Page "Millet (Ottoman Empire)" Paragraph 17

Before the turn of the 19th century, the millets had a great deal of power — they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes.

Tanzimat reforms aimed to encourage Ottomanism among the secessionist subject nations and stop the rise of nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire, but failed to succeed despite trying to integrate non − Muslims and non − Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and regulations.

With the Tanzimat era the regulation called " Regulation of the Armenian Nation " ( Turkish: " Nizâmnâme − i Millet − i Ermeniyân ") was introduced on March 29, 1863, over the Millet organization, which granted extensive privileges and autonomy concerning self − governance.

The Armenian Nation, " Millet − i Ermeniyân ", which is considered here, is the Armenian Orthodox Gregorian nation ( millet ) of that time.

In a very short time, the Ottoman Empire passed another regulation over " Nizâmnâme − i Millet − i Ermeniyân " developed by the Patriarchate Assemblies of Armenians, which was named as the Islahat Fermâni ( Firman of the Reforms ).

The " Firman of the Reforms " gave immense privileges to the Armenians, which formed a " governance in governance " to eliminate the aristocratic dominance of the Armenian nobles by development of the political strata in the society.

These two reforms, which were theoretically perfect examples of social change by law, brought serious stress over Ottoman political and administrative structure.