Ottomanism in Practice
Julia Phillips Cohen’s Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era
In my last post, I introduced you to the idea of “Ottomanism,” which emerged as a state project to create a common Ottoman imperial identity and counter the emerging nationalist currents that had started to threaten the integrity of the Empire, especially in the Balkans.
This week, I wanted to continue with this theme a little bit and explore how Ottomanism was interpreted “on the ground” through an analysis of Julia Phillips Cohen’s influential work, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era.
In this book, Cohen analyzes how, in the rapidly changing socio-political environment of the late Ottoman Empire, the Sephardic Jewish community of the Empire transformed itself into becoming a model “millet,” which was the name given to the non-Muslim religious communities in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. What is important for us is that Cohen directs her gaze away from the state apparatus, focusing instead on the Jewish institutions, such as Jewish schools, synagogues, and the Jewish press, to analyze how the Jews of the Ottoman Empire took it upon themselves to become imperial citizens and constructed their own interpretation of Ottoman patriotism “from below.”
At the beginning of her work, Cohen challenges the widely accepted notion that ever since Sultan Beyazid II accepted the Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492 into the Ottoman Empire, there was a “special relationship” between the Ottoman state and the Ottoman Jewish communities. This narrative, based on the medieval Jewish chronicles, was picked up by the Ottoman Jewish elite in the 19th century to convince the Jewish community that the Jews had always been loyal subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
Cohen, however, calls this special Ottoman-Jewish relationship narrative a “myth” and argues that it actually obscures a more complex and multi-layered dynamic. Instead, she depicts the Jewish allegiance to the Ottoman state and the transformation of the Jewish community into a model imperial “millet” as a “process and project,” which emerged as a result of the social and political transformations that the Ottoman Empire was going through in the 19th century.
Throughout this process, the Jewish elite, including lay and religious leaders, journalists, schoolteachers, and charitable women, played an important role in constructing an ideal image of their communities in order to turn their patriotic project into reality. They did this by buying into the idea of “Ottomanism” and fashioning the Ottoman Jews into model imperial citizens and the Jewish community into a model “millet.” In that sense, the imperial citizenship of the Ottoman Jewish community involved “continual and collective self-invention.”
Cohen traces the patriotic project of the Ottoman Jewish community by analyzing the Jewish reactions to the major socio-political events of late Ottoman history. In Chapter 1, she focuses on the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution in 1876 while also highlighting the Jewish community’s reaction to the wars that the Ottoman Empire had with Serbia, Montenegro, and Russia at this time. Here, Cohen argues that the early stages of the Jewish patriotic project were shaped by the Jewish elites’ efforts to teach their coreligionists how to become proper Ottoman citizens and that the wars that the Ottoman Empire was waging during this time gave the Jewish community an opportunity to display their newfound patriotism.
According to Cohen, the Jewish elite had three main goals during this period. The first was to play an important role in fostering a sense of brotherhood among all the Ottomans, regardless of their faith. Moreover, the Jewish leaders tried to elevate the status of their communities in the eyes of the Ottoman state vis-à-vis other non-Muslim millets since they were convinced that the Jewish community was “backward” in the sense that the Jews were not being regarded with esteem by the Ottoman state as much as other non-Muslim communities were. Finally, the Jewish leaders also tried to prove that the Ottoman Jews were loyal friends of the Ottoman Empire.
To be able to achieve these stated goals, the Jewish leaders tried to instill a sense of Ottoman patriotism among their coreligionists. They tried to contribute to the Ottoman Empire’s war efforts not only by making donations but also by encouraging Jewish men to join the Ottoman army. Cohen points out, however, that the efforts of the Jewish leaders were not taken enthusiastically by all the members of the Jewish millet. The interests of the Jewish community did not always align with the interests of the Ottoman state, which laid bare the contested nature of Ottoman Jews’ patriotic project.
The book then moves on to analyze the Jewish participation in two major events that took place at the end of the 19th century, namely the four hundredth anniversary of the Jews’ arrival in the Ottoman Empire in 1892 and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Cohen tells the story of how the Ottoman Jewish community tried to fashion the four hundredth anniversary of the Jews’ arrival in the Ottoman Empire into a patriotic holiday. According to her, they did this for two main reasons: The first was to convince Sultan Abdulhamid II to accept the Jews, who were fleeing from Russia, into the Ottoman Empire. During this period, Abdulhamid II was cautious about allowing Jewish refugees into the Empire, mainly because he was wary of the Jewish efforts to establish a Jewish settlement in Palestine. By emphasizing and highlighting the role of the Ottoman state in accepting Jewish refugees in 1492, the Jewish leaders tried to convince the Ottoman sultan to accept the Jews who were fleeing from Russia at this time.
