Blood kinship drives the human instinct for political action. People linked to us by blood ties always occupy a privileged place in our social activities. In the tribal dimension, this is reflected in the special treatment of relations with nations perceived by us as related or close linguistically, ethnically, culturally or historically. Instinctively, as in the tribal times, we divide others into our kin ones and strangers. And speaking the same language, displaying a common cultural identity, is an indisputable sign of kinship.
One of the political doctrines based on kinship has been for many years Pan-Arabism. The Arabs spread from the Arabian Peninsula, their cradle, all over the southern Mediterranean up to Mesopotamia. They mixed up with the peoples they conquered, so for some the Arabs are one compact nation, for others they are just a loose ethnic community linked by a common language. Pan-Arabism undoubtedly contributed to the fall of imperial Turkey in 1918. When on the ruins of the Ottoman empire the borders of the Arab States were drawn (the Sykes-Picot deal played an infamous role in it) nobody thought of lumping them together into a single entity. It would simply be too difficult to reconcile various interests in their community, not to mention the imperial interests of France and Great Britain.
After the Second World War, the British believed that Pan-Arabism, just as it contributed to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, would strengthen Arab States against foreign influences, including Soviet and American ones. The British strongly promoted the idea of the establishment and political empowerment of the Arab League.
The Arab States adopted the state model left behind by the colonial protectorate of the West, that is, of a secular nation-state. In many of them, the ruling elite saw the usefulness of pushing through the secular state model (especially where they were a religious minority, such as the Shiites in Syria and the Sunnis in Iraq). There was no lack of socialist phraseology in this process, and attempts of hooking up to Soviet economic aid. The Arab world split initially (in the 1950s and 1960s) into pro-Soviet (Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria) and pro-American (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco) camps.
Pan-Arabism in the societies of Arab states has been present in political debates since the dawn of independence as an attempt to build politically, culturally, ethnically and linguistically uniform might. In part, it was used as an alternative to pan-Islamism, which early took on an anti-elitist, populist tinge. The Palestinian question has become the binder of both currents. A bone of contention between them has been, since the mid-1970s, the attitude to the issue of normalization of relations with Israel (Egypt, when going to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in 1979, had to reckon with ostracism, and indeed it was then that its brotherly Syria broke off diplomatic relations with it, and Egypt was thrown out of Arab League; Jordan established ties with Israel in 1994 already with less odium; in 2020 the UAE and Bahrain did so but with no repercussions).
The Pan-Arab idea found its realization in the creation of the United Arab Republic in 1958. Baathist Syria submitted the idea to Gamal Abdel Nasser, who accepted it after long hesitation. Very quickly, the project resulted in the total domination of the Egyptians in this relationship. Nasser introduced the Egyptian political and economic model (sweeping nationalization), and he filled ruling positions in Syria with many Egyptians. So it’s no surprise that Syrians suddenly began to appreciate their separate identity. In 1961, a military coup in Syria led to the declaration of secession. Syria has gone its own way, although in 1980 it adopted the old official UAR flag (Arab liberation tricolour with two stars). Until 1971, Egypt itself was called the United Arab Republic.
It tried to negotiate Iraq’s joining the UAR, but original negotiations collapsed in 1959. The attempt was repeated in 1963 and even a new flag was developed for the enlarged union (Arab liberation tricolour with three stars). Nothing came of reunification, but Iraq eventually adopted the union’s new flag as its own.
In 1958, the so-called the Hashemite Confederation: Arab Federation of Jordan and Iraq was conceived. The union was intended to serve as a counterweight to the UAR. It survived barely six months.
The idea of a Pan-Arab State was promoted by Gaddafi (using Libyan petrodollars as a carrot). In 1972, the charter for the establishment of the Federation of Arab Republics was even signed (preceded by referenda in Egypt, Syria and Libya). However, it never became a reality, bursting with Libyan-Egyptian tensions. The participation of both Sudan and Iraq was negotiated. Also without success. And Gaddafi, not discouraged from pursuing integration plans, first embraced pan-Islamism (without success) and ended up with Pan-Africanism (not without results).
The United Arab Emirates, established in 1971, remain the only successful form of Pan-Arab integrationism (though territorially and in terms of population on a rather micro scale).
The League of Arab States, operating with various vicissitudes since 1945, is the only world political organization of an ethnic nature. Conflicts and contradictions have shaken it till today. The Western Sahara has divided Algeria and Morocco for decades. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was undoubtedly a blow to Pan-Arabism. The League was split by the individual assessments of the situation in Lebanon, the dispute between Saudi Arabia (supported by six other Arab states) and Qatar in 2017-2021. The Arab League suspended from membership rights the Assad regime in Syria in 2011.
