Terminology and National Identity in the Writings of Şemseddin Sami

Abstract

It has always been necessary to define terms whenever discussing ideas about nationalism. The Ottoman Empire was no exception and possessed several terms referring to social, religious andethnic groups. The meanings of these terms, however, differed both according to the writers or the context in which writer was speaking, Semseddin Sami (1850-1904), who had an Albanian nationality, is credited with linguistic contributions to the Ottoman Empire. Especially he is recognized as an pioneer of cultural Turkish Nationalism by helping the growth of Turkish self-awareness. And also he is recognized as a pioneer of cultural Albania Nationalism by creating new letters for Albanian and other cultural contributions to Albania. The main purpose of this paper is to study the transformation of the self-identity of Semseddin Sami which seems tobe complicated by defining the terms for nationalism that were used by him from 1876 to 1882. In 1876 Sami published a dairy newspaper, Sabah in Istanbul. At that times the Ottoman empire was involved in the Eastern question. Sabah, therefore, spared many spaces for this question too. Sami regarded this situation as the crisis to Vatan (the Ottoman Empire) and claimed that an Ottoman nation should be united against this crisis. An idea of Ottoman nation was derived from the new policy Osmanlilik which granted non-muslims in the Empire full rights as Ottoman citizens, Referring to an Ottoman nation, Sami implied the equality between muslims and non-muslims as well. Five years later (1881) he published a magazin of enlightenment, Hafta. Sami showed the ideas of Vatan, which all Ottoman citizens should be demonstrate loyalty to, and an Ottoman Nation. We, however, can find a little change of idea of an Ottoman nation in his statements in Hafia. He defined an Ottoman nation as all Ottoman citizens among which there was no ethnic and national distinction. In fact his idea of Ottoman nation in Hafta came to be based on the ethnic and national equality, not the religious equality. As one of the reasons of this change, the Albanian issue (1878) could be counted. Whenever Sami refered to this issue he showed innate, sentimental attachment to another Vatan (Albania) as the fatherland of Albanians. The fact that this issue made his ethnic consciousness clearer and made him interested in ethnic groups around him could bring this change of the idea. Sami showed many interests to ethnic groups and used many terms to express the notion of ethnic groups in Hafta. First of all, the notion of ummet, which, is used in a religious sense in the Islamic world, conjured up a community where people spoke a common language buo lived beyond and geographic goundaries for Sami. The most widely used word meaning ethnic group in Ottoman Turkish was the term kavim. What constituted the difference between ummet and kavim for Sami was the population numbers involved and the scale of civilization which that population which that population had reached. He was convinced that every kavim could become ummet if it had its own language and literature as guidelines towards civilization. The word cins also came to be used to signify race. We find several examples of cins in Hafta. According to Sami's usages, cins denttes an ethnic group based on language, so for him, the term cinsiyet (an abstruct noun derived from cins) perfectly coincided with kavmiyet (the abstraction of kavim). In addition it was common for him to apply the term millet to an ethnic group (kavim) in Hafia. It can be easily recognized that Sami tried to regard Ottoman language as Turkish language and spread the Turkish self-awarenss among Ottoman Turks as for as this cotevt Hafia was concered. By the way, Sami, who identified himself as an Ottoman with Albasnian consciousness, gave a definition to being an Ottoman with ethnic consciousness. Being an Albanian was an innate and cultural consciousness for him. On the

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