Turkish Daily News
Date: June 12, 2008

AKP has false image of Ottoman Empire, says US academic


For Princeton historian Lowry, the Ottoman Empire was more secular than the Muslim democrat rulers and the Kemalist elites of present-day Turkey imagine

Devrim Sevimay

ISTANBUL - Milliyet


The Ottoman sultans were more secular than the Kemalist elites and those who call themselves Muslim rulers in present day Turkey, said Heath W. Lowry, a visiting professor of history at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University.
                   The “Islam” of the Ottoman Empire was quite different than the ruling Justice and Development Party’s, or AKP, “Islam,” argued Lowry, comparing the Islamic mentalities of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.
Lowry, a professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University, said the ruling AKP often makes incorrect attributions to the Ottoman Empire in terms of its understanding of Islam, which, he argued, was quite different than what the present day rulers of Turkey imagine.
“When the Ottomans first emerged on the stage, inhabitants of the lands they ruled were mainly Christians,” he said, adding, “Majority of the subjects it ruled until 1500 were of different religions, ethnicities and cultures. “And in such a context, the Ottomans created an incredible administrative system. For example, in the tax records, the name of a tax might appear in Greek or Serbian depending on where it is cited.”
For Lowry, the Ottoman Empire had a more pragmatic mentality and a boarder perspective until the reign of Mehmet II ended. “Did the Ottomans force the people under their rule to convert to Islam or intend to make Jihad? No, they simply wanted to collect taxes in an effective way. So it didn’t matter whether those who paid the tax were Greek or Serbian,” he said.
Many things changed in mentality when Selim I the Grim Yavuz ascended the throne after Mehmet II. “Selim I conquered the Arab world but I sometimes think if the vice versa happened because since then the Arab world began to promote its own values and traditions in the Ottoman Empire. Again, with Selim I, the ulema, the clerical class of the Arab world flocked to Istanbul,” said Lowry.
An example of the Arab influence during the reign of Selim I is the change in the usage of the word “domuz,” which means pig in English. Before Selim I, the word “domuz” appeared in various forms in tax records, but during his rule it was changed into “resmi hınzır,” an Arabic word, which referred to pig in all documents and records.
The conversion of Roman or Byzantine churches into mosques also began after the 16th century, what became an indicator of the mentality change in the Ottoman Empire after the reign of Mehmet II, who ended the Byzantine era in Constantinople.
After Selim I took power, we see the gradual formation of a clerical class called the “ulema” and a number of Islamic orders called the “tariqat.” “Of course, the ulema were made up of erudite Muslims. But when the Turkish Republic was founded, this 600-year old clerical class also came to an end,” said Lowry. “All income and resources that belonged to ulema was suddenly lost. Therefore, when the ulema disappeared in republican times, tariqats continued to exist under ground,” he added. This was the end of “Ottoman Islam” and the beginning of more of an “underground tariqat Islam,” which paved the way for a different understanding and mentality that has nothing to do with the system of the newly established Turkish nation-state of the time. “And when those tariqats reappeared within the last few decades, we saw that they had no ties with the Ottoman tradition,” he said.
The reappearance of the tariqats began in the ‘50s and peaked in the ‘70s. Once they appeared on the stage, their demand to have a free Islamic way of life surfaced as well.

‘I still keep records of my interviews with Özal’
Lowry tells: “One day, after Turgut Özal became the eight president of Turkey, he called me to the presidential office in Çankaya, Ankara. He asked me to write his biography. Then we began to have in-depth interviews. He told me about his childhood years, which were not widely known in Turkey, his youth, the first time he went to the United States and the year he met his wife Semra. But our interviews were interrupted by his death. I still keep those taped records in my personal archive. I plan to publish a detailed article on his life one day.”

Ottoman expansion sought not only with swords:
A study Lowry carried out in Greece in the last four years will be published by Bahçeşehir University Publications under the title “The Shaping of the Ottoman Balkans.” In his study, Lowry notes early Ottoman history is the era on which less has been written, geographically focusing on the north of Greece. His research included also the biography of Evrenos Bey, who was a key figure in that region. As Lowry researched Evrenos Bey, the Ottoman commander who led major sieges in the Balkans, he found something considered as path-breaking: Unlike the generally held idea, the Ottomans did not enter the Balkans with imperialistic, assimilative purposes to make everyone in those lands Muslim with the help of swords, argued Lowry. “They never said ‘You will either be a Muslim or we’ll cut you.’ This is completely a false story,” he said.
“Evrenos Bey had ordered construction of water canals, caravanserais, ways, bridges, and imarethanes (almshouses) on the lands that Ottoman troops marched through in the Balkans. That is to say, the Ottomans were not only holding swords in their hands as they marched through the Balkans but also established cities there. This is a crucial task to undertake for a young empire during its formation era.”