Tag: Neo-Ottoman

What do Turkish people think of the Ottoman Empire today?

Didem Korkmaz on Quora answers the question as follows:

Some Turkish people are big admirers of the Ottoman Empire and in fact would prefer to bring it back. I’m thinking of a large portion of the current Turkish government Akp’s supporters. They often carry a flag of the Ottoman sultan’s tughra, call themselves Evlad-ı Osmanlı (the child of Ottoman) and fully or partially reject the Republic of Turkey. Oddly enough these people are also the ones who know the least about the Ottoman Empire or simply refuse the truth they know. Just to give one example, 8 out of 10 Evlad-ı Osmanlı I come across are xenophobic nationalists and/or totally intolerant of different religions and/or dislike “the West” and what they call “white Turks.” But the Ottoman Empire was much more multicultural than Turkey is today, there were a lot more people from different religions, and a pretty high number of the Sultans they admire had European genes, so they were white Turks. In other words they don’t love the real Ottoman Empire, they love what they created in their minds as the Ottoman Empire which is very different than the reality.

For the rest, the Ottoman Empire is history; we like and feel grateful for some things they have done for paving our way, enjoy some stories from that era, cherish the architecture and inventions (personally speaking, especially food.) We also dislike some other things they have done and wished it was different.

In the end, it’s history. The Ottoman Empire was doomed to fall like every other empire. Our grandfathers and grandmothers built a more modern, democratic country from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and I’m proud to call myself one of the Cumhuriyet Çocukları, the children of the Republic.

October 4, 2023
NATO’s Neo-Ottoman Spearhead in the Middle East

Turkey already has troops in Syria and has threatened military action to protect the site they guard.

A 1921 agreement between Ottoman Turkey and France (the Treaty of Ankara), the latter at the time the colonial administrator of Syria, guaranteed Turkey the right to station military personnel at the mausoleum of Suleyman Shah (Süleyman Şah), the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman I (Osman Bey).

Turkey considers the area adjacent to the tomb to be its, and not Syria’s, sovereign territory and late last month reinforced its 15-troop contingent there.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated the following in an interview televised on August 5: “The tomb of Süleyman Şah and the land surrounding it is our territory. We cannot ignore any unfavorable act against that monument, as it would be an attack on our territory, as well as an attack on NATO land. Everyone knows his duty, and will continue to do what is necessary.” The gravesite of a Seljuk sultan who was reputed to have drowned in the Euphrates River while on a campaign of conquest is now proclaimed a NATO outpost in Syria.

If confirmation was required that a neo-Ottoman Turkey is determined to reassert the influence and authority in Mesopotamia it gained 700 years before and lost a century ago and, moreover, that it was doing so as part of a campaign by self-christened global NATO to expand into the Arab world, the Turkish head of state’s threat to militarily intervene in Syria with the support of its 27 NATO allies should provide it.

Especially as the above complements and reinforces the roles of the U.S. and NATO in providing military assistance to Ankara in its current war of attrition against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and Iraq, with Syria soon to follow as last week Turkey deployed troops, tanks, other armored vehicles and missile batteries to within two kilometers of the Syrian border for war games. Last week a retired Turkish official compared the current anti-Kurdish offensive to the Sri Lankan military’s final onslaught against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) three years ago, ending the 25-year-long war against the latter with its complete annihilation.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s trip to Colombia in April was designed to achieve the same result in the 48-year joint Colombian-U.S. counterinsurgency war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In the current era of international lawlessness, only NATO states and American clients like Colombia and Israel are permitted to conduct military strikes and incursions into other nations and to wage wars of extermination against opponents.

In the same interview cited above, Turkey’s Erdogan asserted the right to continue launching military strikes against Kurdish targets in neighboring countries, stating, “It should be known that as long as the region remains a source of threat[s] for Turkey we will continue staging operations wherever it is needed.”

Turkish Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin recently claimed that his nation’s armed forces had killed 130 suspected PKK members and supporters in Hakkari province, which borders Iran and Iraq.

Specifically in respect to military attacks inside Syria, Erdogan stated: “One cannot rule that out. We have three brigades along the border currently conducting maneuvers there. And we cannot remain patient in the face of a mistake that can be made there.”

