Starting from the late 19th century into the 1930s the Turkish modernization project was modeled after France and took the French notion of civilization as the universal path to modernity. In the 1950s France was replaced by the United States and Turkish modernization took industrialism and capitalism of the United States as the model to follow. In the 1980s, Turkish modernization took yet another turn to model itself after the globalizing neoliberal policies of top Western countries, but adding to the mix a touch of the local. After briefly reviewing how Turkish modernity shifted gears through the 1930s, 50s and 80s, this paper focuses on public culture to trace how the politics of Turkish modernization was played out in the 2000s, which took a sharp turn towards a search for the true “roots” of the Turkish nation. Under the AKP government, this pursuit towards restoring Turkey’s ‘true culture and identity’ took the Ottoman as the ideal model to be followed. Possibly under the influence of the AKPs vision for Turkey as the cradle of “Ottoman-Islamic civilization,” a cultural movement started, referred to as “Ottomania” by recent literature, where elements symbolic of the Ottoman times started to proliferate in the public sphere from TV series, such as the “Magnificent Century,” to restaurants that are increasingly introducing selections from Ottoman cuisine or to fashion, furniture design and architecture that all take the Ottoman as the role model for Turkish modernization. Examining various elements of this new cultural movement, this paper argues that in the 2000s the trajectory of Turkish modernization took a sharp turn to move away from the century-long dream to “catch up with the West” to the projection of the Ottoman as the ideal to be modeled after. However, as with all projects that seek to transform society toward an ideal goal, the AKP project to restore Turkey to its Ottoman roots is also met with resistances, controversies and subversions both within and outside of Islamic circles. Even if bringing back the Ottoman has become quite a popular trend in public culture, what exactly the Ottoman is, and which elements of the Ottoman are going to be embraced and celebrated as representative of Turkey’s true heredity has become one of the key points of contention in Turkish politics, where different political groups and movements are articulating their ideological differences through contending images of the Ottoman.