Introduction
In November 1909—in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, the restitution of a constitutional regime, and the final dethronment of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909)—several sisters from Jaffa, a town on the central coast of Ottoman Palestine, petitioned the Ministry of the Interior in İstanbul by telegraph. These sisters, the daughters of Ismaʿil al-Shakir, claimed that they were trustees (mütevelli) of waqf land in Jaffa and that the waqf authorities had illegally confiscated some of their land by claiming its management to be under their own jurisdiction.Footnote 1 The sisters did not beg the sultan for mercy or ask for his benevolence, as had been so common in petitions to the sultan prior to the 1908 revolution. Rather, their telegram was written in a very laconic, straightforward manner and in a technical style lacking the customary polite phraseology so typical of earlier Ottoman petitions to the sultan, even though it was still written in high Ottoman and surely formulated with the help of a professional petition writer (arzuhalci).Footnote 2 While exceptional insofar as it was a petition to Istanbul made by women (a topic beyond the scope of this article),Footnote 3 it also reflects the zeitgeist of the new era of constitutional rights in the empire and subjects’ awareness of them. Unlike previous petitions to the sultan, the sisters simply demanded what they perceived as their constitutional and civil rights.Footnote 4
In the last few years, the institution of imperial subjects petitioning the Ottoman sultan has received greater attention than before from historians, who have gradually come to acknowledge its potential for social, legal, economic and institutional history, although it is still far from being fully utilized by researchers.Footnote 5 The petition system has deep historical roots going back as early as the sixteenth century, with the Ottomans considering it highly important and making broad use of it on both the provincial and the imperial levels.Footnote 6 Theoretically, every Ottoman subject, even the simplest peasant in the most remote province, had the right to submit a petition to the sultan and beg for justice either in person, through a representative, or by sending a petition alone or as part of a group. For the sultans, petitions were a way to manifest their benevolence, boost their image as just rulers concerned for the wellbeing of their subjects, gather information about the whereabouts of the bureaucracy, gain legitimacy, and avoid criticism by redirecting criticism toward the intermediate bureaucracy instead.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state began regulating numerous facets of its subjects’ lives which it had previously partially or completely neglected, and it began intervening much more in people’s daily lives through such practices and institutions as censuses, conscription, the registration of lands, tax surveys and collection, education, health, and the election of muhtars (local headmen who formed part of the bureaucracy). In return, the empire’s subjects increasingly expected the state and its various representatives to provide redress for their concerns and to hear their pleas.
To this end, many subjects would approach local authorities, such as the newly established municipalities and administrative councils established in the provinces as part of reforms at various levels (e.g., sancak, kaza, nahiye). Others would directly approach the state ministries in İstanbul, such as the Ministry of the Interior (Dahiliye Nezareti), the Ministry of Justice (Adliye Nezareti), or the Ministry of Finance (Maliye Nezareti), in the process utilizing the language of law and rights.
However, despite the existence of such reformed Ottoman institutions, subjects also continued to approach the sultan directly through petitions, and in fact they even did so in growing numbers by taking advantage of new possibilities of contacting İstanbul easily and cheaply, hoping to initiate a process that would serve their interests. The availability of new modes of communication, such as the postal system and the telegraph, increased subjects’ ability to contact İstanbul quickly, cheaply, and without intermediaries. Often they did so in tandem with other approaches to the judiciary, such as filing in nizamiye or Sharia courts or appealing to local administrative councils. Furthermore, they did so even when they knew they had no legal grounds for their demands, nonetheless hoping thereby to improve their position in ongoing disputes or conduct a meaningful dialogue with the government and its various representatives. This massive petitioning to the sultan shows that, even in this age of reforms, he was still considered in his subjects’ eyes to be the ultimate source of power and authority for the entire Ottoman bureaucratic/administrative and legal systems.
