Özet:

The Ottoman Empire was a symbiosis of the Turkish-Islamic and the Byzantine-Balkan traditions. It is more realistic to ention Ottoman identities than a singular Ottoman identity. In the classical period the term Ottoman referred to the ruling class. In fact, the Ottomans did not try to create a common identity, since the political and geographycal unity was in principal more important for them. Although, Islamic e1ements were the basis of the Ottoman ethos, they did not compel non-muslim subjects to convert to the Islam. On the contrary, the Ottomans gave them religious freedom and organized them through the millet system. So each millet (Rum or Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Jewish millet) had its own identity separately. Ethnic groups in the Rum millet in the Balkans, especially Slavic Peoples, were inclined to be Hellenized; similarly there was a tendency among the Balkan converts to Turkifization. In the 19th century the Ottomans tried to form an Ottomanizm ideology against the dangers of nationalism, but it did not work. Consequently this effort did not prevent the disintegrarion of the empire.

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