Anatolia & Empire

Why Does Erdogan Act as he Does?

The subtitle is a question that arose in my mind relative to the Syrian Tragedy—again. Although I visited Turkey once in 1999 for a very fleeting dash along its West coast from Ephesus to Istanbul with a short halt in Izmir to visit Gallipoli instead of Troy, and was very interested in its Neolithic archeological sites, I’ve never dug deeply into the history of the region to the East as the Greeks call it—Anatolia. And that hole in my historical knowledge has plagued me several times over the years. So, over the holidays I embarked on a scholarly mind trip researching to try and discover a logical answer. The short answer is Anatolia being a major geographic crossroad for human migration has long been the seat of Empires, each having its own civilization, the most recent being the Ottoman or Turkic Empire, although we must note that Anatolia was named Turkey, now Turkiye, only in 1923. The Turks geographic seat is Central Asia where many Turkic tribes still live. One need to only look at a map and see Turkmenistan to grasp this basic yet important fact. Many waves of migration originated in the East/Asia and moved West over the ages; one of the last of these was the migration of the Seljuk Turks who began entering Anatolia in the 11th Century only to encounter the waning Byzantine Empire. This site documents Seljuk history.

The Seljuk victory at the battle of Manzikert in 1071 over the Byzantines opened most of Anatolia for their settlement, and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, upon which it disintegrated into several small Turkish beyliks. The Ottomans were one of the dispersed beyliks; but Mongol rule was very loose, and in 1299 the Ottomans set about uniting the beyliks to form the seed of the Ottoman Empire. There’s some rather curious business with the name since its meaning differs depending on the language used. This short Wiki discussion will suffice:

The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān (عثمان). In Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye (دولت عليه عثمانیه), lit. 'Sublime Ottoman State', or simply Devlet-i ʿOsmānīye (دولت عثمانيه‎), lit. 'Ottoman State'.

The Turkish word for "Ottoman" (Osmanlı) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" (Türk) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period, an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of the military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk, but rather as a Rūmī (رومى), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at the end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. [The footnotes in the text can be accessed at the above link. Bolding Original.]

The Ottoman Empire

Most are aware that the Ottoman Empire was quite large and ruled over some very significant areas, the Levant, Northern Black Sea littoral region and Balkans, with the legacy of its rule still very much a part of geopolitics. Reviewing Ottoman Empire history isn’t necessary for my purpose; but for those interested, a trove of 168 downloadable files on the overall subject can be found here. As can be seen in the map at the header, there’re definitive lands of Armenia and Kurdistan shown. The fallout from WW1 was very bad for many within Anatolia as this source notes:

The Ottoman Empire's legacy is both treasured and loathed in equal measure. According to a study by Rutgers University, between 1914 and 1923 over 3.5 million Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians were killed under the successive Young Turks' and Mustafa Kemal's reigns. That genocide to date continues to be a thorny issue in Turkey. As the Armenian National Institute reports, 1 million Armenians perished in that genocide. Increasing Muslim territory by Jihad also came to the forefront during the Ottoman Empire.

The end of the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of Turkish Nationalism that continues today under Erdogan. many will not know of the intricacies, intrigues and many other stories surrounding the Ottoman defeat and subsequent Turkish War of Independence, which is unfortunate because knowing a good deal of it provides some answers to Erdogan’s and broader Turkish motivation to reestablish Turkish pride and power. It also provides answers to other questions related to the Kurds, Armenians and other Christian groups that faced genocide or forced deportation. The initial documentation of that multifaceted event was initiated by Russia and joined by its Triple Entente allies in the May 1915 Triple Entente Declaration wherein first use of the phrase "crimes against humanity" in international diplomacy occurred. This short Wiki at the link above provides crucial basic background info:

The Committee of Union and Progress seized absolute power in the Ottoman Empire in a 1913 coup and entered World War I in November 1914. This laid the groundwork for the genocide of the Empire's Armenian population [the CUP devised the myth of a Christian conspiracy to join the Entente and declared collective punishment of all Christian groups within Anatolia], underway by April 1915. Ottoman paramilitaries also massacred many Christians (both Armenians and Syriac Christians) in the areas of Persia around Urmia that were occupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Persian Campaign. After some areas were captured by Russia, which publicized the atrocities, these massacres, as well as the Armenian defense of Van, were widely covered in world newspapers during March and April 1915.

