In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

PRINCE SABAHADDİN: A SECOND ACCOUNT ON INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE AND DECENTRALIZATION Title: Teşebbüs-i şahsi ve adem-i merkeziyyet hakkında ikinci bir izah (A second account on individual initiative and decentralization) Originally published: As a political pamphlet (edited by Satvet Lütfi of Herzegovina ), Istanbul, Mahmud Bey Matbaası, 1908. Language: Ottoman Turkish The excerpts used are from a collection of Prince Sabahaddin’s reprinted works published with the title Türkiye nasıl kurtarılabilir? Ve izah’lar, abridged by Fahri Unan (Ankara: Ayraç, 1999), pp. 97–103. About the author Prince Sabahaddin (Mehmed Sabahaddin) [1878, Istanbul – 1948, Neuchâtel (Switzerland)]: Ottoman intellectual, politician and member of the royal family. His mother, Seniha Sultan, was the sister of Sultan Abdülhamid II, while his father, Mahmud Celaleddin Paşa, was an Ottoman bureaucrat who was dismissed from a cabinet ministry in 1878 due to his alleged involvement in a conspiracy against the sultan. Victimized by the Hamidian regime, Celaleddin Paşa and his two young sons fled to Paris in 1899 and joined the nebulous Young Turk opposition in exile, thereby increasing the group’s prestige. In 1902, the two brothers organized a congress , with representatives from all ethno-religious communities of the Empire, in order to unite all forces of opposition against the Hamidian regime. Yet the congress (labeled ‘the Congress of Ottoman Liberals’ in European sources) revealed that the opposition had neither a common political outlook nor similar objectives. In the end, two main factions emerged as they confronted each other over the inflammatory issue of intervention. Sabahaddin was among the supporters of the idea of foreign intervention (albeit a limited and controlled one) along with many non-Muslim Ottoman (mainly Greek and Armenian) representatives in the congress, whose interests he would often be accused of serving. Following the split in the congress, Sabahaddin founded the ‘Society of Private Initiative and Decentralization’(1906), with a monthly journal of its own called Terakki (Progress), while his opponents, with more centralist leanings, were organized under a society that was later to become the Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP), which effectively brought about the 1908 revolution. Following the revolution, Sabahaddin returned to Istanbul, while his followers founded the Ahrar Fırkası (Party of Liberties), a political party with lib- 332 FEDERALISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRES eral, decentralist leanings which constituted the most serious political opposition to the CUP. Avoiding an active political career, Sabahaddin propagated his sociologically inspired views on private initiative and the decentralization of government, which were largely informed by the conservative French sociological school of science sociale. In return, he was increasingly harassed by the CUP as a federalist and a traitor who collaborated with separatist national movements and religious fanatics. Accused of being involved in a counter-revolutionary uprising of religious conservatives , Sabahaddin had to leave Istanbul again in April 1909. He returned in 1918, after the collapse of the CUP regime, and publicly supported the national resistance movement in Ankara. These years witnessed the reprinting of his major work, Türkiye nasıl kurtarılabilir? (How can Turkey be saved?), in which he proposed the use of the science sociale method as a political tool that would radically transform the country’s social structure as well as its inhabitants’ ‘backward Eastern mentality.’ Sabahaddin had to leave the country again in 1924, this time due to a law that enforced the exile of all members of the Ottoman dynasty. Between 1924 and 1948, he lived in different countries in Europe, in dire circumstances, and occasionally publishing articles on a variety of topics. Along with Ziya Gökalp, Sabahaddin was among the founders of sociology in the late Ottoman context. His Ottomanist and decentralist views informed the liberal-minded opposition movements that confronted the increasingly nationalizing agenda of the CUP. His decentralist position was perceived as a significant threat during the Young Turk era, since the administrative and military elite that he severely criticized constituted the heart and core of the centralized state apparatus of the CUP (as well as the Republican) regime. Prince Sabahaddin was rediscovered in the 1950s as a ‘founding father of Turkish liberalism ,’ as the rising liberal movement in Turkish politics endeavored to invent a rooted and continuous tradition underlying its own transformative agenda. Main works: Teşebbüs-i şahsi ve adem-i merkeziyyet hakkında bir izah [An account on individual initiative and decentralization] (1908); Teşebbüs-i şahsi ve ademi merkeziyyet hakkında...

Share