In addition, the invented holiday was aimed at elevating the position of the Jewish community in the eyes of the Ottoman state and the Muslim community by publicly demonstrating the gratitude that the Ottoman Jews felt towards the Empire. One important thing to consider here is that even though the Ottoman state and the Jewish leaders, who were sanctioned by the Ottoman government, were later involved in the preparations for this Jewish “holiday,” it nevertheless was a good example of how Ottoman Jews could articulate “public manifestations of their own version of patriotism from below.”
As Cohen perceptively points out, however, on the whole, this newly invented Jewish holiday proved to be detrimental to the idea of Ottomanism. The benevolent picture that the Jewish community painted of the Ottoman state was not shared by the other non-Muslim communities of the Empire, such as the Greeks or the Armenians, who were actually conquered by the Ottomans. As a result, while this Jewish show of gratitude strengthened the ties between the Ottoman state and the Jewish community, it also created tensions between the Jews and other non-Muslim communities of the Empire, a topic that Cohen focuses on later in her analysis.
Meanwhile, the other event that Cohen analyzes in this part of her work is the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which, she argues, gave the Ottoman Jews an opportunity to display their Ottoman identity in a foreign land. The participation of the Ottoman Jews in the Exposition was also covered widely in the Jewish press of the Empire and enabled them to discursively articulate what was “authentic” about them, which led to the strengthening of their “Ottoman” identity as a whole.
The Jewish community’s reactions to the Armenian massacres of 1896 and the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 form the next section of Cohen’s book. The main argument she advances here is that the Ottoman Jewish community adopted two parallel discourses in this period. On the one hand, the Jewish elite promoted the idea of “civic Ottomanism," which emphasized the harmonious relationship between all the communities living in the Ottoman Empire. The way the Jewish leaders tried to achieve this goal was by trying to distance themselves from the attacks on the Armenians in 1896.
On the other hand, however, the Ottoman Jews were also willing to adopt the discourse of “Islamic Ottomanism,” which gained precedence during the reign of Abdulhamid II, especially after the Empire lost much of its European territories in the aftermath of the 1877-1878 War with Russia. During the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897, for instance, the Ottoman Jews, especially in Izmir and Salonica, generally sided with the Muslim community against the Greeks. Moreover, many Jews, ranging from army volunteers to charitable women, also adopted various symbols of Islamic Ottomanism as a way to demonstrate their Ottoman patriotism at this time. These gestures, Cohen argues, enabled the Ottoman Jews to carve out a place for themselves in the eyes of the Ottoman state vis-à-vis the other non-Muslim communities, while also aggregating the hostilities between the Jews and the other non-Muslims of the Empire.
In the final part of her work, Cohen focuses on the Jewish community’s response to Sultan Mehmed V’s visit to Salonica in 1911. Once again, Cohen emphasizes the changing socio-political environment of the Empire, in which the Jewish patriotic project took on new forms.
According to Cohen, the rapid proliferation of the political parties and ideologies that took place after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was reflected within the Ottoman Jewish community as well. The Ottoman Jews were divided along the lines of Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, liberals, and the supporters and opponents of the new regime, which made it increasingly difficult to represent the Jewish community as a unified whole. As a result, the Jewish community not only competed with other non-Muslim communities, but various Jewish factions also competed with one another in order to be able to gain the support of the Ottoman state.
Cohen argues that these divisions within the Ottoman Jewish community were reflected in the Jewish responses to Sultan Mehmed V’s visit to Salonica in 1911, underscoring different and competing forms of loyalty demonstrated by the Zionists, anti-Zionists, and the socialists within the Jewish community. According to Cohen, these struggles to gain the support of the Ottoman state highlight the new and contrasting forms that the Jewish patriotic project took after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. The divisions were also a testament to the fact that by the early 20th century, the Ottoman Jews performed their patriotism no longer as a whole community but as individuals who belonged to a wide-ranging array of social clubs and political parties.
Cohen’s work provides an important case study that shows us that Ottomanism was not simply a top-down state project but a process in which non-Muslim groups played an active role. As Cohen demonstrates, the Sephardic Jews of the Empire adopted Ottomanism as a way to work towards elevating their own position vis-à-vis the Ottoman state and other non-Muslim groups of the Empire. In doing so, they highlighted the advantages and challenges of adopting an imperial identity in a world that was increasingly defined by nationalist principles.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.
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Fashioning history with sculptor’s clay provides much more finished results than using Lego™️ blocks.
Esther Bembassa's Sephardi Jewry is a good source about Salónica. Ultimately, the Federación had it wrong. The 1917 arson and the ethnic cleansing that followed, turning a Sephardi city into a Greek one proved Zionism right. In a time of national revivals, Jews couldn't afford to be a nation without a land.