Ottomanism Then and Now: Historical and Contemporary Meanings: An Introduction

Author(s): Stefano Taglia

Source: Die Welt des Islams , 2016, Vol. 56, Issue 3/4, Special Theme Issue: Ottomanism
Then & Now (2016), pp. 279-289
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24893994

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 DIE WELT DES ISLAMS 56 (2016) 279-289 DIE
WELT DES
ISLAMS
BRILL brill.com/wdi

Ottomanism Then and Now: Historical and

Contemporary Meanings
An Introduction

Stefano Taglia (guest editor)

Oriental Institute, the Czech Academy of Sciences
taglia@orient. cas. cz

On the evening of Friday, 15 July 2016, a large number of international news

channels were frenziedly broadcasting live from Turkey. Most of the world sat
watching, stunned, as they observed events unfolding in the streets and skies
of Ankara and Istanbul. A part of the Turkish military had occupied major ar
eas of the two cities. Officers had taken over the trt (the national tv channel),
and had announced to the Turkish public, and the international viewership,
the removal of the government; a new constitution was to be prepared. But
that was only the beginning of a long night, one in which the military was not
only defeated, but humiliated. The following day, newspaper headlines fea
tured pictures of Erdogan's supporters waving Turkish and Ottoman flags.
Terms such as 'sultan' and 'caliph', referring to the Turkish president, appeared
everywhere in the international press. In the hours following the failed coup, it
emerged that muezzins had called on the people to take to the streets and op
pose the military. Many observers, especially in Turkey, had vivid memories of
the past; for them, after all, a military takeover was nothing new: since i960, at
almost constant intervals of about a decade, Turkey has been the setting for
military coups. While the earlier ones were all successful, the last two have had
different outcomes. In 2007, after the issuing of a threatening memorandum
directed against the government, which appeared on the website of the Chief
of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, the military was firmly re
buffed, being told to stay out of politics and asked to respect democracy and
the will of the people. Nine years later, the sections of the military that had
acted were heavily defeated by other military units, the police and a wave of

* The author is grateful to Ebru Akcasu, Isa Blumi, Sotirios Dimitriadis, Jaroslav Strnad and
Michael Talbot for their useful comments on various drafts of this introduction.

© KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2016 | DOI 10.1163/I5700607-05634P01

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28o TAGLIA (GUEST EDITOR)

public support in favour of the governing party of President Recep Tayyip

Erdogan, the Justice and Development Party, jdp (Adaletve Kalkvnma Partisi,
AKP).
After the first few hours of amazement, what surfaced were overlapping im
ages of the present and the past: the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, the juxtapo
sition between a forcefully imposed 'pseudo-secularisation' of society, during
the Republic's infancy, and the spasmodic display of religious symbols that has
emerged since the 1990s. The presence of the military, too, echoed the imperial
past, as the pivotal role played in politics by the armed forces dates back to the
'Revolution' of 1908 and the subsequent transfer of power to the Unionist re
gime that autocratically ruled until the Ottoman defeat in World War 1. The
politicisation of the religious apparatus during the evening of the attempted
coup, too, recalled images of the Ottoman past, and the ecstatic crowd that
awaited Erdogan at Istanbul Atatürk Airport reminded many of the sultan's
procession to the mosque for the Friday prayer. A raft of questions began to be
asked: Has the Empire returned? How should one read the more or less open
references to past imperial glories? What are the real links between the Otto
man Empire and modern Turkey? What is the place of religion in the public
sphere in Turkey? The events of last July, along with their accompanying im
ages, have attached even more urgency to provide clear answers to a set of key
questions linked with the past, its projected image in the present, and the ties,
if any, between the Ottoman Empire and its successor states.
In social sciences, the political developments in modern Turkey and the
other successor states of the Ottoman Empire have been the focus of special
attention for some time. Issues such as the demise of the Republican (Kemal
ist) Party (Cumhurriyet Halk Partisi, chp), the wars in the Balkans between
1995 and 1999, and the series of revolutions that swept the Middle East in the
2010s, have all been accorded substantial attention. Moreover, in the wake of
the somewhat unexpected rise of religiously-based parties in Turkey since the
1990s, as well as the latter's relationship with the Turkic states of the former
Soviet Union, both academics and the general public have turned their atten
tion towards the interpretation of the Ottoman past.1 By looking into these

i See, for example: Idris Bal, Turkey's Relations with the West and the Turkic Republics: The Rise
and Fall of the Turkish Model (London: Ashgate, 2001); M. Hakan Yavuz and John L. Esposito
eds., Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 2003); Fuat E. Keyman ed., Remaking Turkey: Globalisation, Alternative Modernities, and
Democracies (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007); Fuat E. Keyman and Ziya Öni§ eds., Turkish
Politics in a Changing World- Global Dynamics and Domestic Transformations (Istanbul:
Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2007); William Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy

DIE WELT DES ISLAMS 56 (2016) 279-289

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OTTOMANISM THEN AND NOW 28l

issues, recent scholarship has noted an ongoing reformulation

discourse in Turkey. This has become especially pertinent whe
the place of the Ottoman past in Turkish foreign policy, alon
tion of its image as peace broker and success story for the Ara
the wave of revolutions in the Middle East. The specific reint
recent past is embodied in the formulation of ideas that h
more or less openly, as neo-Ottomanism.
While social scientists have been analysing the place of the p
day Turkey, the fields of imperial and Middle Eastern history
increase in studies addressing the late Ottoman Empire. Hi
ested in the modernisation of the Empire, especially in th
characterised the complicated and frail ethnic and religiou
was once its trademark. Specifically, these themes are bein
context of the Empire's final demise and the emergence of
states. Incidentally, these issues are all closely related to d
nationalist discourse of Ottomanism. This ideology emerged ar
quarter of the 19th century and, articulated in different way
competition with each other - remained at the core of centra
discussions of reform and of the future. Researchers hav
other topics, the parties involved in Ottomanism, the origins
the intended audience, its content, and the reasons for its
Ottomanism has also emerged as a crucial lens through wh
society can be analysed. Substantial aspects of the discussions
of ideas have been deeply concerned with attempts to iden
project the Empire into the new century and support the cou
adapt to the new realities emerging from both internal and e

and Liberalism in Turkey (London: Routledge, 2011); Bülent Aras, The New G
and Turkey's Position (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).
2 Among the extremely long list of works dealing with these aspects, some
Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimati
Ottoman Empire, 1876-igog (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998); Elizabeth Özdal
Society: The Intellectual Legacy (Abingdon: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005); M. §ü
History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
Christoph K. Neumann and S. Ak§in Somel eds., UntoldHistories of the Mi
Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2011); A
Christians in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Study of Communal Relations
Routledge, 2013); Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi
Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Be
Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottom
Stanford University Press, 2014).

DIE WELT DES ISLAMS 56 (2016) 279-289

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282 TAGLIA (GUEST EDITOR)

Apart from a few exceptions,3 neo-Ottomanism and its 19th-century coun

terpart have not yet been exhaustively analysed together. Considering the
growing interest in and relevance of the two, the main purpose of this collec
tion is to facilitate a collective inquiry into these issues. The aim is to discuss
the ideas and concepts that characterised Ottomanism in the 19th and early
20th centuries, analyse how these are remembered and represented today, un
derstand whether the meaning of Ottomanism at that time corresponds to the
meaning assigned to it today, and establish the extent to which Ottomanism
and neo-Ottomanism can, if at all, stand a meaningful comparison. What this
thematic issue aims to achieve is to nuance the image of the past as repre
sented in post-Ottoman states, and to do so through reference to their nation
alist histories and discourse. In doing so, this collection of articles attempts to
sketch a clearer picture of the past, one which puts into perspective the post
Ottoman nation states' political and social engineering activities which, in
turn, support the construction of memories of their imperial past, whether
positive or negative, that appear distorted or incomplete. Ultimately, this col
lection does not focus only on highlighting the similarities between Ottoman
ism and neo-Ottomanism. Instead, substantial effort has been placed on
emphasising the contradictions employed by today's political elites in their at
tempt to construct a legitimate claim to power and justify policies on the basis
of a tenuous, fabricated link with the past.
A total of eleven articles make up this thematic issue, divided between six
historical inquiries and five contemporary analyses. Such an endeavour is par
ticularly important at this time, with topical developments involving Turkey
and other post-Ottoman societies unfolding by the day. It is precisely for this
reason that the contemporary analyses within this thematic issue do not cover
the latest turn of events: the situation is volatile, so an analysis of the latest
events might well result in making assessments that rely heavily on guesswork
rather than in considerations based on empirical research.
The historical articles approach the investigation of Ottomanism from very
different angles, seeking to provide a wide spectrum of interpretations of the
nationalist discourse during imperial times. A number of conclusions stem
from these pieces. Generally speaking, what emerges is that Ottomanism
should be considered as having been a viable and concrete option in the 19th

