Talk:Ottoman Empire

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Good article status needs to be reviewed

I believe this article does not hold a good article status. (1) The content has no integrity. It is a patch work of non related concepts. The weight of content in each section is not balanced. The headings do not reflect the story. Such as the military section; instead of telling the military structure, section tell us the selected military activities which are already covered under the history section. Same content is repeated in different sections without the basic time line structure. (2) The article needs to obey the Wikipedia:Summary style This article contains references to many articles that tells the issues in detail. The article instead of summarizing the main link, gives details that is not even in the main article. (3) The article turn into a violation to Wikipedia:Content forking. The simple example is the military section. The same content has repeated with many different conclusions. (4) The article needs to be checked for Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. The content became biased. Instead of telling the facts, the article tries to propagate a nationalistic view. These problems are just a small section. If these issues are not tackled by the authors, I 'm thinking of bringing a good review on this article. --Anglepush 17:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Translation: The article doesn't meet with the personal tastes of Anglepush, therefore it's a bad article.

To be honest, for instance, the new format of the Ottoman Navy article is a complete mess, might I add.

Note that the "Rise", "Stagnation" and "Fall" periods (of power) of the Ottoman Army and Navy were different. Whereas, you seem to classify these dates as the same in the Ottoman Navy article.

e.g. the Ottoman Navy has nothing to do with 1683 (Battle of Vienna).

Regards. Flavius Belisarius 18:50, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

This is not a competition. I'm pointing to some serious problems. Please check the link Wikipedia:Content forking and Wikipedia:Summary style before performing personal attacks. I'm sure you would recognize the existing problems pointed in these articles. There is always the option that the article can be take to an independent review. If you continue with personal attacks, instead of an improvement, that would be left as the only choice. Surely article will lose its status. --Anglepush 23:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Just looking over this article I would have to agree with anglepush. The article lacks inline citations for most of the article, and the prose needs to be reviewed throughout. I would be willing to help on any effort to try and improve the article but I think that it needs a serious review, as such I am going to delist the article. Please feel free to disagree with me and put the article up for review again. I hope that at the very least this will expose the article to some outside scrutiny which will help to improve it. I hope this doesn't hurt any feelings but I honestly do not believe the article meets the guidelines for good article status. Timhud 00:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC).

lead

"Turkish-ruled" is the one thing that the Ottoman Empire was definitely not. Anyone with basic knowledge on the topic should be aware of the existence of Greek ruling classes such as the Phanariotes, but also Jewish and Armenian societies who played a major role in the empire's economic, political and military sectors. The Ottomans liked to give high privileges to all the ethnies of the empire so that they have less of a reason to feel under a foreign rule. One thing the Ottoman Empire was without any compromises was Islamic. This term characterises it best. Miskin 21:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I made some changes to this. Reference to the empire as Turkish Empire is common enough to leave at the top. Also, considering the multi ethnic and religious make up of the empire, I believe "dynastic" is a better description than "Islamic imperial" state. I've left the paragraph on the ethnic makeup, but I believe such things can be expanded in the section on society. --A.Garnet 11:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Phanariotes were not a "ruling class", they were Istanbulite Greeks who were only appointed to certain specific posts such as the Dragoman (Chief Customs Officer of a port city), or the Voivoda (Prince/Governor) of Wallachia and Moldavia, which were semi-autonomous principalities under Ottoman rule. They were also frequently appointed as Ambassadors to foreign (European) countries due to their fluency in foreign (European) languages. However, they were lower in rank than the Pashas, Beys, Beylerbeyi, Viziers and Grand Viziers, never mind the Sultan and the members of his family. Flavius Belisarius 13:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Phanariotes were a mere example, though they were not always natives to Constantinople (their founding family was from Chios). There's also the Rumeliotes and the Kocabasides, Greek ruling classes in Rumelia and Morea. There are also many notable Armenian, Albanian, Serbian and Jewish communities. All those non-muslim societies played a leading role in many sectors of the empire such as commerce, diplomacy, foreign policy, military (mainly navy, but also infantry) and administration. In fact there were tasks that the muslims did not accept to assume to themselves (for religious-cultural reasons). See for more information specialised sources such as D. Quataert's "the Ottoman Empire", M. Glenny's "The Balkans" or Eric Hobsbawm's "The Age of Empires". You'll find out that the information you removed is a mainstream view which the article lacks at the present moment. Miskin 23:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I accept the edits made by A. Garnet but I see no improvement in Flavius' wholesale reverts which removed sourced content. I made an effort to improve the lead by adding some credible material which is actually informative on the nature of the Ottoman state. Flavius removed it and replaced it with useless information which puts excessive accent on the empire's geographical size. This is not a very encyclopaedic practice, especially when the content at hand is repeated in several different articles. Flavius: Why did you revert my edits? Do you question the validity of the edits? Do you have any counter-sources to present? Thanks. Miskin 23:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

