{"id":45613,"date":"2021-01-05T15:42:41","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T19:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=45613"},"modified":"2021-01-05T15:43:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T19:43:53","slug":"erdogans-crazy-caliphate-turkeys-ottoman-empire-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=45613","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan’s Crazy Caliphate & Turkey’s History of Ottoman Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why Revive a Nightmare?<\/strong><\/h1>\n

By Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, Ontario<\/strong>\u00a04 January 2021<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been running around like a headless chicken clucking about the glories of Ottoman Empire and the benefits, to Islam, of its revival. While he doesn\u2019t say who would become the first Sultan 2.0, it\u2019s obvious the former Istanbul football player believes he would make a perfect sultan. But before he gets too excited about his fantasy, he and his deluded fascist followers should consider these thirty-three facts\u2014picked at random from countless others\u2013about the \u201cglory\u201d that was the Ottoman Empire.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013There were 27 sultans between 1520 and 1915. Twelve were deposed and two were killed.<\/p>\n

\u2014The harem of Suleiman the Magnificent (militarily the most successful sultan) had 300 concubines. Over the centuries, the monotonous life in the harem and the absence of male companionship led many to aberrant sexual indulgences.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Mustapha III (1717-1774) was the father of 582 sons. Voltaire called him \u201cThat Great Pig Mustapha.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/strong>Sultan Murad IV inherited 240 wives when he assumed the throne. To make room for his \u201cfresh\u201d concubines, he dispensed with the previous lodgers by putting each in a sack and tossing them one by one into the Bosporus.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Abdul Hamid II had a \u201cYes Man\u201d to nod in approval of everything the sultan said.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u201cMay you be vizier (prime minister) to Sultan Selim!\u201d was a popular way of cursing someone in the Ottoman Empire because the sultan had seven of his viziers executed.<\/p>\n

\u2014Of the thousands of eunuchs who supervised the sultans\u2019 harems, the most famous was Kislar Agha (literally \u2018Master of the Girls\u2019). He dressed in colorful robes of flowered silk and broad sash. Castrated in Africa, he was taken to Constantinople where he eventually became the head of the sultan\u2019s harem. The sultan trusted his household to the grotesque man who was crude, cruel, corrupt, and capricious.<\/p>\n

\u2014Fratricide was endemic in the palace. In \u201cThe Sultans,\u201d author Noel Barber says newly-enthroned sultans killed all their brothers\u2014no matter how young\u2013to prevent succession wars. To prevent the spilling of blood on the expensive carpets, the preferred method of killing was strangulation.<\/p>\n

\u2014Gentile Bellini, the Italian painter, was hired to paint Sultan Mehmet II\u2019s portrait. Bellini left the court after an episode that must have tested his nerves. One day, while Bellini was discussing the \u201cBeheading of John the Baptist\u201d, the sultan said some of the anatomical details in the painting were incorrect. To prove it, he had a slave executed in the painter\u2019s presence. After Mehmet\u2019s death, his son sold the painting in the bazaar: he rejected all Western influence. A Venetian merchant bought the painting which showed the sultan smelling a red rose.<\/p>\n

\u2013The law required the sultan to remove his father\u2019s concubines from the Seraglio\/castle to join the concubines of previous sultans in monastic seclusion for life. Sultan Murad was so prolific that when he died it took a whole day and all the carriages, coaches, mules and horses of the court to evacuate his concubines. However, seven pregnant widows were not among the evacuees. They were tied up in sacks and flung into the Bosporus.<\/p>\n

\u2014More than once, early sultans jailed enemy\u2019s ambassadors if they didn\u2019t like what the diplomat had said.<\/p>\n

\u2014Some 30,000 of the \u201cGlorious\u201d Ottoman Empire\u2019s soldiers were defeated by 6,000 of Napoleon\u2019s soldiers near Mt. Tabor in Acre, Palestine. Ottoman soldiers dead? 6,000; French dead? 2. Ottoman captives? 500. French captives? 0.<\/p>\n

