Neo-Ottomanism
reactionary ideology in Turkey glorifying the Ottoman monarchy
Neo-Ottomanism (Turkish: Yeni Osmanlıcılık or neo-Osmanlıcılık) is a reactionary, revisionist, monarchist, conservative and Islamist political ideology in Turkey that discredits the Turkish secular nationalist republic and its reforms, and glorifies the Ottoman dynasty and its traditionalist establishments like the caliphate. It is also an irredentist and imperialist ideology that, in its broadest sense, advocates to honor the Ottoman past of Turkey and promotes the greater political engagement of the Republic of Turkey within regions formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor state that covered the territory of modern Turkey among others.
Neo-Ottomanism emerged at the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, forming two distinct waves of the ideology: the first, in the early 1990s, developed by the Turkish journalist and foreign policy advisor to President Turgut Özal, Cengiz Çandar; the second, associated with Ahmet Davutoğlu, former Prime Minister of Turkey and founder of the Future Party. Davutoğlu's foreign policy goals include establishing Turkey as an influential power within the Balkans, Caucasia and the Middle East.
The term has been associated with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's irredentist, interventionist, Pan-Islamist and expansionist foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the neighboring Cyprus, Greece, Iraq, Syria, as well as in Africa, including Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the term has been rejected by members of the Erdoğan government, such as the former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the former Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop.
Overview
One of the first uses of the term was in a Chatham House paper by David Barchard in 1985, in which Barchard suggested that a "Neo-Ottoman option" might be a possible avenue for Turkey's future development. It seems also to have been used by the Greeks sometime after Turkey's invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
In the 21st century, the term has come to signify a domestic trend in Turkish politics, where the revival of Ottoman traditions and culture has been accompanied by the rise of the Justice and Development Party (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, abbreviated AKP founded in 2001) which came to power in 2002. The use of the ideology by Justice and Development Party has mainly supported a greater influence of Ottoman culture in domestic social policy which has caused issues with the secular and republican credentials of modern Turkey.
The public source identifies “Neo-Ottomanism” as reactionary ideology in Turkey glorifying the Ottoman monarchy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Neo-Ottomanism, reactionary and ideology.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q583047. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1974, 2001 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Neo-Ottomanism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.