Islamists and Ottomans

OCTOBER 9, 2009
The Wall Street Journal

By SONER CAGAPTAY

The reaction in Turkey to the recent death of Ertugrul Osman, heir to the Ottoman throne and successor to the last Caliph, could not be more shocking. Islamists in kaftans and long beards gathered in Istanbul two weeks ago to bury the titular head of the world Muslim community. He was a scotch-drinking, classical music-listening Western Turk who until recently lived on New York City's Upper East Side.

The Islamists' embrace of Osman, a descendant of the Westernized Ottoman sultans, provides a window into the Islamist mind. Islamism is not about religion or reality. Rather it is a utopian ideology. Osman, raised by a line of Western-leaning caliphs and sultans, loved Atatürk's Turkey, yet the Islamists abused his funeral and the memory of the caliphate, changing him into a symbol for their anti-Western, anti-secular and anti-liberal agenda.

Despite what the Islamists want the world to believe, the Ottoman caliphate was not anti-Western. The Ottoman Empire always interacted with the Westan interaction that goes all the way back to 16th-century Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, who envisioned himself as the Holy Roman emperor.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman sultans and caliphs embarked on a program of reforms to remake the Ottoman Empire in the Western image to match up with European powers. To this end, the caliphs launched institutions of secular education, and paved the way for women's emancipation by enrolling women in those schools.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the sultans and caliphs of the Ottoman Empire embodied Western life and Western values. The last caliph, Abdulmecid Efendi, considered the Ottoman state a Western power with a Western destiny. An enlightened man and avid artist, the caliph's sought-after paintings, including nudes, are on exhibition at various museums, including Istanbul's new museum of Modern Art.

It is therefore wrong to represent the Ottoman Empire as the antithesis of the secular republic founded by Atatürk. When Atatürk turned Turkey into a secular republic in 1923 by abolishing the Ottoman state and the caliphate, he fulfilled the Ottomans' dream of making Turkey a full-fledged Western society. Atatürk's reforms are a continuation of the late Ottoman Empire.

Atatürk was raised in Salonika, the hub of cosmopolitanism and Western culture in the reforming empire. He studied in secular Ottoman schools, and he was trained in the Westernized Ottoman military.

The debate over the Ottoman caliphate's legacy has ramifications not only for Turkey, but also for contemporary Muslims and the Western world's desire to counter radical Islamists.

Years before the emergence of al Qaeda, the caliphs produced an antidote against radical jihadistsa progressive vision for a Western-oriented Muslim society. The sultan-caliphs built the institutional foundations of this society, including the first Ottoman parliament and constitution of 1876, and planted in it seeds of Western values, such as secular education and women's emancipation. Modern Turkey owes its existence not just to Atatürk but to the sultan-caliphs who were among the first to promote liberal and Western values in a Muslim society.

Now, the Islamists want to usurp the caliphate and its legacy. The fundamentalists first distort the caliphate's politics, re-imagining it as an anti-Western institution. Then, they portray the revival of this invented caliphate as the ultimate political dream in an anti-Western ideology.

Eighty years ago, the Ottoman caliph-sultans imagined a Turkey that is more akin to modern Turkey than to the Islamist society envisioned by al Qaeda or others who dismiss Atatürk's dream of a Western Turkey and liberal values as anomalies. Ertugrul Osman himself told Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas shortly before his death that "the republic has been devastating for our family, but very good for Turkey."

Caliph Osman was Turkish by birth, Muslim by religion, and a Westerner by upbringing. I want my caliph back, and so should all Muslims who want deliverance from the distorted and illiberal world envisioned by the Islamists.


Mr. Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of "Islam Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?" (Routledge, 2006).Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A17


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703298004574458830698234914.html



----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Freedom and independence is my character."
~M. Kemal Ataturk

our idiots are living in 1500 era .

^ you rely are that pathetic are you demir

"idiots are living in 1500 era "

Like most Turks.

"Naksibendi-taliban"

i never heard of that

efendi can you please die your hair like shiny blond at least that way people would clearly know how stupid you are and ignorant and i can see how you are l1cking on american and israeli balz all the time

^ are you g@y or something it looks like you seem to care the way people live and dress

come on Yasin, which tarikat is it?



----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Freedom and independence is my character."
~M. Kemal Ataturk

lol efendi you like those g@y guys from those shows who trys to help out how should people dress or live lol man

you dont have to grow a beard to be sunetli you can even shave as well which is sunetli too

I said which tarikat, you worthless low-life?

come on, tell me which hoca efendi's balls you like to suck after your morning prayer?



----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Freedom and independence is my character."
~M. Kemal Ataturk

i dont suck on any ones balz but that is your wet dream is it to see me su[k on a hocas balz

looks like the otomans are the most bastardized royal family



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

efendi you and your Jew journal don't get it do you?

Its no longer about the Ottoman royal family - that family does not matter, its the idea of KHILAFAH which the infidels fear and piss their pants



See your fear is the West, and our fear is ALLAH - thats the only difference between a religious Turk and a Secular.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nhwtqGPoTc&feature=player_embedded