From the “ottoman nation” to “hyphenated ottomans”: Reflections on the multicultural imperial citizenship at the end of empire

In her afterword to the forum “Subjecthood and Belonging to the Polity in the Russian and Ottoman Empires,” Michelle Campos discusses the problem of Ottoman citizenship. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire oscillated between the ideas of the Ottoman nation and what Campos calls “hyphenated Ottomans,” that is, a composite citizenship recognizing the political loyalty of the center but combining it with local ethnic, linguistic, or confessional concerns. Campos suggests that forms of multicultural citizenship were embraced by Ottomans even as the understanding of what constituted what she calls hyphenated-Ottoman identities was debated by the educated public in the Ottoman Syrian provinces.