2024/12/19 by Cemil Aydın · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Ottoman and Turkish Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198863298.003.0013
openalex publication_date 2024/12/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This chapter deals with the international and legal politics of the process of exclusion and inclusion of the Ottoman Empire within the European imperial order during the nineteenth century. While the Ottoman elite claimed to fulfill the required standards of civilization to become an equal member of the Concert of Europe, it was subjected to unequal legal treatment by European great powers. The chapter focuses on different Ottoman strategies to ensure sovereignty and legal equality in the face of stigmatization as a Muslim monarchy by the European great powers. It argues that the Ottoman imperial strategy of emphasizing the spiritual sovereignty of the caliphate over Muslims ruled by European Empires was one of the policies to negotiate inclusion into the European international order as an equal member, not a rejection of European standards of civilization. The chapter will also try to make sense of the late Ottoman background of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 that recognized the equal sovereignty of modern Turkey.