İlkay Yılmaz: Security Perceptions and Ottoman Passports (1876-1908) by Forum Transregionale Studien published on 2021-09-01T10:11:56Z İlkay Yılmaz (Freie Universität Berlin)talk on “ Security Perceptions and Ottoman Passports (1876-1908)” was held in the framework of the virtual EUME Berliner Seminar on 14 July 2021. The talk was chaired by Önder Çelik (EUME Fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation 2020-22). This study aims at exploring the relation between the Ottoman government’s threat perceptions, security policies and control over geographical mobility by analyzing the passport regulations with using archival materials. The study tries to explain the disciplinary modern power mechanisms developed by the Ottoman political elite through the analysis of the administrative practices and regulations on geographical mobilization in everyday life as surveillance techniques. In the Hamidian Era (1876-1908), the geographical mobility is one of the burning issues of the Ottoman political elite as part of the security policies. The new threat perceptions of the political elites, mainly based on political problems, directed their attention to the Armenians, Bulgarians, seasonal workers, foreign workers and members of secret societies. Besides this, the new legislative and administrative security reforms were also influenced by the anarchist fear in Europe and the anti-anarchist regulations against “propaganda by deed”. The threat perceptions thus shaped the security discourse of the political center. The new articulations of “vagrant” (serseri) and “agitator/seditous” (fesad) create a discursive link to pejorative understandings of “anarchism” and “anarchist” in official correspondences. It also refers to the security ideology which dwells on the intention of unifying the Empire against “internal and external enemies”. The aim of the study consists in examining the relation between these emergent threat perceptions of the political center, the new regulations on geographical mobilization and criminalization process of certain population groups. Genre Wissenschaft