Was the arrival of the Ottomans in these lands 500 years ago an invasion and occupation, or an invasion, occupation, and conquest? Or something else? And 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 Arab Caliphate? And thus unity under the banner of this Caliphate? Were the Ottomans a cause of the backwardness of the Arabs, or did they contribute to the progress of the Arabs?
Exposure to the Ottoman or even Arab caliphate does not represent a nihilistic digging into the past, but rather a necessary exposure to current and modern developments and problems that profoundly affect the present and future of the country, especially Syria, There are enough crises and problems already, and it is not permissible to say in the negative that the conflicts and problems of the present are not enough, so new crises must be invented.
The situation with the neo-Ottomans, the Turks and the Syrians impersonating them, was one of the most important issues concerning the new Syria as we envision it. In fact, when we cannot formulate a clear definition of the concept of Syrian citizenship, the Syrian homeland, and the Syrian citizen, there is no need to envision the new Syria, nor is there a need to work for the new Syria, because the new one will then fail like the old one, The conditions for the establishment of the “old” Syrian state after the First World War were more favorable than the conditions of the present, At that time, Syria had no international allies except for friends who sympathized with it, and now Syria has no enemies except for those who are disgusted with it, its policies, and its actions.
The Ottoman occupation cannot be distinguished from others except in 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 was already widespread, The essence 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 those who adopted Ottoman ways from other peoples, used every means of lying and deception. They claimed to be protecting peoples from the Crusaders when there were no more Crusaders. They wanted, based on a written request from the sheikhs of Aleppo, to liberate Aleppo from the Mamluks. However, the operation (Sultan Selim I) was a colonialism dirtier than the colonialism of the Mamluks. They hid behind lies, just as the Arab Caliphate hid behind similar lies in the context of the conquest of the Levant.
The most important factor in the acceptance of the Ottoman conqueror by the people of the Levant was the religious factor, which was presented within the framework of the necessity of adhering to the principle of loyalty and disavowal, The believer supports the believer in any case against others, in the case of the Sunni against the Shiite, the Alawite or the Christian, These countries did not witness any signs of renaissance or civilization,Civilization comes with stability, which is what the Ottomans deprived the people of the Levant of.
It is difficult to describe the state of slumber in the manner of the People of the Cave, and then the isolation imposed by the Ottomans 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, 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.
It is necessary to point out the similarity between the lies of the Arab conquest of the Levant and the lies of the Ottoman conquest of the Levant, The Arab conquerors raised many slogans, including the slogan of liberating the Levant from Roman-Persian occupation and placing the country under Bedouin occupation, as if there was any benefit or advantage in replacing Roman occupation with Bedouin occupation, similar to Ottoman Bedouin occupation, In both cases, backwardness and ignorance were the real slogans. In both cases, there was a development for the worse, especially after the ten Arab centuries!