He also stated, in reference to fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo, “I believe the Assad regime draws to its end with each passing day” and criticized Iran’s support, which is to say its recognition, of the Syrian government. Iran is the inevitable secondary target of actions directed by Turkey and its NATO and Persian Gulf Arab allies against Syria and will be struck through Iraq also.

In the same interview the Turkish head of state identified a third target: Iraq. He condemned the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, declaring it illegitimate and urging it be overthrown. In what portends confrontation and possible conflict with Iran and Syria as well by exploiting the PKK issue, he added:

“Even though we should be countries that share the same values, for us to be in such rigor [conflict?] only makes the terrorist organization more powerful. This leads us to approach each other with suspicion.”

In the process he criticized Iran as well:

“It is not possible to accept Iran’s stance [of supporting the Iraqi government]. We conveyed this to them at the highest level of talks. We said to them, ‘Look, this has been a source of disturbance in the region.’”

His comments occurred after the Iraqi government criticized the visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to the cities of Kirkuk and Irbil in the Kurdistan Regional Government-controlled north of Iraq in part to secure oil and natural gas deals with the regime of Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish autonomous region. Irbil is the region’s capital, but Kirkuk is claimed by Iraq’s central government too. Davutoglu’s trip to Kirkuk was the first by a Turkish foreign minister since 1937.

On August 7 Hurriyet Daily News columnist Murat Yetkin offered this perspective on the matter:

“Because Iraq [is] at risk of falling apart. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north of the country, which borders Turkey, has started to sign oil and gas deals with energy giants despite the objection of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, who refuses to approve a hydrocarbons law to regulate the sharing of oil and gas income. The energy giants have an interest in supplying more oil and gas that is not controlled or is less controlled by Russia and Iran to Western markets; Turkey provides an option under NATO protection for both Iraqi Kurdish and Azeri resources to be transferred further west. The presence of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the KRG region and its armed campaign is, of course, a pain in the neck and a big obstacle to greater cooperation…”

On July 26 the same commentator claimed that “There are already political and economic actors trying to push Turkey to claim some energy-rich parts of Iraq and Syria, which would mean a regime change such as a federated Turkey, with Kurdish and possibly Arabic members,” which, he conceded, “could drag the whole region into a chain reaction of wars.”

Part of Turkey’s justification for involvement in northern Iraq, and another pretext for potential military intervention, is the protection of their ethnic kin, the Turkmen, in the country.

However, since the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 the true indigenous people of the north, the Assyrians, have been decimated by attacks from Barzani’s peshmergas and Saudi-backed Wahhabi extremists without Turkey, or the West, being in the least degree concerned. Eight years ago there were an estimated 1.5 million Assyrian and other Christians in Iraq; now there under 500,000. Churches have been destroyed and in 2008 the Chaldean Catholic Archeparch of Mosul, Archbishop Mar Paulos Faraj Rahho, was kidnapped and murdered in the northern Iraqi city where he resided. Other religious minorities – Mandeans, Sabeans and Yezidis – have suffered the same fate. Shiites are regularly targeted by Wahhabi death squads.

The Barzani domain in the north has become a Turkish foothold inside the country, which has aided Ankara by preventing the PKK from operating on its territory and suppressing its sympathizers. It is also a dependable Sunni ally for Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies in efforts to weaken the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The al-Maliki administration condemned last week’s visit by the Turkish foreign minister to the Kurdish-dominated north as a violation of Iraq’s constitution and national sovereignty as Davutoglu had neither requested nor obtained permission to enter Kirkuk.

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry handed the Turkish chargé d’affaires in Baghdad a harshly-worded statement and the Turkish Foreign Minister in response summoned the Iraqi ambassador to lodge a protest.

With Turkish threats against Iraq and Syria, and by inevitable implication Iran, mounting, on August 6 the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Seyed Hassan Firuzabadi, warned that:

“Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are responsible for blood being shed on Syrian soil.

“This is not an appropriate precedent, that neighboring countries of Syria contribute to the belligerent purposes of…the United States. If these countries have accepted such a precedent, they must be aware that after Syria, it will be the turn of Turkey and other countries.

He added that Iran fears “Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have become victims of promoting the terrorism of al-Qaeda and we warn our friends about this.”

