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Ottoman Nostalgia and the Revival of Intertextual Practices in Contemporary Turkish Literature

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Ottoman Nostalgia and the Revival of Intertextual Practices in Contemporary Turkish Literature 1 unpublished paper, please do not cite without permission from author Cinnet­e Osmaniye: Ottoman nostalgia and the revival of intertextual practices in contemporary Turkish Literature. Matthew Lundin Like a ghost speaking from the grave, the late Caliph Abdulhamid II has an active presence on Twitter. Every few days he tweets to his followers, calling on them to adopt the ideals of pan­Islamic solidarity in a tone of unabashed imperial pride. He posts black and white photos of a bustling turn­of­the­century Galata bridge, maps showing the contours of the empire at its apogee, and, appropriately enough for social media, plenty of self­portraits.1 Ottoman ghosts are showing up in all kinds of ways in contemporary Turkish pop culture. The recent explosion of interest in the former empire, dubbed Ottomania, has invaded cultural forms both high and low. Amassing collections of calligraphic artifacts in the Arabic script has become a newfound hobby among the rich2. Plans are made to construct shopping malls made to 1 (Abdülhamid Han). 14 Nov 2014. https://twitter.com/abdulhamid_han. Tweet 2 Schick, Irvin Cemi̇l. "The Iconicity of Islamic Calligraphy in Turkey." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics No. 53/54 (2008): 211-24. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25608818?ref=no-x-route:3d92bcd29c8f41776d56dc79714e46ad>. 2 resemble Ottoman military barracks3. On television, one can find the wildly popular Turkish soap opera Muhteşem Yüzyıllar, which has spread Ottomania internationally. The show has been dubbed and broadcast in many areas which were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire4. In Egypt, it has even spawned its own vassal series, Saraya Abdeen, just in time for the month of Ramadan. The show is set during the reign of Khedive Isma’il and features a queen with her own Ottoman Turkish catchphrases. Like Saraya Abdeen, Burger King has for years capitalized on the consumer­oriented festivities of Ramadan to offer its Sultan menu. What has perhaps attracted even more attention in the press and academic circles are those shifts in Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy explained by Ottomania. Originally conceived in tandem with Ahmet Davutoğlu’s “zero problems” foreign policy strategy, variations on the idea has been recruited as a political symbol by competing ideologies, with pro­Ottoman Islamists imagining a return to the Caliphate, and cosmopolitan secularists lauding a lost multicultural past. It is a fantastical alternative for those outside of power, as well as the aesthetic aspiration for the ruling regime5. As a political category, Ottomania has come to be an empty signifier. “The Ottoman past, like all history, is an arena for symbolic competition, between all of the obvious ideologies —nationalism, religion and liberalism—vying for control of Turkey's future.”6 Ottoman Voices The Abdulhamid Twitter account can be seen as both a product of the cultural and political manifestations of Ottomania. This would seem to imply a contradiction between nostalgic entertainment and the serious business of politics. There is indeed an element of tongue­in­cheek humor, and on its surface the Abdulhamid twitter account seems to coincide with other superficial celebrations of Ottoman history in popular culture. But despite the medium, there is a clear political ideal being communicated; a message that sets itself in opposition to not only a current state of politics, but to the state itself. 3 The Gezi protests in 2013 were started as opposition to this plan 4 Batuman, Elif. "Ottomania - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. N.p., 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2014. 5 If the AK party has shown any consistency in its cultural policy, it could be described as a fondness for imperial kitsch. 6Danforth, Nicolas. "Know Your Neo-Ottomanisms." Mid-Afternoon Map. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2014. 3 Osmanlı toprak üzerinde kurulmuş bir imparatorluk değildir sadece. Bir zihniyettir, bir hassasiyettir. Bu yüzden Osmanlı yıkılmadı!7 There is something strange about the way that Abdulhamid speaks on Twitter. His discourse exists in a temporally ambiguous space, somewhere between the royal pageantry of the early modern period, and the pressing political debates taking place in the Middle East today. In fact, the latter is often commented on using the grandiloquence of the former. He speaks, for example, about reinvigorating the Ummah as a united Islamic political community as a way to fight against Israel and Western Imperialism. Biz Arabız, Türküz, Kürdüz diyerek parçalanan ümmet, "BİZ MÜSLÜMANIZ" dediğinde kurtulacak!8 And the spiritual community proposed is not merely the Ummah, but the reestablishment of the Ottoman Empire. Bağdat'tan Şam'a, Kahire'den Üsküp'e.. Dünya Osmanlı'yı özlüyor!9 The language used to communicate these messages is itself strange. While many of the expressions and ideas are old­fashioned, the attempt to match the writing style with antiquated language is somehow off. As much as it resurrects the past in archival images and historical allusions, its language isn’t an accurate recreation. It is the attempt by someone who doesn’t know Ottoman Turkish to mimic its perceived eloquence in 140 characters. 