WESTERN STYLE ROYAL/NATIONAL ANTHEMS OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: TRACING RESISTANCE TO CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

Authors : Sinan Akıllı

Pages : 7-22

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Publication Date : 2012-06-05

Article Type : Research

Abstract :The institution of constitutional monarchies in most European countries in the nineteenth century was accompanied by nation-state formations which were legitimized and popularized by ‘national’ anthems, as different from ‘royal’ anthems. For instance, the British national anthem God Save the King, which became popular as early as the mid-eighteenth century, became a musical expression of British national identity and unity since then, and the apparent reference to ‘monarchy’ did not contradict the rise of a parliament and the transfer of de facto political power from the monarch to a parliament. Again, from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, successive Ottoman rulers began to look to the West to find remedies for the declining power of the Ottoman state, mainly represented by the weakening of its military strength. Until the Tanzimat Fermanı (Rearrangement Edict) of 1839, westernization attempts were limited to the relative reform and modernization of the Ottoman military. After 1839, however, Ottoman rulers felt the necessity, mostly forced by circumstance, to adopt a more comprehensive understanding of westernization, which, in the nineteenth century, could only be complete with a transition towards constitutional monarchy. During this century, seven Ottoman monarchs stayed in power and the Ottoman Empire had five national anthems, all of them dedicated to and called by the names of the monarchs who were in power, composed by European musicians commissioned by respective sultans. Against the relevant social, cultural and political background, this paper argues that the foregrounding of the ‘individual monarch’ as a figure in supposedly ‘national’ anthems may have been intentional to reflect the symbolic resistance of Ottoman monarchs to constitutionalism, even though they appeared to be for constitutional monarchy.
Keywords : Saltanat Marşları, Ulusal Marşlar, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Meşrutiyet