On the same day Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian stated, “There is a question that when al-Qaeda plays an active role in Syrian terrorism and violence, why the US and other countries back the shipment of heavy and semi-heavy weapons to the country?”

Kazem Jalali, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that “Turkey and those who support and arm terrorists” in Syria were responsible for the safety of 48 Iranians kidnapped in the country on August 4.

The following day the Turkish press reported that Osman Karahan, a Turkish lawyer who defended a suspected top-level al-Qaeda operative accused of participating in deadly bomb attacks in Istanbul in November of 2003 was killed in Aleppo fighting with anti-government forces. In 2006 the Turkish government charged Karahan with aiding and abetting al-Qaeda.

Syria has announced that it captured several Turkish and Saudi military officers in Aleppo. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have established a base in the Turkish city of Adana, 60 miles from the Syrian border, to supply weapons and training to Syrian rebels for cross-border attacks.

The Turkish government is providing bases, training and advisers for al-Qaeda and other participants in the insurrection against the Syrian government at the same time that it is threatening Syria, Iraq and Iran over the “terrorist” Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

In bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria, Turkey provides NATO – and through NATO the Pentagon – direct access to those three nations. The final stage in the West’s Greater Missile East Initiative is now well underway, as is a new redivision of the Levant modeled after the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.

# # # #Rick Rozoff is an investigative journalist based in Chicago and has been an active opponent of war, militarism and intervention for over 40 years. He manages the Stop NATO e-mail list , and is the editor of Stop NATO, a website on the threat of international militarization, especially on the globalization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Mr. Rozoff has a graduate degree in European literature.

August 12, 2012
Turkey: Turkish soap operas invade the Middle East

Turkey: Turkish soap operas invade the Middle East

Soft power for a neo-Ottoman expansion, experts

The poster of The poster of “Forbiddden Love”, a successful Turkish soap opera

(ANSAmed) – ANKARA, DECEMBER 12 – People in more than 20 countries watch Turkish soap operas and experts say that these television shows are spreading Turkish values and lifestyle in the Middle East and North Africa. It is also believed that they exercise a ”soft power”, supporting Ankara’s neo-Ottoman diplomacy.

Television serials like ”Muhtesem Yuzyål” (”Magnificent” Ottoman ”Century”), “Ask-i Memnu” (Forbidden Love) and “Yaprak Dokumu” (Falling Leaves) are breaking records in the number of viewers. The more than a hundred episodes that are in circulation have earned the producers the equivalent of more than 60 million USD this year only. These facts are reported by Turkish websites, which point out that a Japanese television channel has made a documentary on Turkish soap operas and their impact on tourism and export. And the American Time Magazine recently called these series ”the secret of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan”.

”With the increase in the number of soap operas circulating internationally, learning the Turkish language and culture has become very important in the Arab and Balkan countries,” a sociologist of the Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Nilufer Narle, wrote on the website of the Turkish newspaper in English Hurriyet Daily News. She added that ”this is what we call ‘soft power’ in the context of cultural industry.” According to the internet site dailybeast.com, the final episode of the Turkish soap opera ”Noor” was seen by 85 million viewers, ranging from Syria to Morocco. Moreover, Hurriyet reports, 78% of people who were interviewed in a poll carried out in the Arab world and in Iran said that they had watched Turkish soap operas. Kemal Uzun, director of ”Noor”, claims that viewers ”feel part of what is happening” on the screen. ”Our cultures and geography are closely related, we have strong ties,” he added. ”These series have an enormous impact,” said Izzet Pinto, head of the company that distributes ”Magnificent Century” and ”Thousand and One Nights”, set in modern Istanbul. The writer of a report with the title ”The image of Turkey in the Arab world,” Paul Salem, underlined that ”the stars of Turkish television become pop idols” and these soap operas create ”great sympathy for the Turkish identity, culture and values,” a role that was played in the past decades by Egyptian television and film. The spread of soap operas seems to follow the geography of Turkish foreign policies and even goes beyond that, following global taste: ”We started broadcasting in the Balkan countries this year,” said Firat Gulgen, president of Calinos Holding which produces 80% of the series exported by Turkey. Pinto, chairman of distribution company Turkey’s Global Agency, pointed out that babies in the Balkan area are now named after characters from the series ”Thousand and One Nights.” But Turkey also exports its soap operas to many countries in central and eastern Europe and the Far East, even to Japan and Malaysia. (ANSAmed).

via Turkey: Turkish soap operas invade the Middle East – General news – ANSAMed.it.

