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POLICING THE COUNTRYSIDE: GENDARMES OF THE LATE 19TH-CENTURY OTTOMAN EMPIRE (1876–1908)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Nadir Özbek
Nadir Özbek*
Affiliation:
Nadir Özbek is Associate Professor in the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Boğaziçi University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey; e-mail: ozbekn@boun.edu.tr
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Extract

This article lays groundwork for a more systematic history of the Ottoman gendarmerie (jandarma), here with special emphasis on the men in the corps and their working conditions. The gendarmerie, which before 1879 reform the Ottomans called asakir-i zabtiye, was a provincial paramilitary police organization established by bureaucrats of the Tanzimat state during the 1840s on an ad hoc basis. This force later acquired a more uniform and centralized character, becoming the empire's principal internal security organization. Through this paramilitary police institution, 19th-century Ottoman bureaucrats aimed to extend their authority into the provinces, which at that time could be described as only marginally under Ottoman sovereignty according to contemporary definitions of the term. From the late 18th century on, extending state sovereignty to recognized territorial boundaries emerged as a vital need for most European states as well as the Ottoman Empire. Along with other modern military and civil institutions and modern administrative practices, introducing various types of paramilitary provincial police forces enabled governments in Europe to enhance and extend their authority over territories in which it had been limited. The gendarmerie thus emerged in both Europe and in the Ottoman Empire as integral to modern state formation and its technologies of government. Although acknowledging the Pan-European context of the gendarmerie's emergence and its theoretical ramifications, the present article is concerned more with the Ottoman context within which this police corps was established, evolved, and took on a uniquely Ottoman form.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 47 - 67
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am indebted to Tracy Lord for her assistance in bringing the text into standard English. I also thank five anonymous IJMES reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. This article was supported by the Boğaziçi University Research Projects Fund, through project 05HZ101.

1 A word on terminology: I most often use “gendarmerie” as a generic term to indicate the provincial paramilitary police organization of the Ottoman Empire before or after the 1879 reform program. Before 1879 the official name used was asakir-i zabtiye; when the zabtiye corps was reorganized in 1879, the term jandarma was adopted. However, financial difficulties slowed down the reorganization of the zaptiye regiments into jandarma force, leaving some zabtiye regiments intact until as late as 1906. In time, however, the new name, jandarma, came to replace the old term zabtiye. Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, one of the leading statesmen of the time, used either jandarma or asakir-i zabtiye to name the new provincial policing institution, showing no apparent preference between the two terms in the late 1870s. Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma'rûzât (Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1980), 77–79.

2 Along with various journal articles cited when relevant, Clive Emsley's book covers gendarmerie in various countries across Europe: Clive, Emsley, Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1–9Google Scholar.

3 Davison, Roderic H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963)Google Scholar. Bernard, Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar. Shaw, Stanford J., Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 142–51.

5 For a critique of this urban bias in literature on policing institutions, see Emsley, Gendarmes and the State.

6 In English there is only one study that specifically focuses on the Ottoman gendarmerie. See Glen Wilfred Swanson, “The Ottoman Police,” in Police Forces in History (1975), 39–56.

7 See, for example, Rogan, Eugene L., Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. Yonca, Köksal, “Coercion and Meditation: Centralization and Sedentarization of Tribes in the Ottoman Empire,” Middle Eastern Studies 42 (2006): 469–91Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Khaled, Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Mine, Ener, Managing Egypt's Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Nadir Özbek, “The Politics of Welfare: Philanthropy, Voluntarism and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1914” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2001).

9 For more on the concept of “colonization of the countryside,” see Frank, Stephen P., Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999)Google Scholar. For a similar approach, see Clive, Emsley, “Peasants, Gendarmes and State Formation,” in National Histories and European History, ed. Fulbrook, M. (London: n.p., 1993), 69–93Google Scholar.

10 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma'rûzât, 183.

11 Examples of such compilations include Derviş Okçabol, Meslek Tarihi (Ankara: Polis Enstitüsü, 1939); Hikmet Tongur, Türkiye'de Genel Kolluk Teşkili ve Görevlerinin Gelişimi (Ankara: T. C. Içişleri Bakanlığı Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü Yayınları, 1946); and Halim Alyot, Türkiye'de Zabıta: Tarihi Gelişim ve Bugünkü Durum (Ankara: Içişleri Bakanlığı Yayınları, 1947).

