Five Centuries Ago Tomorrow

Quite near to a thousand years ago, Turkic Seljuk horsemen stormed out of Central Asia to carve their empire into much of the Middle East, centered on the fading Caliphate of Baghdad. Their advance led them into exasperated Greek and Christian Anatolia, where in 1071 they defeated the ailing Byzantines, capturing their emperor in the process and opening much of the peninsula to Turkish influence.

Though the Seljuks collapsed, Anatolia remained free game. Around the late 1200’s, a new and tiny Turkic principality emerged on the edge of a much-shrunken Byzantine state. Her first ruler of note was a man named Usman, from whose progeny arose the Usmani (Ottoman) Empire, destined to stretch over six centuries and three continents. The longest-ruling single dynasty in human history, at its peak, the Sublime Porte took in its capital Constantinople and radiated outwards to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, including the three holiest cities of Islam. By the 1600’s, the Ottomans were poking into Poland, Germany and the Ukraine, only to be turned back in Vienna in 1683.

All tides that rise must also fall. The once formidable Ottomans became a feeble dynasty, not so much ruling as they were lingering over an empire prone to famine and insurrection. By the 19th century, much of the Porte’s Balkan territories had risen up in nationalist agitation, seceding from the rule of the Sultan – quite often with the help of eager Western powers. Countries such as Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania emerged from the tumult.

The predominantly Muslim territories to the east and south of Constantinople followed quite a different path. Perhaps by virtue of religious allegiance – upon which lay the Ottoman’s primary authoritativeness – these regions did not exhibit significant revolt until World War I, when in ecstasy at European offerings (that is, mirages), certain Arab tribes led resistance to the Ottoman state just as it was battling a more powerful England, France, Russia and United States.

As a result of World War I and the Arab Revolt, alongside a previous century or two of rather consistent defeat, the Ottoman Empire collapsed in on itself. The primary territories of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace became the territory of a secular Republic of Turkey, a modern state obsessed with centralization and Westernization, in place of a prior pluralistic Empire, with a much more relaxed government and a deliberate policy of non-interference in many ethnic and religious communities.

But the Turks, at least, got themselves a country, while escaping the curse of colonization. For the rest of the Middle East, fate had worse fortunes in store. Predominantly Arab territories were carved up into artificial states, ruled over by European powers or their puppets, while in Palestine, Zionists were given license to establish settlements and begin their bid for a state.

It has only gotten worse, really. Turkey, despite considerable progress and development, is mired in questions of identity, ethnicity and belonging, not to mention the increasing tension between resurgent Islam – artificially suppressed for several decades – and more secular forces. The Arab states, meanwhile, have failed or are almost there. Those few that have any semblance of strong national identity suffer, like all the others, under inept and corrupt governments, with little vision or capacity for meaningful change or growth.

And thus it was just about two years ago, when Usama Bin Laden stated that the September 11th attacks were in retaliation for what the West had done to the Ottoman Empire eighty-some years ago; that is, for the West’s dismemberment of what was, admittedly, a collapsed state incapable of defending itself. The Arab and Muslim territories, now parceled into more easily digested pieces, were unable to resist even a handful of Zionist settlers, and have, since then, remained too pathetic to defend themselves or promote their causes or interests (not least because their territories have been divided in such a way as to make them largely, if not wholly, ineffective).

Responses to the post-Ottoman period by Arabs and Muslims have been depressingly ineffectual. For some time, Arab nationalism and other Third world, secular movements were the order of the day, but none of them solved the problem. Tiny Israel ran roughshod over the efforts of several decades, sending Arabs back to where they’d begun and then some, worse off because not only were they defeated, but horribly disheartened.

Today’s crisis in Iraq reveals the same weakness. Divided, downcast and despairing, the Middle East cannot manage its affairs and cannot prevent the invasions and insertions of hostile foreign powers, which through the medium of dictatorships are able to steal the wealth of huge regions and prevent the meaningful development of their peoples.

As of the 1970’s, alternatives emerged in the name of Islam, scoring some initial successes in Iran and against certain Arab regimes, only to fall prey to mindless violence, useless rhetoric and incompetent solutions. Rather than reflect upon this, the phenomenon of political Islamism only finds resort to conspiracy theories and ever more apocalyptic visions. In other words, they too have failed and refuse to admit it. The vicious circle of the past eighty years continues unabated. Little wonder Bin Laden and his types are so ticked off.

It is clear that soon enough, many things are going to give and the region will collapse into terror and chaos. This is a prediction of which, unfortunately, I am rather confident. It is but a matter of time – even if it is a few decades away, it is coming.

Regional governments have lost any and all credibility in the eyes of their people, who no longer consider them capable of handling the most mundane tasks. Tellingly, it has been left to Islamic movements throughout the Middle East – whether Arab or not – to provide basic healthcare, humanitarian assistance, welfare and education, normally the responsibilities of government. Countries like Pakistan have shown themselves to be singularly hopeless, as it seems no party can provide any meaningful ideas, concepts or solutions, other than the tactics of extremists, secular or Islamic.

