfering with the land regime established long before their rule.
Moreover, the tribal dynamics, as well as the irrigation agriculture prevalent in
Egypt and lower Iraq necessitated different arrangements in landholding. In
particular instances, when the Ottomans tried to change these existing structures,
as was the case during their centralization efforts in Iraq in the nineteenth century,
they encountered significant difficulties.11 While the Ottomans maintained the

tradition of a strong state with an extensive bureaucratic apparatus, yet another
Ottoman legacy that persists,12 they also tried to be adaptive to the local
socioeconomic realities, which facilitated their long lasting control over these areas.
In an overall assessment of the current state of the historiography, despite
persisting prejudices and interdisciplinary barriers, it is encouraging to see the seeds
of an intellectual curiosity that attempts to research the Ottoman past simply for its
own merit. This curiosity fuels research for understanding how the past functioned,
divested of discrete or overt national agendas.13 A new generation of scholars are
carrying out an admirable task of painstakingly combing through multilingual
sources, and we have already started to witness a shift in the field towards integrating
the Ottoman period as one that requires and deserves treatment as much as any
other. It is an entirely different matter, however, when and if that shift will be
reflected in the respective official historiographies of Balkan and Middle Eastern
states – including Turkey.
On the other hand, one worrying development in a post-internet, post-9/11 world
is the currency gained by neo-orientalist castings of Islam, essentialized as religion/
political culture. A considerable part of western media peddles an image of Islam as
inherently backward and Muslims as inherently violent – not to mention the
unedited material spewed around in the blogosphere. In this regard, the
identification of the Ottoman Empire as an ‘Islamic state’ is critical in terms of re-
evaluating its legacy for new generations in the Middle East and the Balkans. While
the historians are trying to tackle the dilemmas of the past, the realities of the present
are already creating new challenges.
One of the ‘Ottoman anomalies’ that we hear about in the media, and in a somewhat
more refined form in academic publications, is the prevalence of ‘sectarian strife’ in
parts of the world that have experienced Ottoman rule. It is true that areas like
Lebanon, Bosnia, Kosovo, and more recently Iraq, where we have witnessed – and
continue to witness – striking episodes of sectarian violence, all share an Ottoman
element in their past. A rather obvious link, one might say, which did not escape the
attention of scholars such as David Fromkin, who, in a much cited New York Times
article, called the problem by its name: ‘the ghost of the Ottoman Empire’. The
United States would have a very difficult time ‘imposing secularism’ in the Middle
East, he argued, because of the legacy of 500 years of Ottoman rule. Moreover, he
claimed that this ghost was also with us during the violent ethnic and religious
confrontations giving way to the dissolution of Yugoslavia, putting the blame on the
‘divide and rule’ policies of the Ottomans in the Balkans.14
More than three years after the invasion of Iraq, it is highly doubtful whether
‘imposing secularism’ was ever a goal of US policy in the Middle East. The
fundamental flaw in Fromkin’s analysis from a historical viewpoint, however, is his
treatment of Ottoman political structure as an immutable religious order from the
fifteenth into the twentieth century.15 What Fromkin and other students of the
Middle East and the Balkans readily assume as the immutable political and social
paradigm of the Ottoman Empire is the so-called ‘millet system’, or the Empire’s
administration of its subject peoples as semi-autonomous confessional entities.
The ‘millet system’ has served as a reliable framework for understanding the
Ottoman political and social order without much concern for historicizing its
definition. Despite the anachronism inherent in such unqualified use of the term, the
‘millet system’ endures in official histories of Middle Eastern and Balkan states as
well as reference works on the Ottoman Empire. The ‘millet system’s’ appeal is due
to a variety of reasons, the principal among which is its simplification of a
relentlessly complex pile of historical facts into a manageable schema. Equally
important is how the millet paradigm can also be presented as a lid that facilitated
the preservation of a nation’s core elements throughout the ‘dark ages’ of Ottoman
rule. Finally, and most relevant for the subject matter of this article, is the
convenience it affords to participants and observers of post-Ottoman conflicts in

