A History of the Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today

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Mediterranean Quarterly 27:2 DOI 10.1215/10474552-3618039 Copyright 2016 by Mediterranean Affairs, Inc.

The Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today: In Search of a Usable Past

Nick Danforth

Anyone who has followed Turkish politics in the early twenty-first century is all too familiar with the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (JDP’s) enthusiasm for the Ottoman Empire. In recent elections, JDP candidates appeared in Ottoman garb for campaign posters, and one pro- JDP colum-nist went as far as to suggest that, after the party’s November 2015 electoral victory, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could introduce an updated ver-sion of the Ottoman caliphate, in which representatives from Muslim states would have offices in Erdogan’s presidential palace.1 Yet JDP’s enthusiasm for all things Ottoman has often served to obscure more than it reveals. Why, for example, did Erdogan become a vocal critic of Turkey’s most popular Ottoman- themed soap opera, an indulgent period piece celebrating the life of Suleiman the Magnificent? And how was it that before 2010 Western pundits regularly cited Erdogan’s rapprochement with the regime of President Bashar al- Assad of Syria as proof of his neo- Ottoman foreign policy, then after 2010 switched to insisting it was his support for the Sunni anti- Assad opposition that revealed his neo- Ottoman ambitions?

In December of 2009, the New York Times reported on an outbreak of Ottomania in Turkey. The article, which described “Terrible Turk” T- shirts and Janissaries shilling for Burger King, quotes TV historian Pelin Batu as

1. “Dilipak: Erdogan baskan seçilirse halife olacak,” Yeni Akit, 25 October 2015.

Nick Danforth is a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s national security pro-gram. He writes regularly about Turkey and the Middle East for the Atlantic, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.

6 Mediterranean Quarterly: June 2016

saying that this supposedly recent Ottoman revival is a backlash against Kemalist secularism. “Ottomania,” she said, “is a form of Islamic empower-ment for a new Muslim religious bourgeoisie.”2 Non- TV historians have been almost unanimous, however, in agreeing that Turkey’s current pro- Ottoman attitude is a challenge to the fundamentally anti- Ottoman stance of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In light of contemporary politics, the story of Ottoman history in Republican Turkey has sometimes appeared as little more than a battleground between pro- Ottoman Islamists and anti- Ottoman Kemalists. But like many historical symbols, the Ottoman Empire, which spanned three continents and six centuries, has proved amenable to a wide range of sometimes- contradictory interpretations. To understand how lib-erals, nationalists, and Islamists construct rival claims to Ottoman history today, it is crucial to begin with an account of how the founders of modern Turkey made the empire’s past serve their ideological and political needs during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Ottoman Empire According to Ataturk, 1923 – 1940

The reinvention of the Ottoman past began almost as soon as the empire itself disappeared. Arguing that the Ottoman state began to decline when it lost its Turkish and secular character, Turkey’s Kemalist founders used the empire’s rise and fall to justify the founding principles of their new republic. Moreover, they used the term Ottoman not to describe an entire society or era, as many do today, but instead to discredit the narrow political elite from whom they had recently seized power. Beginning in the 1940s and culmi-nating with the five- hundredth anniversary of Istanbul’s conquest in 1953, Turkish politicians, academics, artists, novelists, and journalists engaged in a thorough Kemalist appropriation of Ottoman history. Powerful sultans from the empire’s Golden Age such as Fatih Mehmet II were transformed into secular, pro- Western revolutionaries while Turks of all political persuasions celebrated the Ottomans for their military might and supposedly self- evident Turkishness. Yet in the early 1950s there were distinct strains of this nation-

2. Daniel Bilefsky, “Frustrated with West, Turks Revel in Empire Lost,” New York Times, 4 Decem-ber 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/world/europe/05turkey.html?_r=0.

Danforth: The Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today 7

alized discourse focusing on Ottoman piety and on Ottoman tolerance, which in time developed into the contemporary Islamist reading of the Ottoman Empire preferred by Erdogan as well as the more pluralistic, multicultural version preferred by many present- day liberals.

According to the narrative found in the growing number of works on the politics of Ottoman history, Ataturk built his new national republic on a vig-orous rejection of the Ottoman past.3 He condemned the Ottoman sultans as foreign interlopers, accusing them of promoting religious bigotry, suppress-ing their people’s Turkish identity, and cravenly collaborating with European powers. Completely ignoring the Ottoman past, the story goes, Ataturk gave his people a glorious and invented history of Central Asian Turks to serve as a basis for their national pride. Then, beginning in the 1990s, a newly pious and newly democratic Turkey “reconnected” with its Ottoman “roots,” finally embracing the national history Ataturk had denied them. This trend cul-minated, of course, in the full- blown, Islamically rooted Ottoman nostalgia of today.

The inadequacy of this reading begins with its failure to recognize that the quotes most frequently cited as evidence for Ataturk’s uncompromisingly hos-tile view of the Ottoman Empire — his description of the sultans as “madmen and spendthrifts,” for example — come from 1922 and 1923, when there was in fact an Ottoman sultan still enthroned in Istanbul who represented a clear political threat to Ataturk’s power.4 By 1927, the most intensely anti- Ottoman claims in Ataturk’s famous speech, the Nutuk, occur when he is quoting his own statements from the debate over abolishing the sultunate in 1922.5 Once it was no longer necessary to condemn the Ottoman dynasty for short- term political reasons, Ataturk and his successors could rework their relationship

3. See Alev Cinar, Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time (Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Étienne Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: Analyse d’une historiographie nationaliste, 1931 – 1993 (Paris: CNRS éditions, 1997); Sam Kaplan, The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in post- 1980 Tur-key (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); Gavin Brockett, How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim National Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). 4. Ataturk’un Soylev ve Demecleri, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1945), 154. 5. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, A Speech by Gazi Mustafa Kemal, October 1927, 1929 Leipzig transla-tion, 586, www.lightmillennium.org/ataturk/speech_introduction.html.


