In a phone conversation, a dear friend wondered whether it would be terribly orientalist to ask if I would be interested in dining in the ambiance of an Ottoman palace over a menu titled “Aphrodisiac tastes.” It probably would have been an inappropriate question if the person on the other end of the line had not been my 26-year-old former student, Dina, from Egypt. Diligently planning her trip from Cairo to Istanbul, Dina came across one of the most amazing restaurants, Asitane (which means Constantinople), a shining star of Ottoman cuisine in Istanbul since 1991.
No one interested in Middle Eastern or European politics could escape the term “neo-Ottoman” in the last decade. A renowned Turkish historian, Kemal Karpat, traces the concept back to 1974; Greeks apparently came up with it to indicate Turkey’s desire to be more involved in lands previously under Ottoman rule. The term has since been used to define Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s foreign policy doctrine. Although Davutoglu relentlessly declares, “I am not a neo-Ottoman,” his name has become synonymous with neo-Ottomanism. Despite initial hopes that it would result in accomplishments, neo-Ottomanism in the last couple of years has only seen an ambiguous foreign policy strategy at best, and a failed foreign policy strategy at worst. However, the spirit of the ancestors — the Ottomans — has been felt in various aspects of life in Turkey, from music to soap operas, from fashion to perfume.
