Displaying the Ottoman past in an 'old' museum of a 'new' Turkey: the Topkapi Palace Museum

Abstract

In this study, employing qualitative research methods, I explore how the Ottoman past, selectively rejected by Kemalist historiography, is displayed in an established place of memory - Topkapi Palace Museum (the imperial house) - in a neo-Ottoman Turkey. Since the 2000s, Topkapi Palace Museum has transformed from a regular state museum to a national museum and then to a national palace museum. In this old state museum in transformation, the Ottoman past is revitalized through the pan-Islamic and multicultural imperial legacy and through primordial Turkic roots in Central Asia and the West, the two main tenets of Kemalist historiography. Accordingly, I argue that, in Topkapi Palace Museum, the Ottoman past is selectively re-inserted to the homogenous, empty time the Kemalist elite imagined while constructing Turkishness. This reflects on the ensuing significance of Kemalist historiography in displaying the Ottoman past, as well as the centralization and malleability of neo-Ottomanism in a 'new' Turkey.