Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 1 2012
Ottomania all the rage in Turkey
Neo-Ottomanism is becoming the political lens through which many Turks
view world politics. box-office record-breaker historical epic `Fetih
1453′ best exemplifies this trend.
1 April 2012 / SUNA Ã?AÄ?APTAY AND SONER Ã?AÄ?APTAY*,
`Fetih 1453′ (The Conquest 1453), a Turkish spring blockbuster that
glorifies the Ottomans and their conquest of Ä°stanbul, is breaking
viewership records in Turkey these days.
Over 5 million Turks have already seen the movie, making it the
country’s most popular film of all time. The film’s popularity sheds
light on Turkey’s emerging preoccupation with its Ottoman past:
Ottomania is all the rage in Turkey today.
In recent years, the Turks have re-engaged with their Ottoman past to
the point of abandoning the early 20th-century thinking of Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end
of World War I, Atatürk recreated Turkey in a European mold, in the
hopes of completely separating it from its Ottoman history. Atatürk’s
thinking, termed `Kemalism,’ dictated that Turkey could become a great
country only if it abandoned its Ottoman past.
Now, though, this need to distance themselves from their history has
passed, and the Turks are once again connecting with their Ottoman
heritage. Many Turks no longer seem content with an inward-looking
state of mind. Rather, buoyed by record-breaking economic growth over
the past decade and at the same time finding Kemalism’s century-old
thinking to be tiring, the Turks are, once again, feeling imperial.
The Turks’ excited embrace of their Ottoman heritage was most recently
demonstrated by the millions of people who flocked to the movie
theaters to see `1453,’ though this is not a pure `return to the
past.’ Rather, the rising Ottomania is laden with contemporary
accretions, such as consumerism and political neo-Ottomanism.
Resurgent Ottomania is especially obvious in Ä°stanbul, the former
capital of the Ottoman Empire. Once upon a time, Ä°stanbul was a
bustling metropolis at the empire’s heart. It was an Ottoman Babylon
of sorts, with a multitude of languages and religions, a city which
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk vividly describes in his novel `White
Castle.’ However, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the
imperial Ä°stanbul of long ago has vanished, giving way to an
increasingly homogenous city.
Lately, though, Ä°stanbul is rekindling its imperial character, and the
city’s cosmopolitanism is making a comeback. This is due to a variety
of factors, from the collapse of the Iron Curtain, which has linked
the city to its traditional Eastern European hinterland, to Turkey’s
booming economy.
Economic growth is the key. In the past decade, the Turkish economy
has nearly tripled in size, experiencing the longest spurt of
prosperity in modern Turkish history. The Turkish Sabah daily wrote
that in 2011 alone, another 9,755 millionaires joined the country’s
wealthy elite. With 38 billionaires, Turkey already boasts more
über-wealthy citizens today than Japan, Canada or Italy.
As is the case elsewhere, the city’s new rich class is buying
influence through the arts, bringing top-notch exhibits to Ä°stanbul.
Accordingly, Ä°stanbul is recovering from its 20th century provincial
cultural stasis, and its residents are rediscovering and embracing the
cosmopolitan Ottoman feeling of the olden days. In February alone, the
city hosted three select exhibits, which brought Rembrandt, Van Gogh
and Dali to the shores of the Bosporus. The former Ottoman armory
grounds hosted Dali’s works under oriental domes, while Van Gogh’s
paintings found their home in a warehouse along the city’s historic
port.
Another show introduced İstanbulites to Nazmi Ziya Güran, one of the
few Ottoman impressionists who blended Ottoman art with French
techniques in the late 19th century. The exhibit, housed at Kadir Has
University — whose campus is, poignantly, a converted 19th-century
cigarette factory — allowed Ä°stanbulites to experience fin-de-siècle
Ottoman impressionism first hand.
Indeed, the Ottoman Empire and its capital, Ä°stanbul, have always
embraced cultural and temporal crossings. When Osman I, founder of the
Ottoman principality, died in the early 14th century, his son and
successor, Orhan, had him buried in an Eastern Orthodox monastery in
Bursa, the first capital city of the Ottomans. With this act of
brilliant statecraft, Orhan kicked off a multi-religious vision for
the emerging Ottoman Empire. He paved the way for the integration of
the Christian and Jewish populations of the withering Byzantine Empire
into his state, catapulting the Ottomans to empiredom, thus
transforming Ä°stanbul into a cosmopolitan metropolis.
In due course, the Ottoman Empire expanded into Europe, thus
incorporating numerous Eastern European nationals, from Greeks to
Poles to Hungarians. As the empire became multiethnic, so did its
capital. By the 16th century, Ä°stanbul, with over a million
inhabitants, was the largest city in the world. It also boasted a
multilingual and multi-religious population, including Venetians,
Germans, Spanish Jews and Armenians, as well as Ottoman Turks.