12 Noémi Lévy, “L'ordre dans la ville: Istanbul à l'époque d'Abdulhamid II” (Mémoire de DEA, EHESS, 2005); Hasan Şen, “The Transformation of the Politics of Punishment and the Birth of Prison in the Ottoman Empire (1845–1910)” (master's thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2005); Ferdan Ergut, “State and Social Control: The Police in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Republican Turkey, 1839–1939” (PhD diss., New School for Social Research, 2000); Cengiz Kırlı, “The Struggle over Space: Coffeehouses of Ottoman Istanbul, 1780–1845” (PhD diss., Binghamton University, 2001).

13 Emsley, Gendarmes and the State, 208.

14 Ibid., 206.

15 Ibid., 239. Emsley, “Peasants, Gendarmes and State Formation,” 69–70.

16 For more on the Habsburg gendarmerie, see Clive Emsley and Sabine Phillips, “The Habsburg Gendarmerie: A Research Agenda,” German History 17 (1999): 241–50, 241.

17 Musa Çadırcı, “Ankara Sancağında Nizâm-ı Cedid Ortasının Teşkili ve ‘Nizâm-ı Cedid Askeri Kanunnamesi,’” Belleten 36 (1972): 1–13; Musa Çadırcı, “Redif Askeri Teşkilatı,” in Yedinci Askeri Tarih Semineri Bildiriler I (Ankara: n.p., 2000), 47–57; Musa Çadırcı, “Anadoluʾda Redif Askeri Teşkilatının Kuruluşu,” Dil Tarih Coğrafya Fakültesi Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi 13 (1974): 63–75.

18 Emsley, Gendarmes and the State, 209. In Russia there were 4,000 men in the gendarmerie corps, ibid., 241.

19 Ibid., 227.

20 For the number of men in the Ottoman gendarmerie, see BOA (Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives), Y.PRK.UM (Yıldız Perakende Evrakı Umum Vilayetler Tahrirat), 31/1, 1312.CA.2 (1 November 1894); Y.PRK.DH (Yıldız Perakende Evrakı Dahiliye Nezareti Maruzat), 2/94, 29.Z.1305 (6 September 1899). For the population of the Ottoman Empire, see Kemal Karpat, “Population Movements in the Ottoman State in the Nineteenth Century,” in Ottoman Population, 1830–1914, Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 60–86.

21 Emsley, Gendarmes and the State, 214.

22 Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice, 8.

23 Ali Sönmez, “Zaptiye Teşkilâtının Kuruluşu ve Gelişimi” (PhD diss., Ankara University, 2005).

24 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Maʾrûzât, 77.

25 Ibid., 78.

26 Ibid., 79.

27 BOA, Y.PRK.UM, 31/1, 1312.CA.2 (1 November 1894).

28 The rules of selection—described in manuals, leaflets, and booklets—were available to prospective recruits and recruited gendarmes. For such a booklet, see for example Hüseyin Hüsnü, Jandarma Efradının Hidematına Rehber (Istanbul: n.p., 1326).

29 Prior to the 1869 codification, the government issued various regulations in 1846, 1861, and 1864. For these regulations, which have not captured the attention of researchers and are not available in Düstûr, see Veli Şirin, Asâkir-i Mansûre-i Muhammediyye Ordusu ve Seraskerlik (Istanbul: Tarih ve Tabiat Vakfı, 2002). For the 1869–70 regulations, see “Asâkir-i Zabtiye Nizâmnâmesi: 3 Rebiulevvel 1286/13 Haziran 1869,” in Düstûr Birinci Tertib, 2: 728–33. “Asâkir-i Zabtiyenin Vezâif-i Askeriyyesi Hakkında Talimatname: 15 Sefer 1287/17 Mayıs 1870,” in Düstûr Birinci Tertib, 2: 734–40. “Asâkir-i Zabtiyyenin Vazife-i Mülkiyyelerine Dair: 11 Rebiulevvel 1286/21 Haziran 1869,” in Düstûr Birinci Tertib, 2: 740–46.

30 For the 1879 and 1903 regulations, see Alyot, Türkiyeʾde Zabıta. A memorandum on gendarmerie reform and draft regulations may be found in BOA. Y.A.HUS (Yıldız Hususi Maruzat), 159/76, 25.L.1296 (22 October 1878).

31 “Asâkir-i Zabtiye Nizâmnâmesi: 3 Rebiulevvel 1286/13 Haziran 1869.” The previous regulations of 1846 and 1861 set the age limit between twenty-five and fifty. See “Asâkir-i Zabtiye Teşkilatının Kuruluşu.”

32 Alyot, Türkiyeʾde Zabıta, 97.

33 Ibid., 150.

34 Hüsnü, Jandarma Efradının Hidematına Rehber, 8.

35 Ibid.

36 BOA, A.MKT (Bab-ı Ali Evrak Odası Sadaret Evrakı Mektubi Kalemi), 225/42, 1265.11.1 (18 September 1849); BOA, A.MKT, 225/53, 1265.11.1 (18 September 1849); BOA, A.MKT, 225/90, 1265.11.3 (20 September 1849).

