The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey

Metin Heper, Sabri Sayari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136309632
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: History

In recent years, there has been growing interest in Turkey, stemming from the country's developing role in regional and global politics, its expanding economic strength, and its identity as a predominantly Muslim country with secular political institutions and democratic processes. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging profile of modern Turkey. Bringing together original contributions from leading scholars with a wide range of backgrounds, this important reference work gives a unique in-depth survey of Turkish affairs, past and present. Thematically organised sections cover:

• Turkish history from the early Ottoman period to the present
• Turkish culture
• Politics and international relations
• Social issues
• Geography
• The Turkish economy and economics

Presenting diverse and often competing views on all aspects of Turkish history, politics, society, culture, geography, and economics, this handbook will be an essential reference tool for students and scholars of Middle East studies, comparative politics, and culture and society.

PART I
History

1
EARLY OTTOMAN PERIOD

Heath W. Lowry

We know virtually nothing about the origins of the Ottomans and little more about the first two centuries of their history. Even at this writing, what has long been accepted as fact is being eroded bit by bit as an ever-increasing number of studies challenging its traditional underpinnings appear. The earliest recorded reference to the founder of what was to become the mighty Ottoman Empire is a laconic reference in a contemporary Byzantine chronicle to a certain “Othman” fighting a skirmish with a Byzantine force near present-day Yalova on 27 July 1302 (İnalcık, 1993, 2010: 49–56).

This much is known: the Ottomans emerged out of obscurity in the last quarter of the thirteenth century in the region of northwest Anatolia known as Bithynia. They did so at a time when the region had been deserted by its Byzantine rulers, who, following the withdrawal of the Fourth Crusaders from Constantinople in 1261, had returned to the city after a 60-year hiatus during. which time their capital had been temporarily relocated to the Bithynian town of Nicaea (İznik). It appears that Osman (1302–24) and his followers lost little time in filling the vacuum created by their departure (Finkel, 2005: 2–6).

By the early 1330s they had taken the Byzantine. towns of Prusa/Bursa (1326) (Lowry, 2003a), Nicaea/İznik (1331) (Lowry, 2003c: 135–74; Inalcık, 2003: 59–85), and Nicomedia/İznikmid aka İzmid (1338), and by the early 1350s, first as a mercenary force supporting various claimants to the Byzantine throne and then acting on their own, the followers of Osman’s son and successor, Orhan Gazi (1324–59), had crossed into southeastern Europe. By the end of the century they had conquered much of the Balkans, thereby leaving Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, an isolated Christian island lying in the middle of an otherwise Ottoman Muslim lake.

Orhan’s son and successor, Murad Hüdavendigâr (1362–89), continued in his father’s footsteps, and by the end of his reign the Ottoman banner flew over most of the Balkans (Lowry, 2008). By the mid-1400s the Ottomans had taken the city of Constantinople, together with the last Anatolian Byzantine outpost of Trabzon (Trebizond) (Lowry, 2009c), and their state stretched westward from Asia Minor in the east to the shores of the Adriatic Sea in the west. Present-day Greece and Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, and Albania had been rolled over by this juggernaut-like entity.

Still, most of Anatolia (present-day Turkey) was not yet under Ottoman control. It was governed as a patchwork of Turkish principalities, whose rulers vied with one another, and the Ottomans, for power. Throughout this period, the Ottomans’ primary focus was directed not toward their Muslim neighbors in Anatolia, but rather against the Christian regions of southeastern Europe. From the moment they first crossed the straits of the Dardanelles and entered the Balkans their drive was westward.

The first real exception to this trend occurred at the end of the fourteenth century, when the fourth Ottoman ruler, Yıldırım Bayezid (1389–1402), attempted (while continuing to conquer in the west), to extend his hegemony over the patchwork of Turcoman principalities in Asia Minor. This premature effort came to an untimely end when the Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane (Timürlenk), moved west and put a decisive end to Bayezid’s ambitions at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. It would be another century before an Ottoman ruler would again attempt to shift the state’s primary focus from the Christian West to the Muslim East.

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Ottoman state came of age in the Balkans, where it shared virtually nothing with the indigenous peoples: neither common languages, religions, histories, nor cultures. Correspondingly, if we are to begin to understand the manner in which the tiny Bithynian principality was transformed into the mighty Ottoman Empire, our starting point must be the Balkans. It was there that the state’s institutions were forged, and it is against this background that we must seek to retrace the real Ottoman “origins,” i.e., within a geographical and cultural milieu in which the Muslims themselves were a distinct minority.

To facilitate their hold on newly conquered territories, they incorporated large numbers of the preexisting Christian feudal petty nobilities into their military, and made them members of their own ruling class. While within a generation or two these Christian Ottomans (or their descendants) had accepted the religion of the ruling dynasty, this had not been a quid pro quo for their initial acceptance. Rather, they had been granted timars (usufruct of some source of state revenue) in return for providing annual military service and serving as local administrators in the same territories they and their families had ruled for centuries. As timariots (fiefholders), these Christians are virtually indistinguishable in the ate fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from other members of the emerging Ottoman elite (Inalcık, 1954a, 1954b; Lowry, 2008).

