Ottoman Empire. Source:
Pixabay.
01.03.2017
Neo-Ottomanism is the
driving ideology behind contemporary Turkey’s domestic and foreign behavior
It’s no secret that
Turkey endeavors to restore its Great Power status all across its former
Ottoman realm, driven in part by the strategic calculations outlined by former Foreign and Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu and carried through to its present iteration through the pioneering
charisma of President Erdogan. The policy of so-called “Neo-Ottomanism”, as
it’s been popularly referred to by outside commentators over the years, has
proven itself to be one of the most disruptive ideologies of the 21st century.
Supporters laud its ambitious vision to return Turkey back to its Ottoman roots
– both in terms of de-facto religiously influenced governance and Great Power
status – while detractors point to the death and destruction that
Neo-Ottomanism has directly contributed to in Syria as evidence that it’s
resulted in much more harm than good.
No matter which side of the debate one stands on, it
can generally be agreed that Neo-Ottomanism is the driving ideology behind
contemporary Turkey’s domestic and foreign behavior, and that it’s indeed one
of the most influential forces shaping the future of the Mideast, for better or
for worse. That being said, it’s absolutely important to understand the nature
of this grand strategy in order to accurately forecast its development across
the coming years, hence the reason for conducting this research.
The author argues in Part
I that Neo-Ottomanism relies on soft power nostalgia for the Ottoman past,
emphasizing Turkey’s central role in building what would eventually become the
world’s largest caliphate, albeit modified in political-administrative ways to
adapt for the present post-modern/post-Western reality. In its quest to de-facto recreate the
Ottoman Caliphate, Turkey is transforming its internal governing structure in
order to ultimately make it more suitable for expanding and retaining its
foreign influence. Pertaining to the latter, the transnational Muslim
Brotherhood network which is clandestinely embedded across all levels of
society in the Mideast and North Africa (MENA) acts as the vanguard
‘revolutionary’ force for Neo-Ottomanism, but given its recent setbacks over
the years, it’s insufficient for sustaining Turkish influence across this large
region.
Therefore, Turkey is simultaneously pursuing a
broad-based strategy to secure as many reliable sources of energy as possible
in order to position itself as a more independent player unencumbered by the
structural restraints which come from its present dependence on Russian
resources, which occupies the focus of Part II. As it turns out to be, there’s
almost a perfect overlap between the soft power, geopolitical, energy, and
military components of Neo-Ottomanism, and this second section endeavors to
shed light on these connections in order to imbue the reader with a more
comprehensive understanding of this Great Power project. In order to present a
more comprehensive level of analysis, Part III then briefly examines the
opportunities and challenges that Turkey faces on its path to build the
Neo-Ottoman Caliphate.
Soft Power Underpinnings
Historical Memory:
Neo-Ottomanism builds off of the historical memory of
the Ottoman Caliphate, a period of time which has become very popular to
reminisce about in Turkish society and which also has its fair share of
admirers among some of the more religiously focused Arabs all throughout MENA.
While some people such as the Syrians, especially the secular ones, view the
Ottoman centuries as almost half a millennium of occupation (just like their
Serbian counterparts do in the Balkans), there are still many others which interpret
it very differently and see it as a high point in their history. These very
religious individuals are much more loyal to the concept of the Ummah –
especially its political-administrative embodiment as the former Turkish-led
Ottoman Caliphate – than they are to their respective countries, and it’s from
this large proportion of the masses that Erdogan seeks to cull his
international supporters.
The Muslim Brotherhood Alliance:
By and large, however, there are still many populists
which have strong reservations about the nature of Turkish rule over the
centuries and could easily stir up trouble which could undermine Ankara’s
ambitions, which is why it’s so important for Turkey to differentiate between
its ethno-nationalist identity as an ‘exclusive’ country of the Turks and its
inclusive religious one as a fellow “brother” to all the Muslims in the world.
Seen in this way, then Erdogan’s decision to openly sympathize with and support
the Muslim Brotherhood takes on a different meaning, since it can thus be
understood as constituting part of his religious opening to MENA and
demonstrating his common point of convergence with non-Turkish Muslims. This
group isn’t representative of the majority of Muslims in this transregional
space, but it’s nonetheless a powerful anti-government force to be reckoned
with, and additionally gives Erdogan and Turkey added ‘credence’ among
religious conservatives.
