The Letter Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic That Followed

An empire can disappear from the map without disappearing from history.

The Ottoman Empire presents a different question of accountability from the European colonial powers we’ve examined. It ruled across southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for centuries, encompassing populations with different religions, languages and political traditions.

Modern Türkiye is the most direct political and territorial successor to the Ottoman Empire, but it is not the empire itself. The Ottoman sultanate was abolished in 1922, and the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923. The empire’s other successor societies include those in the Balkans, the Levant, Iraq and North Africa. Its financial obligations were even divided among successor states under the Treaty of Lausanne. Holocaust Encyclopedia +2

That makes the distinction important: the people who inherited Ottoman institutions, territories or cultural identities did not all inherit the same power, benefits or responsibilities. Many inherited histories of subordination and resistance instead.

The letter confronts the Armenian genocide, massacres of Christian communities, slavery, forced child recruitment, political repression and the effects of imperial rule. It also considers the continuing questions of historical recognition, minority rights, Cyprus and modern Türkiye’s relationship with neighbouring societies. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents the systematic destruction of Ottoman Armenians in 1915–1916; Türkiye’s government continues to reject the genocide designation, including in its official position of April 2026. Holocaust Encyclopedia +2

MUSEUM OF DOOM IX

The Letter Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic That Followed

An empire can disappear from the map without disappearing from history.

An imagined letter of atonement from a Turkish soul who loves the civilisation inherited from the Ottoman Empire, but refuses to let the beauty of that inheritance conceal the suffering inflicted through its power.

To the Armenian people.

To the Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans and Greeks.

To the Kurds.

To the peoples of Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Hungary and the wider Balkans.

To the people of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and the Arabian Peninsula.

To Cyprus.

To every family whose life was shaped by Ottoman conquest, slavery, forced displacement or political domination.

To every community whose existence was subordinated to imperial authority.

And to my fellow Turkish citizens, alongside all the peoples who inherited different parts of the Ottoman world.

I am Turkish.

And I love my country.

I love Istanbul.

Our beautiful Bosphorus.

Our architecture.

Our cuisine.

Our music.

Our literature.

Our craftsmanship.

Our languages and cultural traditions.

I love the extraordinary historical depth of the land we inhabit.

I love the fact that civilisations have met, traded, fought, influenced and transformed one another here for thousands of years.

And I recognise the enormous historical significance of the Ottoman Empire.

Its architecture.

Its administrative institutions.

Its trading networks.

Its military organisation.

Its art.

Its intellectual life.

Its cultural influence.

The remarkable buildings that remain standing.

The mosques.

The palaces.

The markets.

The fountains.

The bridges.

The cities.

The archives.

The extraordinary beauty that developed through centuries of human creativity.

I understand why so many people are fascinated by Ottoman history.

I understand why it inspires films, television series, museums, books and celebrations.

But there is something I want to ask myself.

What exactly am I celebrating when I celebrate an empire?

Am I celebrating the creativity of the people who lived within it?

The knowledge they developed?

The art they produced?

The architecture they constructed?

The relationships they formed?

Or am I celebrating the authority the empire exercised over people who did not always consent to being governed by it?

Because those are not the same thing.

And I have begun to recognise how easily they can become confused.

We can admire a palace without questioning who funded it.

We can celebrate a conquest without examining the lives destroyed through it.

We can admire an emperor without examining the experiences of the people subjected to his decisions.

We can celebrate the size of an empire without asking what happened to the populations living within its expanding boundaries.

And we can inherit an extraordinary cultural civilisation while remaining insufficiently conscious of the responsibilities attached to its history.

An empire is not great simply because it was large.

Nor is a ruler admirable simply because he conquered.

Nor is an institution humane merely because it was sophisticated.

The question must always extend beyond the achievement.

To the human beings who experienced it.

And when I begin examining Ottoman history through that question, I recognise that there is much more to account for than I was prepared to see.

I am sorry.

Not for being Turkish.

Not for loving my culture.

Not for appreciating the extraordinary creativity of the people who came before me.

But for every occasion on which I have confused love for my inheritance with the need to defend everything that occurred within it.

And for every moment when I have celebrated imperial greatness without equally recognising its human cost.

To the peoples of the Balkans

I am sorry.

For the centuries of conquest and imperial administration that shaped the histories of your lands.

