Ottoman Commonwealth

I am neither a sociologist, nor a psychiatrist. How can the Turkish aspiration to somehow, and in some form, rehash the Ottoman Empire be explained?

I asked some friends who are respectable sociologists and they proved to be cowardly enough to swiftly silence me out of an effort to avoid a possible confrontation with the tall, bold, bald and ever-angry man aspiring to become the first-ever elected sultan of this fast socio-political regression. Can anyone blame them? No, definitely not. In a country where political opponents and critics are packed in boxes labeled “terrorist, handle roughly” and confined to a high security concentration camp in the Thracian Turkey, it requires more than courage to come up and say something that might enrage the sultan or his clan of political Islam.

The sultan in the making and his clan are getting more and more courageous, assertive, aggressive and chatty. After all, is there an alternative strong enough to challenge them in the upcoming, or any election in the foreseeable future? No. The nationalists are determined to remain an excessively rhetorical but nationalist salutation group. Social democrats are still trying to figure out what their views on important and trivial issues of the country might be. Some idiots are still looking at the military barracks as if soldiers have not gone to bed with democracy whenever they found the opportunity, but are “still” the “custodians” of democracy. Sorry, they are indeed complete imbeciles.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is just six votes shy of the required parliamentary majority for a constitutional amendment through referendum. Buying six votes is not a problem in Turkish politics, but there is a bigger complication: Current President Abdullah Gül, his men in the AKP and some influential Islamist-conservatives are against a presidential system of governance and thus to becoming sultan aspirations of Erdoğan. Our Sultan in the making needs to enhance his coalition if he wants to achieve his masterly design. Playing the Kurdish card; turning on to nationalists; recruiting a few more eminent Islamofascists, pardon Islamist-conservatives, perhaps can help…but, not all in one basket of course.

Anyhow, at least the vizier of extraterritorial affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu brought to his master a piece of good news from Algeria; the only country that Turks officially apologized for aligning during their war of independence with their former colonial power. According to Davutoğlu, Algerian President Abdulaziz Buteflika has suggested during the visit establishment under Turkey’s leadership of a Commonwealth of Ottoman States. Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamit, who worked a lot on that idea as a way of prolonging the demise of the empire, would perhaps love the suggestion. Davutoğlu was apparently delighted as well.

Creative imagination must be a great gift for artists and artisans, but statesman must be guided and ordained with something else, particularly with a sense of realism.

Commonwealth of Ottoman States, oh la la…