One in every eight people in the world live with a mental disorder, they say. Some of them display disruptive behavior and dissocial disorders, and some simply live in their own hell without troubling others. If you are suddenly overcome with fear for no reason at night, then you need to see a psychologist. But if you can base your fears on some historical facts, well, you have come to the right place. Let’s help you overcome your fears and anxiety.
From the White House to the Kremlin, from the mullahs of Iran to Greek fishermen around the North Aegean Islands, some people (well let’s be honest and say lots of people) suffer from the following “history-related fears.” If you are one of them, fear no more! Keep reading. I don’t promise a total cure for your anxiety, but at least you’ll know how unjustifiable your fear is.
If you are a Greek fisherman or a fellow at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs stuck on the first sentence of the last paragraph... Well, do not despair. For the sake of geographical correctness, I call them North Aegean Islands. We’ll come to them shortly.
“Fear Without Reason” is not only an Alternative Rock band from the U.K. The FWR had members affected by anxiety; the result was a sound that puts energy and feel first, taking inspiration from bands such as Paramore, Alter Bridge, Funeral For a Friend and many more. It used to capture the hearts of all ages with or without anxiety disorder! As in the real medical scene, in the political arena, the fears that look baseless to us usually are used to cover some other motive or intention they might have. But unlike the medical ones, the political anxieties we dissect here do cover something else.
Let’s take the first fear that, Syrian leader Bashar Assad, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden and some Iraqi leaders share (I am not naming names of those Iraqi leaders because their turnover rate at the job is so fast, my article might look out-of-date by next week!):
Turks will go to some areas in Iraq and Syria and won’t come out! Those leaders remember the fact that only a century ago, northern Syria and almost all of Iraq were under Turkish domination. What is a century to the people who had held those areas as part of their empire for more than 400 years? They fear, lest the Turks remember, the taste of ruling Iraq, Syria, Egypt and the Hejaz, the holiest cities of Islam, the most important of the pilgrimage routes, and all the former seats of the caliphate. Türkiye is now a modern, secular country, but the memories of Ottoman rule might reinforce their claim to supreme leadership within the Sunni Muslim world.
I cannot prove it but I have a hunch that Biden and Putin, putting aside all their animosity stemming from their claim to world leadership, discuss their joint fear – let’s call it Ottomania – and they share what each other say on the subject with their respective allies in Iraq and Syria. I can picture the faces of their respective allies in those countries in my mind: Bashar and Ferhat Abdi Şahin (aka Mazloum Abdi and Şahin Cilo), the chief honcho of the PKK’s Rojava branch office, suppressing their happiness and smiles, say “Yes boss, the Turks are dying to come back to the Middle East. They are craving for Baghdad dates and Damascus peanuts.” Also, Biden and, before him, Donald Trump consulted their scientists who told them that the last Ottoman Parliament enacted a law called "Misak-ı Milli" ("The National Pact") drawing the boundaries of the country after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which the new republic’s Parliament never enacted it, but the founders never disavowed it either.
Ottomania has no basis in the modern Turkish narrative because the Turks and their partners in the creation of the modern Türkiye, mainly Kurds and Circassians never had nor have “irredentism,” an ideology of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it; therefore, they don’t have folkloric tales, fables, books teaching young generations that they need to restore ethnic and historic ties to those countries. Yes, there are Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Cherkess people in Iraq, Syria and other regional countries with whom people in Türkiye have kindredship but not affiliation. It is a very fine point, and one might think that Trump, Biden or Putin might not comprehend it. Well, there are countless research, reports, books and articles on the absence of irredenta in Türkiye; and their respective deep states educate those leaders in due time. They all know that “the fear of Ottomanism” is not real but an excuse to keep Türkiye implementing the United Nations’ rule to follow terrorists into neighboring countries: “The U.N. Border Security and Management (BSM) Program aims to strengthen member states’ capacities to prevent the cross-border movement of terrorists and stop the flow of foreign terrorists.”
Why? Is the U.S. not an ally of Türkiye who should be happy seeing Türkiye strengthening its capacities to fight with PKK terrorists? Russia – not an ally but – as a friendly nation should be happy if Türkiye effectively fights with terrorism. Should it not?
