A Fantasy Brought to Life

“A Fantasy Brought to Life”

In Middle Eastern popular imagination the “Magnificent Century” a hundred episode saga of love and intrigue at the court of Suleiman the Magnificent that enticed audiences throughout the Middle East has been replaced by a new series “Kingdoms of Fire” which deals with the struggle between the Mamluks and the Ottomans over control of the Middle East particularly in Syria and Egypt. The series revolves around how Selim I, who is trying to extend his empire is faced with the opposition of the people of Cairo led by Toman Bay as he fights to conquer Egypt. Toman Bay, takes over leadership after the assassination of Mamluk Sultan Qansuh El Ghuri by Selim I during the 1517 Battle of Marj Dabiq near the city of Aleppo. However, in the end, he is betrayed by a Mamluk henchman and delivered to Selim I who orders him hung on Cairo’s Bab Zuweila Gate., where his body remains hanging for three days before burial, showing the dark side of the empire that ruled Egypt after 1517. Interpreted as projecting the true face of Ottoman rule over the Arabs it is produced by a Saudi owned UAE based company and not being streamed in Turkey. Reflective of the growing disconnect between the Turks and the Arabs and recent signs of tensions that came in the aftermath of Operation Peace Spring, it brings into focus the complexities of the Neo Ottoman ‘fantasy’.

Neo-Ottomanism is itself subject to various interpretations. Nicholas Danforth argues what Neo-Ottomanism stands for depends on how one imagines the Ottoman Empire with a variety of images co-existing in Turkish and international imagination. For instance, he argues though the Ottoman Empire recognized the existence of various ethnic groups within the limits of the Empire, there existed a hierarchy of its people which translated to different rights and duties as subjects. Christians paid more taxes than Muslims, were not allowed to bear arms and the testimony of Muslims was considered superior to other religious groups. Similarly, legal reforms that were introduced to create a uniform Ottoman citizenship were never effective leading to the argument that apart from the Tanzimat years the history of the Ottoman Empire was not one where equality existed. To an extent it was this ‘delineated Neo-Ottomanism’ that was appropriated as legitimizing framework in domestic politics. While Neo Ottomanism as a framework was first used in foreign policy, it was in domestic politics that it acquired a distinct meaning particularly following the failed coup attempt in 2016 and the constitutional amendments of 2017.

However, the bifurcation between foreign and domestic politics is not unproblematic and this became evident during recent events. As Turkish forces entered northeastern Syria to expel US-backed Kurdish forces, seven pro-Kurdish HDP Mayors were arrested and replaced with state-appointed trustees. This brought the total number of HDP Mayors detained and removed from office to twelve since the 31 March 2019 Municipal elections raising concerns that democratic representation is being suppressed in the Kurdish dominated southeast. Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy co-chair of Foreign Affairs, HDP, has argued that “Turkey is waging a war on both sides of the Turkey-Syrian border. While they are attacking Kurds in Syria trying to undermine the possibility of autonomous Kurdish self-administration, they are simultaneously increasing pressure on Kurdish politicians at home here in Turkey, so these are two sides of the same coin.” Ahead of the municipal elections, CHP candidates particularly Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, ran campaigns addressing Kurdish rights, gathering support from HDP voters to helping them win against AKP candidates.  The HDP has claimed that Operation Peace Spring was a calculated move to once again divide the opposition parties that had united to defeat AKP candidates in the spring elections. The CHP has backed the ongoing Syria incursion while the HDP was the sole party in the Turkish Parliament to oppose the Syrian incursion. Ozsoy went on to argue that “Fighting a war in north Syria always means fighting a war at home,” This whole invasion involves reshaping domestic politics, and Erdogan has done that by bringing in CHP into this war bloc, undermining the coalition that was established before the Istanbul and local elections.” It is not surprising that it is being argued that Turkish foreign policy has become increasingly centered round the issue of containment of the Kurds in the neighborhood as power has gradually been centralized in the hands of the President.

The term Neo-Ottomanism was introduced by a leading Turkish columnist and academic Cengiz Cander as an intellectual movement that advocated Turkish pursuit of active and diversified foreign policy in the neighbouring region based on Ottoman historical heritage. The Neo-Ottomans envisaged Turkey as a leader of the Muslim and the Turkic worlds and a central power in Eurasia. The idea was first articulated in the early 1990’s by liberal secular intellectuals in collaboration with Turgut Ozal, a socially conservative, economically and politically liberal nationalist. Ozal reintroduced into the political discourse in Turkey, the concept of Turkish-Islamic synthesis which emphasized Turkish nationalism and Islam as key contributors to the international standing of Turkey. It underlined the historical legacy of the Ottoman past and flourishing Islamic culture as a source of ‘soft power’ of the modern Turkish state. As such it was publicized as being essentially less obsessed with domestic issues like the Kurdish question based on the assumption that the Ottoman Empire was the epitome of tolerance, where different groups lived peacefully.