But perhaps the depths of despair to which the people of the region have been brought do, in one sense, offer a positive: As people see how horribly so many alternatives have failed them, they are more open to radically different – and even radically ambitious – programs, in hopes of some change. What could not have been fathomed twenty years ago is discussed openly today, while what is considered unlikely or unrealistic today will be more and more seen as beneficial or worthy in a matter of decades. If not years.

We must bring the Ottomans back.

I do not propose we dig their descendants out of Hyderabad, the children of the last Islamic Caliph having married into the late Nizam’s family, but rather, that we excavate an idea and work with it. Ambitious? Perhaps even too ambitious. But we are living in an era of visions and dreams, each more grandiose in scope than the next, for ever since the fall of Communism, it has been either America or something else. Clearly, the peoples of the Middle East are not going to accept American order, imposed as it shall be through a horrific excess of force. Shock and awe do not make democracy.

Nor is it enough for us to lamely criticize the machinations of Western imperialism, for it is blatantly obvious what the real intentions behind the Second Gulf War are. To do so would consign another generation, if not two or three, to a broken and backward fate. For each failure will produce more apathy, and more apathy will generate thoughtless violence, and such violence will not simply affect one part of the world, but all of it.

So let us go looking for the Ottomans. The future must not be awaited. It must be found, it must be fought, it must be made. Aside from the many wrongs the Ottomans committed, they also had many positive points, and to build from them is no different from the way in which Western civilization built itself off of Rome.

Firstly, any attempt at progress or change in the Islamic world must do so while grounded in Islamic norms and concepts, but that does not mean I suggest blind imitation or purely rhetorical and dictatorial flourish of the kind espoused by the Qurra’ of past and present (the so-called Khariji groups). Islam must provide both the basis for such a movement, and any polity – whether social, communal or cultural – that it aims towards, while concurrently serving as the boundaries for change and adaptation within said polity. To suggest otherwise would immediately negate the likelihood of any success, while also guaranteeing strong – and violent – resistance to said attempt. We do not wish further violence and upheaval on a part of the world already suffering far too much of it.

The current Islamic revival has been shorn of much of its previous ethnic bases, if only because the strength of Western hegemony and the opposition of established governments forces more multilateral and pluralistic cooperation. Consider, for example, Turkey’s AK Party (as compared to the Refah in the 1990’s), or, alternatively, the emergence of Pakistan’s MMA, which despite serious shortcomings remains an improvement over past sectarianism. As the strength of the Islamist challenge grows, so too will government and foreign resistance to it, which will directly cause collaboration with other moderate and indigenous elements, thereby sowing the seeds for a native system.

Furthermore, the Ottoman system serves as potent example for a region divided into false nations, whose borders criss-cross one another’s at all the wrong places. The Ottomans, as it should be recalled, were Turks who did not consider themselves such. Rather, they were a Muslim empire that put much less emphasis on race (or, indeed, class) and far more on the establishment of harmonious relations under the aegis of a moderate religious state. Perhaps one of the reasons the violence in the former Yugoslavia was so bad was because Muslims, Orthodox and Catholic Christians all lived right next door to one another: A legacy of Ottoman toleration.

The Ottomans were replaced by discourses of national liberation, a vicious bloodletting that ruined and wracked Europe – not to mention the Middle East – which has only been silenced in the Balkans by an acceptance of the idea of the European Union. That is, the old Ottoman territories could only be made peaceful again once they were presented with a similarly vast and multinational polity, based on respect for diversity, plurality and cooperation.

While arguments have been made that each ethnicity of the Middle East should have its own nation-state, I believe that in the seeking of a larger polity, there is more promise for actual ethnic flourishing. Should separate Middle Eastern ethnicities receive states that are not currently in existence, they will firstly be impractical, and secondly, accelerate instability in the region. Finally, the likelihood these states will enjoy any meaningful security is dim, seeing as their creation will spark counter-discourses of virulent nationalism (And larger ethnies will be able to put more force into their claims).

As an example, an independent Kurdistan would firstly be an economic disaster, being landlocked and surrounded by hostile states. Furthermore, emphasis of an independent Kurdistan would spark emphases on an independent state for other deprived groups, such as Assyrians and Turkmen, many of whom live in and near Kurdish territory. The history of the Balkans, as previously mentioned, is not one of the realization of national destiny, but generally of decay, disappointment and wanton bloodletting. However, in an inter-governmental entity, local identity has a chance of thriving, founded as it is in a more secure and stable system, within which it no longer poses so significant a threat.

So let us dream. And let us dream big. Let us think about Ottomans, about ideas that brought people together, that gave them a basis for resistance to outside intervention and kept them free of it for centuries. While one might challenge the legacy of the Ottomans and modernity, and what seemed to be their inability or unwillingness to keep up with Europe, I can only say: What they produced for the Muslim world was an order more stable, beneficial and benevolent than anything in existence since.

Aside from George Bush’s Crusade and Osama Bin Laden’s Jihad, there are no longer any other alternatives.