Page 351 - A Call for a Turkish-Islamic Union

Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar

Ottoman Empire" and continues:

Today, the more ambitious spirits in the Bush administration
propose not merely to invade Iraq, but to use it as a base for
transforming the Arab Middle East. Once before in modern
times, Western countries—England and France—set about re-
making these Ottoman lands. After emerging victorious from
World War I, they redrew the map of the Middle East. Iraq
was one of the artificial states to emerge.
After World War I, Britain and France, by defeating the
Ottoman Empire, won control of the Arab lands, and with it,
a tantalizing bauble: the likelihood that vast deposits of oil
might be found there.

The Europeans and their American business partners hoped to
establish stable and friendly regimes. After they redrew the
borders in the early 1920's, Britain and France introduced a
state system, and sought to supply political guidance too. But
the system did not endure. Instead, the area grew more turbu-
lent and unsettled.
Looking back, it is clear that many characteristics of the
Middle East, some of which President Bush would like to
change, were shaped by the five centuries of Ottoman rule. 56

British journalist Timothy Garton Ash expressed similar
views in an article published in The Guardian (March 27, 2003).
Ash, dealing with the problems of Albanians in Kosovo and the
Kurds in northern Iraq, says "in both cases, we are still wrestling,
nearly a century later, with the legacy of the Ottoman empire,"
and concludes:

Let's face it: when this bleedin' war is over, we'll be back in
1918, confronting many of the same questions in the same
places that our grandparents wrestled with, from the Balkans

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