Erdogan seeks to influence Lebanon via cultural aid

Mahmoud El-Batakoushy

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to culturally invade Lebanon to remove its characteristics through the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency(TiKA) drawing on Turkish cultural projects and the Ministry of Culture. To this end, it founded the Ottoman Studies Center to associate Lebanon with the past, for which Erdogan has a strong passion.

TiKA is one of the tools used by Erdogan to boost his influence in Lebanon, as the agency plays a dubious role in state affairs and collects information allegedly for humanitarian aid.

The agency is part of the Turkish intelligence system. The present chief of the Turkish Intelligence Service, Hakan Fidan, was a former head of TiKA.

Erdogan is using TiKA as a tool for his soft invasion plot, as the agency donates tens of thousands of dollars. It also works on the restoration of schools and Islamic monuments dating back to the Ottoman era in Tripoli.

The Turkish regime has allocated billions of dollars to TiKA annually to softly penetrate the Arab and Muslim countries, hoping to realize Erdogan’s ambitions to control the Arab and Muslim world and become a caliph.

Moreover, Turkey founded the Ottoman Studies Center in Tripoli, containing the Ottoman documents about Lebanon. There are 250,000 documents about Lebanon in the Ottoman archives.

A Turkish language department was launched at the Lebanese University, so that Lebanese graduates would master modern Turkish and old Ottoman as well. These graduates will contribute to writing history in the way that pleases Erdogan after finalizing their masters and doctorate degrees.

Hundreds of Lebanese people demonstrated outside the Turkish embassy in Beirut, holding a sign with the flag of Turkey, with a picture of a skull covered in blood, referring to the crimes of the Ottoman Empire during the World War I. Turkey killed hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people by starvation and forced labor.