"A Turkish empire but the term "Turkish" doesn't refer especially to the race/ethnicity". This is what we need to express. "Turkish ruled" does not reflect the reality even if all Sultans were from Kayı tribe and there were countless numbers of Turkish originated Viziers in the ruling elite. Deliogul 09:39, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

To quote from D. Quataert, "The Ottoman Empire":

By "Turks" these frightened mothers meant a more complex reality - the fighting forces, who may or may not have been ethnically Turkish, of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire. Thus, a word here about the terms "Turks" and "Ottomans" seems in order. West, central and east Europeans referred to the "Turkish Empire" and to the "Turks" when discussing the state lead by the Ottoman dynasty. This was as true in the fourteenth as in the the twentieth century. The appellation "Turk" has some basis since the Ottoman family was ethnically Turkish in its origins, as were some of its supporters and subjects. But, as we shall see, the dynasty immediately lost this "Turkish" quality through intermarriages with many different ethnicities. As for a "Turkish Empire", state power relied on a similarly heterogeneous mix of peoples. The Ottoman Empire succeeded because it incorporated the energies of the vastly varied peoples it encountered, quickly transcending its roots in the Turkish nomadic migrations from central Asia into Middle East. Whatever ethnic meaning the "Turk" may have held soon was lost and the term came to mean "Muslim". To turn Turk meant converting to Islam. Throughout this work, the term Ottoman is preferred since it conjures up more accurate images of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious enterprise that relied on inclusion for its success.

I think this answers the above remarks. Compare a mainstream scholarly view with what the article currently implies, i.e. that the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish nationalist which enslaved dozens of nations and conquered three continents. This maybe a nice patriotic fairy tale for someone who wants to overemphasise the geographical size and political might of the Ottoman Empire, but it has no place in a scientific source. It is clearly stated above that the Ottoman Empire succeeded because it was not what the article implies (a Turkish nationalist state), but because state power relied on a mix of peoples. I tried to improve the article by providing some useful and credible material but I was reverted. I have long accepted that some articles/topics in wikipedia will never improve unless there's a radical policy change. This article serves as a fine example. Miskin 10:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

If you are correct, then why did people call it the "Turkish Empire" or "Turkey" instead of the "Islamic Empire" for centuries?

Why is the language called "Ottoman Turkish"?

Why are the Ottomans called the "Turks" and not "Muslims" in thousands of texts?

The answer is obvious, but perhaps not so obvious for emotional/prejudiced minds.

If it's O.K. to assert that the "multiethnic" Byzantine Empire was in essence a "Greek" empire, then it should also be O.K. to mention the essential Turkishness of the Ottoman Empire. Why do you think that the Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs and Armenians of today use many Turkish words in their langauges?

As for the "Christian minorities in high posts like the Dragoman (Chief Customs Officer)": They were always inferior compared to Muslim Turks under the law. The word of a Muslim Turkish witness always weighed heavier than the word of a Christian or Jew in the court, no matter how high his position was (including the Voivoda of Wallachia).

