Abstract:

This article focuses on the use of honor and related concepts in sources written by members of the Ottoman police forces during the Young Turk period, a period that witnessed the complete reformation of the police institution in the Empire. It argues that the concept of honor emerged as a central value around which the promotion of individual, professional and political identities was articulated. I contend that the notion of honor, as it appears in late Ottoman police sources, was instrumental to the project of building two intricate communities, one political and the other professional. Defined as the common denominator characterizing the members of the police as well as their practices and relationships with the people, references to the value of honor also allowed police in the new Ottoman regime to stigmatize and exclude those they considered their enemies from different professional and political communities. This essay is an attempt to better understand the several layers of the rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion that surround the notion of honor, taking the police force of the early Young Turk period as its case study.

Keywords: