What does the discourse of the Arab betrayal hide?

Before the First World War, the vast majority of the geography that today is called the Middle East was under Ottoman administration. As a result of just 10 years of rule by the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat Terakki), whose last 4 years coincided with the First World War, this entire geography quickly left Ottoman administration and was colonized by Britain, France and Italy. The end of the war was determined by the heavy defeat the Ottomans suffered particularly on the Palestine front.

This heavy defeat was in fact not as expected as is supposed. Until the last stretch of the war, that is, until only 42 days before 30 October, when the armistice was made, these lands had not been lost, and our situation on the fronts was not as bad as is supposed. The defeat, which was by no means inevitable, began on 18 September, the day of the British offensive, and within a short period of 42 days all these lands were lost. Neither a proper investigation nor a historical reckoning of this loss, of this defeat, has ever been carried out. Besides, when the event was over, all the cadres of the government that was to conduct this investigation had changed, and the real culprits of this event went on with their lives without giving an account before either the competent authorities or history. Of course, as important actors of the order that followed.

WHAT SHARE DID THE ARAB TREACHERY HAVE IN THE OTTOMAN DEFEAT?

For those who were not to be allowed to understand the event later and go after another question, the story of the Arab Treachery was put forward, exaggerated as much as possible. Was there not the treachery of some Arabs at all? How could there not be? Of course there was. But was this treachery the real cause of the defeat? Would the great Ottoman state, which had many times more Arabs who were loyal to it, have been defeated and brought down by the treachery of three or five marauding Arabs?

Never. Those traitorous Arabs could at most have played a walk-on role in the process leading to the defeat. The real actors of the defeat were altogether different. Otherwise that much treachery, even more, occurred in Anatolia too. The Arab treachery narrative was put forward in that period to hide the real perpetrators, but, more importantly than that, it was worked up as a very functional story to facilitate the British and French occupations and their imperialist plans. Hatred of Arabs would be very useful for keeping the Turk away from the Arab geography in his heart.

What is interesting is that the hatred of Arabs turned into a hatred of the Arab geography as well. Yet the British and the French, who made the Turks cold toward this geography, on the contrary plunged into these lands with great love. The Turks were to hate so that they themselves could comfortably exploit these lands.

So did the Westerners who ran and settled in the Arab geography with great appetite love the Arabs so much? The British and French view of the Arabs is as afflicted as can be with Orientalist prejudices and racism. But these feelings of theirs did not hold them back as they approached these lands, and they brought with them a professional separation between their feelings and their actions.

THE ARAB HATRED OF THE CITIZEN OF THE NEW TURKEY WAS ENTIRELY A BRITISH-FRENCH PROJECT

As the Turks hated the Arabs, they found the wealth of the Arab geography and, of course, a very convenient ground for carrying out the Zionist Israel project. With the Balfour Declaration proclaimed in 1917, the process of bringing the world's Jewish population here and settling it, for the establishment of a state of Israel in Palestine, which the Ottomans had left, begins. This process is carried out much more easily within the distance of hatred established between Arabs and Turks.

Meanwhile, as is well known, oil became a strategic commodity at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911 the British navy took the decision to switch from coal to oil as fuel, and at the end of the war the British began to extract oil on Ottoman lands partitioned by Sycos Picot. Thus the Arab Treachery narrative was successfully performing its function as the ideological discourse of imperialism. And in other countries too... Of course, on the Arab leg of this project there was the story of "Turkish occupation or imperialism" taught in their schools...

These two stories, which complete each other, created a natural emotional distance between Turkey and the Arab world for 80 years. What this distance has cost both peoples was voiced by President Erdoğan last Wednesday at the AK Party Group meeting. Recalling that when they came to power in 2002 they said "We have no eye on anyone's land. We have no enmity toward anyone, we will embrace our geography of the heart again with affection," Erdoğan used these expressions: "We have turned our face again, as a historic duty, to that geography of our heart on which Turkey turned its back for years and which was attempted to be forgotten and made forgotten. We said, 'We will remain within our country's borders, we will protect those borders with our blood and our lives, but no one can set borders on our geography of the heart.'"

Saying that the same tale had been told for years and that today the same tale is warmed up again and again and served to them, President Erdoğan came to the crucial part of his words: "What is that, they say, 'the Arabs stabbed us in the back.' Come off it. For decades they turned their backs on the Persian, on the Arab, on Muslims, on our history and geography, on our geography of the heart, on our friends, on our brothers; they even divided capital into colors. While America, Europe, Russia and China were investing in our geography of the heart, or were withdrawing investment from there, a gang inside stabbed us in the back by saying 'Arab capital, green capital, reactionism.' By telling this lie they did Turkey the greatest harm, the greatest damage. While they were trying to cover up the enormous corruption, filth and swamp, we, like a compass with one foot in Ankara, with the other travel the whole world, our entire geography of the heart, inch by inch, waging the struggle for peace, tranquility and justice."

FACTS CHANGE, BUT PERCEPTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES CHANGE MORE SLOWLY

As might be expected, President Erdoğan's words were perceived in the Arab world as a new manifesto of history and found a very great echo. But of course, while the segments on both sides who are aware of what is going on received these words with great joy and excitement, those who are still nailed to the British-French project rushed to repeat their existing tales as if renewing their faith.

Today it is destined that the two peoples, and indeed in the new process together with the Kurdish people, all the native peoples, will enter the stage of history again as one and together. This entry is shaking the order that has prevailed in the region for 110 years. Zionism has reached its final limits. The distances created between the peoples of the region are closing. The order of exploitation that stamped its feet upon those distances is being shaken. But the ideological narratives engraved in the minds of some do not change immediately, like a faith and creed.

Marx did not say it in vain. Changes in the superstructure do not change at the same speed as the base. Facts change, but ideological assumptions about facts continue for a long time extremely detached from the facts. Of course, putting those who carry and express them into tragicomic, anachronistic situations.