Intellectual and social issues prevalent in present- day Turkey have their antecedents in 19th century Ottoman Empire. Ottoman 19th century was a period where old and new, reform and reaction met each other. In fact, this was an era where the empire was shaken by series of wars and crisis of disintegration. Reformist bureaucrats applied policies to forestall this process, while the intelligentsia vehemently opposed authoritarian reforms. Discussions on the future of the empire became most fruitful during the first four years of the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1912) when people enjoyed some degree of liberal freedom. Public discussions came to an abrupt end when the Committee of Union and Progress established military dictatorship (1913-1918). As a whole, this "long nineteenth century" was an era where institutional foundations of Turkish modernization were laid down. This course aims to introduce, discuss, and understand Ottoman reform movements and thoughts of the last hundred year of Ottoman existence, based on the evaluation of reformist statesmen of the Tanzimat-period, oppositional intellectuals of the 1860s and 1870s, conservative attitude of Hamidian absolutism (1878-1908), and Young Turk reformist ideas of the last decades of Ottoman existence (1889-1918)
