Late Ottoman intellectual Mehmed Akif (1873–1936) was for decades depicted in Turkish public discourse in generic terms as an Islamist radical opposed to the secular nation state. Envisioning Turco-Arab coexistence was a serious feature of policy debates, especially in the years of crisis from the Balkan Wars to the settlement of post-Ottoman nation-states in the aftermath of the First World War. In order to correct this misperception, I will illustrate the existence of corresponding Turkish voices and visions of federalism and multinationalism. While the federalist ideas of Ottoman Arabs are far better known in the academic literature, in regards to Ottoman Turks, the commonplace interpretations follow the teleology of the Turkish nation-state formation. For contemporaries, however, different models of federalism and multinationalism offered solutions to save the Ottoman Empire and safeguard Turco-Arab coexistence. The Ottoman Empire neither survived the Great War nor made way for a multinational coexistence of Turks and Arabs. The idea of a continued Turco-Arab coexistence under the Ottoman Sultanate might appear counterfactual or marginal-if not nostalgic-from the sober vantage of knowing "the end of history".
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