The Political Language of Takvîm-i vekayi: the Discourse and Temporality of Ottoman ‘Reform’ (1831-1834)

Makale İngilizce

Künye:

Yazarlar:

Özgür Türesay

Ekle

Emeği Geçenler:

Ekle

Yayın Yılı:

2020

Yayınlandığı Eser:

European Journal of Turkish Studies

Cilt:

Sayı:

Sayfa Aralığı:

1-45

İçerik Dosyası:

Web adresi:

http://file:///C:/Users/Safak/Downloads/ejts-6874.pdf

Operatör:

Şafak Varol

Güncelleyen:

Ramazan Acun

Özet:

This study aims to shed light on the Ottoman political language and the rhetoric of thepolitical authority in the early 1830s, which is a significant lacuna in Ottoman
historiography. The few studies that examine Ottoman political vocabulary (rather
than language) in the nineteenth century focus on the period after the proclamation ofthe Imperial Rescript of Gülhane (1839) (Aymes 2010: 13-57; Doganalp-Votzi 2002; Doganalp-Votzi, Römer 2009; Reinkowski 2005 and 2012 [2005]; Römer 2002; Strauss2006; Turan 2007: 169-170, 180). While the three studies published by the Center for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBAC) have made a significantcontribution to our knowledge of Turkish and Ottoman political vocabulary, none of them deals with the political language of the pre-Tanzimat period (Georgeon 1999;2012a and 2012b). Among the two precursor studies on Muslim political vocabulary,Bernard Lewis’ book rather focuses on earlier eras and a few semantic fields. Although interesting in itself, it is not of much help for the period under scrutiny here (Lewis 1988). That of Ami Ayalon provides a stimulating analysis of modern political vocabulary in Arabic, however it does not deal with Ottoman Turkish (Ayalon 1987).The Political Language of Takvîm-i vekayi:the Discourse and Temporality of Ot..European Journal of Turkish Studies, 31 | 2020 12 I will begin with a historiographical overview of the official gazette and continue withobservations on the political context within which it appeared and the “public”targeted by this new endeavor. I will draw on the theoretical contributions of various approaches such as historical semantics (Koselleck 1997; 2005; Escudier 2009), historical philosophy (Binoche 2012), semiology (Barthes 1978; 1984), the history of political thought (Skinner 1999; 2018), the history of discourse (Guilhaumou 2017), the sociohistory of language (Noiriel 1995) and the linguistic history of conceptual usages (Guilhaumou 2006; 2000), as well as engaging with the first attempts at theoretical debate on the scope and limits of these different approaches to Ottoman studies (Karabıçak 2020; Topal, Wigen 2019; Zemmin 2019; Sariyannis 2016). Throughout the
article, I will examine the gazette’s terminology to show that the concept of the
“public” existed under various terms at the time in the Ottoman political thought. After a brief presentation of the content of the official gazette, I will zoom in on one of the semantic fields that shapes political language: the vocabulary of the reform. Moreconcretely, I will reflect on how we could better formulate the transformations in the 1830s from the perspective of their lexical, rhetorical and temporal features. Finally, Iwill conclude with five methodological observations drawn from this ongoinginvestigation based on the first 86 issues of Takvîm-i vekayi and Le Moniteur Ottoman (October 1831 to August 1834).