Lexicon of Civilization in S-E Europe: Ottoman Turkish

The years between 1840 and 1870 represent a relatively homogeneous phase of development within the Ottoman Empire, since this is the main period of reforms and modernization widely known as Tanzimat. These reforms were not thought of as a means to re-establish the old order, but were oriented towards the West - for the first time covering more than military aspects. New ideas and new concepts of society and the state had to be expressed adequately within the framework of Ottoman Turkish, a language that during its long history had already absorbed a great many stylistic and lexical devices from Persian - which in its turn had developed the ability to form new words for new ideas from Arabic source-words. Up to now the question of how and in which ways the Tanzimat influenced the Ottoman Turkish language has been more or less neglected. Newspapers and journals - another innovation of the reform period - on the one hand reflected the new social, political, economical and cultural concepts under discussion and on the other hand - and this is an important aspect - had to be understood by their readers. At the same time the language the newspapers used had influence on the scope and the mode of expression of their very readers. Throughout this study special weight will be laid upon articles of socio--political content. The research material will be extracted mostly from five newspapers, i.e. the official Takvim-i Vakayi, the semi official Ceride-i Havadis and Ruzname-i Ceride-i Havadis, the `semi-oppostional` Tasvir-i Efkar, and the oppositional Hürriyet. As a conclusion we will try to sketch the relationship of interdependency between language, society, and history as regards this first effective and vigorous confrontation of Ottoman society with Modernity.

The primary goal of the project "The Lexicon of Civilization in Southeast Europe. Ottoman Turkish" was to investigate the connections between language, society and history with regard to the first important and long-term impact of modern European concepts on a linguistic and cultural basis. The historical period of 1840-1870, the so- called Tanzimat period, is relatively uniform. It is a time of reforms based European socio-political ideas. At the peak of its power the Ottoman Empire comprised various peoples, religions and languages, among them a number of today`s Balkan states. Some of them will shortly join the European Union in addition to Greece, which has been a member for a long time. Due to its prior political and military strength, the Ottoman Empire for a long time felt superior to its neighbours, thereby missing the developments forming a new Europe (the Age of the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and technological progress) well into the eighteenth century. Because of the increasing number of military defeats as well as inner problems the Sublime Porte then had to recognise that the superiority of the Ottoman Empire eventually was in a state of decline. This gave rise to controversial debates on the various forms of modern European life, becoming ever more intensive in course of the 19th century and especially in the Tanzimat Period. On the one hand, efforts were undertaken to translate European literary and scientific works into Ottoman-Turkish. On the other hand, a period of reforms in the administrative, legal and judicial fields was initiated. These reforms were modelled on European examples. For this purpose, however, new words and notions were needed in order to express ideas hitherto unknown. These dynamic developments within the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman language took place on a twofold background. The national movements, especially those in South-eastern Europe, each developed their own respective concepts and their own national languages, forcing the Ottoman Empire to react. At the same time, however, the Ottoman Empire also had to deal with the interference of the European powers. As a consequence, the Ottoman Empire was one of the first Muslim countries to mediate between Islam and European modernity. The present project has tried to show how this mediation was reflected in the Ottoman language, the source materials being extracts from newspapers on the one hand. On the other hand, the more important sources were the constitution-like decrees of this period as well as the first Ottoman constitution proper dating from 1876. The investigation focused on how and when new words for several prominent notions were introduced, e.g. the rule of law, parliamentarism, modern administration, liberty, equality, and the nation-state. A deeper insight into history is one of the most important conditions for understanding today`s conflicts and controversies and for proposing possible solutions.