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“FOR THE FATHERLAND AND THE STATE”: ARMENIANS NEGOTIATE THE TANZIMAT REFORMS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Masayuki Ueno
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Abstract

This article examines Ottoman Armenian attitudes toward the Tanzimat reforms, particularly in relation to the situation of provincial Armenians. Even though implementation of the reforms was slow and marked by setbacks, the promises embedded in them raised expectations of change among Armenians in both Istanbul and the provinces. In response, individuals in these areas equipped themselves with knowledge of the language and principles of the Tanzimat. They interpreted and utilized these for their own purposes, sometimes not as the Ottoman government intended. In this sense, the Tanzimat was not merely a top-down state project; it was also pluralized through interactions between the government and its subjects. Exploring how non-Muslims negotiated the Tanzimat enables reconsiderations of the Muslim-elite-centered historiography on the reforms.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2013, pp. 93 - 109
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

After the Ottoman–Russian War (1877–78), the European great powers convened a congress in Berlin to revise the San Stefano peace settlement, which seemed to them overly favorable to Russia. Before this congress, Armenian delegates, including Mgrdich Khrimian, the former Istanbul patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, had visited European officials in Paris, London, and Berlin to request their assistance in pressuring the Ottoman government to implement administrative reforms in the “eastern Ottoman provinces” (present-day eastern Anatolia, hereafter, “the eastern provinces”). As a result, an article was inserted into the Treaty of Berlin mandating that the Ottoman government implement “reforms demanded by local requirements” in Armenian-inhabited provinces.Footnote 1 A few months later, an Armenian bishop described this event as nothing less than the “unveiling” of “the name of the Armenians,” which “for the first time is acquiring a political appearance” rather than “a mere religious appearance.” It was through this “great international treaty [that] the Armenian Problem [Haygagan Khntirě] is turning into an international problem [Michazkayin khntir mě].”Footnote 2

The situation of Armenians, one of the most significant non-Muslim groups in the Ottoman Empire, did indeed surface as an international problem in 1878. But how had it previously developed within the empire as “the Armenian problem”? This article explores this question by inquiring into Armenian experiences of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76), paying special attention to how Armenian discourse in both the center and the provinces constructed the situation of provincial Armenians.

Until the last decade or so, most scholars portrayed the Tanzimat reforms as a top-down state project that lacked popular support and made little impact on nonelite subjects, especially non-Muslims.Footnote 3 Recent researchers have increasingly criticized this understanding, showing how diverse agents beyond the central government responded to the Tanzimat reforms. Scholars have explored the process of implementing the reforms in the provinces, nonelites’ knowledge of the Tanzimat, and methods used by local Muslims and non-Muslims to adapt to the new order. The Tanzimat reforms have consequently emerged as a series of interactions between the central government and local societies.Footnote 4

Similar shifts can be seen in analyses of the state ideology of the Tanzimat period, commonly known as “Ottomanism.” This ideology, according to previous researchers, aimed at integrating all subjects regardless of religion and ethnicity into a single homogeneous Ottoman nation in order to counter the “national awakenings” of non-Muslims. This conception was often accompanied by the assumption that non-Muslims never accepted Ottomanism because it was not compatible with their national feelings.Footnote 5 Recent scholars have proposed reconsiderations of this framework; focusing less on the government's intentions, they have analyzed, for example, how Orthodox Christian elites adapted the state ideology and developed a version of Ottoman patriotism that was compatible with their growing national identifications.Footnote 6 Historical studies of the “long 19th century” beyond the Ottoman Empire provide examples of similar adaptations, such as among Slovaks in Austria-Hungary and Jews in France and Russia.Footnote 7 These cases help us to understand the national articulations of non-dominant groups within the framework of multireligious and multiethnic 19th-century empires. The present article contributes to this growing scholarship by focusing on the question of how Ottoman Armenians perceived, responded to, and adapted the Tanzimat reforms.

The historiography on Ottoman Armenians, meanwhile, has tended to situate them within the framework of Armenian national history. Although some researchers have emphasized the economic, social, and political roles of Armenians within the Ottoman Empire,Footnote 8 most have focused on topics such as language, education, journalism, and the national liberation movement, presuming that Ottoman Armenians did not support the Tanzimat reforms.Footnote 9 The new revisionist scholarship on the Tanzimat reforms calls for a reconsideration of the history of Ottoman Armenians. Toward that end, this article explores the process whereby the situation of provincial Armenians emerged as a “problem,” a process that reveals much about Armenian attitudes toward the Tanzimat.Footnote 10 It focuses on the Armenian Apostolic community and its patriarchate in Istanbul. Even though implementation of the Tanzimat reforms was slow and marked by setbacks, the promises embedded in them raised expectations of change among Armenians in both Istanbul and the provinces. In response, they equipped themselves with knowledge of the language and principles of the Tanzimat, interpreting and utilizing these for their own purposes. In this way, the Tanzimat was pluralized in the interactions between the government and its subjects.

In the 19th century, Armenians were scattered throughout Ottoman territory. While Istanbul, the cosmopolitan capital of the empire, had the largest single Armenian settlement, the eastern provinces contained the majority of Ottoman Armenians, who shared the region with more numerous Kurdish and Turkish Muslims.Footnote 11 Armenians in the empire saw the eastern provinces as their fatherland (hayrenik‘) or Armenia (Hayasdan).

