Turkish PM vows to revive the Ottoman Empire

davutoglu

We’ve told you many times before that Turkey plans to revive the Ottoman Empire, and now Prime Minister Davutoğlu is saying it once again. In fact what I think is interesting about this is that Davutoğlu said at the celebration to mark the ending of Ramadan, in response to members of his AKP party chanting to him ‘bring us to Ottoman times’.

It’s not just the dream of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu, but the dream of the AKP as explained below:

HURRIYET – Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has vowed to bring the “order and justice” of the Ottoman Empire to today’s world.

“God willing, we will bring the order and justice of the Ottomans to today and into tomorrow,” he said while congratulating party members at his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) Istanbul headquarters for the Eid al-Fitr holiday on July 17.

Davutoğlu’s remarks came after a group of party members started chanting “Ahmet Hoca [teacher], bring us to Ottoman [times],” while he was giving a speech about the political outlook after last month’s general election, in which the AKP lost its parliamentary majority.

In his 2001 book “Strategic Depth” (which had its 100th print run last year), the former professor Davutoğlu articulated a vision drawing on Turkey’s geography, economic power and imperial history to reconnect with its historical “hinterland” in the former Ottoman territories.

As Aaron Stein, the author of “Turkey’s New Foreign Policy,” told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview earlier this year, Davutoğlu is regarded as the architect of a dramatic shift in Ankara’s regional policy after the AKP came to power in 2002.

Davutoğlu’s interpretation of geopolitics “is based on an assumption that the spread of Western power into the Balkans, Central Asia and the Middle East is incongruent with Turkish national interests and must be reversed,” Stein suggested.

Many of us were amazed that the AKP took a hit in the last elections, but so far there has been no coalition and, as I suspected, they are heading back for new elections. It’s not a done deal yet, but just today Davutoğlu was warning local party HQs to be ready for snap elections.

If they go to snap elections, the AKP will probably win big again. In fact, I predict they may win the votes needed to put Erdoğan’s new ‘presidential system’ (to make him Sultan) to a public referendum in order to rewrite the constitution. That’s really what Erdoğan and Davutoğlu care about so they can revive the Ottoman Empire.


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