The Ottoman Empire strikes back: How Turkey became the main beneficiary of the Assad regime fall

When the Arab Spring began in 2011, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK) had been in power in Turkey for right around a decade. Erdogan himself, despite his Islamist background, assured skeptics that he was not an Islamist, but a conservative democrat. When the wave of revolutions swept across the Arab world, the Turkish model was seen as a kind of guiding star for Islamists who came to power in Tunisia (Ennahda) and Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood).

Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister at the time, turned into a genuine hero of the Arab street. Whenever he visited Arab countries, the people applauded him, welcoming him as their own leader. He, in turn, dispensed fatherly advice on combining Islam with democracy.

“A person does not become secular, the state becomes secular... Libya belongs to Libyans. May Allah protect you!” Erdogan intoned, addressing a cheering crowd in Tripoli in September 2011. In the same speech, the Turkish prime minister explicitly voiced his intentions to interfere in the internal affairs of another neighbor, saying that the unfolding civil conflict in Syria represented “a domestic Turkish affair.” At the time, he argued that the authorities in Damascus “will not be able to survive” in the face of massive opposition protests. He was not wrong — even if his prediction took 13 years to come true.

In the early 2010s, Erdogan's triumph in the Arab world coincided with a cold spell in relations between Turkey and the European Union, which criticized the Turkish prime minister for human rights abuses in the country and suspended Ankara's EU accession talks. The change in foreign policy also affected the AK Party's domestic approach. After winning yet another parliamentary election in June 2011, Erdogan said: “Sarajevo has won as much as Istanbul today. Beirut has won as much as Izmir. Damascus has won as much as Ankara.”

From that moment on, Turkey has developed a taste for the Ottoman Empire. Images of Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, began to appear in public schools next to Ataturk's portraits. More and more movies set in the times of the Ottoman sultans began to appear, and Erdogan called on the population to learn the language of the old empire: “Whether anyone wants it or not, the Old Ottoman Turkish language will be studied and taught in this country.”