For the wars.

For the military campaigns.

For the destruction that accompanied territorial expansion.

For the displacement of communities.

For the people subjected to coercive authority.

For the families whose lives were interrupted by the political ambitions of rulers they had never chosen.

I know Ottoman rule lasted for centuries and differed from place to place and period to period.

I know many communities maintained religious institutions, economic activities, languages and local customs.

I know that some people participated successfully in Ottoman political, commercial and cultural life.

And I recognise that Ottoman history cannot be reduced to a continuous record of oppression.

But neither can the existence of coexistence erase the experiences of those who were deprived of their autonomy.

I am sorry for the system known as devshirme.

For the Christian boys taken from their families and recruited into the service of the Ottoman state.

For the children converted to Islam.

For those trained for the military or imperial administration.

I recognise that some eventually acquired exceptional power and status.

Some became important officials.

Some rose to positions that might otherwise have been inaccessible to them.

But I want to ask something.

Does the possibility of future success justify a system through which children could be taken from their families without their free consent?

Does the fact that a child might eventually become powerful erase the fact that their life was redirected by imperial authority?

Can we celebrate the sophistication of the institution without recognising what it meant to the family from which the child was taken?

I cannot.

I want to acknowledge the people affected by that system as human beings.

Not merely as recruits.

Not merely as soldiers.

Not merely as future administrators.

And not merely as evidence of the empire’s remarkable organisational capacity.

They were children before they became instruments of the state.

A child does not become the property of an empire because the empire believes it can give that child a useful future.

I am sorry for the communities whose political independence was restricted.

For those subjected to taxation and military obligations imposed through imperial institutions.

For the religious inequalities that existed within the system, even where non-Muslim communities possessed forms of autonomy.

For every occasion on which the empire treated religious identity as a measure through which human beings should possess different rights and obligations.

And for every person whose humanity was made subordinate to imperial convenience.

To Greece

I am sorry.

For the suffering inflicted during the suppression of the Greek struggle for independence.

For the people killed.

For the villages destroyed.

For the civilians displaced.

And particularly for Chios in 1822.

For the slaughter of civilians.

For the people captured and sold into slavery.

For the families separated.

For the island whose destruction became a symbol of the brutality of imperial repression.

I recognise that the Greek War of Independence involved violence committed by more than one side.

Muslim civilians also suffered massacres and displacement during the conflict.

Those lives matter too.

And I refuse to create another hierarchy of human suffering in which one population’s victims are recognised only by erasing another’s.

But the existence of atrocities committed by Greek forces cannot excuse the atrocities committed by Ottoman forces.

One injustice does not become legitimate because another injustice occurred beside it.

I am sorry for every human being whose life was treated as expendable during the struggle over political authority.

And I am sorry for the generations that inherited hostility between communities whose histories had become deeply interconnected.

There is another event I want us to remember.

The compulsory population exchange agreed between Greece and Turkey in 1923.

A policy implemented after the Ottoman Empire had already come to an end.

Greek Orthodox people were required to leave Turkey, and Muslims were required to leave Greece, with specified exceptions.

Entire communities were separated from places they had inhabited for generations.

Families lost homes.

People lost businesses.

Communities lost continuity.

I recognise that the agreement was made by both governments in the aftermath of war and displacement.

But I want to question the underlying idea.

When did religion become sufficient reason to determine where a human being belonged?

Why should a person who has lived their entire life in one place suddenly become foreign because a political agreement has categorised them differently?

Why should the history of a family be subordinate to a government’s definition of national identity?

And why should people be required to abandon their homes to satisfy the political desire for a more homogeneous nation?

I am sorry for those who suffered.

Greek and Turkish.

Christian and Muslim.

For all those whose belonging was decided without adequately respecting their individual existence.

To the Armenian people

There is something I must say clearly.

And I do not want to hide it behind diplomatic language.

I am sorry for the Armenian genocide.

I am sorry for the systematic destruction inflicted upon Ottoman Armenians during the First World War.

For the arrests.

For the deportations.

For the massacres.

For the forced marches.

For the starvation.

For the people who died from dehydration, exposure and disease.

For the women subjected to sexual violence.

For the children removed from their families.

For the people whose homes and possessions were confiscated.

For the communities destroyed.

For the lives that were never allowed to continue.

