Was the arrival of the Ottomans in these lands five centuries ago an invasion, or an invasion, occupation, and conquest? Or something else entirely? Was the Ottoman era in the lives of the peoples of this region, which lasted for about four centuries, a foreign occupation or a continuation of the Bedouin Caliphate of the Hejaz? And thus, a unification under the banner of the Islamic Caliphate! Were the Ottomans a cause of the backwardness of the peoples of the region? Or did they contribute to the progress of these peoples? These questions and others about the Ottoman era are not new, but the debate about them, no sooner had it subsided, than it was renewed in new forms,Erdogan’s Operation Peace Spring a few years ago contributed to renewing the discussion about conquests, If the matter were not related to religion and conquests, Erdogan would not have named the occupying Turkish army the Army of Muhammad, and there would have been no need to cloak the operation in Surah Al-Fath! Throughout the military operations, Surah Al-Fath was broadcast on Turkish radio.

Addressing the Ottoman Caliphate or even the Bedouin of the Hejaz is not a nihilistic digging into the past, but rather a necessary examination of current and modern developments and problems that profoundly affect the present and future of the country, especially Syria and the Levant in general, The situation with the neo-Ottomans, both Turks and Syrians who have adopted neo-Ottomanism, was one of the most important issues concerning the new Syria, according to its vision, In fact, if it is not possible to formulate a clear definition of the concept of Syrian citizenship, the Syrian homeland, and the Syrian citizen, there is no need to envision a new Syria, nor is there a need to work for a new Syria, because the new one will then fail like the old one, The conditions for the establishment of the Syrian state after the First World War were more favorable than the conditions of the present, At that time, the nascent Syria had only friends who sympathized with it, and now Syria has only enemies who are disgusted with it and its actions ,The hope that some Gulf, Western, and Eastern countries had for an improvement in the behavior of the new Al Julani  authority has completely evaporated, Therefore, there is no aid or investment, and consequently, the Syrian situation is heading towards more poverty and instability, Which will lead to the removal of the current authority in the near future.

Who are these Ottomans? The Ottomans are pastoral tribes who lived in northwest China, moving from place to place and clashing with some civilizations,In the course of their movement, these tribes reached the Asia Minor region in the middle of the twelfth century, Here, Osman Ghazi established the Sultanate, which was named after him. Osman Ghazi’s Sultanate expanded in favorable circumstances, such as the weakness of the Byzantine state, which opened the way for the Balkan invasions in the middle of the thirteenth century, In 1453, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II was able to occupy Constantinople and overthrow the Byzantine state, Thus, barbarism was able to overthrow the civilization of Eastern Rome, just as the barbarism of the Germanic tribes was able to overthrow Western Rome, and the same was done by the Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula in the Levant and North Africa and others.

During the Ottoman conquest of Europe, there were both victories and defeats, The defeats were particularly pronounced against Russia and Austria, which prompted the Ottomans to turn eastward and southward in the 16th century, to conquer the Levant and North Africa,They conquered, occupied, and possessed, then left everything as it was, placing the people in a state of enforced slumber, like the sleep of the Seven Sleepers, The Ottoman state was content with collecting taxes through the governor… There was a figure called the “saddler” who was responsible for collecting money from the various provinces, Professor Al-Desouki summarized the Ottomans’ relationship with the people of the provinces in three words: money, control, and sovereignty.

The Ottoman occupation cannot be distinguished from others except by the fact that the Ottomans represented absolute evil, absolute depletion, absolute exploitation, and absolute backwardness in various forms, The Ottomans were conquerors, despite the fact that it is not right for one Muslim country to conquer another with the intention of spreading the religion, since the religion is already widespread, The content of the conquest in the Ottoman case was ownership, that is, owning other countries as spoils of war, and thus consuming the country and its people for the benefit of the House of Osman forever, as they thought, The Ottomans, and especially the Ottomanized peoples from the local populations, used every means of lying and deception, such as claiming that the Ottomans were protecting the peoples from the Frankish Crusaders when there were no longer Crusaders,They wanted, based on a written request from the sheikhs of Aleppo, to rid Syria of the Mamluks, but the operation of Sultan Selim I was a colonialism worse than the colonialism of the Mamluks, They hid behind lies, just as the Quraysh Caliphate hid behind similar lies in the context of the conquest of the Levant and other regions.

The most important factor in the acceptance by some inhabitants of the Levant of the conquering, occupying, and possessing Ottoman was the religious factor, which was presented within the framework of the necessity of adhering to the principle of loyalty and disavowal, that a Muslim supports a Muslim in any case against the different other. Professor Al-Desouki summarized the matter of the Ottomans as follows: “The Ottoman Sultan was a colonial emperor, and the Arab countries lived in absolute subservience to the Sultan, and these countries did not witness any signs of renaissance or civilization, and this only comes with stability, which is what the Ottomans deprived the peoples of their colonies of.”

It is difficult to describe the state of sleep like the people of the cave, and then the isolation that the Ottomans imposed on the peoples of their colonies, an isolation that lasted for at least three centuries, until Napoleon came to Egypt as an occupier in 1798, Here the backwardness and ignorance that was imposed on the Egyptian people became apparent, The surprise was like a civilizational shock for the Egyptians, for while the ships of the French campaign were docking on the shores of Alexandria, the leaders of the Mamluk armies were confirming that they were coming to crush the Franks under the hooves of their horses, They thought that the French had come to Egypt to fight with the sword, but when the Mamluks heard the sounds of the cannons, they sought refuge from Satan and the saying “O Hidden One of Favors, save us from what we fear” spread among the people.

The article does not claim to be able to answer all the questions that were mentioned in its introduction, but it is necessary to point out the similarity between the lies of the Bedouin Quraysh conquest of the Levant and the lies of the Ottoman conquest of the Levant, The Arabized descendants of the Bedouin conquerors raised many slogans, including the slogan of liberating the Levant from the Roman-Persian occupation by placing those regions under Bedouin Islamic occupation, as if there was any benefit or advantage in replacing the Roman occupation with Bedouin Islamic occupation, similar to the Ottoman Bedouin occupation, In both cases, backwardness and ignorance were the real slogan, and in both cases, there was a development for the worse!