Abstract
TANZIMAT, PERCEPTIONS AND RETHINKING ABDULHAMID II
If there would be a discussion on Sultan Abdulhamid II, it will be unavoidable connecting a relation to Tanzimat. Attempting an evaluation concerning the period of Abdulhamid II requires to comment some data about Tanzimat, but it cannot be reduced only because of its parallelism to Tanzimat chronology proposed by classical acknowledgements. There are a few reasons for that: First, the period of Sultan Abdulhamid was an outcome of Tanzimat values and politics. Second, it is prone to overlook that the sovereign years of Abdulhamid were the period, which Westernism and Western values were political agent in the public sphere for the first time. Lastly, the concept of public opinion, which may be considered as one of the most significant sign of modernity in the social sphere, emerged the first time and in real terms again in this period. All of the evaluations arrive a common point that it is impossible to understand the years of Sultan Abdulhamid II and later without grasping Tanzimat, at least it requires to have some ideas chiefly concerning the typology of Tanzimat. The primary motivation of this article leads to query that there may be an alternative view to Tanzimat and hereby prompts to think of the recent political history of Turkey, which the government of Abdulhamid II was the fundamental starting point. Within the scope of this article, there are some questions and determinations about this direction covering the period of Abdulhamid II.
Keywords
Tanzimat, Westernism, Turkish Modernization, Abdulhamid II, Selim III
