NEW OTTOMANISM ON TRACK
Mirror Spectator
Editorial 9-13
By Edmond Y. Azadian
No matter how much journalists and scholars question and ridicule
the Turkish leadership’s dream to recreate the Ottoman Empire in
the 21st century political realities, the newly appointed Turkish
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his boss, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
seem to be determined and steadfast in their ambitious plan.
Mr. Davutoglu does not miss any opportunity to glorify the Ottoman
Empire as a tolerant and benevolent ruler of other nations, without
asking the opinion of the groups and nations who have suffered at
the receiving end of that “benevolence.”
After being elected president, Mr. Erdogan delivered a farewell speech
as the retiring prime minister and extolled his party’s achievements
during the last 12 years of his Justice and Development Party (AKP)
rule. He also outlined his plans for “the new Turkey,” moving toward
“holy conquest” which promises to bring more prosperity, piety and
global influence.
In this scheme of things, Mr. Davutoglu has a pivotal role
to play, although the Economist casts a shadow on Davutoglu’s
ambitions. In its August 31 issue, the London-based weekly writes,
“The academic-turned-diplomat is criticized for the collapse of his
‘zero-problem with neighbors’ policy.” Further down, the weekly
continues, “Behul Ozkan, an academic who has studied Davutoglu, says
he sees himself as “infallible, as someone who is shaping history —
but whose dreams of building a Sunni Muslim realm of Turkish influence
spanning the Middle East and Balkans have proved empty.”
Undeterred by all those criticisms, the Erdogan-Davutoglu team is
continuing in its set course. Today, no political problem is resolved
in the Balkans without Ankara’s consent, participation or blessing.
During his first trip as president to Baku, in a joint press conference
with President Ilham Aliyev, Mr. Erdogan vowed that the political
agenda in the Caucasus would be set by Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Indeed, to make strong political statements, President Erdogan made
his first two visits to two potentially explosive regions, namely
Azerbaijan and northern Cyprus — the so-called Turkish Republic
of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey. He demonstrated his
intransigence in Cyprus, thumbing his nose at world public opinion and
international law, by perpetuating the 1974 occupation of 38 percent
of Cypriot territory by Turkish forces. The recent rapprochement
between Israel and Greece has hardened Turkish resolve even more
and the Cypriot and Israeli deal to exploit the gas reserves in the
Eastern Mediterranean has infuriated Mr. Erdogan to no end.
The Cypriot and Karabagh conflicts have many similarities,
though they are not identical in nature. Yet Turkey applies two
contradictory principals to the same problem; Mr. Erdogan defends
the self-determination rights of Turks in Cyprus and denies the same
for the people of Karabagh. The international community buys those
policies and even tries to justify them.
Greece, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally, and Cyprus,
a European Union (EU) member, would have to wait for a very long time
to see fellow NATO and EU members slap Turkey on the wrist, since
the US secretaries of state and defense, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel,
respectively, have just rushed to Ankara seeking Turkey’s cooperation
in defeating the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the
terrorist group which continues beheading American journalists.
All this, despite knowing that ISIS was Turkey’s creation. The
terrorist organization’s members were trained, armed and supplied
by Turkey and allowed to cross into Syria and Iraq from the Turkish
border. In fact, in Aleppo, Armenians have been at the receiving
end of their firepower. After all the outrage that ISIS has caused,
Turkey is still reluctant to join a collation to stop the barbarism.
We read in a recent Reuter’s article, “Turkey’s dilemma illustrates
the sort of challenge that Kerry faces pulling together an active
collation among states with very different interests and constraints
in the region.”
In the same article, Henri Barkey, a Lehigh University professor
and former member of the State Department policy planning staff,
predicts that “they will not allow the use of Incirlik [US air base]
for lethal strikes.”
The US and the West armed Turkey to such an extent that it boasts
of having the strongest army in the NATO structure, after the US. It
also helped Turkey to develop its economy, so that today Ankara can
implement an independent policy, undermining its allies. It is because
of unreliable partners like Turkey that the US is not able to develop
a coherent policy to stop ISIS immediately.