6. It would be similarly anachronistic to ask how Turks in Istanbul today could deny the huge impact of Armenians on their city’s history when they are surrounded by enormous mosques designed by “Armenian” architects such as Mimar Sinan. The discourse denying the existence of an Armenian past is inextricably linked with the discourse denying the Armenianness of Sinan and his works.7. Typical was a work from the Military Press in 1933, which described the “Crête Campaign” as one of the most difficult in Turkish military history but one in which the Turks succeeded through “their strength of will.” E. Yuzbasi Ziya and Rahmi, Girit Seferi (Istanbul: Askeri Matbaa, 1933). 8. Almost a third of the entries in the 1945 encyclopedia Turk Meshurlari [Famous Turks], for example, were Ottoman pashas, as were a substantial number of the entries in the more expansive Meshur Adamlar [Famous men] from 1935. See Ibrahim Alaettin Govsa, Turk Meshurlari Ansik-lopedisi (Istanbul: Yedigun, 1945); and Ibrahim Alaettin Govsa, Meshur Adamlar (Istanbul: Yedi-gun, 1935). 9. See “Osmanli kulturu,” Wikipedia, tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmanl%C4%B1_k%C3%BClt%C3%BCr%C3%BC, accessed 14 March 2013.

with Ottoman history in a way that provided voluminous new evidence of past national glories. The rehabilitation of the Ottoman Empire began almost as soon as it was out of the way and gained new impetus after Ataturk’s death in 1938. By the early 1940s, there were scores of publications about Otto-man history. Yet many of them have escaped notice because historians have not fully appreciated the extent to which the meaning of the word Ottoman itself has changed over time. As used in the Republican era, it referred much more exclusively to the royal family itself, as well as the people, policies, and practices most closely associated with the court. In time, as the term itself began to have more positive connotations, its meaning expanded accord-ingly, eventually coming to refer more generally to all of the institutions and social practices that existed during the Ottoman period. To ask today how the Republican government could have renounced so much of the Ottoman past is to ignore how little of it they actually saw as Ottoman.6

To take the most striking example, what today would be called the “Otto-man army” was, in Republican parlance, almost always the “Turkish army.”7 Nationalist rhetoric lauded soldiers and often commanders from Osman I’s time (1258 – 1326) through World War One as “our heroes” who had coura-geously fought for “our fatherland,” whether they won or lost.8 Cultural ele-ments show a similar change. The shadow puppet Karagoz, for example, is now one of the three subheadings appearing in the Turkish Wikipedia entry “Ottoman Culture,” presumably because of the play’s widespread association with traditional nineteenth- century Ramadan celebrations.9 In the 1930s,


10. Consider, for example, Selim Nuzhet, Turk Temasasi: Meddah — Karagoz Ortaoyunu [Turkish entertainments: Storytellers and Karagoz theater] (Istanbul: Matbaa- I Ebuzziya, 1930).11. Cengiz Bektas, Turk Evi (Istanbul: Yapi Endustri Merkezi Yayinlari, 2013).12. Istanbul’s fountains were a product of “Turks’ benevolent spirit.” See Ibrahim Hilmi Tanisik, Istanbul Cesmeleri I (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 1943). Fatih Camii was a ‘”beautiful and power-ful example of Turkish artisans’ aesthetic” that also showed “the development of national genius.” H. Baki Kunter and A. Sasim Ulgen, Fatih Camii ve Bizans Sarnici (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Mat-baasi, 1939), 5. 13. Ismail Hakki Uzuncarsilioglu, Osmanli Tarihi, vol. 2 (Ankara: Turk Tarihi Kurumu, 1998), 284.

by contrast, Karagoz was a folk tradition whose populist spirit defined it as everything the Ottomans were not.10 Similarly, the familiar wooden Safron-bolu houses with protruding balconies now often referred to as “Ottoman houses” were, as seen in Cengiz Bektas’s classic Turk Evi [the Turkish house], once thought of differently.11 Even the bridges, fountains, and medreses that now epitomize “Ottoman architecture” were in the 1930s considered “Turk-ish.”12 Historian Ismail Hakki Uzuncarsilioglu also stressed that the empire’s many mosques were “social foundations” where, in addition to worshipping, citizens could hold meetings, reach collective decisions, and find out com-munity news.13 By the time all these diverse things became “Ottoman,” decades of nationalist rhetoric had already thoroughly convinced people of the fact that everything Ottoman was fundamentally Turkish. What is more, by the time this happened, the Ottoman dynasty was no longer a political reality.

Ignoring the extent to which Ataturk’s anti- Ottomanism was directed at a narrow political elite rather than an entire society or era masks the funda-mentally populist nature of this element of republican rhetoric. In October 2015, President Erdogan made headlines by denouncing Ataturk and his coterie for wasting money on champagne and waltzes while the Turkish peo-ple were shoeless and starving. Ironically, Erdogan’s attack on the Kemal-ist regime replicated the essence of Kemal’s attack on the Ottoman regime, which it sought to portray as a hedonistic and culturally alien elite indifferent to the needs of Turkish people. The last sultan, Ataturk argued, had sought to preserve his wealth and prestige by betraying the Turkish nation through a treacherous alliance with the British. In the same vein, Kemalist histori-


14. Faridun Fazil Tulbentci, Gecmiste Bugun (Ankara: Akba, 1943). Building on Zeki Tastan’s summaries of popular history books from the period, Murat Kaciroglu concludes that while works by authors such as Turan Tan and Nizamettin Nazif were often quite critical of even famous sul-tans such as Fatih or Suleiman; their heroes were men such as Heyreddin Barbarosa or fictitious soldiers whose bravery secured victory for the Ottoman army and state. Zeki Tastan, “Turk Edebi-yatinda Tarihi Romanlar” (unpublished PhD thesis, Istanbul Universitesi, Istanbul, 2000), as cited in Murat Kaciroglu, “ ‘Cehennemden Selam’ Romani Orneginde Ilk Donem (1927 – 1940), Tarihi Macera Romanlarda Knonik Soylem Yahut Angaje Egilim,” Turkish Studies 5, no. 2 (2010).15. Sevket Aziz Kansu “Anadolu’da Turk Mutefekkirlerinin Cografi Yayilisi Uzerine Bir Arastirma,” Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Tarih- Cografya Fakultesi Dergisio 1, no. 1 (1942). 16. Ziya Sakir, Turkler Karsisinda Napoleon (Istanbul: Anadolu Turk Kitap Deposu, 1943).17. Gabriel Romeran, Tepedenli Ali Pasa, trans. Ali Kemali Aksut (Istanbul: Ikbal Kitabevi, 1939). 18. Afet Inan, “Bir Tuk Amirali XVIinci Asrin Buyuk Cografya,” Belletin 1 (1937): 317.19. Ali Riza Seyfi, “Akdenizin Kurtlari,” Resimli Sark 8 (August 1931).

ography argued that previous sultans, like Mad Ibrahim, “took amber as an aphrodisiac so [they] could better busy himself with the women” while the Turkish army died in battle fighting for their country.14