What’s crucial to
understand about the Muslim Brotherhood is that it aspires to overthrow both
secular and Wahhabi governments in order to usher in its own form of Islamic
governance. This technically makes it a ‘revolutionary’ organization, and it in
many ways structurally functions as a 21st-century iteration of the
communist party in the sense of wanting to replace the present political order
in their country with a new transnational one unified by ideology. The “Arab
Spring” Color Revolutions can thus be analyzed as an attempt to carry out a swift
succession of coups designed to lay the political-ideological foundation for a
network of satellite states which would be run by whichever power had the
highest degree of influence over the Muslim Brotherhood. While this role was
originally played by Qatar, the tiny monarchy’s leadership capabilities are
understandably limited and it has no history of ruling the region, whereas
Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Turkey has centuries’ worth of experience in
managing the Ottoman Caliphate.
From the geopolitical perspective, the US sought to
replace the existing order in the Mideast with a Turkish-controlled network of
Muslim Brotherhood-run states, essentially recreating the Ottoman Caliphate in
order to both organize a partial pan-Arab Sunni alliance against Shiite Iran
and exert pressure on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Kingdoms, considering of course
how deathly afraid the latter category are that the organization could one day
violently come to power there too.
This strand of thinking correlates with the
integrational tendencies observed elsewhere in the world, be it the EU, the
Eurasian Union, SCO, or ASEAN, except furthered in a much more disruptive,
violent, and sudden manner.
It also was
preconditioned on having Turkey behave as the US’ “Lead From Behind” partner in controlling this region as Washington’s
proxy, relying on Erdogan’s comparatively more ‘authentic’ Muslim credentials
compared to the American President’s in order to earn him added ‘legitimacy’
among these populations in justifying his envisaged transnational leadership
role as this ideology’s most influential state patron. For as ideal as this
strategy sounded on paper, however, it didn’t deliver as expected in practice
and for reasons which will be touched upon later on in the text. Nevertheless,
Turkey remains tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and utilizes it as its
Neo-Ottoman vehicle for advancing Ankara’s influence all across MENA, even if
it never has the opportunity to do so on as grand of a basis as it was poised
to immediately after the ‘success’ of the “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions and
by the time of Erdogan’s late-2011 ‘victory tour’ of North Africa.
Standing Apart From The Saudis:
For as impressive of an
historical legacy as it has, and given the relative effectiveness of its Muslim
Brotherhood foot soldiers, Turkey still doesn’t hold the same amount of sway
over MENA and the rest of the global Ummah as Saudi Arabia does. The Saudi King
is recognized as the caretaker of the Two Holy Mosques, and this alone imbues
him with enormous respect all across the Muslim world. The Kingdom’s support of
Wahhabism has also earned it many influential adherents among the Ummah,
despite this strand of Islam being largely recognized by many Muslims as being
ultra-conservative and even radical. In fact, an under-reported gathering in
Chechnya last year saw
Sunni religious leaders from a host of countries all but ‘excommunicating’ (to
use a Catholic comparison) the Wahhabis from their fold, further highlighting
the general unattractiveness of this ‘brand’. Be that as it may, it’s hard to
argue with the assertion that Saudi Arabia’s global influence is predicated on
the dual pedestals of its caretaker role over the Two Holy Mosques and the
ideology of Wahhabism, the latter of which has been given a surreal soft power
boost due to the hundreds of billions of petrodollars that stand behind it
decades-long proselytization campaigns.
he value-added differentiator that sets Turkey apart
from Saudi Arabia is its historical legacy of administrative-political
leadership over a broad part of the Ummah and its embrace of the relatively
(key word) more moderate Islamic governance as advocated by the Muslim
Brotherhood. Although there are in practice very little differences between
these two, the perception of course is that the Muslim Brotherhood is slightly
less radical than the Wahhabis, which theoretically gives Turkey a soft power
boost over the Saudis.
Additionally, the reason why Saudi Arabia has listed
the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization – other than its objectively
identified use of terrorism in pursuit of its goals – is that the group wants
to replace the King as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Extrapolating
from this and going forward with the scenario, the organization’s most powerful
foreign patron would thus become the true caretaker of these religious sites,
and should this continue to be Erdogan and the Turkish state, then it would
dramatically elevate them to becoming the symbolic leaders of many of the
Ummah’s Muslims.
There’s no evidence that
Turkey is conspiring against Saudi Arabia and directly working with the Muslim
Brotherhood to overthrow the King, but in the event that this group does indeed
succeed with its ‘revolutionary’ goal, then it would instantly propel Erdogan
to becoming a 21st-century Caliph ruling over a
post-modern/post-Western Neo-Ottoman Empire at the crossroads of Afro-Eurasia,
thereby granting him unprecedented geopolitical influence over global affairs.
