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IMMIGRATION, RETURN, AND THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP: RUSSIAN MUSLIMS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1860–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2007

James H. Meyer
James H. Meyer
Affiliation:
James H. Meyer is a PhD student at Brown University, Box N, Providence, R.I. 02912, USA; e-mail: james_meyer@brown.edu.
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The immigration of Muslims into the Ottoman Empire, especially from Russia and the Balkans, is a feature of late imperial Ottoman history whose legacy remains strong to this day. Millions of individuals in present-day Turkey trace their roots back to the Balkans or Russia, and interest in these regions remains high in Turkey. Estimates of Muslim immigrants to the Ottoman Empire vary, although most sources place the total number of Muslims leaving Russia for the Ottoman Empire in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century at well over one million. As Russian Muslims in 1897 were considered to number nearly 20 million while Ottoman Muslims counted in the same year numbered 14.1 million, this population shift involved a significant proportion of the Muslim populations of both empires.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , February 2007, pp. 15 - 32
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© 2007 Cambridge University Press

The immigration of Muslims into the Ottoman Empire, especially from Russia and the Balkans, is a feature of late imperial Ottoman history whose legacy remains strong to this day. Millions of individuals in present-day Turkey trace their roots back to the Balkans or Russia, and interest in these regions remains high in Turkey. Estimates of Muslim immigrants to the Ottoman Empire vary, although most sources place the total number of Muslims leaving Russia for the Ottoman Empire in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century at well over one million.1

Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995), 14–17. McCarthy estimates that up to 100,000 Muslims immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from the Crimea in the 18th century, with at least another 300,000 immigrating after the Crimean War. Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 27, 66, 67. Karpat estimates that, between 1783 and 1922, the total number of Crimean Tatar immigrants was about 1,800,000. See also Alan Fisher, “Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years after the Crimean War,” Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas 35 (1987), 336–71, and Mark Pinson, “Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854–62,” Güney-Doğu Avrupa Araştırmaları Dergisi, I (1972), 38–41; and Brian Glyn Williams, The Crimean Tartars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 172–75. McCarthy also estimates that up to 800,000 Circassian and Tatar Muslims emigrated to the Ottoman Empire from Russia in the late 1860s alone; see McCarthy, Death and Exile, 35–36; and see Karpat, Ottoman Population, 27, 67. McCarthy further estimates that “tens of thousands” of Muslims immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from Russia immediately before the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, with another 60,000 immigrating immediately afterward, with tens of thousands more Muslims abandoning lands ceded to the Russian Empire after the war; McCarthy, Death and Exile, 113. McCarthy also writes that, by 1882, approximately 40,000 Laz (or Lezgin) had settled in the Ottoman Empire; McCarthy, Death and Exile, 116. Bedri Habiçoğlu, Kafkasyaءdan Anadoluءya Göçler ve İskanları (Istanbul: Nart Yayıncılık, 1993), 73, also 70–84. Habiçoğlu estimates that more than 600,000 Muslims emigrated from the Russian Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire during the years 1855 to 1907, with most of the migration occurring before 1878. Other studies in the Ottoman context discussing Muslim immigration into the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic include Alexandre Toumarkine's Les migrations des populations musulmanes balkaniques en Anatolie (1876–1913) (Istanbul: Isis, 1995) and Alexandre Popovic's L'Islam Balkanique: Les musulmans sud-est européen dans la période post-ottomane (Weisbaden: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1986).

As Russian Muslims in 1897 were considered to number nearly 20 million while Ottoman Muslims counted in the same year numbered 14.1 million, this population shift involved a significant proportion of the Muslim populations of both empires.2

For Ottoman population figures, see Karpat, Ottoman Population, 198. In the first All-Russian census in 1897, Muslims were counted officially at 14 million, although they were considered to have been greatly undercounted, with their actual numbers closer to 20 million; see I. K. Zagidullin, Perepis' 1897 goda i tatary Kazanskoi gubernii (Kazanc: Tartarskoe Knizhnoe izdatelءstvo, 2000), and Robert Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth Century Russia,” American Historical Review 108 (February 2003): fn. 1.

Historiography devoted to the subject of Russian Muslims in the late-period Ottoman Empire tends to follow one of two well-established approaches. The first of these is found in literature concerned with the Turkist (or “Pan-Turkist”) movement and focuses upon the activities of Russian-born Muslim intellectuals in Istanbul during the Unionist period. This literature, while often producing valuable analysis regarding the intellectual climate of the Unionist period, usually provides little or no insight into the status and activities of Russian Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire more generally. Indeed, even in cases in which the experiences of these intellectual figures appear to mirror those of Russian Muslim immigrants more generally (such as with regard to their frequent returns to Russia), the opportunity to situate these figures within the broader context of Russian Muslim immigration is usually lost due to the strict focus of this literature upon the history of ideas.3

Literature on the “Pan-Turkists” (or Turkists) is indeed plentiful. Noteworthy works focusing primarily upon the theme of Russian Muslims in the Turkist movement include A. Holly Shissler's Between Two Empires: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), François Georgeon's Aux origines du nationalisme turc: Yusuf Akcura 1876–1935 (Paris: ADPF, 1980), and Masami Arai's Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992). See also Serge Zenkovsky, Panturkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960). Notable works in Turkish and Azeri appearing in the past 10 years include Ufuk Özcan, Ahmet Ağaoǧlu ve Rol Değişikliği: Yüzyıl dönümünde batıcı bir aydın (Istanbul: Donkişot, 2002); Ali Haydar Bayat, Hüseyinzade Ali Bey (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkesi Başkanlığı, 1998); Rasim Mirz

, Türkçülüyün babası (

li bey Hüseynzad

nin fikir dünyası) (Baku: Elm, 2000); and Bilajet Guliev, Ağaoğlular (Baku: Ozan, 1997).

Scholarly literature focusing upon the immigration of Russian Muslims into the Ottoman Empire more generally tends to be concerned mostly with issues such as the numbers of immigrants arriving and their places of origin. These studies have often revealed a great amount of valuable statistical and empirical data concerning these migrations.4

In addition to the sources cites in Note 1 of this article, see Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 68–88, 136–54, and 276–307; Karpat, Ottoman Population, 65–70; Habiçoğlu, Kafkasyaءdan Anadoluءya Göçler ve İskanları, 67–69; Williams, The Crimean Tartars, 173–74. Fuat Dündar's İttihat ve Terakkiءnin Müslümanları iskan politikası, 1913–1918 (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2001) provides a systematic discussion of settlement policies followed during the Unionist period.

However, like most studies of the subject of immigration, emphasis in this literature is typically placed upon the narrative of arrival and assimilation. Immigrants who returned to their places of origin or who otherwise did not conform to the narrative of assimilation are typically ignored. Yet, Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire—like Mexican immigrants to the United States, Turkish immigrants to Germany, and others—maintained ties with their places of origin and, when conditions allowed, frequently returned. For them, as for immigrants elsewhere, emigration was often not perceived (at least initially) as a one-way voyage, but rather as a temporary necessity.

