How embracing 'Ottomania' may backfire on Turkey's ruling party
As the April referendum approaches, the pro-Erdogan camp’s calculation to benefit from the Ottoman dream is shattered with a member of the dynasty demanding reparations and the throne.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's neo-Ottoman dreams have crumbled in the Middle East, so to conceal this Islamists have turned neo-Ottomanism into a lucrative social business in Turkey.
If you scanned last week’s news from Turkish newspapers or social media, you might doubt that the Ottoman Empire had in fact collapsed in 1922 and that the descendants of the dynasty had been sent into exile in 1924. Turkey has gone neo-Ottoman on steroids.
Although in 1974 members of families of Ottoman rulers were allowed back into Turkey, most of them kept low profiles and lived modestly. As Ryan Gingeras, associate professor at the naval postgraduate school in Monterey, California, explains in his book "The Fall of the Sultanate," Ottoman family members were always respectful and considerate about the new republic’s laws.
The last registered member of the Ottoman royal family died in 2012, while Turkey’s neo-Ottoman foreign policy was making headlines with aggressive yet inconclusive struggles. Much to Erdogan’s chagrin, neo-Ottoman aspirations in the Middle East have collapsed, yet neo-Ottomanism took off in the domestic cultural sphere through soap operas detailing the mysterious life of the palace and the royal family. Ottomania immediately caught on in the commercial sphere. Everyone could fantasize about being a sultan or sultana for a day or a couple of hours with fancy costumes, scents, hamams, jewelry and home decorations. It was only a few years ago that Istiklal Avenue was bursting with tourists and street vendors were advertising women’s lingerie as “Hurrem Sultan’s nightgown, this will surely take you to the Sultan’s bed at night.”
