This paper examines Neo-Ottoman discourse in Turkish foreign and domestic policy, and how state-led rhetoric and hegemonic understandings of the term “Ottoman” misleadingly drives US policy and elides meanings and possible policy paths other than a narrow AKP-based definition. This definition in turn is used to arm Western pundits and policymakers with the image of equating Neo-Ottomanist foreign policy aims to political Islamism, antagonizing Western policymakers, while ignoring other non-State sponsored ideas about a past based around multiculturalism and inhibits a plurality of understanding, erasing the possibility for different “confessions” of Ottomanisms and visions of the past. Altering our visions of the past in this sense have direct implications for altering visions of future policy prescriptions that do not result in the deadlock and hostility embedded in US-Turkish relations we are seeing in our current situation. The paper suggests, utilizing a deeply interactive historiographical review of the use of the term “Ottoman” in Republican era literature, that disentangling current rhetoric about Neo-Ottomanism as related to nodal points of pop culture and rising Islamic sentiment in Turkey, dominant in rhetoric in commemorations of the Battle of Manzikert and Çanakkale anniversaries, will thus offer a plurality of meanings, as historically been seen for the term “Ottoman” enhancing our ability to imagine a different, less monochromatic past, and effectively a different future in US-Turkey policy. The paper is broken up into assessing the term Ottoman beginning with Yusuf Akçura’s “üç Tarz? Siyaset” in which the descriptor was used as more closely to bat?c?l?k in terms of political understanding, comparatively to türkçülük and islamc?l?k. It then moves into the dominant paradigms of a Kemalist versus Islamist contestation of Ottoman place in society, drawing upon the works of Çinar, Kaplan, and Brockett, to name a few who prop up the dominant narrative, against Nick Danforth and Soner Cagaptay who subvert dominant frameworks and understanding. It then follows a review of the term in foreign policy academic discourse which, as concluded, do not incorporate enough laterality in terminology beyond top-down, nation-state approaches and understandings. Analytically, decentering the nation-state in this framework allows for a broader ownership of the rights to Ottoman memory: i.e., for Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Sephardic Jewish diasporic communities, and departs from a misleading interpretation of the term which delineates limited understandings of the permanency of foreign policy bases in Gaullist policy measures which fuel limited bilateral policy maneuvers and options.

Narratives and representations of the past in the present sometimes tell us more about the present rather the past itself. Views of Ottoman history have varied in republican Turkey, according to political and ideological circumstances. The era of Sultan Abdulhamid II has remained one of the most contested ones, as it bridges the Tanzimat with the Young Turk revolution and is identified with oppression and an attempt to divert Ottoman modernization towards the consolidation of a personalistic autocracy, militarization and glorification of the state. It is also identified with massacres of Armenian populations and a very negative international image. While classic republican Turkish historiography has identified the Hamidian era with Oriental despotism, blamed it for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but exonerated it for the killings of Armenians, recent historical interest in the era has been characterized by a revisionist approach. Some of these approaches aim to contribute to a more balanced evaluation of the Hamidian period, identifying some bright sides and the continuation of Tanzimat reform in some areas, along the dark ones involving bloody oppression of dissidence and minorities. Other approaches move to the opposite extreme, aggrandizing Sultan Abdulhamid II and his era and also pointing at the alleged treason which the Young Turks committed against one of the most prominent Ottoman rulers, which precipitated the fall of the Ottoman Empire. These approaches have coincided with a re-evaluation -if not outright critique- of the ideological foundations of republican Turkey and the re-emergence of a strong cult of personality in mainstream Turkish politics. These conflicting views have been represented in the Turkish public sphere through publications and media productions and nurtured a new debate on one of the most controversial issues of late Ottoman history. They also reveal a lot about Turkey’s contemporary ideological and political developments. This paper aims to explore the reasons and the means for the changing perception of the Hamidian throughout republican Turkish history. It will be based on a combination of primary and secondary sources focusing on the Hamidian era, as well as republican Turkish historiography.

The rise of authoritarian regimes poses a challenge of understanding the logic of legitimacy claims in the rhetoric of 'strongman' not only in the Middle Eastern region. In the paper, we aim to explore the hypothesis that crucial elements in the legitimacy claim of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey are based upon 'historicist' assumptions. Historicism as outlined by Karl Popper can be understood in a broad sense as 'cultural engineering' with the aim of reinstating (elements of) a past (Ottoman) order, from which state and society have deviated during the Republican period. As in Plato's depiction of the democratic period, the republican period in Turkey is characterized by Erdogan as one of disorder and decay, while the 'New Turkey' (Yeni Türkiye) aims at reinstating (imagined) values of an old order by socially re-engineering state and society. However, in contrast to 'first generation' political Islam in Turkey (Erbakan and Milli Görüs), Erdogan developed a new brand of historicism which combines utopian social engineering (the 2071 vision for instance) with a gradualist approach of (Popper’s favorite) piecemeal social engineering. The paper applies the concept of historicism to analyze how references to the past, especially to some aspects of (late) Ottoman history are used in Erdogan’s rhetoric to drive and legitimize his claim to power. In contrast to Popper’s rigid distinction between utopian and piecemeal social engineering, the results point at a mindset that can be labeled as 'smart historicism'. Methodological we combine a single case study with elements of content analysis (using MaxQDA) and hermeneutic interpretation of Erdogan's public speeches (formal rhetoric) as well as phrases used at party gatherings and in the media for his critics (informal rhetoric). For instance, the slogan of a 'New Turkey' is used in formal rhetoric, while informal rhetoric such as 'know your place' and 'pay your price' very well match Plato's rhetoric of a closed (tribal) society. The paper will show that both the formal and the informal rhetoric refer to a historicist mindset of an ideal state, in which change is arrested and the well ruled individuals know their place and limits, or have to pay a price. Thus, while in general Popper’s concept of historicism in the case of Turkey’s Erdogan offers a useful framework for analyzing authoritarian claims to power, we suggest making it more flexible and up to date by using the concept of smart historicism.

