The rise of the Western notion of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire eventually caused the breakdown of the Ottoman millet system. The concept of nationhood, which was different from the preceding religious community concept of the millet system, was a key factor in the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
Background
In the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic faith was the official religion, with members holding all rights, as opposed to Non-Muslims, who were restricted. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious legal groups were identified as different millets, which means "nations".
Ideas of nationalism emerged in Europe in the 19th century at a time when most of the Balkans were still under Ottoman rule. The Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire, starting with Serbs and Greeks, but later spreading to Montenegrins and Bulgarians, began to demand autonomy in a series of armed revolts beginning with the Serbian Revolution (1804–17) and the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), which established the Principality of Serbia and Hellenic Republic. The first revolt in the Ottoman Empire fought under a nationalist ideology was the Serbian Revolution. Later the Principality of Montenegro was established through the Montenegrin secularization and the Battle of Grahovac. The Principality of Bulgaria was established through the process of the Bulgarian National Revival, and the subsequent National awakening of Bulgaria, establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate, the April Uprising of 1876, and the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).
The radical elements of the Young Turk movement in the early 20th century had grown disillusioned with what they perceived to be the failures of 19th-century Ottoman reformers, who had not managed to stop the advance of European expansionism or the spread of nationalist movements in the Balkans. These sentiments were shared by the Kemalists. These groups decided to abandon the idea of Ittihad-i anasır ("Unity of the Ethnic Elements") that had been a fundamental principle of the reform generation, and take up instead the mantle of Turkish nationalism. Nationalism was further reinforced by racial thought and race science emerging in the late Ottoman Empire, finding its continuation into the nation-state of Turkey. Racial thought found its origins through the introduction of Western modernity and historiography among late Ottoman scholars. However, this is only one domain of Turkish nationalism and must not be accounted for the whole of Turkish nationalism.
Michael Hechter argues that the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire was the result of a backlash against Ottoman attempts to institute more direct and central forms of rule over populations which had previously had greater autonomy.
Albanians
The 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War dealt a decisive blow to Ottoman power in the Balkan Peninsula, leaving the empire with only a precarious hold on Macedonia and the Albanian-populated lands. The Albanians' fear that the lands they inhabited would be partitioned among Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece fueled the rise of Albanian nationalism. The Albanians wanted to affirm their Albanian nationality. The first postwar treaty, the abortive Treaty of San Stefano signed on March 3, 1878, assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. The Albanian movements had mainly been against taxes and central policies. However, with the Treaty of San Stefano the movements became nationalistic. Austria-Hungary and the United Kingdom blocked the arrangement because it awarded Russia a predominant position in the Balkans and thereby upset the European balance of power. A peace conference to settle the dispute was held later in the year in Berlin, known as the Congress of Berlin. A memorandum in the name of all Albanians was addressed to Lord Beaconsfield from Great Britain not even a week after the opening of the Congress of Berlin. The reason why this memorandum was addressed to Great Britain was that the Albanians could not represent themselves, because they were still under Ottoman rule. Another reason why Great Britain was in the best position to represent the Albanians, because Great Britain did not want to replace the Turkish Empire. This memorandum had to define the land belonging to the Albanians and create an independent Albania.
Arabs
Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology that arose in the 20th centuryCharles Smith, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, in International Relations in the Middle East by Louise Fawcett, p. 220. It is based on the premise that nations from Morocco to the Arabian peninsula are united by their common linguistic, cultural and historical heritage. Pan-Arabism is a related concept, which calls for the creation of a single Arab state, but not all Arab nationalists are also Pan-Arabists. In the 19th century in response to Western influences, a radical change took shape. Conflict erupted between Muslims and Christians in different parts of the empire in a challenge to that hierarchy. This marked the beginning of the tensions which have to a large extent inspired the nationalist and religious rhetoric in the empire's successor states throughout the 20th century.Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World, Bruce Masters, Cambridge
A sentiment of Arab tribal solidarity (asabiyya), underlined by claims of Arab tribal descent and the continuance of classical Arabic exemplified in the Qur'an, preserved, from the rise of Islam, a vague sense of Arab identity among Arabs. However, this phenomenon had no political manifestations (the 18th-century Wahhabi movement in Arabia was a religious-tribal movement, and the term "Arab" was used mainly to describe the inhabitants of Arabia and nomads) until the late 19th century, when the revival of Arabic literature was followed in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Syria and Lebanon by a discussion of Arab cultural identity and demands for greater autonomy for Syria. This movement, however, was confined almost exclusively to certain Christian Arabs, and had little support. After the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 in Turkey, these demands were taken up by some Syrian and Lebanese Muslim Arabs and various public or secret societies (the Beirut Reform Society led by Salim Ali Salam, 1912; the Ottoman Administrative Decentralization Party, 1912; al-Qahtaniyya, 1909; al-Fatat, 1911; and al-Ahd, 1912) were formed to advance demands ranging from autonomy to independence for the Ottoman Arab provinces. Members of some of these groups came together at the request of al-Fatat to form the Arab Congress of 1913 in Paris, where desired reforms were discussed.