Contrary to earlier understandings of the millet system, non-Muslim communities lacked fully centralized structures from the 15th to the 17th centuries.Footnote 12 Non-Muslims had economic and social relations with Muslims while also enjoying religious autonomy in their local communities authorized by official documents of appointment that the government addressed to their high clergymen. Each denomination had several higher religious authorities, such as patriarchs and Catholicoi, and each local community was loosely connected to one of these authorities. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic patriarchates in Istanbul, the religious authorities of the two largest Christian communities in the Ottoman heartland, gradually expanded their influence over their coreligionists.Footnote 13 In the latter community, this was a reaction to the spread of Catholicism among Armenians and was facilitated by the support of wealthy lay Armenians with ties to high-ranking Muslim officials.Footnote 14

At the start of the 19th century, the Armenian Apostolic patriarchate in Istanbul was the political center for most Ottoman Armenians, but its influence was restricted by several factors.Footnote 15 Three other religious authorities of the Armenian Apostolic Church were influential even though their jurisdictions were relatively small.Footnote 16 The relationship between Istanbul and the provinces, particularly those in the east, was still loose. In addition, Armenians who converted to Catholicism and Protestantism left the jurisdiction of the Armenian Apostolic patriarchate in Istanbul, obtaining imperial sanctions to form separate communities in 1831 and 1847.Footnote 17 These new communities had relatively few members, but the support of the great powers made them serious rivals of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

ARMENIANS IN THE PROVINCES

In 1839, the promulgation of the Gülhane Rescript launched the Tanzimat reforms on three bases: the security of life (can), honor (ʿırż u nāmūs), and property (māl) of all subjects; fair taxation based on an individual's property and wealth; and fair practice in the military conscription of Muslims in terms of provincial distribution and length of service.Footnote 18 In 1856, the Reform Edict began the second phase of the Tanzimat, a primary concern of which was the integration of non-Muslims into Ottoman citizenship. Toward this end, the edict contained a dual reasoning that promised non-Muslims equality as citizens of the Ottoman state while guaranteeing their ongoing privileges as religious communities. First, the edict pronounced Muslims and non-Muslims equal, including through the principle of universal conscription and the acceptance of non-Muslims into the state bureaucracy.Footnote 19 Second, the edict reapproved the privileges granted to non-Muslim religious authorities as they had been specified in the imperial edict of 1853.Footnote 20 Under the Tanzimat's religious framework of non-Muslim autonomy, Armenian elites in Istanbul during this early period of national articulation engaged in the development of modern national education, the spread of journalism, and the reform of their written language.Footnote 21

In the provinces, one of the most significant projects of the Tanzimat was tax reform, or the replacement of tax farming with a new system based on an individual's property and income.Footnote 22 Another was the introduction of a council system into the local governments; councils comprising officials and representatives of local Muslims and non-Muslims were established in each administrative unit (province, district, and subdistrict) in the 1840s.Footnote 23 While the reforms of local administration aimed at instituting a comprehensive, empirewide system, they were not applied simultaneously to all provinces; they were implemented first in the central Balkan and Anatolian provinces and then gradually extended to other areas. In 1845, the administrative reforms reached the eastern Ottoman provinces. The semiautonomous rulers of this region resisted the implementation of these reforms, which seemed to imperil their privileges. The most significant resistance was the 1847 revolt of Bedirhan Bey, the most powerful local ruler in the eastern provinces. In suppressing this revolt, the central government theoretically incorporated the provinces into its direct rule. However, it was not very successful at maintaining control; the power vacuum created by the removal of the bey was filled with multiple, smaller, and mainly Kurdish tribal groups who began to oppress both the Muslim and Christian sedentary populations.Footnote 24

In the 19th century, non-Muslims in the provinces could appeal to the central government through the channels of their religious authorities (patriarchs and chief rabbis) in Istanbul and the embassies or consulates of coreligionist countries. However, as a number of Muslim and Armenian intellectuals in this period pointed out, Apostolic Armenians—unlike Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Protestants—had no consistent coreligionist foreign protectors.Footnote 25 Russia did offer protection to Armenians in the eastern provinces.Footnote 26 Nevertheless, they had reason to abstain from appealing to Russia, which could have opened them to serious accusations from other members of local society.Footnote 27 Instead, they tended to appeal to the Ottoman government via the patriarchate when they had grievances related to their unfair treatment. A considerable number of taḳrīrs in the Ottoman archives attests to the widespread use of this avenue by provincial Armenians seeking redress.

During this period, Istanbul's non-Muslim religious authorities could submit an official report, called a taḳrīr, to the Ottoman government. Many of these taḳrīrs summarized petitions that had originally been received by the authorities from their coreligionists in the provinces. A taḳrīr by the Armenian Apostolic patriarchate comprised a summary of petitions along with the patriarchate's appeal to the government to take specific measures in response to the problems raised. Unfortunately relatively few of the original petitions are available in the Ottoman archives. Yet a comparison between available petitions and taḳrīrs indicates that the summary was typically a faithful compendium of the complaints rather than simply the invention of the patriarchate.Footnote 28 In 1869, an Armenian committee producing a survey report on the injustices inflicted on provincial Armenians evaluated 539 taḳrīrs involving complaints to the government between 1849 and 1869.Footnote 29 The committee's choice of the starting year, as well as the fact that most taḳrīrs I found in the Ottoman archives were dated after the late 1840s, suggests that the frequency of provincial Armenians’ petitioning increased around that time. A majority of the 539 taḳrīrs were based on petitions from the eastern provinces: 158 were based on petitions from Diyarbakır, 136 from Erzurum, and 83 from Sivas.Footnote 30 The largest number of taḳrīrs related to violence against Armenians (210),Footnote 31 followed by complaints against local officials (122) and problems related to tax collection (76).Footnote 32 I focus on cases pertaining to these three categories in order to explore the attitude of provincial Armenians toward the Tanzimat reforms.

Concerning tax collection, several taḳrīrs illustrate that provincial Armenians understood and were not indifferent to the Tanzimat's reforms in this area. For example, in a taḳrīr dated 1847, Armenian villagers of the Sivas province complained about their tax burden by invoking the principle of fair taxation.