But, after all, is the fragmentation and diversification of the Arab world, which will appear inevitable, a challenge for regional stability? Certainly, fragmentation is not conducive to Arabs in building a global superpower. They would like to demand a permanent seat on the Security Council for the Arab world, but they do not want to give anyone, even Egypt, a clear mandate to represent the Arab world. Even Arab nuclear weapons are postulated, but no one took such projects seriously.
When the wave of Arab “Nahda” rose in 2011, it did not need the support of Pan-Arabism.
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Another doctrine based on kinship, albeit much looser, is Pan-Turkism. It was even in the 1980s the official doctrine of the Turkish military junta. And it subsided. But when in recent years Hungarian politicians (Orban and FIDESZ) have repeatedly referred to the idea of Turan, talked about the Huns, Mongols and Turks as a common ethnic tribe, they even called Hungary the westernmost eastern civilization, and defined Hungarians as “Kipchat Turks”, some observers felt encouraged to make statements not so much about the revival of Pan-Turkism as about its ideological expansion into hitherto unknown areas.
The Pan-Turkism doctrine was developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It proclaimed the ethnic unity of the Turkish peoples and the necessity of their cultural and political integration, from the Bosphorus Strait to the Altai Mountains. Initially, it grew in two streams. In Turkey, it was dubbed the “Great Turan”. It is said that Leon Cahun dropped this term and “Turan” quickly gained enormous popularity among the Ottomans. At the same time, the doctrine developed among the Turkish-speaking peoples in tsarist Russia. There, Pan-Turkism gained a distinct geopolitical tone.It was associated with the idea of the emancipation of the Turkish nations from Russian domination and the protection of their identity against Russification.
Turanism quickly became the ideological manifesto of Young Turks (assembled in the Committee of Unity and Progress). And it was referred to as the official doctrine of the Turkish state during the rule of Young Turks. They came to power in 1908, and after the First Balkan War, they took over completely the reins of the state. The ideology was strengthened by literary references to the legendary past of the Turks and the myths about their origin from the “Gray Wolf” (the eulogist of Turan was, among others, Ziya Gökalp, a poet and philosopher). The Minister of War, Enver Pasha, was its ardent advocate. The Young Turks regime was responsible for the Armenian genocide, pogroms against the Pontic Greeks and the Assyrians. Turkey’s defeat in World War I dealt a death blow to pan-Turkish ideology. Although Enver Pasha himself went to Russian Turkestan to fight in the ranks of the Basmachis against the Soviet authorities. He also died there.
Ataturk nationalized Turkish thinking, but renounced imperial tendencies. He did not want to support the pan-Turkish sentiment beyond the borders of Turkey, which was shrunken after World War I, also not to irritate the USSR. The Bolsheviks supported his rule (they showed Kemalist Turkey generosity in territorial matters in the Moscow and Kars treaties of 1921).
Turkish generals ruling the country in 1980-1983 tried to galvanize Pan-Turkism. The inspiration behind its assumptions was attributed to later Turkish politicians, when they especially activated Turkish policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the USSR (including Turgut Özal, who organized the first summit of Turkish-speaking countries in 1992 and repatriated Turkish Bulgarians).
Turkish policy towards Turkish-speaking countries gained new momentum under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), starting in 2003.
In 2009, the Council for Co-operation of Turkish-Language States was established. The founding members were Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan joined in 2019 and Hungary obtained observer status in 2018. The Council has an extensive structure. Summits are held regularly. Of course, the focus is on cultural, educational and scientific cooperation, as well as on cooperation in the field of business promotion, transport, customs, tourism, sport and youth. It also concerns the political and diplomatic sphere. Among others, joint election observation missions are dispatched to member States. In 2013, an agreement on cooperation between the military security services of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia was signed in Baku.
The influence of Pan-Turkism also explains Turkey’s development of special relations with Azerbaijan. It is often heard in recent years both in Baku and Ankara that Turkey and Azerbaijan are “one nation, two states”, and the newly elected Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar even declared that Turkey, Azerbaijan and Northern Cyprus constitute “One Nation, three States” “. (As they say: se non è vero, è ben trovato). Turkey provided significant assistance (not only political support) in the Azerbaijani-Armenian war over Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. The victory parade in Baku was hosted by Aliyev and Erdogan jointly on the stand.
Erdogan is attacked by his critics (at home and abroad) for trying to syncretically combine Pan-Turkish ideology with Neo-Ottomanism. This was supported by the active (and by some observers described even as expansionary) Turkish policy in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The 2016 Turkish military expedition to Syria, and the active support of the Government of National Unity in stopping Haftar’s march to Tripoli in 2020, are attributed (by the critics) to Erdogan’s Neo-Ottoman sentiments.
