In the context of discussions on the policies pursued by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, political commentator at Hurriyet Daily News, Yılmaz Özdil, posed the essential question: How can Mr. Erdogan draw up the 2023 vision for Turkey using the mindset of the 19th century?

Erdogan's reply to Özdil's question reveals, in part, his character as he promptly retorted that Özdil is not even a human being, and even demanded that he be fired from his job. This angry answer explains how Erdogan looks at the future and at others.

FIRST: What is Behind the Mosque-Building Strategy?

To start with, there would be no objection to the desire to build mosques if this stems from piety and willingness to promote Islam and project its real image. But what if a larger strategy lies behind this declared goal? This is the question that was posed by several experts and analysts when the Turkish president proposed to Cuba the construction of a mosque on a historic hill on the Caribbean island during a visit in November last year to Havana. Again, does building a mosque in Havana fit within a larger strategy?

To attempt this question, one must stop to ponder the following facts and realities.

• Fact One: Erdogan's decision to build a mosque in Havana is part of a plan to build 18 other mosques around the world, more specifically in the Balkans, Somalia, Cuba and the Gaza Strip. This draws our attention to the following two issues. The first being Erdogan’s insistence on having these mosques built in the Ottoman architectural style; the second being the coordination about building these mosques between the Turkish intelligence service and the Religious Affairs Foundation (TDV), whose budget was increased ten times during Erdogan’s rule as prime minister.
• Fact Two: There seems to be willingness to, or even an “illusion” about Turkey’s global leadership of the Muslim World. This was evident in the issue of the mosque in Havana as Cuba’s condition for the process to go on was that the construction of the mosque should be a collaborative effort between several Muslim countries through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) so that the mosque would not be looked at as a representation of a Muslim community from a certain country. Then, the Cuban government focused on the idea that the planned mosque should be a symbol and a congregation place for all Cuba’s Muslim communities which count around 4000 people. Despite Cuba’s condition, Erdogan insisted on building the new mosque in Havana as a replica of the picturesque Ortakoy Mosque in Istanbul (also known as Büyük Mecidiye Camii, or the Grand Imperial Mosque of Sultan Abdülmecid who ruled between 1839 –1861). Erdogan’s insistence meant that he clearly rejected any cooperation with Saudi Arabia or any other Muslim country on the construction of the new mosque.
• Fact Three: Cuban newspapers published reports about the Muslim community in the country and the issue of allowing them to have a mosque and a plaque that reads, in Arabic, “A new mosque will be built here.” Cuban website also noted that the Cuban authorities will allow Muslim Cubans to perform hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia). On the other hand, Pedro Lazo Torres (Imam Yahya), the leader of the Cuban Muslim community, noted that the site is ready for constructing the mosque and denied that he had known that Turkey was willing to build the mosque single-handedly. But perhaps the unusual yet exact description of Erdogan’s insistence on building the mosque alone and without any cooperation with any other Muslim country was given by the then pro-opposition Yeni Şafak newspaper which said Erdogan's’ plan for the mosque was rather a plan to illegally seize and monopolize the mosque. It is noteworthy that Yeni Şafak recently became pro-Erdogan and government-aligned following a campaign of "pressure and allurement”.
• Fact Four: Erdogan’s visit to Cuba in 2014, what can be called an unusual “media bombardment” was launched by Turkish media against several historical facts in an attempt to employ them to serve the president’s strategy. This bombardment was evident when Erdogan said Muslims discovered the Americas more than three centuries before Christopher Columbus. It was also noteworthy that this media campaign also targeted Turkey’s domestic policies when Erdogan accused the country’s education institutions of ignoring the heritage of the ancestors and even called students to take interest in the works of Namik Kemal, the 19th century Ottoman Turkish writer, intellectual and reformer, Avicenna and other Muslim scholars and scientists instead of taking interest in the works of Western scholars, Shakespeare in particular. Erdogan’s unusual statements prompted some writers and analysts to say that he was walking in the footsteps of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

SECOND: The Illusion of Imperial Ambition

Erdogan’s insistence on building mosques around the world in the Ottoman architectural style clearly reveals the political ideology of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) as demonstrated in the way it exercises power and politics, its future outlook and the way it deals with others. This political ideology seem to be an advanced version of the ideologies embraced by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated movements in Arab countries where what is happening on the domestic level in Turkey does reveal this fact.

Most importantly is the fact that following a decision by Erdogan, mandatory Ottoman language courses were introduced for Turkey’s school students despite the objection of the opposition parties. Equally important was the decision to re-open religious schools where the number of students reportedly rose to one million, up from 50,000 when the AK Party rose to power in 2002. Additionally, the new state emblem that was recently embraced for the Turkish Republic is inspired by the tughra (the monograms of Ottoman sultans) and is equally significant in this context.

Other moves taken in this direction by the Turkish government include the construction of hundreds of services projects inspired by the ancient Ottoman military barracks. But the highlight of these buildings is Ak Saray (White Palace) the new presidential palace in Ankara, where 16 warriors of the Presidential Guard of Honor, representing the 16 Turkic states founded in the past by the ancestors of the Turks over the last 2300 years. Focusing on promoting religious education and increasing the budget of the Presidency of Religious Affairs to ten times the collective budgets of ten ministries.

These facts reveal the approach of gradual Islamization of the state and society and demonstrates Erdogan's vision aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate rebranded with a neo-Ottoman identity, as if to say: "The past decades of the Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924 were but a mere interlude in the course of the history of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey will lose its identity if it loses its Ottomanism, with the linchpins being its language, culture and a geography stretching between the Adriatic Sea and the Great Wall of China."

Mr. Erdogan appears to be so obsessed with the Sultanate and haunted by the images of his Seljuk and Ottoman ancestors that he keeps repeating their names in almost all his speeches in which he frequently associates Ankara and Istanbul with Arab cities, Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo in particular.

Conclusion

No doubt Mr. Erdogan – who is strongly seeking to switch from the parliamentary system to a presidential system that gives him absolute power including the dissolution of the parliament- is obsessed with the leadership of the ‘Muslim World’ based on his neo-Ottomanist project, in particular after this political ideology transformed to intellectual, cultural and linguistic actions and became the official policy of the AK Party government, a shift that will undoubtedly embrace a new civilizational approach to relations with Arabs, neighboring countries and the rest of the world.

To put the problem of Erdogan in a nutshell: First, his conception of neo-Ottomanist revival as prosperity for the Muslim World is envisaged in the Arab countries as restoration of colonialism and hegemony. This idea could be harder for Europe which Erdogan’s Turkey seeks to join as an EU member. That is because Europeans will always remember that the Ottoman Empire was the colonialist country that committed massacres against them, occupied Istanbul which they will always be for them the spiritual center of Orthodox Christianity. Second, building the future and attaining global leadership cannot be achieved through the illusions and glories of the past but through building a modern state that is in possession of policies and capabilities that qualifies it for this leadership.