Return of the Empire: Why Erdogan Wants to
Resurrect the Ottoman State
Turning Hagia Sophia once again into a mosque
is seen by a substantial segment of the Turkish
population as part of the effort to reclaim their
country’s history.
by Mohammed Ayoob
Much has been written about the immediate
reasons behind Turkish president Recep
Erdogan’s move to change the character of
Hagia Sophia from a museum back to a
mosque. While factors such as Erdogan’s search
for populist moves to shore up his declining
popularity brought about by economic
incompetence, the precipitous fall of the lira,
increasing unemployment, and his authoritarian
style of governance help explain the timing of
this action they do not shed light on why a
large proportion of the Turkish population has
enthusiastically welcomed this move. This can
only be explained with reference to the recent
history of Turkey spanning a hundred years.
Turks consider themselves to be the true heirs
of the Ottoman Empire. Ataturk’s efforts and
those of his authoritarian Kemalist successors
to wipe out the Ottoman past in order to create
a republic of their dreams custom-made for
Europe may have temporarily driven this feeling
underground but were never able to remove it
from the psyche of the large majority of the
Turkish population. Among other things, the
immense popularity of Turkish films with
Ottoman themes and TV series, such as
Ertugrul, which is based on the life and exploits
of the father of the founder of the Ottoman
Empire, testify to the veracity of this assertion.
These deep-seated sentiments among the
population of the Anatolian heartland surfaced
dramatically with the election of the Erdogan-
led Justice and Development Party (AKP), which
took pride in Turkey’s Ottoman and Islamic
past, to power in 2002. AKP’s victory not only
rendered the secular political elite largely drawn
from the western coastal belt powerless, but it
also drastically reduced the influence of the
secular military brass that considered itself the
protector of Kemalist ideology in the political
life of the It was a coalition of the religiously
observant populace of Anatolia and the anti-
authoritarian liberal elements in the coastal
areas that brought AKP to power and helped
dismantle the military-dominated Kemalist
authoritarian power structure in the country.
While the liberal elements have become
disenchanted since 2013 with Erdogan’s
authoritarian tendencies the religiously
observant Anatolian heartland has, by and
large, stood by him so far. This has meant that
Erdogan has been forced to cater more and
more to the sentiments of the observant
population who are the standard-bearers of the
Ottoman legacy since the Ottoman Sultan was
also considered to be the Caliph of Islam and
the symbol of the Muslim triumph over Christian
Europe especially during the first three
centuries of the Ottoman empire. At the height
of the Ottoman Empire the Sultan-Caliph ruled
over one-third of Europe and as late as 1683
Ottoman armies were knocking at the gates of
Vienna. It was only in the second half of the
nineteenth century that the empire began to
gradually unravel and steadily lost its European
possessions in the Balkans. It was finally dealt a
deathblow as a consequence of its defeat in
World War I when its Arab parts were removed
from imperial control. To add insult to injury,
the Treaty of Sevres.
To add insult to injury, the Treaty of Sevres
imposed on the defeated Ottoman regime by
the victorious allies carved up the Anatolian
Turkish rump of the empire as well. Western
Anatolia was awarded to Greece and southern
Anatolia and southeastern Anatolia were
respectively assigned to Italy and France as
their “zones of influence” in reality semi-
colonies. Moreover, significant portions of
eastern Anatolia were to be turned into Kurdish
and Armenian enclaves or proto-states. This
was too much to bear for the Turkish
population of Anatolia and especially for the
Turkish army that under Mustafa Kemal (later
called Ataturk) rose in revolt against the
Ottoman Sultan who had signed the instrument
of surrender. In a hard-fought war of
independence that lasted four years, the Turks
threw the Greeks out of western Anatolia and
rendered the Italian and French zones as well
as the Armenian and Kurdish proto-states null
and void. However, Ataturk had the strategic
sagacity not to reclaim the non-Turkish Arab
portions of the Ottoman empire as it would
have brought the nascent Republic of Turkey
into direct conflict with Britain and France, who
had taken over as mandatory powers in the
Fertile Crescent, and might have aborted his
attempt to maintain the sovereignty and
independence of Muslim Turkey in its current
geographic contours.
The new boundaries of Turkey were delineated
at the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1923 at the
successful end of the Turkish war of
independence more or less in line with the
borders set out by the Turkish Grand National
Assembly. The popular Turkish reaction to the
reconversion of Hagia Sophia (known as Aya
Sophia in Turkish) cannot be explained without
reference to these historical facts. The attempt
by the “Christian” allied powers to carve up the
Turkish homeland in addition to detaching the
non-Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire
and dividing them up among themselves have
been strong reminders for the Turks over
generations of their loss of greatness. The
transformation of Hagia Sophia from a mosque
to a museum was perceived as a part of this
loss that needed to be remedied. The mosque
of Hagia Sophia was a major symbol of the
Ottoman victory over the Byzantine Empire in
1453 and an emblem of Turkish pride. Ataturk’s
decision to turn it into a museum to display its
dual Byzantine and Islamic heritage was an
attempt to demonstrate both a break from what
he considered to be the decrepit Ottoman past
and to establish Turkey’s credentials as a
“civilized” nation in the eyes of the West. But,
this decision had been resented by the
religiously observant Turkish masses imbued
with the combined spirit of Islam and
Ottomanism. These feelings remained dormant
as long as the secular and authoritarian
Kemalist elites, both civil and military, held
near-absolute power in Turkey. However, when
the equation changed with the rise of the AKP
to power in 2002 this viewpoint began to
reassert itself. Erdogan and the AKP leadership
had resisted the pressure to change the status
of Hagia Sophia as long as they believe that
Turkey had a reasonable chance to enter the
European Union and the Turkish economy was
flourishing under Erdogan’s leadership.
However, it has now become clear that the
door to Turkey’s membership of the EU has
been firmly closed thanks to the opposition of
major European powers who feel that the
Christian character of EU will come under threat
by the inclusion of Muslim Turkey.
Former French president Giscard d’Estaing
summed up this feeling succinctly declaring,
“European civilization is Christian civilization.”
Thus, the reconversion of Hagia Sophia into a
mosque, which it had been for close to five
hundred years, as a move to revive his
dwindling popularity appeared an attractive and
relatively costless proposition to Erdogan.
However, such a move cannot succeed in a
vacuum for it would not work if it did not touch
a vital chord in Turkish hearts. That the
decision would appeal to a large majority of
Turks is the gamble that Erdogan has taken
and there is sufficient reason to conclude that it
will probably work to his benefit. Several years
ago a secular Turkish academic and a good
friend told me “Ataturk was a great man but he
left us a people without history.” Turning Hagia
Sophia once again into a mosque is seen by a
substantial segment of the Turkish population
as part of the effort to reclaim their country’s
history.
*Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus
of International Relations, Michigan State University, and a senior
fellow for the Center for Global wants-resurrect-ottoman-state-
167404 Policy. His books include The Many Faces of Political
Islam and, most recently, Will the Middle East Implode and editor
of Assessing the War on Terror.