Though it’s extremely doubtful that this will ever happen, let alone anytime
soon, this idea can be said to serve as an inspiration which works towards
Turkey’s ultimate soft power favor in recruiting more Arab MENA Muslims to its
Neo-Ottoman cause. More than likely, any advancement of this scenario wouldn’t
necessarily be due to Turkish cunning, but rather the Muslim Brotherhood’s
typical exploitation of chaotic situations, such as in the event that domestic
destabilization arises within the crumbling Kingdom and is first exacerbated by
Iranian (political, diplomatic, or perhaps even other) support for its Shia
co-confessionals in the oil-rich Eastern Province, which then provides space
for the Muslim Brotherhood to rise elsewhere in the country and try to pull off
an Egyptian-like coup against the government.
Administrative-Political
Tweaking
The soft power
underpinnings of Neo-Ottomanism might sound attractive to a broad base of MENA
Muslims, which could naturally give Turkey an enormous amount of geopolitical
sway, but they’re incapable by themselves of ensuring that Ankara’s influence
remains enduring and ever-lasting in the manner that Erdogan expects it to be.
It’s conceivable that Turkey could one day influence Muslim
Brotherhood-governed countries all across this transregional space along the
lines of the abovementioned “Lead From Behind” strategy, but this is crucially
dependent on the stability of the Turkish state itself and its immediate borderlands.
Turkey and its two southern neighbors have been greatly destabilized owing to
Erdogan’s front-row participation in the US’ War on Syria, which has revealed
itself as being a 21st-century iteration of the Yinon Plan in
respect to dividing the Muslims all along “Israel’s” periphery. Even though
that’s how it’s turned out, it was thought at the time by Erdogan that this was
his perfect opportunity to establish a Muslim Brotherhood client state next to
his borders and therefore give him a prime position to project more ideological
influence into the Arab World. It would also, of course, enable the
construction of the Qatar-Turkey pipeline which President Assad had earlier
rejected, the significance of which will be elaborated on later.
While the War on Syria is
proving itself to be a failed enterprise for all of its culprits, especially
Turkey, it also saw the eventual administrative-political tweaking of
Neo-Ottomanism. Turkish scholar Dr. Can Erimtan warned in late-2013 that “the government’s long-term
goal (as arguably expressed in the AKP’s policy statement Hedef 2023) is to
transform the nation state Turkey into an Anatolian federation of Muslim
ethnicities, possibly linked to a revived caliphate. In this way, Turkey’s
future (as a nation state) would arguably become subject to Anatolia’s past as
a home to many different Muslims of divergent ethnic background.” What this
basically means is that the devolution of the unitary Turkish state to a
federation would give Ankara the flexibility to incorporate/annex territories
under its wing which are populated by people of a separate ethno-nationalist
identity in order to build the post-modern/post-Western 21st-century
Neo-Ottoman Caliphate. In practice, this could allow for all or part of Syria
become part of a reformatted Turkey, as well as Syrian and Iraqi “Kurdistan”,
and the geographically large Sunni areas of Iraq. In fact, the “federalization” of both Syria and
Iraq would amount
to an internal partition in both cases and the emergence of a transnational
sub-state “Sunnistan” which could, under Dr. Erimtan’s analyzed template of the
future Turkish state, come under Ankara’s eventual control.
Turkey is still a unitary
republic, but it’s on the verge of transforming into a centralized one if the
forthcoming constitutional amendments are approved in April’s referendum. Erdogan would in that case be empowered to reverse
Ataturk’s legacy by removing secularity from the country’s constitution, or at
the very least overriding it for all intents and purposes. The devolution into
a federalized republic could also be sold to the country’s citizens as a
compromise with the Kurds, though in reality it would be a sly maneuver for one
day formalizing the inclusion of Syrian-Iraqi “Kurdistan” and “Sunnistan” into
the Neo-Ottoman Caliphate. If an expanded Turkey (or whatever it might be
called by that point) can directly connect to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, then it
would establish itself as a major global power capable of both cooperating and
competing with its southern neighbors. Either way, it would earn a lot of
“respect” among its supporters in the Ummah, particularly those which used to
be a part of the original Ottoman Empire. For this to happen, though, like it
was earlier written, Turkey needs to devolve from a unitary state to a
federalized one, whether or not it still maintains (even in a superficial
sense) its republican identity, as this would enable it to more easily absorb
more Muslim Brotherhood-controlled territories and supporters.
(Continued in Part II)
__________
All personal views are my
own and do not necessarily coincide with the positions of my employer
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otherwise by them. I write in a private capacity unrepresentative of
anything and anyone except for my own personal views. Nothing written by
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