This House Regrets the Demise of the Ottoman Empire - Ayşe Gülnev Osmanoğlu - Prop

[00:00:02][applause] Good evening, Mr. President, honorable members, and distinguished fellow speakers. It is a pleasure and a privilege to stand before you in this historic chamber, having just enjoyed the reception in the Gladston room. Of course, Mr. William Gladston, once president of this society and classic scholar here at Oxford, fancied himself a crusader for Christian Europe. I rather suspect he would have been utterly horrified to find a descendant of the very dynasty he denounced as the one great antihuman specimen of humanity, belonging to a race of lower capacities, and whom he urged be expelled bag and baggage from the provinces they ruled. enjoying the union's warm and most generous hospitality. His was the vitriolic language of the classically educated evangelical Victorian moralist, concealing beneath its moral veneer a potent mix of cultural arrogance, religious intolerance, and a distinctly Western European sense of self-righteousness that helped sew the seeds of the division, instability, and conflict that still scar the former lands of the Ottoman Empire today.

[00:01:25]Yet to regret the demise of the Ottoman Empire is not to whitewash history, nor to offer a defense of imperialism.

[00:01:34]Neither is it to romanticize an empire that, like all empires, had its flaws, nor to excuse the grave injustices it committed and ignore the mistakes it made, particularly during our twilight years.

[00:01:50]Rather, it is to lament what was lost.

[00:01:53]Pax Ottomana, the Ottoman peace and the temporal and spiritual power vacuum its demise created. That is the motion before the house this evening.

[00:02:06]Ours was a complex multicultural, multithnic, multiffaith empire where for six centuries Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisted under the relatively stable rule of the Ottoman Sultan Caif.

[00:02:24]The Ottomans did not seek to create a single homogenous nation. Ne we never tried to erase tribal or religious identity or force people to assimilate.

[00:02:36]If we had, Greek would most likely not be my honorable friend, Professor Phyllis's mother tongue, nor would Professor Poke perhaps speak Hungarian.

[00:02:46]Instead, we recognized difference and embraced diversity. We understood the uniqueness of minorities and organized them into milletes, autonomous communities that govern themselves in matters of religion, family law, and education.

[00:03:03]This system was the antithesis of the European nation state. Ours was a pluralist state. Long before the term pluralism was coined in the west, it existed as the foundation stone of the Ottoman order. From Budapest to Damascus, from Shrebronitza to Sana, from the Crimea to Gaza, from Istanbul to Mecca.

[00:03:27]It was not a liberal utopia, but it was a world in which Greek and Turkish women sat side by side beneath the shade of ancient plain trees, shelling beans and gossiping in Macedonia, where in Jerusalem an Arab mother might breastfeed her Jewish neighbors baby, and families of different faiths kept a watchful eye on one another's children as they played. In Aleppo, an Armenian silvermith worked beside a Syriak craftsman in the bustling bazaar as a Kurdish notable sipped thick, strong coffee while playing back gammon with his sicassian friend. This was the fabric of daily life, ordinary, intimate, human that vanished with the collapse of the Ottoman order.

[00:04:18]I implore you to search your conscience.

[00:04:21]Did the demise of the Ottoman Empire bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the people of the Arab world and the Balkans? Or did it unleash more than a century of death, destruction, displacement, and exploitation, first by the Western powers who did not come to liberate, but to colonize, and then by the authoritarian regimes that took their place?

[00:04:49]So what shattered Pax Ottoman this unique and complex mosaic of coexistence?

[00:04:56]It was the twin hammers of radical ethnationalism and western colonial imperialism.

[00:05:03]Nationalism was a poison in the veins of the Ottoman state pitching neighbor against neighbor turning friends into enemies and transforming peaceful towns and villages into places of discontent and rebellion.

[00:05:17]The Western powers fanned these flames, driven by greed for the vast oil reserves buried beneath our soil, intent on expanding their spheres of influence, and fearful of the liberal modernizing caliphate we were becoming.

[00:05:33]Promises of liberation, independence, and self-determination were broken, and in their place rose a fragile tapestry of volatile nation states, colonial mandates, and authoritarian regimes. And with them came genocide, repression, and endless conflict. The consequences have been devastating and relentless.