The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 contributed to a transformation of the time-honored Ottoman petitioning system, a topic which has thus far received little attention.Footnote 7 At this time, more than in the past, petitioning became a way to demand constitutional, civil, and political rights.Footnote 8 The reinstatement of the parliament and of the constitution suspended in 1876, the lifting of the ban on the free press and political activity, and the demise of the notorious Hamidian regime in general—all brought about political, societal, and legal changes that were reflected in petitions. In other words, as the political reality changed, so did the petitions submitted by Ottoman subjects to the imperial center. This should hardly be surprising, given that petitions often serve as a barometer for social, cultural, and even political developments.Footnote 9 In the Ottoman context, subjects’ petitions to the state and its institutions reflected these changes in vivid and surprising detail, above all through a disregard of the sultan himself, a development which to a great degree contradicted the very essence of the petitioning mechanism in the first place. These petitions thus reveal the changes occurring during the upheavals of the empire’s last decade and enable striking comparisons with the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid, as well as with the earlier period of reforms, in such areas as state-subject relationships, legal practices, the justifications cited when petitioning, the ability to act politically, and the rule of law.
Despite the changes visible in post-1908 Ottoman petitions, however, there were also aspects of continuity with previous petitions. Subjects during the late Tanzimat and Hamidian periods were developing a growing awareness of the bureaucratic procedures involved in the reforms and of their rights as subjects who increasingly acted (and were treated) as citizens of a modern state, and as a result they acted in various ways meant to both protect their interests and demand what they thought were their rights. Thus, after 1908 there was not a complete break with the previous petitioning system. Rather, the changes were scaffolded onto subjects’ growing awareness of the procedural modes of the reforms of the late Tanzimat and Hamidian periods.Footnote 10
Focusing on petitions sent to various bodies and officials in the Ottoman capital between the 1908 revolution and the eve of World War I, this article presents a case study of dozens of petitions (arzuhal, șikayet, and at times simply telegrams) from the region of Ottoman Palestine, which are today located in the central Ottoman archives in İstanbul,Footnote 11 as well as of the bureaucratic correspondence relating to these petitions. To compare post-1908 petitions with previous petitions and better grasp changes in the nature of the petitioning system, the article draws on the existing secondary literature on Ottoman petitions,Footnote 12 in particular a recent study of 500 petitions from Palestine submitted to İstanbul during the Hamidian period.Footnote 13 As such, the article will discuss such varied issues as the second constitutional period, legitimacy and reforms, justice, and Ottoman control of the Arab provinces.
The institution of petitioning after 1908
What happened to the institution of petitioning following the reintroduction of the constitution and a parliamentary regime and the end of actual rule by the sultan? In the first, short-lived Ottoman constitution of 1876, it is stated that petitions would be referred to the appropriate Ottoman bureaus or to the parliament for consideration. The article (Art. 14) dealing with the right of petition reads as follows: “One or more persons of Ottoman nationality have the right to present petitions in the proper quarter relating to the breaking of law and regulation, done either to their own or public detriment, and may likewise present in protest signed petitions to the General Ottoman Assembly, complaining of the conduct of state servants and functionaries.”Footnote 14 Had the short-lived parliament addressed petitions, this naturally would have contradicted the essence of the institution of petitioning the ruler as the head of an absolutist regime. However, since the first Ottoman parliament was dissolved by the autocratic Abdülhamid II a little over a year after it was convened, and did not reconvene before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, its assigned task of responding to petitions in fact became a moot issue.
