Crime and punishment in the Ottoman State civil bureaucracy (1892-1900)

The Ottoman State had a traditional understanding of the state. This understanding continued until the beginning of the 19th century. State's defeats in wars and experienced financial problems forced statesmen to undertake some military, financial, administrative and legal reforms outside the traditional state understanding. These reforms took place synchronously with the emerging state administration and understanding of nation in the West. The Military reforms that started with III. Selim, followed a series of legal, financial and administrative reforms in during the reign of II. Mahmud. The judicial and administrative reform movements, which accelerated with the announcement of Tanzimat, passed to a more stricct implemention ground with the declaration of the Constitution. Therefore, II. Abdulhamid's period was the period when a strict pressure of law was applied in the shadow of the laws. Nevertheless, whether administrative and legal reforms which in the Ottoman Empire governed by the "Kanun-ı Esasi" during the reign of Abdülhamid were officially implemented, Sultan intervened in the legislature and the executive, the civil servants have the competence and equipment that the state needs in the administrative field are questions that need to be answered. The first reflection of all reforms implemented in a state administration is seen on civil servants, the most important element of bureaucratic functioning. Officers are the class in which the state observes the public and the public also observes the state. Therefore, the functioning of the bureaucracy gives us information about both society and state administration. The Abdulhamid II. period is considered as a paradoxical period, in which both the "istibdat" period and reforms in all areas of the state administration were made. The crimes committed by the Ottoman civil bureaucracy during this period, the punishments envisaged for these crimes and the coherence of the penalties imposed on civil servants with the laws in force were examined in order to illuminate this paradoxical structure a little. In addition, the crimes of civil servants of this period, which are shown as the source of the problems of today's bureaucracy were examined.