Gendered Nostalgia: Neo-Ottomanism in Islamist Women’s Media in Turkey

A webinar with Petek Onur, Marie Curie fellow, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.

Please sign up to Catharina Raudvere, raudvere@hum.ku.dk

Gendered Nostalgia: Neo-Ottomanism in Islamist Women’s Media in Turkey

Neo-Ottomanism as a political ideology has been a major component of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, particularly since 2007. It is based on the aim to revitalize the glory of the Ottoman Empire in contemporary Turkey with a nationalist and Islamic reinterpretation of history, which is also predominantly patriarchal.Cultural reflections of the ideology have also been widely seen in daily life, popular culture, and media, primarily in TV series and Islamist news media, newspapers, and magazines. This seminar is based on the analytical framework and the initial findings of the research project “Gendered Nostalgia: Neo-Ottomanism in Islamist Women’s Media in Turkey” which studies how this ideology is reproduced in different Islamist women’s journals and magazines. The research aims to understand and emphasize the creative agencies of the women editors and authors of the publications in reproducing, aestheticizing, and popularizing neo-Ottomanism. The first set of data is obtained from the archive research covering the period 2007-2021 of five journals representing different Islamic groups, communities, and life-styles.