In the second half of the 19th century, the question of citizenship5

Obviously, the term “citizenship” here is not entirely appropriate as the people under discussion were subjects, not citizens. My use of this term is not intended to imply a set of rights or responsibilities belonging to a “citizen,” but rather the state of being a “subject,” such as in the Ottoman tebiʿyet or the Russian poddanstvo.

emerged as a new sphere of diplomatic and political struggle between the Russian and Ottoman empires. While the historiography of Muslim emigration from Russia often describes the departure of Muslims from the empire as a policy objective of the Russian government, this was generally not the case.6

See, for example, Justin McCarthy, who writes, “Forced expulsion of peoples was an effective instrument of Russian policy” in the Caucasus, Death and Exile, 18; Kemal Karpat writes that “forcible eviction became state policy only after 1856 when the Russian official attitude towards its minorities took on a discriminatory bent,” Ottoman Population, 66.

Indeed, after the exodus of two thirds of the Crimean Tatar population in the immediate aftermath of the Crimean War (1853–56), the Russian government began taking measures to discourage and prevent Muslim emigration from the empire. Although exceptions to this policy did arise—such as during the War of 1877–78, when Muslims in some areas of the Caucasus were forcibly removed from their lands7

V. O. Bobrovnikov, Musulءmane Severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura RAN, 2002), 17–19, 22–23.

—Russian bureaucrats and policymakers in the late 19th century turned increasingly to several means at their disposal to retain the empire's Muslim population. These means ranged from attempts at reassuring Muslim fears regarding their future in the empire to the use of force and violence against Muslims attempting to emigrate.

In 1860, the same year in which the Russian government instituted a set of new regulations restricting Muslim emigration from the Crimea, the Ottoman Empire created the Refugee Commission (Muhacirin Komisyonu). While the Russian government's response to postwar emigration had been the establishment of a variety of bureaucratic and financial roadblocks to Muslim emigration, the Ottoman government sought to establish better control over immigration by diverting refugees away from large urban centers such as Istanbul and toward other regions of the empire. Even as the Russian government made the process of renouncing one's Russian citizenship evermore complicated and costly, the Ottoman government made becoming Ottoman easier and more attractive, providing land to immigrants and often exempting them from conscription.

Partly as a result of these developments, many Russian Muslims began immigrating “illegally” to the Ottoman Empire, that is, without filling out the proper paperwork beforehand. Still viewed by the Russian government as subjects of Russia, immigrants arriving in the Ottoman Empire were treated by the Porte as new Ottomans and were provided with Ottoman identity papers (tezkire-i osmaniye). This situation led to several diplomatic tensions between the two empires as Russian and Ottoman bureaucrats working in foreign ministries, embassies, and consulates routinely battled over the citizenship status of Russian Muslims residing in the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, Muslim immigrants from Russia frequently exploited ambiguities regarding their citizenship status to receive consular assistance and other benefits available to Russian subjects in the Ottoman Empire. Far from simply conforming to the decisions made by policymakers and bureaucrats regarding their lives, Russian Muslim immigrants often pursued strategies to effectively play the two states against one another.

Starting in Russia, the first half of this article discusses changing Russian policies regarding Muslim emigration and return immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The second half of this article then examines issues of return immigration from the Ottoman Empire, diplomatic disputes over citizenship status, and tactics developed by Russian Muslim immigrants in the face of these disputes. A final section of this article discusses the Russian-born Turkist intellectuals of the Unionist period within the context of Russian Muslim immigration to the Ottoman Empire more generally.

THE RUSSIAN STATE AND RUSSIAN MUSLIMS

Following massive emigration8

A. Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar v Turtsiiu v sviazi s dvizheniem naseleniia v Krymu,” Vestiia akademii nauk SSSR (otdeleniia gumanitarnykh nauk) 1928 (Moscow), 400–401. An estimated 200,000 Crimean Tatars left during the years 1859–63, approximately two-thirds of their entire population.

of Muslims from the Crimea during and after the Crimean War (1853–56), the Russian government began taking measures to prevent such emigration from occurring again. One of the means through which the Russian government sought to convince Muslims to stay in Russia was by appealing through the official representatives of Islam in Russia, the regional Muslim spiritual assemblies.9

The first of these to be created was the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in 1788. In 1794, the Tavridian Muslim Spiritual Assembly was established in the Crimea, eleven years after Crimea's incorporation into the Russian Empire. In the Caucasus, the Shiʿite and Sunni administrations were not created until 1872, although various attempts to create a Muslim spiritual assembly had been in the works since the late 1830s. On the Orenburg Assembly, see Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006); Danilء Azamatov, Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie v kontse XVIII–XIX vv. (Ufa: Gilem, 1999); Danilء D. Azamatov, “The Muftis of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in the 18th and 19th centuries: The struggle for power in Russia's Muslim institution,” Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries: Volume 2, Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations (Berlin: Schwarz, 1998); Vafa Kulieva, Rolء i pozitsiia musulءmanskogo dukhovenstva v sotsialءno-politicheskoi i kulءturnoi zhizni Azerbaidzhana v XIX-nachale XX vv. V rakurse armiano azerbaidzhanskikh politicheskikh otnoshenii (Baku: Nurlan, 2003), 29; Dana Sherry, “Mosque and State in the Caucasus, 1828–1841,” Caucasus and Central Asia Newsletter 4 (2003): 3–9; I. F. Aleksandrov, “K istorii uchrezhdeniia Tavricheskago Magometanskago dukhovnago pravleniia,” in Isvestiia Tavricheski uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii 54 (Simferopol, 1918), 316–55. D. Iu. Arapov, Sistema gosudarstvennogo regulirovaniia islama v Rossiiskoi imperii (posledniaia tret' XVIII-nachalo XX vv.) (Moscow: Moskovskii gos. universitet. Istoricheskii fakul'tet, 2004).

These four bodies of Muslim administration included the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly, the Tavridian Muslim assembly in the Crimea, and the Shiʿite and Sunni assemblies of the Caucasus. Components within the tsarist bureaucracy, these bodies were responsible for much of the administration of Muslim communities in their respective regions. The three Sunni assemblies were each headed by a mufti, while the Shiʿite assembly of the Caucasus was under the authority of a sheikh ul-Islam. Responsible for keeping bureaucratic records for Muslim subjects as well as arbitrating cases pertaining to marriage, divorce, the division of property, and the management of vakıf properties, the spiritual assemblies were also called upon in times of crisis to assist the Russian state in resolving problems relating to Muslim communities. In the Caucasus, leaders of the spiritual assemblies worked closely with civil authorities to combat Muridist and other expressions of nonofficial Islam, while in the Volga region provincial officials relied increasingly upon the Orenburg mufti to assist in quelling several mass disturbances taking place in Muslim communities in the last three decades of the 19th century.10

For a discussion of Muridism in the Caucasus, see Kemal Karpat, Politicization of Islam, 24, 33–41, 111, and Vafa Kulieva, Rolء i pozitsiia, 43–52. See also Azerbaijan State History Archive (Baku, hereafter cited as ADTA), f. 291, op. 1, d. 618, ll. 1–4; f. 524, op. 1, d. 52, ll. 48–58; f. 288, op. 1, d. 5. On Volga Muslim resistance to the 1897 census, see I. K. Zagidullin, Perepis' 1897, especially 36–57, 142–90. On the use of the spiritual authorities by provincial authorities to help subdue Muslim protests, see National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan, Russia, hereafter cited as NART), see, for example, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4345, l. 32; f. 1, op. 3, d. 4637, l. 233; f. 3, op. 1, d. 8137, l. 8.

