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In the last decade and a half, Turkey has been gripped by both nostalgia for the Ottoman past and an authoritarian government that has harnessed nostalgia to strengthen its own power. What began as a playful, cosmopolitan phenomenon—manifested in fashion, food, and the success of the TV series The Magnificent Century, about palace intrigues under Sultan Süleyman—became a more rigid exaltation of masculinity, empire, and righteousness celebrated in state-sponsored venues and media such as political rallies, the TV drama Resurrection: Ertuğrul, and the Panorama 1453 History Museum in Istanbul. Using Turkey as a case study, this book draws on extensive media analyses, fieldwork, and interviews to explain how populist nostalgia works and show how audiences actively engage with, critique, and sometimes resist the messages before them. Populist Nostalgia offers a powerful warning for how right-wing movements around the world endeavor to capture our historical and political imaginations for their own ends.

Yagmur Karakaya is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.