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Abstract:
Turkish politicians, intellectuals and ordinary citizens usually take an ambivalent view of the Ottoman state. The founding fathers of Turkey, mostly soldiers and bureaucrats in the Ottoman state structure had, for the most part, negative perceptions owing to the loss of territory and defeats during the latter days of the Ottoman Empire. Consequently, republican Turkey endeavored to create a modern Turkish nation that was very much part of Western civilization. Nevertheless, fascination with the Ottoman Empire rose to the fore during the multiparty era of the 1950s and further increased in the 1980s and now under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The AKP leadership has been articulating a new identity and historical perspective to create a new national identity for Turkey. This article analyzes the nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire in Turkish politics by focusing on the conservative ideologue Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (1904–1983), who had a significant impact on the AKP leadership as well as on efforts to create a new post-Kemalist Turkey.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Rose McDermott (Citation2004) Political Psychology in International Relations, p. 167; also see Ofer Zur (Citation1991) The Love of Hating: The Psychology of Enmity, in History of European Ideas, 13, 4, pp. 361–362.
2 Mehmet Arısan (Citation2016) Eternal Sunshine of an Obscure Mind: World War I, the Imperial Collapse, and Trauma Management in the New Turkish Republic, in M. Hakan Yavuz & Feroz Ahmad (eds) War and Collapse: World War I, and the Ottoman State (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), pp. 1218–1239.
3 M. Hakan Yavuz (Citation2016) ‘Social and Intellectual Origins of Neo-Ottomanism: Searching for a Post-National Vision,’ Die Welt Des Islams, 56, p. 448.
4 Büke Koyuncu (Citation2014) Benim Milletim… AK parti iktidarı, din ve ulusal kimlik, (Istanbul İletişim), p.41. It should be noted that the term Neo-Ottomanism was first used by David Barchard, Turkey and the West, quoted in Yavuz, Social and Intellectual Origins, p. 443, n.12.
5 Yılmaz Çolak, (Citation2000), Civilizing Process from Above: Culture and State in Turkey, 1923–1945, Bilkent University, Ph.D. Dissertation, Political Science and Public Administration, pp.13, 144–145.
6 İnan Kalaycıoğulları (ed.) (2010) Aydın Sayılı Külliyatı. Hayatta en Hakiki Mürşit İlimdir. , Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Ankara, 2010.
7 Mete Tunçay, (Citation1992). TC’inde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923–1931), (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi) pp.149–159.
8 Ibid, pp.152–153.
9 Andrew Mango, (Citation1999). Atatürk. (London: John Murray), p. 499.
10 Menderes Çınar & İpek Gencel Sezgin (2013) ‘Islamist political Engagement in the Early Years of Multi-Party politics in Turkey,’ Turkish Studies, 14 (2), pp. 329–331.
11 Yavuz, ‘Social and Intellectual Origins of Neo-Ottomanism,’ pp. 439–440.
12 Ibid, p. 452.
13 Ibid, pp. 456, 459.
14 According to Yavuz, Kısakürek is characterized as ‘a leading ideologue of the AKP today.’ See ibid, p. 446.
15 N.F.Kısakürek, (Citation2008), Abdülhamid Han, (Istanbul: Büyük Doğu), (first published 1969), pp. 12–13.
16 Ibid, p. 13.
17 Ibid, p.14.
18 Carasso is described in one website as ‘the enemy of Turks and Muslims.’ See http://www.dunyabulteni.net/tarih-dosyasi/207790/sultan-abdulhamite-seni-millet-azletti-dediler, accessed: 15 June 2017.
19 Kısakürek (Citation1997) İdeolocya Örgüsü [Ideological Pathway] (Istanbul: Büyük Doğu Yayınları), pp. 476–478.
20 Ibid, p. 568.
21 Ibid, pp. 9, 12. Actually he uses the term “orderly officer” (emir subayı) but I thought handmaiden would better serve in this context.
22 Ibid, pp. 31, 33.
23 Ibid, pp. 64, 72.
24 Ibid, pp. 163, 197. He used the term “İslam İnkılabı” on p. 171 of his book, Ideological Pathway.
25 Ibid, p. 209.
26 Kısakürek, (Citation2011), Ulu Hakan: İkinci Abdülhamid Han, (Istanbul, Büyük Doğu), p. 643.
27 Ibid, p. 329.
28 Ibid, p. 340.
29 Ibid, p. 299.
30 Ibid, pp. 5, 10–11.
31 Ibid, p. 339.
32 Particularly Burhan Kuzu who denied that there were any territorial losses during his reign. See his tweet posted on 21 September 2016 at 4:10 PM. “II.Abdülhamit Han dünya çapında tam bir Devlet Adamı idi.33 yıl bu ülkeyi en karışık bir dönemde bir karış toprak kaybetmeden yönetti.” https://twitter.com/burhankuzu/status/778733235744313344?lang=en Accessed: 5 June 2019.