As for the "Devşirme" (Convert) Viziers of Christian origin: Their genetic origins (DNA) didn't matter much, as they were taken as babies and raised as Muslim soldiers or officials speaking the Ottoman Turkish language. Your "brain" matters more than your DNA in determining your national and religious identity. Yes, in terms of DNA, they were Serbian/Greek/Hungarian/etc. But in terms of brain, mentality, religion, ideology and language, they were Muslims speaking Ottoman Turkish. And language, by the way, is the #1 ingredient which defines a nation. Flavius Belisarius 19:31, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

The last sentence in your post shows that your logic is anachronistic and that it is based on modern nationalist concepts, alien to the subject at hand. I answered you with a source and I expect you to do the same. I could have answered your POV with another POV but this would only commence a vicious circle. If you care to ameliorate the article you should (a) avoid removing sourced content that you simply don't agree with [1] and (b) start making assertions and edits that abide by WP:ATT. Wikipedia is not a place to publish original thought. But as I said, I don't expect this article to get better any time soon. The "good article" label is just a red herring, another demonstration of wikipedia's exploitable nature. Miskin 20:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Miskin, how do you explain the Turkish surnames of the Armenians? They are not Arabic/Muslim surnames, they are plain "Turkish" surnames, like Zilciyan (Zildjian, i.e. Cymbalmakerson or Bellmakerson), Kazancıyan (Kazanjian, i.e. Potmakerson), Deveciyan (Devedjian, i.e. Camelsellerson), Odacıyan (Odadjian, i.e. Roomkeeperson), Bayrakdaryan (Bayrakdarian, i.e. Standardbearerson), Pamukçuyan (Pamboukjian, i.e. Cottonsellerson), Terziyan (Terzian, i.e. Tailorson), Kavukçuyan (Kavoukjian, i.e. Hatmakerson), etc?

Or Greek surnames which are pure Turkish like Kazancıakis (Kazantzakis) or Kazancıoğlu (Kazanjoglou) or Kazancıdis (Kazantzidis) which all mean "Potmakerson"; or Karamanlı (Karamanlis, i.e. From Karaman), Çarık (Tsarouchis, i.e. Shoe), Yemeniciakis (Yemendzakis, i.e. Scarfsellerson), Kuyumcu (Koujioumtzis, i.e. Jeweller), Yeniçeri (Genitsaris, i.e. Janissary), Çolak (Tsiolakoudi, i.e. Armless), Paçacıoğlu (Patsatzoglou, i.e. Trousercuffmakerson), Kasap (Chasapis, i.e. Butcher), etc?

Or why do Bosnians say "Ramazan Bayram Mübarek Olsun" (completely in Turkish) instead of the Arabic form "Eid Mubarak", if the Ottoman culture was plain "Muslim" without any Turkish character, as you are trying to imply? Flavius Belisarius 19:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how all of the above is relevant, and if someone does then please explain it to the rest of us only if it comes with a citation. Prior to Kemal's purification attempts, the Turkish language had an enormous amount of loan words from Arabic and Persian, this doesn't mean that the Ottoman Empire was Arabic. I never implied anything about what Ottoman culture was or was not, I just pasted a text from a leading scholar on the topic (Cambridge University Press) and used it to make some constructive contributions, which of course you reverted. If you want to accuse someone for implying stuff that you don't like then accuse mainstream scholarship. The only topic of interest is your unorthodox editing behaviour, the way you use such poor and uncited argumentation in order to remove attributable material and POV-check tags. Have you ever read WP:ATT, WP:NPOV and WP:OWN? Miskin 09:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Miskin, I, as a Turk, probably know Ottoman history, identity and character much better than you can or ever will (because I am a part of it). Both of my paternal great-grandfathers were Ottoman generals, who also served as generals in the early Turkish Republic. One of them got married in Prijepolje (Ottoman Empire, today in Serbia) while in duty, and a few years later my grandfather was born in Yemen (Ottoman Empire) during WWI. The language which they spoke was practically the same with the language which I speak today. Anyone who denies the essential Turkish character of the Ottoman Empire clearly doesn't know much about the subject. Honestly speaking, I doubt that the Cambridge professor you mentioned can understand Ottoman Turkish better than I do. Flavius Belisarius 20:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention WP:AGF and WP:NPA. I wasn't planning to insist with this at first but seeing that almost all policies have been violated, I suppose the topic deserves at least to be listed under WP:RFC. Miskin 10:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Do whatever you can - I'll be there to correct the errors if I see any, including resources, of course. Flavius Belisarius 20:48, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