3 See, among others, Yilmaz (Jolak, "Ottomanism vs. Kemalism: Collective Memory and Cultural
Pluralism in 1990s Turkey", mes 42, no. 4 (2006): 587-602; and §uhnaz Yilmaz and Ipek
Yosmaoglu, "Fighting the Specters of the Past: Dilemmas of Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans
and the Middle East", mes 44, no. 5 (2008): 677-93. However, this field deserves closer
attention.

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OTTOMANISM THEN AND NOW 283

century. It should not simply be discarded, by applying a teleological approach,

as an unworkable concept that was bound to fail. As far as the contemporary
papers are concerned, their focus is on the meaning of Turkish (national) cul
ture, the need for internal pacification, Turkish foreign policy, and the sites of
imperial memory. This, already, conveys part of the story: although Ottoman
ism used to be a dynamic, multifaceted phenomenon that adopted numerous
avenues and permeated a variety of fields, its interpretation today seems to be
somewhat narrower and limited to specific areas and purposes. A number of
considerations can be drawn from this collective work.
Ottomanism was not a uniform concept. It was articulated in various over
lapping discourses and plans, at times competing and at other times compati
ble, carried out and propagated through different means. Emerging at the
onset of the reform period (Tanzimat, 1839-1876), Ottomanism took the shape
of a critique of reform, as Sotirios Dimitriadis aptly reminds us when referring
to the group known as the Young Ottomans. It embodied a call for changes
geared towards re-establishing the constitutional regime that had been sus
pended in 1878, as well as towards representing the rights and duties of the
non-dominant groups of the Empire, discussed in this issue with reference to
Albanian, Arab, Kurdish, and Jewish Ottomans (in contributions by Hamit Bo
zarslan, Stefano Taglia, and Michael Talbot). Ottomanism was also a state ini
tiative, oscillating between including foreigners in Ottoman society based on
organic law and using Muslims abroad as a tool of diplomatic harassment
against colonial powers, rooted in the idea of the religious legitimacy of the
sultan/caliph. Ottomanism was also the guiding principle behind the founda
tion of educational establishments that sought to mould pupils according to
specific societal values. This dynamic ideology took the shape of a transna
tional concept that necessarily transcended boundaries and was, surprisingly,
welcomed by some sections of Western society. It was not solely a defensive
discourse but an active 'global Ottomanism' that contributed to the formula
tion of anti-colonial practices. The diversity in discourse was also reflected in
the means each group and individual employed for implementing and dis
cussing each specific blend of Ottomanism: setting up and writing in journals,
undertaking missionary activity, organising a political opposition, (misapply
ing legal texts, and setting up ad hoc schools.
What clearly emerges from all of the historical articles is that Ottomanism
was, in all its aspects and facets, a political and civic nationalist discourse. Too
often, the emergence of nationalism in the wider Middle East is positioned in
the post-imperial period because, from the Western experience, nationalism
took shape after the fall of empires, either in the form of emancipation from
foreign rule or following a revolution. In parallel, there is also a tendency to

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284 TAGLIA (GUEST EDITOR)

