While wandering through downtown of Kütahya, which is grimy and old-fashioned, but at the same time reveals current Erdogan’s “Ottomania” trend, which the largest impact obtained since 2007 – the date of the End of the Age of Divinity. ABRACADBRA-C collected some colour pics from the buildings which in a final set looks like this:
This was a largest amount and widest scale of urban colours in one territory during the whole DAMTP peregrination.
Multiple degrees of Ottomanism, alongside multiple versions of Fatih, persist in the JDP’s contemporary rhetoric. There is a more radical version, with Fatih implicitly cursing Ataturk and 1453 replacing 1923 as the symbolic foundation date of the Turkish state. But there is also a more mainstream narrative in which Fatih and Ataturk remain enshrined together alongside the dates of their triumphs. After 2007 in the government’s enthusiasm for Ottoman history, classic components of Ataturk’s nationalist historiography have been increasingly “Ottomanized.” Just as Kemalists celebrated elements of Ottoman history by simply calling them Turkish, the JDP has stylistically and rhetorically incorporated references to the Seljuks, and even the Central Asian Turks, into their Ottoman- centered history. Thus Erdogan’s Ottoman- revival architecture has drawn heavily on pre-Ottoman Seljuk elements. Colour included.