In the 1880s and 1890s, tsarist officials turned to spiritual authorities in an effort to stem Muslim emigration. In 1886, according to reports filed by the Ottoman ambassador in St. Petersburg, Mufti Huseyin Gubayof of the Sunni Assembly of the Caucasus issued a fatwa to the imams and akhunds (mullas) under his authority denouncing Muslim emigration from Russia. In the document, which had been passed on to Ottoman authorities in Tbilisi, Gubayof wrote that “some ignorant individuals who do not understand when emigration is required have been making the argument that we are obliged by the shariʿa to emigrate.” Not only, wrote Gubayof, is emigration from the “motherland” (vatan) not required, but those people attempting to convince Caucasian Muslims to needlessly undertake the hardships of emigration were themselves acting contrary to the shariʿa.11

Ottoman Prime Ministry Archives (hereafter cited as BOA), YA HUS 203/20, s. 11–13.

In 1894, Russian authorities in the Volga region requested a similar declaration from Orenburg Mufti Soltanov. In response to rumors regarding an alleged agreement between the tsar and the Ottoman sultan that allowed Russia to baptize its Muslim subjects en masse, Russian authorities began to fear that Muslims in the region were preparing to emigrate in large numbers to the Ottoman Empire. They therefore turned to Mufti Soltanov, asking him to issue a fatwa denouncing immigration to the Ottoman Empire.12

NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, ll. 7, 9, 17, 23, 48, and 64.

While the mufti protested that his involvement in a public plea to prevent emigration would not be a useful undertaking, officials working in the office of the governor of the Kazan guberniia (province)—themselves acting on a request from the Kazan offices of the Ministry of the Interior—convinced the mufti to lend a hand. In the fatwa issued by the mufti to the imams and akhunds of the Orenburg Assembly—who then were supposed to disseminate the message among the Muslim population of the region more generally—the mufti stated unequivocally that Muslims should feel no need to leave Russia.

It has come to my attention that rumors have been circulating, even among mullas, that Muslims are going to be baptized into the Russian faith. These rumors are absurd and nonsensical, as the government has no intention whatsoever of baptizing us. On the contrary, the government allows us to freely confess Islam, carry out our religious practices, and construct mosques openly and without constraint. Rumors that they want to baptize us come from people who are either foolish or evil and who should not be believed. But benighted people do believe them. Some people, wishing to immigrate to Turkey, sell off all their land, and ill-intentioned individuals take advantage of this. They collect money to arrange the journey, while others buy up for nothing the last possessions of the frivolous ones who should have thought better.13

NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, ll. 142, 208–9-ob. A copy of this circular can also be found in Sbornik tsirkulirov i inykhء runovodiashchikhء rasporiazhenii po okrugu Orenburgskogo Magometanskago Dukhovnogo Sobraniia 1836–1903 g. (Ufa: Gubernskaia Tipografiia, 1905), 112.

Although the regional spiritual assemblies were the principal means of communication between the Russian government and Russian Muslims, they were not the only ones. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Russian government began experimenting with opening newspapers written in the languages of the empire's Muslim subjects. Some of these, like the Turkestan Wilayetining Gazeti, were published by the Russian authorities themselves.14

Turkestan Wilayetining Gazeti was published from 1870 onward. See Alexandre Bennigsen, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris: Mouton, 1964), 25–26. See also Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 82, 85–89, 112, 120, 125–27, 134, 146, 151, 203, 241, 286.

Other newspapers, like İsmail Gasprinskii's Tercüman, were independent but still subject (like Russian-language newspapers) to official censorship.15

On the difficulties endured by Gasprinskii in obtaining permission to publish Tercüman, see Edward James Lazzerini, “Ismail bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1878–1914,” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1973), 10–29. See also State Archive of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Simferopol, Ukraine, hereafter cited as GAARK), f. 26, op. 2, d. 1595, ll. 1–27.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Gasprinskii also tackled the question of Muslim emigration, publishing several articles in Tercüman warning Muslims of the dangers of emigration and urging them to stay in Russia. Like the two muftis, Gasprinskii blamed the desire of Muslims to leave Russia upon “foolish rumors” and urged his readers to ignore people who spread them.16

“Ob ukhode v Turtsiiu,” Tercüman, 30 July 1893.

On occasion, such as in an article written in response to the emigration of several thousand Muslims from the oblastء (region) of Kuban in 1890, Gasprinskii's words were similar to those used by muftis Gubayof and Soltanov.

If the Muslims of the oblastء of Kuban really have decided to abandon their homeland and Russia, have they truly considered the seriousness of this step? What need do you have to leave Russia? Nobody prevents us from confessing our religion. Our religious practices are not constrained.17

“Ob emigratsii,” Tercüman, 18 March 1890.

On at least one occasion, provincial authorities contacted Gasprinskii to request assistance in using Tercüman to pass on messages to Muslim populations regarding the issue of emigration. In early 1902, in the face of a new wave of Muslim emigration that had begun the previous year, local authorities in the Crimea effectively banned Muslim emigration altogether. Local police officials, to whom Muslims were obliged to apply for passports, began turning down all applications, telling the prospective émigrés that “Tatars are absolutely forbidden from going abroad.”18

GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, ll. 112–13.

Before long, incredulous Tatars were petitioning the governor personally for permission to leave, often claiming they had already sold off all of their belongings and had no place to stay.19

Ibid. For other petitions making similar observations, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, ll. 47–76, 113–17-ob.

Others sought permission to receive foreign-travel passports by insisting they had no intention of emigrating.20

See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 119, ll. 114–114-ob.

Meanwhile, thousands of Tatars began leaving the region without permission altogether.21

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, l. 67–67-ob.

Facing a worsening situation, the governor of the guberniia of Tavrida contacted İsmail Gasprinskii in May of 1902:

In my capacity as Governor of the guberniia of Tavrida, I respectfully request you, dear sir, to notify and warn, by means of your newspaper and to the greatest extent possible, those Tatars wishing to renounce their Russian citizenship and leave the country that they should not sell off their belongings until they have received the appropriate permission to emigrate, lest they fall into difficult economic circumstances resulting from their undue haste.22

GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, ll. 133–133-ob.

As provincial authorities had already stopped issuing foreign-travel passports to Crimean Muslims, the governor's request that Tatars defer acting “until they have received the appropriate permission” was essentially aimed at halting, rather than simply regulating, emigration. As they had done with the spiritual assemblies in earlier years, tsarist authorities believed that Gasprinskii's newspaper could be used as an effective means of slowing or preventing emigration. Although it is not known whether or not Gasprinskii responded to the governor's letter, several articles against emigration did appear in Tercüman over the next several months.23

Cafer Seydahmet Kırımalı cites the following four articles and dates: “Lazım bir nesihat, gafil olma!” 15 Mayıs 1902; “Hicret,” 21 teşrinevvel 1902; “Hicret pasaportu,” 3 ikinciteşrin 1902; “Dost davuşı,” 11 ikinciteşrin 1902. See Kırımalı, Gaspiralı İsmail Bey: Dilde, Fikirde, İşte Birlik (Istanbul: Matbaacılık ve Neşriyat Türk Anonim Şirketi, 1934), 163–64.

