Turkish Nationalists and the Ottoman Imperial Legacy

Turkish Historical Review, 2022

This article analyses how the ruling party in Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are trying to construct a new Turkish nation on an ideological level through a different reading of Ottoman history. In this process, a special reading of Ottoman history comes to the fore after the Kemalist state tried to undermine its importance. The article studies the importance of the ideological use of history and the instrumentalization of the events of the Ottoman past by the administration in Turkey. This effort is analysed as an attempt to prove the historical continuity of the Turkish nation, which includes the long Ottoman history that the Kemalist state challenged. It is argued that Erdoğan is in essence nationalizing and religionizing the Ottoman Empire as a Turkish and Islamic empire and Ottomanizing the contemporary Turkish nation as one that should rely on the religious aspect of its identity.

Umut Uzer's An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism offers a textual analysis of the ideational grounds and developments of Turkish nationalism from the late Ottoman Empire to the present. The book's overarching argument is that in the course of its " ideological odyssey, " Turkish nationalism has evolved from a modern, secular, progressive, and even revolutionary idea—which the author loosely associates with early Kemalist thinking—to a " conservative " and patriarchal ideational formation that embrace traditional, exclusionary, and Islamic values. Uzer mainly credits the transition to multiparty democracy in the 1950s for this transformation but also emphasizes other factors, including the republic's gradual welcoming of Islamic ideals and groups into political life, the Cold War dynamics and anxieties about communism, and urbanization. In mapping this transformation, the book covers an impressive range of primary literature including not only the nationalist thinkers such as Ziya Gökalp who commonly feature in studies of Turkish nationalism, but also, more usefully, neglected figures such as Nihal Atsız, the influential proponent of Turkish racism. Indeed, the book's strongest contribution is its comprehensive analysis of racist thought and ethnic nationalism in modern Turkey. Thus, in addition to Uzer's analysis of the racial components of Turkish nationalism, the expansive primary sources contained within the book make it an important and useful resource for students and scholars interested in the region and era, but who cannot read Ottoman and Turkish. There are, however, three criticisms that could be raised against this otherwise important book. The first concerns style. Despite bringing together close readings of an impressive body of literature, some of which appears for the first time in English, the texts covered are not situated within a broader theoretical structure. Nor does the book offer a theoretically rich account of them. Instead, the presentation takes the form of descriptions and summaries of different texts, leaving the reader craving a more robust analysis of their theoretical depth and structure. The second point concerns the book's main argument about the evolution of Turkish nationalist thought from a relatively progressive and revolutionary ideational form to a more right wing and Islamist ideology. While not novel in the scholarship, this argument endorses a somewhat romanticized

Akademik Hassasiyetler, 2024

This study explores the critical contributions of the New Ottomans and Young Turks to the development of Turkish nationalism in the Ottoman Empire and their legacy to the modern Turkish Republic. It first identifies the ideological evolution and practical practices that characterised the New Ottomans and Young Turk movements. Both movements, this study argues, were the roots or sources of Turkish nationalism. The New Ottomans, in their attempt to synthesise Ottomanism with emerging nationalist sentiments, laid the foundations of a distinct Turkish identity. The Young Turks, on the other hand, built on this foundation with a more ambitious nationalist agenda that shaped the trajectory of the modern Turkish state. This study, which also addresses the similarities and differences between the New Ottomans and the Young Turks, emphasizes the importance of these two movements from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century to look at the historical origins of Turkish nationalism. It also claims to contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics of nationalism in a multi-ethnic empire by filling gaps in the existing literature and offering new perspectives.

Political views such as Ottomanism, Islamism and Turanism (Turkism) were experienced by Ottoman Empire in last and longest century in order to protect his integration better. Newborn Republic took over ideological legacy of the Ottoman Empire largely and transformed it with a new style. Nationalist ideology, that continues its evolution in anti-communist conjuncture during the Cold War, has again changed its imagination with emerging the problem of ethnic nationalism after the 1980s. The traces of nationalism, which has a particular goal but does not have a way that is exactly certain, are tried to be followed from the Ottoman to Turkey. We carefully elected some important actors and their perceptions in order to understand and compare better the reality of national cases.