attributing at least part of the blame to Ottoman peculiarities.
In this respect, the assessment of the Ottoman legacy as it relates to sectarian strife
presents a very interesting and illuminating case study. What Benjamin Braude has
termed the ‘foundation myth’16 of the Ottoman millet system starts when Mehmed II
appointed Gennadius II not only the Ecumenical Patriarch but also the leader of all
Greek Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire – a practice that extended to
include the Armenian and Jewish millets. However, the term millet acquired the
meaning most commonly associated with it, i.e. ‘confessional community’, only
during the reform period after 1839.17 The principal problem with piling every single
piece of evidence related to the way religious difference was managed in the Ottoman
Empire under the banner of a so-called millet structure and attributing to it the
consistency of a system is the ease with which it glosses over the inner dynamics and
evolution of the Ottoman political and social structures. Therefore one tends to
forget that the rationale for religiously organized communities and the way they
related to the central ruling machinery of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth
century could be entirely different than the way religious difference was tied to
political principles in the nineteenth.
The essential issue that needs to be emphasized here, despite its evident simplicity,
is the operating logic of a pre-modern state, which was literally centuries removed
from its modern counterpart. Consider, to wit, the claim that the Ottomans
organized their subject peoples according to the dictum ‘divide and rule’, and hence
the need to recognize – and even encourage – religious and sectarian differences.
While this claim certainly makes sense in carefully delimited contexts such as the
Ottoman administration’s favouring of the Patriarchate in their disputes with the
Bulgarian Exarchate at the turn of the twentieth century, one should not overlook
the fact that administration according to sectarian difference was devised first and
foremost to serve the tax collection needs of the central state.
One necessary word of caution here that also follows from the need to recognize
the dynamic and evolving nature of the Ottoman state is that we should refrain from
essentializing its attitude towards religious difference in an overly positive manner
just as we have cautioned against its negative typings. There were elements of
Ottoman rule that no doubt must have generated resentment even during the earlier
phases of Ottoman expansion, when appeasement was as much a part of conquest
policy as coercion was.18 It is tempting to view the Ottoman mosaic of ethnic and
religious communities as an instance of ‘multiculturalism’ avant le mot, especially
today when the positive political vibe emanating from the term presents it as a
convenient tool of revisionism. Just as the ‘Turkish yoke’ is a creation of a modernist

and nationalist historical paradigm, however, ‘multiculturalism’ in the Ottoman
Empire is also subject to the same fallacy of trying to narrate the past with today’s
lexicon.
It is important to understand sectarianism and sectarian violence as innately
modern phenomena if we are to evaluate the presumed role the Ottoman cen-
turies played in the violence that seems to be intrinsic to the Balkans and the Middle
East. The Balkans, having acquired the distinction of being the midwife to the two
world wars, constitutes an especially interesting case study in this regard. Towards
the end of four centuries of Ottoman rule in this region, the impact of nationalism
was palpable everywhere from Macedonia to Bosnia. In the case of Bosnia-

Herzegovina, for instance, the activities of the Serbian paramilitary groups, which
particularly targeted the Muslim population, attacking villages and destroying and
confiscating their property, irrevocably altered communal relations.19 The crucial
and often overlooked point, however, was that these Serbian paramilitary groups
were also attacking other Christians of different sects, pillaging their villages,
confiscating their animals, burning their churches, assaulting their clergy and even
killing them. For instance, the complaint from the Christian villagers to the Ottoman
authorities concerning the assault of the Serbian paramilitary groups burning down
the Tavina monastery in the vicinity of Izvornik, with an old priest trapped inside,
also killing some people who tried to stop them, was by no means an isolated
incident.20 It was indeed the manifestation of a broader development, which the
Ottomans would be unable to control and contain, and soon engulf the highly
fragmented ethnic map of the Balkans turning coexistence in religiously and
ethnically mixed communities, which used to be the norm, into an exception owing
to the past.
A short time after the incidents cited above, Macedonia turned into another
battleground for territorial influence manifesting itself as sectarian conflict between
Patriarchist Greeks and Exarchist Bulgarians. According to most accounts, the root
of this conflict is to be found in the Congress of Berlin of 1878, which restored
Ottoman rule in Macedonia – a region that had been included in the ‘Greater
Bulgaria’ of the San Stefano Treaty earlier that year. An alternative date cited as the
inception of the Macedonian conflict is March 1870, which coincides with the
formation of an alternative Orthodox Church in the imperial capital, namely
the Exarchate.21 The Bulgarian Exarchate was a semi-autonomous church still under
the authority of the Patriarchate, but two years later the tense relations between the
two resulted in the Patriarchate’s declaring the new church schismatic.22 Since the
struggle in Macedonia was as much among the different Christian communities as it
was against the Ottoman Empire, one might even consider this date a more accurate
starting point, reflecting a deeper source of conflict than a mere greed for territory.
However, the implicit assumption that we need to recognize here is that the
formation of an alternative church was the first sign of a serious social conflict – one
we might even call ‘civil war’ considering the neighbours slaughtering each other and
congregations attacking their priests in the later stages of the struggle for
Macedonia, during the first decade of the twentieth century.23
Before we scrutinize this assumption further, however, we must note that the
Eurocentric notion that viewed the ‘intermingling of races’ and their coexistence in
close proximity to one another was formed in the nineteenth century as the Ottoman
Empire became a main destination for European travellers. In other words,
presenting ethnic and religiously mixed communities as an ‘Ottoman anomaly’ was a
time-specific development. A geographer highlighted the surprisingly large variety of
‘nationalities’ in Ottoman Macedonia in the following manner: ‘Hungary has a
homogenous population, if we compare it with that of Turkey; for in the latter
country there are districts where eight or ten different nationalities live side by side
within a radius of a few miles.’24 Later, the Cambridge scholar and visitor to the
region G.F. Abbott would describe the situation of the people who constituted these
ethnically diverse communities with highly (and characteristically) unflattering
words: ‘Verily no country ever was in such need of a herald’s office or of a lunatic
asylum, as Macedonia. It may be described as a region peopled with new-born souls
wandering in quest of a body, and losing themselves in the search.’25 At the turn of
the twentieth century, most European observers considered the dizzying array and
arrangement of different ‘races’ in Ottoman Macedonia a sign of Ottoman
incompetence in governing their realms. H.N. Brailsford, who visited the region
after the Ilinden Uprising of 1903 noted, ‘Macedonia lies confounded within three
vilayets (provinces), which correspond to no natural division either racial or
geographical . . . The natural arrangement would have been to place Greeks, Servians,
and Albanians in compartments of their own, leaving the Bulgarians to occupy the
center and the East.’26
It is not surprising that Brailsford’s schema did not include any references to
Muslim Turks who inhabited the area in large numbers. They were associated with
the ruling class, but did not, in the eyes of many, carry any legitimate claim to the
land where they lived, because they did not belong to one of the ‘races’ that inhabited
the area from time immemorial. Time immemorial usually referred to the time when
St. Paul preached in the region, but the discourse about the curious and somewhat
amusing mix of races preserving their ancient ways increasingly acquired a more
sinister tone that underscored the inherent threat such variety implied.27 John Reed,
for instance, wrote after the Balkan Wars: ‘Macedonia is the most frightful mix of
races ever imagined. Turks, Albanians, Greeks and Bulgarians live there side by side
without mingling – and have lived so since the days of St. Paul.’28
It is true that Macedonia did not lack stories of violence to lend ample support to
the notion that it was a danger zone at the time. It had been the scene of terror
attacks, armed uprisings and guerrilla warfare from the end of the nineteenth century
onwards. The question we need to ask is whether the violent conflict there was a
result of differences that already existed and preserved (and exploited) by the
Ottomans – or were those same differences compounded into a rigid definition of
identities after they were politicized and violence was imported as a way of settling
them? Evidence suggests that the forces which finally tore the ‘mixed’ communities
apart did not invent themselves out of religious or ethnic incompatibility; they were
the result of a changing order that no longer tolerated ambiguous boundaries that
could easily be negotiated on a daily basis.
In this regard, it is important to remember that even during the bloodiest stages of
this conflict, which was purportedly based on centuries-old feelings of mutual
animosity, many communities managed to maintain their coexistence without killing
each other or asserting their ‘national identity’. In fact, to the astonishment of
European observers, in many districts of Macedonia, where part of a community had

