The Dawn of 5th Day in the Ottoman Empire: Nineteenth-Century Constitutional Regulations
Revenue-Raising Institutions, State Organization and Economic Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, Bora Altay, Editör, Palgrave Macmillan, London , London, ss.85-98, 2025
- Yayın Türü: Kitapta Bölüm / Araştırma Kitabı
- Basım Tarihi: 2025
- Yayınevi: Palgrave Macmillan, London
- Basıldığı Şehir: London
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.85-98
- Editörler: Bora Altay, Editör
- Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
In one of the most desperate moments in the third film of Tolkien’s immortal novel, The Lord of the Rings, adapted to the cinema by director Peter Jackson, the character Gandalf, one of the main characters of the series and played by Sir Ian Mckellen, tells his followers to look east at dawn on the 5th day of the war. Indeed, he played a very important role in winning the war by coming from the east with a large army at the dawn of the 5th day.
So, just like in the movie, what date corresponds to the dawn of the 5th day for the Ottoman Empire? What is the east to look at that day? This study aims to analyze the possibility of a victory based on the nineteenthcentury Ottoman Constitutional developments. Because this victory, if there is one, will serve as an important milestone in showing us the correlation between the Ottoman Empire and the state of law.
When we look at world political history from a general perspective, the first thing we encounter are sovereign states in which there is no separation of powers and no rules limiting the ruler. Afterward, police states emerged where the state set rules but did not comply with these rules. After police states, we encounter the treasury theory, in which the state and the state treasury are constructed as different legal entities. In its simplest form, in the treasury theory approach, the state does not comply with the rules it has set but compensates the losses resulting from its non-compliance from the treasury. After the treasury theory, the concept of the rule of law emerged. What is most generally meant by the concept of the rule of law is states that comply with the rules they set themselves.
In order for any structure to be considered a rule of law, it must meet various criteria. Elements such as judicial independence, financial responsibility of the administration, control of the constitutionality of laws, certainty and predictability of state activities, respect for acquired rights, and constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights and freedoms are among these criteria.
In this analysis, it was created in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century; Constitutional documents such as Charter of Alliance, Rescript of Gülhane, and Edict of Reform, and regulations of the texts of the first constitution of the Ottoman Empire, were taken as basis. It was evaluated for what purpose the principles established through the mentioned regulations were made and to what extent the Ottoman Empire approached the concept of the rule of law in the modern sense.