A new course with Turgut Özal

Özal became Prime Minister in 1983.

The course in Turkey was reset.

In his portfolio was the implementation of the January 24 decisions, of which he was the architect. He had taken his reference from the USA and had steered the Turkish economy away from independence, etatism, and populism, throwing it into the arms of neo-liberalism.

Privatizations had been initiated, a free exchange rate economy had been adopted, and in the face of the boundless competition of imports, the collapse of the domestic economy—reminiscent of the Ottoman capitulations—had begun. The Turkish Lira was rapidly losing value, bans on the sale of our mineral resources were being lifted, alcohol and tobacco monopolies were being broken, state support for State Economic Enterprises (KİT) was being cut, and foreign capital was being encouraged. A consumption-oriented growth model had been adopted.

Everything remaining in the Turkish economy from the Atatürk era had been, in a sense, plundered.

Özal's arrival was in harmony with the rise of neo-liberalism in the world. It coincided with the same time frame as Thatcher's neo-liberal/conservative policies in the UK and Reagan's neo-liberalism in the USA.

Undoubtedly, Özal was also a representative of conservative/neo-liberal politics. His bedside book was "Capitalism and Freedom," written by the Jewish economist Milton Friedman, one of the representatives of neo-liberalism.

The Turkish-Islamic synthesis, which began with Evren, had now become dominant in the State; the concept of "status-quoist leftists" had become a buzzword, and it began to be explained that "we have reached this state because we have been moving away from Islamic morality and manners for the last 150 years."

However, the greatest fracture in society was the change in social values. Özalism first killed the "idealistic human of the republic" and then built the "economic human" in their place—that is, the selfish, savvy, self-interested individual. Now, a new identity construction was next: "OTTOMANISM."

While moving forward by breaking the national reflex, he was also presenting the Neo-Ottomanist movement.

CONSTRUCTING A NEW IDENTITY: NEO-OTTOMANISM

In the 1980s, Ottomanism was introduced to the public with a powerful political discourse.

With the project of the September 12 coup plotters, which started with Atatürkism and continued with the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, Islam began to find a place within the official identity. The coup plotters, together with the Turkish-Islamic synthesists they chose as their guides, thought that while creating a ground of legitimacy for themselves by using religion, they could also control the separatist Kurdish movement with the same method and fuse Kurdish and Turkish-origin citizens along the axis of religion. This was because a large portion of the Kurdish-origin population was Sunni Muslim.

The rise of radical religious movements and separatist ethnic structures after the coup resulted in an increase in demands for a transition to a pluralist, multicultural, multilingual, and multi-identity structure that highlights differences. Thus, the Neo-Ottomanist Movement gained emotional momentum in society. It brought together opponents of the Republic's founding values and Kemalism in the same pool.

According to Özal, ethnic and religious elements had not been given enough space in the official identity definition of the Republic of Turkey, which was based on national identity, and a social belonging problem had been created.

The Neo-Ottomanism proposed by Özal was a "super-identity." There was a need to create a new identity by embracing the Ottoman legacy, the practices of Ottoman administration, and pluralism, and to throw the outdated Kemalism into the dustbin of history.

Emphasis was placed on the transition to a hybrid secular system with the Westernization movements in the late Ottoman period, and "Ottoman Secularism" began to find a response instead of "Strict Laicism." With the hollowed-out concept of moderate secularism, the psychological infrastructure for the effectiveness of religion in social life was being prepared.

According to the Özalists, Atatürk's "Peace at Home, Peace in the World" policy in foreign policy was also status-quoist and outdated. One should move forward with the expansionist vision of the Ottomans, and "Turkey should remember that it is the heir to the imperial civilization in the Middle East and the Balkans, and realize its power."

In his Taksim Rally speech on February 18, 1993, Özal declared that "the 21st century will be the Turkish Century."

The Aydınlar Ocağı (Hearths of Intellectuals), which holds an important position among the theorists of Neo-Ottomanism, presented Ottoman secularism as a model to replace Kemalist laicism.

The Ottoman Model had begun to receive extraordinary support from the West.

While Bill Clinton, following his visit to Patriarch Bartholomew, "complained about the lack of a leader for the Islamic world" and called for a "caliphate," Samuel Huntington was sending a message with the words, "Democracy does not necessarily have to be based on secularism. Turkey has a unique place in terms of leading the Islamic world. Didn't the Ottomans do this in history?"

CIA agent Graham Fuller was supporting Neo-Ottomanism with the words, "Forced Westernization left some wounds in Turkish society. There were those who loved their own Ottoman history and Ottoman traditions. Westernization turned into something that humiliated Islam."

There are numerous publications regarding the fact that Israel is also among those joining this chorus and viewing Ottomanism as a salvation model for the Middle East.

This project, cooked in the kitchen of the Imperialist Bloc and served to the Turkish Political Table via Özal, is still in effect.

The romanticism carried by the project, the pride of belonging to a glorious, powerful, and great Ottoman Empire, and the magic created by narratives that equate Ottomanism with conquests are undoubtedly effective in society.

The shrinking of the Ottoman Empire through loss of territory, the loss of its independence through capitulations, its submission to Western countries, the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres which partitioned Anatolian lands, the efforts of the Sultanate to prevent the War of Independence waged to save the homeland, the alliance made with the enemy during this process, the betrayal of the Sultan who struggled to enter under the yoke of the USA and Britain and eventually boarded a British ferry to flee, and the success of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his friends who saved the homeland and gifted a fully independent Turkey to the Turks—none of these are in this picture.

A glittering shawl of Ottomanism has been draped over them, and the identity of Neo-Ottomanism has been brought to the screen with a romantic deception.