Review of Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire, by Ahmet A. Ersoy (original) (raw)
Related papers
Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary
While European eclecticism is examined as a critical moment in western art history, little research has been conducted in the historicist pursuits of late Ottoman architects as they negotiated the nineteenth century’s vast inventory of styles and embarked on a revivalist/ Orientalist program they identified as the ‘Ottoman Renaissance.’ Ersoy’s book examines the complex historicist discourse underlying this ‘renaissance’ through a close reading of a text conceived as the movement’s canonizing manifesto: the Usul-i Mi‘mari-i ‘Osmani.
"This paper discusses the conflicting identities and works of Alexandre Vallaury (1850-1921) – an Ottoman Levantine with Italian roots, a well-known architect with Ecole des Beaux Arts education, a French citizen born and lived in Istanbul – will be evaluated through different lenses. This study examines several accounts on Vallaury’s background and architecture, which started in the Ottoman Istanbul; continued in Paris; and came to an end in the Republican Turkey. As the founder of the first architecture school in Turkey and designer of numerous significant buildings that were famous for their historicist and eclectic agenda, Vallaury is a prominent figure in the late Ottoman cultural and architectural realms. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the Turkish Republic empowered the nationalist and anti-cosmopolitan agendas, and tools for self-representation and national identity were redefined. With an urge to “re-discover” Turkish architecture and its pure forms, exclusion of “foreign” items became an instrument for nation building strategy. A historiographical survey of the Republican era confirms that many architects and scholars of the young Turkish Republic rejected the architecture of the nineteenth century and labeled it as a period of “decline” and “corruption”, marked by the works of foreign and non-Muslim architects, such as that of Vallaury’s.
The aim of this study is to assess the transformation of Turkish politics in 21 st century which political scientists term 'the revival of Ottomanism'. In this paper, the neo-Ottomanist vision under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which aim to create an autonomous, selfregulating and self-confident political agenda, is handled. 3
Pseudo-Historicism and Architecture: The New Ottomanism in Turkey
The changes within temporality, the rise of presentism, and the emergence of ersatz nostalgia as the cultural consequences of late capitalism are producing a pseudo-historicist perspective as a way of dealing with the past. This article claims that the rising interest in the Ottoman Past in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not just the product of the conservative cultural perspective of the ruling party but also the result of the pseudo-historicism produced by the long-term transformation of the Turkish society since the 1980s. This article takes the architectural production as an exemplification to illuminate the pseudo-historicist perspective in the Turkish context, because architecture appears as the most important terrain which reflects the development of this interest in the Ottoman past due to its characteristic as a profession closely knitted with the economy, and its representational power mirroring the cultural.
Cities in Evolution Diachronic Transformations of Urban and Rural Settlements, VIII AACCP Symposium, 2021
At the beginning of the 20th century, the revivalist movement seen in the architecture of the Ottoman State, mainly in the beginning of the 20th century, with today's terminology "First National Architectural Style", showed itself with using the background of neo-classical movements within the context of 16th century classical Ottoman Empire architecture or using the "magnificence, beauty and technology” of Seljuk architecture. Since the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, the various reforms introduced by the bureaucratic elite, new historical and social constructions in the nation state, aim to adapt the society to a Western lifestyle and not to adhere to the cultural elements that refer to the Ottoman State. Western reforms in fields such as education and social life did not affect architecture until the 1930s and the First National Architectural Style continued to show itself in the first 10 years of the Republic. Starting from the 1930s, the modern style, which has simpler and clearer elements, begins to find its place in the public sphere by European architects. Although this period, which we can say between 1923 and 1930, is generally seen as a "contradiction" in the history of the republic, it allows the republic to construct the "Turkish" identity inherited from the Ottoman Empire through the discourse of "Turkish architecture" together with nationalist policies. The Ottoman-Turkish identity of the revivalist style, whose effects we can see in public buildings intensely, becomes the "Turkish architecture" in the efforts of "purifying Turkish history from Ottoman history" during the republican period. Until the 1950s, various researches, periodicals and monuments are also constructed in the same way, apart from the structures built on the Turkish identity in public areas. Although the contexts mentioned are designed together with the elements that symbolize the republican regime in particular, the research also aims to discuss that they reiterate the magnificence and success of various well-known Ottoman figures in history by associating them with the “Turkish” identity. In this study, the application of this revivalist approach, which we can say that it continued from 1923 to 1950, over the "Turkish" identity and what kind of context it had in the political tendencies of the period will be discussed.
