The Ottomans Never Left

An excerpt from, “The Ottomans are back – what does that mean for Israel?” By Seth J Frantzman, The Jerusalem Post, January 1, 2020:

The Past 10 years have witnessed an extraordinary reversal, as most of the Arab countries have been torn apart from within. Where monarchies or Arab nationalism failed, a rising religious extremism preyed on weak states. But even this Islamist terrorist rise did not supplant the new states.

ISIS came and went. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, briefly rising in Gaza and even in Tripoli or other areas, and seeking election in Tunisia, Jordan and other places, has not been the success that some thought. Political Islam is not winning.

What has happened is that the historically powerful periphery states, Turkey and Iran, have risen to grab influence throughout the Middle East. These states, as the Ottoman Empire and Persian Empire, were weakened in 1920 and European powers supplanted their historic role. But now, with Europe looking more insular, these countries are rising again.

Turkey’s expedition to Libya is just one symbol of that new world order in the Middle East.

“War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,

The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade” – Shelley.

The fast changing events in Syria in the last couple of days has left people guessing about what’s coming next. 

Will Assad be assassinated, as President Trump proposed to his generals back in 2020, or overthrown after a NATO sponsored onslaught on Damascus? 

I think since Turkey seems to be the lead actor in this unfolding drama Assad’s life is not threatened in the near term. Turkey is satisfied with taking a few cities at a time. Erdogan wants Assad to stay, and Syria to remain weak.

Turkey’s immediate priorities, and its long-standing military and political objectives, are reclaiming the cities it lost a century ago and removing from the map the Kurds who until recently had no tangible presence on its border with Syria. 

During the end of Trump’s first term Erdogan had received the approval from Washington to invade Afrin, as well as other Kurdish towns in north Syria, and ethnically cleanse the Kurds living there. 

But giving him that little real estate obviously wasn’t enough. You give the Devil an inch he will take a mile. Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman clique always had their eyes on bigger prizes: Mosul, Aleppo, Kirkuk, Damascus, possibly even Beirut and further down. 

When the invading terrorists took Aleppo this week they unfurled the Turkish flag over one of its historic citadels. This was Turkey letting the world know this is a conquest, not a liberation.

Syria’s future won’t be stable, peaceful or prosperous. Everyone but the Turks has a painful historical memory of the Ottoman Empire. Even the Salafist and Wahhabi Arabs, the crazy guys who ate their enemies’ organs on the battlefield, know how bad they were for the entire region. 

Six centuries of brutality, slavery and oppression. And when it finally died it left behind nothing, not a grand monument, a beautiful mosque, a glorious church, just a pile of dust. They built nothing. They came and went pillaging and destroying.

And history seems to be repeating itself. The Turkish-backed terrorists have looted everything they can get their hands on in Syria. Thieves don’t know how to rebuild or create.

The only way Turkey can hold onto Aleppo and other newly acquired cities in its ill-gotten possession is through military force. And, as we’ve seen in Gaza in the last year, that is not sustainable.