After the revolution of 1908 and the repropagation of the 1876 constitution, the question of who would address petitions under the new circumstances once again became topical. Until the failed counter-revolution in the spring of 1909, which was driven by conservative circles and eventually led to Abdülhamid’s final dethronement and deportation, there was a short period of confusion and hesitation evident from the petitions, and in fact not many changes are visible.Footnote 15 During these nine months after the revolution, petitioners were very careful not to manifest disrespect toward the sultan or express any opinions or statements that might put them in danger in case the revolution ultimately failed.Footnote 16
Thus, for a while, petitioners refrained from mentioning the notorious and feared sultan directly when addressing their petitions to the office of the grand vizier, who usually handled petitions in the name of the sultan, or to other Ottoman entities.Footnote 17 These self-imposed strictures were only abandoned when it finally became clear that Abdülhamid had been dethroned for good and would not return to govern. At this point, in the spring of 1909, his long reign immediately began to be described in petitions in the darkest terms possible, with his image thus being denigrated. While it is virtually impossible to run statistics on the post-1908 petitions found in the archive owing to the fact that there was no one place where they were collected and registered—unlike the situation that held until the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the topics of petitions and their handling being recorded in complaint registers (şikayet defterleri)—nevertheless the change in the tone, characteristics, and demands of the petitions is quite clear.Footnote 18
Take, as an example, a dispute between the village of al-Masmiyya in the kaza of Gaza and the Bedouin group of al-Wuhaydat over the land of al-Mukhayzin. This conflict led to the submission of mutual complaints to İstanbul by both parties. The villagers claimed that they had cultivated the land for hundreds of years, whereas the Bedouins had taken possession illegally during the reign of Abdülhamid, allegedly obtaining illegal title deeds for the land through their connections in Gaza. Strikingly, the villagers’ petitions castigate the era of Abdülhamid, employing the new discourse of the post-Hamidian period, a stylistic choice undoubtedly motivated by flattery.Footnote 19 It also served as a point of reference for evaluating the new regime, which in the document is assumed to be completely different from the previous one. The petitioners depict the earlier era as one of darkness and tyranny, and the new post-revolution era as sunshine. Moreover, the document also contains an unusual reference to constitutional rights, the new age in the empire’s history, and subjects’ right to be protected by the rule of law.Footnote 20
In this regard, although many of the petitions sent to İstanbul between 1908 and 1914 still dealt with issues historically typical of Ottoman petitions—corruption and misdeeds by local officials and bureaucrats, poor administration, and allegations that certain rights had been impinged uponFootnote 21 —and thus resemble former petitions in terms of style, content, and tone, there are yet several noticeable changes as compared to earlier petitions. These reflected the shift in the empire’s politics and its relationships to its subjects. The three key changes observable through the post-1908 petitions—namely, the addressees of petitions, their demands and vocabulary, and their politicization—are discussed below.
Addressees of the petitions
Already prior to 1908 many of the petitions sent to İstanbul, not to mention those sent to local Ottoman authorities, did not address the sultan himself, even indirectly. Nevertheless, through 1908 the sultan—whether directly or through the grand vizierate—was still the addressee of numerous petitions requesting his mercy, benevolence and kindness, intervention, or ad hoc justice. In addition, it was clear to all that he stood at the head of the Ottoman system, was the ultimate source of power and legitimacy, and had the last word with regard to justice. After the revolution—particularly after the final dethronement of Abdülhamid II in the spring of 1909, when the new sultan, Mehmed V (r. 1909–1918), became a mere figurehead—petitions which previously had been addressed to him began to be sent more frequently to the Council of State (Şura-yı Devlet), the parliament, and the different ministries.Footnote 22 Despite the lack of accurate statistics, it seems that petitions, more than had been the case in the past, became a way for the Ottoman subjects—now increasingly acting like citizens of a modern state—to communicate directly with state bureaus and officials concerning administrative/bureaucratic and legal matters; petitions were now less used as a way to plead for mercy or personal favor from the sultan and his representatives. In fact, the sultan, who in the original Ottoman petitioning system was the addressee of the petitions and who used petitions to provide himself with much needed legitimacy and boost his image as a benevolent ruler concerned for his subjects’ wellbeing, was now completely eliminated from the petitioning system.