In the last decade, academics have been debating whether Turkey has been breaking away from the West (Kalin, 2011). The purchase of Russian made the S-400 air defense system and military operations in Syria and Libya sparked a debate on whether Turkey should be expelled from NATO (Boot 2019). Along with the orientation, Turkey's foreign policy instruments have changed too. Turkey extensively uses militant proxies in Syria and Libya, arrest foreign individuals for hostage diplomacy (Cuplo 2018), and Syrian refugees to blackmail the European countr?es. Besides, employing Muslim Brotherhood ideology to penetrate the Muslim world, reaching out to Muslim Diasporas in the West to buy influence, and conducting well-calculated counter-terrorism operations to use it as a bargaining chip are the other tools that the Erdogan government often use. Losing his hope in the EU process, facing a popular uprising in Gezi protests, and witnessing the Western support to the military coup in Egypt made Erdogan reconsider his relations with the actors in the international arena. Since then, he has adopted a survival strategy. As a result, instead of a long-term pro-Western foreign policy for absolute gain through EU membership, he chose a Waltzian view of international politics. Now, for Erdogan, "relative gain is more important than absolute gain" (Waltz 1959, 198). This paper argues, since the Arab Spring, Erdogan has transformed Turkey's foreign policy from long-term pro-Western oriented policy to a sort-term transactional foreign policy. Currently, Turkey's foreign policy has three aims: first and the most crucial objective is to maintain public support for his reign by using foreign policy tools for domestic political consumption. Second, Erdogan uses the new tools to repel Western criticism towards deteriorating human rights records and gaining the upper hand in negotiations with Europe and Russia. The third aim is to insert himself into Muslim affairs to grab a chair to sit on the negotiation tables. This study aims to understand the transformation of Turkey's foreign policy through the lenses of neoliberalism and to neorealism. The main question that this paper addresses is why Erdogan has adopted a new foreign policy perspective that requires him to focus more on the Middle East and Muslim affairs? What Turkey calculates to gain by employing new foreign policy strategies and tools? These research questions are addressed by using qualitative methodology, including in-depth interviews with diplomats, military officials, and academics and analyzing official statements, press news, and publications.

Historically, Turkey has been financially and culturally integrated with the West rather than the East. Following the conservative and Islamist Justice and Development Party's (AKP) coming to power in 2002, Turkey emerged as a greater economic and political power not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia. Along with the rapid growth and globalization of its media industry, the geopolitical and economic interests of Turkey in these regions significantly increased. In the last three decades, the television industry in Turkey and its audiences have undergone dramatic transformations. In the meantime, Turkish media products have become more transnational, and also controversial, over a vast geography from the Middle East, Eastern Europe to North Africa. Even today, despite the recent crisis in the Turkish economy, the Turkish TV industry is still a pioneer in the global media market as the second highest exporter of scripted TV series in the world (Turkey world’s second, 2014; Vivarelli, 2018) and the 5th largest TV program exporter worldwide in 2016 (France and Turkey, 2016). The global success of the Turkish TV industry created enormous excitement in the country’s popular public discourse with the hope that television exports would play an important role in promoting Turkey’s image in the world and thus, further strengthen its soft power by attracting tourists, developing diplomatic relations, and expanding business opportunities. However, the industry’s competitive struggle to create cutting edge and high quality content also necessitated engagement with culturally and politically sensitive topics, causing unease among certain factions of society, including government officials. In the international popular discourse, the success of Turkish TV content was welcomed with much surprise but without much explanation for its popularity other than its production quality. Therefore, our presentation treats Turkish television’s recent transnational expansion as a consequence of a number of shifts in both global and local markets. The paper aims to explore Turkey’s complex and rich socio-cultural and political landscape that shapes its television production, distribution and reception while critically scrutinizing various concepts and conceptual perspectives that have been previously used to explain the global popularity of Turkish TV, such as neo-Ottoman cool, public diplomacy, contraflow of global media, Turkey’s soft power, and cultural proximity. The authors reconsider these concepts by exploring the dissemination and popularity of Turkish TV products, the content of popular TV series, and the reception of these exports by Turkish audiences.