The image of the Iranian people in the Ottoman Empire’s chronicles

Seyhanoglu, FatihFatih Seyhanoglu is managing editor for Encompassing Crescent; an Overseas Associated Member of CAEI (Argentine Center for International Studies); and, worked as a journalist in Turkey between 2002 and 2005.

This work examines the image of the Iranian people in the Ottoman Empire's historical chronicles and literature, as a way of looking at the construction of the Turkish or Ottoman self in terms of an Iranian other. In dealing with the image of Iranian people, this study observes that the official view of Ottoman Islam was linked with Iranian people as other when determining the construction and portraiture of a national Turkish identity. The Iranian (Acem in Ottoman and modern Turkish) was a preferred "other" rather than the "West as other" because Iranians were historically portrayed in constant hard confrontation with the Ottoman Empire from its early period to contemporary Turkey. Thus, projected in the Ottoman chronicles' discourse and modern literature of 19th and 20th century, the pejorative image of Iranian people constructs a Turkish self as one against the Acems. Briefly, this paper proposes the influence of Ottoman and modern Turkish historians' accounts on modern Turkish identity and self-perception or definition.