Well! No. Neither Russia, the U.S., nor some European Union countries would be happy seeing Türkiye rid off terrorism. Yes, they all pay a weak lip service to Türkiye’s right to defend itself, but they know very well that if Türkiye saves all the human, monetary and other national resources in its counterterror operations, it will be spending all those resources into... you know... becoming a rich, self-sufficient nation, helping others not to avail themselves to imperialistic systems of exploitation, wherever they come from. (You may ask Macron, what a little Turkish prodding could do in Africa against French domination.)
Is it that simple for Biden or Putin’s dissemblingly (I am trying to be nice, here!) attitude toward Türkiye and the region? No, there are other motives that motivate our allies and friends. We’ll come to them.
Let’s add the Iranian mullahs to that unwholly assembly of friends and allies through the Fear of the Zangezur Corridor in Armenia. Actually, we should call it “Turkophobia” for it entails more than a simple passage from the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan to Azerbaijan proper. Nakhchivan covers a little more than 2,000 square miles (as large as one-third of Delaware) with a population of half a million. It is bordered by Armenia to the east and north, Iran to the southwest, and Türkiye to the west. It is the sole autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, governed by its own elected legislature. However, it has been separated from the mainland for a purpose: Stalin, the Soviet dictator who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, had extended the Armenian lands with a 40-kilometer (27-mile) wide and 100-kilometer long line between Nakhchivan and the mainland, thus, Azerbaijan lost its territorial connection to Türkiye, as well as all other Central Asian Turkic republics. Türkiye could do nothing about it, but the U.S. and Europe might interfere with Uncle Joe’s plans to ingurgitate the entirety of Central Asia into the Soviet Empire. Stalin had gotten away with his plan, and Turkestan, Bukhara, Khorezm (former Khanate of Khiva), Kara-Kyrgyz (later Kirghizia), Karakalpak, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan had been devoured into the largest country in the world. The communist ideology on the one hand and the nationalistic competition flames between the Turkic people (fanned by Moscow to the fullest). As a result, nobody noticed that their ground transport to Türkiye had been cut off by a mere peninsula of Armenian territory extended between Nakchivan and Azerbaijan.
However, Soviet leaders of Azerbaijan extract, for example, current president Ilham Aliyev’s father Heydar Aliyev (who served for 28 years in Soviet state security organs and held the post of First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1987), built two railway connections used to link Nakhchivan with the main territory of Azerbaijan. Armenia, as a Soviet Republic and after its dissolution, guaranteed safe passage in what has been called the Zangezur Corridor. After the Armenian invasion of Karabakh, both lines were abandoned. The concept was introduced to the geopolitical lexicon later by Ilham Aliyev. It has since been promoted by Azerbaijan and Türkiye and during the 2021 Russia-Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, Armenia expressed a willingness to participate in rebuilding the Soviet-era railway links. But as always, the Russian side had not hesitated to upset the applecart and announced that what had been discussed was unblocking regional communications and not creating a “corridor.” Not only Russia, but Iran also characterized the Zangezur Corridor as a pan-Turkist agenda, drawing from irredentism. The EU leaders, especially Monsieur Macron of France and President Biden of the U.S. think that as soon as that 40-kilometer railroad opens, Genghis Khan and all the Turkic hordes of the Asian steps will thrust into Iran and Anatolia, and through Greece and Balkans, into Europe.
Ladies and gentlemen of Iran and Russia and Monsieur Macron: no, no, no! It is not going to happen. All you need to do is to rush to shrink and tell him/her that you are suffering from Turkophobia. Don’t worry, it is curable.
I have a hard time naming the third fear. Naming things is something that comes with experience, but as a general rule, it is not easy always to choose the right name. Especially when the thing you are trying to name is so absurd like the Greek’s phobia that can be expressed as “Turks are coming... They will take all those Aegean Islands that we hoaxed from them with the help of the British and Americans.” (Well... When I put it t that way, it did not look so absurd to me, after all.)
But for the sake of truth, I have to recommend to my Greek friends that to cure that phobia is to obey the agreements that had bamboozled those islands from the hands of Türkiye. They were not physically in the hands of Türkiye to be exact; the Ottomans, depending on the sincerity of the masters of Europe, entrusted them to Italians for safekeeping during the war. Unfortunately, the Italians were on the losing side, so, the British twisted their arm and beguiled the islands to Greece. Our Greek neighbors might stop violating the status of the Eastern Aegean Islands by militarizing them, then the entire Aegean would turn into a peaceful pond, and their nightmare would go away.
You know, Türkiye has repudiated home and kin and all, a long time ago.
