The Imaginary Ottoman: an examination of “Ottomanism” among the Islamic elites in today’s Turkey as an intellectual bridge between the local and the global

Abstract

The aim of this work was to shed light on the emergence of the idea of the Ottoman in modern Turkey and its importance in Turkish politics. It was argued that this new idea of the Ottoman was a representation of a social imaginary for the elites and for the leadership of Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP), defining the position of Turkey in a globalized world. It was also argued that the emergence of the idea of the Ottoman and the properties ascribed to it are closely related to globalization. Within this framework, a research, focusing on depicting the critical properties of the Ottoman idea, how it is imagined and how the political stances of the AKP leadership relate to it, was conducted through a review of the written sources and by way of a review of the speeches given by AKP leaders since 2007. The research revealed that this new Ottoman, the imaginary Ottoman, is portrayed as a civilization with a different time and space apprehension than the West and as an Islamic imaginary that extends to the present time with an expanded conception of nation and motherland. The imaginary Ottoman, thus, is an attempt to secure a new place with a different identity in the global world; it is a link between the global and the local. The imaginary Ottoman includes elements from the real, historical Ottoman. However, it offers a new sense of the present time, derived from the deconstruction of the past. It is portrayed as a guide of action and identity for today and as a solution to the problems of the national imaginary in the age of globalization. The research showed us that the imaginary Ottoman is a product of the encounter of the newly emerging Islamic elite in Turkey with globalization. Thus, its emergence is directly related to globalization as a historical event. AKP leadership shares the same Ottoman imaginary. The AKP leadership tries to constitute and institute the Turkish society in the way the Ottoman is imagined and projects itself as the representative of the Ottoman imaginary. The Ottoman, in its imaginary form, is not static and transforms continuously, thanks to the creative capability of imagination. Accordingly, it helps the elites and the AKP leadership to redefine and reposition themselves in a globalizing world. It helps them to introduce new ideas, in order to justify their position by selectively using certain events from the vast reservoir of Ottoman history. It also helps the AKP leadership to adopt selfcontradictory positions in politics, such as being nationalist without being nationalist and being Islamist without being Islamist. The new habitus created through the imaginary Ottoman and the creative adaptation that this imaginary Ottoman facilitates provide an advantage to the AKP leadership in covering the political spectrum in Turkey and in answering the problems stemming from the Turkish national imaginary. The imaginary Ottoman is, therefore, not an aspiration to revive the historical Ottoman, which would have been a type of Ottomanism, but rather it represents the social as imagined by the Islamic elites and the AKP leadership.