Ali Suavi (1839-1878)
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A Revolutionary Young Ottoman: Ali Suavi (1839-1878) Aaron S. Johnson Institute of Islamic Studies McGill University, Montreal June 2012 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. © Aaron S. Johnson 2012 CONTENTS ABSTRACT/RÉSUMÉ..................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 Why Study Ali Suavi? ............................................................................................ 1 Literature Review.................................................................................................... 3 Approach................................................................................................................. 8 CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ............................................................... 12 The World in the Nineteenth Century........................................... 12 The Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century .......................... 17 The Tanzimat Reforms.................................................................. 20 Turkish Book and Newspaper Publishing..................................... 25 The Young Ottomans and the Constitution .................................. 29 II. ALİ SUAVİ’S LIFE ................................................................................... 37 The Early Years, 1839-1866 ......................................................... 37 The Istanbul Muhbir and Flight to Europe, 1867 ......................... 41 London and Le Mukhbir, 1867-1868 ............................................ 43 Paris and Ulum Gazetesi, 1869-1870............................................ 47 The Franco-Prussian War and Muvakkaten, 1870-1871............... 50 Pamphleteering in Paris, 1871-1876 ............................................. 51 Return to Istanbul.......................................................................... 54 Galatasaray.................................................................................... 55 The Çırağan Palace Incident ......................................................... 58 Aftermath ...................................................................................... 61 iii III. ALİ SUAVİ’S WORK AND THOUGHT, THE EARLY YEARS....... 65 Early Works, 1864-1867 ............................................................... 66 The Istanbul Muhbir, 1867............................................................ 68 Le Mukhbir and the London Years, 1867-1869 ............................ 74 Ulum Gazetesi and the Final Years of Journalism in France, 1869-1870.......................................................................... 95 IV. ALİ SUAVİ’S WORK AND THOUGHT, THE LATER YEARS ..... 109 A New Direction: Book Publishing in Paris, 1871-1876............ 109 Crisis and Response, 1875-1876 ................................................. 121 Return to Istanbul: Newspaper Articles, 1876-1878................... 149 V. A MULTITUDE OF SUAVİS ................................................................. 165 Early Slander............................................................................... 168 Pamphlets .................................................................................... 169 Namık Kemal and His Followers................................................ 170 Vilification of Suavi During the Hamidian Period...................... 174 Ali Suavi as Epic Hero for the Young Turks .............................. 179 Suavi in the Republican Era........................................................ 185 Suavi the Turkist ......................................................................... 196 Continuing Vilification ............................................................... 200 From Vilification to Revisionism................................................ 209 Views of Suavi in English-Language Works .............................. 212 Recent Developments.................................................................. 216 Concluding Remarks................................................................... 217 VI. RETHINKING ALİ SUAVİ .................................................................. 219 Some Remarks Concerning Suavi’s Aims, His Image, and His Style of Writing.................................................. 220 Interpreting the Çırağan Incident ................................................ 224 Ali Suavi and the Emergence of Modern Turkey ....................... 230 Ali Suavi in Ottoman History...................................................... 238 CONCLUDING REMARKS........................................................................................ 260 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 265 iv ABSTRACT This thesis is a study of the life and work of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkish journalist and activist Ali Suavi, best known for his failed attempt to overthrow Sultan Abdülhamit II in 1878. It includes a study not only of Suavi’s Turkish newspaper work, but also of his oft-neglected European publications. It also includes a thorough overview of how our image of Suavi has been distorted in various ways over the years, and in particular by Turkish nationalist historiography. Far from being a Turkish nationalist or protonationalist, as many scholars have claimed, Ali Suavi was in fact an Ottoman patriot with pan-Islamic leanings. Ali Suavi, as well as the popular Ottoman Muslim resistance to Russian occupation in the Rhodope mountains in what is now Bulgaria in the 1870s, can best be understood as precursors not of Turkish nationalism but rather of the Ottoman Muslim nationalism that guided Young Turk policy during World War I and subsequently motivated the postwar Anatolian resistance, and which was only replaced by Turkish nationalism following the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. RÉSUMÉ Ce mémoire est une étude de la vie et de l’œuvre du journaliste et activiste politique turc ottoman du dix-neuvième siècle, Ali Suavi, devenu célèbre pour la tentative de coup d’état qu’il a dirigé contre le Sultan Abdülhamit II en 1878. Il s’agit non seulement d’une étude de ses écrits dans les journaux turcs, mais aussi de ses ouvrages européennes, qui ont trop souvent été négligées. Ce mémoire comprend également un aperçu global des diverses façons par lesquelles notre image de Suavi a été déformée au cours des années, en particulier par l’historiographie nationaliste turque. Loin d’être un nationaliste ou protonationaliste turc, comme de nombreux chercheurs l’affirment, Ali Suavi était en effet un patriote ottoman avec des tendances panislamiques. On ne devrait pas comprendre Ali Suavi et la résistance populaire des ottomans musulmans contre l’occupation russe dans les montagnes Rhodopes (dans ce qui est maintenant la Bulgarie) pendant les années 1870 comme des précurseurs du nationalisme turc, mais plutôt comme des précurseurs du nationalisme ottoman musulman qui a guidé la politique des Jeunes- Turcs pendant la Première Guerre mondiale et a ensuite motivé la résistance anatolienne d’après-guerre, et qui n’a été remplacé par le nationalisme turc qu’après la fondation de la République turque en 1923. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks to the many people who helped bring this project to fruition, and in particular: To my thesis supervisor, Professor A. Üner Turgay, for his years of invaluable guidance, for suggesting Ali Suavi as a thesis topic, and for his unwavering support throughout the long process; To Professors Wael Hallaq and Laila Parsons for introducing me to much of the scholarship that has shaped my approach to Ali Suavi and to the study of Islamic history in general; To Professor Rula Abisaab, for seeing me past many major milestones in her capacity as Graduate Program Director at the Institute of Islamic Studies, and for helping me secure Institute funding for my research in Istanbul; To Faika Çelik and Şükran Fazlıoğlu for teaching me Ottoman Turkish; To Salwa Ferahian, for introducing me to the Islamic Studies Library and for years of encouragement; To Faika Çelik, David Mason, Masha Barabtarlo Sapp, Murat Eroğlu, and Paula McFarling for generously helping me gather the sources for this thesis; To Heather Empey and Claire Baffaut for helping me with French; To Paula McFarling and Peter Yronwode for providing me with a quiet place to work; And to Nazak Birjandifar for helping keep me on track, for providing valuable feedback at critical junctures, and for too many other things to mention here. vi INTRODUCTION Why Study Ali Suavi? Whether the products of Ali Suavi’s mind are worth analyzing in detail is a question which anyone willing to follow his adventurous life has to consider seriously.1 Thus begins Turkish sociologist Ş erif Mardin’s chapter on Ali Suavi from his classic work on the Young Ottomans, an Ottoman Turkish opposition group that formed in the 1860s and of which Ali Suavi was a prominent member. Pronouncements such as the above are in fact part of the reason why Ali Suavi is such a fascinating research subject. Not only did Suavi have an adventurous life and a dramatic death, but the products of his mind – that is, his writings – are in fact much worthier of analysis than Mardin’s comments would have