The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics of the Eastern Question in the Late Nineteenth Century

`Whie European were preoccupied with the Eastern Question in the mid nineteenth century. Ottoman intellectuals grappled for a strategy to address their "Western Question". The leading Turkish intellectuals of the day were the Young Ottomans, and they found common ground with Turcophile Britons led by David Urquhart. Nazan Cicek has written a compelling account of the exchange of ideas between East and West that shaped the age of Ottoman Reforms. Strikingly original, drawing on untapped archival sources in Britain and Turkey, The Young Ottomans will stand as the definitive work on this important subject.' Eugene Rogan, Director of The Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

`In this clear and elegantly written book Nazan Cicek makes an important and overdue contribution to our knowledge of the late Ottoman Empire and its relations with Western Europe. By examining the Young Ottomans in the context of what became known as "The Eastern Question," i.e., the stakes for the European balance of power occasioned by the impending demise of the Ottoman Empire, Cicek greatly advances our understanding of the inner workings of the emerging Young Ottoman opposition group. In particular she addresses the interconnections between these Ottoman intellectuals and an important but understudied group of British Turcophiles who coalesced around the figure of David Urquhart.

Examining in turn such developments as the Cretan insurrection of 1866-69, the burning question of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims ignited by the reform decree of 1856 and the financial crisis facing the empire brought on by foreign debt. The Young Ottomans delivers an historically engaged study with important implications for the present day.' Benjamin Fortna, Senior Lecturer in the Modern History of the Middle East and Head of the Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

The scope of the Western world's Eastern Question in the nineteenth century loomed large, encompassing issues from the threat posed by the `Russian bear' to the interests of other Great Powers in the Eastern Mediterranean, to the conditions, or rather `oppression' of non-Muslims, especially Christians, under the Ottoman `yoke'. But the most important question of all, one that summarized the Eastern Question, was published in an anonymous pamphlet from 1850, which asked, `what to do with the Turk?'. He had been regarded as the `sick man of Europe' since his heydays came to an end in the late eighteenth century, and his possible untimely death spelled a nightmare for the crowned heads of Europe.

In this book Nazan Cicek narrates and analyses some salient features of the Eastern Question, or the Ottoman Empire's `Western Question', through the lenses of the Young Ottomans, the newly-rising semi-autonomous Ottoman Muslim Turkish intelligentsia. The Young Ottomans, although inwardly divided among themselves, were representative of a generation who shared a common framework of experiences and concerns that were mostly generated by the encounter of the Ottoman Empire with its `other', the West. This encounter, intrinsically linked to the Eastern Question, compelled the Ottoman Empire to re-interpret its historical self-conception, to discover the qualities that rendered her different and vulnerable with regard to the West, and to seek a formula for survival in an increasingly hostile atmosphere.

The intellectual discussions offered by the Young Ottomans took a polemical stance not only on the way the Eastern Question unfolded and how it was received by the Ottomans as well as Western ruling elites and intelligentsias but also on the very legitimacy of the modernisation project initiated, manipulated and implemented by the Tanzimat regime between 1839 and 1876 and its Western backers. By considering the appearance of the Young Ottoman opposition as a site of struggle over the definition of civilisation, modernity, reform and citizenship, a struggle that was by and large engendered by the dynamics of the Ottoman Empire's Western Question, this book narrates an alternative story of the Eastern Question as experienced by its Eastern observers and provides a fresh and original perspective on the political and intellectual history of the Ottoman Empire.

Nazan Cicek completed her PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2006. She currently teaches at Ankara University in the Faculty of Political Sciences. She has published articles on the political and intellectual history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic in several journals including Middle Eastern Studies and Etudes Balkaniques.