Panel: Petitions and Petitioning in Iranian & Ottoman Constitutionalism

This panel will examine the constitutionalism processes in the Ottoman and Iranian contexts with a particular focus on the meaning, institution, and transformation of petitioning. Yuval Ben-Bassat will explore the Ottoman institution of petitioning following the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, when the Sultans no longer reigned. Ben-Bassat is the author of Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine and his research focuses on Ottoman petitions, Greater Syria in the 19th century, the rural population of Palestine, and the early Jewish-Arab conflict. Nader Sohrabi will explore the democracy of petitions in Iran’s constitutional movement. Sohrabi is the author of Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran and his research focuses on questioning Turkish, Albanian and Arab nationalisms and comparative histories of the Ottoman and Iranian empires. Serpil Atamaz-Topçu is an Assoc. Professor at California State University and she focuses on the history of modern Middle East, the Ottoman Empire and Iran.