37 Hüsnü, Jandarma Efradının Hidematına Rehber, 8.

38 “Asâkir-i Zabtiyenin Vezâif-i Askeriyyesi Hakkında Talimatname: 15 Sefer 1287/17 Mayıs 1870.”

39 Ebubekir Hazim Tepeyran, Hatıralar, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Pera Yayınları, 1998), 126–34.

40 Alyot, Türkiyeʾde Zabıta, 96.

41 Hüsnü, Jandarma Efradının Hidematına Rehber, 8.

42 Ibid.

43 BOA, DH.TMIK.S (Dahiliye Nezareti Tesri-i Muamelat ve Islahat Komisyonu), 46/61, 1321.R.5 (1 July 1903); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 60/22, 1323.S.2 (2 October 1905).

44 Max L. Gross, “Ottoman Rule in the Province of Damascus 1860–1909” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1979), 281.

45 These provinces were Adana, Baghdad, Belgrade, Edirne, Işkodra, Izmit, Karahisar, Kerkük, Cyprus, Malatya, Mardin, and the Danube Province in Bulgaria. BOA, Y.PRK.UM, 30/60, 1312.RA.101 (11 September 1894).

46 For the application of this criterion in the province of Izmit in 1903, see BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 45/53, 1321.S.24 (22 May 1903).

47 In the late 19th-century Habsburg Empire, for example, just under a third of each gendarmerie regiment consisted of local men. Emsley and Phillips, “The Habsburg Gendarmerie.”

48 Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, 67–68, 75.

49 Gross, “Ottoman Rule in the Province of Damascus,” 267, 80–82.

50 FO (Foreign Office), 424/206, no. 39, Vice-Council Heathcote to Sir N. OʾConor. Bitlis, 19 March 1904.

51 On one occasion, Zeki Paşa, the marshal commanding the army corps of Erzincan, refused one of his officer's proposals to restore order in Sasun with a troop of Circassian gendarmerie he had organized. Zeki Paşa was on the scene with a large force of regular troops. By Graves's account, things had gone from bad to worse, culminating in a massacre of some 3,000 Armenians in the district of Talori. Sir Robert Graves, Storm Centres of the Near East: Personal Memories 1879–1929 (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1975), 144.

52 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 34/103, 1319.R.27 (13 August 1904).

53 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 27/45, 1317.C.16 (22 October 1899).

54 FO, 424/106, no. 146, Captain Stewart to Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson. Antalya, 18 February 1880.

55 FO, 424/106, no. 100, Report on the General Administration of the Vilayet of Kastamonu. 17 December 1879.

56 FO, 424/91, no. 21, Report upon the Gendarmerie and Police of Syria by Vice-Consul Jago. Damascus, 8 October 1879.

57 For the calculation, twenty-five work days a month is assumed.

58 In Istanbul a construction laborer received 8 piastres a day. It was around 7 piastres in Anatolian provinces. Şevket Pamuk, Iistanbul ve Diğer Kentlerde 500 Yıllık Fiyatlar ve Ücretler, 1469–1998: 500 Years of Prices and Wages in Istanbul and Other Cities (Ankara: Devlet Istatistik Enstitüsü Yayınları, 2001).

59 FO, 424/106, no. 61, Report on the Vilayet of Konya. Konya, 25 October 1879.

60 FO, 424/106, no. 89, Captain Cooper to Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson. Adana, 7 January 1880.

61 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 30/72, 1318.R.13 (11 July 1900).

62 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 33/103, 1318.Z.5 (26 March 1901).

63 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 36/4, 1319.N.3 (14 December 1901).

64 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 35/107, 1319.S.27 (9 December 1901).

65 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 37/55, 1320.M.27 (6 May 1902).

66 For example, in 1906, due to the months of salary arrears, the gendarmerie battalion in Sülaymaniye deserted the force. BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 63/8, 1324.R.11 (4 June 1906).

67 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 33/22, 1318.N.7 (29 December 1900); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 33/38, 1318.L.9 (30 January 1901).

68 FO, 424/106, no. 100, Report on General Administration of the Vilayet of Kastamonu. 17 December 1879.

69 FO, 424/106, no. 13, Report by Captain Clayton on Reforms in Van. Van, 1880.

70 FO 424/106, no. 270, Report on the Administration of Justice in Anatolia. C. W. Wilson, Lieutenant-Colonel, 29 June 1880.

