Political instrumentalization of the Ottoman past in contemporary Turkey :|the case of Diriliş Ertuğrul

Abstract

The Ottoman past of Turkey has always been a source of nostalgia in Turkish political history. In contemporary Turkey, the use of the Ottoman past goes beyond nostalgia and has become the central feature of neo-Ottomanism. As an ideology of adopting Turkey’s political and cultural Ottoman legacy, the concept of neo-Ottomanism was first used during the Turgut Özal period and has been revived under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The objective of this research is to find out the characteristics of contem-porary neo-Ottomanism. A television series about the father of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, “Diriliş Ertuğrul”, is analyzed in pursuit of this objective. Because the series is aired on a television channel of the state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) and is explicitly endorsed by the political elite, it represents neo-Ottomanism as a political ideology. As a result of the analysis of contemporary mass media in Turkey, it can be said that neo-Ottomanism which is represented in “Diriliş Ertuğrul”, imagines a morally superior Turkish-Islamic nation and regards Turkey as a great power that protects the Islamic World.