Turks as exemplified by Erdogan have denied those atrocities ever since. The cleansing of Anatolia remains a Turkish goal with the Kurdish people, whose one great opportunity for statehood came with 1920’s Treaty of Sevres:

You’ll note another missing nation: Azerbaijan, which only existed as a province of Persia just as it does today. But the treaty was never ratified and Turkey’s revolt and war for independence brought about a different treaty and border adjustments:

Note the Treaty of Lausanne refers to Anatolia not Turkey.

As usual, the victors wrote the history, and that has a very big impact as the Kemalist or Nationalist version of history is what’s taught to Turks. Ethnic based nationalism can become very dangerous as we’ve seen throughout history with the Nazis and Zionists being the two most devastating recent examples. The following Wiki citation comes from this discussion, “State Identity, Continuity, and Responsibility: The Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide “| European Journal of International Law | Oxford Academic:

The orthodox Turkish perspective on the war is based primarily on the speeches and narratives of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a high-ranking officer in World War I and the leader of the Nationalist Movement. Kemal was characterized as the founder and sole leader of the Nationalist Movement. Potentially negative facts were omitted in the orthodox historiography. This interpretation had a tremendous impact on the perception of Turkish history, even by foreign researchers. The more recent historiography has come to understand the Kemalist version as a nationalist framing of events and movements leading to the republic's founding. This was accomplished by sidelining unwanted elements which had links to the detested and genocidal CUP, and thus elevating Kemal and his policies.

Atatürk’s main testimony is published in Nutuk, which is reported to be 1900 pages long and can be downloaded at the link. The authors of “Constitutive Discourse of Turkish Nationalism: Atatürk's Nutuk and the Rhetorical Construction of the ‘Turkish People’” have this to say:

Nutuk marked a turning point of Turkish nationalism by introducing a series of new myths and concepts into the vernacular of public discourse, such as republic, democracy, sovereignty of the nation, and secularism. Atatürk designated these concepts as the 'most precious treasures' of Turkish people, the 'foundations' of their new state, and the preconditions of their future 'existence' in his speech.

There’s a lot of very damning history related to the Turkish War for Independence, with just a very tiny fraction written above. But that event just over 100 years ago still lives within the Turkish mind. The similarity between Turkish Nationalists of that era and today’s Zionists is striking. That history also gives reason to doubt Erdogan’s sincerity when it comes to supporting Palestinians and Palestine as the revolutionary Turkish nationalists also persecuted and deported their Arab population from Anatolia and most Kurds are Muslim.

Pepe Escobar has described Erdogan many times as a wannabe Sultan—Pasha Erdogan. I see him as a wily, opportunistic autocratic Turkish Nationalist who wants power and respect for Turkiey as a sovereign middle-ranked power worthy of respect due to its geographical position in Anatolia. In that regard, Erdogan wants BRICS full membership, not the junior partner status. I’ve written in the past that Erdogan and future Turkish leaders will promote and pursue Turkiye’s national interest. Given decades of spurning by Europe and its longstanding hatred of “The Turk,” the EU will never allow Turkiey into the EU, and it’s a wonder it remains in NATO. With Europe colonized by the Outlaw US Empire, I doubt Erdogan wants that same fate, so he’ll continue to turn East and continue trying to promote Pan-Turkism while looking South to Africa for markets. One big question is, will Erdogan confront Netanyahu in Syria. A second is attacking the Empire-aligned Kurds. And I’m sure there’re more. Within 2025, Erdogan and Turks will most certainly be players, but their exact course remains cloudy, although we can be sure Turkish Nationalism will feature prominently.

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