Erdogan Nostalgic about the Ottoman Empire

• 10.26.2016, 21:03
•  Region,  World,  Analytics

ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

In the recent years, Turkey's growing ambitions have reached their peak. Since 2002, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party's policy, in fact, has been based on expansionist ideologies, such as neo-Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism. These are the components that form Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision of "New Turkey".

A few days ago, Erdogan openly stated that "the physical boundaries do not correspond to the borders of Turkey’s heart." Reminding of Turkey’s national covenant (the Kemalists' program of ''Struggle for independence'' which in fact reflected the basic principles of the national policy of the Kemalist movement), Erdoghan said that Turkey cannot remain indifferent to such regions and countries such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea, Karabakh, Bosnia, Georgia, Ukraine, the Balkans, North Africa and "other brother regions." Erdogan thus told about the ambitions  of Turkey towards these areas. "When Turkey will lose its independence and lose its future, then we will lose interest toward these territories," the Turkish president said.

Earlier, Erdogan once again complained of the Lausanne Treaty (Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, defines the boundaries of modern Turkey. According to the agreement, Turkey refused its claims over other parts of the Ottoman Empire). "In 1914, our premises consisted of 2.5 million sq/km, and were reduced by the Treaty of Lausanne, reaching only 780,000 sq/km," Erdogan complained.

It is no secret that Tayyip Erdogan's government with its idealogies of neo-Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism became an alternative to Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk's nationalism. The ideology of neo-Ottomanism received a new birth and led to the foundation of the Turkish foreign policy in the beginning of 2000s based on the theories developed by Ahmet Davutoglu. The main idea of ​​ neo-Ottomanism lies in the fact that Turkey is seeking to political, diplomatic, economic and other types of dominance of the former Ottoman Empire, a number of regions (including the Middle East, Balkans, North Africa, Caucasus). If we add the factor of political Islam, as well as the idea of ​​Turkic unity, we will see the AKP's foreign policy model.

Over the past decade, Turkey had an active policy in accordance with the spirit of this ideology to carry out the above-mentioned directions. And if in case of Middle East and the Arab world, Turkey's primary objective was to become the driving force,  then in case of Caucasus "zero problem" with its neighbors was the main approach.

Leaving aside the issue of the effectiveness of this policy (including in the context of wars and conflicts right by the borders of Turkey), there comes the problem of resistance to Turkish ambitions. In particular, the Greek Foreign Ministry has called on Turkey to respect international agreements, and the president in turn warned that his statements could undermine regional security, ekathimerini.com reports.

“The rhetoric of Turkish President Erdogan, in any perspective, even the most benevolent, unfortunately directly or indirectly undermines the Treaty of Lausanne, not to mention Greek-Turkish relations and relations between the European Union and Turkey,'' the Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos said.

In the future we will surely witness new manifestations of Erdogan’s expansionist policy, as it implies to the AKP's foreign policy model. As the "principle of zero problems with neighbors" does not justify itself for a long time already, Turkey actively gets engaged in all possible conflicts without ''any invitation'', openly stating its territorial ambitions.