adopted Ottomanism as a promise to its supporters for a wealthy and glorious future.

Transcription

1 Re-placing Ottomans: How to Understand AKP s Istanbul 1 Ayşe Çavdar The topic of my presentation is the reflection of neo-ottomanism in the urban social and physical landscape during the AKP period, namely in the last 15 years. The conventional way to discuss such a topic should be starting from the a historical/chronological point of view up to today and then an analysis of its dynamis via examples. However, the complicated presence of neo- Ottomanism in the political discourse of the AKP, or the neo-right wing politics in Turkey or neoconservatism needs another approach. Thus I will start examining the reflections of Ottomanism today and go back to the roots of this ideology. I chose some specific examples in order to demonstrate how Ottomanism is incorporated in the political discourse of the AKP and how it is embodied within the urban landscape. First of all, I would like to stress that the merge of Ottomanism and Islamism in the discourse of political Islam is not new. It started in the 1980s, although there were many factions within Islamism that were highly critical of the Ottoman Empire. Neverthless, later, the Welfare Party adopted Ottomanism as a promise to its supporters for a wealthy and glorious future. One of the first and most important occasions of this marriage between Islamism and Ottomanism occured in 1994, right after the local elections in which Tayyip Erdogan became the mayor of Istanbul. The Welfare Party celebrated its election victory as a conquest. Right-wing politicians, such as Adnan Menderes, Turgut Ozal initiated celebrations for the conquest of Istanbul before. But it was the first time a political party was appropriating the term conquest as 1 Presented in the panel "Neo-Ottomanism: An Investigation into Narratives, Museums, and Urban Spaces, Turkologentag 2016, Hamburg. 1

2 a direct presence in its political discourse. Necmettin Erbakan, in his speech in the celebration on 29 May 1994, the 541st anniversary of the Conquest said: Our party won the local elections in Istanbul, like many other towns in Turkey. The Istanbul municipality is now trusted to believers. In this way, after 541 years, Istanbul is virtually conquested one more time. I should mention that our aim is the happiness of the 6 billion people in the world. Then he summarized how to provide happiness for all: First, getting power in the local municipalities, second, winning the general elections and the central government, and establishing the Islamic Union. Later on, Tayyip Erdogan, as the newly elected mayor of Istanbul visited Saudi Arabia to be a Hadji, and then came back with excellent news that he found enough money to rebuild Istanbul. Then after a couple of months, the housing project named Basaksehir started with another big celebration. In the first phases of Basaksehir, there is no sign of Ottomanism, but in the later stages, Istanbul Municipality attempted to revitalize the idea of Ottoman neighborhood in the physical landscape of Basaksehir in the form of villas. However, because they had been prudent about the usage of land, the villas were too close to each other and surrounded by the huge blocks. Basaksehir I. Etap Basaksehir dorduncu etap Meanwhile, in parallel to Basaksehir s first phases Istanbul Municipality built Hilal Mansions; a gated community in Uskudar, on the Anatolian side of the city, in which Tayyip Erdogan, Abdullah Gul and other elites of political Islam lived together. 2

3 In Hilal Mansions, there are more architectural elements imitating the Ottoman material heritage. When I was conducting the research for my Ph.D. thesis, I asked the municipal officers who engaged with both projects why Basaksehir could not be like Hilal Konaklari. The answer was simple: Basaksehir was for lower classes with limited income, while Hilal Konaklari was an elite project. Consequently, it becomes apparent that the concept Ottoman refers to something wealthy, elite and glorious. Thus it emerges as an aesthetic ideology representing political Islam s approach to mundane affairs and social justice. It merely recasts the ordinary class distinctions of any market society. Hilal Konakları However, if one insists that they ideological and architectural fathers of these projects want this material wealth only for the elites of political Islam, one would be failing to understand the complexity of the Ottomanism in the neoconservatism's political discourse. There is also a populist element in the political Islam s Ottomanism. I will explain it later with another case from the 1990s. After Tayyip Erdogan's victory in Istanbul, the municipality declared that the contract allowing the usage rights of Malta, Kariye, Cadir and Hidiv palaces to TURING, a network of tourism agencies, would be terminated. The decision was an act intending to ban alcohol in public spaces since TURING was serving alcohol in these pavilions. Erdogan accepted that they would prohibit the alcohol in the palaces to open them to the religious people, who are excluded by the elites. Of course, he was mentioning the secular elites. 2 " 2 Arife Avcu, "Uzgun ve Kirgin Veda" (A sad and broken goodbye) 20 December 1994, Milliyet 3