What if we replace "Turkish ruled" state with "Turkish dynastic state"? --A.Garnet 17:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

A.Garnet, thank you for your good will in resolving the "question", but I really don't understand what's behind this "complex" in the first place. Flavius Belisarius 20:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Flavious relax, you'll encounter more people like Miskin here in WP, take it easy, just play cool. --Gokhan 21:28, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by more people like me? People who cite published sources rather than their personal family experiences? Miskin 10:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Miskin, here's my final message regarding the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnVK03cjQ_U

Flavius Belisarius 19:46, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Re:

I, as a Turk, probably know Ottoman history, identity and character much better than you can or ever will (because I am a part of it)....

This is fallacious in at least two ways. First of all, there is no particular reason to believe that someone with personal experience of something understands it better than outside observers, which is one reason that Wikipedia has a no original research policy. Secondly, many non-Turks have participated as much in Ottoman history as many Turks: my own great-grandfathers, for example, were born in Ottoman Crete.

Re:

...my paternal great-grandfathers were Ottoman generals.... The language which they spoke was practically the same with the language which I speak today....

I'm not sure what bearing the relationship of Ottoman and modern Turkish has on the question of ethnic identification under the Ottoman Empire, but this, too, is a problematic statement. I don't know how your great-grandfathers spoke in 1920, but presumably you don't either. Every serious scholar of Turkish acknowledges that Turkish today has changed radically from Ottoman Turkish. Mustafa Kemal's famous 1927 speech Nutuk had to be translated into "modern language" by the 1960's, and again (!) in the 1980's. (Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success, pp. 2-4) --Macrakis 21:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I can clearly understand the original Nutuk by Atatürk, just like I can clearly understand his speech in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5gaURc2jc

Flavius Belisarius 15:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and many Greeks can understand the Koine New Testament. That doesn't mean that the language hasn't changed. --Macrakis 15:52, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

The language didn't change, only a few words were "modernized" (Turkicized) - but even the "old" words are completely understandable to the average Turk. For instance, when my grandmother says "tayyare", I know that it's "airplane", even though the more common modern Turkish word for airplane today is "uçak" (which derives from the Turkish verb "uçmak", i.e. "to fly"). Or when my grandfather says "bahtiyar oldum", I know it means he's "happy", even though the common modern word today for happiness is "mutlu" instead of "bahtiyar". You can make millions of other similar examples... Flavius Belisarius 16:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

You are describing language change; old words and constructions don't disappear from one day to the next, though I understand the Persian izafet is pretty much gone except in idioms/compounds like aksıseda; and how many Turks today do you think know the correct Ottoman plural of galat-ı meşhur? Anyway, as I said before, the relationship of late Ottoman Turkish to Modern Turkish isn't the issue here.