Muslim and Armenian residents in the village of Zara used to pay equal annual taxes as required. Recently, however, Muslims forcefully reduced their own tax and added [the reduced amount] to the non-Muslims’ tax. They imposed a tax on non-Muslims that was one and a half times the amount of their [own] tax, even though 200 houses in the abovementioned village were Muslim and 150 were Armenian; thus, the bigger portion should have been imposed on the Muslims.

To remedy this unfair tax assessment, the petitioners requested that: “All property and lands owned by Muslim and Armenian residents of the village be surveyed again and, according to the good principle of the beneficial Tanzimat [Tanẓīmāt-ı hayriyye uṣūl-i maḥāsin-şümūline taṭbīḳan], the tax be imposed according to each individual's situation, capability of paying taxes, and profits.”Footnote 33 This recommendation fully reflects the Tanzimat precept of taxation based on property and income, the implementation of which has been reasonably evaluated by scholars as a failure.Footnote 34 Yet Armenian villagers had equipped themselves with knowledge of the precept and invoked it to register a complaint against their Muslim neighbors. In the 1850s, Armenians in the Diyarbakır and Kayseri provinces applied the same logic in requesting that the Ottoman government reduce their tax burden.Footnote 35

Halil İnalcık notes that the Ottoman government prohibited forced labor in Niş (a district in present-day Serbia) as part of the implementation of the Tanzimat tax reforms, hoping thereby to alleviate a major cause of unrest in the province.Footnote 36 Although it is not clear whether similar measures were taken in the eastern provinces, Armenians there understood that the Tanzimat reforms included the abolition of forced labor, which in the 19th century was routinely and arbitrarily imposed by local notables. Among the relatively few original petitions in the archives is one written in Armenian in 1847 about forced labor in Arapgir, a subdistrict in the eastern provinces. The petitioning Armenians complained that twenty-two of them were drafted as workers for the Keban mine twice every year. They asserted that the “usurpers” of the mine forced peasants to work, “without obeying the principles of the Tanzimat and the order of the great sultan at all” (amenewin chansalov tʿēnzimētʿi vusuli, ew hram[a]ntsʿ metsi Arkʿayis), repeating the Turkish word (in Armenian script) tʿēnzimētʿ three times.Footnote 37 They justified their call for an end to forced labor by pointing out that the situation violated the new order of reform in the empire while describing those who victimized them as ignorant of the principles of the Tanzimat.

Other taḳrīrs registered complaints against officials, such as one based on a petition from Armenians in the district of Van in 1855. The petitioners reported on the actions of Mehmet Salih Efendi, the treasurer and chair of the district council:

Addressing our bishop and other [Armenian] clergymen of that place [Van], [Mehmet Salih Efendi] dared to curse, without necessity, [their] creed, mouth, hair, and beard publicly in front of everyone and to use inappropriate and unspeakable words. The aforementioned insults caused harm to the honor of the community and were totally against not only the glorious commands of the exalted [1853] decree that confirmed the old religious privileges [imtiyāzāt-ı ḳadīme-i rūḥāniyye] . . . but also the exalted Tanzimat['s orders] that had been occasionally executed [arasıra icrā buyurulan Tanẓīmāt-ı seniyye].Footnote 38

Other cases suggest that Armenians in some provinces actively participated in the new arena of local politics that the Tanzimat council system had created. In a taḳrīr based on a petition from Diyarbakır, Armenians asserted that El-Hac Şeyh Ağa, a Muslim member of the local council, was falsely accused and imprisoned; they requested his release and the restoration of his council membership.Footnote 39 When Muslim council members abused the system, Armenians could request the central government's support. For example, one taḳrīr delivered the complaints of Armenians from Kemah (a subdistrict in the Erzurum province), who claimed that Muslim council members had committed several injustices such as deceitfully manipulating the imposition of a tax for their own profit.Footnote 40 A case in 1864 suggests that Armenians and Muslims sometimes cooperated in local politics. The taḳrīr, which was based on the minutes of the primarily Muslim Çemişgezek subdistrict council, lists abuses committed by Kurdish tribes of the Dersim region against both Muslims and Armenians in the area. The council members appealed to the central government through the channel of the Armenian patriarchate.Footnote 41

Numerous taḳrīrs related to violence against Armenians are available in the Ottoman archives. As the case of Çemişgezek shows, sedentary Armenians and Muslims were both victims of violence by armed nomads. In 1876, Garabed Panosian, a journalist and publisher of Armeno-Turkish newspapers, claimed that while Armenians in the eastern provinces could appeal to Istanbul by petitioning the patriarchate or sending letters about their plight to newspapers, Muslims did not have such channels.Footnote 42 Some of the Armenian appeals seem to have borne fruit, as indicated by the appreciation expressed in Armenian newspaper articles that Ottoman provincial officials had intervened in the violence of Kurdish nomads on the central government's order.Footnote 43 Nevertheless, an increase of newspaper articles related to violence in the 1860s and 1870s suggests that the situation was deteriorating in the eastern provinces.

In requesting the central government's support, Armenians described their plight while frequently employing the catchwords of the Tanzimat. A taḳrīr based on a petition from Erzurum in 1854 claimed that in some subdistricts of Erzincan, Tercan, Muş, and Bitlis, Kurdish tribes occasionally victimized Armenians by “usurping property, taking lives, and violating honor” (gaṣb-ı emvāl ve ḳatl-i nüfūs ve hetk-ı ʿırż u nāmūs).Footnote 44 Similar phrases were used in other taḳrīrs to demonstrate that the accused were violating a promise of the Gülhane Rescript.Footnote 45 Some reports described Armenians as “Christian subjects of the empire” (Hıristiyan tebaʿa-ı şāhāne),Footnote 46 whose property, life, and honor should be protected by the state.