[00:05:58]Hundreds of thousands were displaced in the Turkish Greek population exchange following the Treaty of Loausanne. The Neighborly Trust in Bosnia curdled into the ethnic cleansing of Shrebrinitza.

[00:06:10]The carefully managed differences of Mesopotamia exploded into the sectarian violence that has left Iraq and Syria in ruins and millions fleeing as refugees.

[00:06:23]Starvation and civil war ravage the Yemen and the horrors of the Nakba and the genocide in Gaza continue to shock the conscience of the world.

[00:06:34]These are but a few examples. The scale of human suffering is staggering.

[00:06:41]What the last century has proved with horrifying clarity is that what came after the demise of the Ottoman Empire was infinitely worse than what existed before. I ask this house to acknowledge this fact and regret the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

[00:07:01]But if this unimaginable catalog of suffering is not enough to convince you, consider another gargantuan loss. the loss of the Ottoman caliphate which represented a tolerant and modernizing Islam.

[00:07:16]Since 1517, the Ottoman sultanss were the spiritual authority of the Islamic world. Since the caliphate was abolished in 1924, Islam has had no universally recognized religious leader to defend and protect its two billion followers, to interpret Sharia, to issue fatwas against extremism, or to lead a reformation from within.

[00:07:43]The consequences again have been profound. the twisted misinterpretations of the Holy Quran, the persecution of religious minorities, the suppression of women's rights, the destruction of heritage sites, and the tidal wave of Islamophobia that is flooding the West.

[00:08:04]Foreign powers, authoritarian regimes, and reactionary extremists have tried and failed to assume the mantle of the last Ottoman caiff.

[00:08:14]This spiritual power vacuum has become a source of global instability.

[00:08:20]It has fueled radicalization and deepened the chasm of misunderstanding between east and west.

[00:08:29]And that is another reason to regret the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Now, let me be unequivocally clear. When I speak of regretting the demise of the Ottoman Empire, I do not advocate the restoration of the House of Osman. I most certainly do not call for a return of my family to the throne, nor do I excuse our mistakes or pretend we were perfect.

[00:08:55]I mourn the loss of something most precious, the collapse of an order that understood the region's soul. An order that for centuries held together vast lands and diverse communities that though flawed believed in a harmony of difference that offered both temporal and spiritual authority in lands that have since struggled to find peace, stability, and unity.

[00:09:24]>> Not at the moment. Thank you. To regret the fall of the Ottoman Empire is to recognize that the world which emerged from its ashes is not a better one. It is to acknowledge that its destruction has led to chaos, civil war, and mass migration. It is to accept that PAX Ottoman was in truth a sacred peace. And perhaps it is no coincidence that there is no voice on the opposition benches this evening from any of the former Ottoman viles in greater Syria, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula or North Africa or from the vile of Bosnia.

[00:10:02]I can only assume the committee were unable to persuade anyone from these regions to speak against the motion.

[00:10:10]Now, before I end, I wonder what William Gladston would say if he could stand here tonight and survey the wreckage of the world. His rhetoric did so much to shape the displacement of millions, the blood of Shrenitsa, the rubble of Aleppo, the tears and incomprehensible suffering of Gaza. I suspect even he might regret the demise of the Ottoman Empire.

[00:10:35]Obviously for me, this debate is deeply personal.

[00:10:39]My grandfather used to say that he left his soul in Turkey when he was forced to leave his homeland. The sorrow and heartbreak of her long exile never left my grandmother's eyes.

[00:10:52]My family were of course collateral damage of the empire's demise and we still live with the consequences and the throb of that pain. But this debate is not just personal to me. It remains relevant to the millions of innocent men, women, and children who have suffered and who continue to suffer and who continue to suffer in the wake of the brutal dismemberment of of the Ottoman Empire and the reckless abolition of the Ottoman caliphate.

[00:11:25]So out of empathy and respect for them, I implore you to acknowledge their pain and acknowledge what has been lost. And I urge this house to regret the demise of the Ottoman Empire. For it was not the Ottomans who failed humanity, but humanity that has failed since their demise. Thank you. [applause] >> [applause]