Set against these attacks on the late Ottoman dynasty, almost all of the varied works on Ottoman history published during the one- party era can be read as efforts to prove that Turks deserved credit for the glorious parts of Ottoman history. Aziz Sevket Kansu, for example, is perhaps most famous for the effort to unearth Mimar Sinan’s skull in order to anthropometrically prove the architect’s Turkishness. In 1940, however, he published the results of an equally bizarre project, in which he used 1927 Republican census data and Bursali Mehmet Tahir’s Ottoman Authors to calculate the number of Ottoman intellectuals that came from each Anatolian province as a ratio of that province’s population.15 He then compared these results to average skull measurements from each region in order to prove that the regions first settled by members of the “Turkish race” were the ones with the most per- capita Ottoman geniuses. Other authors worked to prove diverse but similar claims about the role of “Turkishness” in other Ottoman achievements. For example, Turkish military genius deserved credit for defeating Napoleon in Egypt;16Ali Pasha, the Lion of Yanina, was not only a Turk but a Turkish patriot;17 Piri Reis, a Turkish cartographer, discovered America;18 and the exploits of “Ottoman” mariners forced “historians of every nation to con-fess that the Turkish race was the world’s most militant race.”19 The Turk-ish Military Press, meanwhile, republished books like Celal oglu Mustafa’s


20. Celal oglu Mustafa, Osmanli Imparatorlugunun Yukselme Devrinde Turk Ordusunun Savas-lari ve Devletin Kurumu, Ic ve Dis Siyasasi, trans. Sedattin Tokdemir (Istanbul: Askeri Matbaasi, 1937).21. Cumhuriyet Arsivi, 030- 0- 010- 000- 000- 2410631- 37, Hariciye Vekaleti to Yuksek Basve-kalet, 20 December 1933. 22. Cumhuriyet Arsivi, 030- 0- 010- 000- 000- 233- 573- 22, Hariciye Vekaleti to Basvekalet, 9 July 1942.23. M. Faruk Guntunca, Bu Arslan Dokunmayin (Istanbul: Ulku Kitap Yurdu, 1939).24. Busra Ersanli, “The Ottoman Empire in the Historiography of the Kemalist Era: A Theory of Fatal Decline,” in The Ottomans and the Balkans: A Discussion of Historiography, ed. Fikret Adanir and Suraiya Faroqhi (Boston: Brill, 2002).

Tabakatu’l Memalik ve Derecatu’l Mesalik as The Turkish Army’s Wars in the Time of Ottoman Expansion.20

Also during this period, the Turkish Foreign Ministry reported on the way Turkey’s neighbors treated the Ottoman past, with the clear sense that this treatment reflected on Turkey’s national image. In 1933, for example, the Turkish embassy in Sophia reported with alarm the production of an “anti- Turkish” film showing the “unlimited oppression” Bulgarians suffered dur-ing the “era of Turkish administration.”21 In 1942, a Turkish diplomat in Albania reported on the dilapidated state of Sultan Murat’s tomb, while an Italian official sought to curry favor with the Turkish embassy by inform-ing it that when the region had been under his control he had tried to see to the tomb’s upkeep.22 Several years earlier, by contrast, the poet M. Faruk Gurtunca had reminded Italians coveting Anatolian soil that, in addition to riding on Rome with Atilla, the Turks had sunk Andrea Dorea’s fleet under Barbarossa and were ready to do so again. “Ask,” he suggested with refer-ence to Ottoman incursions in southern Italy, “which lion Janissary rests in your great- grandmother’s heart?”23

But Republican historians incorporated the Ottoman Empire into their nationalist narrative in ways far more sophisticated than this sort of blunt appropriation. Using what Busra Ersanli has called the “theory of fatal decline,” they identified a Golden Age lasting until the time of Suleiman and then followed by a period of stagnation and decline from the eighteenth cen-tury onward.24 They then went on to argue that through its Golden Age the empire had maintained its fundamentally Turkish character as well as the more enlightened approach to religion that the Turks had brought with them


25. Afet Inan, “Turk- Osmanli Tarihinin Karakteristik Noktalarina bir Bakis,” Belletin 2 (1938). As one of the founders of the Turkish Historical Society, Inan played a major role in articulating official Kemalist history, including preparing the “Turk Tarihinin Ana Hatlari” [Fundamental out-line of Turkish history], which would serve as the foundation for Turkish history textbooks. 26. Ibid., 125.27. Ibid., 126.

from Central Asia. Decline, when it came, resulted from the influx of “foreign elements” and the increasing power of the reactionary ulema. This strategy allowed the Turkish nation to take credit for the early Ottoman Empire’s cul-tural achievements and battlefield victories while escaping blame for the later failures. Just as important, it positioned the Kemalist reform as curing the diseases that had crippled the Ottomans.

Perhaps this theory’s most concise and official articulation appeared in Afet Inan’s “A Study of Turkish- Ottoman History’s Characteristic Features,” written for the second issue of the Turkish Historical Society’s journal in 1938.25 She begins by emphasizing that there was a Turkish “ethnic founda-tion” for Ottoman expansion in Anatolia, and that “empires’ lives are linked to the strength of their foundations.” Then, in explaining the empire’s phases, she highlights the fact that Selim “added the title of Caliph to his ances-tors’ imperial legacy.” This “made the Ottoman Empire a theocratic state and bound its political statesmen by doctrine to the unchanging rules of a religious book.” With this periodicization in place, Inan goes on to praise the positive characteristics of the early empire. The Ottomans provided the still feudal Europeans with their first example of a centralized monarchy: the “central administration” knew the income potential of every small town in the entire empire and determined how it would be spent in an orderly man-ner.”26 Ottoman “military power and technical superiority” were also based on the empire’s intellectual life: “a school” was found in each village” until a “retrogression” in the entire Islamic society during the sixteenth century prevented the further development of Turkish medreses.27 Inan also praised the empire’s statist policies, pointing out that until the sixteenth century, all financial activity was “under the state’s organization and control.” In the late sixteenth century “the microbes of decline” began to appear in the state’s “healthy structure.” Subsequent reform efforts failed because “Tanzimat men remained too bound to religion and opposed to free- thought,” while the


28. Ibid., 130. 29. Ibid., 132.30. Tarih: Yeni ve Yakin Zamanlarda Osmanli — Turk Tarihi, vol. 3 (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaasi, 1931), 3.31. Ibid., 3, 5, 28, 32, 52.32. Sefika Akile Zorlu- Durukan, “The Ideological Pillars of Turkish Education” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2006), 158.33. Ibid.34. Kilkisli Huseyin Husnu, Manzum Turk Tarihi (Izmir: N.p., 1933), 3 – 4.

