Dialectics of tolerance and exclusion: the rise and collapse of Ottomanism from above and Ottomanism from below

Triumphant Young Turk leaders of the 1908 constitutional revolution promised the Ottoman public to dismantle the thirty-two years long despotic regime of Abdulhamid II and replace it with a new system characterized by political freedoms, cultural diversity/tolerance, and peaceful coexistence of the ethno-religious factions of the empire. The mantra of the new regime, spearheaded primarily by young military officers echoed widely among the urban, non-Muslim, and pro-western segments of the Ottoman society. The new regime did indeed initially promote a political climate of liberalization perhaps still unparalleled in Turkish history. However, this top-down regime of “tolerance” and liberalization soon made a sharp turn towards oppressive policies.

The Justice and Development Party ascended in Turkish politics as a movement backed by the masses marginalized by the hegemonic military/bureaucratic Kemalist elites. The party won a parliamentary majority in 2002 upon a platform promising economic/political liberalization, speeding-up the EU membership process as well as advocating a peaceful solution to the “Kurdish question.” Around its steps towards liquidating the Turkish military’s hegemony, the party enjoyed increased support from a broad spectrum of the public, including the leftist-liberal intellectuals, and “minorities.” Ironically the Justice and Development Party version of Ottomanist tolerance too, evolved into a regime of aggressive exclusion of the very groups it had promised to tolerate. This paper compares and inquires into the ways in which both the Ottomanism from above of the Young Turks and the Ottomanism from below of the Justice and Development Party have adopted politics of exclusion.