As many of you know from our past articles on this, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reviving the Turkish Ottoman caliphate that fell back in 1923, and he has established a goal of having this Islamic caliphate, or “New Turkey” as he calls it, completed by 2023.
This is nothing new for many of you. But what is new is how Erdogan is now pushing hard the Muslim world to unify, to prepare for his coming neo-Ottoman caliphate.
Islamic Interpol
A meeting of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) was held in Istanbul in the middle of April, where the rotating presidency was given to Erdogan for the next two years. This group includes 57 Muslim member countries and purports to be the collective voice of the Muslim world. Being the president of this Islamic organization is no small deal and Erdogan intends to use his 2 years to completely reform the Muslim world.
The biggest news out of the OIC meeting was that the group accepted Erdogan’s proposal to create a new Islamic Interpol, a multinational Muslim police force based in Istanbul to fight terrorism in the Muslim world:
“It would be helpful to establish a structure among member states that will strengthen and institutionalize cooperation against terror and other crimes,” Erdoğan said, adding that Turkey’s proposal to realize this with an Istanbul-based center, under the formal name of OIC Center for Police Cooperation and Coordination, was approved by member states.
So why is Erdogan really doing this? Because he wants to unify the Muslim world under the principle that unity means power:
Erdogan continued “we must establish the concept of unity on the basis of the principle that ‘unity is power’ and we cannot overcome the problems that surround us unless we succeed as Muslims to achieve co-existence, despite our differences.”
He also added:
“All Islamic countries should act together to safeguard Muslims in areas in which they live as a minority from the effects of violence, fear and stress and Islamophobia, and all the other negatives.”
So basically Erdogan and the OIC are creating a top-down Muslim police force that will work to unify the Muslim world by silencing anyone or any group that stands in their way, or anything they deem disruptive or Islamophobic. So any free speech that already exists…well the Muslim world can kiss it goodbye.
Uniting Sunnis and Shiites
Sectarianism is also something that Erdogan has been speaking out against lately, from the OIC summit to just a few days ago. At the OIC Erdogan said this:
“I believe the greatest challenge we need to surmount is sectarianism. My religion is not that of Sunnis, of Shiites. My religion is Islam.”
Since then, Erdogan has also referred to this as ‘discrimination‘:
Stating that the Islamic world was threatened by the divide between Shiism and Sunnism, Erdoğan stressed that the two were not separate religions, but were only paths within Islam and no one should cast shadow on “our brotherhood as Muslims.”
“We will not engage in such discrimination,” he said.
Uniting Turks and Arabs
Erdogan is even calling for the Arabs and the Turks to unite:
Citing racism as a major threat facing Islam, Erdoğan said he was saddened by people using the words “Turk” and “Arab.”
“Will there be a Turk League in response to this [the Arab league]? Why should there be [such a league]? You say the OIC on one hand, and the Arab League on the other hand. What kind of an issue is this? Why do we call one the Organization of Islamic Cooperation but call the other the Arab League? Arabs don’t have supremacy over non-Arabs, nor do non-Arabs have supremacy over Arabs. Supremacy only [comes] through surrendering to God [takva]. This is the core,” said Erdoğan, delivering a speech at the closing ceremony of a Turkish-Arab Higher Education Congress in Istanbul on April 28.
As my friend Walid Shoebat told me, Arabs would never fall for this. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Erdogan is still making this unification appeal.
Turkey is the Muslim World’s Only Hope
Just a couple of days ago Erdogan stated that Turkey is the only hope of the Muslim world:
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Thursday asserted that Turkey is now the only hope for the Muslim world as the current global order cracks. “The dominant order in the world is cracking. Crises are the signals of a new wave of changes. Turkey is now the hope of the Muslim world,” Erdoğan said.
Clearly Erdogan has begun a new phase in his plans to establish his 2023 caliphate, to unify the Muslim world. And as president of the OIC, he will work hard to that end.
Inside Turkey
To get this done, Erdogan still has a few battles left in Turkey he is still waging, namely that of creating a new constitution in order to make him sultan or caliph of Turkey. We’ve written about ways Erdogan may get this done, but since then we’ve learned that Erdogan and his AKP plan to lift the immunity of the HDP members in Parliament, which would allow terrorist prosecution of any HDP member. Given that the HDP represents the Kurds and Erdogan is right now at war with Kurdish terrorist groups, this will be a big problem for the HDP.
As a side note, this immunity proposal has already created very high tensions in the parliament, so much so that there was even a couple of fist fights this week between the AKP and the HDP. One fist fight occurred because there weren’t seats in a meeting room and the HDP wanted a bigger room.
The next day, another fist fight broke out when an HDP speaker was commemorating Kurdish civilians who were massacred in 2011 by Turkish warplanes. An AKP member accused him of being a terrorist, and the HDP speaker responded in kind that the real terrorists were the AKP. A fist fight ensued and the parliament had to be shut down for two days.
The immunity proposal was supposed to be voted on in the past few days by secret ballot, but I haven’t read any reports of this occurring so I expect the fights must’ve delayed it.
IMPORTANT: Once the immunity is removed from the HDP members, Erdogan will then have huge leverage over the HDP members to force them vote for his ‘presidential system’, and I expect with the threat of prosecution and many years in prison, Erdogan will get his way. This way he won’t have to bother with a public referendum.
And just as another aside on this, a poll came out today showing that 89% of Turkish citizens agree with lifting the immunity of the HDP members. This same poll showed that 57% of Turkish citizens also support changing their constitution to give Erdogan his new ‘presidential system’.
Erdogan and Turkey’s Defense
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention this, as I believe it also points to Erdogan’s determination to building his caliphate:
Turkey’s defense industry needs to be 100 percent self-sufficient at a time of increased threats, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Saturday.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the inauguration of the building phase of an amphibious assault ship, Erdoğan said Turkey’s reliance on foreign components in the defense industry had fallen down to around 40 percent from 80 percent back in 2002.
“Our goal is to be totally self-sufficient by 2023,” he said.
Noting that building an amphibious assault ship was the first step on the road towards building the world’s best aircraft carrier, Erdoğan underlined Turkey’s need to have a more active presence outside its borders.
Conclusion
While we are still years away from 2023, what Erdogan is doing now and what he will be doing in the next few years is very important to bringing the Muslim world together so that it will one day recognize him as their new Caliph.
As we’ve explained here, the Bible tells us that the former Ottoman Empire will resurrect, that it rise from the dead, and I truly believe that is what we are witnessing right now. Whether it comes to fruition or not remains to be seen, but I don’t see any major obstacles standing it is way.
Note: The image used on the front page for this article is by AFP’s Kayhan Ozer.