The ghost of the Ottomans is haunting the Middle East

A specter is haunting the Arab world, and the Middle East in general. Those who feel that they owe their existence and their present position to betraying the Ottomans cannot refrain from feeling pangs of conscience. It is nothing other than this guilty conscience that from time to time makes them speak out again against the Ottomans and brings the Ottomans back onto the agenda with an absurd accusation such as colonialism. The memory of the past betrayal does not let go of their collars.

Today there is no Ottoman state, but the unending instability in the region since they killed it, the order that never settles, the yokes they handed over to the Westerners in the name of independence from the Ottomans, all keep them from forgetting the Ottomans.

Every unrest they experience sounds to them like the footsteps of the dead Ottoman rising from the grave. They saw the Arab Spring as the coming of this specter to take revenge, and therefore they tried to suppress it with great haste and panic; the more they suppressed it, the more crimes they committed. The crimes they have committed leave them, in fact, no place to lie down.

Even though Turkey makes no such claim, their remembering of the Ottomans cannot be prevented. The matter is largely psychological. The psychology of betrayal. Turkey says: children are not responsible for the sins of their fathers. The past is past. Today there is a new world, and Turkey is not after any such revenge; as for a renewed Ottoman state and the like, these are not even under discussion. It is no lie: Turkey of course wants to grow stronger, to grow, to become economically richer, and it does what this requires in a peaceful sense, respecting the rights and the law of all existing countries; it has no designs whatsoever on anyone's land or sovereignty.

But however much Turkey says this, their fear of the Ottomans does not end. The fear that those they betrayed will one day come and take revenge does not pass. There is no one around avenging those of three or four generations ago, but some people cannot escape the pangs of conscience over what their own grandfathers did. Their provoking over Fahrettin Pasha, and their seeing in the Arab Spring the manifestation of Turkey as the new Ottoman state, stem from this.

In recent days Lebanese President Michel Aoun made a scandalous statement, attacking the Ottomans out of the blue, far from reflecting either historical knowledge, or political courtesy, or the values of the people he represents. In a tweet he posted, Aoun said: "All attempts to free ourselves from the Ottoman yoke were accompanied by violence, murder and sectarian conflict. The state terror that the Ottomans applied to the Lebanese, especially during the First World War, including famine, conscription and forced labor, resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims."

This is a historical discourse distorted by typical feelings of guilt. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave the necessary response to it, but more meaningful responses were given by the Lebanese people themselves and by other Arab peoples through thousands of social media messages. I would like to relay two of these responses, translating them from the Arabic.

The first reaction is from Imad el-Hout, Head of the Political Bureau of the Lebanon-based Islamic Group:

"Building the homeland is not achieved by distorting history and accusing the Ottomans of terrorism, but by working hard to ensure renewal and prosperity."

Hout, who tries to explain that the President, in order to cover up his incapacity to perform the real duty expected of him and to distract attention, as many cheap politicians do, is taking refuge in excuses from deep history that no longer have any effect today, continues as follows:

In the era of the founding of the Lebanese state, which is now a century old, some want to try to distance the Lebanese from their real history and to confuse their minds about Lebanon's place among nations. In this context, the following facts must be emphasized:

1 - Lebanon, which all of us accept as a homeland in which we want to live, which we want to exalt, whose sovereignty we care about protecting and raising, cannot be an island isolated from its natural surroundings and from the Arab and Islamic world.

2. The Ottoman Empire is a part of our strong and proud history. We were once a part of this state, and Lebanon had not yet been formed. The Ottomans built a civilization at that time that was greatly respected by everyone, far and near. They came to us with the construction of electricity, trains, schools and hospitals, the lack of which we feel even today.

3 - The Ottoman Empire never was a terrorist state or an occupying state; how could it have been an occupier, when at that time there was not even a state called Lebanon. Moreover, it never imposed on us changing our language, customs and traditions, nor did it oppress any of the components that make up Lebanon. The most important proof of this is the prevalence of historic mosques and churches in our country, which the Ottoman state protected throughout history. There are many examples like this that bear witness to this fact.

4. The real terrorism at that time was the French occupation itself, against which all the Lebanese peoples rose up, and we celebrate every year the independence revolution achieved through this uprising. The red color that adorns our flag is to remind us of the sacrifices of our martyrs who shed their blood in this revolution.

5 - Building a nation is not done with hatred toward others, nor does it require hurting the feelings of others living together in the homeland, belittling others, or distorting their image in order to look better. Building a homeland is done by showing respect to people of merit and benefiting from their qualifications, not with unreal claims. It is done by building an integrated, mutually supportive and productive society, not by creating a rentier economy that facilitates corruption in various forms through quotas allocated to sectarian and ethnic groups. And finally it is done by applying justice in the true sense, not by inventing slogans contrary to reality and practice."

Another meaningful response came from Dr. Tarık el-Şendeb, the Lebanese member of the International Federation of Jurists. In a statement he issued, he said that Aoun violated the Lebanese constitution by attacking the Ottomans, and accused him of lapsing into racist and sectarian discourses that distort historical facts.

While accusing the Lebanese President of distorting historical facts and of trying to damage the image of the Ottomans, who for more than 500 years contributed to civilization, to the spread of Islam and to the development of humanity, and who stood against the ambitions of Western imperialists over Arab and Islamic lands, by ignoring the true history of Muslims, Şendeb at the same time criticized him for not having read history well.

"Probably the President has not read the history of the Arab region well, the history of Lebanon's existence and how it was founded, and the history of the Ottomans, the real history of our country, which was not yet called Lebanon but was a part of the Ottoman Caliphate, which ruled the region and brought civilization to Europe and the world."

In his statement Şendeb added that with these expressions that Aoun made against the Ottomans, he had hurt the feelings of all Muslims who are sincerely attached to the Ottomans.

Thousands of reactions like this to the words of the Lebanese President are again coming from Arab politicians and intellectuals.

Who knows, perhaps this is exactly the Ottoman specter that frightens some people.