Hajdarpasic: Reflections on the Ottoman Legacy in South-eastern Europe
Tags: papers, europe, Post-Ottoman Near East, bosnia
Talks about the nationalist power of Ottoman narratives, especially in light of places like Albania, Macedonia, etc.
Concludes with that the idea of ‘Ottoman ruins’ and ‘countries emerging from the ruins’ is fundalmentally flawed, there is more for the past to teach us
Making Ottoman synonmyous with Islamic or Turkish influences is a defining hallmark of the 19th century Balkan nationalist projects that perceived the Ottoman Empire as a ‘religiously, socially, and institutionally alien imposition on autochthonous Christian medieval socities. - pg 717
- The conflation of ‘Turk’, ‘Mohammedan’, and ‘Muslim’ helps to stigmatize by lumping diverse ‘Islam’ into a generalized set of cultural characterists
- Does the Turkish gov’s usage of Ottomanism help spur this idea? Like described in Danforth: The Ottoman Empire from 1923 to Today
- Influencial public figures in modern Serbia helped reproduce images of converts to Islam as traitors - pg 718
- Balkan nations defined themselves against the Ottoman background
- The Balkan idea puts a lot of stress on the ‘Muslim vs Christian’ tension
- Overshadows other communities, such as those described by Blumi - Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939
- Later Bosian Muslims romanticized the Ottoman period as a way to reclaim Bosnia Mulsim cultural traditions while inserting them within the Austro-Hungarian and Yugoslav political frameworks - pg 724
- Backfires, this self-justifying stance provided the Serbs and Croats a way out, stating that the Ottoman past and legacy were solely shared by the Bosnians
- Bosnian reclamation of the Ottoman heritage is atypical when compared to mustafa kemal
- Bosnian version is very romanticized and valoried
Questions:
- Are these nationalism made stronger due to the assimlation of religion and being co-opted by the state, described by Anscombe - State, Faith, and Nation?