converted to the Exarchate, they had devised a method which allowed both
communities to have access to the church building on alternate Sundays, or even at
the same time as service was performed in both Greek and Slavonic.29 This is not to
say that these arrangements that facilitated coexistence were formulated and
observed without any resistance from within the communities – they were created
out of necessity, and in many instances ‘coexistence’ implied an uneasy compromise
situation, but a compromise that functioned perfectly well. As the pressures on the
population from armed bands forcing them to take sides in the struggle intensified,
however, compromise and coexistence became untenable options.30 Continuous
attacks and the violence that engulfed the countryside ensured that the peasant
communities, which had somehow managed to survive the onslaught of new
ideologies competing for their loyalty, could no longer remain indifferent bystanders.
The events that accompanied the implementation of the Ottoman population
count of 1903–5 in the ‘Macedonian’ provinces constitute a revealing case study of
how the new classificatory practices of the modernizing state, European intervention
and nationalist factions competing for influence in the region coalesced into a
current that hardened communal boundaries; effectively creating solid sectarian
factions out of the plastic matter of confessional communities.31 Simply the act of
asking people to declare themselves as Exarchist or Patriarchist, as opposed to
Christian Orthodox, was a political act with far-reaching ramifications, most of
which were not foreseen, at least by the Ottoman state. Assigning numbers to
collective identities – however defined – was a necessary step in the configuration of
demographic supremacy, which could then be used as a basis for territorial claims.
The novelty of this situation, however, was not only in the system of counting the
population, but the dissemination of the idea that national identity, represented as
an entry in the census register in this case, was the true principle of political
legitimacy. This process did not reflect a spontaneous escalation of an already-
existing tension so much as the transformation of that tension into a novel method of
politics.
Sectarian violence has haunted not only the Balkans, but the Middle East as well
since the nineteenth century. Even in the mind of the least informed the name
Lebanon almost instantly evokes an association with ‘civil war’ among people
adhering to sects with ‘unpronounceable names’. Throughout history Mount
Lebanon, which enjoyed a semi-autonomous status under the Ottoman Empire,
provided a safe haven for numerous religious and ethnic groups, as well as political
dissidents, thanks to its mountainous and rugged terrain. Hence, historically the
legacy of different periods of immigration and invasion has been the creation of a
very diverse and complex religious mosaic. Under Ottoman rule, the Christians
formed the majority in Mount Lebanon. Most of these Lebanese Christians either
belonged to Eastern Catholic churches (of which the Maronites were the most
numerous), or to various branches of the Eastern Orthodox church. There were also
others who were members of the Monophysite churches.32 To make the picture even
more complicated, this region was also cohabited by the Lebanese Muslims of
Sunnite and Shiite origin. Moreover, the Druzes (an offshoot of the Ismaili sect of
the Shiite Muslims) have also traditionally been a significant player in Lebanese
politics.
The Druzes and the Maronites found themselves in a bloody struggle, which
climaxed in 1860. The colonial patronage of France and Britain of the Maronites
and the Druzes, respectively, was an important factor in deepening the cleavages
among these two communities. European intervention followed the massacres of
1860, at which a majority of the victims were Maronites. It is noteworthy that the
violence of 1860 did not simply take place between Muslim, Maronite and Druze
communities, but also within them in an attempt to redefine their own respective
boundaries in a period of turmoil. In the struggle over communal representation,
intra-communal violence formed an integral part of the broader religious
confrontation across sectarian communities. In 1861, Lebanon became autonomous
under a Christian governor assisted by an administrative council with representatives

