‘With Turkey Flexing its Muscles, We May Soon Face a Revived Ottoman Empire’

No longer limited to ‘Eastern Paradigm’ students of Biblical eschatology, others are now beginning to understand how the empire that was is the empire that may be yet again …

By Niall Ferguson – “… But since 2003, when Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected prime minister, that has changed. The founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Erdogan is a seductive figure. To many, he is the personification of a moderate Islamism. He has presided over a period of unprecedented economic growth. He has sought to reduce the power of the military. It was no accident that one of President Obama’s first overseas trips was to Istanbul. It was no surprise when the AKP won a third consecutive general election earlier this month.

And yet we need to look more closely at Erdogan. For there is good reason to suspect he dreams of transforming Turkey in ways Suleiman the Magnificent would have admired.

In his early career as mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan was imprisoned for publicly reciting these lines by an early-20th-century Pan-Turkish poet: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.’ His ambition, it seems clear, is to return to the pre-Atatürk era, when Turkey was not only militantly Muslim but also a regional superpower.

This explains his sustained campaign to alter the Turkish Constitution in ways that would likely increase his own power at the expense of the judiciary and the press as well as the military, all bastions of secularism. It explains his increasingly strident criticism of Israel’s ‘state terrorism’ in Gaza, where pro-Palestinian activists sent a headline-grabbing flotilla last year. Above all, it explains his adroit maneuvers to exploit the opportunities presented by the Arab Spring, chastising Syria, seeking to check Iran, and offering himself as a role model.” Read more.

The coming Turkish-led caliphate – “We are now nearing the conclusion of a perfectly executed plan to purge Turkey of its secular Kemalist system and ensconce the Islamists in power indefinitely. In the name of democracy, the Islamists have toppled what was once a shining beacon of hope for the Middle East. And behind it all is the architect, Prime Minister Erdogan, who once projected, ‘Democracy is like a streetcar. You use it to get you where you wish to go, and then you get off.'” Read more.