OSMANLI CUMHURIYETI: A TURKEY WITHOUT ATATURK

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 002158 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/22/2018 TAGS: EU OSCE PGOV TU SUBJECT: OSMANLI CUMHURIYETI: A TURKEY WITHOUT ATATURK Classified By: Acting Pol counselor Christopher Krafft for reasons 1.4( b,d) ¶1. (SBU) Summary: "Osmanli Cumhuriyeti," a recently released comedy film hypothesizes what Turkey would look like today had its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, not lived past the age of eight. Its vision is bleak, a combination of anti-Westernism and nostalgia for a largely-imagined golden age of Ottoman peace and prosperity, two views that have become increasingly popular among sectors of Turkey's intelligentsia in recent years. End Summary. The Ottoman Republic -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Fast on the tails of Can Dundar's biopic, "Mustafa," which boldly explored the hypothesis, "What if Ataturk were a human being with real human feelings?" comedic screenwriter-turned-director Gani Mujde released his Osmanli Cumhuriyeti (Ottoman Republic),which imagines a world in which Ataturk died of a fall at the age of eight. In this world, the Ottoman Empire has lost World War One, has been subjected to the Treaty of Sevres, and, has been put under a US mandate by the League of Nations (building, perhaps, on an American Mandate over "Western Armenia" that was originally envisioned, but never enforced, in the Treaty of Sevres). In the year 2008, Sultan Osman VII rules over Istanbul and Western Anatolia (the Eastern half having been given to the French) from Dolmabahce Palace. He himself is ruled in political matters by an American governor and, at home, by his domineering, fashion-driven wife. After falling in love with an activist art student, Osman awakens to the fact that Turkey has been enslaved and his life of luxury (replete with Prada shoes and Segways) is empty. His efforts to raise a rebel army to evict Turkey's American overlords come to naught, however, through the manipulations of Ibrahim Pasha, his conniving, sniveling advisor. Osman is sent off to exile, leaving his young son as the new Sultan in the capable hands of Ibrahim Pasa and the Americans. The departing former sultan laments, "If only someone had foreseen all of this in time to prevent it;" the scene then fades back to the young Ataturk, who becomes conscious again and runs forward to meet his destiny. ¶3. (SBU) Reviewers have largely criticized the movie for trying to be both a melodrama and a comedy and succeeding in being neither. A handful of reviews praise it for its patriotic sentiments; other reviewers see instead nationalist propaganda. Despite its failure to amuse or (curiously) to spark controversy, it nonetheless reflects two interesting aspects of how Turks perceive themselves and the world around them: swelling anti-American feelings and an increasing nostalgia for the alleged golden age of the Ottoman Empire. The first of these is something with which we have grown increasingly familiar; the second is, perhaps, more worrying. Against the West -------------- ¶4. (SBU) On surface, Osmanli Cumhuriyeti seems sharply anti-American. The American occupiers in the film are universally shown to be arrogant and disrespectful of the Turks, casually causing grievous harm to Ibrahim Pasa in a baseball game, for example, all the while calling him, condescendingly, "My Little Ibo". The Americans break up peaceful protests violently with rifle-toting marines, throw protesters (and, once, the Sultan) in prison without recourse to any legal process, and dispassionately sell off bits of the Empire to Greece. In the end, it is the Americans who slaughter the nascent rebel force in a palace coup and exile the Sultan. But the Americans are villains of convenience in this film; absent the Second Gulf War, the film would most likely still have been made, only with cricket-playing British colonels pulling the strings behind the throne, not baseball-playing Americans. The Europeans in the movie -- who play a lesser, but significant role, in the form of EU ambassadors dangling EU membership before the sultan to extract concessions from the Ottomans -- are just as arrogant, conniving, and condescending. The foreign occupiers are cardboard villains, stand-ins for what one Turkish film critic called "our nation's current mixture of inferiority and superiority complexes." ANKARA 00002158 002 OF 002 Misplaced Nostalgia -------------- ¶5. (SBU) It is, instead, a nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire that is the main message of this movie. Superficially, it recognizes that without Ataturk, Turkey would have suffered at the hands of its occupiers. But underneath is the assumption that modern politics is the source of all the problems of modern Turkey. In Mujde's imagined world, the Kurds in eastern Anatolia are clamoring to be united with the Turks, not to be divided from them. Various ethnic types -- a Bosnian bodyguard, a Kurdish chauffeur, a group of Turkish friends from the rural hamlet of Ankara -- band together to stand against the foreign occupiers. Said Mujde in an interview with Zaman newspaper: "If only we could accomplish in republican Turkey what Mehmet the Conqueror accomplished... we would not have secularism or headscarf issues, etc." ¶6. (C) Comment: Unlike the 2006 smash hit, "Valley of the Wolves," Osmanli Cumhuriyeti's anti-Americanism has not sparked the public's imagination. Its simplistic view of Ottoman history, however, is not uncommon amongst our interlocutors or in press outlets, particularly those of a nationalist or a religious bent. The view glosses over the failings of not just the Ottoman Empire, but empires in general -- patent inequality, lack of local political participation, simmering ethnic and religious tensions -- that made them no longer viable in global politics. The view also assumes that the Ottoman decline was wholly external, imposed by crafty European diplomats, completely ignoring the court intrigues, self-serving rulers and advisors, and disinterest in the general welfare that made the Ottoman Empire vulnerable to manipulation and led to its ultimate demise in the first place. Osmanli Cumhuriyeti should be a warning against Ottoman-style politics, not a longing for their return: the basic message that Turks of all political and ethnic stripes should band together for a common cause to strengthen the Republic is indeed a good one. But Turkey does not need an Osman VII or even another Ataturk; it needs a state that can build upon Ataturk's legacy to create fully transparent state structures, a fully politically active public, and a responsible political class that works together constructively for the common good. The Ottoman Empire is no model for that. End comment. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Turk ey Jeffrey