4 This issue was widely discussed in the secular media, because it appeared just before the general elections of December 24, The media was claiming that the WP would "Islamize" the public sphere. After a very long struggle against the central government, Istanbul Municipality appropriated the Ottoman palaces to renovate them. The decision was declared with these sentences: "Istanbul Greater City Municipality has not forgotten the monuments built by our ancestors. The municipality restored and opened these pavilions to the people to rebuild the link between current generations with history." 3 In this case, we see how a discourse to defend the Ottoman heritage and also the rights of people on this legacy becomes the pretext of the Islamization of the public sphere. In this speech, the municipality accuses secular elites as the party excluding general, Muslim public to enjoy Ottoman heritage. Taking the religious crowds support, political Islam appropriates the public space using the Ottoman legacy. Meantime, it appropriates the idea of Ottomans for the religious Muslims. In other words, political Islam re-interprets and appropriates the Ottoman past as the past of Muslims. Çadır köşkü Considering the Republican conception of Ottoman Empire, as a backward civilization failed to survive, this appropriation becomes an easy task for the political Islam. In many occasions, we witness how political Islam reverses this historiography claiming the Republican elites gave a " 3 "Mehmet Efendi de köşklere girebilecek", Milli Gazete, 30 September 1996) Efendi "owner of slave" in Turkish is used ironically as an addition to the male names of those working in unqualified jobs like gatekeeper, vassal etc. as well as peasants. The title of the news report highlighted the populism of the RP comparing it to the elitism of secular politics, referring to the opposition of secular media and politicians to the opening of pavilions to people instead of tourism agencies. 4

5 wrong direction to Turkish Muslim society rejecting their Ottoman past. Thus, there is a tendency to go back to the point this failed modernization project of Republic started and initiated an alternative modernization. Therefore, political Islam was not against the modernization at all, rather, since the beginning, it suggests an alternative path for the modernization highlighting not secularized Turkish identity but a nation defined through its religious belonging. In that sense, there are many signs that political Islam sees Abdulhamid II period as the starting point. Of course, there are so many mentions to the Mehmet II, Yavuz Sultan Selim, Kanuni Sultan Suleyman and recently the first Sultans of Ottomans, but Abdulhamid II has a special place in the Ottomanism of political Islam. For example, in 2014, Cemil Ertem, one of the advisors to Tayyip Erdogan, told that Erdogan s economy policies are complementary to the Abdulhamid II s unfinished policies. He means the development projects based on the infrastructure such as roads and bridges and the oil-based foreign policy. 4 When it comes to the landscapes of Turkish cities, this complementary mission has many reflections, such as the third bridge, Kanal Istanbul, and clock towers. Beyond all the vast investment in the infrastructure, I want to stress a little bit on clock towers. Clock towers during the Abdulhamid II period had two functions: Indicating the power of Sultan and also educating Ottoman subjects about the modernization of time because the Empire accepted Western clock system in his period. Thus, Abdulhamit initiated to build clock towers not only in the Ottoman cities but also in foreign cities like Mexico, New York and Venice. Now, we see there are new clock towers rise in the emerging districts of the major cities in Turkey

6 İzmir Saat Kulesi Ankara Saat Kulesi Ottomanism in the discourse of the AKP also serves land transfer from old users to the new ones. There are two types of land transfer in that sense. On the one hand, some of the Ottoman architectural heritage is privatized for the sake of tourism. On the other hand, in some cases, Ottoman legacy becomes the coverage of expropriation of some lands, especially in the central urban areas. Here are two cases linked to each other through Ottoman archives. While the original archive building is privatized to a company named Ipekyolu as a hotel, the state built a new facility in Kagithane expropriating the land occupied by gecekondu neighborhoods. Sura Hotel Ottoman Archive My last example is related to the religious generation that Tayyip Erdogan wants to produce. In one of his speeches, he compares two examples from the very late times of Ottoman Empire. Tevfik Fikret s real son Haluk and Mehmet Akif s imagery son Asim. Haluk, for Tevfik Fikret, is not only a real child but a civilizational project. He sent his son to Scotland and the US to get an education. However, instead of being a secular intellectual like his father dreamed, Haluk became a protestant priest. Asim, on the other hand, maybe because he was only an imagery person, continues to represent his father s prominent Muslim civilization ideals. In one of his speeches, Erdogan compares Haluk and Asim and says: In the one side, there is Asim tries to understand the West without ignoring East, and on 6

