ANKARA, 24 July 2004 — The most senior surviving member of the once mighty Turkish Ottoman dynasty says Turkey should aim to become a leader of the Muslim world if the European Union refuses to let it in.
The Ottoman sultans ruled over much of the Muslim world for centuries and also bore the religious title of caliph. But Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who scrapped the monarchy and founded modern Turkey in 1923, pulled the country firmly Westward.
“It would be wonderful if we could become the leader of the Islamic world,” Ertugrul Osman, a sprightly 92-year-old who lives in New York but is visiting his homeland, told the Sabah daily in an interview published yesterday.
The current AKP government has its roots in political Islam but has set joining the EU — a Turkish goal since 1963 — as its priority.
Osman, who despite his fondness for Islam leads a Westernized lifestyle in Manhattan, added that he saw little chance of the Muslim world accepting Turkish leadership at present because of Turkey’s close ties with the state of Israel.
Republican Turkey, true to Ataturk’s modernizing, secular and Western-oriented views, has long been suspicious of its Ottoman past, seeing the old empire as backward and decadent.
But Osman said: “For Turkey to move forward it must make peace with its Ottoman past. This is its most important heritage.... It is a psychological stage Turkey must overcome.”
Last week, Osman received a Turkish passport for the first time, a fact he ascribed to the more sympathetic stance of the AKP government. Previously he had visited his homeland on a US travel document.
“I am a Muslim like them. My family was for centuries the most important symbol in the Islamic world,” he said.
Osman went into exile in 1924 and lived for a while in Vienna before moving with his family to the United States, where he worked in the mining business.
