Roaming through the streets of the old imperial capital Istanbul is a true feat for a provincial Ankaran like myself. Almost every corner of this city offers the depth, history and mysticism that our official, almost artificially modern capital so severely lacks.

However, the contrast between the two cities is not only limited to their backgrounds or the heritage of their historical monuments. Neo-Ottomanism, the revival of the intellectual legitimacy of the Ottoman Empire, is fully at work in many of the major cities of Turkey. That being said, Istanbul most effectively demonstrates the intellectual return of Ottoman culture in our social, cultural and political lives. Within a half day of strolling around Sultanahmet one cannot but notice boards indicating Ottoman clubs, foundations that research Ottoman studies or other signs of a distinct revival of our Ottoman past.

Last week I noticed that the Turkish Armed Forces now own up to the Ottoman coat of arms, for years a sign of Islamism/Ottomanism, now most visibly demonstrated with stickers on cars throughout Turkey's major cities. Turkish army museums now freely display the Ottoman coat of arms as part of our military/state heritage. These are of course very healthy signs. Yet, these were anathema only a decade ago, when symbols of our Ottoman heritage were still regarded as signs of backwardness or dangerously Islamic.

What then is going on in Turkey? Why is Osman making such a forceful return that no part of society can deny or resist? There are a multitude of reasons. The most significant reason is that fundamentally the doctrines of the republic have been unable to respond to the moral and ethical needs of Turkish society. The republic was successful in creating a political superstructure which made a leap towards becoming a modern country possible. The republic also accomplished fundamental reforms which eventually led Turkey to a multiparty democracy. Yet the style was authoritarian, did not permeate to the public level effectively, and remained by and large a project of the elite. Large segments of the country remained beyond the reach of the republican project to transform Turkey from the top down. However, the most significant deficiency was the inability to provide a secular ethic, a moral code that would respond to the needs of Turkish society. Not all was gloomy. In some areas the nation-building was successful, but even these gains were limited. A critical turning point was the discrediting of the Marxist-Socialist model, which occurred with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Unable to respond to a multitude of challenges including globalization, the Turkish nation-state moved onto the defensive. The global rise of identity politics and the concomitant ascent of religion continue to defy the intellectual legitimacy of the republic, which was founded on the basis of a secular, unitary state based on constitutional citizenship. It is under these conditions that neo-Ottoman tendencies have gained considerable momentum in Turkey. On the foreign policy front as well, from Bosnia to the Crimea, and from Karabakh to Iraq, Turks are constantly reminded about a distinctly Ottoman geopolitical space.  

From the domestic to the external domain, neo-Ottomanism is back in swing and reasserting itself within the Turkish elite. Turkey's intellectual regeneration is destined to continue for some time -- as the prominent Turkish writer Cemil Meriç years ago noted, not by disassociating ourselves from the past, but on the contrary, by embracing our rich and diverse Ottoman past and culture and marrying them with the positive and modernist gains of the republic.