President Obama’s hesitation has given ammunition to his opponents
and journalists to satirize his statement of “leading from behind”
or “we have no strategy yet.” However, that policy has a silver
lining in engaging Iran in the fight. It so happens that the US and
Iranian polices in destroying ISIS coincide, but in this case, my
enemy’s enemy still remains my enemy. The US is dragging Iran into
the conflict to overstretch and exhaust its forces, since the latter
is already heavily engaged in Syria.
It looks like Turkey will be the beneficiary of another political
windfall, if we believe Armenia-based journalist Igor Muradian,
who seems to have many intriguing political sources. In an article
in lragir.am, on September 4, titled “Turkey Isn’t Asleep: Russia’s
Fragmentation Plan,” he reports on a secret gathering in Ukraine: “In
late August and early September, a conference with a strange agenda
was organized in one of the beautiful towns of southern Ukraine. A
large group of experts from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Tataria, Chuvashia,
Gagauzia, Crimea and many other republics and communities from the
Volga basin and North Caucasus were attending.”
The agenda comprised US and NATO policy in the Black Sea region,
the Crimean Tatar problem and the possibility of the fragmentation of
the Russian Federation, giving rise to the emergence of independent
and sovereign states on its territory.
If the collapse of the Soviet Empire was unthinkable and it happened,
nothing can be ruled out in today’s political climate. President
Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union “the most catastrophic
geostrategic tragedy of the 20th century.”
The Soviet Union imploded because the system had itself sown the seeds
of self-destruction. Of course, those factors were further activated
under pressure from the empire’s adversaries.
In case of the disintegration of the Russian Federation, there is a
belt of Turkic nations extending from Azerbaijan to Central Asia,
ready to form the new Ottoman Empire, a dream which Enver Pasha
pursued, but did not see realized, as he was killed in Bukhara.
Today, with the Cold War winds blowing again, they may exacerbate the
fault lines in the federation. Because of the falling birth rate, the
number of Slavic people is shrinking and the Islamic groups are growing
at a rapid rate. Mr. Putin can hardly keep the lid on smoldering
tensions in Chechnya. It is believed that Chuvashia is becoming a
restive region. Everybody witnessed that in Crimean referendum the
most vocal ethnic group that voted against Ukraine’s union with Russia
was the Tatars. The Tatars have legitimate grievances, since they have
ruled Crimea for many centuries, sometimes falling under Ottoman rule,
which extended all the way to Crimea. Mr.
Davutoglu publicly came to the Tatars’ defense as former Ottoman
subject/allies.
Two major wars were fought between the Russian and Ottoman empires
in the 19th century. The Tatars even had a republic after the Soviet
rule (1921-1944) until Stalin deported 238,500 Tatars to Central Asia
because they had cooperated with the Nazis during the German occupation
(1941-44) of Crimea. That elevated the Russian ethnic profile on the
peninsula, until Sergey Khrushchev annexed the region of his native
Ukraine in 1954 and Putin undid that annexation this year.
In addition to the restive Muslim groups within the Russian Federation,
an uneasy cohabitation is manifest between Russia on one side and
Kazakhstan and Belarus on the other side in the Customs’ Union,
which Mr. Putin is crafting, as a counterpart to the European Union.
Adding to the mix of these problems is the fact that Russia’s Far
East, with all it natural resources, is depopulated. This paves the
way for Chinese settlers, whom China might one day defend, like Mr.
Putin wishes to defend Russians living in Ukraine and “near abroad.”
This is a pretty gloomy scenario, which is whetting the appetite of
Mr. Erdogan, who was hailed recently in Azerbaijan as the “standard
bearer of new Ottomanism.”
As if Soviet domination over Armenia was not bad enough, now the
specter of new Ottomanism looms on its border.
From: Baghdasarian