İsa Boletini (1864-1916): An Ottoman Albanian Figure of Twists and Turns

---

Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: İstanbul Şehir Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Modern Türkiye Çalışmaları Anabilim Dalı (Disiplinlerarası), Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2020

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: BERİA KAFALI FERKO

Danışman: Abdulhamit Kirmizi

Özet:

İsa Boletini is one of the Ottoman imperial figures with multiple identities and loyalties at the turn of the twentieth century. He was born in the village Boletin from Mitroviçe during the transformation of the last Ottoman land in the Balkans to become an independent state of Albania. He was one of the local figures who felt the foreign pressure in the region by the Great Powers and tackled them in his own ways which resulted in diplomatic crises between the Ottoman and Russian Empires. As a local power magnet, he was invited to the Palace to serve as a personal guard, tüfenkçi, to the Sultan Abdülhamid II. Given privileges and concessions, he returned to his hometown where he became a gendarme of the Sultan and continued to exercise his authority within the limits. However, with the success of the 1908 Revolution by the Young Turks, the new regime targeted him and aimed to diminish the symbolism he carried as an old ally of the Sultan. Yet, in the tumultuous environment of the Balkans, perpetuating further violence turned the region into a more vulnerable land in the eyes of the Great Powers. This thesis aims to show the parallelism between the fluctuating events of the nineteenth century Balkans and İsa Boletini's multiple identities, in the light of the "Imperial Biography" approach, by making use of Ottoman archival material which was not yet incorporated into the study of his life