Imperial Citizen: Marriage and Citizenship in the Ottoman Frontier Provinces of Iraq

5. Continuity and Challenges to the Marriage Prohibition During the Transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

138 5 Continuity and Challenges to the Marriage Prohibition During the Transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic During the Constitutional Period (1909–1918), the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) confronted the precariousness of security on the empire’s borders, as the result of the arrival of thousands of Muslim and Jewish refugees and the outbreak of World War I. Even during this period of war and disintegration, Ottoman officials maintained the status quo with respect to Ottoman-Iranian marriages.1 In 1913, for example, the Office of the Grand Vizier took up the question of whether the prohibition of marriages between Ottoman women and Iranian men was based on religious or national differences. Their decision clearly confirmed that both reasons were operational. First, the legal advisors remarked that the intention behind Mahmud II’s 1822 decree was to prevent the spread of Shi‘ism in the Ottoman state by prohibiting marriages to Iranians and persons of unknown lineage. Second, they noted that the Law Protecting the Prohibition of Marriage Between Iranians and Ottoman Citizens of 1874 had not made a distinction with 1. During the Constitutional period, the empire lost its remaining Balkan territories when the Greeks acquired Macedonia in 1913, when Albania declared independence during the Balkan wars, and when Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina . Greece also took Crete, and Italy occupied Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. By 1913, only the land from Eastern Thrace to Bulgaria remained a part of the empire’s European territory. Continuity and Challenges to the Marriage Prohibition | 139 respect to religion, and therefore the prohibition of marriage remained in force for all Ottoman citizens, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.2 The exemption of sons born before the 1886 publication date of the AAN pertained only to military service. In all other matters, the children of these marriages were Ottoman citizens and were liable for taxation and other responsibilities to the state.3 By 1914, however, some of the legal advisers from the Office of the Grand Vizier began to consider, for the first time, the possibility of canceling the 1874 law. The impetus for these discussions was a request from the Ottoman Embassy in Tehran to determine what steps were necessary to enact a new law amending the 1874 prohibition. The legal advisers noted that, in proclaiming the 1874 law, the government had aimed at restricting the number of Iranian citizens and the expansion of Shi‘ism in the Ottoman state, but that this plan had not been successful .4 The advisers called for a meeting of Sunni and Shi‘i experts in order to adopt a plan that would be satisfactory to both governments. The advisers cautioned, however, that it was still necessary to prevent Iranians from flooding into Iraq in order to escape military service, and that it was likely there would be more Iranian citizens in the region should the prohibition be repealed and Ottoman women and their children be allowed to take Iranian citizenship. They proposed a new law whereby these marriages could be legalized without causing an increase in the Iranian population in Iraq. The law would legalize the marriages but continue to deny Ottoman women and their children the right to acquire Iranian citizenship. The male children would still be obligated to perform military service. While recognizing that the exclusion would be contrary to the 1869 Law of Ottoman Nationality, they nevertheless proposed the following draft law: Article 1. Marriages between Iranians and Ottoman women are not prohibited. 2. BOA, HR.HMŞ.İŞO 146-3, 17 Mart 1329 (20 March 1913). 3. BOA, HR.HMŞ.İŞO 146-3, 8 Nisan 1329 (21 April 1913). 4. BOA, HR.HMŞ.İŞO 7-1/4, 1 Receb 1332 (26 May 1914). 140 | Imperial Citizen Article 2. In order to protect the original citizenship of Ottoman women who marry Iranians, they do not acquire the citizenship of their husbands. Article 3. The [male] children who are born from Ottoman women married to Iranian men will be obliged for military service. Article 4. The law dated 25 Zilkade 1291 [7 October 1874] and all other laws and regulations contrary to the regulation of this law are annulled. Article 5. The Office of the Şeyhülislam and the Justice, Interior, and Foreign Ministries are authorized to carry out the regulations of this law.5 No immediate action was taken to adopt the draft law...