Nationalizing the Ottomans and Ottomanizing the Turks

Abstract

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.