Anyway, the original issue was whether it makes sense to call the Ottoman Empire "a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Turkish-ruled state". This seems to me wrong in a variety of ways. First of all, the state itself (as opposed to its subjects) was not "multi-religious"; it was clearly and unequivocally a Muslim state: the legal system was based on Sharia law, Muslims had special privileges and duties, the Sultan often claimed to be the Caliph, etc. The population, of course, included large numbers of non-Muslims: Christians of various varieties and Jews, and even non-Peoples of the Book (largely as slaves). Their relationship with the state was as zimmis, a status defined by Sharia law. "Ethnic" is probably not an appropriate word to describe the different linguistic and religious groups within the Empire, since group definition was quite different from what we think of nowadays as "ethnic". Finally, I am not sure the "Turkish-ruled" is a useful term. For one thing, I don't think the Ottoman elite considered itself "Turkish" until the end of the 19th century. Wouldn't it be clearer to simply say that the origins of the ruling dynasty were Turkish and the language of administration was Ottoman Turkish?

That leaves us with something like:

The Ottoman Empire was a Muslim state governing a variety of linguistic and religious groups. The ruling Ottoman dynasty had Turkish origins and the language of administration was Ottoman Turkish.

Thoughts? --Macrakis 22:57, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

It's "generally" correct, but the "essence" is "watered". Let's be realistic: All former Ottoman nations, apart from the Turks, describe the date of independence of their state as "liberation from the Turks"; whereas Turkey proudly considers itself as a "successor state" of the Ottoman Empire. This is for a reason. If the Ottoman Empire was a state "shared by many nations", then why are the Armenians pointing their fingers only to the present-day Republic of Turkey for the alleged Armenian Genocide which happened during the Ottoman Empire? Why do only the Turks feel any sympathy for their Ottoman past? Why do even the Muslim Arabs blame the Turks for their backwardness (apart from the Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, etc?) Why do Greeks say "YAHOO" about 21 March 1821 if they were so happy of their Ottoman identity? Why do they consider that date as "liberation from the Turkish yoke"? Let's be realistic. The Byzantine Empire was as multiethnic as the Ottoman Empire, but it was essentially a Greek state, just like the Ottoman Empire was essentially a Turkish state. Which is the reason why its contemporaries called it the "Turkish Empire" (Imperium Turcicum) or "Turkey" (Turchia). Flavius Belisarius 23:11, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not terribly relevant that modern Turkey is the legal successor state of the Ottoman Empire, or even that modern Turks are proud of their Ottoman past. What is relevant is how the Ottomans saw themselves:

Even in the age of nationalism, after the French Revolution, the Ottomans resisted the emergence of a Turkish sense of national identity paralleling national awakening among the Christian minorities. The ordinary Turks did not have a sense of belonging to a ruling ethnic group. In particular, they had a confused sense of self-image. Who were they: Turks, Muslims or Ottomans? ... As Bernard Lewis expressed it:

in the Imperial society of the Ottomans the ethnic term Turk was little used, and then chiefly in a rather derogatory sense, to designate the Turcoman nomads or, later, the ignorant and uncouth Turkish-speaking peasants of the Anatolian villages.

—Ozay Mehmet, Islamic Identity and Development: Studies of the Islamic Periphery Routledge 1990, p. 115f

Think, too, of the actual usage of the word "Turk" to mean simply "Muslim". Consider, for example, the so-called "Turcocretans", who were almost entirely local converts to Islam, and almost entirely Greek-speaking. --Macrakis 23:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Likewise, the Byzantines never called themselves "Greek". They defined themselves as "Roman" (Romaios/Romiosini). That's why the Muslims called them "Rum" (Roman). But they were, essentially, "Greeks", just like the Ottoman Turks were essentially "Turks". Despite the fact that neither of them (Byzantines and Ottomans) directly used these specific names (Greek and Turk, respectively). Flavius Belisarius 21:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are similarities in the two cases. And indeed, the "Greek" nature of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire is less obvious than you might think. Of course the Byzantines spoke Greek, and wrote archaicizing Attic Greek just as the Ottomans spoke Turkish, and wrote, well, they wrote an interesting amalgam of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. But the modern conception of continuity from ancient Greece to the present was essentially invented by the 19th-century nationalist historian Paparrigopoulos. Precisely as you say, the Byzantines did not call themselves Hellenes (a word reserved for pagans) until very late, just as the Ottomans did not call themselves Turks (a word reserved for peasants and nomads). Plethon, who tried to revive the link to ancient philosophy, had his writings burned as heretical. Why? Because the Eastern Roman Empire saw itself first as Christian, not Greek, just as the Ottoman Empire saw itself first as Muslim, not Turkish. --Macrakis 03:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

