Turkey: A New Caliphate? By Ardavan Amir Aslani

Focus today on Turkey through a book: Turkey, a new caliphate? published To the editions of the Archipelago, to wonder about the future of this country, a work written by the geopolitician Erdovan Amir Aslani, a lawyer at the Paris Bar.

franceinfo: Emir Aslani Ardavan, why is Turkey a new caliphate?

Ardavan Amir Aslani: Because the caliphate is political Islam. This is one of the options that Erdogan continues to demand in his desire to revive again, to revive the Ottoman Empire.

Erdogan, his civilized project for you is the caliphate, neo-Ottomanism, Bantoranism, what is it?

Panturanism is a Persian expression invented by the great Persian poet Ferdowsi to describe the historical enemies of Persia, i.e. the Turkic states. Indeed, today Erdogan seeks, by reviving the return of Panturism to Turkey, to be able to rediscover the imperial dimension of the past, which goes beyond the territorial dimension of what was formerly the Ottoman Empire, and which includes the entire central region. Asia. It’s back to basics.

Because Central Asia is Turkish. And you say in your book that he wants to reconnect with his Asian roots?

It has its own roots. Indeed, if Atatürk embodied the desire to refocus what was once the Ottoman Empire around “chaos,” then Erdoğan, who ruled, and the word reign is not even an oxymoron, longer than Atatürk, is trying to reconnect with the past. The greatness of the Ottoman Empire, and the greatness of Turkey’s role as a dominant source of Sunni thought, as let us remember that for 1000 years Mecca and Medina were in the Ottoman Turkish lands. And today, with Pantoranism, this move eastward, across the Caucasus, toward Central Asia.

toAt the expense of the Kurds and Armenians?

At the expense of everyone. You know the new ottoman, what is it for Erdogan ? The neo-Ottoman, these are illegal drilling operations in the eastern Mediterranean, daily clashes with the Greek Air Force, it is the questioning of the Treaty of Lausanne, the fact that the basic Treaty of Sevres has been taken out of history, and the bombing. Kurds in northern Syria, northern Iraq. This is the new ottoman. Pantoranism goes further, turning east towards Central Asia and the Caucasus. But there is a caliphate too, so why the new caliphate in Turkey?

Can you explain to us exactly what the caliphate is because no one knows what it is?

So you need to know that the Ottoman Sultan was both a secular leader and a religious leader, and he was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, including the Bulgarians, Armenians, and Kurds of Turkey. But he was also the caliph of the Islamic world, because it was there that Mecca and Medina were located on Ottoman territory.

Therefore, today he wants to be the Ottoman Sultan again as Abdul Hamid was, as well as the leader of the global Sunni community. We see him in conflict with the Saudis, it’s over Khashoggi caseI noticed: every day he distills information to keep the crisis on the minds of the Saudis. What he did in Libya today showed that there are two conflicting thesis: the thesis of the Muslim Brotherhood that he embodies, in relation to the thesis of Islam, coming from the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf.

Only today must Recep Tayyip Erdogan face a historic economic crisis…

A major economic crisis as a result of the instability it embodies, with an inflation of 80%.

Today, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, 2023: 100 years of the Turkish Republic. How can he be reincarnated, like the new Atatürk, to continue clinging to power?

Therefore, he wants to erase Ataturk from history, he wants to erase Ataturk’s presence in establishing the modern Turkish state, and to make Turkey sympathize with him more than Mustafa Kemal.

It will be hard…

It will be difficult, but he is trying, you see, he took the coup d’état he was subjected to as a pretext, to discount the army, to cut off the head of the army, to strengthen the higher civil service, the judiciary, and to form it in his country. in his own way.

Today, modern Turkey has nothing to do with the Turkey that Ataturk designed and created. Secularism is no longer at the center of discussions. His wife wears a headscarf. We are not thinking of Atatürk, we are thinking of a certain ‘Turk’, but this time based on the glory of what was once the Ottoman Empire, on religious truth, on a return to the roots. Hence the expression panturanism.