Demands and vocabulary in the petitions
In the context of the drastic social and political changes and upheaval in the empire, many petitions now sought to ensure civil equity and constitutional rights, prevent treatment contrary to the constitution and its spirit,Footnote 23 obtain various political rights, and preserve previously granted privileges vis-à-vis other groups in society or within the petitioning group. As such, the petitions used positivist arguments and justifications that had been less common in the previous regime given the nature of sultanic rule, the limited freedom of expression, and the limitations placed on political activity. Indeed, while discourse about equality before the law, legal order, and rights was already present in petitions during the Tanzimat period and afterwards, at that time the emphasis was still on sultanic justice and care for the empire’s subjects, and no political issues were raised in such an open and even blunt manner.
This represented much more than just a change in discourse: it illustrates the very transformation of petitions as an institution. As already mentioned, the introduction of postal services and the telegraph in the second half of the nineteenth century made petitioning an affordable way for ordinary subjects to demand justice, especially during the proceduralization of the legal system that dated from the last quarter of this century, which made access to standard legal apparatuses much more expensive.Footnote 24 The gap between “legal” and “just” was bridged by the sultan, who served as the ultimate and sole authority capable of linking the two concepts. Once constitutional rights came to be framed as legal articles, the disparity between law and justice was, presumably, eliminated: from then on, demanding justice was in fact theoretically synonymous with demanding enforcement of the law or the legal protection of civil rights.Footnote 25 The constitution was enacted and upheld by the state, rather than by the sultan himself, and was now the supreme guardian of the common good, a fact which was clearly reflected in the petitions.
For instance, consider the words of the villagers living in the vicinity of Jaffa in a petition sent to the grand vizier in İstanbul in the summer of 1913, following a clash with Jewish colonies in the region: “It is well known that the exalted state works continuously for the welfare of the people, and the numerous decrees it issues clearly testify to this. The state does not discriminate when applying justice to and conferring mercy upon rich and poor; townsman and peasant; Muslim, Christian, and Jew.”Footnote 26
After the revolution, there was also a considerable change in the vocabulary used in the petitions, in their wording and rhetoric. It was only natural that the familiar institution of petitioning would serve as a medium through which new discourses could be negotiated, and as a result the discourse found in the petitions shifted so as to focus on constitutional and civil rights, the rule of law, equity, the new age in the empire’s history, subjects’ rights to be protected by the rule of law, and the defects of the former system.Footnote 27 Even so, no violation of specific clauses in the new constitution was cited in the petitions; instead, they simply argued, in a generic way, that certain acts violated the spirit of the new constitution and the new era of the empire.
For the most part, the petitions were still written with the help of professional petition writers (arzuhalci) offering their services for a fee. Previously, when petitioning the sultan, this practice allowed the petitioners to submit their petitions in a way acceptable in the Ottoman capital by using the correct level of flattery and the right jargon, justifications, and codes of expression. The arzuhalcis sat with their makeshift stands in the market, next to the post and telegraph offices, and in cafés and other public spaces. Their services were used by a wide variety of petitioners. Under the new conditions—and despite the lifting of the former system’s limitations and shackles—their services continued to be heavily used, as can be seen in the petitions’ repetitive forms of expression, rationales, jargon, and general language use.
As pointed out by Michelle Campos in her analysis of the changing discourse of the empire’s subjects in the period after the revolution, “Ottoman citizens studied and cited the constitution and other revolutionary ‘sacred texts’ that endowed them with political power, and they utilized a variety of tools to exercise and preserve that power.”Footnote 28 The new spirit expressed in the petitions after the revolution reflects ideas circulating in the urban centers of the empire, in the press and elsewhere, and which were couched in writing by these petition-writers.Footnote 29
It remains an open question whether the petitions’ words solely reflected the arzuhalcis’ knowledge, understanding, and capabilities, or whether they to a certain extent also reflected those of the petitioners themselves. In both cases, interesting issues regarding relationships between periphery and center are raised. The arzuhalcis and/or petitioners knew how they had to express their claims and which words to use under the empire’s new conditions. Hence, they appear to have been staying abreast of state and civil issues. On the other hand, however, this might also testify to how provincial they were: they lacked a thorough understanding of the complexities of the Ottoman bureaus and officials concerned, which was due to their distance from the nexus of state politics. The abrupt turnabout in the language of the petitions might serve as evidence for this.
