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List of contents
Introduction
Chapter I: Classes and the Problem of Agency in the Ottoman Empire
Non-Muslim Bourgeoisie and the State
Muslim Merchants
Muslim Working-class
Culture, Class Consciousness and Islam
Chapter II: The Emergence of Economic Boycott as a Political Weapon, 1908
People Takes Action: Mass Actions and Public Demonstrations
The Organization
Workers’ Boycott: Oscillating in between Strike and Boycott
Merchants in the Boycott: The Weakest Link
Popularization of the National Economy
Chapter III: The Shift from Foreign to “Internal” Enemies, 1910-1911
The Cretan Question
Meetings, Direct Actions and Mobilization of the Society
The Boycott Society
Muslims versus non-Muslims
National Economy, Muslims Merchants and the Working-class
State and the Boycott Movement
Chapter IV: The Muslim Protest: Economic Boycott as a Weapon under Peacetimes, 1913-1914
The Political Milieu
Pamphleting the Muslim Public
“Henceforth Goods to be Purchased from Muslim Merchants”
Banditry and Agency in the Boycott Movement
Epilogue: The Mass Politics in the Second Constitutional Period and the Boycott Movement
Popularization of Politics and the Shift in Mass Politics
Mass Politics, National Economy and the Boycott Movement
Popular Ideology, Islam and the Mobilization of the Masses
Bibliography
About the author
Dogan Cetinkaya is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Political Sciences at Istanbul University, Turkey.
Summary
The first decade of the twentieth century was the Ottoman Empire's 'imperial twilight'. As the Empire fell away however, the beginnings of a young, vibrant and radical Turkish nationalism took root in Anatolia. The summer of 1908 saw a group known as the Young Turks attempt to revitalise Turkey with a constitutional revolution aimed at reducing the power of the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhammid II- who was seen to preside over the Ottoman Empire's decline. Drawing on popular support for the efence of the Ottoman Empire's Balkan territories in particular, the Young Turks promised to build a nation from the people up, rather than from the top down. Here, Y. Dogan Cetinkaya analyses the history of the Boycott Movement, a series of nationwide public meetings and protests which enshrined the Turkish democractic voice. He argues that the 1908 revolution the Young Turks engendered was in fact a crucial link in the wave of constitutional revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century- in Russia (1905), Iran (1906), Mexico (1910) and China (1911) and as such should be studied in the context of the wider rise of democratic nationalism across the world.
The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement is the first history to show how this phenomenon laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state and will be essential reading for students and scholars of the Ottoman Empire and of the history of Modern Turkey.