December 13, 2011
Turkish P.M. Erdogan: We Cannot Deny Our Ottoman Past

Posted by Ishaan Tharoor Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 2:24 pm

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stands among Justice and Development Party (AKP) members during a meeting at the party headquarters in Ankara, September 28, 2011. (Photo: Adem Altan /AFP / Getty Images) Read more:

Our interview with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published earlier this week on Global Spin, dwelled mostly on the growing shadow cast by the charismatic premier across the face of Mideast geo-politics. One question edited out of the earlier transcript raised the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, whose dominion once stretched over much of the region. As they now swagger through Cairo, Tripoli and other former Ottoman strongholds, Erdogan and — perhaps to even greater degree — his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have earned the monicker of “neo-Ottomans.”

Few democratically-elected statesmen in this day and age would welcome the label of imperialists. And, for whatever connotations “neo-Ottomanism” invokes abroad, it’s a far more sensitive subject domestically in Turkey. Nearly a century of Ataturk-inspired, Western-facing secularism meant those raised in modern Turkey looked with wariness upon the decadence, decay and religiosity of Ottoman times, when, after all, Istanbul was the veritable capital of the putative Caliphate.

But much has changed since Erdogan’s rise to power. Turkey no longer pines after Europe — indeed, see Erdogan’s matter-of-fact retort at the close of our interview with him — is ruled by a moderate Islamist party, and has signaled clear intent to influence events in many of the countries once ruled by Ottoman Sultans. Below is Erdogan’s response to a question I posed to him on whether he accepted donning the neo-Ottoman mantle:

Of course we now live in a very different world, which is going through a scary process of transition and change. We were born and raised on the land that is the legacy of the Ottoman empire. They are our ancestors. It is out of the question that we might deny that presence. Of course, the empire had some beautiful parts and some not so beautiful parts. It’s a very natural right for us to use what was beautiful about the Ottoman Empire today. We need to upgrade ourselves in every sense, socially, economically, politically. If we cannot upgrade ourselves and the way we perceive the world, we will lag behind tremendously. It would be self-denial. That’s why whether it be in the Middle East or North Africa or anywhere in the world, our perception has in its core this wealth that is coming from our historical legacy. But it’s established upon principles of peace. And it all depends on people loving one another without discrimination whatsoever.

Critics may wonder how willing Erdogan and other Turkish leaders are to actually admit to the empire’s “not so beautiful parts”, not least the grisly massacre of Armenians when the Ottoman Empire itself was on its last legs. Turkish diplomats on the sidelines of U.N. meetings spoke to TIME of Erdogan’s professed commitment to values of peace, tolerance and neighborly love — a lofty sentiment not exactly on display during the continued Turkish offensive against rebel Kurds in the country’s east.

Still, it’s noteworthy that the Turkish P.M. sees in the Ottoman past a “wealth” — a soft-power cachet, based presumably on the empire’s extraordinary diversity and tolerance of many faiths — to inform the present. We tend to forgive many Western powers, say the French, British and even the Americans, for tracing their foreign policies sometimes in memory (or nostalgia) of lapsed empire. An ascendant, capable Turkey has every right to walk its own post-imperial path as well.

via Turkish P.M. Erdogan: We Cannot Deny Our Ottoman Past – Global Spin – TIME.com.

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September 30, 2011
Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman Foreign Policy

Turkey’s Neo-Ottoman Foreign Policy

Pro-Palestinian activists hold down an Israeli commando on the Gaza-bound Turkish ship “Mavi Marmara.” Nine Turkish nationals were killed when Israeli forces boarded the ship in international waters in 2010.

September 15, 2011

By Michael Weiss

How does Turkey’s ruling Islamist party react when it gets a report it doesn’t like from the United Nations?

By yanking diplomats, threatening military conflict with a neighbor, and menacingly eyeing that neighbor’s new yield of natural resources.