Young Ottomans, too, were crippled by their commitment to sharia.28 Inan thus concluded that it fell upon “the greatest of all Turks to teach us through his actions that harmful practices could only be fixed with revolution, not reform.”29

State history textbooks reflected Inan’s interpretation of the Ottoman period. The 1931 edition of Tarih, a high- school textbook often cited as the defining expression of Kemalist historiography, begins by explaining that Osman’s rise was a result of his being able to bring good government to the people where Byzantine princes had failed, “in addition to the unique hero-ism and militarism of the Turks.”30 In addition to pointing out that one of Osman’s first acts was to cancel “capitulations” given to foreign merchants, the book repeatedly stresses the Ottoman government’s capacity for state- building and administration during the Golden Age and goes on to cite two separate instances when Germans expressed a desire to receive the blessings of Ottoman rule.31 Sefika Akile Zorlu- Durukan’s study of Tarih bolsters this interpretation, claiming that while Ataturk’s state- building project “required the construction of the immediate past as worthless, corrupt, and unredeem-able” (emphasis added), this did not apply to the early Ottoman period.32 “Criticism of the Ottoman Empire in general” starts in the late sixteenth cen-tury, she concludes, before which early textbooks suggested that “Eastern civilization maintained its superiority.”33

This narrative was also prevalent outside of textbooks. In the poetic realm, Huseyin Husnu published a sultan- by- sultan history of the Ottoman Empire in verse, “written from a feeling of Turkishness, in plain Turkish,” dedicated to the Turkish nation’s “exalted savior,” and published on the tenth anniver-sary of the republic.34 Husnu wrote that the Ottoman Empire began when Osman “unfurled the banner of Turan and caused Turkishness to come


35. Ibid., 95.36. “Turku bozan dervislerle hocalar / bu hakandan yedi hayli sopalar,” “Hocalarla devlet isi yurumez / Dua ile hic bir gemi yurumez.” Ibid. Author’s translation.37. A. Zeki Polar, Osmanli Imparatorlugunun Cokus Sebepleri (Istanbul: Ak Kitabevi, 1962), 10.38. Orhan Kocak, “Westernization against the West: Cultural Politics in the Early Turkish Repub-lic,” in Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity: Conflict and Change in the Twentieth Century, ed. Celia Kerslake, Kerem Oktem, and Philip Robins (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

alive once more.”35 He then contrasted the empire’s early days, when “The Turkishness- rejecting men of God / Got a heavy dose of Osman’s rod,” with a later era when its rulers forget the basic truth that “religion should not a nation steer / nor should a ship with prayer recklessly veer.”36 Alongside poets, diplomats also used this narrative when stressing the importance of Republican reforms to a foreign audience. In 1929, Abdullah Zeki Polar’s “Essai sur les causes du Decadence de l’Empire Ottoman” began by stating that before the seventeenth century the empire’s wealth and power were leg-endary, but decline set in because “religion dominated the state.”37

The narrative of fatal decline remained central to all popular, official, and academic history from the beginning of the Republican period through the Democratic Party era. Beginning in the late 1930s, however, the number of books published on Ottoman history by official and private presses rose noticeably, and there was a newfound enthusiasm for celebrating the Ottoman Empire’s Golden Age achievements rather than condemning its later failures. At least one author has speculated that Ataturk’s personal hostility toward all things Ottoman facilitated a historiographical shift immediately following his death.38 Yet it also seems possible that with the passage of time Republican leaders became increasingly confident in the permanence of their revolution and the transformation they had achieved. By the late 1930s, there was no longer any reason to fear the reestablishment of the old empire. Nor was there any reason to suspect that Europeans, whatever prejudices they still might harbor about the Turks, had failed to notice that Turkey had changed dra-matically since the empire’s collapse.

The Six Arrows of Ottomanism: Conquest Day 1953

Against this backdrop, in the midst of World War Two, President Ismet Inonu began preparations for the five- hundredth anniversary of one of the Ottoman


39. Sadun Savci, “Dolmusta,” Vatan, 3 June 1953. 40. Newspapers gave detailed information about these festivities. See, for example, “Fetih yili programi,” Milliyet, 21 May 1953. 41. Ferdi Oner, “Fethin 500 uncu yildonumu Toren ve Senlikleri basladi,” Cumhurriyet, 30 May 1953. 42. Ibid.43. “Everest’in fethinin akisleri,” Milliyet, 3 June 1953. 44. “Besiktas Fenerbahceyi dun 2 – 1 maglup etti,” Milliyet, 1 June 1953.

Turks’ most glorious achievements: the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In both form and content, nationwide celebrations defined Fatih’s achieve-ment as a victory for secularism, a victory for Western enlightenment values, and, most of all, a victory for the Turkish nation. In form, the celebrations followed the self- consciously modern Kemalist repertoire for commemorating important national anniversaries in a civilized, European manner, with com-mentators looking at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, taking place at the same time in London, for additional ideas.39

Over the course of ten days, students and faculty of Istanbul University hosted lectures, conferences, and seminars at which countless historians dis-cussed the importance of Fatih’s achievement.40 The students also hosted a soiree, a garden party, and a ball, the last of which lasted until dawn and included a fashion show with dresses inspired by Ottoman costumes. The Turkish Theatre Company performed “Tosca” in Fatih’s honor, as well as a special play written about the sultan himself. The government opened new schools and libraries on the outskirts of Istanbul. With fighter planes soaring overhead, the military paraded to Fatih’s tomb in the center of Istanbul’s old city.41 There, a mufti said prayers for Fatih’s soul, which were subsequently broadcast on Turkish state radio.42 The Beyazit Library exhibited almost five hundred children’s drawings of the conquest. Other exhibits highlighted fine art from Fatih’s time or displayed the sultan’s personal effects. Schoolchildren read poems written by the conqueror himself. The word fatih (conqueror) was on everybody’s lips; Sir Edmund Hillary was hailed as the “Fatih of Mount Everest,” while advertisers insisted their nylon dresses would conquer Istan-bul.43 In addition to state- sponsored wrestling tournaments, gymnastics com-petitions, and horse races, there was also a special Fatih soccer match played to mark the occasion (Besiktas defeated Fenerbahce two to one).44 Mosques and historic buildings throughout Istanbul were illuminated at night. Fire-


