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Abstract
Historians and social scientists view the Ottoman millet system as a successful example of non-territorial autonomy. The Ottoman rulers recognized the diversity of religious and ethnic communities that made up the empire and also understood that this diversity could not and should not be assimilated into an overarching principle of sameness. Instead, they organized a series of ad-hoc negotiations with the heads of religious communities, resulting in what became known as the millet system. Under these arrangements Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities organized their existence in the empire and survived through a generalized system of imperial toleration and intense negotiation. This article describes the main features of the millet system, and looks at the legacy it bequeathed to certain successor states, notably Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey. It argues that this kind of non-territorial autonomy was best suited to the geographical dispersion of minorities, but also to the strategic goals of the Ottoman Empire. Although this model was subsequently idealised, it had the effect not just of allowing autonomy to minorities but also of ensuring that they remained under the control of the state.
Notes
1. The Pact of Umar is analyzed by Cohen, Citation1999; it is described as an agreement between a non-Muslim group and ‘Umar ibnal-Khat˙t˙āb (pp. 634–644), the second caliph during the early formation of Islam.
2. Some scholars refer to the Muslim community as a millet as well, even though the organizing principles of the Muslim community, the ruling group, were different, separating the community along lines of askeri (military) and reaya (the flock).
3. Transferred populations often consisted of nomads, soldiers and dervish colonizers. In addition to sürgün, Ottoman officials selectively encouraged or coerced conversions to Islam in order to strategically increase Muslim populations.
4. Çiçek further notes the important role that court interpreters played across communities and with the state: ‘In Cyprus, the employment of interpreters was a necessity because the Greek majority, particularly in the city of Nicosia, lived in close contact with their Muslim neighbors, and often resorted to the qadi for a solution to disputes with their Muslim neighbors. Clearly the qadi needed an interpreter in order to serve Greek Cypriot litigants and to gain their confidence in court’ (Çiçek, Citation2002, p. 4).
5. Braude and Lewis (Citation1982); other classic statements include Gibb and Bowen (Citation1950), Rodrigue and Reynolds (Citation1995), Karpat and Yildirim (Citation2010), Karabell (Citation2007), Ergener (Citation2004), Haberlein (Citation2008), Adanir (Citation2003), Ritchie (Citation2005) and Lafi (Citation2011). See also www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/movies/in-turkey-ottoman-nostalgia-returns.html
6. Indeed, this extends to the area of foreign policy as well. The former minister of foreign affairs and current prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu wrote a major foreign policy treatise describing the country's approach to regional diplomacy as one of neo-Ottomanism (Davutoğlu, Citation2001).
7. Chen and Cammett note that between 1975 and 1991 the share of public hospital beds dropped from 26% to 10% of the total as sectarian political groupings consolidate exclusive control over more and more of the country's health infrastructure (p. 2).
10. It is not just the millet type of non-territorial autonomy that is complicated to set up and sustain. As the literature on non-territorial autonomy and some of our co-authors indicate, this form of autonomy is as appealing a concept as it is complicated to institute. As one scholar notes, debates on this approach can sometimes focus more on philosophical and normative issues over the practicalities of how to replace existing systems with NTA (see Smith, Citation2013).
11. The bombings of Coptic churches and abductions of Coptic citizens in 2011 are a case in point.
12. Deets and Stroschein (Citation2005, p. 298) explain, ‘Because individuals must actively and publicly affiliate with a cultural community in order to receive its benefits, the state must create a process for documenting who is a member of which community'.
13. Al-Monitor, February 2014.
14. The Barışve Demokrasi Partisi (now under the acronym HDP), a party in Turkey that advocates Kurdish rights, likewise takes a territorial approach to its political platform. In recent years, it called for the creation of 20–25 autonomous administrative regions in Turkey with assemblies to make decisions on matters of education, culture, social services, agriculture and the environment (Güneş, Citation2013, p. 79).