Armenians
Until the Tanzimat reforms were established, the Armenian millet was under the supervision of an ethnarch ('national' leader), the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Armenian millet had discretion to set their own laws and collect and distribute their own taxes.
To deal with the Armenian national awakening, the Ottomans gradually gave more rights to its Armenian and other Christian citizens. In 1863, the Armenian National Constitution was the Ottoman-approved form of the "Code of Regulations" composed of 150 articles drafted by the "Armenian intelligentsia", which defined the powers of the Armenian Patriarch and the newly formed "Armenian National Assembly".Richard G. (EDT) Hovannisian "The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times" p. 198 The reformist period peaked with the Ottoman constitution of 1876, written by members of the Young Ottomans, which was promulgated on 23 November 1876. It established freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before law. The Armenian National Assembly formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the aristocratic dominance of the Armenian nobility by the development of the political strata among the Armenian society.Ilber Ortayli, Tanzimattan Cumhuriyete Yerel Yönetim Gelenegi, Istanbul 1985, p. 73
Aromanians
A distinct Aromanian consciousness was not developed until the 19th century, and was influenced by the rise of other national movements in the Balkans. Until then, the Aromanians, as Eastern Orthodox Christians, were subsumed with other ethnic groups into the wider ethnoreligious group of the "Romans" (in Greek Rhomaioi, after the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire), which in Ottoman times formed the distinct Rum millet. The Rum millet was headed by the Greek-dominated Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Greek language was used as a lingua franca among Balkan Orthodox Christians throughout the 17th–19th centuries. As a result, wealthy, urbanized Aromanians were culturally Hellenized and played a major role in the dissemination of Greek language and culture; indeed, the first book written in Aromanian was written in the Greek alphabet and aimed at spreading Greek among Aromanian-speakers.
By the early 19th century, however, the distinct Latin-derived nature of the Aromanian language began to be studied in a series of grammars and language booklets. In 1815, the Aromanians of Budapest requested permission to use their language in liturgy, but it was turned down by the local metropolitan.
The establishment of a distinct Aromanian national consciousness, however, was hampered by the tendency of the Aromanian upper classes to be absorbed in the dominant surrounding ethnicities, and espouse their respective national causes as their own. So much did they become identified with the host nations that Balkan national historiographies portray the Aromanians as the "best Albanians", "best Greeks" and "best Bulgarians", leading to researchers calling them the "chameleons of the Balkans". Consequently, many Aromanians played a prominent role in the modern history of the Balkan nations: the revolutionary Pitu Guli, Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis, Greek magnate Georgios Averoff, Greek Defence Minister Evangelos Averoff, Serbian Prime Minister Vladan Đorđević, Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople, Romanian metropolitan Andrei Şaguna etc.
Following the establishment of independent Romania and the autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the 1860s, the Aromanians increasingly began to come under the influence of the Romanian national movement. Although vehemently opposed by the Greek church, the Romanians established an extensive state-sponsored cultural and educative network in the southern Balkans: the first Romanian school was established in 1864 by the Aromanian Dimitri Atanasescu, and by the early 20th century there were 100 Romanian churches and 106 schools with 4,000 pupils and 300 teachers. As a result, Aromanians divided into two main factions, one pro-Greek, the other pro-Romanian, plus a smaller focusing exclusively on its Aromanian identity.
With the support of the Great Powers, and especially Austria-Hungary, the "Aromanian-Romanian movement" culminated in the recognition of the Aromanians as a distinct millet (the Ullah millet) by the Ottoman Empire on 22 May 1905, with corresponding freedoms of worship and education in their own language. Nevertheless, due to the advanced assimilation of the Aromanians, this came too late to lead to the creation of a distinct Aromanian national identity; indeed, as Gustav Weigand noted in 1897, most Aromanians were not only indifferent, but actively hostile to their own national movement.
Assyrians
Under the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, each sect of the Assyrian nation was represented by their respective patriarch. Under the Church of the East sect, the patriarch was the temporal leader of the millet which then had a number of "maliks" beneath the patriarch who would govern each of their own tribes.
The rise of modern Assyrian nationalism began with intellectuals such as Ashur Yousif, Naum Faiq, and Farid Nuzha who pushed for a united Assyrian nation comprising the Jacobite, Nestorian, and Chaldean sects."A Brief Study in the Palak Nationalism", by Dr. David Barsoum Perley LL.B.
Bulgarians