71 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 1/64, 1314.C.11 (18 October 1896); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 3/18, 1314.C.17 (23 November 1896); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 45/28, 1321.S.14 (24 July 1896).

72 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 18/70, 1315.Z.8 (30 April 1898); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 21/58, 1316.C.29 (14 November 1898).

73 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 38/7, 1320.S.18 (27 May 1902); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 45/44, 1321.S.20 (18 May 1903).

74 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 45/22, 1321.S.12 (10 May 1903); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 49/1, 1321.B.16 (8 October 1903).

75 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 46/43, 1321.R.26 (22 June 1903).

76 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 49/1, 1321.B.16 (8 October 1903).

77 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 45/45, 1321.S.20 (18 May 1903).

78 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 23/63, 1316.L.16 (27 February 1899). Of the numerous salary cuts that affected the civil bureaucracy in this period, that of 1897 was the most general. See Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 300.

79 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 39/32, 1320.R.25 (1 August 1902).

80 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 40/33, 1320.S.17 (19 November 1902).

81 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 23/75, 1316.L.22 (5 March 1899).

82 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 23/68, 1316.L.19 (2 March 1899).

83 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 36/22, 1319.L.16 (26 January 1902); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 36/62, 1319.Za.24 (4 March 1902).

84 Carter Findley, “The Acid Test of Ottomanism: The Acceptance of Non-Muslims in the Late Ottoman Bureaucracy,” in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Volume 1: The Central Lands, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (1982), 339–68; Ufuk Gülsoy, Osmanlı Gayri Müslimlerinin Askerlik Serüveni (Istanbul: Simurg, 2000). For a study focusing on Armenian participation in public administration, see Mesrob K. Krikorian, Armenians in the Service of the Ottoman Empire: 1860–1908 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).

85 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma'rûzât, 185.

86 For a brief summary, see Krikorian, Armenians in the Service of the Ottoman Empire, 5–11. For a more detailed account, see Musa, Şaşmaz, British Policy and the Application of Reforms for the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000)Google Scholar; Ali, Karaca, Anadolu Islahatı ve Ahmet Şakir Paşa (1838–1899) (Istanbul: Eren Yayıncılık, 1993)Google Scholar.

87 BOA, Y.PRK.UM, Yıldız Perakende Umum Vilayetler Tahriratı, 31/1, 1312.CA.2 (1 November 1894).

88 FO, 424/91, no. 171, Lieutenant Chermside to Sir A.H. Layard. Tarsus, 26 November 1879.

89 FO, 424/106, no. 86, Vice-Consul Jago to Sir A. H. Layard. Damascus, 10 February 1880.

90 From 1908 to 1914 Armenian intelligentsia of Sivas and Harput subscribed to an Ottomanist patriotism and tried to encourage local Armenians to serve in the Ottoman military. See Ohannes Kılıçdağı, “The Bourgeois Transformation and Ottomanism among Anatolian Armenians after the 1908 Revolution” (master's thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2005).

91 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 9/38, 1314.Z.18 (20 May 1897); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 4/8, 1314.B.3 (8 December 1896); BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 10/90, 1315.M.14 (15 June 1897).

92 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 7/35, 1314.N.23 (25 February 1897).

93 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 12/33, 1315.S.24 (25 July 1897).

94 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 24/2, 1316.Z.4 (16 March 1899).

95 BOA, DH.TMIK.S, 24/75, 1316.Z.20 (1 May 1899).

96 Sami Önal, Sadettin Paşa'nın Anıları: Ermeni-Kürt Olayları (Van, 1896), 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2004), 104.

97 BOA, Y.PRK.AZJ (Yıldız Perakende Arzuhal ve Jurnaller), 31/105, 9.Za.1312 (4 May 1895).

98 Janet Klein, “Power in the Periphery: The Hamidiye Light Cavalry and the Struggle Over Ottoman Kurdistan, 1890–1914” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2002). For the Hamidiye, see also Selim Deringil, “The Ottoman Twilight Zone of the Middle East,” in Reluctant Neighbor, Turkey's Role in the Middle East, ed. Henri J. Barkey (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 13–23.

99 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma'rûzât, 123.

100 Even during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, peasant protests were far from being articulated claims to nationality. In these provinces of the empire, government practices such as modern population registration and census counting were key to the formation of national identities. See Ipek K. Yosmaoğlu, “Counting Bodies, Shaping Souls: The 1903 Census and National Identity in Ottoman Macedonia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006): 55–77.

101 Emsley, Gendarmes and the State, 234–35.

102 Nadir Özbek, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and the Hamidian Regime, 1876–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 59–81.

103 Emsley, Gendarmes and the State, 220–22.