That is a good parallel between the two Empires, though I don't agree that the connection with ancient Greece was invented - Constantinople was originally an ancient Greek colony and until its fall in 1453 it was decorated by both Christian and pagan culture (such statues of Olympian Gods and figures from Greek mythology). All studies in literature and philosophy were essentially the same as that of Hellenistic Alexandria and Athens, and the bulk of the Empire was geographically located on the areas of ancient Greek colonisation. Most importantly, the Empire was since the time of Justinian viewed in the eyes of the non-Byzantines as nothing but a corrupted continuation of ancient Greece (and even 'Rum' came to mean also 'ancient Greece' in Arabic). However it's wrong to refer to Byzantium as if it were always an ethnic Greek state, as it is wrong and anachronistic to refer to the Holy Roman Empire as an ethnic German state. It's true that Byzantium was founded on an ancient Greek city and fell consciously as a Christian Greek state, but for the most part of its history it was first Orthodox Christian and then Greek, just as the Ottoman Empire was first Islamic. In both cases (Ottomans and Byzantines), the foreigners called them "Turks" and "Greeks" respectively, and their empires "Turkey" and "Greece", but this should not allow anachronistic implications about those two states. Yes there was Turkish nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire, and yes there was Greek nationalism in the middle-late Byzantine Empire, but none of them were ethnic states, they were religious imperial powers. However, unlike Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire was not founded on Turkish-speaking lands nor did it ever reduce itself to an ethnically homogeneous population. Also, unlike Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire had never preserved a "classical Turkic" culture, for Islam was the only Turkish culture. The most important thing here is Quataert's statement:

As for a "Turkish Empire", state power relied on a similarly heterogeneous mix of peoples. The Ottoman Empire succeeded because it incorporated the energies of the vastly varied peoples it encountered

The article is implying the opposite of the above statement. It anachronistically applies Kemalist nationalist thought on a Islamic Imperial state. The irony is that if what Belisarius suggests had been true, the Ottoman Empire would have never become as great as it did. This is what Quataert states at the beginning of his book. Miskin 14:32, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

"Let's be realistic: All former Ottoman nations, apart from the Turks, describe the date of independence of their state as "liberation from the Turks"; whereas Turkey proudly considers itself as a "successor state" of the Ottoman Empire."
As usually, you overestimate your knowledge on the topic, and you couldn't be more wrong. The Battle of Navarino was essentially the event which instigated the French colonisation of Magreb. Today Algerian and Tunisian historiography views this "break-up" from the Ottoman Empire as a national destruction. As for the Successor states of the Ottoman Empire, those were essentially all nation-states that were created upon the former's dissolution. The claim that "I know Ottoman history better than you ever will because I'm a Turk" is simply laughable, let alone against the spirit of wikipedia and NPOV. One thing that should be made clear is that Wikipedia considers editors' personal family experiences as irrelevant, and I won't be responding to such "evidence". As far as WP:ATT is concerned, this is largely a waste of time. The unintelligibility between modern and Ottoman Turkish is simply irrelevant to the topic at hand. To make the long story short, I don't disagree that the Ottomans were essentially Turks, as well as the direct ancestors of modern Turks, but I certainly refuse to accept that the Ottoman Empire was a Turkish version of 3rd Reich, in which a sole ethnicity "commanded and conquered" other nations and peoples. As Quataert says, "The Ottoman Empire succeeded because it incorporated the energies of the vastly varied peoples it encountered". I think this should no longer be neglected by the Turkish editors in the article. Miskin 14:32, 24 July 2007 (UTC)