Comment on Question: When Turk/Ottoman Empire lost the WW I, did it offer Palestinians to move back to the new borders of the Ottoman Empire?

PugJesus@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Oh, God, no. The Ottoman Empire, after WW1, was more or less entirely at the mercy of the Entente, who had already decided to carve up the Middle East amongst themselves. The level of control the Ottomans had at the end of WW1 over the territory, or its ability to pursue any kind of policy, foreign or domestic, was about nil.

The Entente's imperialism actually would have been even worse, save that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and managed to make the modern Turkish Republic out of the war-weariness of Britain and France, and the poor performance of the Greek military.

The resulting Turkish Republic largely regarded Ottoman imperialism as undesirable and non-Turks* as not Turkiye's concern.

*Who was and was not a Turk was decided by Turkiye, of course, and curiously, a great number of Kurds in desirable areas contiguous with Turkiye were designated as "Mountain Turks" who just needed to get in touch with their "real" roots. For obvious reasons, the Kurds have never been particularly fond of this interpretation, and a great deal of violence has resulted in support of this oppressive position.

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