Historical Reflection on Neo-Ottoman Weltanschauung: between Identity-making and Foreign Policy

The text is a diachronic presentation of the development of neo-Ottoman ideology in Turkey. After six decades of secular Kemalism that assimilated minorities under a single Turkish identity, Turgot Özal’s government progressively reintroduced elements of Islam in Turkish public life and revived the 19th-century concept of Ottomanism involving a multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious state. Islamic spiritual movements contributed to the start of formation of a new Turkish identity with a strong Ottoman Islamic character This process has been continued under the rule of the AKP, a party rooted in Islamic tradition but active in foreign policy. According to the party theoretician Ahmed Davutoğlu, the Middle East turmoil results from the destruction of Ottoman cosmopolitanism by the European model of secularism and political nationalism and Turkey can be a pivotal state in the region. The AKP perceives Islam as a key for a new identity that will unify the various domestic ethnic groups and a way to calm regional instability while its current foreign policy carries strong pan-Ottoman undertones.