Negotiating the terms of mercy : petitions and pardon cases in the Hamidian era

Abstract

This study focuses on the pardons of the Hamidian era by using the petitions which were written by convicts, accused people or their relatives to the Sublime Porte. Beside the lives, prison conditions and accusations of the convicts, the pardon petitions constitute a useful source for seeing the nature of the relationship between the state and the ordinary people. This study argues that although requesting a pardon seems to have been a kind of obedience to the authority, the relationship established on pardons was established through bargaining and negotiations. The process of granting pardons was an interactive one in which the actors negotiated on the conditions according to the position of supplicant. Also, the petitions allow us to see the debated characteristics of the Hamidian era from the eyes of the ordinary people. This study seeks clues to the reasons for the frequently granted pardons of the Hamidian era and suggests that granting pardons was one of the policies of Abdülhamid II. In the popular debates on the Hamidian era, the approval of only a few death penalties and commutation of heavy penalties usually are attributed to the mercifulness of the Sultan. However, the pardoning power was a political tool of the Sultan to solve certain problems in a peaceful way. The pardons worked well in establishing a legitimate and just rule in the eyes of the people, compensating the weakness of state in many cases. Hence, this study claims that the pardon was a state policy and it was especially applied during the Armenian Events of the 1890s, the banditry problem and tribal conflicts. Moreover, to gain the loyalties of the outlaws, to use them as informers and collaborate with them in the critical areas of the Empire, pardons were a step in allowing the state to make alliances without losing its prestige. Through the discretionary power of forgiveness, the Sultan tried to restore the monarchical ideology, namely the merciful image of Sultanic rule, which was a distinctive element of monarchical power. On the other hand, these pardons reflected certain expectations of the popular classes. Generally speaking, the convicts used many discursive strategies requesting pardons through petitions, which also can be found in abundance in the Ottoman archives. These pardon petitions mentioned the innocence of the convict, the miserable conditions of prisoners and their families and the diseases that prevalent in the jails. Through emphasizing the justness, dignity and mercifulness of the Sultan side by side with their weakness, ignorance and poverty, the convicts pleaded for mercy from him. However, in granting pardons, the Abdülhamid regime expected from the convict less loyalty or regret than certain services, and active collaboration on particular issues – a tension which constituted the dynamics of the pardon negotiations.