7 the other hand, there is Haluk goes to Scotland and the US and dies in a church. All of our steps (to create religious generations) are met with resistance by not our people, but by those minority defends Haluk-style Westernization. That sick Westernization still continues. We consider this in our education policies. This approach to create religious generations ended with the booming of religious high schools. In this fashion, the AKP converted many secular public schools into imam-hatip high schools. According to Egitim-Sen, a labor union of left-wing educators, the number of students attending the imam-hatip schools was in the end of the 1990s, this figure decreased to in 2002, and this year it reached to including both middle and high imam-hatip schools. 5 The curriculum of these schools are beyond this presentation, but when it comes to their architecture we see how Ottomanism is fortressed with another theme, called Seljukism. Often, both Erdogan and the other AKP representatives mention Turkish cities should represent both Ottoman and Seljukid architectural heritages. Basaksehir imam-hatip lisesi And the usage of this heritage as the capital of new Turkey gets a peak in a very famous building called Aksaray or Cumhurbaskanligi Kulliyesi. Aksaray Bulent Batuman, an architectural historian from Bilkent University describes how these intentions reflects in the Presidential Palace

8 It is evident that the primacy of the building is gloriousness. (However) The floor space of the monumental stairs is not sufficiently responding the height of the volume. Thus, the stairs are too upright, and one has to get too closer to see the upper floor. This composition reduces the magnificence of the stairs. 6 While reading Batuman s observations on the Kulliye s architecture it is easy to conclude that the technical capacity in architecture is not sufficient to reflect the meaning attached to the Ottomans and Seljukids. I think I gave enough examples to establish a brief conclusion about the content and function of Ottomanism in the AKP s neo-conservatist, neo-islamist, or neo-right wing political discourse. First of all, Ottomanism in the AKP s discourse appears as a critique not to modernization per se but specifically to the secular modernization during the Republican period. It portrays Ottoman heritage as the historical capital to invest in within this this new conservative modernization. In this alternative project, Ottoman legacy is something not to protect from change but to exchange with wealth and modernity. In that sense, Ottomanism serves as a legitimacy discourse covering the dispose of Ottoman material and immaterial heritage, simply as commodity. On the other hand, this neo-conservative Ottomanism does not develop an alternative historiography about the Ottomans. As Ugur Tanyeli rightly puts it, neo-islamism reads the Kemalist, republican historiography with a sound of resentment. 7 Why does not neo-conservative politics suggest an alternative historiography? I think the answer could be simple that they don t 6 Okul Cephelerinden Cumhurbaşkanlığı Sarayı na: Mimari Temsil olarak Osmanlı-Belçuklu ve Ulusun Millet Olarak Yeniden İnşası, Arrademento Mimarlik, sayı: 285, 2014/12, s Osmanli Mekaninin Pesinde: Sınır Metinleri, Akin Nalca Kitaplari, 2015, p. 24 8

9 need to suggest an alternative, in fact, nobody cares. The knowledge about the Ottoman Empire is necessary only as much as it serves to the political and economic interests of neo-islamists. Therefore, I define this neo-conservatist or neo-islamist Ottomanism as a neo-colonial ideology. Especially looking at the foreign policy of the AKP, I have enough reason to argue Ottomanism serves political Islam to build a new-imperial imagination for the future, but this part has to be left to the questions and answers. Finally, Ottomanism in the discourse of the AKP appears as a new definition of the nation. In this way, the AKP appropriates the political claims to build an environment not being hostile to the demands of different ethnic minorities. Almost every day, an AKP representative lists the ethnic groups living in Turkey such as Kurds, Laz, Circessians, Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, Arabs so on and claims their policies cover and represents all those groups. In practice, this discourse builds a limit to the political demands of these ethnicities contending with what the AKP provides. Looking at how the Kurdish cities which claimed autonomous administration which is also problematic because they could not communicate what they mean with autonomy are destroyed in last year provides enough sample how this multiethnic approach limits the space for the representation of demands instead of opening a space for them to negotiate their claims. 9