Crisis of the reformist ideal: A critique of Ottoman narratives of crisis on 1875-1876

This study aims to analyze the narratives of Mithat, Cevdet, Mahmud Nedim Pashas, and Ahmet Mithat Efendi regarding the economic, political, and international crises of the Ottoman 1875 and 1876 as founding narratives of the Hamidian Era. It suggests that in these narratives ideological bifurcations of the Tanzimat era were reconstructed to shape the following political regime, since, at the time, the current political status quo was shattered within the empire and the international arena. Based on political treatises, memoirs, and chronicles, it discusses the intertwined nature of the internal political struggles of the Empire after the death of Ali Pasha in 1871 and the rivalry between a liberal Britain and a monarchist Russia in the international arena. It shows that the political figures of the period who saw the crisis period as an opportunity for promoting their political ideals reconstructed these crises through their narratives. Thus, the main goal of this thesis is to show that the essential crisis of the period of 1875-1876 was a regime crisis that emerged from the shattering of the Tanzimat status quo within the empire parallel with the shattering of the Euro-pean balance of power.