When the numbers of Balkan aristocrats were no longer sufficient to fulfill the ever-expanding administrative needs of the state (within one or two generations virtually all of these Christian timariots and their descendants had opted for the religion of the ruler), the Ottomans introduced the periodic levy (devşirme) of Christian boys, who were taken into Ottoman service, converted to Islam, taught Turkish, and then sent back to the very places from which they originated to serve as fortress Janissaries (Lowry, 2008). They, like the Byzantine and Serbian aristocrats before them, were rewarded for their service with timars. These newly created Ottomans, not unlike the Christian aristocrats in earlier times, also had the advantage of sharing the language and culture of the local peoples in the regions in which they served (Lowry, 2002, 2008).

From the outset the tiny Ottoman principality was one in which what counted most was not ethnicity, religion, or culture; rather, it was an entity in which (regardless of one’s background) the ability to contribute to the overall fruits of conquest, that is, the attainment of plunder, booty, and slaves, determined one’s position. Christians, converts and native-born Muslims all came together in pursuit of these shared goals. This reality was given voice as early as the 1340s by the Byzantine chronicler Nicephorus Gregoras, who wrote: “Therein all the Bithynians came together, all the barbarians who were of his [Orhan’s] race, and all the mixobarbaroi [offspring of mixed Greek and Turkish unions], and in addition all those of our race [Byzantines] whom fate had forced to serve the barbarians” (Lowry, 2003b: 94).

The idea that the early Ottomans were a confederacy of Muslims set on spreading Islam by the sword to the Christian West, while long popular, is today no longer a viable assessment of early Ottoman history. While religious sentiments may well have served to mobilize the itinerant mendicant dervishes who played a key manpower role in the initial conquests, it is impossible to equate the desire to spread Islam in the Christian West with a system which from the outset so willingly assimilated unconverted Christians into its administrative ranks. If we want to uncover the actual causes of Ottoman growth and success, we must do so on the ground, that is, by following the path of their conquests in the Balkans (Lowry, 2003b: 2–64).

This task is made difficult by virtue of the fact that in the first two centuries of their existence the Ottomans had little concern for recording their deeds. Indeed, it was only in the second half of the fifteenth century that they began to take an active interest in setting down their own history. Prior to that time they had been too busy making it to pay much attention to writing it. The resultant historiography is far more a reflection of what they had become by the end of the fifteenth century than it is an accurate rendering of their origins and rise to power.

Until recently, virtually all studies of the early Ottomans have relied primarily on these later chronicle accounts, most of which were compiled at least two centuries after the events they purport to relate. Only in recent years has scholarship begun to focus on what survives from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in an attempt to weigh its testimony against the version of events preserved in the chronicle tradition (Lowry, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Lowry and Erünsal, 2010).

For the historian desirous of unraveling the story of the rise of the Ottomans, every scrap of evidence must be gleaned. Scattered references in the historiography of the neighboring states with whom they were in conflict, the occasional travel account, and, most importantly, the surprisingly large footprint in the form of architectural remains scattered throughout western Anatolia and the Balkans, dateable to a time prior to the point at which the Ottoman chronicle tradition began, must all be utilized (Lowry, 2008, 2009a, 2009b).

In addition, there is a small but important body of administrative records compiled in the fifteenth-century Balkans, the tahrir defters (tax registers), which provide a detailed listing of all sources of revenue and, up until the sixteenth century, the manner in which their proceeds were distributed to those in service of the state. Only by the careful winnowing of these materials (supplemented by the far larger body of sixteenth-century registers) may we begin to uncover a more accurate view of the manner by which the Ottomans, in the century between 1350 and 1450, brought an end not only to Byzantium and the Serbian empire of Stefan Dušan, but so firmly ensconced themselves in the overwhelmingly Christian Balkans that half a millennium would pass before they were to be dislodged (Inalcık, 1954a, 1954b; Lowry, 2008).

One of the first Ottoman creation myths of which we must disabuse ourselves is the narrative recorded in the later chronicle tradition, which accords all conquest to the Ottoman rulers themselves. In its place a more nuanced narrative is called for: one which, while recognizing the House of Osman as the primus inter pares (first among equals), comes to terms with the fact that the actual conquest of the Balkans was largely the project of a group of march lords (uc beys), who from the moment of the Ottoman entry into southeastern Europe, step by step planted the Ottoman banner in their wake. Men such as Hâcı/Gâzi Evrenos and his descendants (Lowry, 2008, 2010; Lowry and Erünsal, 2010), the Evrenosoğulları; the family of Mihal, the Mihaloğulları (Kiprovska, 2008); the family of Ishak, the Ishakbeyoğulları of Üsküp (Šabanović, 1960, 1964); and, later, the Turahanoğulları (Kiel, 1996) and the Malkoçoğulları (Babinger, 1940), were the engines that drove the Ottoman war machine westward.

By tracing the remains of the built environments created by these march lords, it becomes possible for us to recreate significant aspects of the methods they developed to facilitate the smooth incorporation of the newly conquered lands (Lowry, 2008). Their efforts in this regard were assisted by their willingness to find a niche for local practices, customs, and administrative tools within their own evolving institutional framework.

Even before a region was conquered, its rulers were offered the chance to accept Ottoman suzerainty, in return for guarantees that upon so doing they would at least temporarily remain in control of their territories. The quid pro quo for accepting the proffered “carrot” was the obligation to pay an annual tribute and to supply a stipulated number of troops to the Ottoman war machine. This process was meticulously detailed almost 60 years ago by the doyen of twentieth-century Ottomanists, Halil Inalcık, in his seminal article, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest.” In this study he traced the three-stage process of: a) establishment of indirect rule; b) followed within 20–30 years by the imposition of direct rule, i.e., conquest; and, c) then the immediate implementation of a fairly sophisticated system of taxation, details of which were recorded in tax registers drawn up in the aftermath of the final conquest (Inalcık, 1954a, 1954b).

Key to a more nuanced understanding of the actual history of Ottoman growth is the realization that from the mid-fourteenth century onward the Ottoman polity was fully cognizant that the long-term benefits of conquest, typified by a regularized form of taxation and the profits provided by a secure commercial network, were far more advantageous than the short-term financial gains afforded by booty and slaves. While the promise of slaves and booty was an essential element in attracting warriors (many if not most of whom in the opening century were dervishes) to its banner, from the beginning effective steps were undertaken to regularize the long-term fruits of conquest.

While at first glance this may seem paradoxical—that is, a system that held out the promise of slaves and booty for those who joined the endeavor simultaneously being one that, as soon as the initial conquest of a region was realized, set about restoring a regularized system of governance— this was in fact the secret of Ottoman success. Their awareness, shaped no doubt by the advice of the numerous representatives of both Islamic (read: Seljuks and the various Turkmen principalities of Asia Minor) and Christian (read: Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serbian) states who, from the outset, had joined their ranks, that the long-term benefits of conquest were dependent upon the support of the conquered and also the quick restoration of normalcy, both of which were included under the rubric of the Pax Ottomanica, was a feature not generally seen in the experience of semi-nomadic and/or nomadic empires that had preceded them. To achieve this goal, the Ottoman rulers in Anatolia, and their march lords in the Balkans, quickly embarked upon a process of establishing a series of institutions designed to forge a new polity in the conquered regions.

None of these was more important than that known as the zâviye-imâret, or dervish lodge-cum-soup kitchen. This institution, together with an ever-growing network of hans (covered market halls) and kervansarays (inns with large courtyards), soon came to mark the urban landscape throughout both western Anatolia and the Ottoman Balkans. While over time it was the minarets (minares) piercing the sky that came to symbolize the Ottoman presence, it was, in fact, the built environment of dervish lodges, soup kitchens, hans and kervansarays that provided the glue that initially served to unite the Balkans.

While charity is an integral element in all Muslim societies, the institution of the soup kitchen, as it developed in its Balkan milieu, was uniquely Ottoman in conception and implementation. For, at a time when the Balkan population was overwhelmingly Christian, its march lord conquerors and other high administrators endowed a broad network of these facilities designed to meet the needs of their own forces (akıncı and guzat) (Šabanović, 1951), travelers, merchants, wandering mendicants, and the poor. By the beginning of the sixteenth century there was a network of no fewer than 75 imârets (soup kitchens) stretching across what today is northern and central Greece alone. As noted frequently by the seventeenth-century professional Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi, from the outset the services of the Balkan imârets were open to one and all: in his words, even to “unbelievers (Christians), Jews, Gypsies and fire worshippers” (Çelebi, 2003: 27, 34, 73, 80, 103, 288). His account is confirmed by numerous European travelers and merchants, who waxed eloquent on the free food and lodging they were accorded in the course of their travels (Lowry, 2008: 237).

In the second half of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the zaviyes (dervish lodges) endowed on behalf of the dervish şeyhs s and their followers, and the imârets (soup kitchens) where they, together with the indigenous poor, were fed. Indeed, contemporary documents that refer to them often use the two terms interchangeably (Eyice, 1962; Lowry, 2007b). This “availability” of the services they provided to one and all stands in stark contrast to the practices seen in the older Islamic states of the Middle East, where (as in Christian Europe) charity was something to be bestowed on one’s coreligionists.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to state that the most visible aspect of the Ottoman presence on the ground in this period...

Table of contents

• COVER
• TITLE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I History
• PART II Culture
• PART III Politics
• PART IV Society
• PART V Geography
• PART VI Economy
• INDEX