Being an Ottoman Citizen in a Time of Ambivalence: The Case of Jewish Immigrants during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire

• In Event: War and Nationalism: Sephardim/Mizrahim in Between

Abstract

The Ottoman government had two principal conditions for Jewish immigrants who wanted to settle on the Ottoman territories at the turn of the century: first, they had to accept the Ottoman citizenship, and second, they were allowed to settle anywhere but Palestine. Restrictions on the destination of immigration, the number of immigrants, and land purchase changed and varied due to political, social and economic conditions till the end of the empire. But the Ottoman citizenship remained as a constant requirement for the prospective Jewish immigrants.

In 1869, the Ottoman Law of Nationality constituted equal status for all Ottoman residents, declaring that “all subjects of the empire are without distinction called Ottomans, irrespective of whatever religion they profess." It was the beginning of a transition, at least legally, from communal definitions of identity to "official imperial nationalism." However, in a century when the concepts of citizenship, nationality, identity, and loyalty were all in transition, the Ottoman citizenship only meant security and food for the oblivious Jewish immigrant from an obscure Eastern European village. However, for an idealist member of Bilu from Romania, it was only an instrument to achieve a national revival in the land of his ancestors, i.e. Palestine. Towards the end of the empire, the emergence of Zionism as an organized nationalist movement and the weakening of Ottomanism as a legitimate transnational ideology created a space for redefinition and reinterpretation of existing competing loyalties in the Jewish community.

This paper examines how perceptions and definitions of citizenship affected the Ottoman government’s policy towards Jewish immigration and investigates Jewish immigrants’ reaction to it from 1880s to the end of the Ottoman Empire. The shifting allegiances of Jewish immigrants between Ottomanism and Zionism will be discussed regarding their position during time of war and crisis with a specific focus on the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897 and the Palestine Front during the First World War. I will utilize the Ottoman, Israeli and British archival sources, the memoirs and letters of Ottoman officials and Jewish immigrants, and the major newspapers of the era.

author

• Yeliz Baloglu Cengay, Brandeis University