Mukaddime (Jan 2016)
From the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey Manifestations of Nationalisms and National Imaginations / Osmanlı Devleti’nden Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’ne Milliyetçiliklerin ve Milli’lik Tasavvurlarının Tezahürleri
Abstract
Slowing managerial reflexes of the Ottoman Empire in the last century, lost battles, collapsing of financial structure and socio-economic backwardness, rapid changes in the world and giant waves of nationalism that coming from Western World makes the imperial geography indefensible. All ideological instruments such as Ottomanism, Islamism that are tried to use by Ottoman Empire which wants to protect unity were in vain. Last Ottomans who are trying to defend the borders with the shield of Turanism and Nationalism took the final blow with World War I. Newborn Republic took over ideological legacy of the Ottoman Empire largely and transformed it with a reformist style. Nationalist ideology, that continues its evolution in anti-communist conjuncture during the Cold War, has changed its color with emerging the problem of ethnic nationalism after the 1980s and especially the 1990s. The traces of ideology of nationalism, which has a particular goal but does not have a way that is exactly certain, are tried to follow from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey. We elected also some prominent persons and public opinion leaders about their national perception and views in order to understand and compare better the reality of national case in Turkey in this article.
