The image of the Turks/Muslims in the Ottoman Greek press 1830-1860

Abstract

One of the results of the movement to reorganise the Ottoman state in the
19th c. in line with Western Europe, was the evolution of an indigenous press.
The importance of the press in promoting the efforts of the Government was
recognised both by Sultan Mahmud II (1785-1839) and Mohammad Ali (1769-
1849) governor and later viceroy of Egypt both of whom established their own
state run newspapers in Istanbul and Cairo respectively. Their example was
followed very quickly by private individuals in Smyrna and Istanbul who saw
the press both as a business and as a means of promoting their political ideas,
informing their Millet about what was going on, complaining about maladministration,
advertising goods and services and promoting the cultural life of
their readership.
By the 1860’s all four initial millets (religious nations) of the Ottoman
Empire i.e., Muslim, Orthodox Christian, Armenian and Jewish had developed
their own press. The Muslims had produced eight newspapers. Five of
them were state run, one was semi oficial and two were independent. The
Armenians sixteen and the Jews three and as far as I can ascertain all of them
were independent. The Orthodox Christians produced thirty three (twenty
seven in Greek, one in Bulgarian and five in Turkish with Greek characters),
all of them independent.
In this paper I present the image of the Turks/Muslims as portrayed in
the Ottoman Greek press up to 1862. I begin by presenting how and in what
context the terms Turk and Muslim were used in that period. The Turks/
Muslims appearing in the Greek press are divided into several distinct groups:
the Sultan and his family, the rest of the government ministers, the local
government officials and ordinary people. I show the general trend of how
each group was treated in the Ottoman Greek press with examples of editorials, reports from local correspondents and individual letters from all over the

Empire. It appears that the image of the Turks/Muslims as portrayed in the
Greek press is varied and the comments or explanations that accompany each
positive or negative image of the Turks/Muslims give us an insight of what
Greeks in the Ottoman Empire found good or bad in the character, behaviour
and customs of the Turks/Musiims as well as in the administration of the
Ottoman Empire, how they perceived and what they felt towards their Muslim
compatriots and the Ottoman government.