Mustafa Akyol
In
Turkey, there has been an unmistakable revival of the image of Sultan
Abdulhamid II. The powerful Ottoman monarch who ruled the empire
single-handedly from 1876 to 1909 is praised with a flood of articles in
the pro-government press, endless messages on social media and various
conferences and panels. The speaker of the Turkish parliament, Ismail Kahraman, a confidant of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
even hosted an “International Symposium on Sultan Abdulhamid II and His
Era,” at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, a relic from the latter-day
Ottoman Empire. The great sultan, Kahraman said, “is a mariner’s compass to give us direction and enlighten our future.”