from different religious communities.33 Hence, the foundation of a political
structure, which formed along confessional lines, was institutionalized. This
encounter was instrumental in transforming the meaning of religion by singling
out sectarian identity not only as the yardstick for political reform and modernity,
but also as the main instrument for political claims forming a precursor for future
conflict.
It is questionable, however, to what extent the current conditions in Lebanon
could be explained by the troubles of Ottoman administration after the reform
period. The present dynamics are complicated by a host of factors, principal among
which can be counted the French colonial legacy. Greater Lebanon’s boundaries,
created in 1920, were drawn up in response to Maronite demands backed by France.
Ironically, ‘Greater Lebanon’, which encompassed new areas such as Beirut, Biqa
‘valley, Tripoli and Jabal’ Amil, eroded the authority of the Maronites by altering
the demographic balances among the Muslim and Christian communities creating
further problems of representation in a political system designed along confessional
lines. By 1932 the population was 51 per cent Christian against 49 per cent Muslim.
After this date Lebanon terminated official counts of its population.34 Maintaining
Christian dominance in the confessional power structure within boundaries that did
not reflect a demographic advantage to the Christians became a major problematic
of Lebanese politics.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the presence of hostile neighbours,
Israel and Syria, against which Lebanon had to define its position was added to
Lebanon’s internal misfortunes. The significant numbers of Palestinian refugees
living in Lebanon further complicated the intricate dynamics of domestic power
struggles. Finally, Lebanon’s fragile pluralistic communal structure collapsed under
all these pressures giving way to a bloody civil war in 1975. More recently, the
unravelling developments in the aftermath of the Hariri assassination in Lebanon
once again reveals the persistence of these complex dynamics, as well as the Lebanese
vulnerabilities.
In both Lebanon and Macedonia, the modernization and centralization policies of
the Ottoman Empire had the unintended consequence of accentuating sectarian
strife. In their modernization efforts, the Ottoman administrators also facilitated
political centralization redefining the power relations between the core and the
periphery. This process in return transformed the local dynamics and power
relations, in some instances giving way to sectarian strife. In assessing the overall
impact of the Ottoman legacy, however, as Ussama Makdisi argued, ‘it is imperative
to dispel any illusion that sectarianism is simply or exclusively a native malignancy

