This House Regrets the Demise of the Ottoman Empire - Attila Pók - Prop

[00:00:01][applause] Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, let me start with two preliminary remarks. The first preliminary remark is that I am Hungarian. And from a Hungarian perspective, the Ottoman Empire's expansion towards Hungary is considered to be one of the greatest tragedies in Hungarian history that led to the collapse of the strong medieval empire.

[00:00:32]That still I am trying to be as objective as possible. The second preliminary remark is that during the dinner I had the privilege sitting next to the last speaker of the proposition and that seems to have made my speech softer.

[00:00:51]So uh one can let me come to the my major arguments. One can regret something if the regretted event that is the demise of the Ottoman Empire had a real option. Do not misunderstand me. My point is not that the only scenario that followed the collapse of the old great power was what actually happened. No, things could have been different if World War I had had a different ending.

[00:01:20]Still uh if you look at the long process of development maybe starting out with the with the battle of La Panto in 1571 or latest with the failed siege of Vienna in 1683.

[00:01:37]I think that in spite of all the reform events, one can argue that ever since the 16th century, as also Bernard Lewis, the great expert in the field argues, the Ottoman Empire experienced an allcompassing long-term decline.

[00:01:56]Economically the empire was undermined by the discovery of the new world, the subsequent shift in the economic balance between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe as well as the voyages of discovery which brought Europeans to India and led to a decline in the volume of trade passing through Ottoman ports.

[00:02:18]Also economically the price revolution led to the destabilization of the Ottoman coinage and severe fiscal crisis. And all this proved to be disastrous when paired with a rapidly rising cost of warfare including the destination Hungary. As the cavalary army of the Ottomans became obsolete, the tear system of land tenure which had sustained it fell into obsolescence while the corrupt bureaucracy was unable to replace it with a functional alternative.

[00:02:55]Ottoman economic and military backwardness was extenuated by the close-mindedness and unwillingness of the bureaucracy to adopt European innovations. Ultimately, let me take it to the extreme. The Ottoman Empire reverted to a medieval state with a medieval mentality and a medieval economy, but with the added burden of a bureaucracy and a huge standing army that very few medieval states had to deal with. Even most of the empire citizens saw the collapse as beneficial.

[00:03:33]In fact, since 1908, the state was very different from the old empire. It was moving from an old Roman Empire towards a Turkish state. The Sultanate political monopoly by that time was broken, creating space for more representative governments. Ataturk and his followers would depict the foundation of Turkey as a triumph of clearsighted modernization over the peridy of western powers and the reactionary forces of the sultnet.

[00:04:07]Many Turks I accept feel mixed emotions about the Ottoman Empire's fall, pride in its cultural legacy and unease about imperial decline.

[00:04:20]Older generations who experience early republican reforms or family narratives tied to force population exchanges may feel more attachment to Ottoman memories. Younger urban Turks often priorize economic prospects and modern identity over imperial nostalgia.

[00:04:41]Arab, Greek, Armenian and other national movements gave a chance to form their own states. For centuries, the empire has been renowned no doubt for its religious, ethnic and linguistic pluralist. But by the time of the demise, the final demise, Turk became synonym with poor and educated peasant on Anatolian villager. After a few centuries, Ottoman elites identify themselves as Ottoman.

[00:05:12]Ottomans embraced the Turkish identity but only at the end of the 19th century or per possibly early 20th century. It was too late to make a strong national non-imperialistic state.

[00:05:28]Increasingly therefore Turkish national identity came to be defined not inclusive terms but exclusionary terms in line with Wilson's 14 point ambiguous at its relevant first point might have been according to the majority of American West European politicians it was so to say natural for a multithnic empire to be carved up into nation states For many communities in the empire, the empire sent promised an escape from decades on conscription and frontier wars. The empire that no doubt earlier provided a long period of regional stability at Pak Autoana across large parts of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans was by this time no more in a position to do so. From the 1819s onwards, successive brutal attempts by imperial governments to crush Armenian separatives and root out supposedly disloyal populations led to mass killings in which a million or more people per perished. Hundreds of thousands of other Orthodox Christians were purged from government service, driven from their homes, forcibly relocated or expelled. For centuries, the empire had been renowned for its religious, ethnic, and linguistic pluralism. But that was over. The increasingly centralized nature of the Ottoman Empire produced uh resistance against innovation.

[00:07:09]And although cultural pride and selective nostalgia are still widespread, regret for the empire's demise is strongest among conservative older generations and not among constructive uh uh dynamic younger people.

[00:07:29]Ottoman memory shapes politic diplomacy and popular culture today functioning more as a symbolic resource then as a program to revive the empire and that means no regret for the demise. Let me conclude with two remarks. I had two introductory remarks. The first remark is a reference to Paul Kennedy's term the imperial overstretched. I think it can be very well applied for the Ottoman Empire as Paul Kennedy also does. His theory of imperial overstretch argues that the empire's decline was linked to internal political decisions that led to its isolation and failure to keep pace with European economic and military innovation. Kennedy argues his main argument is that a great power stability ascendancy depends on balancing its economic capacity with its military and strategic obligation and at that point the Ottoman Empire after the first world war was no more in a position to meet this expectations.

[00:08:43]And the second remark I thought I would end with a more positive remark.

[00:08:48]Demises, declines, falls can also have positive consequences in the field of art and literature. Let me refer to a Hungarian and a Turkish example. There's a very famous Hungarian poet in early 20th century who was forecasting a visionary poet who was forecasting the demise of the Habsburg Empire within that of Hungary but he is considered to be one of the greatest Hungarian poets because this demise this negative experience uh gave an impetus to to cultural and literary creativity and uh the the Turkish example is the famous writer Pamuk who also combines the willingness for innovation, modernization with a wonderful memory and nostalgia for uh the old Ottoman Empire. But this doesn't mean a demise but a cultural uh contribution to the memory of this empire. Thank you very much. [applause] >> [applause]