45. Morris Kaplan, “Turks Here Will Sip ‘Lion’s Milk’ to Mark Victory of 500 Years Ago,” New York Times, 29 May 1953. 46. Ferdi Oner, “Fethin 500 uncu yildonumu Toren ve Senlikerli basladi,” Cumhuriyet, 30 May 1953. 47. “Istanbul bugun Fetih yilini kutluyor,” Cumhuriyet, 29 May 1953. See Esra Ozyurek’s analysis of a similar ritual during celebrations of the republic’s tenth anniversary in his Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 131.

works were launched and cannons were fired. In New York, the city’s three thousand Turks gathered to celebrate the conquest with a cocktail party in the Empire State Building. There, the New York Times said, they would cele-brate by drinking Raki and Istanbul Magic, a cocktail made by mixing Raki with lemon juice and crème de menthe.45

More explicit, the content of all these events repeatedly emphasized Fatih’s Turkish national identity, his revolutionary, pro- Western outlook, and his sec-ularism. Certainly Fatih’s most striking characteristic in 1953 was his Turk-ishness. Fatih was, to the celebrants, not an Ottoman emperor but the “great Turkish ruler” of a “great Turkish empire.” Istanbul, in fact, was his “eternal gift” to the Turkish nation. In addition to this terminology, more concrete rhetoric bound Fatih to the modern Turkish state. Watching Turkish soldiers marching past Fatih’s tomb “with bristling mustaches and a lion’s gait,” a writer for the newspaper Cumhuriyet concluded that these “heroic children of the Great Fatih” were proof that “heroism was truly this nation’s ancestral inheritance and the legacy of its forefathers.”46

More than just binding Fatih to modern Turkey, these displays wrote him into the narrative of the Turkish War of Independence, forging a link between Fatih’s victory and Turkey’s ongoing struggle to preserve its national sov-ereignty in the face of Russian territorial claims. One of the most popular slogans to appear in newspapers and speeches proclaimed, “Istanbul has been Turkish for five hundred years and will remain Turkish for five hundred more.” More pointedly, on 29 May official delegations brought silver vases full of “border soil” from Kars and Edirne — cities on Turkey’s Soviet and Bulgarian borders, respectively — and deposited them on Fatih’s grave.47

Politicians and journalists were quick to wrap the mantle of Fatih’s hero-ism around Turkish soldiers serving in Korea. Speaking to a crowd assem-bled on 29 May, the mayor of Istanbul, Gokay declared:


48. “Fatih ve Topkapi’daki torende yuzbinlerce Istanbullu bulundu,” Vatan, 30 May 1953. 49. Mumtas Faik Fenik, “Seferihisar’da Genc Ulubatili Hasanlar,” Zafer, 30 May 1953.50. The full version of this legend is related by the Turkish Ministry of Religion outside the tomb of the Sofu Baba, located on the Findikli yokusu in Istanbul’s Cihangir neighborhood.51. “Istanbul bugun Fetih yılını kutluyor’,” Cumhuriyet, 29 May 1953.52. “Istanbul Fatih’i kucakliyordu,” Istanbul Ekspres, 29 May 1953.

Great Fatih . . . [m]ay your spirit rest in peace. Your noble ideals will live forever — along with the Turkish nation and the Turkish Republic — upon the sound foundation laid by Ataturk. Is it even necessary to elaborate? Look at Korea. Look at the Atlantic Pact. . . . We, Fatih’s children, show our greatest display of being worthy of him through serving the cause of world peace with our soldiers’ blood in Korea today. Now we bow with honor before all of our holy martyrs who, beginning with Fatih, have died for their country and who now give their lives for world peace under the United Nations in Korea today.48

Columnists, too, made similar comparisons, with one asking, “What dif-ference is there between Ulubatili Hasan, who first raised our flag over the walls of Istanbul, and the commander who went into battle in Korea wrapped in the Turkish flag?”49 Soldiers returning from Korea even reported that when surrounded by communist forces they had been visited by the spirit of the Sofu Baba — one of Fatih’s “happy soldiers” killed in the siege of Constanti-nople — who calmed and inspired them before disappearing into the battle-field smoke.50

“Among the Ottoman sultans, Fatih was undoubtedly the most secular,” Cumhuriyet declared.51 In 1953, secularism stood alongside nationalism as one of Fatih’s defining virtues. The oft- repeated phrase used to articulate the historical importance of the conquest in papers of all political persua-sions was that, in conquering Istanbul, Fatih had “brought an end to the Middle Ages” — marked by “fundamentalism” and “sectarian conflict” — and “opened a new era” in human history. A particularly ambitious, but by no means uncommon, formulation of this achievement credited Fatih with kick-ing off the Renaissance: “The West was shocked by Istanbul’s fall, but it was also awakened. Shaking off the yoke of religious bigotry, it turned again to the life- giving source of Ancient Greek free thought.”52

There was an explicitly pro- Western dimension to Fatih’s enlightenment


53. Hasan Ali Yucel, “Fethin Onemi,” Cumhuriyet, 29 May 1953. 54. Sami Nafiz Tansu, “Sanatkar Fatih,” Cumhuriyet, 31 May 1953.55. Ibid.56. “Fatih’e ait seminerler devam ediyor,” Vatan, 6 June 1953.57. Yucel.58. Atac, “Yeni,” Ulus, 31 May 1953.

as well. In capturing Istanbul, the former Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi education minister declared that Fatih definitively “turned his face toward the West,” both culturally and geographically.53 Fatih showed this Western orientation through patronage of humanistic arts and sciences.54 Fatih made Istanbul a center of scientific research by establishing its first university and brought about a “renewal” in Turkish art and culture by, among other things, ignoring the religious prohibition on representing human figures. Fatih revealed him-self to be Western and cultured through the respect he showed his teachers, through his employment of Renaissance artists like Giovani Bellini, through his knowledge of Italian, Latin, and Greek,55 and, finally, through the “ratio-nality’ of his ideas.”56

Learning from the West had also supposedly been crucial to Fatih’s mili-tary success: Belief and personally righteous forces were not enough for the victory. . . . The Ottomans learned [the Byzantines’] lifestyle and mili-tary techniques well. We knew well that victory cannot be achieved in a war between two nations without using the same techniques.57