analyse discourses and events in the wider Middle East through the lens of
religion,4 thus neglecting to consider Ottomanism as a more complicated dis
course than an Islamic reaction to Western imperialism or a secular ideology
copied from the West. In a similar way, the frequent claim that Ottomanism
should be regarded as a transnational discourse rather than a nationalist one
misses the nuances of the discourse itself. As is clear from this collection, Ot
tomanism, in its many forms, attempted to create a new concept of a political
entity and to locate the source of its legitimacy within an imperial framework.
Whether it was focusing on the rights of the non-dominant groups, abolishing
authoritarian rule, or incorporating newcomers to make them part of the game
and force them to respect the game's rules, the main objective was to turn sub
jects into citizens. This was carried out by drawing on local sources of inspira
tion, not unequivocally based on a religious ethos. In attempting to do all this,
old barriers of religion and ethnicity needed to be dismantled. Similarly,
whether it was used in a corrupt way, e.g. as leverage to harass the colonial
powers, or by non-Ottoman Muslims to legitimise their own position abroad,
Ottomanism revealed itself to be a real and powerful (at least for a time) asso
ciative discourse, so much so that disparate groups such as Albanians, Arabs,
Kurds, and Jews all discussed and negotiated their dual allegiance (to the state
and to their own communities).
In the historical contributions, Blumi's work shows that Ottomanism was
used by some to imagine their future as citizens of a unified Ottoman Empire
and that the ideology "took on the characteristics of a modern civic identity,
linking disparate actors by the simple conviction that the Ottoman Empire
must survive". Simultaneously, Ottomanism emerged as a defensive, but not
passive, and powerful idea that fuelled resistance to British and French colo
nial encroachments. As far away from Ottoman dominions as the Western In
dian Ocean and South America, those struggling against colonialism found in
the Ottomanism propagated by charismatic spiritual leaders a forceful ideolo
gy, which, in turn, contributed to the formulation of Orientalist images on the
part of the West. Akcasu and Dimitriadis brilliantly show how Sultan Abdiilha
mid 11 and his statesmen, including Midhat Pa§a, hoped to use Ottomanism as

4 In this sense, rather than Ottomanism, one should recall the idea of vatan, as formulated by
Namik Kemal and other Young Ottomans; which framed the idea of 'nation' and called for a
sense of patriotism as a reaction to Western ideas and policies, as well as being imbued with
Islamic undertones. For more on the Young Ottomans and vatan, see §erif Mardin, The Genesis
of Young Ottomans Thought: A Study in the Modernisation of Turkish PoUtical Ideas (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1962); and Nazan (Jigek, The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics of the
Eastern Questions in the Late-Nineteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

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OTTOMANISM THEN AND NOW 285

a means of creating a modern citizenry, with a clear awareness of nationality

and national culture, a modem education system, and a clear understanding of
their rights and responsibilities. From the discussion on this issue in Akcasu's
"Migrants to Citizens", it emerges that, by accepting migrants into the imperial
dominions, the sultan's Ottomanism was more interested in encouraging new
comers to embrace an Ottoman 'national' sentiment than it was in applying a
Sunni-Ottoman exclusivism in selecting 'new' Ottomans. However, Abdülha
mid also used Ottomanism to inspire the image of an accessible Ottoman na
tion for those outsiders struggling for independence from colonial rule. In
doing this, the contradiction between internal and external Hamidian Otto
manism stands out clearly: as Akcasu points out, the extraterritorial Otto
manism of the sultan relied heavily on the divine source of caliphal authority.
The presence of religion in external Ottomanism is also addressed in Sotirios
Dimitriadis's article. Using the example of an Ottoman vocational school
(1islahhane) in Salonica, Dimitriadis argues that as long as Ottoman authority
in the Balkans was not fully threatened, the school curriculum reflected an Ot
tomanism inspired by promoting a civic identity imbued with inclusiveness.
When Ottoman authority in the area began to be challenged, the curriculum of
the islahhane increasingly included Islamic elements, which served as a link
between those Muslim communities located in the newly emerging Balkan
states and the Ottoman Empire.
In the period when Ottomanism was emerging and developing, the Empire
was undergoing drastic changes that impacted various religious and ethnic
groups, with ethnic and linguistic nationalism being spread through mission
ary and foreign educational establishments, as well as through newly arrived
immigrants. Because of this, a substantial component of the formulations and
discussions on and around Ottomanism involved the non-dominant Ottoman
groups. In his article, Michael Talbot surveys the push and pull of Ottomanism
for a Jewish community faced with the powerful idea of Zionism. He depicts
a situation in which a whole community, divided between Ottoman Jews and
new Jewish immigrants, debated the issue of where its allegiance lay and what
the future held for its members. To counter the possible appeal of Zionism, the
state protected itself and the idea of Ottomanism by employing part of the Ot
toman Jewish community as educators of the population and censors of pos
sibly seditious publications. Bozarslan and Taglia, on the other hand, present
an assessment of oppositional Ottomanism, as propagated by members of the
non-dominant groups that challenged the Hamidian or Unionist visions of the
nation, as opposed to the more widely discussed position put forward by the
dominant members of the organisation known in Europe as the Young Turks.
What stands out is that among the Albanian, Arab, and Kurdish Ottoman

