TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

statesmen appeared in the course of time. Nonetheless the hegemony of Persian and
Arabic culture in the Ottoman high circles continued.
From the fifteenth century on, the ‘Persianized’ and ‘Arabized’ elite began to
recruit novices from a completely new source of men: the slaves or kapı kulları. In the
middle of the fifteenth century the power of slave-origin statesmen reached such a level
that the sultan used to use the balance of power between them and ulemā-origin
statesmen to maintain his absolute authority. It has been shown that following the
conquest of Constantinople, the Conqueror changed the balance within the Ottoman
state machinery in favor of the former group.
A detailed analysis of the emergence of the Ottoman bureaucratic elite and ulemā
class is far beyond the scope of this study. Suffice it to state here that by end of the
fifteenth century, an ‘Ottoman ruling elite’ with well-determined cultural, intellectual,
ideological, and social boundaries had already emerged. Being eminently attached to the
classical Middle Eastern Islamic cosmopolitan culture, they were totally alienated from
the simple culture and ‘way of life’ of Turkomans.
3.2.3. The Development of the Ottoman Ideology or “Imperial Regime”
It should be mentioned that the arising ‘official ideology’ developed concomitantly with
the growing of the elite class. The official ideology of Ottomans was indeed a work of
these elite. The most dominant components of the ‘Ottoman official ideology’ might
well be regarded as the notion of the exalted-eternal state (devlet-i ebed-müddet) 296 as a
296 Ahmet Yaşar Ocak argues that in the Ottoman empire the sate is a subject of belief and regarded as a
sacred being. See Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, Zındıklar ve Mülhidler, p. 73. Ocak also underlines that, following
the Islamic state tradition, Ottomans perceived ‘state’ and ‘religion’ (din ü devlet) as inseparable twins.
See ibid, p. 83.
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