Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled his plans to control the resources of the East
Mediterranean a few days ago.
Erdoğan did this when
he stood in front of the grave of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk, on the occasion of holding the meeting of the Turkish
Consultative Military Council for 2020.
Addressing the grave, Erdoğan
said his government worked to fulfill the objectives of the Turkish Republic
for 2023.
Dreaming
In a sign of his
disconnect with realities, Erdoğan added that the achievements his country made
on all fronts, including in Libya, Syria and the East Mediterranean,
demonstrated the strength of the Turkish Republic and the power of its army.
On the following day, the
Head of Turkey's Religious Directorate, Ali Arbas, stood on the pulpit of Hagia
Sophia Museum-converted-mosque and held a sword in his hand, reviving an old
Ottoman tradition by Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. Almost all Ottoman
rulers imitated the Conqueror to denote the planned revival of the Ottoman
Empire.
The two scenes throw
light on Turkish ambitions in the region. They show that Erdoğan wants to revive the conditions of
bygone times by dividing the countries of the region, all with the aim of
fulfilling the objectives of the Turkish Republic in 2023.
Erdoğan dreams of abolishing the Treaty of Lausanne and applying what is known as the National
Oath or the set of six decisions made by the last term of the Ottoman
Parliament.
Ottoman armies received
a humiliating defeat at the hands of the allies, namely Britain and France, at
the end of World War I.
History
The National Oath
conceded the defeat of the Ottoman armies and the loss of Arab states. However,
it excluded the Kurdistan region as well as northern Syria and northern Iraq.
The Oath considered
these regions part of the new Turkish state, given the fact that most of the
residents of these regions speak Turkish. The same Oath considered the whole of
Cyprus, Western Thrace and the Aegean Sea islands to be part of the same state
for the same reasons.
Nonetheless, the map
produced by the National Oath made the allies angry. This was why the Greek
army attacked the western line of Anatolia on March 3, 1920. The allies also
occupied Istanbul on March 19 of the same year.