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286 TAGLIA (GUEST EDITOR)

communities there were those who were convinced proponents of Ottoman

ism. They abandoned it only after the Turkish community did; as Bozarslan
himself suggests, they were non-nationalist upholders of a multi-ethnic and
multireligious discourse, Ottomanism. What seems to emerge strongly from
Bozarslan's piece, however, is that Ottomanism was regarded by parts of the
non-Turkish Ottoman communities as being too loose an ideology and thus
prone to give way, too easily, to Turkist undertones, under the rule of the Com
mittee of Union and Progress. It was, nonetheless, regarded as an important
tool to manipulate in order to work against the hegemony of the Turkish com
munity, within the imperial framework. Taglia's contribution concentrates on
the specific formulations of Ottomanism developed by the Young Turk intel
lectuals in exile. Taking the works of the Albanian Young Turk ismail Kemal as
an example, Taglia's article emphasises the involvement of non-Turkish Otto
mans in formulating Ottomanism as a viable nationalist project. As a discourse
in flux, Ottomanism also allowed for simultaneous belongings, as the analy
sis of ismail Kemal's contribution to the thinking of Young Turk intellectuals
clearly shows. Efforts to reform the Empire by individuals such as Kemal, §erif
Pa§a, and Säti'al-HusrI should be regarded as genuine, despite their allegiance
to a specific community and their commitment to the latter's improvement.
The legitimacy of their actions, as well as their wholehearted commitment to
the welfare of two seemingly contradictory yet ultimately compatible com
munities, should be appreciated. In the end, it surfaces from this collection
of articles that Ottomanism failed for a number of reasons. Specifically, it was
abandoned by a large part of those who had been its proponents and believ
ers because its core idea of equality was betrayed by the dominant section of
society when the latter arrived at a crossroads: the struggle to pursue a multire
ligious and multi-ethnic avenue that appeared doomed to fail, or the appeal of
sacrificing everything, including the people, in exchange for gaining authority
and control over the political process and social environment.
The contemporary section of this collection further emphasises that Otto
manism was a more complicated and articulated discourse than the way in
which it is currently remembered. Neo-Ottomanism, on the other hand, pres
ents itself as a more linear and uniform train of thought. It is a specific pro
jection of 'what used to be' in the Ottoman world, with unequivocal targets
and with a narrower aim. Yet, as M. Hakan Yavuz argues, there are differences
within neo-Ottomanism as well. Although they are viewed as overlapping, the
neo-Ottomanisms formulated by former Prime Minister and President Turgut
Özal and by the jdp today are fundamentally different. From all these articles,
a common feature of both Ottomanism and neo-Ottomanism does in fact
emerge. Similar to Ottomanism, the re-examination of the Ottoman past, as

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OTTOMANISM THEN AND NOW 287

carried out specifically by Özal and, later, by members of the akp, should be
treated as a nationalist discourse. In this case, these new utterances of nation
alism are framed within a new conception and a drive away from the older Ke
malist world view, which is thought to have been, as Yavuz himself describes it,
too 'Jacobinian'. In today's Turkey, as highlighted by Gabriela Özel Volfovä and
Lerna Yanik, these thoughts are usually formulated for outside consumption,
as part of Turkish foreign policy, in order to re-establish Turkish primacy in the
Middle East and in the Turkic states of the former Soviet Union. However, the
projection of supremacy is also instilled within Turkey, for both foreign visitors
and Turks themselves. A case in point is the attempt to stretch Turkish 'owner
ship' of a number of sites that were part of Ottoman dominions, but that are
geographically outside modern Turkey, as Jeremy Walton's description of the
various replicas of Miniatürk highlights. Furthermore, the internal presence of
the memory and interpretation of the Ottoman past is undeniable. It becomes
crucial when, as Yavuz suggests, it serves the purpose of building a new nation
al (milli) identity. However, these new concepts should not be seen as having
emerged abruptly during recent years. As Yanik and Yavuz both underline, the
process has been slow and dates as far back as the first years of the Republic.
The process of negation or sidelining of the recent past that was perpetrated
during the Kemalist era should, therefore, be appreciated as part-and-parcel
of the reconstruction and political use of Ottoman memory. This brings into
consideration the use of the past. It is clear that the memory of what used to be
a little over a century ago can change drastically (i.e. between Kemalism and
the post-iggos), and can be reconstructed and reframed to suit the needs of the
ruling establishment. Walton describes how this memory is revived or erased
as part of a political project of nation-building or identity reinforcement, as in
the case of Istanbul Miniatürk, Thessaloniki's Yeni Camii and the tomb of Gül
Baba in Budapest; "[f]or many Turks today [Walton reminds us], neo-Ottoman
memory provides a template for the beautiful, the good, and the true." But this
same period can be remembered very differently by the contemporary heirs
of those who were non-dominant Ottomans during the last centuries of the
Empire. This is the focus of the paper by Ana Deviö, who analyses how Otto
man memory and its use by the Turkish government is interpreted as a threat
by Serbian observers of developments in the Middle East. As Devic shows, for
them, neo-Ottomanism is the new embodiment of the centuries-old expan
sionist ethos of the Empire, which threatened not only the territorial rights
of some, but also the overall security of 'Christian lands'. In this sense, the ex
ample depicted by Devic also speaks to an attempt to formulate and reinforce
Serbian identity, by imagining an archetypal enemy of the past and projecting
it into the present.

