Temporality in the postmodern times and the Ottoman nostalgia in Turkey

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Thesis Type: Doctorate

Institution Of The Thesis: Galatasaray Üniversitesi, İletişim Fakültesi, Radyo Televizyon ve Sinema, Turkey

Approval Date: 2016

Thesis Language: English

Student: ZAFER ÇELER

Supervisor: NİLGÜN TUTAL CHEVIRON

Open Archive Collection: AVESIS Open Access Collection

Abstract:

In Turkey, there has been an increasing interest towards the Ottoman past in recent years. The appetite for the Ottoman past seems invading the Turkish society. The images, objects and discourses related to the Ottoman history have been appearing in from television series, political discourses and manifestations to social media, from architecture to house decorations. This study aims to understand the reasons for such a revival of the Ottoman past in Turkish society within the framework of the transformation of the history, and the changes in the ways of engagement with the past in modern societies. It attempts to analyse this new interest through the references both to the internal dynamics of the Turkish modernisation and to the more general structural changes within the modern societies. The debates over the neo-Ottomanism either claim that it is strategic policy in the international political stage, or assert that it is a deliberate attempt of the conservative government to establish a new historical discourse. This study, beyond these arguments, contends that the interest towards the Ottoman past is a consequence resulting from the convergence of the changes and ruptures that the Turkish society has been experiencing since the 1980s and of the continuities within the Turkish modernisation.