\u2014Suleiman the \u201cMagnificent\u201d attacked the tiny island of Rhodes without provocation. He succeeded in capturing it after a siege of 145 days but he lost ten times more soldiers than the defending islanders.<\/p>\n

\u2014In the Battle of Mohacs (1526) against the Hungarians, the Turks took no prisoners, enabling Sultan Suleiman to note in his diary that he had massacred 2,000 prisoners. Eventually, 200,000 Hungarians were massacred and 100,000 were taken to Constantinople as slaves.<\/p>\n

\u2014Suleiman failed to take Vienna although he had nearly a quarter of a million troops and 300 guns while the city was defended by 16,000 troops and 72 guns. Although his troops kept attacking for three weeks, Suleiman withdrew because he couldn\u2019t feed his army: Ottoman troops had denuded the countryside of food. A bad loser, when he withdrew he burned an enormous amount of booty plundered from the countryside. The good-looking women his army had captured were taken to Constantinople as slaves. The rest\u2014mostly peasant women who had nothing to do with the war\u2014were hurled into the raging pyre in full view of the Viennese.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Abdul Hamid II banned the word \u201cArmenian\u201d in all newspapers, even school text-books, which in many cases had to be reprinted. He also ordered \u201cArmenia\u201d to be removed from maps. This, too, resulted in reprinting new maps.<\/p>\n

\u2014For nearly three centuries\u201415th<\/sup>\u00a0to 17th<\/sup>\u2014Ottoman fleets and armies plundered and slaughtered their way through Southern Europe. For centuries after, Italian mothers would warn their children that if they didn\u2019t behave, the \u201cTurks will get you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Suleiman drank wine\u2014a taboo for a Muslim\u2014from a goblet cut out of single piece of turquoise.<\/p>\n

\u2014Suleiman had his lifelong friend Ibrahim strangled because of a minor slight by his friend. He had his eldest son (Mustafa) strangled while he watched from behind a curtain. Mustafa had to be killed because Suleiman\u2019s new favorite wife (Roxelana) wanted her own son to succeed to the throne. Following Mustafa\u2019s slaying by five people, Suleiman ordered three days of mourning.<\/p>\n

\u2014Suleiman had 300 odalisques (women of the harem). The odalisques were slave or abducted girls. Thus, most sultans had non-Turkish mothers.<\/p>\n

\u2014When Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed, he was replaced by his brother Mohammed V. He had at least one qualification: he had not read a newspaper for twenty years.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u201cTractacus\u201d\u2014a book published in Europe in the 15th<\/sup>\u00a0century\u2014said: \u201cOttoman Turks come together for war as though they had been invited to a wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014The twenty-five sultans who followed Suleiman were, without exception, totally lacking in any of the qualities needed to rule. Enervated and enfeebled by seclusion and idleness filled with ennui, they sought pleasure and diversion in eerie and traditional forms of extravagance, self-indulgence, and vice,\u201d wrote Prof. Barnette Miller in \u201cBeyond the Sublime Porte\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2014The fleet of Sultan Selim attacked Cyprus because he liked Cypriot wine. In Nicosia they massacred 30,000 people. In Famagusta they flayed alive the leader of the defenders. They also massacred the survivors although they had promised to set them free. Selim got his wine. After ruling for only eight years, Selim died in a manner not unfitting to his life. After drinking a bottle of Cyprus wine, he decided to take a bath. While teetering on the marble floor, he slipped and cracked his skull.<\/p>\n

\u2014When Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed, the revolutionaries found in the Yildiz Palace cellars eleven sacks of gold coins, and boxes crammed with precious gems, plus a book which listed the sultan\u2019s foreign holdings and money secretly deposited in the Deutsche Bank and with American oil companies. An immense cupboard contained thousands of shirts. One drawer contained two hundred medals mixed up with rubies and railway shares and bookcases filled with five-pound notes.<\/p>\n