If the General Assembly ever does something really provocative and votes on a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide or the right of Kurdish self-determination, you can bet that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will make the prison guard in “Midnight Express” look like Florence Nightingale.

Reacting to the leaked UN Palmer Report on the 2010 flotilla fiasco, which found that Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal and that the passengers aboard the “Mavi Marmara” were cruising for a bruising, Erdogan’s government has taken to issuing thuggish pronunciamentos.

At issue is the fact that Israel refused to apologize to Turkey for killing nine Turkish nationals in the Mediterranean.

Israel reckons that to do so would be an insult to the commandos who abseiled onto the “Mavi Marmara” only to be bludgeoned, stabbed, and shot.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has tried to have it both ways on the flotilla. It banned its own members from participating in order to distance itself from what was obviously a blockade-running provocation.

Yet ranking AKP members are on the board of IHH, the Turkish “charity” that organized the event.

Anatolian Chest-Poundings

And Erdogan’s refusal to let the 2011 flotilla start out from Istanbul — at the urging of Washington — complicates the government’s claims of having no control over a supposedly independent NGO. Needless to say, bilateral relations with Israel have gone from lousy to dire.

“The eastern Mediterranean will no longer be a place where Israeli naval forces can freely exercise their bullying practices against civilian vessels,” one Turkish official said, promising a military escort for all future “aid” ships to Gaza — assuming, that is, that these ships can outfox the savvy Israeli lawyers who made the sequel set-sail a busted flush.

From the sound of it, Turkey now wants to become the chief maritime bully. Part and parcel with its “more aggressive strategy” in the eastern Mediterranean is its attempt to stop Israel from mining its huge natural gas and oil fields, recent discoveries which some experts predict will make the Jewish state one of the largest — and wealthiest — energy exporters in the world.

The threat by a NATO member to skirmish on the high seas with a major U.S. ally follows other Anatolian chest-poundings.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoganyrian (left) had done “happy business” in the past with Syrian President Bashar Assad

Earlier in the week, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose foreign policy vision used to be known as “no problems with the neighbors,” announced that Ankara would be expelling all Israeli Embassy officials above the rank of second secretary.

Erdogan wants to visit Gaza in the coming days to increase “international attention” on Israel’s siege of the strip.

This from the man who previously said that he doesn’t think Hamas is a terrorist group.

Erdogan’s visit is sure to impress upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas which party the AKP would like see ruling the Palestinian state the UN is about to recognize.

A Dirty Little Secret

Finally, Erdogan vowed to suspend all military relations and defense industry trade between Turkey and Israel.

Years ago, this might have been significant. Yet here’s a dirty little secret: Greece, which diplomatically facilitated the second flotilla’s deep-sixing, is fast replacing Turkey as Israel’s favorite regional military partner.

Not only is flight distance between Israel and Greece the same as that between Israel and Iran, but the Hellenes have got S-300 antiaircraft missiles that the mullahs have been itching to buy from Russia in order to deter an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Joint Israeli-Greek military exercises are therefore seen as very valuable at the moment.

The Israelis and Palestinians have had their share of Turkish strong-arming, but so have the Syrians.

Indeed, the reason that a Syrian National Council was hastily announced on Al-Jazeera late last month, following weeks of oppositionist wrangling and backbiting at a conference in Istanbul, is that a faction of Syrian youth activists had grown tired of seeing the AKP trying to make their revolution a Muslim Brotherhood-led affair. (What better way to minimize the Islamists than to appoint a secular French sociologist chairman of a transitional body, as the Syrian National Council voted last month?)

Erdogan did happy business with Bashar al-Assad while he could, but he now wants to make sure that any post-Assad state consists of loyal Sunni ideologues.

That’d be one way to undercut Iran’s influence in the Middle East, and never mind that the people bleeding and dying in Syria are mostly apolitical kids who don’t trust neo-Ottoman power brokers any more than they do former regime apologists.

Turkish intelligence and the Muslim Brotherhood are also trying to co-opt the Syrian Free Army of rebel soldiers, according to Syrian sources.

“They are the only ones connected to them,” one opposition activist told me recently. “I’d rather the Syrian Free Army connect to the CIA. Tell your NATO friends that I extend them an open invitation to Syria.”

Michael Weiss is the communications director of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank based in London. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL

September 16, 2011