Pseudo-Historicism and Architecture: The New Ottomanism in Turkey

The changes within temporality, the rise of presentism, and the emergence of ersatz nostalgia as the cultural consequences of late capitalism are producing a pseudo-historicist perspective as a way of dealing with the past. This article claims that the rising interest in the Ottoman Past in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not just the product of the conservative cultural perspective of the ruling party but also the result of the pseudo-historicism produced by the long-term transformation of the Turkish society since the 1980s. This article takes the architectural production as an exemplification to illuminate the pseudo-historicist perspective in the Turkish context, because architecture appears as the most important terrain which reflects the development of this interest in the Ottoman past due to its characteristic as a profession closely knitted with the economy, and its representational power mirroring the cultural.