Later in the year, Gasprinskii was rewarded for his service to the empire with a golden cigarette case during the visit to the Crimea of Tsar Nicholas II.24

GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 237, l. 211.

Preventing emigration, particularly massive and sudden emigration, was an important component of Russian state policy regarding Muslims, even as fears of “Pan-Islamism” and “Pan-Turkism” became regular features of tsarist bureaucratic discourse in the first decade of the 20th century. In 1910, for example, a civil servant working in the Department of Spiritual Affairs (a division of the Interior Ministry) applauded policies adopted in the final decades of the 19th century to reduce Muslim emigration. He wrote that in 1894 (the year of Mufti Soltanov's fatwa) the Russian government had managed to stave off a feared Muslim migration from the gubernias of Ufa, Samara, Orenburg, and Kazan, in part by permitting more Muslim schools to open. “Thanks to the adoption of more contemporary measures devoted to relieving the concerns of Muslims,” wrote the official, “massive emigration of Muslim populations to Turkey was effectively halted.” Later on in the same report, the author concluded that “from the perspective of domestic policy, the departure from the eastern guberniias of European Russia of the industrious, loyal, and peaceful population” of Tatars, Kazaks, and Bashkirs, “would be harmful to the prosperity” (blagosostoianie) of the affected regions.25

Russian State Historical Archive (St. Petersburg, hereafter cited as RGIA), f. 821, op. 133, d. 469, l. 224.

The adoption of “more contemporary measures” notwithstanding, the Russian state also relied upon the implementation of bureaucratic obstacles and the use of force to deter Muslims from emigrating. In response to massive Muslim emigration in the late 1850s, for example, tsarist authorities in 1860 began obliging Russian subjects wishing to emigrate to first purchase a foreign-travel passport.26

Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 400–401.

These were costly,27

Although the original cost of these passports is not known, by 1902 they cost 10 rubles. A. N. Zorin estimates that factory workers in the Volga region at this time were earning between 3 and 9 rubles a month. See Goroda i posady dorevoliutsionnogo povolzhءia (Kazan: Izdatelءstvo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 2001), 205.

valid for only three weeks after their issue date, and were mandatory for each family departing from Russia.28

Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 398–99.

Muslims who were caught attempting to emigrate without purchasing a passport were prosecuted.29

GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24345, ll. 1–2.

During periods of heavy emigration, police officials in the Crimea would stop issuing passports to Muslims altogether.30

See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op.2, d. 3407, ll. 138, 222, 229–229-ob.

In 1902, Russia scored a major diplomatic victory when the Ottoman Empire announced that it would stop accepting Crimean Tatars who arrived in the country without a Russian exit passport.31

GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, l. 161.

All the same, Russian Foreign Ministry officials frequently complained that the Ottoman government was not living up to this pledge, a charge denied by Ottoman bureaucrats.32

BOA, HRH 575/40.

On other occasions, security forces arrested and physically transported Muslims back to their places of origin. In 1896, 395 families from the guberniias of Ufa and Samara appealed to the Russian Interior Ministry for permission to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire. When their initial request was declined, representatives of the families appealed for assistance from the Ottoman embassy in St. Petersburg. Still finding no success, fifty-two of these families, apparently having decided to leave without permission, began traveling south until they arrived in the Russian city of Rostov. Learning of this, the Interior Ministry ordered the families transported immediately back to Ufa and Samara and that “decisive steps be taken to put a stop to Muslim migration” from the region.33

RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 469, ll. 225–26. For a view into Ottoman reactions to the plight of these families, see BOA, YA HUS 391/87.

On other occasions, the state committed more extreme acts of violence against would-be immigrants. In 1898, for example, Ottoman foreign ministry officials reported that several Muslims had been shot by Russian soldiers as they attempted to board a ship in Batumi in an effort to emigrate illegally.34

BOA, Y. Mtv. 188/127.

Whereas the tsarist administration endeavored to prevent Muslims from emigrating, large numbers of Muslims nevertheless did choose to leave. In 1874, 1890, and 1902, tens of thousands of Tatars emigrated from the Crimea to the Ottoman Empire.35

Hakan Kırımlı, National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars (1905–1916) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 11; Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 395–408; A. Markevich, Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar v Turtsiiu v sviazi s dvizheniem naseleniia v Krymu,” Vestiia akademii nauk SSSR (otdeleniia gumanitarnykh nauk) 1929 (Moscow), 1–3. See also note 1 of this article.

From the Caucasus, emigration subsided in the 1880s and 1890s, but there were still occasionally large numbers of Muslims moving to the Ottoman Empire, such as in 1890 when more than 9,000 Çerkez emigrated.36

Habiçoğlu, Kafkasyaءdan Anadoluءya, 84, fn. 2.

In some cases, emigration appears to have been tied to specific events. In 1874, for example, the introduction of universal conscription in Russia seems related to a wave of emigration occurring in that year and in early 1875.37

Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 1–2. Before this date Tatars had the option of paying a sum of money each year in lieu of service.

Sometimes, provincial authorities responded to increasing emigration by temporarily forbidding emigration altogether, prompting waves of even larger numbers of Muslims to leave illegally.38

On rumors of Russian government plans to ban emigration altogether in 1861, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24165, l. 1-1-ob; on Tatar illegal emigration resulting from this, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24345, ll. 1-2-ob.

In other cases, however, specific reasons behind emigration at a particular time are more difficult to locate. Tsarist bureaucrats in the Crimea explained the 1902 emigration of Crimean Tatars in terms of “religious reasons,” a wish to evade conscription, and the desire of emigrants to be with family who had already emigrated.39

GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 1-ob; ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, l. 67. See also “Evpatoriia, 4-ogo oktiabria,” in Krymskii Vestnik, 11 October 1901, 3.

Crimean Muslims petitioning police authorities and the provincial governor for foreign-travel passports, meanwhile, most frequently cited the desire to reunite with family as their chief motivation for emigrating.40

See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 3407, ll. 122, 125, 138, 139, 193, 205, 229.

While such factors no doubt played a role in motivating some Muslims to leave Russia, it is difficult to separate these issues from the more general climate of anxiety and fear for the future, which often characterized Muslim communities in the empire. Tsarist officials frequently investigated, for example, rumors that Muslims would be forcibly baptized, that their children would be taken away from them, or that they would be deported to other regions of the empire.41

NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4627, l. 179; f. 1, op. 3, d. 9602, ll. 1–5; f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, ll. 7–9-ob, 17, 23, 48, 64, 142, 208–9.

The question of Muslim emigration is a complex one not adequately addressed simply through recourse to the themes of “Russification” or brutality toward Muslims. Muslims were often mistreated in Russia simply because they were Muslims, and the suffering of individual Muslims and Muslim communities across the empire was sometimes very bitter. Yet conditions for Christian and Jewish subjects of Russia were hardly better and were often considerably worse. Like Jewish refuseniks of the late Soviet period, Russian Muslims sought to emigrate more often than other subjects of the empire at least in part because they had someplace to go, a neighboring state willing to take them in and provide them with land and, perhaps, a new start in life. Even in these cases, however, many ended up returning to Russia, either for temporary stays or as permanent return immigrants.

