Ethnicity: Erdogan’s plan for Turkish expansion at the expense of Arabs

Sarah Rashad

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statements during the past month focused on the Libyan issue and the battle for the capital of Tripoli, as he attempted to justify an intervention as well as provoke the Libyan people.

In a speech at the end of December 2019, Erdogan tried to justify his country’s policies of supporting militias, claiming that Libya contains nearly a million Libyan citizens of Turkish origin, which requires an intervention to rescue them, he said.

Despite the accusations leveled against Erdogan of trying to strike at Libya’s social fabric in light of his statements, it is clear by looking at Turkish practices in recent years far from the Libyan crisis that this is not the first time Erdogan has resorted to the Turkish “ethnicity” to achieve his goals.

In mid-2013, Turkish intelligence managed to form a brigade of Syrian Turkmen, called the Sultan Murad Division, to be Turkey’s militant arm in the Syrian crisis.

Despite the multiplicity of factions in Syria supporting Turkish interests, Ankara was keen to form an armed entity from the Turkmen in order to ensure their loyalty by virtue of common origins.

This is why Turkey has made an effort to bring together militias with Turkmen backgrounds, such as the Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror Brigade, the Martyr Zaki Turkmani Brigade, and the Ashbal Akida Brigade, into one entity to become its arm in Syria since 2013.

Considering the role these militias played in the developments of the Syrian crisis, accusations have been leveled against them for their involvement in implementing Turkish policies in northern Syrian against the Kurds, in what amounted to ethnic cleansing, as well as their understanding with ISIS to avoid a clash.

It is well known that these militias serve as the Turkish tool to commit crimes Ankara tries to distance itself from in public.

The Sultan Murad Division is made up of what are known as Arab Turks, who are either Arabs of Turkish descent or Arabs with Arab origins who believe in what is known as “the new Ottoman Empire.”

In an article titled “Arab Turks: Libya as a Model!” in the Saudi newspaper Okaz, Saudi writer Muhammad al-Saed considered Turkey’s exploitation of “Turkish Arabs” as nothing but an immoral mechanism to implement its expansionist policies that Ankara has resorted to after all its other tools have failed since the outbreak of the Arab Spring.

What Erdogan is doing is the most dangerous thing to happen since the collapse and disintegration of the Ottoman sultanate, as it destroys the societal homogeneity of Arab societies, according Saed.

He cited the example of Yemeni Brotherhood activist Tawakkol Karman, who he said holds more loyalty to the Turkish project than to Yemen by virtue of her family’s roots in the province of Karaman in southern Turkey.

Saed pointed out that Karman considers Yemen just a station in which she mistakenly lived, while Turkey is the land of her ancestors.

Meanwhile, Egyptian writer Nasr Muhammad Aref said that Erdogan has become accustomed to using history to serve his policies, as well as raising the issue of Arabs belonging to Turkish origins.