After the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the 19th century, modern Turkey
was born of its ashes. Led by Atatürk, Turkey became a new state
dominated by an elite who sought to sever all ties with their Ottoman
past. Multiculturalism swiftly ended; Italians, Russians, Greeks and
Armenians left the city, and Ä°stanbul became almost entirely Muslim
and Turkish. The city’s imperial luster seemed to be lost forever.
Lately, however, this trend of homogenization has been reversed.
Instead, Ä°stanbul’s multi-religious and multiethnic nature is getting
a fresh infusion. Again, economic growth has been the key: In the
third quarter of 2011 alone, the Turkish economy grew by a record 8.2
percent, outpacing not only the country’s neighbors, but also all of
Europe. Turkey is the only growing and stable country in its region.
Hence, many Eastern Europeans, such as Romanians, Moldovans and
Russians, are returning to the city, looking for trade and jobs.
Azerbaijani, Ukrainian and Kazakh billionaires are coming to Ä°stanbul
to find a safe haven for the wealth they have amassed in the energy
and metals trades.
Initially attracted by the international trade and finance
opportunities Ä°stanbul offered, Western Europeans, too, returned. Some
of them eventually settled down and intermarried with the Turks, a
convergence reminiscent of the economic boom years that graced the
Ottoman Empire.
Even Armenians are coming back, thanks to economic growth. Since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of Armenian citizens
have arrived in Ä°stanbul in search of jobs. This influx has been so
significant that Armenians now outnumber the city’s 60,000-strong
Turkish Armenian community. Responding to the influx, Ankara recently
expanded its laws to allow the children of undocumented Armenian
immigrants access to the Turkish school system. The return of
Armenians `has reached a meaningful point,’ says Aram AteÅ?yan, acting
patriarch of the Armenian Church in Turkey.
The Greeks are coming back, too. The financial crisis in Greece has
started a mass migration of professionals to `Constantinople,’
including academics, doctors and teachers. Take Georgia Kapoutsi, for
instance, a 29-year-old English teacher from Athens who recently moved
to Ä°stanbul to `learn, work and live.’ `Wealthier Greeks are returning
to the city for its quality of life and to escape Greece’s chaos,’ she
notes. Ä°stanbul’s trendy Cihangir and BeyoÄ?lu neighborhoods are
brimming with wealthy Athenians who fill the district’s humming
bistros and vintage stores.
Ä°stanbul’s re-emerging cosmopolitan identity has even surpassed that
of the original Ottoman realm. Take, for instance, the Filipinos, who
are coming to Ä°stanbul as babysitters, and the Chinese, who have built
the city’s first Chinatown in downtown Taksim. Taner Akpınar, a
Turkish specialist in labor economics, points out that `due to free
labor movements ¦ Ä°stanbul has been a haven for immigrants from the
Asian countries.’ For instance, whereas only a decade ago, Central
Anatolian Turks and Kurds from Eastern Turkey provided domestic help
in upper class households, now rich Ä°stanbulites are increasingly
hiring East Asians, looking beyond traditional Ottoman realms. Indeed,
Ä°stanbul is opening to a whole new world.
Subsequently, new trends have recently emerged that help restore
Ä°stanbul’s imperial identity on the one hand, while challenging
Kemalism’s nation-state ethos on the other.
One of these trends is Ottoman Islamic consumerism. This trend, which
envisions the Ottomans as a religious civilization, is a type of
Ottoman revivalism that is increasingly being adopted by some of
Turkey’s newly moneyed conservative elite. Å?afak Cak, an
Ä°stanbul-based designer, says Islamic consumerism `explains why some
people are busy designing mansions with specially arranged praying
rooms and Swarovski-covered toilet seats.’
Consumerist and conservative Ottoman revivalism is not just limited to
interior design, though. Turkey now has a number of `Islamic’ summer
resorts, with baroque Ottoman architecture, state of the art services,
and separate facilities for men and women.
The rise of Ottoman revivalism is Kemalism’s demise in reverse. For
decades, visitors to Turkey were treated to Atatürk mania — statues
and portraits of Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk. Such depictions were
sprinkled across the country, from airports and schools to hotels and
homes. Now, medieval Ottoman calligraphy, indecipherable to many Turks
but undoubtedly Islamic in character, is replacing Atatürk mania.
Ottoman Islamic consumerism sells a simple message: Never mind who the
Ottomans really were, just buy their symbols.
