President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is deliberately advancing a policy rooted in the doctrine of pan-Turanism. With gains achieved in Syria, Ankara now aims to establish control over Armenia’s Syunik province, seeking the shortest route to integration with the rest of the Turkic world.

Why is the “Zangezur Corridor” through Armenia’s Syunik region important to Turkey?

However, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was not solely a consequence of World War I. It had been foretold by the empire-wide crisis of the 19th century, during which the Ottomans were often referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” Internal contradictions, compounded by foreign interference, led to Istanbul’s retreat from the Balkans, North Africa, and Arabia.

The uncontrolled collapse of the polyethnic Ottoman state was never in the interests of the great powers. Not every part of the “Greater Middle Eastern Question” enjoyed support from Europe or Russia. Greece, for instance, never succeeded in securing Constantinople or Smyrna; “Wilsonian Armenia” remained a theoretical construct never realized in the Treaty of Sèvres, and the Kurdish question remains unresolved to this day.

At the Lausanne Conference in 1923, Kemal Pasha had no choice but to accept the victorious powers’ terms and the new status of Turkey as a regional state. Yet post-imperial political consciousness in Turkey has never lost its relevance. Turkish leaders and diplomats have since attempted to exploit favorable historical moments (such as World War II, the Cold War, and the dissolution of the USSR) to rekindle imperial ambitions.

Whenever Ankara placed its bets on a “strong West” — be it Germany, Britain, or the United States — to counter Russia, its efforts failed. In the early 21st century, Turkey began to draw lessons from history, seeking to build bridges with post-Soviet Russia and asserting greater independence from the West. Within this paradigm, Ankara did not abandon its revisionist plans, whether through the lens........

© New Eastern Outlook