Introduction: The Ottoman Legacy for Contemporary Turkish Culture, Institutions, and Values

In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, after its founding in 1923, it would have been anathema to suggest that the Ottoman Empire might have a positive legacy to pass on to the new nation. The door to the past was to be not merely firmly closed but slammed shut and locked tight to prevent any seeping of influence or temptation to nostalgia. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the other Turkish leaders looked past the empire, in space and time, and beyond the borders of the new republic for models and ideas, and set their own collective gaze and that of the nation firmly forward to the present and the future. Nationalist rhetoric and much of the historical assessment of early republican history reinforced this attitude and vision. Therefore, the title of this special section of the journal reflects a shift in perception and contextualization of republican history with respect to the Ottoman past, a shift that has been occurring more emphatically in Turkey and concerning Turkey since the military coup of 1980 and through the subsequent decades of economic liberalization and growth, social change, war with the Kurds, and the emergence of contemporary Islamist ideologies and political power.

“The Ottoman Legacy for Contemporary Turkish Culture, Institutions, and Values” was the topic set for the 2008 Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award competition. The award was “designed to promote fresh thinking, new ideas, and original research relevant to Turkish studies conducted in any field of the humanities and social sciences.” It has been presented annually since 2006 through Sabancı University, which was founded in 1996 in Istanbul. Original articles submitted to the competition must address the theme set for each year. These are read and judged by an international jury of scholars in Turkish and/or Ottoman studies and fields related to the topic of the prize.¹

In the keynote speech at the award ceremony in June 2008, the Turkish economic historian and jury member Şevket Pamuk articulated the assumption underlying the 2008 award theme:

We must remember that the founders of the Republic, Atatürk and his friends, were brought up in educational institutions that were formed as part of the education movement of the 19th century; it was there that they met the ideas which would later constitute the Republic. In this and many other respects, the Republic was born of the Ottoman modernisation process. In short, our past lives in our social affairs, the values that lead the society daily, in habits and customs, in written rules and unwritten codes of conduct, and in styles of culture, politics and thought.²

Much research is still needed to discover and trace through the various Ottoman legacies and the path each one followed in the transition and transformation to becoming part of Turkish culture, institutions, and values. Each of the five articles presented here examines one of these legacies, following its trajectory and analyzing how it was affected by the transition, in what ways it retained its earlier shape, how it was altered, and why it persisted. Within this shared framework, however, the articles reflect great differences in the manner of the transitions, their pace or timing, and the extent to which Ottoman aspects were preserved in each legacy. Read collectively, and against the background of existing research from the past thirty years, the articles reinforce the claim of legacy built into the general title. However, they do not claim that Turkey is actually Ottoman; rather, they imply collectively that without such legacies, Turkey would not be the complex and dynamic place that it is today.

“The Persistence of Philanthropy,” by Amy Singer, discusses two legacies: the practice of large-scale elite philanthropy and the physical remains of Ottoman philanthropic endeavors in the form of large monuments. Turkey today enjoys economic wealth and prosperity, and philanthropic giving by the wealthy elites as well as by the general population has continued to play an important role both in the establishment and running of major social and cultural foundations and in civil society aid and development projects. Schools, museums, hospitals, universities...