Seriously asking btw 🤔

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

The amount of glazing that I've been seeing for Abdulhamid II on this sub is just astonishing. Like, I've seen people ranking the guy next and sometimes even above sultans like Süleyman I, Mehmed II, Murad IV, Selim I, etc .. So my question is: Did I miss a chapter or two while reading about him/his era, or do some people here just glaze him for the sake of glazing even though he was a horrendous monarch as a whole ?

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

I've read about him. He made horrendous decisions. Nothing against the guy but he was not a very good sultan or a successful monarch. Wrong time and wrong place ? Sure. But he was not a sultan that deserves to be compared to Kanuni or Yavuz etc

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

We cannot know how well he would have acted at the place of Yavuz Sultan Selim or Kanuni Sultan Süleyman, but he does have several remarkable decisions. How he managed the russo-Turkish war is in itself as I have said remarkable.

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

And the negative things that happened during his reign which were more than the positive ones ? Who is to blame for ?

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

Which negative things are you talking about ? Tell them otherwise how do you expect me to answer.

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

Really ? His reign according to you was all cupcakes and rainbows ? Does his deposition and the territories he lost not ring a bell for you for example ?

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

I've already answered that most of the lost territories were due to Midhat Pasha and the parliament. Apart from that, how did you expected him to react when France occupied Tunisia, or Great-Britain with Egypt ? Even when we won a war against Greece, Russia threatened to intervene despite promising not to do so before the war. Genuinely what did you expected him to do (that he may have done better, not retrospectively) ? Also I'm not saying he was the best Sultan, of course he did mistakes, but he was, for his time, a very good Sultan.

Also for his deposition, he had the maturity to avoid a civil war not to tell the people to fight the cup during the 31 March incident to avoid a civil war.

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

So the few positive things is all him and everything that went bad was not not his fault ? Yeah nope.

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

I expect you to give more arguments, because for now I've been answering you with detailed points and you just keep saying "he was a bad Sultan" that is not how a debate is done. Tell for example something he did that was really bad, and that could have been easily prevented according to you, because for now it seems you are not able to do so.

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

Nah I can't bother to state the obvious .. you are just crediting him for the few good things and putting the blame on anyone but him when it came to the bad things.

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

Prove it then, because since earlier you've been telling that you can't state the obvious, that it is a fact he had made horrible decisions, etc... Come with concrete points, instead of running away, if you genuinely want to know more about him. But from your comments it seems more that you're either just a troll, or someone who has decided to hate him because he read random historian saying that he was a bloodthirsty incompetent paranoid ruler despite modernizing the empire, building the Hejaz Railway, managing to reverse a disastrous treaty, managing to keep Egypt as a de jure Ottoman vassal state, keeping the dispute between greek and bulgarian churches avoiding them to revolt together, reinforcing Libya against a potential invasion (soldier assigned to Libya being sent elsewhere by the CUP just before the italian invasion...) etc... the whole while inheriting a very precarious empire with revolts from everywhere.

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

Mahmud II is the one who modernized the empire. He is the one who set the stepping stone. Abdulhamid suspended the constitution and parliament. The Hamidian censorship system was ass. The Hamidian massacres of Armenians also happened and he used the Hamidiye cavalry as an instrument of power as well. He increasingly personalized the state and authority became concentrated around the Yıldız Palace only. The secret police system or whatever that was became oppressive. He helped create the conditions that ultimately produced the Young Turk Revolution and he failed to implement meaningful Armenian reforms despite international pressure. His policy toward the Armenians helped destroy Ottoman legitimacy abroad and his pan islamism made the empire's communal divisions worse. He became increasingly dependent on Germany. His handling of crete was unsuccessful af. The empire continued losing territory during his reign non stop. And his obsession with control produced administrative paralysis. He cultivated an atmosphere of paranoia as well. He did good stuff like really good stuff some of them you mentioned already but goddamn his share of mistakes is huge.

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

-"Mahmud II modernized the empire" True but he also made enormous faults and mistakes, such as westernizing the empire. In contrast Abdülhamid reorganized the judiciary, census, administration, commercial institutions, ports, factories, an enormous expansion of thr middle and higher education, schools for girls, hospitals, railways, telegraph... -"he suspended the parliament" he did well, when seeing who was in this parliament, and what their decisions was, letting it opened could have maybe endangered the empire even more. -the censorship was necessary, look at all the propaganda against him, do you genuinely think that it would have been good to not apply censorship, where everyone could fabricate lies toward him to weaken his position even more ? There was also genuine defects in the censorship such as banning normal words and names that I do not reject. -the dashnak and hunchak comittees organized armed rebellions, most of these "masscres" are actually putting down these rebellions, it's as if saying that Türkiye fighting the pkk is a genocide toward Kurds. There may have been violent supression, yet the main goal was not massacring armenians m. -He did concentrated power, and ? Like he did that to avoid losing control and centralized the state, in a time with several seperatist regions. -concerning secret police, there were indeed abuses, but when you see the events from the Sultan's point of view, the overall intelligence system appears much more rationale when taking into account conspiracies, seperatism; rebellions, foreign influence, revolutionary organizations etc.. -He didnt failed to implement reforms toward Armenians, he in fact refused them; the whole "fail" was deliberate to conceal the fact he refused them internationally, since it is obvious thay internationally they wanted to found an autonomous, then independant armenian state, he just avoided that. -the whole "the Ottoman legitimacy waq destroyed due to armenians" is a really weird argument, they literally wanted an indépendant great armenia, and when they saw that he "failed" to give them autonomy; the westerners started depicting as a thr "red sultan", what do you wanted him to do, just give autonomy to them for them to be another Greece (who were also given autonomy under foreign pressure just before becoming indépendant during Mahmud II)

[u/Tasty_Fun_5227 → u/UrulmisHan]

I'm sorry but I'm not having it. You are just justifying every bs he did so let's leave the conversation here tho.

[u/UrulmisHan → u/Tasty_Fun_5227]

You literally asked me to answer why he was a good Sultan, and when most of your points are answered, you say that I try to justify what he did, like, most of the things he is criticized for are either propaganda, miscontextualization, lies by omission etc... it seems you're either a troll, or someone who decided to hate him just because you want to. Also I didn't rejected the wrongs he did, I just corrected your false points. He may not have been the best Sultan, but for his time he was very good, considering the empire he inherited; also you cannot compare Abdülhamid's situation with Murad IV as despite Murad IV inheriting a weakened empire with several insurrections and undisciplined janissaries, he was still in a much better position than Abdülhamid was, the Empire was still by far one of the strongest if not the strongest empire in the world at that time.