Is Turkey Aiming To Head A Global Islamic Union?

Turkey Aiming to Head a Global Islamic Union Governed by Sharia

• Turkey's Strategic Research Center for Defenders of Justice is planning to organize an "International Islamic Union Congress" every year until 2023, to address the "Islamic confederal state" it aims to establish across the Muslim world.
  
  
• "Go to Syria, Iraq, North Africa, the Middle East or the Balkans, and ask the people there what they think of Turkey and Turks. You will never hear words such as colonialism, invasion, persecution or massacre. Instead, you will hear expressions of thanks that have become a symbol, such as, 'The loyal Turk was here.' ... Yes, it has been a century since we left those lands but the waiting and the hope of the people there has never ended.... You know I say, 'The world is bigger than five' [referring to the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council]. And Turkey is bigger than Turkey; just know this. We cannot be trapped inside 780,000 kilometers [Turkey's total area]." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, November 10, 2016.
  
  

Turkey appears to be accelerating its endeavor to establish an Ottoman-style Islamic government encompassing several Muslim nations. One such effort was apparent in early November at the second "International Islamic Union Congress," in Istanbul. The conference is sponsored mainly by the Strategic Research Center for Defenders of Justice (ASSAM), headed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's chief military advisor, Adnan Tanrıverdi, a retired Islamist lieutenant general.

Other organizers of the congress -- the next one of which is to be held in December 2019 -- include the Association of Justice Defenders (ASDER), Istanbul's Üsküdar University (ÜÜ), the Union of NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW), the International Muslim Scholars Association (UMAD) and the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).

The self-described aim of the congress is "to make determinations on an academic and political ground with regard to current problems in world politics, particularly in Islamic world geography, and to offer solutions to decision-makers."

At the November event, Tanrıverdi and other prominent supporters of Erdoğan promoted the creation of a common Muslim economic market. Participants declared their aim to create an Islamic "superpower of the future on Islamic lands owned by 60 Islamic countries, inhabited by 1,6 billion Muslims, on 19 million km2," constituting "55.5% of world oil reserves and 45.6% of its production, 64.1% of natural gas reserves, and 33% of its production."

Referring to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the withdrawal of Turkish forces from other nations, Erdoğan said:

"Yes, it has been a century since we left those lands but the waiting and the hope of the people there has never ended. Yesterday, we were there as a state. Today, we are there with our charitable, educational and health organizations as well as our projects of development. You know I say, 'The world is bigger than five' [referring to the veto power of the five permanent member states of the United Nations Security Council]. And Turkey is bigger than Turkey; just know this. We cannot be trapped inside 780,000 kilometers [Turkey's total area]. For our physical borders are different from the borders of our heart. Our brothers in Mosul, Kirkuk [in Iraq], in Al-Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs [in Syria], Misrata [in Libya], Skopje [in the Republic of Macedonia], Crimea [in the Russian Federation] and the Caucasus might be outside our physical borders, but they are all inside the borders of our heart. They are right inside our heart."

In short, as the ASSAM congresses demonstrate, Erdoğan seems determined to bring back the Ottoman Empire and a Sharia-governed caliphate.