Performing the Nation(s) in the Imperial Domains and Abroad

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Ottoman citizens of a plethora of backgrounds had created a common physical culture. This culture, based in Istanbul, centered around the belief that the regular performance of physical exercise, gymnastics, and team sports was the most effective means of forming robust young men, modern communities, and a civilized empire. The individual and the community, after all, were not separate, but mutually constitutive. According to early-twentieth-century biological understandings of society espoused in Istanbul and other cities around the world, the rejuvenation of the community was contingent upon the physical, moral, and spiritual regeneration of the individual. While all three realms were important, sports enthusiasts in the late Ottoman Empire highlighted man’s corporeal dimension and treated the male body as the main site in which the strength, development, and progress of the community should be measured and exhibited.

This paper examines this understudied phenomenon by focusing on the ways in which Ottomans exhibited the physical dexterity of the individual, community, and empire through male bodies competing and performing in newly constructed urban spaces in Istanbul and abroad. Football matches in Istanbul’s new spacious outdoor stadiums, gymnastic exhibitions in theaters and gardens, and athletic events in international competitions abroad served as the spaces in which Ottoman citizens simultaneously negotiated their modern identities, experimented with novel activities, embraced shared civic values, and projected exclusive ethno-religious ties.