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288 TAGLIA (GUEST EDITOR)

A number of crucial considerations stem from the collection. Ottomanism

was multifaceted and should be regarded as a concrete attempt at the political
and cultural modernisation of the Empire, whether it originated from the sul
tan or the opposition. This was so much the case that it caught the attention of
the Great Powers and Muslims abroad. Its importance and centrality is also
manifested by the interest it receives in today's sociopolitical discussions. It
becomes clear that the interpretation of the past taking place in contemporary
Turkey, as well as in other post-Ottoman nation states, involves an exercise in
selective memory. In this sense, today's image of the Ottoman past is more
representative of Istanbul's version of Ottomanism than it is of its opponents
depicted in this collection. In fact, save for the central dilemma of how to deal
with non-dominant groups, contemporary discussions evolve around the at
tempt at regaining authority and supremacy in the area that was once the Ot
toman Empire. However, Ottomanism and neo-Ottomanism stand meaningful
comparison as both emerge from a concrete need to reposition a political en
tity following a period marked by old or unsustainable foundations. Whether
these old pillars constituted the legitimacy of the sultan/caliph, the contract
between an absolute ruler and his population, the political programme of ac
ceptance by the West, epitomised by the 'official' suppression of religion and
its symbols carried out in Republican Turkey, or the cultural reorientation car
ried out following the rejection of Turkey as a member of the European Union,
it is clear that a new 'nationalist' programme has been devised. Ottomanism
and neo-Ottomanism also share a homogenising mission: developing a dis
course that is inclusive of the various ethnicities and instilling a sense of pride,
one which is more grounded in its 19th-century contemporaneity in terms of
Ottomanism, rather than being geared up to a nostalgic attempt to re-establish
bygone grandeur, as in the case of neo-Ottomanism. Yet there is another aspect
that the two share, and it has to do with an increase in prestige on the world
scene. Ottomanism was intended to be part of an anti-colonial struggle, as the
ideology of a state that protected the oppressed and as an idea that contribut
ed to the formulation of transnational political dynamics. It strove to achieve
this by locating the Empire on the international scene as an important player.
Similarly, neo-Ottomanism's objective is to present Turkey as the heir and
rightful owner of past glories, the example of a successful, modern Muslim
society, and the alternative ally to the exclusivist and orientalist policies of the
West. There are also, however, fundamental differences between the two. One
that forcefully makes its way to the fore is that Ottomanism was an elitist ideol
ogy, one that the masses did not grasp in its entirety. Possibly due to other,
more appealing discourses, the larger Ottoman population regarded it as being
out of tune with the times. Neo-Ottomanism, on the other hand, speaks to the

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OTTOMANISM THEN AND NOW 289

wider population and, for many, is either an appealing, nostalgic world view or
the embodiment of a menace from the past that haunts today's world. How
ever, all aspects covered in this issue point to the fact that historical Ottoman
ism and its contemporary identifications are both concerned with redefining
national culture and a world view, one that involves geopolitical repositioning
and, ultimately, provides a sustainable blueprint for imagining the future. Last
ly, but no less importantly, both sets of discourses should be viewed as mal
leable ideologies in a state of constant negotiation, adapting to the changing
needs of their formulators and environment.

DIE WELT DES ISLAMS 56 (2016) 279-289

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