33 Ulu Hakan, p.168.
34 Ibid, pp.281, 338.
35 Ibid, pp. 310, 312–313, 344, 546.
36 Ibid, p. 478.
37 Ibid, p. 69.
38 ‘Abdülhamit Hanı yediler, biz Tayyip Erdoğan’ı yedirmeyeceğiz’, Hürriyet 3 March 2018, http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/bilal-erdogan-abdulhamit-hani-yediler-biz-tay-40760303, accessed March 23, 2018.
39 V. Engin, (Citation2010) Pazarlık: İkinci Abdülhamid ve Siyonist lider Dr. Theodore Herzl arasında geçen “Filistin’de Yahudi Vatanı” görüşmelerinin gizli kalmış belgeleri, (Istanbul: Yeditepe) pp. 1–3.
40 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/serkan-demirtas/eu-sanctions-on-turkey-over-cyprus-unwise-145018, accessed July 21, 2019.
41 Umut Uzer, The Revival of Ottomanism in Turkish Foreign Policy, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Winter 2018, p. 36.
42 Yavuz, Social and Intellectual , p. 459. For Turkey’s decreasing trust towards the European Parliament see Seda Gürkan, ‘The role of the European Parliament in Turkey-EU relations: A troublemaker or a useful normative actor?’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 18, (1), 2018.
43 Serhun Al, Patterns of Nationhood, pp. 152, 155.
44 Murat Somer ‘Democratization, Clashing Narratives, and Twin Tolerations between Islamic-Conservative and Pro-Secular Actors’, in M. Casier and J. Jongerden (ed.), Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue. pp. 32–34.
45 Ernesto Laclau, Discourse, p. 545.
46 Jorgensen, Discourse Analysis , pp.6–7.
47 Ibid, , p.1.
48 Laclau, Discourse, p. 543.
49 http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/ahmet-hakan/erdogan-millet-derken-ne-demek-istiyor-40415112, accessed August 20, 2017.
50 http://www.sozcu.com.tr/2017/gundem/erdogan-diyarbakirda-konusuyor-2-1769269/, accessed August 20, 2017.
51 http://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/2988/1915-osmanli-imparatorlugunun-en-uzun-yili-sempozyumunda-yaptiklari-konusma.html, accessed June 9, 2017.
52 http://www.yenicaggazetesi.com.tr/erdogandan-sultan-2-abdulhamid-aciklamasi-146660h.htm, accessed June 10, 2017.
53 See the long list https://www.google.com.tr/search?q=k%C4%B1sak%C3%BCrek+okulu&rlz=1C1CAFA_enTR630TR630&oq=k%C4%B1sak%C3%BCrek+okulu&aqs=chrome..69i57.3289j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8, accessed June 9, 2017.
54 http://www.tccb.gov.tr/konusmalar/353/69549/necip-fazil-kisakurek-odulleri-takdimi-toreninde-yaptiklari-konusma.html, accessed June 9, 2017.
55 http://www.necipfazilodulleri.com/, accessed February 5, 2019
56 Svante Cornell, ‘Erdogan’s Turkey: The role of a little known Islamist poet’, 2 January 2018, https://www.silkroadstudies.org/publications/joint-center-publications/item/13269-erdogans-turkey-the-role-of-a-little-known-islamist-poet.html, accessed March 23, 2018.
57 Mehmet Nuri. Şahin and Mehmet Çetin. (2010) Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, (Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yayınları).
58 Yavuz, Social and Intellectual, pp. 462, 465.
59 B. Koyuncu, (2010) Benim Milletim… AK parti iktidarı, din ve ulusal kimlik, pp. 77, 319–321.
60 Cemil Aydın & Burhanettin Duran, (2013) ‘Competing Occidentalisms of Modernist Islamist Thought: Necip Fazıl Kısakürek and Nurettin Topçu on Christianity, the West and Modernity,’ The Muslim World, 103.
61 Koyuncu, Benim Milletim, p. 192.
62 Ibid, pp. 267, 282.
63 Ibid, p. 325.
64 Uzer, Glorification, p. 356. İlker Aytürk coined the term post-Kemalism. See İlker Aytürk “Post- Post- Kemalizm,” in Birikim, November 2015.
65 Lerna Yanık, Bringing the Empire , pp. 467–468.
66 Koyuncu, Benim Milletim , p. 106.
67 Murat Bardakçı ‘Payitaht Istanbul’, Habertürk, 1 March 2017, http://www.haberturk.com/yazarlar/murat-bardakci/1408740-payitaht-istanbul, accessed August 1, 2017.
68 Elif Uluğ ‘Gerçek Osmanlıcılık bu değil’, Şalom 8 March 2017, http://www.salom.com.tr/haber-102324-gercek_osmanlicilik_bu_degil.html, accessed July 1, 2017.
69 Yavuz, Social and Intellectual, p. 459.
70 E. Uluğ, Hayaller Neo-Osmanlı, gerçekler…, Şalom 27 December, 2017.