Turkey's Pan-Turkism

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by reedak, Dec 21, 2019.

  1. reedak

    reedak Well-Known Member

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    1. Thousands of protesters marched in support of China’s Uighurs in Istanbul on Friday and voiced solidarity with Arsenal midfielder Mesut Ozil after the furore caused by his criticism of China’s policies toward the Muslim minority......

    2. Ottoman Turkey was ‘‘the sick man of Europe’’ and in what appeared to be terminal decline when it chose to side with Germany in 1914. It was not long before Britain and France began eyeing up Ottoman domains and, in 1916, they struck a secret agreement about who would have what when Turkey was defeated.

    The Treaty of Sèvres marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and its dismemberment. The terms it stipulated included the renunciation of all non-Turkish territory and its cession to the Allied administration. Notably, the ceding of Eastern Mediterranean lands allowed the creation of new forms of government, including the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon.

    The disintegration of the mighty Ottomam Empire by Western powers certainly proved traumatic for the collective Turkish psyche. There is not much of a protest whenever the US and other Western powers ruthlessly run roughshod over Turkey in their foreign policies. For instance, when the US House of Representatives voted 405-11 on 29 October 2019 in favour of a resolution to formally recognize the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915, modern-day Turkey, as “genocide”, the protests from Turkey were not as vociferous as expected. Turkey's response was equally low-key when the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and became the first country to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

    3. At its height which was the dawn of the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire controlled Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Northern Caucasia, Crimea (up to Don and Volga Rivers), the whole Black Sea coast ( it was an inner sea for them), Romania, Wallachia, Moldova, Hungary, southern Poland (for some time), parts of Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, the whole Aegean Sea including bigger islands like Crete and Cyprus (another inner sea), Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, all small states of southern shores of Iranian Sea, Oman, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea, some parts of Ethiopia (Red Sea another inner sea), Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco (for some time) and Anatolia for sure. In some estimates it is believed that the empire had almost 20 million square kilometres of land under its administration.

    After receiving a bloody nose from the West, the Turks realised they could never have the chance to rebuild their once-mighty empire which stretched from northern Africa to southern, central and eastern Europe. The Turks obviously address others as "beasts" but look up to the US and other Western powers as “royal highnesses" after the great Ottoman Empire dismemberment that really cut deep into the collective Turkish psyche. Instead of seeking revenge on the West, they began to look eastward or backward at their "roots" by propagating the nationalistic concept of Pan-Turkism in their bid to build a new empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia, Russia and Siberia to the borders of China.

    Turkey, and its President Recep Erdogan, are engaged in a multifaceted push to assert influence over Turkic peoples in Central Asia and beyond. Ankara probably can’t replace Moscow or Beijing as Central Asia’s leading external player – at least, not in the near future. Moscow is deeply entrenched; Beijing has deep pockets. But Ankara is focused on the long term and the vast potential of the “Turkic World.” How the dynamics of that grouping will mesh with or clash with Moscow’s “Russki Mir” (“Russian World”) paradigm and China’s Belt & Road ambitions remains to be seen.

    4. The Turks were originally a nomadic tribe from Central Asia before migrating westward to occupy the lands of Hittites, Phrygians, Luwians, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks and Byzantines.

    The following are the ridiculous and outrageous claims by some groups in Turkey propagating their nationalistic concept of Pan-Turkism in Central Asia:

    (a) They claim that all the peoples in Central Asia are Turks. Ankara tells Central Asia: "We’re all Turks."

    (b) They claim that the Xiongnu nomads which were defeated and chased westward by Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty were Turks.

    ( c ) They claim that the Huns who terrorized much of Europe and the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. were Turks.

    (d) They claim that Attila, nicknamed the “Scourge of God”, who terrified the crumbling Roman Empire and came close to vanquishing half of it was a Turkish chieftain.

    (e) They claim that Turks were related to the nomadic tribes which marauded the Chinese border regions in the past.

    (f) They claim that the Mongols who invaded Europe in the 13th century were Turks
    .
    (g) They claim that Genghis Khan was not a Mongol but a Turk. :smile:

    (h) They claim that the Turks invented the original Latin-script alphabet which they borrowed for writing the Turkish alphabet (Turkish: Türk alfabesi) consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ş, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language.

    (i) They claim that Western China belongs to the Turks. :wall:

    P.S. China and Russia have to beware of the long-term threats posed by Turkey's Pan-Turkism.
     

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