Neo-Ottoman Nostalgia in Contemporary Turkey

Abstract

The article examines the phenomenon of neo-Ottoman nostalgia in the context of attempts to shape a new post-Kemalist civil identity. Today, neo-Ottomanism is making itself heard in various spheres of life in Turkish society: in culture, cinema and literature, politics and elsewhere. The new Turkey is making every effort to tie together individual parts of its fragmentary identity. This being said, an ambivalent approach to the Ottoman heritage is widespread amongst various strata of Turkish society. Most of the founding fathers of the secular republic took a negative view of the Ottoman past and blamed the empire for a string of failures that beset it at the dawn of its new existence – extensive territorial losses and numerous military defeats. The Kemalist nation building project gave rise to a modern Turkish nation which was supposed to become part of the Western world. At the same time, the appeal to Ottoman narratives reemerged after the transition to a multiparty system in the 1950s; admiration for the Ottoman past increased noticeably in the 1980s and has now reached its peak under the Justice and Development Party (JDP). The party leaders are striving to create a new identity for contemporary Turkey, construing and interpreting history in their own way. It should also be taken into account that the growing interest in Ottoman history in contemporary Turkey reflects changes in both the state’s political discourse and popular culture. This nostalgia for the past reinterprets and decontextualizes previously clearly formulated and enshrined symbols, ideas and historical facts.