EMIGRATION AND RETURN

In the historiography of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, as in that of many other states composed of large numbers of relatively recent immigrants, the question of immigration is generally framed according to the themes of assimilation and incorporation of populations into the society of the “new” country. The issue of “return immigration” tends to be less explored.42

Migration is a subject that can be discussed in many comparative contexts. Fouad Akram Khater's Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001) studies return immigration among Maronite Christian émigrés to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. See also Ewa Morawska, “Return Migrations: Theoretical and Research Agendas,” in A Century of European Migrations, 1830–1930, ed. Rudolph Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 277–92; Walter D. Kamphoefner, “The Volume and Composition of German-American Return Migration,” in A Century of European Migrations, 293–314; and Dino Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

While the majority of Russian Muslim immigrants did in fact settle permanently in the Ottoman Empire, for many others the voyage to Istanbul was not a one-way trip. Indeed, for many Russian Muslims immigrating to the Ottoman Empire, Russia remained an option to be retained, like their passports, for future consideration and possibilities.

Just as Russian authorities in the second half of the 19th century had become increasingly concerned with preventing Muslim emigration, policies regarding the question of what to do with Russian Muslims who had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire and who now wished to return to Russia also came to be reevaluated during this period. Muslims who had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire and wished to return to Russia first began applying in large numbers in the early 1860s. Sometimes this occurred within a few months after emigrating, sometimes after a span of several years. Frequently, Muslims who had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from Russia applied to Russian consulates in Bessarabia and elsewhere, or else simply showed up at the Russian border requesting to return to Russia to live.43

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, ll. 39–66. See also Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 396–401.

From the end of the Crimean war until the early 1860s, as many as 300,000 Muslims left the Crimea for the Ottoman Empire.44

Karpat, Ottoman Population, 66.

Beginning in 1861, however, a large number of Crimean Muslims who had arrived in the Ottoman Empire began petitioning the Russian government for permission to return. Tsarist bureaucrats in the Crimea and St. Petersburg, alarmed by the departure of two thirds of the peninsula's Tatar population (and more than half of its total population) authorized a partial return of the emigrants. In June of 1861, a council of ministers meeting in St. Petersburg recommended that

Regarding the question of granting permission to return to the Crimea of Tatars who have departed, the council does not deny that their return might be, to a certain degree, useful, provided it is carried out with extreme caution.45

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, l. 39.

Ultimately, it was decided to authorize Russian consulates in the Ottoman Empire to begin issuing new Russian passports to Crimean Muslims who wished to return. However, only those immigrants who owned land (or who agreed to purchase land) were eligible to receive the passports. Landless immigrants who wished to return were still allowed to petition for permission to return, but the decision to grant this permission was left to the authority of the regional governor.46

GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24165, ll. 41–44; ADTA, f. 525, op. 1, d. 82, ll. 39–40. This is also described in Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 404–5.

Approximately 10,000 Tatars were granted new Russian passports and returned to the Crimea during the years 1861–63.47

Markevich, “Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar,” 401.

Many others—perhaps several thousand—who had not been able to receive the new passports returned to the Crimea anyway with Ottoman passports. Many of these individuals lived more or less permanently in the Crimea as restrictions limiting their stay in Russia to six months do not appear to have been regularly enforced.48

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, ll. 47–48.

Muslims from across Russia returned from the Ottoman Empire for a variety of reasons and frequently did so after having spent years abroad. In 1902, Abdulhadi Ahmedov, a native of the guberniia of Samara who had lived in the Ottoman Empire since 1891, successfully appealed to the Russian embassy in Istanbul for assistance in gaining permission from the Ottoman Empire to leave the country and return to Russia permanently. Ahmedov, who had recently been exiled by the Ottoman government to Tripoli, claimed that he had become an Ottoman subject only because doing so was a necessary condition for pursuing his studies in the Ottoman Empire. Having, he said, recently received a job offer to work as a teacher in Tashkent, he now wished to return to Russia as a Russian subject. The Russian embassy accepted Ahmedov's claim and worked on his behalf to obtain the necessary permission from the Ottoman authorities allowing him to return from Tripoli to Istanbul, from where he traveled back to Russia. The Ottoman authorities, perhaps relieved to be ridding themselves altogether of an individual they had earlier exiled internally, appear to have made no objection to his departure.49

BOA, HRH 574/26, s. 1–2.

Many Russian Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire returned to Russia to attend to various personal and financial matters on only a short-term basis. Living full time in the Ottoman Empire, these individuals maintained homes, property, and personal relations in their places of origin. In 1898, for example, Kasım Ağa bin Abdullah, a Russian Muslim from Dagestan living in the Ottoman Empire, applied to the Russian embassy in Istanbul for permission to visit Russia temporarily to attend to various personal and financial matters. It had been thirty years since Kasım Ağa had emigrated, and because he had emigrated illegally (i.e., without formally renouncing his Russian citizenship), he would be obliged to pay a fine upon retuning to Russia. Nonetheless, family and financial ties still apparently bound Kasım Ağa sufficiently to his ancestral homeland in Dagestan to merit taking the trip back.50

BOA, HRH 572/55, s. 1–3.

Some returns were for longer periods of time. In 1895, Russian authorities reported to the Ottoman Foreign Ministry that one İbrahim Halil, an Ottoman subject whose father had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire “many years” earlier, had traveled back to Russia and had been residing for the past year with his son Ahmed in their ancestral village of Hüseyin-Çelebi, in Dagestan. Having decided to return to the Ottoman Empire, father and son were now requesting an exit permit from the Russian authorities.51

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 55, l. 12.

As had been the case with Kasım Ağa, distance and the passing of years had not severed ties between İbrahim Halil and his relatives in Dagestan.

In the months following the 1908 Unionist takeover in Istanbul, thousands of Muslim families who had immigrated to the Ottoman Empire in 1901–02 began returning to the Crimea.52

A noticeable increase in the number of formerly Russian—and currently Ottoman—Muslims applying for residence permits or Russian citizenship can be detected after the 1908 Unionist takeover in Istanbul, and particularly from mid 1909 onward. See GAARK, f. 27, op. 7, dd. 6434, 6447, 6461, 6468, 6493, 6494, 6495, 6553, 6568, 6573, and many others. See also ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, l. 67.

Most of the families had purchased foreign-travel passports prior to leaving the Crimea and had renounced their Russian citizenship. Unable to receive official permission from the Russian government to return to the Crimea permanently, they had entered Russia with Ottoman passports. With growing apprehension, officials in the Ministry of Interior noted that many of these families were settling semipermanently and in numbers that were growing larger by the year.53

Indeed, even in 1902, police in the Crimea had begun to investigate the “noticeable” increase in Ottoman subjects living in the region permanently and without registration. GAARK f. 26, op. 3, d. 262, l. 2.

Of the several thousand (perhaps as many as 10,000) families who had left the Crimea in 1901–02, a total of 1,652 families were registered by 1913 as having returned to the Crimea with hopes of residing permanently.54

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, ll. 79, 90.

Unwilling to allow such a large number of foreign subjects to reside permanently in the peninsula, a decision was made to allow the returning Tatars to become Russian subjects once again. A substantial proportion of the families (1,104) accepted the offer, whereas 548 families declined.55

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, l. 90.

Ultimately, the regional administration decided to allow all of the Tatars who had emigrated in 1902 and who had returned to the Crimea before 1 May 1913 to resettle in the Crimea provided they give up their Ottoman citizenship and once again become subjects of Russia.56

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, ll. 1–8-ob.

In theory, those families who refused to return to Russian citizenship were supposed to leave the country. However, local authorities appear to have been unwilling or unable to enforce regulations obliging them to leave, and there was no effective way of preventing their return to Russia even after they had been deported.57

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, ll. 11–14.

In 1913 and 1914, Russian consulates in the Ottoman Empire received still more requests from Crimean Tatars who had immigrated in 1902 to receive Russian passports and return to the Crimea, but these requests were denied on the grounds that they had missed the deadline to apply for Russian passports. Crimean Tatars who had left in 1901–02 without renouncing their Russian citizenship were, however, allowed to return until the closing of the frontier with the Ottoman Empire after the onset of hostilities in 1914.58

ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, ll. 15–18.

DISPUTED SUBJECTS

Although the great majority of Russian Muslims who immigrated to the Ottoman Empire did not return to Russia, even those who stayed in the Ottoman Empire frequently made use of their Russian citizenship to benefit from consular and other privileges extended to Russian subjects. In 1907, for example, one Nebi İsmailoğlu received assistance from the Russian consulate in Erzurum and the Russian embassy in Istanbul in defending himself against the charge of murdering his wife. Nebi, who had lived in Erzurum for seven years, was being treated by the Ottoman authorities as an Ottoman subject. In response to this, the Russian embassy in Istanbul addressed a note personally to Ottoman Foreign Minister Tevfik Paşa and complained about the behavior in this regard of the Erzurum governor, Nuri Bey, demanding that Nebi be recognized as a subject of Russia and allowed to receive Russian consular assistance to help with his defense.59

BOA, HRH 576/41, s. 1–2.

Russian Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire routinely contacted Russian consular officials in moments of personal necessity, requesting and receiving assistance regarding a variety of legal and financial matters. Heyti Latifoğlu, a Dagestani rug merchant who had been living in Istanbul for “many years,” was aided by the Russian consulate in 1896 in getting some articles he was importing released from Ottoman customs.60

BOA, HRH 572/19.

One year later, one Abdül Kerim and three of his friends contacted the Russian consulate with regard to a legal dispute involving the purchase of some property.61

BOA, HRH 572/54, s. 1–2.

When Istanbul resident Gül Mehmet and his son Hüseyin were imprisoned in 1896 for one week for theft, the Russian consulate in Istanbul protested vigorously to the Ottoman Foreign Ministry over the fact that the consulate had not been notified.62

BOA, HRH 572/21, s. 1–6.

The Russian consulate also helped the Istanbul-based bookseller Kerimoff receive indemnification from Ottoman customs for the confiscation of 5,000 copies of the Qurءan he was attempting to import from Russia.63

BOA, HRH 574/41, s. 1.

In each of these cases, Russian Muslims who had lived in the Ottoman Empire for years invoked their Russian citizenship as a means of receiving assistance from the Russian consulate and gaining leeway over Ottoman authorities. In other instances, such support even extended beyond the grave. In 1906, the Russian embassy in Istanbul contacted the Ottoman Foreign Ministry with regard to one Haci Mahmud Ablaoğlu. Haci Mahmud had made a down payment for a farm in the region of Çatalca when he had been informed by the Ottoman authorities that, being a foreigner, he was not allowed to acquire land in this area. The person to whom Mahmud had made this payment, however, then refused to return the money. Shortly thereafter, Mahmud had died, yet the Russian Embassy continued with its claim on Mahmud's behalf.64

BOA, HRH 576/17, s. 1–2.

The Russian Foreign Ministry recognized everyone other than those who had specifically renounced their Russian citizenship as a subject of Russia. Because renouncing Russian citizenship was a bureaucratic process that entailed expenditure of both money and time, many Russian Muslims emigrated without officially notifying the Russian authorities. An example of this is the case of Bey Sultan, a Russian Muslim immigrant living in Konya who wished to return to Russia in 1902 to visit his family. The Russian embassy in Istanbul informed Bey Sultan that he could enter Russia as either an Ottoman or a Russian subject. However, if he were to arrive in Russia as an Ottoman subject, he would be obliged to pay a fine for having left the country without having filled out the proper paperwork.65

BOA, HRH 574/12.

In the eyes of the Russian government, Muslim emigrants from Russia continued to be subjects of Russia even after spending decades in the Ottoman Empire. As the Ottoman state often granted citizenship to Muslims arriving from Russia without requiring proof that they had renounced their Russian citizenship, Muslim immigrants were frequently recognized as subjects by both states simultaneously. These cases often led to disputes when Russian Muslim immigrants attempted to invoke the privileges afforded to Russian nationals. In these situations, Russian consular officials serving in the Ottoman Empire almost always offered determined support of Russian Muslims claiming Russian citizenship, refusing help only in those cases when no record could be found to support the claim that an individual had emigrated from Russia. Meanwhile, Ottoman bureaucrats often argued just as vigorously that these individuals were in fact Ottoman, rather than Russian subjects.

In 1903, for example, Derviş Mehmed bin Arif, a Muslim from Russia, was detained by the Ottoman authorities for an unspecified crime. Having arrived in the Ottoman Empire from Russia four years earlier, Derviş Mehmed had received identification documents (tezkire-i osmaniye) from the Ottoman authorities shortly thereafter, and the Ottoman authorities now considered Derviş Mehmed a subject of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Russian embassy, however, a second piece of paper had been attached to his tezkire by the Russian consulate in Bursa stating that the Russian government continued to recognize Derviş Mehmed as a subject of Russia. As such, wrote the Russian embassy, Derviş Mehmed should be freed by the Ottoman authorities immediately and placed in the custody of the Russian consulate in Istanbul.66

BOA, HRH 574/49.

In 1907, Russian officials likewise came to the assistance of a Russian Muslim living in the district of Sapanca. Mustafa Nalbendoğlu claimed that the director of the local administration (kaymakamlık) in Adapazarı had been pressuring him to give up his Russian citizenship and become a subject of the Ottoman Empire. Having refused to do so, claimed Mustafa, he was then arrested on trumped-up charges of banditry and thrown in jail for ten days. In a note of complaint to the Ottoman authorities, the Russian embassy stated that it had paid 150 piastres to have Mustafa released from jail and that it was now demanding that this sum be repaid by the Ottoman government.67

BOA, HRH 576/48, s. 1–5.

Disputes over citizenship also occasionally concerned the dead. Such was the case with Muhammed Kasımbaev, who had emigrated in 1884 from Russian Central Asia to Jeddah, where he died in 1893. According to the Ottoman authorities, Kasımbaev had received an Ottoman passport upon his arrival in the Ottoman Empire. The Russian authorities, however, countered that no Ottoman passport had been found among Kasımbaev's possessions after his death. In the absence of such proof, they argued, Kasımbaev had to be considered a Russian subject. The Russian Foreign Ministry therefore requested that Kasımbaev's personal items be given to Russian consular authorities for remission to his relatives in Russia. This resulted in a protracted struggle between the Ottoman Foreign Ministry and the Russian embassy in Istanbul that lasted over two years. Despite numerous demands from the Russian embassy that Russian officials be allowed to take possession of Kasımbaev's belongings and send them back to Russia, the Ottoman Foreign Ministry refused to permit this, insisting that Kasımbaev had been a subject of the Ottoman Empire and that the Russian government therefore had no right to claim his belongings.68

BOA, HRH 571/31, s. 1–2.