Another important issue related to the discourse used in the petitions and their vocabulary after the revolution was the denigration of the era of Abdülhamid.Footnote 30 In this regard, Campos writes that “[i]n public addresses and on the pages of the newly free press, complaints of the sufferings of the past thirty-three years abounded. Father, brother, and son had feared each other, neighbors had informed on one another, and man had to hide his own thoughts from himself.”Footnote 31
Politicization of the petitions
Perhaps the most important development in the nature of petitions after the revolution, at least from the region under study in this article, was that many petitions were much more overtly political than before. On the surface, one might argue that this had to do with specific circumstances in Ottoman Palestine, but there was also apparently a larger process unfolding in connection with empire-wide developments and processes. This is also the picture obtained from the few studies available on post 1908-petitions.Footnote 32 The abolition of Abdülhamid II’s censorship, the awakening of political life, and the right to freely express one’s opinion in public are all evident in the petitions. For instance, in Palestine in the years following the revolution, a growing number of petitions were submitted against Jewish settlement activity and purchase of land, many of them expressing warnings about the dire consequences of Zionist activity. There were even concerns that the integrity of the empire might be threatened. Consider, for instance, the strongly worded petitions against Jewish activity sent to İstanbul after clashes such as the one in al-Fula in northern Palestine in 1911Footnote 33 and the one in Zarnuqa in central Palestine in 1913.Footnote 34 These petitions expressed disappointment that the empire had turned a blind eye to Zionist activity, which could potentially create a state within a state.Footnote 35
The issue of Zionist activity was also prominent in the accusations leveled against Abdülhamid himself. It was claimed that corruption during his reign had allowed Jews to take over Palestine and set up a Zionist regime that could undermine the empire’s political integrity. In the case of al-Masmiyya discussed above, for example, among the villagers’ repeated arguments was the claim that, unless the state and its legal institutions protected them, the land would eventually fall into Jewish hands, as had often occurred during the despotic era of Abdülhamid. The villagers thus blamed the previous regime for allowing Zionist activity to take place and warned that the same thing could happen again.Footnote 36 The petition writers and the villagers were likely well aware of the change of tone with regard to Zionist activity after the revolution and the spread of opposition to Zionism in the press and among the urban elite of Palestine; otherwise, they likely would not have referred specifically to this particular threat or gone so far as to raise the specter of the creation of “a state within the state.”Footnote 37
As suggested above in the cases of al-Fula and Zarnuqa, after 1908, petitions against Jewish activity by the rural population were often submitted with encouragement from different urban circles, which was also a new phenomenon. Sporadic petitions against the Zionist colonization activity that had started in Palestine in 1882 and led to the establishment of dozens of colonies through 1908 are found in the archive for the pre-revolution period, but these were all local incidents lacking a political dimension: for the most part, they concerned arguments about the use of natural resources like water, the demarcation of plots of land, ownership rights, grazing rights, and the like. One of the main problems involved was the clash between the positive law promoted by the state and the traditional practice of land usage and usufruct adhered to by villagers and others. The difference after the revolution was that the series of clashes between Jews and Arabs in the rural areas of Palestine, which greatly intensified after 1908, attracted growing attention among the educated Arab elite. The latter manifested an increased political awareness of the aims of the Zionist movement and were well informed concerning Jewish-Arab clashes in the rural areas of Palestine.