For the ancestors whose descendants have spent generations demanding recognition.

I know that the contemporary Turkish government disputes the classification of these events as genocide and presents a different interpretation of the wartime circumstances.

I know that Turkish Muslims also suffered enormous violence, displacement and death during the empire’s final decades.

That suffering was real.

And it deserves recognition.

But the documented suffering of one population cannot cancel the systematic destruction of another.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the overwhelming scholarly consensus on the Armenian genocide identify deliberate policies of mass deportation and killing carried out under the Ottoman government of the Committee of Union and Progress.

And I want to confront that history.

Not because I wish to condemn every person who lived under Ottoman rule.

But because the truth does not require the collective condemnation of an entire population.

It requires recognition of actions, decisions, institutions, victims and responsibilities.

I am sorry for the Armenian children who were forcibly separated from their cultural and religious identities.

For the families who never learned what happened to their loved ones.

For the properties taken.

For the villages emptied.

For the churches and cultural institutions damaged, destroyed or appropriated.

And for the generations that inherited the consequences.

I am sorry for the historical silence.

For the evasions.

For the defensiveness.

For the instinct to change the conversation whenever the question becomes uncomfortable.

And for every time acknowledgement has been treated as though it would require the destruction of Turkish identity.

Why should recognising the humanity of Armenian victims threaten the humanity of Turkish people?

Why should an honest account of history require us to abandon our culture?

Why should we imagine that acknowledging the crimes of a government from more than a century ago means every person alive today must be personally responsible for committing them?

The issue is not whether every Turkish citizen committed the atrocity.

They did not.

The issue is what our society chooses to recognise, preserve, investigate and repair within the historical inheritance it continues to carry.

And I cannot ask the descendants of Armenian victims to abandon their memory merely because acknowledging it makes me uncomfortable.

Their ancestors do not become less deserving of recognition because my national identity was developed through a different historical narrative.

I am sorry.

And I want that acknowledgement to become more than a sentence.

I want serious examination of records, confiscated property, lost cultural heritage and the experiences of surviving communities.

I want reconciliation that respects historical truth rather than requiring one population to erase its own memory.

Because the passage of a century is not the same thing as the completion of accountability.

To the Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean peoples

I am sorry.

For the persecution and mass killings inflicted upon Christian communities during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

For the violence remembered as Sayfo.

For the families murdered.

For the villages destroyed.

For the people displaced.

For the communities whose ancestral presence in the region was devastated.

For the destruction of cultural and religious life.

And for every occasion on which these histories have received less attention because the populations affected were smaller, dispersed or politically less influential.

I recognise that these communities possess histories extending far beyond the Ottoman Empire.

Their languages.

Their religious traditions.

Their cultural knowledge.

Their relationships with ancestral lands.

Their literature.

Their communities.

They did not require the Ottoman state to establish their humanity.

And I am sorry for every system through which their right to continue that existence was denied.

I do not want their stories to disappear beneath broader descriptions of imperial collapse.

The empire did not simply collapse.

People experienced that collapse.

And some were subjected to extraordinary violence within it.

A historical transition does not become less destructive because historians can explain why it occurred.

To the Greek communities of Anatolia and the Black Sea

I am sorry for the persecution, killings, expulsions and forced displacement experienced by Ottoman Greek communities during the empire’s final years and the conflicts that followed.

For the families separated from ancestral homes.

For the communities destroyed or uprooted.

For the people killed.

For the children who lost their parents.

For the traditions disrupted.

For those who were never able to return.

I recognise that the classification and interpretation of particular campaigns and atrocities remain subjects of historical and political disagreement.

But the documented mass suffering of Greek communities requires acknowledgement regardless of those debates.

And I recognise the suffering of Muslims displaced from the Balkans and other territories during the same era.

Some arrived in Anatolia after experiencing violence, expulsion and dispossession.

Their trauma did not disappear because they arrived among people who shared their religion.

And their suffering should not be used to diminish somebody else’s.

I want us to understand that the end of empire did not produce one uncomplicated story of liberation.

It produced multiple experiences.

Some people gained independence.

Some lost homes.

Some escaped violence.

Some became refugees.

Some survived atrocities.

And some inherited political systems that continued organising belonging around exclusion.

The end of imperial rule does not automatically mean the end of the human consequences of imperial rule.

