Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Empire
Arts & Ideas
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The What-if Moment of the Ottoman Empire
There's a really interesting moment in Ottoman history just after Abdul Hamid II is overthrown when we have this brief but flourishing period of democracy. Yet very quickly this parliament divides into languages and religions and ethnicities, everyone ends up hating each other. So that is the what-if moment. And if that didn't succeed then it was never going to succeed. In a strange way, yes, the non-Muslim portions of the empire often felt invested in the Ottoman project. But that also made the Muslim majority feel excluded from these processes When you've got Jews and Christians overrepresented in the parliament. Then why would they think as Muslims that they have a stake in this as much as they
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