The Building of Millet: Islamist production of space and imagined Ottoman identity

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the government of Turkey has been building a new Islamist nation called Millet based on an imaginary Ottoman past. This new millet projects itself as an Islamist emancipatory struggle against the laicite of the Republic that self-colonized the (Ottoman) nation via Western centric secularist ideas. The building of millet is observed through Islamization of built environment and creation of Ottoman identity. By doing sound mapping the mosque sounds and ethnography in Ankara's four districts, I argue Turkey’s millet building project is practiced by the Islamist production of space in sonic/aural environments and imagined transnational Ottoman identity. The first key component of this project is the mosque sound, whose sonic performance takes two typical forms: The Ezan (call to prayer) and the Selâ (a supererogatory prayer recited over mosque loudspeakers). Both my lived experience in Ankara and newspaper reports demonstrate that the frequency and the volume of these performances have increased since the 2016 coup attempt (Cumhuriyet, 2023; Habertürk, 2019). The changing frequency and volume of the mosque sounds bear political implication, outside of their religious-cultural values. The second component is the imagined Ottoman identity. While being institutionalized by Ottoman Turkmen Associations, and reproduced by the Iraqi Turkmen immigrants who self-identify themselves as Ottoman Turks in Ankara, this imagined identity displays extra-citizenry characteristics going beyond the nationals. The outcome of these questions will overarchingly help better understand struggles over and for urban public spaces and the right to non-Islamist Ankara amid millet building in Turkey.