Ottoman Engineers: the Redefinition of Expert Identities During the Reign of Abdülhamid Ii and the Early Years of the Second Constitutional Period

Darina MARTYKÁNOVÁ 125 OTTOMAN ENGINEERS: THE REDEFINITION OF EXPERT IDENTITIES DURING THE REIGN OF ABDÜLHAMID II AND THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SECOND CONSTITUTIONAL PERIOD I n 1907, Mustafa Şevki, a young engineer who worked in the Public Works (nafıa) provincial administration of Prishtina, was approached by two young army officers who proposed him to join the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihatveTerakkiCemiyeti, CUP).1 The CUP was a secret organisation that channelled the opposition against the autocratic rule of the sultan Abdülhamid II. Its ranks were full of Muslim (and some non-Muslim) students, officers and civil servants educated in “new-style” schools. Its members were united by their concern for the fate of the Ottoman Empire and their conviction was that the Empire could not be saved and restored to its former glory by using old ways and measures. They believed that only a thorough modernisation could save the Empire, Darina Martykánová, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Filosofía, Calle Albasanz, 26-28, 28037 Madrid, Spain. [email protected], [email protected] 1 This article develops some of the ideas briefly outlined in my book Reconstructing OttomanEngineers (see bibliography at the end), using new primary and secondary sources. My thanks go to Feza Günergun for providing me with photocopies of the engineers’ journals from the Second Constitutional Period. I am also grateful to Emmanuel Szurek, Juan Pan- Montojo and Ana Romero for their thought-provoking comments and criticisms. The “Research in Paris” programme of the City of Paris supported my research stay at Cetobac (CNRS – EHESS – Collège de France), during which this article was written. Turcica, 45, 2014, p. 125-156. doi: 10.2143/TURC.45.0.3032667 © 2014Turcica.Tous droitsréservés. 997040.indb7040.indb 112525 112/08/142/08/14 114:394:39 126 DARINA MARTYKÁNOVÁ while liberties and rights granted by a constitution were supposed to provide a better framework for the relations between the different ethnic and ethno-religious groups and communities.2 In the eyes of the two graduates of the Mekteb-iHarbiye (military academy), the most prestig- ious school in the Empire, Mustafa Şevki must have been an ideal can- didate for recruitment: graduate of the Hendese-iMülkiyeMektebi (civil engineering school), founded in 1883 to provide civilian engineers for the Public Works administration, he was versed in sciences, possessed technical knowledge and skills and was working in a strategic region. Nevertheless, our engineer was not very enthusiastic about the prospect of joining the secret patriotic organisation, worried as he was about the possible punishment in case his membership became public. He argued that he was already serving his country by doing his duty as an engineer in charge of public works. However, he eventually decided to join the CUP.3 The way Mustafa Şevki explains his decision in his memoirs is extremely telling. He argues that, on the one hand, he feared for being dismissed from civil service and exiled in “a faraway place like Yemen or Libya,” if his membership was discovered by the authorities. Nevertheless, he was actually more afraid of the dangers of refusing. The possibility that the secret organisation might “become suspicious of him” or may “judge him by default” motivated him sufficiently for his fear to be overcome. Such reasoning points to how much deteriorated was the sultan’s author- ity by 1907 as well as to how extensive and notorious the opposition movement within the Ottoman frontiers was able to become.4 Besides revealing the weakening legitimacy of Abdülhamid’s rule, this story informs us about several other key issues. Among civil and military government officials, the loyalty to an abstract entity — be it the state, the nation or the fatherland — was gaining strength vis à vis personal loyalty to the dynasty and embeddedness in traditional structures of mediating powers, despite the conscious policies developed by Abdülhamid to promote personal 2 On the Young Turks and the Second Constitutional Period, see e.g. Hanioğlu, The YoungTurks; Zürcher, “Young Turks;” id., TheYoungTurkLegacy; Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma. On the other hand, the summary I have provided can hardly reflect the ideological plurality within the CUP and within the Young Turk movement as a whole. For an interesting analysis of ecumenism among the Young Turks, see e.g. Hanioğlu, “Turkism.” 3 Atayman, BirİnşaatMühendisinAnıları, p. 37-41. 4 Martykánová, ReconstructingOttomanEngineers, p. 53. 