The question of which government had authority over Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire was, in some regions, further complicated by the transfer of territory which had taken place after the war of 1877–78. According to Article VII of the Treaty of Constantinople (1879), Ottoman subjects living in territories ceded to Russia were automatically to become Russian subjects if they did not leave the territory within a span of six months. Thus, even those individuals who immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from the provinces of Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi after this six-month period expired became, often without knowing it, Russian subjects. Such was the case with one Kara Veyseloğlu, who sought the protection of the Russian consulate after he was imprisoned in Trabzon in 1905. Kara Veyseloğlu's father was a Muslim from Batumi who had immigrated to Trabzon after the expiration of the six-month grace period. Having never formally renounced his Russian citizenship, Kara Veyseloğlu's father had continued to be viewed by the Russian government as a subject of Russia. When Kara Veyseloğlu was arrested, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that he and even his children were subjects of Russia. The Ottoman Foreign Ministry disagreed, arguing that because Kara Veyseloğlu himself had been born in the village of Kara-Każı, outside Trabzon, he was a subject of the Ottoman Empire. Exchanges between the two ministries continued for two years, and the case culminated with Kara Veyseloğlu and his family being expelled to Russia in 1907.69

BOA, HRH 576/82.

Muslims traveling between the two countries were able to evade bureaucratic and legal restrictions placed upon them by other means as well. In January 1897, the Russian government placed a medical quarantine on Mecca and banned Muslims from taking the pilgrimage. Before long, however, it became clear that Russian Muslims were traveling to the region anyway. Those who could obtain a foreign-travel passport went first to Istanbul, where they would obtain Ottoman identification documents. From Istanbul, they would then travel to Mecca, eventually returning to Russia with their Russian passports as Russian subjects.70

GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 4314, ll. 1–1 ob.

Meanwhile, police officials in the Crimean cities of Kerch, Sevastopol, Yalta, and Yevpatoria reported a “several-fold” increase in the number of Ottoman subjects in the region reporting that their passports had been lost or stolen. Police officials believed that Ottoman subjects in the Crimea, many of whom were themselves returned Crimean Tatars, were selling their passports for up to 50 rubles and then were reporting them stolen to the Ottoman consulate in Sevastopol to receive new ones. Muslims wishing to travel to Mecca, “primarily from the guberniias of Kazan, Simbirsk, and Astrakhan,” would then use them for travel to Istanbul and from there to Mecca.71

GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 4313, l. 6; f. 26, op. 2, d. 4314, ll. 1–1-ob, 5–6-ob.

Tensions between the foreign ministries of the two empires derived largely from their very different concepts regarding citizenship. Whereas the Russian authorities continued to recognize as Russian subjects virtually all Muslims who left the country, Ottoman authorities accepted nearly all comers as Ottomans. In 1860, the same year that the Russian government had erected new bureaucratic and financial barriers to Muslims wishing to emigrate, the Ottoman government established the Refugee Commission (Muhacirin Komisyonu) in an attempt to bring more order to the process of incorporating new immigrants into the empire, steering new arrivals away from major urban centers such as Istanbul and toward areas where it was hoped their presence would help boost agricultural production. The Ottoman government then distributed money and land to these immigrants, usually about twenty-six acres per family.72

Karpat, Politicization of Islam, 184–88.

In some cases, representatives of the Ottoman government also promised to not conscript muhacirin for a specified period of time.73

ADTA f. 45, op. 1, d. 35, ll. 22–23. A Muslim immigrant from Sheki, having settled outside of Bursa, wrote that the muhacirin in his area had been told they would be exempt from conscription for seven years. Fuat Dündar also remarks upon this but states that such practices occurred only in the case of married men. See İttihat ve Terakki, 225.

Gaining muhacir status was not nearly as complicated a process as renouncing Russian citizenship. In a letter written in 1901 and intercepted by Russian authorities, a Muslim who had recently emigrated from the city of Sheki (today in Azerbaijan) recounted to a friend the relative ease with which he had been accepted as a muhacir by the Ottoman authorities. He was given money and, eventually, land outside the city of Bursa.

I went to the station near Sheki and from there boarded a train. Within 24 hours I had arrived in Batumi. Once there, I was left with just 9 rubles. After 5–10 more days of waiting and travel we arrived in the Ottoman city of Rize. From there I boarded a boat and, without paying anything, traveled to Trabzon. This is the seat of the regional governor's office. In the ports of both Rize and Trabzon there were a number of Ottoman policemen looking for refugees [muhacirin]. They separated the muhacirin from the non-muhacirin, and once they got a look at our clothes they put us in among the muhacirin. In Trabzon we met up to 70 other muhacirin. Some of them were Tatar, some were Çerkez, some were Georgian [gürcü], some Dagestani. Some of us had money, some of us didn't. They gave us free transport to Istanbul and bread for 7 days.74

ADTA, f. 45, op. 1, d.35, ll. 22–23-ob.

The contrast between the cumbersome and costly process of renouncing Russian citizenship and the speed with which many Russian Muslims were given Ottoman citizenship sometimes led to strains between the bureaucracies of the two empires. The Russian embassy in Istanbul complained that the Ottoman authorities recognized Russian Muslims as muhacir “simply upon their declaration of a desire to settle in the [Ottoman] empire, even if they do not possess a Russian foreign travel passport” and insisted that it would “never” recognize as muhacir Muslims who had left Russia without renouncing their Russian citizenship first.75

BOA, HRH 575/40.

Meanwhile, Ottoman authorities would occasionally detain Muslims attempting to return to Russia after having accepted money or land through their muhacir status, leading to heated diplomatic exchanges.76

BOA, HRH 579/43.

Other disputes between the Ottoman and Russian foreign ministries involved Russian Muslims accused of spying for Russia. The most famous of these was Mehmet Shahtakhtinskii, a former deputy to the Russian duma.77

See Michael A. Reynolds, “The Ottoman-Russian Struggle for Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1908–1918: Identity, ideology and the geopolitics of world order” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2003), 147–48, and BOA, DH SYS 56/10, s. 8. One of Shahtakhtinskii's activities involved infiltrating Russian Muslim student groups in Istanbul suspected by the Russian embassy of Pan-Turkist activities. Shahtakhtinskii's report for the embassy was emphatic in its claims that the students had no such interests. See Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI), Moscow, f. 180, op. 517/2, d. 4226, ll. 27–30. For other cases of suspected Russian Muslim spying in the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, Y. PRK. EŞA 30/21; DH EUM 5inci Şübe, 3/60, s. 1/1; and DH EUM 5inci Şübe, 9/7.