To the peoples of the Arab provinces

I am sorry for the occasions on which Ottoman authorities subordinated local autonomy to imperial political and military interests.

To Syria.

Lebanon.

Iraq.

Palestine.

Jordan.

And the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula.

I recognise that Ottoman rule varied greatly across regions and centuries.

Local elites exercised power.

Religious communities maintained institutions.

Trade networks connected cities.

Many Arab people participated in Ottoman political, intellectual and commercial life.

And not every Arab community regarded Ottoman rule in the same way.

Some supported it.

Some resisted it.

Some were indifferent to its distant political centre.

But that complexity does not remove the need to examine coercion and repression.

I am sorry for the people subjected to forced conscription and wartime requisitions.

For communities whose resources were diverted to military objectives.

For the political activists executed under Ottoman authority during the First World War.

For the people whose aspirations for greater autonomy were treated as threats to imperial control.

And for the suffering of civilian populations during the empire’s final conflict.

I am sorry for the people who were made to carry the human consequences of decisions taken by political and military authorities far away.

To Lebanon

I want to acknowledge a catastrophe.

The famine of the First World War.

For the people who starved.

For the families who watched loved ones die.

For the children who suffered.

For the communities devastated.

For the people whose survival became dependent upon access to food that the surrounding economic and political systems failed to provide.

I recognise that the causes were multiple.

The Allied naval blockade.

Ottoman military requisitions.

The diversion of transport and agricultural resources.

Food shortages.

Profiteering.

Corruption.

Locust plagues.

And environmental conditions.

But the presence of multiple causes does not erase the responsibilities of the authorities governing during the crisis.

And I want to ask something.

What is the purpose of an empire if the people living within it can become expendable whenever the empire’s military objectives take priority?

How can a government demand loyalty from people whose basic survival it cannot adequately protect?

How can military success remain the focus while civilians are dying from hunger?

And what does this reveal about the difference between governing territory and sustaining the human beings who inhabit it?

I am sorry.

For the suffering that might have been prevented.

For the lives not adequately protected.

And for the way war exposed the vulnerability of populations dependent upon systems beyond their control.

To the peoples of North Africa and Egypt

I am sorry for the imperial ambitions through which Ottoman authority expanded into North Africa and Egypt.

For the wars and coercive political arrangements associated with establishing and defending control.

For the exploitation that occurred within systems of taxation, trade and slavery.

For the people who were bought, sold and forced into service.

For the women subjected to enslavement and sexual exploitation.

For the children whose existence was treated as transferable property.

For the people taken from Africa, the Caucasus and other regions through slave-trading networks connected to Ottoman territories.

I recognise that slavery within the Ottoman world took forms different from plantation slavery in the Americas.

Some enslaved people acquired important political or military positions.

Some were eventually manumitted.

Some gained wealth and influence.

But none of that means the original denial of freedom was insignificant.

A system does not become humane simply because a small number of people subjected to it eventually acquired power.

And I want to question every historical narrative that treats the social mobility of some enslaved people as though it cancels the exploitation of others.

Their lives were human lives.

Not merely components of an imperial institution.

To the women whose histories remain hidden

I am sorry.

For the women subjected to enslavement, coercion and exploitation within Ottoman social and political structures.

For the women brought into households and harems without meaningful freedom to determine their own lives.

For the women whose reproductive existence became connected to the ambitions of powerful families and dynasties.

For those whose children were separated from them.

For those subjected to violence.

And for the women whose labour sustained homes, institutions and communities without receiving adequate recognition.

I recognise that women within Ottoman history were not all powerless.

Some exercised considerable influence.

Some owned property.

Some established charitable institutions.

Some participated in commerce.

Some shaped political and cultural life.

But recognising their achievements does not erase the conditions of those whose autonomy was denied.

The existence of powerful women does not automatically mean every woman within a society possessed power over her own existence.

I want to recognise both histories.

Not merely the extraordinary women whose influence became visible.

But also the women whose lives were never considered important enough to record.

And now, to modern Türkiye

This is where I must confront my inheritance.

Because the Ottoman Empire no longer exists.

Its sultanate was abolished in 1922.

The Republic of Turkey was established in 1923.

And the country we inhabit today is a different political entity.

It has its own history.

Its own institutions.