Numerous documents thus illustrate how provincial Armenians utilized the language and reasoning of the Tanzimat, and the same can be said for taḳrīrs submitted by the Orthodox and Catholic patriarchates.Footnote 47 Even though implementation of the reforms was slow and the central government could not fully establish control over the remote eastern provinces, the new proclamations and centralization policies raised expectations among provincial Armenians. In the promises of the Tanzimat they saw an opportunity to improve their social status. Some cooperated with Muslim neighbors, while others attempted to enlist the central government's support by framing their claims in the language of the Tanzimat, which they had learned and adapted. The next section turns to the responses of Armenian elites in Istanbul to these appeals from the provinces.

ARMENIAN ELITES IN ISTANBUL

Until the 1860s, as Panosian noted critically in his Armeno-Turkish newspapers, Armenians in Istanbul were not much concerned about the situation of provincial Armenians.Footnote 48 The response of the Armenian Apostolic patriarchate to provincial petitions was limited to composing and submitting taḳrīrs to the Ottoman government. In the 1860s, however, journalists began calling the attention of Istanbul Armenians to the situation by writing articles on the plight of provincial Armenians.Footnote 49 In addition, a pamphlet published in 1865 warned Istanbul Armenian elites that some of their coreligionists in the eastern provinces were seeking help not from the Ottoman authorities but from the Russian governor of Tiflis and the Echmiadzin Catholicosate—the highest religious authority of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the Caucasus under Russian rule.Footnote 50

Armenian elites gathered around the Armenian Apostolic patriarchate in Istanbul mainly included high clergymen, journalists, and Ottoman state officials. In 1860, they came together in a formal organization, the Armenian assembly, which was organized under the jurisdiction of the patriarchate according to the new regulation on community administration.Footnote 51 Prominent among the issues discussed, especially by high clergymen and journalists in the assembly, was the plight of their coreligionists in the provinces.

The most eminent figure among high Armenian clergymen in the mid-19th century, Mgrdich Khrimian, was born and had made his career in the eastern provinces. Since the middle of the 1850s, Khrimian had devoted himself to the education of provincial Armenians by opening schools and publishing journals in Van and Muş. He was one of the most popular clergymen of the time among Armenians in both Istanbul and the provinces.Footnote 52 In 1869, he was elected the Armenian Apostolic patriarch of Istanbul. Under his initiative, “oppression in the provinces” (kawaṛagan harsdaharutʿiwn) was placed on the assembly's agenda, and the phrase began to be used frequently in its meetings.

At an 1870 assembly meeting, Khrimian remarked:

When the considerate [Ottoman] government accepted the European enlightenment [lusaworutʿiwn] on the date of the Gülhane Rescript [Giwlhanēi ōrēnstrutʿean ōrēn], it prepared a code of laws and named it Düstur. The government gave it to both brothers [Kurds and Armenians] and asked, “Why do you behave hostilely toward each other? Worship the Qurʾan in a mosque and the Bible in a church. Then, in your social life, obey this code of laws.” In doing this, the government fulfilled its duty. However, the Kurds never even read the cover of this code of laws, and thus the [unfavorable] situation [in the eastern provinces] remains.

He continued that “when the principle of equality [hawasarutʿean ōrēnkʿ] is enforced and the Kurds see that some among Christians . . . are promoted to the rank of provincial governor, then they will truly understand the essence of the code of laws and the government's order.”Footnote 53 In mentioning Christian promotion to provincial governorship, Khrimian must have been thinking of the 1861 appointment of an Armenian Catholic as the governor of Lebanon following the strife in the region between Druze and Maronites.Footnote 54 Before his election, the new patriarch had been criticized for knowing neither politics nor the Turkish language well,Footnote 55 yet in this speech he invoked the achievements of the Tanzimat reforms as a way to analyze the causes of oppression in the eastern provinces and to propose the principle of equality as the panacea to Kurdish tribal violence.

In the same assembly meeting, Oksen Khojasarian, a newspaper publisher, proposed creating a committee within the assembly to investigate the “oppression in the provinces.” The assembly approved this proposal and elected four clergymen and six laymen (four of them, including Khojasarian, were journalists) to the committee. According to one assembly representative, these individuals learned of the situation in the provinces either by visiting the region or through journalistic channels.Footnote 56 The committee requested information from each bishopric in the provinces and evaluated all taḳrīrs that the patriarchate had submitted to the Ottoman authorities since 1849. In October 1871, the committee presented a survey report to the Armenian assembly.Footnote 57 It consisted of two parts: the first summarized the provincials’ complaints and the second proposed solutions. After a discussion by the assembly, it was published in Masis, the semi-official organ of the patriarchate.Footnote 58 Later, the patriarchate presented the report to the government and asked that the proposed reforms be put into effect.

One assembly member opposed the idea of recommending solutions to the government. His and several other members’ remarks suggest that it was unprecedented for non-Muslim religious authorities to propose comprehensive (rather than case-specific) solutions to be carried out by the state. However, many assembly members, including Krikor Odian, the most influential figure in the assembly and an Ottoman official who would be promoted to undersecretary of foreign and public work ministries in the 1870s, supported the idea of including recommendations in the report, pointing to the fact that the government was eager to accelerate reforms in the provinces and to collect information on the situation.Footnote 59

Indeed, the government did accelerate reforms in the provinces during the 1860s, and some Armenian state officials were engaged in these projects. In 1860, when Fuat Pasha was dispatched to Lebanon to restore order after the strife between Druze and Maronites, he was accompanied by Sahag Abro, an Armenian official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Footnote 60 Later in the decade, the government dispatched inspectors to the Balkan and Anatolian provinces to investigate the situations there. Among the inspectors were several Armenian officials, including Sarkis Aghapegian, a future member of the state council (Şura-yı Devlet).Footnote 61 In 1864, Midhat Pasha, as the new governor of Danube province, instituted a number of reforms as a test case for a future empire-wide provincial reorganization, which was realized in 1867 as the general law for the provincial system.Footnote 62 Krikor Odian assisted Midhat in implementing administrative reforms as the chief foreign affairs officer of the Danube province.Footnote 63 When in Istanbul, Abro, Aghapegian, and Odian were leading figures of the Armenian assembly and contributed to the development of Armenian national culture.Footnote 64 Bridging the spheres of state and community, they involved themselves in the provincial reforms as both Ottoman officials and Armenians.

