This article examines the Ottoman state's increasing involvement in caring for the poor and the needy and the emergence of modern relief institutions and hospitals throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The particular focus will be on the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) and the second constitutional period (1908-14) up until World War I.

Rather than presenting the emergence of poor-relief institutions in the Ottoman Empire as a function of increasing poverty and need, or as a function of the state's desire to control and regulate the urban population for various concerns, I concentrate on the dynamics of the political sphere. I will focus particularly on the political conflict between the sultan and the new political elite, whose identity was defined in relation to newly structured state functions and services.

The rise of Islamist political movements through open electoral competition has constituted a challenge to the political systems of numerous Middle Eastern countries in recent years and has led to a rethinking of the question of compatibility between Islam and democracy. Esposito and Voll (1996, pp. 193-94) have pointed out that while many unquestioningly believe that Islam and democracy are fundamentally opposed, “many Muslims have made advocacy of democracy the litmus test for the credibility and legitimacy of regimes and for political parties and opposition.”

On 23 May 1919, a large crowd gathered in Sultan Ahmet Square in the center of Istanbul. Facing them was one of the most famous female figures of modern Turkish history. Since that day, the gathering has come to symbolize the call by the masses for change in the structure of authority and their protest against the 15 May occupation of Izmir by Greek expeditionary forces. Not only has this gathering taken on a mythical aura, but so has the image of Halide Edib, the woman who faced the crowd that day.

Modern conservatism, at least in its philosophical form, is a child of what it attacks—modernity. If the central ethos of modernity is a belief in the plasticity of society and the individual, the central ethos of conservatism is a belief in the sanctity of community, kinship, tradition. Modernity's fascination with the new is matched by conservatism's defense of past tradition. It is on the priority of a past order bequeathed by history, and its traditional institutions, that the conservatives base their critique of modernity. The modernist idea that societies can be shaped, molded, and steered in new directions, and that individuals can direct their own destinies, finds its counterpart in conservative thought in the rediscovery of the past-its institutions, values, themes, structures.

Critics of European Union (EU) enlargement claim that new members could pose a serious challenge to the existing institutional balances within the EU and endanger future institutional deepening. Together with various enlargements since its inception in 1958, the EU has gone through numerous institutional changes that increasingly reflect its supranational character, although the European Community still contains intergovernmental elements. The most important dimension, which has evolved in this evolutionary process of the EU institutions, is the fine balance between small and large member states in terms of representation and power distribution. This is reflected, for example, in the European Commission, where the ten (relatively) small states are apportioned one commissioner and the remaining five large states two commissioners each.