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4 - Multipurpose Empire

Ottoman History in Republican Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2021

Nicholas Danforth
Nicholas Danforth
Affiliation:
Wilson Center
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Summary

Chapter 4 examines the Kemalist appropriation of Ottoman history, beginning at the moment the empire itself ceased to exist and building up to the 1953 quincentennial of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. From the 1930s, Turkish historians used a narrative of fatal decline to not only justify Kemalist reforms but also facilitate the selective incorporation of the Empire’s triumphs into Turkish nationalist history. By 1953, the Kemalist appropriation of the Ottoman past had reached a point where it was possible to celebrate Fatih Sultan Mehmet II as a secular, pro-Western sultan who laid the groundwork for Turkey’s membership in NATO.

Keywords

historiographyOttoman EmpirenationalismmemoryFatih Sultan MehmetTurkeypopular history
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Chapter
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The Remaking of Republican Turkey
Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire
 , pp. 97 - 125
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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