An
Ottoman Relic—and Turkish Ambitions in Syria—are Re-laid to Rest
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Originally published under the title, "Turkey's Illusions
Hit Realities."
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Hundreds
of Turkish troops entered Syria on the night of February 21 to evacuate
38 Turkish guards at the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the
Ottoman Empire's founder.
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Turkey's dramatic miscalculation over Syria is pushing it into weird
acts. The latest was the forced relocation of a pre-Ottoman Turkish
commander's tomb from its spot in Syria to another spot in Syria, this
time a stone's throw away from the Turkish border. Relocating the tomb
seems to have been prompted by the fear of an attack from radical
Islamists -- who, ironically, Turkey wanted discreetly to support.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who in 2001 authored the 600-page
book, "Strategic Depth," hoped at the start of the Arab Spring,
when he served as Foreign Minister, that a belt of (Sunni) Muslim
Brotherhood-ruled regimes would proliferate in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia,
Lebanon and Libya, and be subservient to an emerging Turkish empire. To
start with Syria, therefore, the Nusayri strongman of the country,
President Bashar al-Assad, had to go.
In August 2012, Davutoglu predicted
that Assad's days in power were numbered "to a few weeks."
Turkey once hoped to see a belt of
(Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood-ruled regimes in Syria, Egypt, Tunisia,
Lebanon and Libya.
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Two and a half years later, Assad is no longer Turkey's southern
neighbor. Instead, various groups of jihadists and armed comrades from
among Turkey's own restive Kurds are Turkey's new neighbors across the
910 km border. It was one of those violent groups, the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria [ISIS, aka The Islamic State], which prompted Turkey to
perform one
of the most bizarre military operations in recent history.
Suleyman Shah was the grandfather of Osman I, the founder of the
Ottoman Empire and a revered figure for the Turks. He is believed to have
drowned in the Euphrates in 1236, and was buried in what is now Syria. In
1886, a tomb was built for him. And in 1921, when France controlled
Syria, it signed a peace treaty with Turkey and granted the Turks
sovereignty over the small plot of land that hosted Suleyman Shah's tomb.
That land would be Turkey's only sovereign land outside its own
territory.
The treaty stated that:
The tomb of Suleyman Shah, the
grandfather of the Sultan Osman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty (the tomb
known under the name of Turk Mezari), situated at Jaber-Kalesi shall
remain, with its appurtenances, the property of Turkey, which may appoint
guardians for it and may hoist the Turkish flag there.
Although the tomb was relocated to a new piece of land inside Syria in
1973, due to threats from floods from a dam, its new location also became
a de
facto Turkish enclave. A garrison of 38 Turkish soldiers has stood
guard permanently at the tomb since then.
The guards were regularly replaced with new conscripts until eight
months ago when, threatened by ISIS, the Turkish military felt no longer
able to change them: The guards were besieged at the tomb, surrounded by
ISIS's jihadists who have a notoriety for destroying tombs and sepulchers
that they deem "un-Islamic."
On the night of Feb. 21, the Turkish
military sent 572 troops, 39 tanks, 57 armored vehicles and 100 other
vehicles to extract its soldiers from there.
The building was destroyed by the army (in order not to let ISIS do
that); the tomb was transferred to land just a few hundred meters away
from the Turkish border, and the risk of humiliation from a new encounter
with ISIS was averted. (In 2014, ISIS
raided the Turkish consulate in Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city,
and held hostage 46 people, including the consul general, consul staff
and their family members. The hostages were released after 101 days of
captivity under terms that were never disclosed).
The tomb rescue operation, at best, could be considered a retreat with
a rational explanation. Apparently, the Turkish government does not want
to confront ISIS, which until recently was its comrade-in-arms against
Assad. The risk of another hostage crisis with ISIS would have been too
embarrassing for Turkey's government, especially with only about 100 days
to go until critical parliamentary elections.
But instead of taking modest pride in successfully averting a crisis,
the Turkish leadership and its cheerleaders in the media -- 65% of which
it controls -- portrayed
the operation as if Turkish special forces had abducted Assad, rather
than rescuing their own besieged soldiers and the roaming tomb of a
pre-Ottoman Turkish commander.
One headline said, "The world is talking about the success of
Operation Suleyman Shah." Other headlines said: "The Turkomans
are proud"; "No permission, we just went there and took
it"; "We hit whoever stood on our way"; "The epic
[tale] of Shah Euphrates."
Social media were quickly filled with jokes teasing the
"heroes." One of them created speech balloons on a photo that
shows Davutoglu
and the top military brass managing the crisis at military
headquarters. The speech balloons say "What an escape it was!";
"How successfully we ran away, eh?"; "After all, it was a
perfect escape"; and "Let's accept it... We ran away so
skillfully..."
Another photo shows Davutoglu
with General Necdet Ozel, Turkey's top military commander. Ozel's
speech balloon reads: "Now are we abandoning the tomb?" To
which Davutoglu answers: "Do you think we should also abandon Hatay
(a Turkish city claimed by Syria)?" Meanwhile, the air force
commander looks on and says: "Strategic madness..."
In many ways, the "abduction from the tomb" is not just
neo-Ottoman skullduggery. It is yet another face of neo-Ottoman illusions
hitting hard on a wall of Middle Eastern realities.
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is
a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East
Forum.
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