PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

A set of causes explains this protracted and painful process of decline:the use of the accumulated capital for military purposes and luxuries;the concessions made to the European povvers through capitulationsthat prevented true, autonomous development; the scant integrationachieved within the framework of a multi-national Empire, that wouldfoster broad movements for independence during the 19th and the 20thcenturies; the deterioration of the state administration and the army; thegrovving separation between the corrupt ruling elites and the masses; thesystem of obedience to the Sultanate, inspired in a brand of islam withdogmatic characteristics 1 . In short, like a distinguished Latin Americanpolitologist said, "the Ottoman Empire was essentially the result of a political'tour de force' that built, on the basis of an entirely servile dedicationto the Sultan, legitimized by religious conceptions, a militaryorientedsociety [...] vvhose inability for cultural and economic change,due to the double rigidity engendered by its set of values and by its notionsabout participation, proved to be fatal in the long run, despite its politicaland military successes" 2 .The attempts to curb that decline, that began in the late 18th centuryand lasted one hundred years, failed to change the nature of the system.Hovvever, it is worthwhile remembering some of the main stages experiencedby the movement that pitted "modernists" and "conservatives"against each other, from whose legacy benefıtted the revolutionary Kemalistmovement, in a dialectic of denial-integration-surpass, conducive tothe creation of modern Turkey.Reformist attempts began with the establishment of military schoolsafter the western model, under Selim III but mainly under the authoritarianrule of Mahmud II, who laid the groundwork for a modern army afterhe annihilated the jannizars in 1826, subdued the Islamic clergy, and wasthus able to rally the support of broad intellectual sectors and of the statebureaucracy, receiving the sobriquet of the Ottoman Peter the Great.These first steps were followed by the "Tanzimat" (reorganization) periodunder Sultan Abdu-l-Mejid, who reigned from 1839 until 1877.This stage culminated with the 1876 Constitution under the Sultanate ofAbdu-l-Hamid, that granted, albeit belatedly, the Ottoman citizenship toali of the Empire's subjects, at a time when nationalist movements werealready on the rise. This stage was characterized by some political andcultural reforms and by a formal constitutionalism that remained in placeuntil 1908, although it was ignored by the essentially despotic governmentof Abdu-l-Hamid. On that same year, the movement of the Young1. See Kemal H. Karpat, Turkey's Politics, Princeton University Press, 1959, pp. 4-6.Some interesting assessments about the decline of the Ottoman Empire in Paul Kennedy'sThe Rise and Fail of the Great Powers, Vintage Books, New York, 1987.2. Helio Jaguaribe, Sociedad, cambio y sistema politico, Editorial Paidos, Buenos Aires,1972.30