The Feasibility of Ottomanism as a Nationalist Project: the View of Albanian Young Turk Ismail Kemal

0467607 - OÚ 2017 RIV DE eng J - Journal Article
Taglia, Stefano
The Feasibility of Ottomanism as a Nationalist Project: the View of Albanian Young Turk Ismail Kemal.
Die Welt des Islams. Roč. 56, 3-4 (2016), s. 336-358. ISSN 0043-2539
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : nationalism * Ottomanism *  İsmail Kemal * Committee of Union and Progress *  Sultan Abdülhamid II * Mehmet Sabahettin * Albania * Ahmet Rıza
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Method of publishing: Limited access

This article surveys the appeal of Ottomanism for non-dominant group members of the Young Turk organisation. It focuses on a specific reading of Ottomanism as a nationalist discourse articulated by Young Turk intellectuals in exile. The article analyses the actions, thoughts and writings of Ottoman Albanian İsmail Kemal who, in 1900, after an influential career in Ottoman officialdom, escaped to Europe and affiliated himself with the leaders of the organisation in exile. What emerges from this study is that Ottomanism was, until the Committee of Union and Progress adopted an authoritarian and pro-Turkist stance, a feasible discourse for Young Turk activists from both a dominant and non-dominant background. The article also suggests that an assessment of the role of Young Turks from a non-Muslim or non-Turkish background needs to include a consideration of a simultaneous and compatible role of such members as working for imperial reform and for the improvement and protection of their own particular community.


Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0267404