Indeed, the innovative military tactics that Fatih used to conquer Istanbul were one of the many things that earned him the title of “revolutionary.” The adjective appears regularly, if not frequently, in descriptions of Fatih, who revealed his innovative spirit by dragging his fleet overland in order to cir-cumvent Byzantine defenses on the Golden Horne. This rhetoric was particu-larly pronounced in Ulus, the semi- official paper of the opposition Republi-can People’s Party. According to one writer, Fatih’s approach “shows he was a totally new kind of person, one who believed in newness and in the innova-tors” of the age. He was not satisfied with the methods of his ancestors. He was not tied to “old ideas.”58

In this context it is no surprise that many writers made the comparison between Fatih and another enlightened, secular, revolutionary, and pro-


59. Ismail Habib Sevuk, “Fatih ve Dar- us- sefeka,” Cumhuriyet, 27 May 1953.60. “Times’in Fatih ve Atatürk yazisi vesilesile,” Cumhuriyet, 10 June 1953.61. See Brockett, chap. 6.62. Fenik. 63. Damat Mehmet Serif Pasa, Faith Sultan Mehmed Han- i Sani ve Istanbul Fethi (Istanbul: Hilmi kitabevi, 1953).

Western Turkish leader explicit. “Fatih’s portrait, like Ataturk’s, should be hung in our houses and offices with respect,” claimed one Cumhuriyet col-umnist, adding that if the government subsidized the distribution of these portraits, it would gladden the spirits of both men.59 Many other authors drew a parallel between the service both men had provided to the Turkish nation: “It was the Istanbul Fatih took that Ataturk saved twice, once by stopping the enemy at Canakkale, once by driving him back after Dumlupinar. At each end of Istanbul’s five- century existence as a Turkish city is a great Turk.”60 Frequent comparisons between these two great Turks were not evidence of an effort to supplant, if only partially, Ataturk with Fatih, and therefore Kemalist values with the more religious ideals Fatih supposedly stood for.61 In a cli-mate where praise for anyone other than Ataturk often carried a caveat, most authors specified that in making this comparison it should be understood that they were in fact praising Fatih for all the ways he was like Ataturk. Indeed, to eliminate any doubt that there was no contradiction, authors of all political persuasions quoted Ataturk’s response to a colleague who had belittled the sultan: “Quiet. Who is Fatih? And who are you? Take that great man’s name to your lips with reverence [aptest alip da agzina oyle al].”62

More remarkably, several authors drew a comparison between Fatih’s deci-sion to convert Hagia Sophia from a church into a mosque and Ataturk’s deci-sion to convert it from mosque to a museum. According to this version, both Ataturk and Fatih were showing their respect for the building and the culture it represented.63 As the journalist Bulent Ecevit, who would go on to become prime minster, dramatically proclaimed:

In Hagia Sophia were some of the finest mosaics that Byzantine artists had executed, depicting scenes from the Bible. Yet representation of the human form was forbidden by the Mohammadan religion. So the new rulers of the city, who were of the Mohammadan faith, had no choice but to destroy them. Could Mehmet the Conqueror, the liberal Sultan who was later to


64. See Bulent Ecevit, “Istanbul: A Beautiful City of Many Names Haunted by Its Long Hectic Past,” Winston- Salem Journal Sentinel, 2 January 1955. 65. Fetihten Evvelki, Istanbul ve Fatih’e Ait Menkibeler (Istanbul: Saka Matbaasi, 1953).66. Sami Nafiz Tanus, “Sanatkar Fatih,” Cumhuriyet, 31 May 1953.

bring over the famous Italian artist Bellini to his court to do his portrait, allow such an act? For nearly five centuries the whole world believed that he did! But a few years after Turkey became a secular republic in the first half of this century and restoration work was started in Santa Sophia, which was to be turned into a museum, it was discovered that Mehmet the Conqueror had only had those mosaics covered with sheets of durable cloth, upon which thin layers of plaster had been applied. So when the plaster and the sheets of cloth were removed, the mosaics were there — as fresh as they were in 1453.64

Much as Ataturk anecdotes have become a stable of contemporary Turkish discourse, Fatih’s legacy came complete with an array of rumors and legends that could be used, at times straightforwardly, at times with some contortion, to prove or refute any aspect of his character. Testifying to Fatih’s secularism was the oft repeated story about his confrontation with several holy men who claimed that God answered their prayers by giving Istanbul to the Turks. “This,” Fatih says gesturing to his sword, “is sharper than your prayers.”65 Other stories testified to Fatih’s respect for education, for the law, or for his elders. One of the best, explicitly told to demonstrate Fatih’s commitment to the positivist ideal of artistic verisimilitude begins with Gentile Bellini pre-senting Fatih with a canvas showing a dead man’s face. Fatih tells him the face is not waxen or droopy enough to be a dead man’s. Then, to prove his point, Fatih took the artist to see the head of a recently executed criminal. Bellini was shaken, but enlightened.66 The range of these anecdotes allowed authors to pick and choose, including whatever set of stories best gave Fatih the ideological character they found appropriate.

Toward Today’s Liberal and Islamist Ottomanisms

Among the many stories about Fatih Sultan Mehmet told during the 1950s, however, were also those that become central to the contemporary Islamist


67. See “Fethinin 504: Yildonumu dun torenle kutlandi,” Cumhurriyet, 30 May 1957. 68. Record no. 1238, Ibrahim Hakki Konyali Library, Istanbul.

interpretation of the Ottoman past. While secular, Kemalist Fatih was being celebrated in official discourse during this period, a rival, if not unrelated, conservative narrative was also audible, sometimes in spite of the govern-ment’s efforts to silence it. In 1957, a “youth by the name of Mesud Yavuz Bilgin” read a poem at an unofficial Fatih day ceremony in Eminonu that used “emotional language” to criticize Hagia Sophia’s transformation from a mosque into a museum.67 After the reading was finished, a police officer approached Bilgin and asked for a copy of the poem. Saying there was no copy, Bilgin offered to read the poem again while the officer took notes. The officer responded by dragging him and a youthful journalist who had inter-vened on his behalf to the police station. The two youths were detained while their case was sent to the chief of police, then were released an hour later. While we know little else about Bilgin himself, his criticism was certainly widespread in Islamist circles. According to the narrative of Bilgin and oth-ers, Ataturk had not perfected Fatih’s act of enlightened tolerance by turning Hagia Sophia into a museum. Rather, he had unforgivably betrayed Fatih’s grand act of Islamic piety.

