Neo-Ottomanism

Neo-Ottomanism (Turkish: Yeni Osmanlıcılık, Neo-Osmanlıcılık) is an irredentist and imperialist Turkish political ideology that, in its broadest sense, advocates to honor the Ottoman past of Turkey and promotes greater political engagement of the Republic of Turkey within regions formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor state that covered the territory of modern Turkey among others.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Neo-Ottomanism emerged at the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union,^[6] forming two distinct waves of the ideology: the first, in the early 1990s, developed by the Turkish journalist and foreign policy advisor to President Turgut Özal, Cengiz Çandar; the second, associated with Ahmet Davutoğlu and his foreign policy goals of establishing Turkey as an influential power within the Balkans, Caucasia and the Middle East.^[7][8]

The term has been associated with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's irredentist, interventionist and expansionist foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean and the neighboring Cyprus, Greece, Iraq, Syria, as well as in Africa, including Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]} However, the term has been rejected by members of the Erdoğan Government, such as the former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu^[20] and the former Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop.^[21]