Its own achievements.

Its own political responsibilities.

Its own failures.

And its own future.

I do not believe modern Türkiye should be treated as though it were identical to the Ottoman Empire.

Nor do I believe the peoples of the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa should all be assigned equal responsibility for an imperial system that governed them through very different relationships of power.

But there is something I cannot ignore.

Modern Türkiye inherited the imperial capital, much of the empire’s Anatolian heartland, important institutions, archives and cultural symbols.

And within our society, Ottoman history continues to occupy a significant place.

We visit the palaces.

We admire the mosques.

We celebrate the architecture.

We produce historical dramas.

We study the rulers.

We remember the military achievements.

And for some, Ottoman greatness remains a source of national and cultural pride.

I do not wish to forbid that pride.

But I want to ask something.

If we are willing to inherit the pride of Ottoman achievements, are we equally willing to confront the responsibilities attached to Ottoman history?

Or do we selectively inherit?

The architecture belongs to our national heritage.

The artistic achievements belong to our national heritage.

The military accomplishments belong to our national heritage.

The political influence belongs to our national heritage.

But the atrocities?

The displacements?

The massacres?

The forced assimilation?

The enslavement?

The property confiscations?

Those suddenly become something so distant that they have no relationship to us?

I do not believe that is a complete understanding of inheritance.

And I do not believe our national identity should need that selectivity to remain meaningful.

To the Kurdish people

I want to acknowledge something.

The Kurdish people are not simply a minority to be discussed whenever security becomes a political issue.

They are human beings with histories, cultures, languages and relationships with their ancestral lands.

Their existence extends beyond the boundaries of any one modern state.

And within modern Türkiye, Kurdish communities have experienced restrictions upon language, cultural expression and political rights during different periods.

There have also been decades of armed conflict involving the Turkish state and the PKK.

Civilians have suffered.

Families have lost loved ones.

Communities have experienced displacement.

And political and human rights questions remain unresolved.

I recognise that the PKK has carried out deadly attacks and that states have legitimate responsibilities to protect their populations.

I also recognise that Kurdish communities hold diverse political views and cannot be reduced to any single organisation.

But I want to ask something fundamental.

Why should recognising a person’s cultural identity threaten the existence of the state within which they live?

Why should linguistic difference be treated as something requiring suspicion?

And why should the existence of multiple identities within one country automatically become a question of national insecurity?

I welcome efforts that genuinely reduce violence and create opportunities for peaceful coexistence.

But I believe enduring peace requires attention to the rights and wellbeing of the people concerned.

Because a society cannot create genuine harmony simply by suppressing the visible expression of its internal differences.

Harmony requires recognition.

And recognition requires being willing to understand the people whose existence differs from our own.

To Cyprus

There is another history that requires recognition.

Cyprus became independent from Britain in 1960.

Its constitutional arrangements attempted to protect the interests of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

Intercommunal violence followed.

And in 1974, after a coup supported by the military junta then ruling Greece, Türkiye intervened militarily.

The island became divided, with Turkish forces controlling the north.

Today, decades later, that division remains.

I recognise the fears, losses and displacement experienced by both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.

I recognise that the historical responsibility for the crisis cannot be reduced to one actor.

And I recognise that the Turkish government regards its intervention as having protected Turkish Cypriots.

But I want to acknowledge the continuing human consequences.

Families separated from homes.

People unable to return to properties.

Communities divided by political boundaries.

Generations growing up within the reality of a conflict they did not personally create.

And I want to ask something.

How long must people continue living with unresolved consequences before their wellbeing becomes more important than preserving the positions inherited from the conflict?

I do not claim to possess a simple solution to the political status of Cyprus.

The people involved have legitimate rights, security concerns and different aspirations.

But their humanity must remain central.

And I do not want our historical relationship with Cyprus to be reduced to a contest over which side can claim the greater political victory.

To the refugees and displaced peoples of our region

I want to acknowledge another contemporary responsibility.

Türkiye has hosted millions of people fleeing war and instability, particularly from Syria.

I recognise the extraordinary generosity of many Turkish citizens and communities who have provided shelter, work, education and support.

I also recognise the economic and social pressures involved in accommodating large populations.

But the existence of genuine pressures cannot justify abuse.

Nor can the presence of refugees be treated as proof that their humanity has become conditional.

