Topkapı Palace and Gülhane: the state at the door

The outer wall separates Gülhane Park from the palace complex, which at that time was more often called the New Palace. The garden lay outside its strict inner order while remaining part of the same grounds. Later, the name Topkapı Palace—Cannon Gate—became established for the whole complex: it was transferred from a wooden palace on the shore that perished in a fire. Gülhane itself means house of roses, although the former pavilion in the garden disappeared long ago.

On the third of November, eighteen thirty-nine, Mustafa Reşid Pasha, the foreign minister and chief author of the reforms then in preparation, came to the palace garden with little expectation of returning home. The previous evening, he had told his steward Salih Bey that the next day he would be in great danger and had little hope of staying alive.

For an Ottoman dignitary, this was no theatrical pose. His office, property, and life depended on the decision of the sultan and his opponents at court. Reşid's patron, Pertev Pasha, had been executed two years earlier on the orders of Sultan Mahmud II. Now Reşid was about to read aloud a document that promised to protect subjects and officials from arbitrary justice, secret reprisals, and confiscation of property. The sultan himself was then to swear to uphold those promises.

Four months earlier, Mahmud II had died. The throne passed to his sixteen-year-old son, Abdülmecid I, who needed to hold the state together after a military disaster. Ottoman forces had been defeated at Nizip by the troops of Mehmed Ali Pasha, ruler of Egypt, who sought hereditary possession of Egypt, Syria, and Adana. Fearing reprisals at court, the commander of the Ottoman fleet took the ships to Alexandria and handed them over to Mehmed Ali Pasha. In one week, the court lost its former sultan, a battle, and nearly its entire fleet. The road to the capital lay open, and help from the European powers became a matter of preserving the throne.

Having returned from London and Paris, Reşid proposed that Abdülmecid I respond not with a new campaign. Public guarantees were to restore the subjects' trust and show European governments that Istanbul could change its laws. The young sultan agreed.

The ceremony was arranged beside the palace wall, in Gülhane Square. This was the outer garden of the complex now called Topkapı Palace, though at the time it was more often known as the New Palace. Its present name means “Cannon Gate” and became established later: it was transferred from a wooden palace on the shore by gates with cannons, which burned down in eighteen sixty-two. Gülhane—“house of roses”—was the name of the garden part of the palace grounds.

The site made it possible to gather ministers, ulema, representatives of the city guilds, foreign ambassadors, and Istanbul residents before the palace, while keeping the sultan within the palace order. Abdülmecid I watched from the Gülhane Pavilion, hidden behind a curtain. Hüsrev Pasha, the head of government, handed Reşid a red book containing the sultan's text. The minister stepped onto a platform beneath a golden canopy, waited for the court astrologer's signal, and began to read.

The document promised to protect the life, honor, and property of all subjects without exception. A person could be executed only after a public trial. Taxes were to be collected according to established rules, and military service was to be limited to a specified term. The confiscation of property was separately forbidden, especially important for officials: previously, a disgraced dignitary could lose office, fortune, and head at the same time.

This was not yet a constitution, and the promises did not turn into ready-made laws at the moment of reading. But the next day Abdülmecid I, the ministers, and the highest dignitaries placed their hands on the Quran and swore not to violate the announced rules. Officials in the provinces then took such oaths. The Tanzimat era began—a restructuring of Ottoman courts, taxes, the army, and state administration. Already in eighteen forty, a criminal code defining punishments for officials was adopted, and three years later new conscription rules were established. Much was carried out inconsistently, but the sultan's promise had already been spoken before witnesses and sent throughout the country.

The Gülhane Edict was not the only reason for European intervention in the dispute with Mehmed Ali Pasha, but it gave Reşid the diplomatic argument he needed. In eighteen forty, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia supported Istanbul. Egyptian troops left Syria, and Mehmed Ali Pasha received hereditary rule over Egypt, which formally remained part of the empire. Reşid survived the day he feared and later held the office of head of government six times.

Sultan Abdülaziz ordered the Gülhane Pavilion, behind whose curtain Abdülmecid I had listened to the reading, demolished in eighteen sixty-five. Nothing has survived on its site. What remains is the park's name—the same word used to name the edict read here.