Most complaints in the survey report echoed those expressed in the earlier taḳrīrs. For example, the report gave substantial space to complaints about the insufficient implementation of the Tanzimat's new taxation system, such as the tax in lieu of military service and the tax on property and income. As was the case with the taḳrīrs themselves, these complaints were directed not against the new taxes but against the process of assessing and collecting them.Footnote 65 On violence against Armenians, however, the survey report devoted surprisingly little space.Footnote 66 With regard to the local councils, there were complaints that some provinces had no Armenian councilmen. Even where Armenians were members of the councils, the proper seating order of non-Muslims (which, the report claimed, should have been Orthodox Christians first, then Apostolic Armenians, followed by Catholics and Protestants) was not observed. This seating order was important to the committee members because the neglect of Apostolic Armenians in local councils encouraged their conversion to Catholicism and Protestantism.Footnote 67 Although the report emphasized equality with Muslims, it advocated a hierarchical seating order for non-Muslims.

At the beginning of the section on “solutions,” the report claimed that it was necessary for the patriarchate to take measures other “than conventional taḳrīrs” (sovoragan tʿakrirēn turs) and for the Ottoman government to take measures other than conventional orders. The committee members framed their right to propose solutions through references to the principle of equality and the Reform Edict (paregarkutʿean khatʿtʿ hiwmayun) clause that ordered each community to discuss a reform plan that the demands of the time necessitated and submit it to the government.Footnote 68 The committee members adapted this clause, which was originally aimed at reforming community administration, in order to claim that their action was within the scope of the Reform Edict.

The report proposed that some of the achievements of the Tanzimat reforms be utilized or modified to improve the social status of provincial Armenians. For example, it recommended that Armenians bring commercial, criminal, and property-related cases to the newly organized Nizamiye courts, which heard cases according to the state law, instead of to the shariʿa courts. It also proposed translating the code of laws (presumably into Kurdish, Armenian, and/or Turkish in Armenian script) and promulgating orders of the government in the official gazettes of the provinces. Finally, the report suggested that the election procedure of the local administrative councils be reformed so that Armenian candidates would be approved by the Armenian council of that region.Footnote 69

But the most striking proposals were those related to military service. In 1855, the Ottoman government had decided in principle to subject non-Muslim males to military conscription as a step toward establishing their equality with Muslims. In practice, however, it imposed a tax on non-Muslims in lieu of military service (bedel-i ʿaskerī).Footnote 70 The committee report proposed that the Armenian community provide men to the Ottoman army in order to eliminate the unequal collection of the tax in lieu of military service. The authors asserted that this recommendation was based on the Reform Edict (paregarkutʿeantsʿ hrovardag) as well as their opinion that Armenians needed to show their “spirit of honor and citizenship” (badwoy ew kʿaghakʿatsʿiutʿean zkatsʿumn) and their willingness to spill their blood “for the Fatherland and the State” (Hayreneatsʿ u Dērutʿean hamar) alongside their Muslim compatriots.Footnote 71 In Ottoman Armenian writings during this period, “the Fatherland” usually referred to an Armenian “national” fatherland, that is, the eastern Ottoman provinces.Footnote 72 In the committee's proposal, however, it refers to the Ottoman fatherland for which Armenians, as Ottoman citizens, should not hesitate to spill their blood alongside Muslims. The duality governing the Reform Edict itself had enabled Ottoman Armenians to express belonging to two fatherlands, one Armenian and the other Ottoman.Footnote 73

Native inhabitants of Istanbul, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, were exempted from military service in this period.Footnote 74 Thus, when the committee members called for male Armenian military conscription, they did not have to consider the possibility of themselves or their sons entering the army; they were proposing it for their coreligionists in the provinces. They likely recalled how, at the beginning of the Crimean War (1853), the Armenian Apostolic patriarch had been the first among the non-Muslim religious authorities to propose providing men to the Ottoman army and that the Ottoman government had praised this Christian display of allegiance in its official gazette.Footnote 75

The proposal for conscription met with a stormy response in the assembly. The representatives who supported it were mainly members of the report committee, such as Sdepan Papazian, a former journalist, renowned pedagogue, and author of textbooks on Armenian history and language who expressed his optimism by invoking the principle of the Tanzimat reforms. His opinion was that when Armenians were ready to take on the same military duties as those shouldered by their “Ottoman compatriots” (Ōsmantsʿi hayrenagitsʿ), Muslims would accept them as “compatriots with equal rights” (hawasar irawantsʿ dēr hayrenagtsʿutʿiwn). Further, if provincial Armenians learned to defend their property, honor, and family, the violence inflicted on them by Kurdish nomads would cease.Footnote 76 The conscription proposal was thus linked by its supporters to Armenian oppression by nomads, whom the report described as armed rebels who neither paid taxes nor faced conscription. In contrast, Armenians were taxpaying subjectsFootnote 77 who were willing to be conscripted and to serve as full-fledged citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Among those who invoked the ideology of Ottoman nation-building during the conscription debate were Papazian, a leader in the development of Armenian national education,Footnote 78 and Garabed Iwtiwjian, a member of the committee and the editor of Masis, who published editorials in support of the proposal. One editorial argued that for Armenians to demand the enforcement of equal rights from the government, according to the Reform Edict's promise, they needed to fulfill their equal duties through military service.Footnote 79