A second and perhaps deeper trend is neo-Ottomanism, which overlays
the Ottoman legacy with modern day political sensitivities. Just as
the sudden spread of middle-class prosperity in 1950s United States
instilled a can-do attitude in Americans, the same is now happening in
Turkey. A young cab driver we spoke with in Ä°stanbul said, `Europe is
too small an arena for Turkey; we need to be a global player.’
Accordingly, in the past decade, Turkey’s Justice and Development
Party (AKP) government has pursued a foreign policy that transcends
the country’s 20th century Europeanizing vocation. Buoyed by economic
dynamism, political stability (the AKP has already run Turkey longer
than any other party since it became a democracy in 1946) and a new
supra-European vision, the Turks are again embracing their Ottoman
past, though with a modern, power politics twist.
Subsequently, neo-Ottomanism is becoming the political lens through
which many Turks view world politics. `The Conquest 1453′ best
exemplifies this trend. Armed with plenty of artistic license,
including an imaginary Turkish female chief engineer whose skills help
the Ottomans breech the walls of Constantinople, the movie casts
Ottomans and contemporary Turks as a superior but tolerant people,
enjoying their global power status.
After two hours of fighting between medieval Turks and Greeks, `1453,’
nevertheless, ends with a contemporary, albeit neo-Ottomanist,
political message. Having just conquered Ä°stanbul from the Greeks,
victorious Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II marches into the Aya Sofya, hugs a
little Christian girl, and promises a grand message of `a world of
Muslim-Christian coexistence, to be managed by the Turks.’ The French
paper Le Figaro also sees the film as confirming the rise of political
Ottomanism, saying, `The huge enthusiasm for this epic [film] is an
indication of the wave of Ottomania that has affected Turkey in recent
times.’
A third and alternative trend that enshrines Turkey’s imperial past is
cosmopolitan Ottomanism, reminiscent of Sultan Orhan’s vision. Deeply
rooted in a nostalgia for the Ottoman era, this vision calls for the
city’s inhabitants to cherish Ä°stanbulite cosmopolitanism.
The rise of cosmopolitan Ottomanism can best be observed in
Karaköy-Galata, the city’s Ottoman-era financial center.
Karaköy-Galata, which became dilapidated with shabby shops and parts
suppliers in the 20th century, is now being gentrified. The area’s
recent revival can be traced back to the opening of the Ä°stanbul
Modern Museum in 2004. Overlooking the Bosporus and the Golden Horn
and housed in a converted customs warehouse, this is Ä°stanbul’s answer
to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. A welcome addition to the city’s
contemporary art scene, the museum has 8,000 square meters of
exhibition space, and its permanent collection is filled with a
selection of modern Turkish art. Ä°stanbul Modern, which also hosts the
Ä°stanbul Biennial, the biannual contemporary art exhibition, calls
forth the city’s past cosmopolitan charms.
Furthermore, most of the Ä°stanbul-based Turkish universities and think
tanks have opened research centers in Karaköy-Galata, thus taking
advantage of the grandeur of Ottoman-era financial houses, especially
the Ottoman Imperial Bank building designed by French-Ottoman
Levantine architect Alexandre Vallaury.
The Ottoman Imperial Bank building now houses SALT Galata, a private
organization that promotes research in visual and material culture
with an open archive of print and digital resources. SALT Galata also
holds a 219-capacity auditorium, the Ottoman Imperial Bank Museum,
workshop spaces, a bookstore, a temporary exhibition space and a café,
Ca d’Oro Restaurant (named after the Venetian Palace overlooking the
Grand Canal, the Casa D’Oro) fitting the café’s paysage over the
Golden Horn.
Soon after its opening, SALT became a hub for contemporary art,
including an exhibit titled `Scramble for the Past,’ which explores
the historiography of archaeology under the Ottoman domain. The
exhibit affirms Ä°stanbul’s re-emerging cosmopolitan identity as a
blend of East and West and narrates archaeology not as a Western
imposition upon the East, but rather as a process that emerged out of
the interaction between Europe and the Ottoman world. This is one way
to define Ä°stanbul: a bit of Europe and a bit of the East.
In the past decade, Ä°stanbul has emerged as the wealthiest town
between Frankfurt and Mumbai, restoring its reputation as a global
city of political power. At the same time, Turkey has outgrown
Atatürk’s Europeanizing vocation, instead choosing to embrace its
Ottoman past. Accordingly, while Ä°stanbul rediscovers its true
cosmopolitan self, it will also emerge as a hub of consumerism and
neo-Ottoman political power.
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*Suna Ã?aÄ?aptay is an assistant professor of architectural history and
archaeology at BahçeÅ?ehir University, Ä°stanbul, where she focuses on
the medieval Mediterranean world. Soner Ã?aÄ?aptay is a senior fellow
and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.