Article Writing Homework Help

Create a 17 pages page paper that discusses the idea of osmanlilik. Primary education, conscription head tax, and military service were to be applied to non-Muslims and Muslims alike. However as Gelvin (2005) notes, “for all its good intentions a policy that attempted to establish equality among Ottoman citizens satisfied few Muslims or Christians” (p. 100). In summary, Osmanlilik ensured that all communities were considered equal in rights and responsibilities regardless of religious background.

The Young Turks rebelled against the Sultan by drawing on sentiment among primarily the intelligentsia whom they were a part of as well as the public mass sentiment of Turks and thereby leading to the successful overthrow of his power. Similar to the Osmanlilik the young Turks were interested in maintaining the Ottoman Empire’s control which was rapidly diminishing. Unlike the Osmanlilik, the Young Turks combined a previously unlikely union of reform-minded pluralists, Turkish nationalists, and Western-oriented secularists and indeed anyone who accorded the Sultan political blame for the weakening state of the Empire. The Young Turks had outlined four core reasons for their disgruntlement: a) a thirty year increasingly centralized government, b) increasing surveillance of all aspects of life leading to c) the assassination and exile of anyone who opposed the powers of the Sultan, and d) the consciousness that foreign dominance was increasingly a threat to the entire empire and that this would inevitably lead to the demise of the empire a responsibility that the Young Turks believed to be on the hands of the Sultan (Oktem, 2003). The Young Turks tried to employ Osmanlilik, which saw a revival during this time. This was done to strengthen the Empire however they were unsuccessful in doing so, making Turkish ethnicity dominant and overbearing and thereby straining relations with the ethnic minorities of the region (Oktem, 2003. Gelvin, 2005).

As discussed in response #1 the fact that the pioneers of Turkish nationalism the Osmanlilik and Young Turks had borrowed ideas from the French Revolutionaries and European Enlightenment illustrates that they were somewhat eager to transcend religious involvement in the State thereby laying the foundations for the modernization of Turkey in the 20th century. Enlightenment policies rejected the role of religion or tradition in society and especially the governing of that society. The rationale for this being that a traditional society in which religion predominated was not only locked within an archaic framework of thinking but that it would inevitably prejudice the rights of those who were either non-followers or non-religious. As such, and according to Oktem (2003) the modernizing of Turkey really was well seasoned upon the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 by Officer Mustafa Kemal. Kemal, wishing to reach the level of Enlightenment of contemporary civilization broke away from the Turkish/Islamist past. The modernization of Turkey during this time included reforms such as secular/republican forms of government, European legal codes, the emancipation of women and the abolition of Arabic script all of which were looked upon favorably and all of which were previously embraced by Osmamlilik and the Young Turks (Gelvin, 2005. Khater, 2004).