7 “What was founded upon Ottoman lands was not merely an Empire. It is a mindset, a sensibility. This is why the Ottoman has not been destroyed.” (AbdülHamid Han). “Osmanlı toprak üzerinde kurulmuş bir imparatorluk değildir sadece. Bir zihniyettir, bir hassasiyettir. Bu yüzden Osmanlı yıkılmadı!” 18 August 2014, 5:07 p.m. Tweet. 8 “For those who said we are Arabs, we are Turks, we are Kurds, and took apart the Ummah, they will be saved when they say WE ARE MUSLIMS” (AbdülHamid Han).“Biz Arabız, Türküz, Kürdüz diyerek parçalanan ümmet, "BİZ MÜSLÜMANIZ" dediğinde kurtulacak!” 11 October 2014. Tweet. 9 “From Baghdad to Damascus, from Cairo to Skopje… The world longs for the Ottoman!” (AbdülHamid Han).“Bağdat'tan Şam'a, Kahire'den Üsküp'e.. Dünya Osmanlı'yı özlüyor!” 10 October 2014. Tweet. 4 Bir milletin gücü ne topudur ne tankı.. Bir milletin asıl gücü imanlı evlatları!10 This attempt mainly includes the use of specific archaic words, familiar to the younger generations of Turks from their use in old books, or in a few expressions used by their grandparents. They are mostly understood, but carry with them a historically specific connotation. They are clearly out of place on modern Turkish social media. Ottoman was once the prestige register of Turkish, used in court poetry and official bureaucracy before the “catastrophic success” of the language reform undertaken in the early Republican period11. The vocabulary of the Ottoman literary lexicon was largely borrowed from Arabic and Persian, and was extirpated en masse at the beginning of the national project in an effort to purify Turkish of foreign elements. Over the course of the 20th century, modern Turkish continued to distance itself from Ottoman as it created a new vocabulary based largely on compound words formed by combining semantic elements from other Turkic languages. But if Turkish social media is any indication, these words were not lost for good. Just as the sights of the Ottoman Empire are returning to popular culture, so are its voices. 12 On Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook there are several accounts where you can receive daily aphorisms in old Turkish, admire tughras and other types of calligraphy written in Arabic script, and take lessons to learn the letters to be able to read Ottoman Turkish yourself13. Most of these social media accounts do not share Abdulhamid’s ideological convictions, and are content to use Ottoman Turkish casually. This dead language is coming back to life online as it is used to write spiritual truisms paired with images of whirling dervishes, or to rewrite the dialogue in comic strips, or to share antique curios found in second­hand bookstores. In these instances, the match between medium and message is even more jarringly anachronistic 10 “A nation’s strength is not from cannons or tanks...a nation’s true strength is in the credence of its progeny” Ibid 12 October 2014. Tweet 11 Lewis, Geoffrey. The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. 12 The same is true of many Arab countries. Turkish has shown up in popular culture in “the Book of the Sultan’s Seal” by Youssef Rakha, as well as on the previously mentioned Soap Opera “Saraya Abadeen.” On the show, Egyptians have come to know Queen Khoshyar, the wife of Isma’il, who come to be known by her long list of half-Turkish, half-Arabic catch phrases such .”yok” and “Mantiq-siz ﺍﻧﻀﺒﺎﻁ “ as 13 It will certainly be interesting to see the effect of Ottoman courses being mandated in Turkish public schools will effect this interest 5 than Abdulhamid’s politics. The best example of this is certainly is that of the use of Ottoman Turkish a a caption for end­all internet ephemera: cat pictures. It would seem that much of the interest in the Ottoman language seen online is by those with a purely academic curiosity, history buffs, or people looking for a new arts and crafts project. Ottoman writing is a way to explore part of Turkish cultural heritage, a high­minded hobby. However, I would argue that the act of writing in Ottoman involves a more profound engagement with the past than many realize. While Abdulhamid knowingly uses an imitation form of Ottoman for political ends, others who use Ottoman in contemporary writing are also participating in a politically meaningful form of creative cultural expression. Using older forms of Turkish in new settings co­opts it from its historical context to be used it a new productive and polyvocal variety of the language. Although the idea of “contemporary Ottoman” may seem at 6 first like an anachronistic amalgamation, or a politically inconsistent motif, Ottomania as a form of writing actually benefits from these tensions to imagine a narrative identity founded on alterity.
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