However, a larger number of representatives opposed the proposal, arguing that it was too early for Armenians to serve in the military or for the government to let them serve. Several representatives, including Aghapegian, implied that the committee members had failed to understand the wishes of provincial Armenians, who would not agree to conscription at the present time. Although the patriarch Khrimian admitted that the conscription of Armenians would be an effective solution to Kurdish tribal violence, he, too, insisted that Armenians in the provinces were not ready to serve in the military.Footnote 80 Like supporters of the proposal, those who opposed it did so in the language of the Tanzimat. One lay representative asserted that military conscription of Armenians was impossible at that time, because even if the Tanzimat [Reform] Edict (tanzimatʿi khatʿtʿ-ı hiwmayuně) promised the introduction of conscription to non-Muslims, it also conferred privileges upon them that had not yet been realized. He argued that the government should perform its duties before the Armenians were required to perform theirs and insisted that when the time came, the government, not the Armenian assembly, should be the one to institute conscription.Footnote 81 The assembly decided to exclude the clause related to military service in the final report submitted to the Ottoman government.Footnote 82

The conscription discussion in the assembly demonstrates that Armenian community elites were highly concerned about equality between Muslims and non-Muslims. Their arguments were sensitive to the negative response of many Muslims to the fact that the government had promised non-Muslims equality without imposing military duties on them.Footnote 83 Even though the majority of assembly members opposed the immediate conscription of Armenians, their discussion assumed an acceptance of future conscription on the grounds that equal rights as Ottoman citizens would need to be accompanied by equal duties. The argument was over whether the Armenian community or the government should fulfill its duties first. Papazian optimistically expected that the committee's proposed conscription initiative would hasten Muslim acceptance of equality with non-Muslims. Even though many representatives, including several state officials, argued that equality was a solution to Kurdish tribal violence, they cautioned that the government needed time to make Muslim subjects accept equality and that provincial Armenians were not ready to perform military service.

AFTERMATH

The patriarchate presented the survey report to the Ottoman government in 1872 and a similar one in 1874.Footnote 84 It was later noted in the Armenian assembly that the government had formed a committee to investigate the instability in the eastern provinces.Footnote 85 However, the state's ability to implement reforms was limited by financial constraints and suffered an additional setback with the deaths of Tanzimat leaders Fuat Pasha in 1869 and Ali Pasha in 1871. In 1875, the situation deteriorated further, as Christians revolted in Herzegovina and Bosnia. By the end of the year, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia had intervened, requiring the Ottoman government to implement a reform program in those regions prepared by the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister. The foreign intervention was followed by an uprising in Bulgaria in April 1876.Footnote 86

With the empire in turmoil, Armenian community elites considered it necessary to demonstrate their allegiance. In the Armenian assembly in May 1876, Nerses Varzhabedian, the patriarch of Istanbul, declared in a long speech that “we Armenians” would remain inseparable “from the Ottoman nation” (Ōsmanean azkēn). Assembly members responded to this declaration by repeating “yes.”Footnote 87 Demonstrations of allegiance were not limited to the assembly. Armenians (as well as Orthodox Christians and Jews) in Istanbul, Bursa, and Izmir came forward to volunteer for the Ottoman army.Footnote 88 Elite Armenian women established an association to provide aid for the care of Ottoman soldiers who “fought against the enemies of the Ottoman state.” Many members of this “humanitarian and patriotic” (martasiragan ew hayrenasiragan) association were wives of Armenian officials such as Odian, Abro, and Aghapegian.Footnote 89 In December 1876, the government promulgated the Ottoman constitution, which perpetuated the duality of the Tanzimat by stipulating that all who had Ottoman nationality were “Ottomans” regardless of the religion or denomination they professed and, at the same time, that the state upheld the religious privileges granted to non-Muslim communities.Footnote 90

The turmoil in the Balkans might have affected how Armenian assembly members thought about the plight of provincial Armenians. Previously, they had referred to “oppression in the provinces,” but after the disturbances in the Balkans, they began to use a new phrase: “oppression in Armenia [Hayasdan]” (Hayasdani harsdaharutʿiwn, Hayasdani mēch kordzuadz harsdaharutʿiwn).Footnote 91 With the great powers demanding that the Ottoman government implement the reforms in particular provinces in the Balkans but not throughout the empire, Armenian assembly members found it necessary to focus on their national fatherland when appealing to the government for the implementation of reforms in the eastern provinces. Khojasarian went further, suggesting that Apostolic Armenians needed support from the great powers to pressure the Ottoman government on this front.Footnote 92

Although the necessity for foreign support was not frequently emphasized in the assembly, some members insisted that the right to demand reforms was a reward for their allegiance.Footnote 93 This opinion was voiced more loudly after the Ottoman–Russian War broke out in 1877 and the government required that the patriarchate provide soldiers. Madteos Izmirlian, a clerical representative and future patriarch, insisted that although the Ottoman constitution pronounced Armenians as “Ottoman” (ōsmantsʿi) under the law of equality, that principle had not yet been realized. Considering full equality to be the panacea for injustices in the provinces, he argued that if the government had the right to demand soldiers, Armenians had the right to demand equality in all spheres.Footnote 94

CONCLUSION

This article has examined how traces of the Tanzimat reforms were embedded in the petitions of provincial Armenians, the taḳrīrs written by religious authorities in Istanbul, the survey report of the Armenian assembly committee on provincial affairs, and the remarks of assembly representatives in the debates that ensued.

The “Armenian problem” evolved domestically for several decades before surfacing as an international problem in 1878. Although implementation of the Tanzimat reforms was slow, their promises raised expectations of change among provincial Armenians. In their appeals to the central government, they equipped themselves with knowledge of the reforms and adapted themselves to the new order. In a similar vein, Armenian elites in Istanbul framed their right to make recommendations to the Ottoman government on reforms needed in the eastern provinces through references to the language of the Tanzimat. The duality of state and community inherent to the Reform Edict enabled them to reconcile Armenian particularism with Ottoman patriotism as they struggled to address the “oppression in the provinces.” The same figures who were contributing to the development of Armenian national education, the reform of written language, and the spread of Armenian journalism were discussing their duties as Ottoman citizens in the Armenian assembly. Such discourse was not limited to Armenian state officials but was also produced by clergymen, journalists, and educators who were willing to invoke the state ideology to frame their political claims. The debate on conscription in the assembly is just one example of the extent to which the Armenian community was intertwined with the Ottoman state.

For some high-ranking Muslim officials, the Reform Edict may have been primarily addressed to the great powers, but as long as the central government promoted its principles, there was room for Ottoman subjects to interpret them for their own ends. Armenian elites involved themselves in contentious political issues with the belief that they could improve the situation of provincial Armenians as well as their own status as community leaders. Similar to Orthodox Christian elites, they imagined a future for themselves in the pluralistic order of the empire. In 1877, some of them were officially integrated into state politics with the introduction of the parliamentary system. Even though Abdülhamit II closed the parliament in 1878 and shifted the emphasis of state ideology toward an Islamic Ottoman identity, the Ottoman state continued to employ Armenian officials and maintained the religious privileges of non-Muslim communities.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: Dates in the Hijri, Rumi, and Julian calendars have been converted to the Gregorian calendar. Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian were transliterated according to the Library of Congress transliteration system. For their help at various stages of the project, I am grateful to Tadashi Suzuki, Kayoko Hayashi, Cemal Kafadar, Mesrob Mutafian, Nobuyoshi Fujinami, Jun Akiba, Hiroyuki Ogasawara, Tuncay Bağla, Helda Aynayüz, and Manami Ueno. I also thank the anonymous referees and the editors of IJMES for their valuable comments and suggestions. This article was supported by the Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

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15 According to Libaridian, Istanbul Armenians in the middle of the 19th century considered Istanbul to be the center of the Ottoman Armenian community. Libaridian, “Ideology of Armenian Liberation,” 110–12.

16 Sahman Azkayin Zhoghovoyn (Istanbul, 1826), 7–9; Sahman Azkayin Zhoghovoy (Istanbul, 1830), 9–12; Salname-i Devlet (Istanbul, 1847–80). On the relationship between the Istanbul patriarchate and the other religious authorities during the Tanzimat period, see Ueno, Masayuki, “Tanzima-to Ki Arumenia Kyodotai no Saihen: Mirreto Kempo Go no Isutanburu Sosyukyoza o Chushin ni” (The Reorganization of the Armenian Community during the Tanzimat Period: Focusing on the Patriarchate of Istanbul after the Recognition of the Millet Constitution), Toyo Bunka 91 (2011): 263–87.Google Scholar

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21 See n. 9.

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27 For example, a Muslim in the Eğin district accused Armenians in the same district of communicating secretly with Russian subjects and obtaining weapons from them. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (hereafter BOA), MVL 281/13 (25 May 1854). To damage the trustworthiness of the Istanbul patriarch, the Sis Catholicos told the Ottoman government that the patriarch had close relations with Russia. Sanjian, Avedis K., The Armenian Communities in Syria under Ottoman Dominion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 242–57.Google Scholar

28 While the languages of the petitions were Armenian, Ottoman Turkish, or Turkish written in Armenian scripts, the taḳrīrs were written in Ottoman Turkish.

29 Adenakrutʿiwn (20 October 1871): 475–78. This number does not include taḳrīrs written on matters such as the appointment of clergymen or the repair of religious facilities or to express gratitude for fair treatment from provincial officials.

30 In addition, forty-four were from Aleppo, nineteen from Adana, fourteen from Trabzon, thirteen from Damascus, one from Aydın, twenty-one from Ankara, thirty-eight from Bursa, three from Kastamonu, and nine from Rumeli.

31 Among these, sixty-five were based on petitions from the Erzurum province and seventy-nine from Diyarbakır.

32 In addition, thirty-two addressed forced conversion, thirty-eight addressed conflicts with Catholics and Protestants, twenty-six requested nonintervention in church construction and calls for prayer, and thirteen requested nonintervention in religious services.

33 BOA, MVL 55/54 (The date of the order responding to the taḳrīr was 30 November 1847).

34 Takamatsu, “Ottoman Income Survey,” 15–45.

35 BOA, HR.MKT 155/64 (30 July 1856); MVL 266/10 (1 December 1853).

36 İnalcık, “Tanzimat'ın Uygulanması,” 640.

37 BOA, A.}DVN.MHM 4/23 (27 November 1847). See also BOA, HR.SYS 80/29 (16 September 1851); A.}DVN 844/75 (12 November 1252).

38 BOA, MVL 286/16 (8 March 1855).

39 BOA, MVL 645/1 (24 February 1863). Also, BOA, MVL 657/63 (29 September 1863).

40 BOA, MVL 678/35 (17 June 1864).

41 BOA, MVL 686/5 (8 September 1864).

42 Manzumei Efkʿear, no. 3136 (5 June 1876).

43 Masis, no. 256 (31 December 1856), Masis Oratʿertʿ, nos. 186 (6 July 1868), 418 (21 September 1869).

44 BOA, HR.MKT 96/97 (7 December 1854).

45 For example, BOA, MVL 641/26 (5 November 1862); MVL 678/18 (13 May 1864).

46 BOA, MVL 702/8 (24 March 1864).

47 For example, BOA, MVL 285/19 (4 February 1855, Orthodox, Gümülcine/Komotini), MVL 294/60 (13 November 1855, Catholic, Erzurum). For the case of the Danube province, see Petrov, “Everyday Forms of Compliance,” 730–59.