IMMIGRATION AND THE “PAN-TURKISTS”

The complex location of Russian Muslims between the Russian and Ottoman empires also provides a context for better understanding the activities of some of the best known Russian Muslim émigrés from this period, the Turkist (or “Pan-Turkist”) intellectuals who resided in Istanbul during the Unionist period. As is the case with historiography studying the immigration of Russian Muslims to the Ottoman Empire more generally, scholarly literature concerned with the Turkist movement tends to emphasize the arrival of Russian-born Muslims into Ottoman Empire, while generally ignoring their continued ties to their places of origin.78

An exception is Paul Dumont's article, “La Revue Türk Yurdu et les Musulmans de l'Empire Russe 1911–1914,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 3–4 (1974): 315–31.

Yet, like many other Russian Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire, the Russian-born Turkist intellectuals did not envision their arrival in Istanbul as the conclusion of a simple one-way trip. In fact, the careers of the three best-known Russian-born Turkists—Yusuf Akçura, Ahmet Ağaoğlu, and Ali Hüseyinzade—were all marked by their travels between the two empires. Akçura, for example, was a Tatar from the Volga city of Simbirsk who moved to Istanbul as a child. He later returned to Russia in 1903 after studying in Istanbul and Paris. After five years of considerable political and journalistic activity in Russia, Akçura returned to Istanbul in 1908 as a foreign correspondent for the Orenburg newspaper Vakit. Spending the end of 1908 in Istanbul, Akçura went back to Russia in February of 1909, where he rented an apartment in St. Petersburg. He returned yet again to Istanbul in the fall of 1909 but continued to draw a significant portion of his income from Russia, and his letters to his editor in Orenburg, Fatih Kerimi, demonstrate his continued involvement in affairs taking place in Russia as well as a pronounced indecisiveness regarding where he wanted to live.79

On Akçura's views on staying permanently in Istanbul, see NART, f. 1370, op. 1, d. 20, l. 18, Letter from Yusuf Akçura to Fatih Kerimi, 17 April 1909, and NART f. 1370, op. 2, d. 25, ll. 66–67, Letter from Akçura to Kerimi, 25 September 1908. On Akçura's continued relationship with Vakit newspaper, see, for example, NART f. 1370, op. 1, d. 20, l. 102, Letter from Akçura to Kerimi, 25 December 1909.

In 1914, tsarist security offices reported that Akçura had again returned to Russia, spending the months January through March in St. Petersburg and Simbirsk before departing again for Istanbul, where he would spend the war years.80

NART f. 199, op. 1, d. 948, ll. 52, 178.

As was the case with Akçura, Ahmet Ağaoğlu and Ali Hüseyinzade also maintained close connections with their lands of origin after their departure for Istanbul. Ağaoğlu continued to publish regularly in the Baku newspaper Hakikat for nearly two years after his departure for Istanbul in 1909. After World War I ended, he returned to Baku, where he served as a deputy in the parliament of the newly formed Republic of Azerbaijan (whose president was Mehmet Emin Resülzade, another Türk Yurdu contributor from the prewar years). In 1919, Ağaoğlu was arrested by the British in Istanbul while traveling to Paris to represent Azerbaijan at the postwar peace conferences. Ali Hüseyinzade, meanwhile, spent much of his adult life traveling between the two empires. Originally from Baku, Hüseyinzade had lived in Istanbul between the years 1889 and 1903, where he worked as a doctor. He then returned to Baku, where he lived for another seven years before settling back in Istanbul in 1910. Hüseyinzade returned to Baku during the summer of 1918 but after a few months went back to Istanbul.81

See Ali Hüseyinzade, “Azerbaycanءda Düşündüklerim,” Hilal-i Ahmer, 15 Şevval 1336/24 July 1918.

CONCLUSIONS

Far from following a single-minded policy to expel Muslims from its territory, tsarist policymakers and bureaucrats endeavored increasingly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to induce Muslims to remain in Russia. Indeed, while influential studies of Muslim emigration have argued that the Crimean War marked the beginning of an era in which the forcible eviction of Muslims became an objective of Russian state policy, the year 1860 in fact marked the undertaking by the Russian government of new policies designed to limit Muslim emigration. Policies aimed at retaining Muslim subjects were carried out through several instruments available to the state. These included, on occasion, attempts at dialogue and persuasion but also frequently involved the use of force, intimidation, and violence.

Both the Ottoman and the Russian governments adopted new measures concerning migration in response to the crises created by the sudden arrival in Istanbul of more than 200,000 Muslims from the Crimea in the wake of the Crimean War. The Ottoman government, seeking to avoid a repeat of the human misery and potential instability permeating the makeshift refugee camps set up to respond to this influx, managed to bring considerably more order to Muslim immigration by providing immigrants with land in regions away from the capital and in areas where their presence might contribute to the agricultural and industrial growth of the empire. Russian policies after 1860 were likewise designed to lessen instability, focusing on preventing a recurrence of the sort of massive and sudden emigration that followed the Crimean War.

The number of Russian Muslims who returned, either temporarily or permanently, from the Ottoman Empire to Russia is difficult to gauge, yet it is doubtless quite small in comparison to the total number of Muslims emigrating from Russia during these years. However, as examples like the case of Muslims returning to the Crimea after the 1902 emigration indicate, these numbers could also at times represent a significant proportion of emigrants from a particular area. Indeed, even for so-called “fathers of Turkish nationalism,” such as Akçura, Ağaoğlu, and Hüseyinzade, the move to Istanbul was not a simple one-way journey, but rather a step that was in many ways temporary and provisional. Muslims, moreover, were hardly the only religious group to emigrate and return in the ways described in this article. Various groups of Christians and Jews from both empires also emigrated and returned to their country of origin both temporarily and permanently.82

On Armenians wishing to emigrate from Russia to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 2773/23; HR SYS 2840/7; HR SYS 2840/10; and HR SYS 2840/31. On Ottoman Armenians wishing to immigrate to Russia, see, BOA, DH. MKT, 1440/8. On Ottoman Armenians who had earlier immigrated to Russia wishing to return to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HRH SYS 2840/38; HRH SYS 2840/39; and HRH SYS 2840/41-44. On Russian Jews wishing to emigrate from Russia to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 1299. On Ottoman Muslims living in the Russian Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 1269/2, s. 23, 39–41, 171–73; ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 32, ll. 16–17, 29–30-ob. For information on cases involving Christians and Jews exploiting ambiguities in citizenship laws, see BOA, HRH 572/30, HRH 572/38, HRH 572/40, and HRH 572/41.

By the end of the 19th century, immigration and citizenship had become an increasingly complicated bureaucratic and legal process, with states devising over the course of the century several ways to formalize citizenship status, including the issuing of national identity cards, passports, and residence permits. In an era in which governments increasingly turned to new means of counting, measuring, and classifying their populations, the existence of populations passing back and forth across the frontier became ever more vexing for policymakers and bureaucrats alike. While Ottoman and Russian authorities struggled with one another over jurisdiction and the citizenship status of particular individuals, both states turned to bureaucratic and police methods in an effort to strengthen their authority over issues pertaining to citizenship. Yet such steps were hardly foolproof. Russian Muslims were not simply categorized and shaped by these regulations but also engaged them and found loopholes through which they could pursue personal advantage. Like Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and others traveling between the two empires, Russian Muslims frequently devised strategies that helped them take advantage of the categorical ambiguity of their positions. Living as Russians in the Ottoman Empire and Ottomans in Russia, these individuals succeeded in manipulating the politics of citizenship on both sides of the frontier.