This article considers late nineteenth-century Ottoman literature, concentrating specifically on the tension between the poetics of the avant-garde “New Literature” (1896–1901) and the poetics of conservative modernizers, spearheaded by the prominent Tanzimat author Ahmet Midhat. In calling for experimentation with traditional Ottoman poetic forms and a new mode of composition using an uncompromisingly elaborate style, the avant-gardists sought to capture the fin-de-siècle spirit in the Ottoman Empire, overwhelmed by the sense of decline and urgency for modernization. What unites the different decadent practices of the time is the objective to challenge the communicative language of systematic modernization by pursuing aesthetic autonomy. The conservative modernizers, politically committed to social and cultural reforms, attacked these authors for being decadent and excessively influenced by French literature, initiating what later came to be known as the “decadence controversy,” which became part of the larger historical question of modernization and westernization.