\u2014The biggest sea battle the Ottomans engaged in was the Battle of Lepanto (1571) against European states. The Europeans had 200 galleys and the Ottomans 300. Some 260 of the Ottoman ships were either captured or sunk. Five-thousand Ottomans died and 15,000 Christian galley-slaves were freed.<\/p>\n

\u2014Life for Christians living in 16th<\/sup>\u00a0century Constantinople was subject to many humiliating restrictions. Armenians had to wear deep crimson shoes, Greeks black, Jews pale blue. They had to paint their houses black and wear black clothes. They had to dismount whenever they met a Muslim.<\/p>\n

\u2014The 700-year misrule of the Ottomans was characterized by corruption, violence, usurious taxation, authoritarianism, racism, a violent brand of Islam; plunder, slavery, sloth, unqualified rulers and the oppression of minorities. Other than the work of Armenian architect Moamer Sinan, in 700 years the Ottomans made no significant contribution to the arts or sciences.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Ibrahim was probably the most detestable and debauched of the sultans. When his mother complained that the harem was too cold because there wasn\u2019t sufficient firewood, the sultan executed the Grand Vizier. When he was told one of the concubines was caught in a compromising situation with a man, Ibrahim murdered all 280 concubines in batches, tied up in sacks weighted with stones and dropped in the Bosporus.<\/p>\n

\u2014Sultan Abdul Mejid commissioned the famous Balian family to build a palace which \u201cmust surpass any other palace of any potentiate anywhere in the world.\u201d The result was the Palace of Dolmabahche. Its marble terrace stretched half a mile. More than fourteen tons of gold leaf was used in decoration. The throne room was 150 feet long. The palace had the world\u2019s largest ballroom and mirrors. The central chandelier weighed three tons. Mejid\u2019s bed was of solid silver. The 300 rooms included twenty-five ornate salons. Sultan Abdul Aziz\u2019 insane extravagance (he spent 40 million francs for his daughter\u2019s trousseau when she married), raised the Ottoman debt to foreign bankers to 200 million British sterling.<\/p>\n

\u2014Putting aside the frequent pre-1820 massacres, the Ottomans launched seventeen documented massacres between 1820 and 1923. The victims were Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Kurds. The total count of the massacred was over 3 million, more than half of them Armenian.<\/p>\n

\u2014The idea of his assassination haunted Sultan Abdul Hamid II so much that the newspapers attributed the assassinations of King Aleksandr and Queen Draga of Serbia, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, President Sadi Carnot of France, and President William McKinley respectively to indigestion, pneumonia, apoplexy, and anthrax.<\/p>\n

Sultan also exhibited his paranoia by deleting the formula for water\u2014H20\u2013from high school and university text books. He believed the formula was a code indicating Hamid the Second is Zero.<\/p>\n

Turkey has a big airline (THY) now, thanks to the tutorials of Lufthansa German Airlines and the support of Germany. But even then, the 50 percent government-owned airline loses money. Thanks to NATO support for nearly 70 years and billions of dollars in U.S. and European economic and military aid, it has a huge army which has invaded four countries in the past few years. Thanks to a dozen European and North American companies, it makes deadly drones which killed young Armenians defending their land. A murderous government\u2013with no pride or dignity\u2014went on a genocidal spree against a country which has a population 26 times smaller than Turkey, not to mention Turkey\u2019s war criminal allies\u2026barbarian mercenaries, hate-filled Azeri troops, and religion-crazed Pakistani volunteers.<\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t changed much in Erdogan\u2019s Turkey more than a century after Abdul Hamid\u2019s H20 farce. Several years ago Turkey\u2019s education minister banned the equation P=2K because he said it was a secret symbol of PKK, the Kurdish freedom fighters.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/keghart.org\/tutunjian-why-revive-nightmare\/?unapproved=8834&moderation-hash=61cfb1d3d2ab8cc8e4ec9d574dcdec3b#comment-8834<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why Revive a Nightmare? By Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, Ontario\u00a04 January 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}