The story that best illustrated Fatih’s Islamist orientation came from the pen of the popular historian Ibrahim Hakki Konyali. Konyali’s diverse career involved working for the Turkish military museum, writing for one of the era’s best known and subsequently banned Islamist papers, and briefly publishing a slightly pornographic magazine called History World. In the early 1950s Konyali claimed to have discovered a document in which Fatih followed up his order turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque with a curse on anyone who sub sequently countermanded it.68 The legacy of Konyali’s historiographi-cal intervention can still be seen today, printed in Turkish and English in an informational poster by Fatih’s tomb, alongside the claim that Fatih was killed by his Jewish doctor.

Interestingly, multiple degrees of Ottomanism, alongside multiple ver-sions of Fatih, persist in the JDP’s contemporary rhetoric. There is a more radical version, with Fatih implicitly cursing Ataturk and 1453 replacing 1923 as the symbolic foundation date of the Turkish state. But there is also


69. S. Djanasia and N. Berzenisvili, Gurcustan Meselesi (Tibilisi: Georgian Academy, 1945), as quoted in Sinasi Altundag, “Osmanli Idaresi ve Gurculer,” Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Tarih- Cografya Dergisi 10, nos. 1– 2 (March– June 1952): 79 – 90.70. Ibid., 81.

a more mainstream narrative in which Fatih and Ataturk remain enshrined together alongside the dates of their triumphs. Recently, in the government’s enthusiasm for Ottoman history, classic components of Ataturk’s national-ist historiography have been increasingly “Ottomanized.” Just as Kemalists celebrated elements of Ottoman history by simply calling them Turkish, the JDP has stylistically and rhetorically incorporated references to the Seljuks, and even the Central Asian Turks, into their Ottoman- centered history. Thus Erdogan’s Ottoman- revival architecture has drawn heavily on pre- Ottoman Seljuk elements. And most famously, perhaps, he has created a costumed presidential guard that represents the Kemalist vision of the sixteen histori-cal Turkic states, but does so in the preferred outfits of the JDP’s Ottoman reenactors.

At the same time, Turkey’s geostrategic needs also helped promote the discourse of Ottoman tolerance in this period. In the early Cold War, Turkish diplomats were well aware that the country’s historical treatment of Christian minorities was the subject of intense criticism among its allies and enemies alike. The legacy of the Armenian genocide loomed large in US domes-tic debates over Turkey, and particularly after the 5 – 6 September pogrom in 1955, many Greek and Armenian Americans were vocal critics of the US- Turkish alliance. And from the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union sought to advance its territorial claims to northeastern Anatolia with reference to the argument, advanced by two Georgian scholars in 1945, that Ottoman Turks had “spread violence and death” across Georgia, “impos-ing their religion and language by sword.”69 Much of the Ottoman tolerance rhetoric that emerged in the early Cold War period can be read as a response to these accusations. In 1948, Turkish historians sought to rebut Georgian accusations by citing the “emotion and loyalty” that Georgians felt toward the Ottomans. Why? Because “a tolerance reigned in the Ottoman Empire that was the envy of other nations. . . . To steal a Christian’s chicken or pasture a horse on a Christian’s field was equivalent to a murder and punishable by death.”70 Of the many publications the committee overseeing the anniversary


71. Ismail Hami Danismend, “The Importance of the Conquest of Istanbul for Mankind and Civili-zation,” trans. E. A. and B. M. (Istanbul: Publications of the Istanbul Society for Celebration of the Conquest, 1953). This rhetorical outreach was sufficiently effective that the New York Times noted, “The modern Turk believes his was the first country to establish a legal basis for the co- existence of all religious and racial groups.” Morris Kaplan.

celebrations produced in 1953, one of the few it translated into English was a pamphlet called “The Importance of the Conquest of Istanbul for Mankind and Civilization,” which explained that ‘the respect of the Turks for all reli-gions, even in the days before Mohammedanism, is no[w] proved by recent research.”71

Recognizing the political roots of “Ottoman tolerance” forces us to con-sider the role of political forces in the subsequent development of that dis-course. While historians have been quick to identify the relationship between knowledge and power among nineteenth- and twentieth- century nationalist historians, they are sometimes hesitant to acknowledge the extent to which their own liberal transnationalism, like the nationalist perspective that pre-ceded it, is the product of political circumstances. Just as the Turkish gov-ernment transformed the Ottoman Empire into a symbol of Turkish national power during the 1940s and 1950s, beginning in the 1990s transnational institutions such as the European Union as well as a more internationally oriented Turkish government have used their resources to transform the Otto-man Empire into a symbol of religious and cultural tolerance. At the risk of oversimplifying, where nineteenth- century nation- states promoted the work of nationalist historians who provided embellished accounts of their nations’ historical origins, transnational institutions now play a similar role in pro-moting the work of historians whose accounts of a prenational, multicultural past seem to offer a model for overcoming current national conflicts. The EU, which has an obvious interest in promoting stability and international cooperation along its borders, has funded museums, conferences, universi-ties, and individual scholars that promote a vision of the Ottoman Empire conducive to this goal. Some accounts, for example, replace the old myth of five centuries of Turkish- Greek hatred with a new myth of cooperation and Christian- Islamic syncretism. Karagoz has become “Ottoman” in the sense of being part of a shared regional culture, while Sinan’s Armenian ancestry serves as evidence of Ottoman pluralism. Remaining attentive to these politi-


72. Louis de Bernières, Birds without Wings (New York: Vintage, 2005).

cal dynamics is necessary to ensure that admirable political goals do not fuel the creation of dangerously romanticized history.

In the early twenty- first century, many in Turkey began to fear that jingo-istic nationalism had become an obstacle to EU membership and domestic peace. Meanwhile businesspeople who wanted to build apartments or sell biscuits in Kurdish Iraq, Syria, Armenia, or Greece discovered that the lan-guage of historical enmity did not open doors or win customers. As a result, various national and transnational actors now found it necessary to convince Turks that they were more than just Turks; that, in fact, they have always been more than just Turks.

Thus academics, politicians, and many interested citizens, both in Turkey and in other countries, began rediscovering the Ottoman Empire as a para-gon of religious tolerance and cultural diversity. Under the Ottomans, it is said, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together peacefully in places like the Balkans and the Middle East, where they seldom do so today. In contrast to the embattled Turkish Republic, the powerful Ottoman Empire also offered a political structure and collective identity that incorporated diverse cultural groups such as the Tatars, Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs, and Laz. Perhaps the best articulation to date of this appealing vision is the 2004 novel Birds with-out Wings.72 Written by British author Louis de Bernières, the book takes place in a small village on the southwestern coast of Anatolia that is inhab-ited by a mixed population of Greeks and Turks. In de Bernières’s Ottoman past, Greeks and Turks lived side by side before the forces of nationalism and organized religion intervened. The plot revolves around a Turkish youth’s love for his beautiful Greek neighbor and repeatedly highlights examples of religious syncretism in the daily life of the village. The book begins with a Christian woman giving birth after drinking from a bowl engraved with verses from the Koran and then, for added luck, sleeping with a cross on her belly.

