Scholarship on the official historiography of the Ottoman Empire in modern Turkey assumes two fixed reference points: the early Republic, when the Ottoman legacy was firmly rejected, and the present, when it is eagerly embraced. It is accepted that Ataturk and his compatriots rejected Turkey’s Ottoman past, denigrating the Ottomans to promote their own vision of secular Westernization. Now Turkey is “coming to terms with” its Ottoman past as part of the country’s larger transformation into a regional power. Yet between these two points of comparison lies the largely untold story of how Turkish politicians and intellectuals gradually transformed the Ottoman Empire from Turkey’s foil into its source of inspiration. This paper examines popular perceptions of the Ottoman Empire during the 1950s, specifically in reference to Turkey’s new relationship with America and NATO. Evidence from Turkish newspapers from the time shows that during the 1950s many among the Turkish elite had accepted the fundamentally Turkish character of the Ottoman Empire and begun using it as a source of national pride. In doing so, they tailored their image of the Ottomans to fit their political needs, glorifying the Empire’s military valor in the face of Greek and Russian hostility, while also depicting it as secular, tolerant, revolutionary and pro-Western in its heyday. At the same time, they were faced with a public whose enthusiasm for Ottoman history was far greater than their own, as demonstrated by films and fiction of the day. Thus the 1950s saw ongoing tension between the official history taught in schools and the images that pervaded the popular consciousness. The United States, for its part, was distinctly aware of the question of Ottoman legacy as it sought to create an anti-communist alliance between Turkey and its formerly Ottoman neighbors in the Middle East. At the same time, US policymakers realized that Greece was likely to take offense to public glorifications of the Ottomans, which could undermine NATO unity. In exploring the way these tensions were managed, my work contributes to debates about the relationship between foreign policy and ideology as well scholarship on the contestation of historical memory. It also complicates an often simplistic narrative about Turkey’s relationship to its past by showing that the country’s embrace of its Ottoman legacy is by no means a new phenomenon.