Erzurum- pulk oil concessions: discovery of oil in the minds and the lands of the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The story of oil in the Ottoman Empire is not limited to the rich oil reserves in Mosul and Bagdad. The administration of the period of Abdulhamid II had to deal not only with great powers that were after rich oil reserves but also with modest entrepreneurs who dreamt of setting up smaller oil wells. This thesis focuses on this other, overlooked aspect of the story of oil, i.e., on the granting of a concession for a small oil field that put in motion the huge apparatus of the State. The aim of the study is to analyze the impact of the (discovery of) oil in Erzurum Pülk on the actors of the system’s institutions, such as the Sublime Port, the Council of State and the Fourth Army, as well as their perception of the oil concession applicants and their identities. More than to contribute to the history of oil, the main concern of the study is to sound the State mechanisms taking place both from the point of view of the relationship between the different structures within the administration of the era of Abdulhamid II and in terms of its center-periphery relationship. It therefore analyses the role played by institutions like the Sublime Porte, the Council of State and the Fourth Army in the State’s decisionmaking process. This thesis argues that rather than adopting a protectionist policy in relation to the Pülk oil, Abdulhamid II prefers to use it as a tool for his planned rapprochement between an Ottoman Empire now reduced to the position of a peripheral State, and the German Empire, which is in the position of a Central power. Instead of the usually mentioned tension between the Sublime Porte (the formal government) and the Yıldız Palace (the Sultan), this case study shows the Sublime Porte and the Yıldız Palace agreeing on a decision that is opposed by a coalition made up of the Council of State, the Fourth Army and the Anatolia General Development Inspector, who, to a certain extent, take on the role of protectors of local interests against the foreign policy objectives of the Yıldız Palace. Finally, the place occupied by the oil of Pülk in the minds turns out to be much more important than the one it occupies in the actual well. In a word, in its attempt to provide another perspective on the Hamidian era by approaching it through the correspondence concerning the Pülk oil concessions, it has added a few shades to the general picture of the said era.