48 Miwnadiyi Erjiyas, no. 213 (26 August 1862); Manzumei Efkʿear, no. 1753 (18 November 1871).

49 For example, Masis, nos. 559 (8 November 1862), 568 (10 January 1863), 655 (10 September 1864), and 684 (1 April 1865).

50 Aghapekian, Deghegakir Amenayn Hayotsʿ Gatʿoghigosutʿean, 16.

51 Armenians called this regulation, which was approved by the Ottoman government in 1863, the “Armenian National Constitution” (Azkayin Sahmanatrutʿiwn Hayotsʿ). On the drafting process, see Artinian, Armenian Constitutional System; Albōyajian, Arshag A., “Azkayin Sahmanatrutʿiwně: Ir Dzakumě ew Girarrutʿiwn,” in 1910 Ěntartsag Ōratsʿoytsʿ S. Pʿrgchean Hiwantanotsʿi Hayotsʿ (G. Bolis: Tpagrutʻiwn H. Mattʻēosean, 1910), 476–528Google Scholar; and Ueno, Masayuki, “The First Draft of the Armenian Millet Constitution,” Annals of Japan Association for Middle East Studies 23 (2007): 213–51.Google Scholar The 1863 version stipulated that the assembly consist of twenty clergymen, eighty laymen from Istanbul, and forty laymen elected by provincials. Azkayin Sahmanatrutʿiwn Hayotsʿ, art. 57–62. Assembly minutes, published after each meeting, were distributed to the representatives and sold to the public.

52 Kostandyan, Ēmma, “Mkrtichʿ A Vanetsʿi,” in Kʿristonya Hayastan Hanragitaran (Erevan, Armenia: Haykakan Hanragitarani Glkhavor Khmbagrutʿyun, 2002), 745–47.Google Scholar

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56 Adenakrutʿiwn (3 December 1870): 152–53, 165; (9 December 1870): 175–78; (3 November 1871): 497.

57 Adenakrutʿiwn (20 October 1871): 468–83.

58 Masis, nos. 1158–162 (9 November 1871–18 November 1871).

59 Adenakrutʿiwn (3 November 1871): 498–99.

60 Balcı, Sezai, “Bir Osmanlı-Ermeni Aydın ve Bürokratı: Sahak Abro (1825–1900),” in Osmanlı Siyasal ve Sosyal Hayatında Ermeniler, ed. Erdal, İbrahim and Karaçavuş, Ahmet (Istanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat, 2009), 115–19.Google Scholar

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62 Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, chap. 5.

63 Masis, no. 666 (26 November 1864); Petrov, “Tanzimat for the Countryside,” 103.

64 Balcı, “Osmanlı-Ermeni Aydın,” 112–13; Artinian, Armenian Constitutional System, 69–71, 86.

65 Adenakrutʿiwn (20 October 1871): 469–70.

66 Ibid., 473–74.

67 Ibid., 472.

68 Ibid., 479.

69 Ibid., 480–81.

70 Gülsoy, Ufuk, Osmanlı’nın Gayrimüslim Askerleri (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2010)Google Scholar, chap. 2; Heinzelmann, Tobias, Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nda Genel Askerlik Yükümlülüğü 1826–1856, trans. Noyan, Türkis (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2008), 244–50.Google Scholar

71 Adenakrutʿiwn (20 October 1871): 479.

72 For example, Manzumei Efkʿear, no. 1753 (18 November 1871).

73 Şemsettin Sami Frashëri, a Muslim Albanian intellectual and state official, employed a similar discourse. See Gawrych, George W., “Tolerant Dimensions of Cultural Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire: The Albanian Community, 1800–1912,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 524.Google Scholar

74 Heinzelmann, Cihaddan Vatan Savunmasına, 155.

75 BOA, İ.HR 5001(6 October 1853); Takvim-i Vekayiʿ, no. 494 (27 October 1853).

76 Adenakrutʿiwn (3 November 1871): 502–503.

77 Adenakrutʿiwn (20 October 1871): 481.

78 Haykakan Sovetakan Hanragitaran, s.v. “Pʿapʿazyantsʿ.”

79 Masis, no. 1161 (16 November 1871).

80 Adenakrutʿiwn (3 November 1871): 500–505.

81 Ibid., 500, 504.

82 Adenakrutʿiwn (10 November 1871): 510–12; (1 March 1872): 593–98.

83 On Muslims’ negative attitudes toward equality with non-Muslims, see Arai, Masami, Osuman Teikoku wa Naze Hokaishita noka (Why Did the Ottoman Empire Fall?) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2009), 79–83Google Scholar, 146–160.

84 Masis, nos. 1226 (27 April 1872), 1574 (8 September 1874).

85 Adenakrutʿiwn (22 September 1876): 174–76.

86 Stavrianos, Leften S., The Balkans since 1453 (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1958), 396–401.Google Scholar

87 Adenakrutʿiwn (19 May 1876): 6–7.

88 Manzumei Efkʿear, nos. 3180 (17 July 1876), 3183 (20 July 1876); Masis, no. 1852 (22 July 1876).

89 Masis, nos. 1847 (11 July 1876), 1848 (13 July 1876); Manzumei Efkʿear, no. 3175 (12 July 1876).

90 Hatt-ı Hümayun ve Kanun-ı Esasi (Istanbul: Matbaʿa-i ʿAmire, 1876), 4–5.

91 For example, Adenakrutʿiwn (7 June 1876): 38–42; (8 September 1876): 153; (22 September 1876): 174–86.

92 Adenakrutʿiwn (22 September 1876): 185–86.

93 Ibid., 180–84.

94 Adenakrutʿiwn (7 December 1877): 309–10, 317–18.