Social and Intellectual Origins of Neo-Ottomanism.pdf
Die Welt Des Islams, Vol. 56: 3-4 (2016): 438-465, 2016
This article will unpack the intellectual and sociopolitical conditions under which the idea of neo-Ottomanism was formulated, by focusing on the following questions: What is neo-Ottomanism, who constructed the term, and for what purpose? What aspects of the Ottoman legacy have been incorporated in the 'self' definition of a new Turkey? Is this shift temporary or rooted in a more far-reaching transformation of Turkish society that will shape future sociopolitical choices? The article examines the intellectual origins of the term 'neo-Ottomanism' by examining the role of cultural entrepreneurs, such as Yahya Kemal and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, along with the interactions among social factors, in the search for a new 'old' identity of Ottomanism by reimagining the Ottoman past. It seeks to provide a historical and sociological perspective of the process of reconfiguring the past, and especially its implications in domestic and foreign policy. Due to the oppressive nation-building project of the Kemalist regime, literature, art, music, and poetry became alternative sites for preserving, updating, and reconstructing the Ottoman memory. After explaining the formation of neo-Ottoman discourse in the 1990s, the article will address the debate about the politics of identity under the Justice and Development Party (JDP).
Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 2020
Sur des modes divers, les historiographies nationales du Moyen-Orient ont présenté la sortie de l’Empire ottoman comme une rupture, parfois assortie d’un déni d’héritage, et en tout état de cause accompagnée de refontes globales des pratiques et des référents culturels. Elles se sont construites sur l’idée que les peuples « s’étaient endormis » pendant des siècles de domination ottomane, avant de se réveiller au son d’une modernité tardive. La réalité de ces transformations ne saurait être remise en question. Après la déroute des armées ottomanes en septembre-octobre 1918, le décrochement politique entre ce qui reste de l’État ottoman et ses anciennes provinces est très rapide : élections parlementaires dans un espace ramené grosso modo à la Turquie actuelle, organisation de comités islamo-chrétiens ou mésopotamiens dans les territoires occupés, ou encore préparation de délégations avec leurs programmes respectifs en vue de la conférence de la paix. Puis, en aspirant à l’indépendance, les États post-ottomans confirment leur volonté d’effacer le passé impérial, pour se projeter dans un avenir national. Cette époque charnière témoigne ainsi d’une multitude de reconversions rapides. 2Pourtant, malgré le processus d’épuration des référents sociopolitiques et culturels de la période ottomane, cultivé comme un projet politique par les nationalismes de la région, il nous apparaît qu’on donne à l’effacement de l’Empire ottoman de la carte politique une portée globale forcée et mécanique. De même que l’ingénierie sociale de nouveaux États-nations ne s’est pas faite de façon immédiate, ni incontestée, ni en opposition systématique au legs ottoman, de même l’ingénierie culturelle n’a pas conduit à une disparition brutale des référents ottomans, notamment des référents turcs ottomans dans le monde arabe, et arabes dans la Turquie républicaine. Au contraire, ce legs a souvent été entretenu, tantôt par un attachement non délibéré à des formes ottomanes connues, tantôt par une appropriation, une réactivation intentionnelle du reliquat ottoman, à des fins de revendications diverses : entre persistances et revendications d’ottomanité(s). Ce numéro de la Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée s’intéresse ainsi aux diverses expressions sociales, politiques, culturelles, linguistiques et littéraires de l’hybridation des référents ottomans dans les espaces turcs et arabes après 1918 – que nous appelons les fantômes d’Empire – en prenant appui sur une documentation aussi bien visuelle et matérielle que diplomatique ou littéraire.