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Intellectual and social issues prevalent in present- day
Turkey have their antecedents in 19th century
Ottoman Empire. Ottoman 19th century was a period
where old and new, reform and reaction
met each other. In fact, this was an era where the empire
was shaken by series of wars and crisis of
disintegration. Reformist bureaucrats applied policies to
forestall this process, while the intelligentsia vehemently
opposed authoritarian reforms. Discussions
on the future of the empire became most fruitful during
the first four years of the Second
Constitutional Period (1908-1912) when people enjoyed
some degree of liberal freedom. Public
discussions came to an abrupt end when the Committee
of Union and Progress established military
dictatorship (1913-1918). As a whole, this "long nineteenth
century" was an era where institutional foundations
of Turkish modernization were laid down.
This course aims to introduce, discuss, and understand
Ottoman reform movements and thoughts
of the last hundred year of Ottoman existence, based
on the evaluation of reformist statesmen
of the Tanzimat-period, oppositional intellectuals of the
1860s and 1870s, conservative attitude
of Hamidian absolutism (1878-1908), and Young Turk
reformist ideas of the last decades
of Ottoman existence (1889-1918)
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