Sunni Islam was the official religion of the Ottoman Empire. The highest position in Islam, caliphate, was claimed by the sultan, after the defeat of the Mamluks which was established as Ottoman Caliphate. The sultan was to be a devout Muslim and was given the literal authority of the caliph. Additionally, Sunni clerics had tremendous influence over government and their authority was central to the regulation of the economy. Despite all this, the sultan also had a right to the decree, enforcing a code called Kanun (law) in Turkish. Additionally, there was a supreme clerical position called the Sheykhulislam ("Sheykh of Islam" in Arabic). Minorities, particularly Christians and Jews but also some others, were mandated to pay the jizya, the poll tax as mandated by traditional Islam.
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Islam in the Ottoman Empire in the context of Minorities in Turkey
Minorities in Turkey form a substantial part of the country's population, representing an estimated 25 to 28 percent of the population. Historically, in the Ottoman Empire, Islam was the official and dominant religion, with Muslims having more rights than non-Muslims, whose rights were restricted. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious groups were legally identified by different millet ("nations").
Following the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, all Ottoman Muslims were made part of the modern citizenry or the Turkish nation as the newly founded Republic of Turkey was constituted as a Muslim nation state. While Turkish nationalist policy viewed all Muslims in Turkey as Turks without exception, non-Muslim minority groups, such as Jews and Christians, were designated as "foreign nations" (dhimmi). Conversely, Turk (term for Muslims) was used to denote all groups in the region who had been Islamized under Ottoman rule, especially Muslim Albanians and Slavic Muslims.
Islam in the Ottoman Empire in the context of Turk (term for Muslims)
The ethnonym Turk (Greek: Τούρκοι/Tourkoi, Serbo-Croatian: Turci/Турци, Macedonian: Турчин, Bulgarian: Турчин, Albanian: Turqit) has been commonly used by the non-Muslim Balkan peoples to denote all Muslim people in the region, regardless of their ethno-linguistic background. Most of the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, however, were indeed ethnic Turks. In the Ottoman Empire, the faith of Islam was the official state religion, with Muslims holding higher rights than non-Muslims. Non-Muslim (dhimmi) ethno-religious legal groups were identified by different millets ("nations").
Turk was also notably used to denote all groups in the region who had been Islamized during the Ottoman rule, especially Muslim Albanians and Slavic Muslims (mostly Bosniaks). For the Balkan Christians, converting to Islam was synonymous with Turkification, succumbing to "Ottoman rule and embracing the Ottoman way of life," hence "to become a Turk". In South Slavic languages, there are also derivative terms, which are seen as more offensive towards Bosniaks, such as poturiti, poturčiti and poturica (all essentially meaning "Turk" or "to turkify").
Islam in the Ottoman Empire in the context of Vilayet
A vilayet (Ottoman Turkish: ولایت, "province"; [vi.laː.jet]), also known by various other names, was a first-order administrative division of the later Ottoman Empire. It was introduced in the Vilayet Law of 21 January 1867, part of the Tanzimat reform movement initiated by the Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856. The Danube Vilayet had been specially formed in 1864 as an experiment under the leading reformer Midhat Pasha. The Vilayet Law expanded its use, but it was not until 1884 that it was applied to all of the empire's provinces. Writing for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1911, Vincent Henry Penalver Caillard claimed that the reform had intended to provide the provinces with greater amounts of local self-government but in fact centralized more power with the sultan and local Muslims at the expense of other communities.