Soner Cagaptay: Islamists and Ottomans
[Mr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of "Islam Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?" (Routledge, 2006).]
The reaction in Turkey to the recent death of Ertugrul Osman, heir to the Ottoman throne and successor to the last Caliph, could not be more shocking. Islamists in kaftans and long beards gathered in Istanbul two weeks ago to bury the titular head of the world Muslim community. He was a scotch-drinking, classical music-listening Western Turk who until recently lived on New York City's Upper East Side.
The Islamists' embrace of Osman, a descendant of the Westernized Ottoman sultans, provides a window into the Islamist mind. Islamism is not about religion or reality. Rather it is a utopian ideology. Osman, raised by a line of Western-leaning caliphs and sultans, loved Atatürk's Turkey, yet the Islamists abused his funeral and the memory of the caliphate, changing him into a symbol for their anti-Western, anti-secular and anti-liberal agenda.
Despite what the Islamists want the world to believe, the Ottoman caliphate was not anti-Western. The Ottoman Empire always interacted with the West—an interaction that goes all the way back to 16th-century Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who envisioned himself as the Holy Roman emperor.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman sultans and caliphs embarked on a program of reforms to remake the Ottoman Empire in the Western image to match up with European powers. To this end, the caliphs launched institutions of secular education, and paved the way for women's emancipation by enrolling women in those schools.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the sultans and caliphs of the Ottoman Empire embodied Western life and Western values. The last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, considered the Ottoman state a Western power with a Western destiny. An enlightened man and avid artist, the caliph's sought-after paintings, including nudes, are on exhibition at various museums, including Istanbul's new museum of Modern Art.
It is therefore wrong to represent the Ottoman Empire as the antithesis of the secular republic founded by Atatürk. When Atatürk turned Turkey into a secular republic in 1923 by abolishing the Ottoman state and the caliphate, he fulfilled the Ottomans' dream of making Turkey a full-fledged Western society. Atatürk's reforms are a continuation of the late Ottoman Empire...
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The reaction in Turkey to the recent death of Ertugrul Osman, heir to the Ottoman throne and successor to the last Caliph, could not be more shocking. Islamists in kaftans and long beards gathered in Istanbul two weeks ago to bury the titular head of the world Muslim community. He was a scotch-drinking, classical music-listening Western Turk who until recently lived on New York City's Upper East Side.
The Islamists' embrace of Osman, a descendant of the Westernized Ottoman sultans, provides a window into the Islamist mind. Islamism is not about religion or reality. Rather it is a utopian ideology. Osman, raised by a line of Western-leaning caliphs and sultans, loved Atatürk's Turkey, yet the Islamists abused his funeral and the memory of the caliphate, changing him into a symbol for their anti-Western, anti-secular and anti-liberal agenda.
Despite what the Islamists want the world to believe, the Ottoman caliphate was not anti-Western. The Ottoman Empire always interacted with the West—an interaction that goes all the way back to 16th-century Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who envisioned himself as the Holy Roman emperor.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman sultans and caliphs embarked on a program of reforms to remake the Ottoman Empire in the Western image to match up with European powers. To this end, the caliphs launched institutions of secular education, and paved the way for women's emancipation by enrolling women in those schools.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the sultans and caliphs of the Ottoman Empire embodied Western life and Western values. The last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, considered the Ottoman state a Western power with a Western destiny. An enlightened man and avid artist, the caliph's sought-after paintings, including nudes, are on exhibition at various museums, including Istanbul's new museum of Modern Art.
It is therefore wrong to represent the Ottoman Empire as the antithesis of the secular republic founded by Atatürk. When Atatürk turned Turkey into a secular republic in 1923 by abolishing the Ottoman state and the caliphate, he fulfilled the Ottomans' dream of making Turkey a full-fledged Western society. Atatürk's reforms are a continuation of the late Ottoman Empire...