The image of a multicultural Turkey with a multicultural past holds an obvious appeal for the EU, a transnational entity whose success depends on overcoming national boundaries. The EU has been trying to forge a new sense of European identity with varying degrees of success for some time


now, and those within the EU who think that Turkish membership would create a stronger, more dynamic union have an obvious interest in including Turkey in this vision. The JDP has also been quick to see the benefits of this narrative. After coming to power in 2003, at a time when EU membership seemed a more realistic goal, the JDP embraced the cliché of Turkey as a bridge between East and West, presenting the country’s religious diversity and historical tolerance as antidotes to the rising tide of Muslim alienation and European fear. Depicting Turkey as a land where religions have mingled and coexisted also serves to make the JDP’s mildly Islamist agenda more appeal-ing to Western audiences. Whenever possible, the JDP has argued that it is challenging Turkey’s rigid interpretation of secularism not in the name of conservative Islam but rather on behalf of a more pluralistic liberal vision. That is, in fighting for women to be able to wear headscarves, it also fights for Christians to be able to build churches and freely choose their religious leaders. Yet as with the Kurdish issue, the government’s behavior does not always match its admirable rhetoric. The JDP promoted Istanbul’s winning bid to become a 2010 European Capital of Culture with a video featuring Orthodox chants mingling with the Islamic call to prayer. When the resulting EU grant money arrived, however, priority went to restoring mosques rather than churches and synagogues.

A more pluralist version of history also served the JDP’s foreign policy well. During much of the party’s first decade in power, then foreign minis-ter Ahmet Davutoglu argued that Turkey’s Ottoman heritage has given it a historical and cultural “strategic depth” that can, if properly used, enhance its regional power. Davutoglu’s signature foreign policy initiative, awkwardly translated as the “zero problems with neighbors policy,” revolves around using this heritage to improve relations with traditional enemies along Tur-key’s borders. The hope is that if Turkey is on good terms with its neighbors it will become a trading hub and an arbiter of regional conflicts. Though the JDP rejects the label neo- Ottomanism — which has raised some concerns among former Ottoman subjects in the region — it has not hesitated to make Ottoman history part of Turkey’s cultural diplomacy. In countries like Bos-nia, Kosovo, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, all eager to find powerful regional allies, Turkey has helped restore Ottoman monuments like the Mostar Bridge, advertised Turkey as a tourist destination, and used


Turkish minorities, who see themselves as descendants of the Ottomans, to promote trade ties. In the Middle East, too, the JDP has exploited Turkey’s multifaceted history. When currying favor with Iran, Turkish politicians spoke about the profound influence of Persian poetry on Ottoman literature or the four centuries during which the Ottoman and Persian empires alleg-edly shared a peaceful border. Then, faced with the task of salvaging ties with the Israelis, they reminded listeners that it was the Ottomans who wel-comed the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

If Turkey’s use of history often seems ineffective (as in the Israeli case) or limited to the realm of cultural diplomacy (as in the Balkan case), for a period the “zero problems with neighbors” policy succeeded in paying dividends for Turkish businesses. After Turkey and Syria lifted visa restrictions in Novem-ber of 2009, for example, bilateral trade more than doubled. Turkish Arabs living near the border have been well positioned to capitalize on their native fluency in Arabic, which might, in another context, have been politically problematic. Similarly, as Turkish nationalists worry about the ideo logical threat posed by a semi- independent Kurdish government in northern Iraq, Turkish business is flooding the region; 70 percent of the foreign commercial activity in the Kurdish- controlled part of Iraq is now Turkish, and the firms involved were well aware of what a serious outbreak of ethnic violence would do to their profits. In this light it is no surprise that a rising class of pious businesspeople from central Anatolia were one of the JDP’s main constituen-cies, while even the more established secular business community often sup-ported the JDP’s foreign and economic policies.

Over the past decade, Islamic politicians have done their best to solidify the empire’s reputation for piety, liberals have embraced the empire as a mul-ticultural model for a more pluralistic Turkey, and many nationalists still see it as a proud symbol of Turkish military might. But these rival strands are not as distinct as sometimes assumed. The discourse of Ottoman tolerance, for example, has always been appropriated by national and religious readings of the empire. In the 1950s the Ottomans were tolerant because they were Turks, and Turks are a tolerant nation. Today, more frequently the Ottomans are tolerant because they were Muslims and Islam is a tolerant faith. That is to say, tolerance can easily become a mark of cultural superiority rather than the prelude to a multicultural reading of the past. And just as it did in the


73. Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews, 1430 – 1950 (New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2007), 439.

1950s, talk of Ottoman tolerance today still often serves as a way to dodge serious conversations about the Armenian genocide.

Just as Turkish nationalists in the 1920s appropriated Ottoman history by calling it Turkish, the JDP’s neo- Ottomanism has increasingly incorpo-rated “Ottomanized” elements of traditional nationalist history. Seljuk archi-tectural motifs are popular in JDP building projects. And in January 2015 Erdogan revealed a new presidential honor guard consisting of soldiers sup-posedly representing the sixteen great Turkic empires throughout history. These sixteen empires owe their place in nationalist myth to the non- Islamic Kemalist nationalism of the 1920s, but, by quite literally dressing them up in what are now thought of as “Ottoman” costumes, Erdogan made them a part of his new Turkish- Islamic synthesis. More recently, on the night of 7 – 8 Sep-tember 2015, a group called the Ottoman Hearths (Osmanli Ocaklari) led an attack that set fire to the offices of a leading opposition newspaper. Turkey has a long history of right- wing nationalist groups organizing themselves into “hearths” to commit acts of political thuggery. Now this tradition too has been Ottomanized.

Ultimately, though, the story of the Ottoman Empire’s repeated reinvention serves as a reminder that the Ottoman history is unlikely to remain the sole possession of its most recent or aggressive appropriators. Turkey’s domes-tic and regional politics will continue to evolve, and, in the words of Mark Mazower, “Other futures may require other pasts.”73

Documents

A History of the Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today