It was a tough choice—write about Turkey’s latest mess with its ludicrous arrests of HDP parliamentarians or the U.
S. election. Erdogan’s shenanigans (tricks or mischief) won for two reasons: Some election results are still too close to call with many uncounted ballots remaining and inspired by the trend of recent developments,I noticed a pattern of Turkish history. We might be witnessing the beginning of a third, and hopefully final/terminal, or phase of Turkish dominance in Asia Minor,hence the lav, pav, or tzav” above. Presumably,you’ve be admonished with that Armenian saying in childhood when being naughty, translated as “OK, and enough,pain.” In 1299, the Ottoman Empire (OE) was founded, and even though the 1453 plunge of Constantinople to the Turks is perhaps more memorable,perhaps even a better benchmark. Until 1699, the OE was ascendant. But its fortunes turned that year after losing the Battle of Vienna. Its subsequent two-plus century decline saw the turn of the Turkic invaders’ savagery inwards, and culminating,of course in the 1915 Genocide. In the last century of its life, various attempts to reform and save the OE failed. These were both top-down—by somewhat more enlightened Sultans, and nearer the stop bottom up – by reformists and revolutionaries. In [...]
Source: armenianweekly.com