Ottoman rule of law and the modern political trial : the Yıldız case /

Rubin (Ben-Gurion Univ.) explores the 1881 murder trial that ensnared top Ottoman officials, particularly Ahmed Midhat Pasha, the Turkish reformer who served as grand vizier. This "first modern political trial," which became a show trial as well, targeted Midhat, viewed as a threat to the new sultan, Abdulhamit II. Carefully sifting through court documents, journalistic accounts, memoirs, and earlier historical studies, the author places the trial at Yildiz Palace within the framework of newly developing legalism and the sultan's determination to rid himself of the Ottoman Empire's leading exemplar of constitutionalism. Emphasizing the trial's performative aspects, its instigators, including Abdulhamit II, desired to deliver general warnings too. Adopting a sociolegal approach, Rubin examines Ottoman codification, designed for control, state centralization, and social engineering, and the farcical aspects of the actual trial, earlier emphasized after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. What remains uncertain is Midhat's actual role in the coup and murder of the former sultan Abdulaziz 32 years earlier. Nevertheless, according to Rubin, the constitutional camp's failure, resulting in legal abolition and parliament's closure, led inexorably to the Yildiz Trial and "the physical annihilation" of constitutionalism's symbol. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Robert C. Cottrell, California State University, Chico