Abstract
Until about a decade ago, there was little interest in lynching among scholars in Turkey. The fact that neither the Ottoman Empire nor the Turkish Republic has gone through a distinctive “era of lynching” in contrast to the United States may explain the reason for this. However, as attempted lynchings have increased in recent years, mainly targeting Kurds and leftist activists, political scientists and sociologists have begun to see these incidents as a legacy of the Ottoman past, as well as reflecting the rise of nationalism and even of fascism in Turkey today.1
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Notes
See Taner Akçam, “İttihat ve Terakki’ci Gelenek,” Radikal, February 9, 2007; Tanil Bora, Türkiye’nin Linç Rejimi (Istanbul: Birikim Yayinlari, 2008), 18.
Zeynep Gambetti, “Linç Girişimleri, Neo-Liberalizm ve Güvenlik Devleti,” Toplum ve Bilim, no. 109 (2007): 7–34.
Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 59–61.
and Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (New York: Gordian Press, 1973), 40.
Halil Inalcik, “Applications of the Tanzimat and its Social Effects,” Archivum Ottomanicum, no. 5 (1973): 111.
and Nuran Yildirim, “Karantina Istemezük!: Osmanli Coğrafyasinda Karantina Uygulamasina İsyanlar,” Toplumsal Tarih, no. 150 (2006): 22–25.
Ahmet Uzun, Tanzimat ve Sosyal Direnişler (İstanbul: Eren Yayinlari, 2002), 30–38.
Roderic H. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 59, no. 4 (1954): 860. See also Başbakanlik Osmanli Arşivleri, İstanbul [hereafter BOA] (Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives), İ.DUİT, 138/33, 13 Rebiyulahir 1293 (May 8, 1876).
Donald Quataert states that the majority of workers in the carpetmaking sector in Western Anatolia were Christians due to the European-dominated merchant houses’ relations with their Ottoman Christian business partners. During the nineteenth century, Uşak was an important center for the carpetmaking sector of Anatolia. See Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 183.
After the 1864 and 1871 Provincial Statutes, new administrative and judicial councils were set up in the provinces along with lower-level councils in the subprovinces (sancak) and districts (kaza). The establishment of local administrative councils was an important change for the Christian population as these councils included representatives of the non-Muslim communities as well. See İlber Ortayli, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanli Mahallî İdareleri (1840–1880) (Ankara: TTK, 2000), 70–82.
Leslie Peirce, “Rape: The Ottoman Empire,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 700.
Millet denotes the “membership of a religious group.” The Ottoman Empire was a theocratic state and, in accordance with Islamic law, the legal status of non-Muslim millets-the dhimmi-was different from that of Muslims. They were under the protection of the Islamic state with the condition of submitting to the authority of Islam. Millets were autonomous in spiritual and civil matters, but were to pay a poll tax called cizye. See İlber Ortayli, “The Ottoman Millet System and it’s Social Dimensions,” in Ottoman Studies (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayinlari, 2004), 15–22.
Cevdet Paşa, Tezâkir, 1–12 (Ankara: TTK, 1991), 67–68.
Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe (London: Odysseus, 1900), 439; Ismail Kemal Bey, The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1920), 254.
Robert Melson, “A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, no. 3 (1982): 501.
Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, no. 1 (2002): 64.
See also Stephen Duguid, “The Politics of Unity: Hamidian Policy in Eastern Anatolia,” Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1973): 147–148.
Robert F. Zeidner, “Britain and the Launching of the Armenian Question,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 470; Duguid, “The Politics of Unity: Hamidian Policy in Eastern Anatolia,” 142.
Selim Deringil, “The Ottoman Twilight Zone of the Middle East,” in Reluctant Neighbor: Turkey’s Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J. Barkey (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 16.
Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 41–42.
Melson, “A Theoretical Inquiry into the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896,” 487; Duguid, “The Politics of Unity,” 148–149. For an alternative evaluation of the Sasun incidents and the following events in Anatolia, see Ali Karaca, Anadolu Islahâti ve Ahmet Şâkir Paşa (1838–1899) (İstanbul: Eren Yayinlari, 1993), 43–77.
Taner Akçam states that no direct evidence exists that the massacres were ordered by the Palace. See Akçam, A Shameful Act, 42. However, he also cites from various sources, such as the reports of the British, French, and Austrian ambassadors to the Porte, claiming that “the massacres of 1894–96 were centrally planned.” See ibid., 44–45. On the role of the office of the commander in chief (Seraskerlik) in the massacre of İstanbul Armenians following the attack of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksutuin) at the Ottoman Bank on August 29, 1896, see Edhem Eldem, “26 Ağustos 1896 ‘Banka Vakasi’ ve 1896 ‘Ermeni Olaylari,’” Tarih ve Toplum 5 (2007): 113–146.
Akçam, A Shameful Act, 43. Also see George H. Hepworth, Through Armenia on Horseback (London: Isbister and Company Limited, 1898), 154–159, for his comments about the hypocritical policies of the Great Powers and their reluctance to solve the Armenian question.
Among them, see Christopher Waldrep, “Word and Deed: The Language of Lynching, 1820–1953,” in Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History, ed. Michael A. Bellesiles (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 244.
Hazel V. Carby, “On the Threshold of Woman’s Era: Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality in Black Feminist Theory,” in Feminist Postcolonial Theory, ed. R. Leis and S. Mills (New York: Routledge, 2003), 228–229.
Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York: Norton, 1995), 10.
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© 2011 Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt
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Aykut, E. (2011). Ethnic Conflict, the Armenian Question, and Mob Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire. In: Berg, M., Wendt, S. (eds) Globalizing Lynching History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001245_8
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