Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908

Abstract: İlkay Yılmaz reconsiders the history of two political issues, the Armenian and Macedonian questions, approaching both through the lens of mobility restrictions during the late Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1908 in her book Ottoman Passports. Yılmaz investigates how Ottoman security perceptions and travel regulations were directly linked to transnational security regimes battling against anarchism. The Hamidian government targeted “internal threats” to the regime with security policies that created new categories of suspects benefiting from the concepts of vagrant, conspirator, and anarchist. Yılmaz explores how mobility restrictions and the use of passports became critical to targeting groups including Armenians, Bulgarians, seasonal and foreign workers, and revolutionaries. Taking up these new policies on surveillance, mobility, and control, Ottoman Passports offers a timely look at the origins of contemporary immigration debates and the historical development of discrimination, terrorism, and counterterrorism.

Bio: İlkay Yılmaz is currently a DFG (German Research Foundation) funded research associate at the department of Modern History at Freie Universität Berlin. She was an Einstein Senior Researcher at the same department. She was a research associate at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient between 2017-19 with Humboldt Scholarship and between 2014-15 with TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) scholarship. She was working as an assistant professor at Istanbul University from 2014 until 2017. Her articles have appeared in Journal of Historical Sociology, Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies, Photoresearcher-Journal of European Society for History of Photography. Her research interests focus on the history of security, passport history, inter-imperial collaboration on policing, state formation and history of violence in the late Ottoman Empire.

Suggested Pre-Read: Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 by Ilkay Yilmaz

Cosponsors:
Multidisciplinary Workshop for Armenian Studies, U-M
UCLA Promise Armenian Institute
Armenian Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley
Armenian Studies Program, Fresno State University
Middle East Studies Department, Stanford University

Register here: https://umich.zoom.us/j/96004855164