I want us to remember that the people crossing borders are not simply numbers.

They are parents.

Children.

Workers.

Students.

Families.

People with memories.

Relationships.

Cultures.

And futures.

And I want our government and institutions to exercise their responsibilities without exposing vulnerable people to unlawful treatment or forced return to danger.

I also want us to consider the consequences of Turkish military activity and political influence in neighbouring territories, including northern Syria.

These contemporary questions have their own causes and cannot simply be described as continuations of Ottoman rule.

But they raise a familiar principle.

The ability to exercise power beyond our borders must never become a substitute for respecting the human beings who live there.

And if our country’s historical inheritance has taught us anything, it should be the importance of examining the consequences of power before describing its exercise as necessary or beneficial.

To the countries that once formed part of the Ottoman Empire

I want to address something else.

Türkiye is not the only society that inherited Ottoman history.

The Balkans inherited Ottoman architecture, institutions, vocabulary, cuisine and cultural traditions.

Some communities remember periods of coexistence and commercial exchange.

Others remember conquest, repression and resistance.

Many remember both.

The Arab world inherited political, legal and administrative influences, alongside histories of autonomy movements, wartime suffering and the transition to new forms of rule.

North African societies retain cultural and historical connections that vary greatly across regions.

And some successor states inherited conflicts, divisions and institutions that were later transformed through European colonialism, nationalism, war and independent political decisions.

Their histories cannot all be attributed to the Ottoman Empire.

Nor can their modern governments be treated as simply extensions of the sultanate.

They possess their own agency and responsibilities.

But the Ottoman inheritance is part of a much larger regional story.

And I want us to understand that story without making Istanbul its permanent centre.

The histories of the peoples once governed by an empire do not belong to the empire alone.

The people who lived within it contributed to its culture.

Its architecture.

Its literature.

Its economy.

Its institutions.

Its knowledge.

Its achievements.

And its transformation.

Ottoman history was never simply the history of one ethnicity.

It was created through the lives of many peoples.

And the descendants of those peoples have every right to interpret that history through their own experiences.

Even when those interpretations differ from ours.

The guilt I did not know I was carrying

There is something I want to confess.

Perhaps I have spent years defending Ottoman history without fully understanding why.

Perhaps when someone criticised the empire, I immediately felt the need to explain its achievements.

Its tolerance.

Its religious institutions.

Its administration.

Its power.

Its remarkable longevity.

Its architecture.

Its cultural diversity.

Perhaps I wanted to explain that European empires also committed atrocities.

That the Ottoman system sometimes allowed religious communities to govern their own affairs.

That Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe found refuge in Ottoman lands.

That different peoples lived together across centuries.

And perhaps those facts are important.

They are.

But why did I feel the need to introduce them before acknowledging the suffering being described?

Why did a question about imperial violence sometimes feel like a question about my personal worth?

Why did I feel compelled to protect the reputation of rulers who died centuries before I was born?

And why did recognising somebody else’s suffering feel as though it might diminish the history I had inherited?

I am beginning to wonder whether I was protecting an identity whose full inheritance I had never learned to hold.

And perhaps there is guilt within that.

Not necessarily an emotion that announces itself.

Not something one simply chooses to carry or discard.

But a burden that can remain beneath conscious recognition.

Something that influences behaviour.

Defensiveness.

Avoidance.

Irritation.

The desire to explain.

The need to justify.

The fear of questioning something associated with one’s own identity.

I do not claim to know what every Turkish person experiences within their subconscious.

But I can examine my own relationship with the society I belong to.

And from a metaphysical perspective, I want to ask whether collective historical consciousness can contain unresolved burdens that continue influencing the ways societies understand themselves.

Because I cannot claim the achievements of an inherited ecosystem while refusing to examine the full history that shaped it.

I do not need to have committed an atrocity personally to recognise that the institutions and narratives I inherit may carry responsibilities that remain unresolved.

And I do not want guilt to become merely another uncomfortable feeling that I attempt to suppress.

I want recognition to become responsibility.

There is a difference between historical pride and imperial entitlement

I want modern Türkiye to understand something.

We can love our culture.

We can preserve Ottoman architecture.

We can study the empire’s history.

We can admire the creativity of its people.

We can recognise the achievements of its institutions.

We can celebrate the extraordinary cultural inheritance that developed through centuries of interaction.

But we do not need to celebrate domination.

We do not need to imagine that neighbouring peoples owe us loyalty because their ancestors once lived under Ottoman rule.

We do not need another country’s political dependency to validate our historical greatness.

We do not need to treat the loss of imperial territory as an injustice that must be reversed.

And we do not need the descendants of people who experienced Ottoman oppression to adopt our interpretation of history.

We do not own the memories of the people our empire governed.

Their experience belongs to them.

And our responsibility is not to demand that every historical memory become comfortable for us.

It is to develop the capacity to confront what happened.

Even when it is difficult.

Especially when it is difficult.

What genuine atonement would require

I do not want merely another ceremony.

Another speech.

Another national celebration that recognises the beautiful aspects of our inheritance while leaving the difficult questions outside.

I want historical research.

Accessible archives.

Honest education.

Respect for the memories of affected communities.

Recognition of documented atrocities.

Examination of cultural property and confiscated assets.

Serious discussion of restitution and reparatory responsibilities where evidence establishes a basis for them.

Preservation of minority languages and cultural heritage.

And international relationships that respect the sovereignty of neighbouring countries.

I want Ottoman history taught as the history of a complex empire.

Not merely a heroic story of conquest.

Not merely a collection of atrocities.

But a complete history in which the administrative, cultural and intellectual achievements are examined alongside the coercion, inequalities and violence.

Because the existence of something admirable does not erase something harmful.

And the existence of something harmful does not mean that every human being who lived within the empire lacked humanity.

The task is to understand.

Not to construct another mythology.

Historical accountability requires a civilisation to become capable of recognising everything it was, not merely everything it wishes to remember.

To those whose ancestors endured Ottoman violence

I am sorry.

For the people whose lives were lost.

For the families separated.

For the lands taken.

For the cultures suppressed.

For the children recruited or removed.

For the people enslaved.

For the civilians massacred.

For the people forced to leave homes their ancestors had inhabited for generations.

For the communities whose history was interrupted.

And for every person whose suffering became invisible within an official narrative of imperial greatness.

I cannot restore those lives.

I cannot undo centuries of conquest.

I cannot return every lost possibility.

And I cannot honestly claim that one letter accounts for every act committed across a vast empire that existed for more than six hundred years.

There are histories I have not mentioned.

Communities whose names I do not yet know.

Events that require further investigation.

Responsibilities that remain disputed.

And consequences whose relationships with the past are complex.

But I do not want uncertainty about some details to become an excuse for avoiding the harms already documented.

Nor do I want the suffering of those who resisted the Ottomans to erase the suffering of Ottoman Muslims who were themselves massacred or displaced during the empire’s decline.

Every human life deserves recognition.

And every institution responsible for violence deserves scrutiny.

To modern Türkiye, one final time

I love you.

I love the extraordinary beauty of the land we inhabit.

The cultures that have met here.

The knowledge preserved.

The creativity developed.

The cities built.

The people who have contributed to our history.

And the possibility of what we can become.

But I do not want our future to be built around the need to protect an empire that no longer exists.

I want us to become conscious of the distinction between inheriting culture and inheriting entitlement.

Between remembering conquest and admiring conquest.

Between recognising historical power and wanting to reproduce it.

Between loving our identity and defending every action ever associated with that identity.

I want us to be capable of saying:

We created extraordinary things.

And we also caused extraordinary harm.

We built institutions.

And we also denied people autonomy.

We preserved cultures.

And we also participated in suppressing others.

We developed knowledge.

And we also exercised power in ways that damaged human existence.

Those truths can coexist.

And perhaps our ability to hold them together is a greater demonstration of civilisation than our ability to describe how vast the empire once was.

Because if our identity is so fragile that recognising historical injustice threatens its existence, then we must ask what our identity has been constructed around.

I do not want a Turkey that requires historical denial to remain proud.

I want a society capable of knowing its history so fully that pride no longer depends upon innocence.

My final confession

I once believed the greatness of the Ottoman Empire could be measured through the territories it governed.

The armies it commanded.

The resources it controlled.

The monuments it constructed.

The wealth it accumulated.

The influence it exercised.

And the centuries through which it survived.

But now I want to measure civilisation differently.

How did people live?

How were children treated?

