• Abbreviations


• Dedication


• Preface


• Introduction


• 1. The Modes of Ottomanism


• 2. The Social Origins of Nostalgia for Ottomans


• 3. Sites of Ottoman Memory: Literature and Sufi Orders


• 4. Turgut Özal's Neo-Ottomanism


• 5. The Neo-Ottomanism of the Naksibendis and the Welfare Party


• 6. Erdogan's Neo-Ottomanism


• 7. The Neo-Ottoman Foreign Policy of the AKP


• 8. The Balkan and the Arab Responses to Neo-Ottomanism


• Conclusion


• Notes


• Selected Bibliography


• Index

M. Hakan Yavuz is a professor of political science at The University of Utah. He has produced a body of scholarly work dealing with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the patterns of nation-state building, secularism, ethnic conflict, transnational Islamic networks, civil society and the public sphere. His books include Turkey's July 15th Coup, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford), and Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey, among others.

Nostalgia for the Empire examines the social and political origins of beleaguered and wistful expressions of nostalgia about the Ottoman Empire. Political memories of the Ottoman past have been transformed in Turkish society, along with reactions from the outside world. The Ottoman past, as remembered now, is grounded in contemporary conservative Islamic values. Thus, the connection between memories of the Ottoman past and these values defines Turkey's new identity. This new expression of national memory portrays Turkey as a victim of the major powers, justifying its position against its imagined internal and external enemies.