These clashes were also monitored by the flourishing Arab pressFootnote 38 —which for all intents and purposes had not existed under Abdülhamid—and even came to be discussed in the Ottoman parliament, where representatives from Palestine raised the issue of Jewish immigration and colonization activity.Footnote 39 These are clearly two new developments that must be considered when discussing petitions from this period, because previously there had been no ability to discuss political events in either the press or parliament. The Jaffa-based newspaper Filastin, for example, devoted several articles in the months after the Zarnuqa incident to this affair. Some three weeks after the incident, it printed the following:
[W]hat is intriguing about the foreign Jews who reach us after being expelled, humiliated, and despised is how quickly they turn, thanks to the leniency of the local population, to our masters, who are stronger than us and who look down on us with contempt and scorn. Later, when we want to teach our children to be aware of the risks awaiting us, they throw it back at us, saying that we behave barbarically, with jealousy and hatred, and they announce in their newspapers to European eyes and ears that we encourage disgust for them among the people, incite people against them, and want them to be massacred. Isn’t it similar to the fable of the wolf in sheep’s clothing?Footnote 40
To return to the villagers’ petition following the Zarnuqa incident, the fact that dozens of villagers signed a petition against the Jewish colonies so soon after the incident in question is indicative of the incident’s broad influence over the local population. The petition was apparently organized by a political activist from Jaffa named Shaykh Sulayman al-Taji, the founder of the Ottoman Patriotic Party in the town, who was known as a strong opponent of Zionist activity.
In this regard, some of the petitions composed during the decade of Young Turk rule were even published in the press, which blossomed after the lifting of Abdülhamid’s censorship—a new development that changed the rules of the game.Footnote 41
Conclusion
Similar to the changes in the Ottoman political and legal system after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the upheaval in Ottoman society prompted by the subsequent accelerated political and social developments, the petitioning system also underwent its own refashioning. Petitions reflect the zeitgeist,Footnote 42 with their content mirroring current developments and trends in society and the administrative and political systems. In the Ottoman case discussed in this article, the post-1908 petitions reflect, above all, the transfer of power from the sultan to state ministries, administrative bodies, and various office holders. This thus represented a new era in terms of petitioning and constituted a major transformation in response to the demise of the sultan as the ultimate source of justice in the empire, a situation which had previously held for hundreds of years.
Given this situation, one can argue that petitions evolved very rapidly from a traditionally private or confidential mode of communication between subjects and ruler into a public vehicle for demanding constitutional and political rights, lodging protests, and issuing a range of demands to change governmental policy.Footnote 43 This constituted a step away from an institution that, within a monarchical system, monitored authority, and a step toward a practice of expressing public opinion and posting popular demands. Thus, some petitions came to reflect public opinion more than serve as a judicial tool.
The nature of petitions was later changed once again by World War I, an era of great duress that shattered the old order and led to confusion and hardship. Considering the circumstances prevailing in the empire at the time and the nature of the governing regime during the war, this is a period that deserves special treatment; however, several general comments on the petitions of this period are worth making. For one thing, Yiğit Akın, writing about women’s petitions during the war—which traditionally were less common than petitions submitted by men and were usually highly submissive in nature—noted that “[f]rustrated by deteriorating local conditions and increasingly harsh state policies, Ottoman women from all parts of the empire sent petitions and letters to various ministries as well as to local authorities during the war years.”Footnote 44 Some of these petitions were quite courageous as compared to past petitions, thus suggesting “a new mode of interaction between women and state authorities based on a perceived understanding of mutual obligations and expectations.”Footnote 45
In fact, the unusual situation prevailing in the empire during the War is also well reflected in the petitions examined in this article, which in general were much less polite, very particular in their demands, and indeed very demanding. The main addressee in İstanbul became the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Talat Pasha, as under the prevailing conditions there was no point in contacting either the sultan or parliament, as had been the case in earlier periods. In the Levant, some petitions were apparently submitted directly to the Ottoman military commanders in the region, such as Cemal Pasha, the governor of the Syrian front during the war, while others reached him through İstanbul asking for clarifications.Footnote 46