How were women treated?

How did communities preserve their identity?

What freedom did people possess?

What happened when they disagreed with authority?

What happened when they wanted independence?

What happened when the state required their labour, land or resources?

And what happened to those who refused?

Because the greatest measure of a civilisation should not be how many human beings it could govern, but how much humanity it allowed those human beings to exercise.

To Armenia:

I am sorry for the genocide, the destruction of communities and the generations that have had to struggle for recognition.

To the Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean peoples:

I am sorry for the massacres, displacement and damage to your cultural inheritance.

To Greece:

I am sorry for the atrocities inflicted during imperial conflict and for the suffering of communities whose lives were uprooted through war and population exchange.

To the peoples of the Balkans:

I am sorry for the violence and coercion associated with conquest, forced recruitment and imperial domination.

To the Arab peoples:

I am sorry for the times your political autonomy, livelihoods and lives were subordinated to imperial authority.

To Lebanon:

I am sorry for the contribution of Ottoman wartime policies to the devastating famine and for the civilians inadequately protected.

To the people harmed by Ottoman slavery:

I am sorry for the commodification of your existence, your labour and your bodies.

To the Kurdish people:

I recognise the need to confront both historical and contemporary questions of cultural rights, equality, violence and political participation.

To the people of Cyprus:

I recognise the human consequences of division, displacement and unresolved conflict.

And to every people whose history intersects with the Ottoman Empire:

I recognise that your history belongs to you.

That your memory deserves respect.

And that you should not be required to celebrate the power that once governed you.

But I also want to say something to those who inherit Ottoman culture today.

You do not need an empire to be extraordinary.

You do not need a sultan.

You do not need conquest.

You do not need another people’s obedience.

You do not need to occupy another country.

You do not need to control another civilisation.

And you do not need to defend every historical action associated with your ancestors in order to respect the lives they lived.

We have our minds.

Our creativity.

Our knowledge.

Our cultures.

Our languages.

Our relationships.

Our humanity.

And the capacity to contribute meaningfully to the world.

We can build relationships grounded in respect rather than imperial entitlement.

We can recognise what others have created.

We can preserve our own inheritance without diminishing theirs.

And we can become a society whose greatness is measured through the human lives it sustains rather than the territories it controls.

The Ottoman Empire is gone.

Its buildings remain.

Its institutions have left traces.

Its cultural contributions remain.

Its histories remain.

And the consequences of some of its actions remain.

But the empire itself does not need to return.

What needs to emerge is something greater than empire.

A relationship with humanity that does not require domination to establish value.

An understanding of sovereignty that recognises the autonomy of others.

An understanding of culture that does not require the erasure of difference.

And an understanding of historical inheritance that includes responsibility alongside pride.

We cannot change what the empire was.

But we can change how consciously we carry what it left behind.

And if the Ottoman Empire was once capable of organising people across three continents, then surely its modern inheritors can develop the capacity to organise relationships grounded in dignity, accountability and mutual respect.

Not because we have forgotten our past.

But because we have finally begun to understand it.

I am sorry.

Özür dilerim.

And I do not ask that my apology erase the memory of what happened.

I ask that recognition become part of how we build a different future.

With remorse, consciousness, recognition, accountability and responsibility,

A Turkish soul who finally understands that the inheritance of an empire is not a licence to continue its authority, but an obligation to understand the human consequences of the power it exercised.

Museum of Doom IX — The Letter Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic That Followed.

SHS – Human First

Historical and contemporary grounding

The letter’s principal historical claims are supported by research into Ottoman religious governance, the devshirme system, the Chios massacre, slavery, the Armenian genocide, violence against Assyrian and Greek communities, and the wartime famine in Greater Syria. OpenStax +5

Its contemporary sections draw on the UN’s documentation of Cyprus’s continuing division, Human Rights Watch’s 2026 findings concerning minority rights in Türkiye, and the official Turkish position concerning the events of 1915. UNFICYP +2

The distinction that makes this chapter especially important is that Türkiye is the primary successor state, not the sole inheritor of Ottoman history. Other successor societies have their own relationships with that past, and many inherited its consequences without inheriting the power that created them.

The letter’s treatment of unrecognised guilt and collective energetic inheritance is an expression of your metaphysical framework, not a clinical claim about Turkish people collectively.