997040.indb7040.indb 112626 112/08/142/08/14 114:394:39 OTTOMAN ENGINEERS 127 loyalty specifically to him as sultan.5 The men who received modern education felt entitled to fashion themselves as saviours of the country and act on its behalf, independently of the decisions and policies pursued by the ruling dynasty. Following the same logic, working for the state could be perceived as fulfilling one’s patriotic duty, particularly when the tasks performed were generally considered as useful and beneficial for the country and its people. OTTOMAN ENGINEERS AS EXPERTS? While the sources clearly indicate that many Ottoman engineers shared a notion of service to an abstract political or socio-political entity (devlet, vatan, millet…) during the Hamidian absolutism period6, we can find much less evidence implying that they linked the notions of duty and usefulness to their specific expert knowledge, and that they claimed the right to intervene in decision making specifically asengineers, rather than as highly-educated men and government officials. How do we explain the relative “silence of the engineers” during the rule of Abdülhamid II? Is it a problem of sources? Can we actually discuss engineers in the Ottoman Empire during the Hamidian period in terms of a community of experts? To answer this question, it might be useful to define the analytical category of expert that I systematically apply in this article. Multiple definitions have been developed strongly depending on specific historical and geo-cultural contexts. Ch. Rabier has summarised the recent trends as follows: “the notion of expertise has been redefined by social scien- tists as either the cognitive dimension of a particular administrative or legal practice of assessment, or the complex social setting in which the latter takes place as a ‘situation’ or a ‘forum of expertise’.”7 Some have argued against the use of this category for historical settings where the 5 For Abdülhamid’s innovative strategies of self-representation, see Deringil, TheWell- Protected Domains. For specific examples from the Mülkiye Mektebi, see Uluçay, Kartekin, YüksekMühendisOkulu, p. 149-152; Martykánová, op.cit., p. 91. For deeper historical roots of an understanding of political power at least partially autonomous from the figure of the sultan, see Sigalas, “Devlet.” 6 In this article, I use the term “absolutism” to define a regime in which the power of the sovereign is not officially limited by any earthly power, in opposition to “constitutional monarchy,” not as an assessment of the specific policies of Abdülhamid II. 7 Rabier, “Introduction,” p. 2 and fn. 3. 997040.indb7040.indb 112727 112/08/142/08/14 114:394:39 128 DARINA MARTYKÁNOVÁ term expert(or alike) was absent. Nevertheless, I am convinced of the usefulness of the notions of expert and expertise as flexible categories of analysis when they allow us to label figures and phenomena that did indeed exist. After all, a concept does not have to be embodied in a single word in order to shape human thought and action.8 I. Backouche’s definition focuses on the twofold dimension of expertise both as a set of char- acteristics and as a dynamic process: “The assertion [of a person] as an expert, characteristic of each context, invokes acquired experience, institu- tional acknowledgement, the relationship to political power, the mastery of knowledge, or even a claim of proximity with the ‘indigenous’ world. The experts deploy subtle and shifting strategies, in the very core of their exercise of expertise, to build a legitimacy which they do not always possess apriori.” At the same time, she points out a potential “inconsistency between the intentionality displayed and the actual prac- tices of expertise.”9 In the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, expertise developed closely linked to the practice of government, as a form of an “authoritative exercise of power.”10 At least since the 18th century, sciences and techniques/ arts (ulûmvefünûn) were understood as useful knowledge indispensable for an efficient governmental action.11 While the bureaucrats considered that, as enlightened gentlemen, they could, in principle, access this knowledge through the use of reason, the proliferation of the different spheres of military and administrative intervention led to an effectual acknowledgement that the persons who possessed — certified, if possible, by a relevant foreign or local institution — deep knowledge and skills in a specific field should not only carry out what they were told to by the enlightened statesmen, but also have certain power over the decisions on what was needed to be done. This particular version of the Weberian “rational domination” turned the different levels of the Ottoman administrative apparatus into a key space of production and exercise of expert knowledge and identities as well as of the very definition of several fields 8 For the discussion of Reinhardt Koselleck’s understanding of concepts and for concepts as “clusters of meanings,” see Ifversen, “Text,” p. 67. 9 Backouche, “Devenir expert,” p. 2; id., “Expertise,” p. 2. 10 Rabier, art.cit., p. 16. 11 Kaçar, OsmanlıDevleti’ndeBilimveEğitimAnlayışındakiDeğişmeler. Recently, Kaçar has used an updated version of his dissertation in his contribution to Karaca ed., IstanbulTeknikÜniversitesi; Kaçar, “The Development;” Zorlu, Innovation; Beydilli, TürkBilimveMatbaacılıkTarihindeMühendishâne; id., “İlk Mühendislerimizden Seyyid Mustafa ve Nizâm-ı Cedîd’e dair Risalesi,” p. 17-47. 997040.indb7040.indb 112828 112/08/142/08/14 114:394:39 OTTOMAN ENGINEERS 129 of expertise.

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