However, in reality there was a definite disconnect between the projection of ‘soft power’ in the Middle Eastern neighbourhood that was in keeping with the Neo-Ottomanist trend and the gradual hardening of stance in the domestic policy in ‘new’ Turkey. In its initial phases the AKP did attempt an ‘opening’ with minority groups including the Kurds. However, reconsideration of Turkish support for the Kurdish agenda in the neighbourhood impacted on the domestic scenario. Anti-Kurdish policies became stringent since 2015 when the Syrian Kurds became an important US ally in its fight against the Islamic State. And while Erdogan had emphasized that the ‘national will’ would find its voice in a ‘new Turkey’ in which all citizens would be embraced irrespective of their ethnicity or creed and formulated a new slogan, “Vote for AK Party. Write your own Constitution” (Oyunu AK Partiye ver, kendi Anayasani yap!) in actuality anti Kurdish policies were renewed both domestically and in the neighbourhood. This was followed by a period which was characterized by an escalating rift with the Gulenists (since 2012) the Gezi Park protests (2013) an attempted coup (2016) and a Presidential referendum (2017) during which Turkey replaced its foreign policy based on economic relations with the Middle East with a more security-focused one that included greater support for the Muslim Brotherhood, aggression against Kurds in both Turkey and Syria, and a growing Eurasian focus.

Gradual rifts became discernible in Turkish foreign policy towards the Middle East from promoting ‘regional economic cooperation’ (about 2002 to 2010) to ‘Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Sunni sectarianism’ (about 2011 to 2015) and finally ‘anti-Kurdish militarism’ (about 2015 to 2018). The initial period of regional economic cooperation coincided with the continuation of many traditional elements of broader Turkish foreign policy (i.e. modernisation, a Western focus and EU accession talks). The following periods that featured more focus on Sunni sectarianism and enmity towards the region’s Kurds introduced tensions and dissonance between Turkey’s Middle Eastern policies and aspects of wider Turkish foreign policy. Nationalistic and personal assertiveness meant that while the AKP’s focus on achieving control over the Turkish state, with support from the Gülenist movement was accompanied by a ‘status quo’ foreign policy during the first term, this was not the case for the second and third terms during which AKP’s political dominance alternated with new challenges to its rule from the Gülenist movement and Turkey’s Kurds. This profoundly changed Turkey’s position in the Middle East and in the West. Instead of a regional role model and soft power, Turkish relations with its neighbouring Syrian regime suffered a setback and although it successfully contained the region’s Kurds, this came at the price of a revival of Kurdish nationalism and militancy within Turkey.

It was partly the opposition that the government faced in the Gezi Park protests but more importantly the results of the June 2015 elections that changed the domestic dynamics. And it is within this context as much as within the broader parameters of Turkish ambitions in the Middle East that one needs to examine Neo Ottomanism, particularly towards bordering states where Kurdish minorities have demonstrated possibilities for autonomy. Code named Operation Peace Spring, the ongoing Turkish intervention in Syria is less about a ‘safe zone’ (which in any case is complicated by various factors) and more about sending a message of deterrence to Kurds in Turkey, tied to a variant of Turkish nationalism that Erdogan has been promoting within Turkey for more than a decade.

Anita

22 December 2019

References

Salwa Samir, “Why this TV Series Causes High Drama Between Cairo, Ankara”, Egypt Pulse, November 27, 2019, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/11/kingdoms-of-fire-creates-tensions-egypt-turkey.html

Semih Idiz, “Turksih Saudi Animosity Spills over into the Cultural Sphere”, Turkey Pulse, November 29, 2019, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/11/turkey-saudi-arabia-animosity-spills-over-cultural-sphere.html

Nicholas Danforth, “The Empire Strikes Back”, Foreign Policy, 27 March 2014, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/27/the-empire-strikes-back-2/

Diego Cupolo, “Crackdown on Kurdish Mayors Raises Pressure on Turkish Opposition”, Turkey Pulse, 24 October 2019, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/10/turkey-replaces-seven-more-kurdish-hdp-mayors.html#ixzz66LsJgeVn

Halil M Karaveli, “Ankara’s New Kurdish Opening: Narrow Room for Manoeuvre”, Turkey Analyst Vol 2 No 14 17 August 2009.

Alexander Murinson, “The Strategic depth Doctrine of Turkish Foreign Policy”, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol 42, No 6, 2006.

See Erwin Van Veen and Engin Yuksel, Too Big For its Boots, Turkish Foreign Policy Towards the Middle Easy from 2002-2018, CRU Report, July 2018.

This article is part of a lecture that was presented at a seminar on West Asia 2010: Of Faultlines and Possible Meltdowns, organized by CSIRD, IFPS, ICWA and IVS Global at Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta 4-5 December 2019.

[i] The title has been borrowed from a line in the concluding chapter of Sonar Cagaptay, Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East, I.B Taurus, 2019, Kindle Version.