THE INFLUENCE OF THE OTTOMAN RULE IN SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE: FROM MILLET SYSTEM TO REVIVAL OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES

Abstract

Legal protection of religious and linguistic identity of non-Muslim population in the Millet System in the Ottoman empire provided the non-Muslim elites of this system the opportunity to gradually embrace Western ideas of the nation and articulate political aspirations of their ethnic or linguistig groups in line with these ideas. Therefore in the age of dissolution of the Ottoman Turkish empire and the age of „Moderna“ in Slavic/Balkan states there were created preconditions and circumstances for the establishment and revival of ethnic and cultural identities in former Ottoman Turkish Slavic and other state-colonies.