Kırlı 183what kinds of political issues people talked about and thought affected
their lives and on the other, various attempts to place limits on people’s
expression of their political opinions.^25 In historical scholarship, this
apparent contradiction is usually raised in connection to the practices
of early modern forms of government—especially those of eighteenth-
century France—and those of the so-called authoritarian and totalitarian
regimes of the twentieth century, such as the Stalin-era Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany.^26
basic principle of early modern governments that informed the A
relationship between the ruling elite and its subjects was that politics were
the prerogative of the ruler. To the extent that this was so, and that it was
recognized as the embodiment of the state, popular utterances regarding
politics, government, and administrative matters were legally forbidden.
Numerous archival documents testify that prior to the mid-nineteenth
century, and especially in times of political crises, the Ottoman state had
vigilantly monitored public places for “seditious” political conversations
and punished subversive gossip-mongers. In 1798, the sultan wrote to his
grand vizier:
It has been reported that lies and fabrications are being
invented and circulated by fomenters of strife and mischief
and by the malicious and devilish sort, and that some ignorant
and half-witted people, unable to tell good from evil and ben-
efit from harm, dare utter words about the state and imperti-
nently tell these fabrications to each other in coffeehouses and
barber shops. It is necessary to close these coffeehouses and
barber shops, where these dissolute assemble and dare talk
about the state, and to apprehend, punish, and banish both
those who own these coffeehouses and barber shops as well as
those who dare utter frivolous and nonsensical words ... From
now on, those who dare talk about state affairs and those who
listen to them in coffeehouses, barber shops, other shops and
places of assembly, as well as officers who discuss state affairs
beyond their duties in state offices, are to be apprehended
without hesitation as a warning to others; and in order to exe-
cute this order, special undercover [agents] and spies are to be
posted in such places, and state officers are to be warned by