or a foreign conspiracy. Sectarianism can be narrated only by continually
acknowledging and referring to both indigenous and imperial histories, which
interacted – both collided and collaborated – to produce a new historical
imagination’.35
In the words of Cemal Kafadar, the Ottoman Empire emerged from ‘a tiny outpost
between the worlds of Islam and Byzantium, not only physically but also
politically and culturally beyond the pale of established political orders in either
world; the latter upon conquering Constantinople in 1453, represented itself as heir
to the Eastern Roman Empire and leader of the Muslim world’.36 The victorious
Ottoman sultan, who wrested Constantinople from the remnant Byzantine state,
was later remembered with the sobriquet ‘the Conqueror’, but perhaps more
significant is one of the titles Mehmed II chose for himself in addition to the
requisite ghazi, namely ‘Caesar’, underscoring his acceptance and reverence of
the Byzantine legacy now subsumed under the rule of the House of Osman. On
the other hand, particularly with the conquests of the early years of the sixteenth
century, which brought most of the Arab lands including the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina under Ottoman control, a different legacy of the Sultan-Caliph also
had to be incorporated into Ottoman traditions of dynastic legitimation. From the
very origins of the Ottoman Empire, to its main successor state the Turkish
Republic, combining a strong western orientation with extensive ties in the Middle
East presented itself as both a major challenge and opportunity. As an integral
part of, yet at the same time peripheral to, both Europe and the Middle East, this
duality has been a defining factor in the shaping of the complex dynamics of
identity and foreign relations of the Ottoman Empire, continuing as a common
thread into the Turkish Republic.
The classical framework of power politics, as defined by geo-strategic concerns
and material capabilities, has naturally been the main parameter defining Turkey’s
relations with its neighbours. William Hale categorized Turkey as a ‘middle power’,
whose military strength, economic resources and level of development determines its
capabilities and constraints in the field of foreign policy.37 However, the political
worldviews and perceptions of the relevant actors also have an impact during the
transformation of these power constraints into foreign policy choices.38 There are
three factors related to the perceptions of the Ottoman legacy, which further
complicates Turkey’s relations with its neighbours in the Balkans and the Middle
East. The first one is shaped by an imperial legacy, through which the Turks have
been perceived as ‘the other’ in the nationalist movements in the Balkans and the
Middle East. The second perception has been shaped by Turkey’s close alliance with
the United States since the beginning of the Cold War that caused Turkey to be
labelled as a ‘proxy of the West’. Therefore, any attempt towards an activist foreign
policy or any desire to play a mediator role in regional politics, has raised concerns
and scepticism among Turkey’s neighbours as either a possible sign of neo-
Ottomanism or a conspiracy of the West. The third and even more complex issue has
been the Turks’ own love – hate relationship with their Ottoman past, placing some
‘self-restraints’ on Turkish foreign policy.
The independence of the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union and
dissolution of Yugoslavia (particularly the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina) gave way to
a period of diplomatic activism in Turkish foreign policy starting with the end of the
Cold War. While in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkey’s ethnic ties and
influence (combined with energy interests supported by the United States) came to
the forefront, Turkey’s active diplomacy in the Balkans gave way to neo-Ottomanist
concerns coupled with a rhetoric of the possible rise of a new ‘Muslim axis’ in the
Balkans under the leadership of Turkey. In this period, Turkey, which always tried
to act within multilateral mechanisms regarding Balkan conflicts, was stuck in a
dilemma of activism versus self-restraint, and mainly opted for the latter.39 In the
Middle East, Özal’s enthusiastic support for the US-led coalition against Iraq,
overlooking the divergences it created with the General Staff and foreign ministry,
was also interpreted as a neo-Ottomanist move aiming to regain control over the rich
oil resources of Mosul and Kirkuk, which once belonged to the Ottoman empire. In
a similar fashion, when disputes arouse about the hydropolitics of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, the Turks were accused once again within the parameters of the
historical discourse of Turkish oppression and revival of neo-Ottomanism.40
From another perspective, particularly in the Arab world, Turkish foreign policy
has been perceived mainly as an ‘instrument’ of western, and more specifically
American, politics.41 Since Turkey very closely aligned itself with the United States
within the bipolar power structures of the Cold War era and had relatively normal
relations with Israel (and even signed an economic and military cooperation
agreement in 1996), these perceptions were intensified. Instances such as Turkey’s
joining the small group of states that rejected the policy of nonalignment by
Egyptian President Nasser and Indian Prime Minister Nehru at the Bandung
Conference or its vote against the independence of Algeria at the United Nations
while consolidating this negative image, further intensified the cleavages among
Turkey and its neighbours in the Middle East.
The final point concerns Turkey’s own problematic relation with its Ottoman
legacy and its foreign policy implications. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire,
there was an ideological shift to a secular republic in the formative years of the
Turkish Republic under Kemalist principles. In creating a new identity within the
framework of a nation state, there was a strong attempt towards establishing a sharp
break with the Ottoman past. Hence by emphasizing a non-adventurist and pacific
line of foreign policy, Kemal Atatürk aimed to replace Ottomanism, pan-Turkism,
and pan-Islamism by republicanism, territorial nationalism, and secularism. Despite
significant aspects of continuity, there was a frontal assault on the political symbols
and institutions of the Ottoman Empire. Subsequently, while emphasizing its western
orientation, Turkish foreign policy distanced itself from its Muslim neighbours in the
Middle East. Moreover, mirroring the negative stereotypes in the Arab world, Turks
formed their own biases concerning their Middle Eastern neighbours as ‘the deceitful
Arab’ reflecting a strong sense of distrust, due to Turkish perceptions of being ‘back-
stabbed’ during the Arab revolt. All of these factors formed a ‘self-restraint’ relating
to the improvement of relations with the Arab world. In a similar fashion, Turkey
has also had problematic relations with its western neighbours Greece and Bulgaria,
the reasons for which may partly be attributed to the persistence of memories of
perceived betrayal and the negative stereotypes these memories generate.
As a part of the Ottoman legacy, Turkey also inherited what might be called
‘the Sèvres syndrome’ reflecting a deep distrust also towards the intentions of the
European states and a belief in possible conspiracies to dismantle the Turkish
Republic. As the focal point of the Eastern Question during its demise, the
Ottoman Empire had become the arena for European power politics and the
collaboration between religious and ethnic minorities and foreign states has been a
persistent fear. Currently, similar debates resonate about the Kurdish question and
Turkey – EU relations, and related concerns shape Turkish foreign policy towards
the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq. More than 80 years after the signing of
Lausanne Treaty, the future of Kerkuk is once again a burning question in the
Middle East.
Despite the persistence of stereotypical images, there have also been some
significant foreign policy moves which challenged the viability of these arguments.
For instance, despite the current stalemate, the initiative of the two countries’
Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the late Ismail Cem and George Papandreou, ushered
in a period of rapprochement in Turkish – Greek relations starting in 1999. These
concrete political developments, combined with the impact of earthquake diplomacy
and intensive contacts through track-two diplomacy also brought the societies closer
by mitigating the mutual biases.42 There have also been other incidents, such as the
decision of the Turkish parliament on 1 March 2003 not to permit the United States
to deploy combat troops on Turkish territory during the war in Iraq, which starkly
contradicted the stereotypical image of Turkey as a tool of American politics in the
Middle East. Moreover, since the early years of the republic Turkey has been
tackling the challenges of reconciling with its own Ottoman legacy. Hence, these
developments indicate that the persistence of historically constructed stereotypes
also has its limits and the new foreign policies have the potential of transcending, and
eventually even transforming, the historical narratives.
Karl Babir starts his ‘Memory, Heritage, History: The Ottoman Legacy in the Arab
World’ with an oft-repeated citation from Thucydides: ‘It was a case of people
adapting their memories to suit their sufferings.’43 As we have discussed in detail in
this article, the ‘term Ottoman legacy’ often has a negative connotation that
legitimizes (or even requires) a clean break with the Ottoman past. Hence, the
inclusion of the Ottoman era in the national history narratives of the Balkan and
Middle East states has often been perceived as redundant, except in so far as
commemorating collective suffering.
This article tried to tackle three challenging dilemmas concerning the perceptions
of Ottoman legacy. The first one is related to the reconstruction of history in order to
legitimize post-imperial dynamics by accentuating differences and stereotypical
images at the expense of the memories of a communal coexistence and elements of
continuity. We also emphasized, however, that historical assessments of the Ottoman
past are neither monolith nor unchanging. In addition to these dilemmas concerning
perceptions of the Ottoman legacy, an additional challenge of historiography is the
‘fragmentation of knowledge’. Arabists, Balkanists, specialists on Hellenic and
Turkish studies all focus on different aspects of the Ottoman legacy from different
lenses with rather limited interaction.44 Until recently, most Arab specialists took
1918 as the defining moment of their field, while most scholars of the Balkans treated
the Ottoman period as the dark ages. Turkish historians, on the other hand, have
typically focused on the areas that later constituted the Republic with a strong
emphasis on the state. While there are some insightful attempts to cut across the
well-established boundaries of these academic fields of area studies, they still remain
more of an exception, rather than the norm. Despite the problems associated with
the multiplicity of languages and complex histories, however, as suggested by Carl
Brown, ‘an occasional glance over the fence to see what is taking place in the
neighboring scholarly field’45 could prove to be very useful. Only then would we be
able to start putting together the pieces of the puzzle of the Ottoman legacy. While
there are some promising steps in that direction, however, when and if that shift will
be reflected in the respective official historiographies of Balkan and Middle Eastern
states – including Turkey – and whether it would trickle down to the general public
remains a critical question.
The notion of sectarian violence as an Ottoman legacy is another dilemma
originating from the misreading of the millet system and the impact of
modernization. As the Macedonian and Lebanese cases we have addressed indicate,
while modernization and centralization policies of the Ottoman Empire might have
had the unintended result of accentuating sectarian strife, numerous other and more
influential dynamics were also in action in triggering and perpetuating it. Ottoman
ghosts running amok on the streets of Sarajevo, Pristina, Beirut or Baghdad –
wherever ethnic/sectarian conflict breaks out – does not only make for an extremely
poor, not to say ahistorical metaphor, it also completely disregards the complexities
and individual qualities of conflicts in each of these reasons, effectively undermining
any meaningful attempt at their resolution. Exorcism, which seems to be the only
appropriate means of dealing with ghosts, is unfortunately not a viable policy
alternative for addressing the challenges we face in the Middle East and the Balkans
today.
Finally, the Ottoman legacy also presents the Turkish Republic with significant
dilemmas regarding foreign policy at some instances raising concerns of neo-
Ottomanism, at others giving way to self-restraint. As we have discussed above, since
the Ottoman state was the principal force with which nationalist movements in a vast
area had to contend, the subsequently emerging nation states have tended to negate
and/or neglect the Ottoman legacy by labelling it as the oppressive ‘other’ in
formulating their national agendas. Consequently, Turkey’s relations with its
neighbours are afflicted with mutual suspicion and distrust stemming from fears of a
‘neo-Ottomanist’ revival on the one hand, and Turkey’s own problematic relation-
ship with its Ottoman past on the other. Nevertheless, changing internal and external
dynamics of the relevant actors also present new opportunities for transcending
parochial interpretations of the past, hence creating a more conducive environment
for the enhancement of present relations.
Challenging the ‘spectre’ of an Ottoman past is necessary, we have argued. It is
necessary not only in terms of tackling historiographical problems, which are largely
in the purview of professional historians, but also because this is the only way we can
reach sound decisions to deal with the myriad problems facing these regions today.
Otherwise, we will have to let the present stay a hostage to the divided memories of a
common past.
Notes
Şuhnaz Yılmaz also gratefully acknowledges the support of the American Research Institute in Turkey
Social Sciences grant, as well as the Distinguished Young Scientist Award (GEBIP) of the Turkish
Academy of Sciences for her research. I.K. Yosmaoglu would like to thank the National Endowment in
the Humanities and the American Research Institute in Turkey for their support of her research in
Istanbul, and the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard University for the collegiality they provided
during the writing of this article.
_
1. H. Inalcık, ‘The Meaning of Legacy: The Ottoman Case’, in L.C. Brown (ed.), Imperial Legacy: The
Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: University of California Press, 1996),
pp.17–29.
2. R.A. Abou-El-Haj, ‘The Social Uses of the Past: Recent Arab Historiography of Ottoman Rule’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.14 (1982), pp.185–201.
3. See for instance, Z.N. Zeine, The Emergence of Arab Nationalism (Beirut: Khayats, 1966).
4. Abou-El-Haj, ‘The Social Uses of the Past’, p.186.
5. H. Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks, Ottomanism, Arabism, Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997); U.W. Haarman, ‘Ideology and History,
Identity and Alterity: The Arab Image of the Turk from the Abbasids to Modern Egypt’, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.20 (1988), pp.175–96; D. Jung, ‘Turkey and the Arab World:
Historical Narratives and New Political Realities’, Mediterranean Politics, Vol.10, No.1 (March 2005),
pp.1–17.
6. M.E. Yapp, The Near East since the First World War (New York: Longman Inc., 1991), p.3.
7. Afaq ‘Arabiyya (Arab Horizons) starting publication in Baghdad in 1975, al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi
(The Arab Future) starting publication in Beirut in 1978, and al-Thaqafa al-Arabiyya
(Arab Culture) starting publication in Libya in 1973 could be considered as significant representatives
of this scholarly trend emphasizing the unity of Arab historical identity; Abou-el-Haj, ‘The Social
Uses of the Past’, p.190. There are also other scholars such as Albert Hourani, who present a
much more balanced account of the impact of the Ottoman legacy, in his landmark works Arabic
Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), The Emergence of the
Modern Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981), A History of the Arab
Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1991); as well as P.S. Khoury in the
Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983).
8. For an eloquent critique concerning the Balkans see M. Mazower, The Balkans, a Short History (New
York: Modern Library Chronicles, 2000); M. Todorova, ‘Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans’, Imperial
Legacy, pp.45–78.
9. H. Inalcık, The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire (Bloomington: Indiana
University Turkish Program, 1993).
10. M. Palairet, The Balkan Economies, c. 1800–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
11. Y. Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp.3–55.
12. For a detailed discussion of the Ottoman administrative legacy and the bureaucratic apparatus legacy,
see C.V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); C.V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social
History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
13. It would, of course, be naı̈ve to suggest that there is such a thing as ‘objective’ history, and nor is this
our purpose. Having stated that, perhaps we should place the emphasis on a ‘critical’ rather than an
‘objective’ approach to sources and secondary literature.
14. D. Fromkin, ‘A World Still Haunted by Ottoman Ghosts’, New York Times, 9 March 2003, pp.4, 14.
15. For a detailed critique, see Ş. Hanioglu, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyete, Zihniyet, Siyaset ve Tarih
(Istanbul: Baglam Yayıncılık, 2006), pp.227–30.
16. B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, the Functioning of a Plural
Society: Volume I: The Central Lands; Volume II: The Arabic-Speaking Lands (New York/London:
Holmes & Meier, 1982).
17. It is commonly repeated that before the nineteenth century the term millet referred to Muslims within
the Empire and Christians outside of it – see, for instance, D. Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–
1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) – but archival record indicates that this was not
necessarily the case – see ‘Millet’, Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol.VII, pp.61–4). Technicalities aside, it is
safe to say that one can only speak of a systematized organizing of the subjects of the Ottoman Empire
according to confessional lines as the product of the age of reforms.
18. See H. Inalcık, ‘Ottoman Methods of Conquest’, Studia Islamica, Vol.3 (1954), pp.103–29.
19. Ferik Mehmed Ali Paşa’dan, fi 20 Tesrin-I Evvel sene, 13 Za. 1292 (11 Aralık 1875), BOA, Hariciye
Siyasi Evrakı, No.250/1, belge sira no, 221; Bosna Vilayeti’nden mevrud tahriratın sureti, 15 S. 1293
(13 Mart 1876) BOA, Hariciye Siyasi Evrakı, No.250/1, belge sıra no, 184; Bosna Vilayeti valisinden
mevrud telgrafname sureti, 19 S. 1293 (16 Mart 1876) BOA, Hariciye Siyasi Evrakı, No.250/1, belge
sıra no, 152.
20. Bosna Merkez Mutasarrıflıgı’ndan makam-ı Sadaret’e gelen telgrafnamenin sureti, 13 Za. 1292 (11
Aralık 1875), BOA, Hariciye Siyasi Evrakı, No.250/1, belge sıra no, 221; Bosna Vilayet-i Celilesi’nden
mevrud telgrafnamenin sureti, 1 R. 1293 (26 Nisan 1892), BOA, Hariciye Siyasi Evraki, No.250/1,
belge sıra no, 96.
21. See, for instance, E. Barker, Macedonia, Its Place in Balkan Power Politics (London and New York:
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1950).
22. T.A. Meininger, Ignatiev and the Establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate, 1864–1872 (Madison: The
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1970).
23. See, for instance, France, Ministère des Affairs Etrangères, no. 150, Rapport du Major Foulon, Serres,
21 Jan. 1908; Constantinople, Serie E/Macédoine, No.144, f.179 A, Colonel Vérand to the French
Ambassador in Istanbul, Serres, 19 February 1907.
24. E. Reclus, ‘The Earth and Its Inhabitants’, in E.G. Ravenstein (ed.), Greece, Turkey in Europe,
Rumania, Servia, Montenegro, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Vol.1 (New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1882), p.89.
25. G.F. Abbot, The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia (London: Edward Arnold, 1903), p.81.
26. H.N. Brailsford, Macedonia, Its Races and Their Future (London: Methuen & Co., 1906), p.7.
27. G. Fawcett and H.A. Fawcett, Macedonia: A Plea for the Primitive (London: John Lane the Bodley
Head; New York: John Lane Company, 1921), p.8.
28. J. Reed, The War in Eastern Europe (1916), quoted in P.H. Liotta and C.R. Jebb, Mapping Macedonia:
Idea and Identity (Westport and London: Praeger, 2004), p.1.
29. See, for instance, Brailsford, Macedonia, p.72. The papers of the Rumeli Umum Müfettişli gi, or the
General Inspectorate of Rumeli, which was a special administrative body directly under the Sublime
Porte, contain many examples that refer to the practice of church-sharing; for instance, TFR.I. SL 67/
6606, April 1904.
30. See, for instance, the reports of the British vice consul Bosanquet in Serres to Consul Graves in
Salonika, Foreign Office, 195/2263, 28 May 1907 and 7 June 1907.
31. I.K. Yosmaoglu, ‘Counting Bodies, Shaping Souls: The 1903 Census and National Identity in
Ottoman Macedonia’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.38 (2006), pp.55–77.
32. While less significant in numbers, the myriad of other Christian Lebanese sects included, but were not
limited to Protestants, the Syrian Jacobites, Catholic Malchites, the adherents of the Armenian
church, the Armenian Catholics, the Syrian Catholics, the Assyrians (Nestorians), and the Catholic
Chaldeans.
33. For a comprehensive account, see P.K. Hitti, Lebanon in History: From the Earliest Times to the
Present, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1967); W. Khalidi, Conflict and Violence in Lebanon:
Confrontation in the Middle East (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); K.S. Salibi, A
House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: I.B. Tauris, 1988).
34. Yapp, The Near East since the First World War, p.105.
35. U. Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Nineteenth Century
Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p.2.
36. C. Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995), p.xi.
37. W. Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p.7.
38. For a detailed analysis of the critical players and processes shaping Turkish Foreign Policy, see P.
Robins, Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War: Suits and Uniforms (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2003), pp.52–89.
39. Ş. Kut, ‘Turkey in the Post-Communist Balkans: Between Activism and Self-Restraint’, Turkish
Review of Balkan Studies, Annual 1996–97 (3).
40. For a more detailed discussion of the relevant arguments of Syrians and Iraqis, see Ş. Yılmaz, ‘Bridge
over Troubled Waters: Hydropolitics of Tigris and Euphrates Rivers’ (MA Thesis, Princeton
University, 1995).
41. The findings of Dietrich Jung’s field research based on a series of interviews with academics,
journalists and officials in Amman, Beirut, Cairo and Damascus supports this argument. Jung,
‘Turkey and the Arab World’, p.3.
42. For a detailed assessment, see Z. Onis and S. Yilmaz, ‘Greek – Turkish Rapprochement: Rhetoric or
Reality?’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol.123, No.1 (Spring 2008), pp.123–50.
43. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. R. Warner (London and New York: Penguin
Classics, 1972), p.156, cited in K. Babir, ‘Memory, Heritage, History: The Ottoman Legacy in the
Arab World’, Imperial Legacy, p.100.