Neo-Ottomanism is referred to to explain the ambitions to rebuild influence in the area of the former empire, and in its extreme form, to the idea of resurrecting the Turkish caliphate from before World War I.
Erdogan and the AKP leaders, who engineered a clear shift in Turkish politics in the region, sometimes used Neo-Ottoman slogans, especially at election campaign rallies (they called their supporters “descendants of Osman”), but they consistently dissociated themselves from Neo-Ottomanism in official speeches. Ahmet Davutoğlu (initially as Erdogan’s adviser, and in 2009-2014 as the minister of foreign affairs, and in the years 2014-2016 the prime minister) was considered the main ideologist of Turkey’s new foreign policy. Davutoğlu, the author of the catchy slogan “zero problems with neighbours”, explained that shifting the focus of activity to the immediate region did not mean abandoning the Kemalist tradition of looking at Europe as a strategic goal of Turkish policy. At the end of 2010, I had the occasion to hear, in a very small group, his detailed analysis of the assumptions of the new Turkish strategy.
As Director for Policy Planning in the Secretariat of the Council of Europe, I have had a unique opportunity to support the work of a group of eminent personalities who prepared the report on Cultural Diversity in Europe “Living Together: Diversity and Freedom in Europe in the 21st Century”. The panel was composed of Joschka Fischer, Javier Solana, Timothy Garton Ash, Emma Bonino, Danuta Huebner, Vladimir Lukin, Martin Hirsch, Sonia Licht and Ayse Kadioglu. I listened to their discussions, and even had the opportunity to have longer informal conversations with some of them. It was an extremely intellectually enriching endeavour. During a session in Istanbul in late 2010, Davutoğlu invited the participants to dinner by the Bosphorus. The dinner began with over an hour of Davutoğlu lecture on the goals of Turkish foreign policy. But the more he rejected the accusations of Neo-Ottomanism, the new superpower, the more his arguments raised doubts.
The report of the group of prominent personalities was presented at the session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in Istanbul in May 2011. And it provoked an angry and irritated reaction from Davutoğlu (I witnessed it in the lobby of the Ciragan Palace). From good sources, I learned later that he was counting on a stronger criticism of Islamophobia in Europe, the actions of European institutions and governments, condemnation of attacks on Islam (in the spirit of “name-it-and-shame-it”); he was angry at mentioning in the report of concepts such as “Islamic extremism” or “Islamic terrorism”. He did not really want to understand that the fact that it was Turkey who financed the work on the report did not have to mean that the report was supposed to have only a one-dimensional shape, consistent with the Turkish perception of problems with the integration of migrants in Europe. Davutoğlu demanded the money still unspent on the project should be immediately returned. His reaction scared the leadership of the Council of Europe to such an extent that the report, although it contained very accurate diagnoses and recommendations (being ahead of its time, as shown by the migration crisis in 2012-2013), was largely unnoticed by European governments (although in fact, the president of Finland, the president of Slovenia, non-governmental organizations and think tanks were involved in promoting it).
Erdoğan’s critics also attributed to him Neo-Ottoman inspiration in domestic politics. They associated references to the Ottoman tradition and culture with centralization, concentration of power, limiting the independence of the judiciary, suppressing the opposition, arrests of intellectuals, journalists, scientists, and cultural activists. Indeed, many great figures with European horizons, such as Osman Kavala, were put in prison on trumped-up charges.
The opposition accused Erdoğan of the manners of the “Ottoman Sultan”.
As a result of Erdogan’s policy, in the view of his critics, relations with the European Union became inflamed (against the background of the exploration of the Cypriot shelf and actions towards Greece), which placed the possibility of introducing sanctions against Turkey on the agenda. After the Gaza Freedom Flotilla incident in 2010, relations with Israel got complicated. Turkey was criticized for its actions in Syria and for supporting radical rebels. In the South Caucasus, Erdogan is blamed for intending to divide influence in the region on a permanent basis with Russia. With his actions, he undoubtedly pushed Armenia into the strong embrace of Russia for many years, making Russia the guarantor of Nagorno-Karabakh security and the undisputed protector of Armenia itself. And the arms dealings with Russia (the purchase of the S-400) exposed Turkey to Washington’s sanctions and made it seen as a weak link in NATO. And Russia itself was irritated by the sale of combat drones to Ukraine and by its firm rejection of the Russian annexation of Crimea (in which some observers see also a hidden agenda). Thus, Turkish policy began to raise concerns among some of its neighbours about a return to Turkish regional hegemonism. Even if a lot in this policy is of a regular operetta. But in the moment of truth, when in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkey stood clearly on the side of Ukraine.
Thus the “zero problems with neighbours” policy has not brought the expected results. One can hope that at least the normalization of the Turkish-Armenian relations will succeed.
