Neo-Ottomanism is an ideology and identity project championed by Turkey’s conservative and Islamist actors that seeks to bring Islam and Ottoman history back into the center of political and social life. It aims to redefine both societal and state identity not along narrow ethnic lines, but as civilizational—rooted in a shared Ottoman–Islamic heritage that transcends territorial or purely national definitions. Thus, neo-Ottomanism is fundamentally grounded in nostalgia and the political needs of contemporary Turkey, seeking to reconstruct the future through a selectively curated and mythologized Ottoman past. Its central objective is to transform both state and societal identity by delegitimizing the founding philosophy of the Republic—Kemalism—and replacing it with a civilizational framework rooted in Ottoman–Islamic memory. Kemalism was a secular nation-state project modeled explicitly on Europe: it sought to overcome imperial collapse, religious pluralism, and perceived backwardness by imitating European political forms, legal systems, and cultural norms. Through laicism, territorial nationalism, and Western orientation, Kemalism aimed to create a homogenous, modern nation that would secure recognition and survival within a Eurocentric international order.

Neo-Ottomanism challenges the Kemalist secular nation-state legacy by advancing the idea of the civilizational state, in which political legitimacy derives not from republican institutions or popular sovereignty, but from history, religion, culture, and a presumed continuity of civilizational mission. This vision is operationalized through civilizational state–centric nationalism, a form of nationalism that redefines Turkish identity around Ottoman–Islamic civilization rather than secular citizenship. Since 2003, this discourse has enabled Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to marginalize Kemalist secularism, centralize power, and legitimize a neo-patrimonial, sultanic mode of governance. Domestically, neo-Ottomanism operates as a surrogate for Islamism by embedding Islamic norms within state identity; internationally, it underpins an expansive foreign policy aimed at extending Turkey’s influence across former Ottoman geographies and Central Asia. Understanding this ideological reversal requires first examining Kemalism itself as a nation-building project shaped by fears of fragmentation, backwardness, and exclusion from Europe.

From Kemalist Westernism to Status Frustration

The Sèvres Syndrome (August 10, 1920) stands as the most devastating blueprint for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and remains one of the deepest psychological wounds in Turkish national memory. Drafted at the end of World War I by the victorious Allied powers, Sèvres effectively abolished Ottoman sovereignty and partitioned the empire into zones of occupation and influence. Large portions of Anatolia were slated for Greek annexation, including İzmir and much of Western Anatolia; an Armenian state was to be established in the east under U.S. arbitration; and a possible autonomous or independent Kurdistan was envisioned in the southeast. The Straits were to be placed under international control; Istanbul itself was threatened with permanent Allied occupation; and the remaining “Ottoman” territory was reduced to a small, landlocked, economically unviable state surrounded by foreign mandates. For ordinary Turks—already exhausted by a decade of war—Sèvres represented not just a punitive treaty but the complete erasure of political existence. By dividing Ottoman lands, subordinating sovereignty to foreign powers, and treating the state as illegitimate, the treaty effectively made the empire unable to govern itself independently. The Ottoman heartland would have become a patchwork of protectorates, leaving its people without a recognized political authority and marking the end of Ottoman political life as it had been known.

This moment of near-annihilation created a collective trauma later termed the “Sèvres Syndrome”: a pervasive fear that foreign powers still seek to partition Turkey, undermine its sovereignty, or manipulate its minorities. The War of Independence (1919–1922), led by Mustafa Kemal, is therefore remembered not only as a military victory but as a civilizational resurrection that saved Anatolia from political extinction. The Lausanne Treaty of 1923, which replaced Sèvres, became sacralized as a foundational act of national salvation—proof that Turkey had reversed its historical humiliation and reclaimed dignity. Yet the trauma of Sèvres did not disappear. It produced a powerful but anxious nation-state that viewed threats through the lens of potential dismemberment, fusing national security with existential fear. Suspicion of great-power imperialism, vigilance toward ethnic separatism, and sensitivity to Western tutelage became core components of the Republican identity.

Kemalist secular nationalism emerged from the ruins of empire as a radical civilizational reorientation. The new Republic sought to replace an Islamic-imperial identity with a secular, territorial nation-state anchored in the Turkish language, rationalist modernity, and alignment with “contemporary civilization,” meaning Europe. Independence (bağımsızlık) and Westernization were seen as mutually reinforcing: only by internalizing Western norms, institutions, and technologies could Turkey secure true sovereignty and avoid a repeat of Ottoman dismemberment.  The Ottoman past was recoded as a history of decline and humiliation, while the Republic’s founding war and the Lausanne Treaty were sacralized as moments of salvation. Turkey entered NATO and pursued membership in nearly all major European institutions out of a deep-seated anxiety about exclusion from the........

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