With a focus on the key developments and critical junctures that shaped and reshaped the relationship between the Ottomans and its non-Muslim subject communities, this paper seeks to understand the ...dynamics and the rationale behind the Ottoman policies and practices vis-a-vis non-Muslim communities. It will do so by offering a periodisation of Ottoman rule along four major pathways, each of which also provides the title of the respective section. The first period is referred to as structural exclusion by toleration over centuries, from the conquest of the respective territories to their incorporation into the imperial domain. The second phase is entitled integration via politics of recognition which basically covers the Tanzimat era (1838-1876). The third period is put under the heading of coercive domination and control, roughly corresponding to the Hamidian Period (1876-1908). And finally, the last period is concerned with the Young Turks regime (1908-1918), discussing its politics and policies towards non-Muslims communities framed under the title of nation-building by nation-destruction.
The chapter titles act both as hypothesis and structuring elements of the periodisation presented. As such they shall help identify the dominant paradigm of each period pertinent to the status and situation of the communities under consideration, while connecting them in a plausible manner. This paper is motivated by a non-Orientalised decolonial approach to the study of the Ottoman empire as well as the nation-states established in the post-Ottoman political geographies.
The purpose of this paper is to review the history of the constitutional regulation of marriage and divorce in British mandate Palestine and the state of Israel from 1918 on. Israel was subject to ...British rule (mostly under a mandate of the League of Nations) from 1918 to 1948, and was called Palestine at the time. In 1948 some of this territory claimed its sovereignty as an independent state called Israel. The paper will highlight the different constitutional norms and procedures that govern the field of family law in British mandate Palestine and the state of Israel from the beginning of the British mandate to this day.
The paper is based upon historic scrutiny of the legislation of British Palestine and the state of Israel in the field of family law, analyzing the law in accordance with the historic developments in the region. The results of this scrutiny are that from 1948 to the third decade of the 21st century, the Israeli legislator has repeatedly acted to prevent the constitutional regulation of civil marriage, preserving the archaic millet system, an Ottoman system of marriage within religious communities, that was the basis of the British mandate’s regulation of marriage and divorce in Palestine. But as much as the original millet arrangement was enacted by the British as a voluntary system, it was given new and compulsory features by the Israeli legislator, all the while avoiding a comprehensive constitutional regulation of Israeli family law.
The paper concludes that a constitutional regulation of civil marriage is probably not possible in Israel, due to the political inability to reach an agreement between religious and secular Jews in Israel. But this did not prevent the Israeli legislature from fundamentally changing the British mandate constitutional arrangement, leaving behind a patchwork of improvised legislation that violates the basic civil rights of Israeli citizens.
The transition from empire to nation-state poses challenges in managing religious and ethnic pluralism. Empires, characterized by hierarchical structures and diversity, contrast with nation-states, ...which aim for uniformity and unity. As empires modernize administratively, they grapple with different approaches to pluralism. While Habsburgs were more in favor of a federal plurality, the Romanovs pushed for centralization and assimilation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottomans vacillated between these two alternative paths. This vacillation is most evident in their approach to millet system which simultaneously followed the contradictory policies of undermining millet boundaries in order to promote a sense of unity across the multi-faith society and policies of promoting and safeguarding the privileges and group-specific rights of non-Muslim communities. Ottoman nationalism eventually shifted towards a homogenizing model, akin to the Romanov approach, leading to the exclusion of religious minorities. This process of homogenization continued in the nationalist policies of modern Turkey and resulted in the secular Turkish Republic being less tolerant towards non-Muslims than the Islamic Ottoman Empire.
Abstract
State accommodation of plural identity has remained very much subject to the contestations of a majority/minority paradigm, through which autonomy and tolerance are still negotiated and ...filtered. These social reconfigurations, including those oriented towards internal self-determination and minority rights regimes, reveal glimpses of a dark neo-colonial underbelly to state rule. A comparison between the Ottoman millet system and the Israeli control system illustrates that imperial modes of 'divide and rule', or 'segmented pluralism', continue to operate, and are sometimes even enhanced, through the deployment of minority rights. Using a selective Marxist reading, this paper will initially explore the parallels between imperial and modern state rule in the face of pluralism before discussing the methods used for hegemony-maintenance, including: segmentation; dependence; and cooptation. Finally, a socio-legal discussion on the ways in which the forces of hegemony are heavily guised and sustained will follow.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Ottoman Empire introduced the muhtar system in Istanbul in 1829, appointing lay headmen, called muhtar, to the lowest levels of urban administration: Muslim neighborhoods; Orthodox, Armenian, and ...Catholic parishes; and Jewish congregations. This reform resulted in the overlapping of state responsibilities and those of non-Muslim religious authorities, later leading to disputes between the groups. This article investigates such disagreements in an effort to understand how state officials perceived non-Muslim religious authorities’ participation in imperial governance. In so doing, this article argues that, as non-Muslim political movements began developing during the late nineteenth century, state officials adopted a cautious attitude toward non-Muslim clergy, viewing the latter as requiring more careful handling than the layman. This take on clergymen was a shift, a reconsideration of the exceptional treatment they had previously enjoyed, and ignited a growing desire to sever the ties, formerly tolerated, between muhtars and religious authorities.
This article examines the treatment of Armenians by the late Ottoman and Turkish republican state with a special focus on the social and political roles of the Armenian clergy, especially the ...patriarch. After giving a brief account of the historical evolution of the millet system – the principles and practices applied by the Ottoman state in its treatments of non-Muslims – the article tries to understand whether the new regime kept it or adopted a modern approach during the transition from empire to nation-state. It concludes that the republican state has created a deliberate inconsistency in its treatment of the Armenian community and patriarch. Although it has avoided recognizing them as a group and their group’s rights it continuously discriminated against them because of their group identity. The republican state has tried to downgrade the patriarch to a mere religious figure without any social or political role which is defined de jure. However, it has continued to accept him as de facto leader of the Armenian community on some occasions.
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