44. On the shortcomings of the current approaches also, see I. _ Ortaylı, Osmanlı’yı Yeniden Keşfetmek
_ Ortaylı, Son Imparatorluk
(Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2006), pp.184–9; I. _ Osmanlı (Istanbul: Timaş
Yayınları, 2006), pp.21–41.
45. Brown, Imperial Legacy, p.305.

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Middle Eastern Studies

ISSN: 0026-3206 (Print) 1743-7881 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmes20

Fighting the Spectres of the Past: Dilemmas of

Şuhnaz Yilmaz & İpek K. Yosmaoglu

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Fighting the Spectres of the Past:

ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/08/050677-17 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis

the Ottoman Empire was by no means a ‘Turkish Empire’, but a genuinely

discontinuity’ in the otherwise natural development of various nations remain a

they encountered signiﬁcant diﬃculties.11 While the Ottomans maintained the

convenience it aﬀords to participants and observers of post-Ottoman conﬂicts in

convenient tool of revisionism. Just as the ‘Turkish yoke’ is a creation of a modernist

was palpable everywhere from Macedonia to Bosnia. In the case of Bosnia-

European observers, in many districts of Macedonia, where part of a community had

under a Christian governor assisted by an administrative council with representatives

to dispel any illusion that sectarianism is simply or exclusively a native malignancy

Arab World’, Imperial Legacy, p.100.

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