Sublime Council of Tanzimat/Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat As High Regulatory Institution of Tanzimat Reforms (1854-1861)

During the Tanzimat Period, the transformation of the subject-state relationship, a wholesale civil reform process materialised, in addition to this bureaucratic units with the status of legislative-advisory body to a certain extent, traces of that are detected in the classical period Ottoman state tradition, were established and this conception to some extent was institutionalized. The practice of the consultancy council, which is based on the understanding of consensus, especially in war and rebellion periods, become one of the usual practices in the management approach of the Bab-ı Âli/Sublime Porte since the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This procedure stabilized during the Selim III period, during the Mahmud II period, when the modern-central state principle arised in the first half of the nineteenth century, the participants, rules, and meeting places partly made regular. During the transition from the Divan system, which has not been effective and functioning for a long time, to modern ministries and cabinet practice, legislative-advisory councils with defined member structures, working procedures and locations and with delineated jurisdictions were founded in order to provide expertise support to the newly established ministries and the office of Grand Vizier, who was granted the status of  prime ministry, in the wide-scale reform process and to maintain the legislative process. The Meclis-i Vâlâ-yı Ahkam-ı Adliye/Supreme Council, which was established during the Mahmud II period but whose working procedures and authorities were determined after the declaration of the 1839 Tanzimat Edict/Imperial Firman of Gulhane, was organized as the centre and the preparatory of the Tanzimat reforms. The Tanzimat bureaucracy was engaged in an endless bureaucratic construction work in order to ensure the well, fast and efficient execution of the reform process and procedural work of the state apparatus. It was aimed to ensure that the central advisory-legislative assemblies had an effective working and legislative structure with constant amendments and regulations in this process. However, due to the enormous extent of the Ottoman reform process and the predominance of civil servants unfamiliar with modern procedures in the bureaucracy, by the second half of the nineteenth century, Meclis-i Vâlâ/Supreme Council lost its function and transformed unwieldy institution. High-ranking statesmen such as Âli and Fuad Pasha, who rose in the bureaucracy during the Tanzimat Period and were the executives of the Ottoman modernization, founded the Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat/ Sublime Council Of Tanzimat, which was composed of members of high-ranking and reformist statesmen above the Meclis-i Vâlâ/Supreme Council, in order to rapidly prepare and implement major reforms that would deeply affect the provincial-central organization and all Ottoman subjects in 1854. This structure, which was created to implement large-scale reforms, unlike the previous reform councils, worked on the Ottoman scholar and religious law field, and the qadi/muslim judge and scholars were given a new order. In this study, the reforms, institutional structure and functioning of this Council, which was established for the purpose of negotiating and controlling the Tanzimat reforms at the highest level, will be discussed, and its place in the central bureaucracy of the Tanzimat will be tried to be determined.

Keywords

Ottoman State, Period of Tanzimat, History of Administration, Legislation, Sublime Council of Tanzimat/Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat