masterchief_mirza
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I'm not buying this "ottomans were just Arabs in disguise" malarkey. By that purely anthropological argument, Brits are just Germans and Norsemen.I never wrote that Ottomans were a complete and utter failure (lol). What I wrote however is based on historical facts. Objectively speaking, even though most of what is considered Ottoman civilization and culture was either Arab in origin or heavily influenced by Arab culture, including the people and lands, starting with the Ottoman language for a starter too, the 400 years of Ottoman presence in PARTS of the Arab world (1/3 of it more or less) cannot be considered as a success story at all for Arabs. So any Arab praising them is either 1) ignorant of history, 2) pan-Islamist so he/she will but default praise anything Islamic even though if you study Ottoman culture, many Muslims here would be shocked, starting from the art (homosexual at times) to how the various Sultans were murdering their own brothers to stay in power, to constant alliances with Christians, to no Ottoman Sultan ever making Hajj or Umrah once etc.
This is exactly what I was taught in KSA as a kid and what remains the case to this day from what I am aware of. Obviously criticism as well at Islamic history and weak eras and mistakes throughout Muslim history but overall the picture is always positive regardless of which Muslim entity.
On the other hand the official ideology of the Turkish Republic (Turkey is only considered as the "successor state of the Ottomans due to the capital being Istanbul, if the capital had been Syria or Cairo, it would be Syria or Egypt for instance) is a total opposite of the Ottoman one. They are apparently taught about some imaginary Arab betrayal 100 years ago (a few Arab ruling families and select clans - later spread) while they are not teaching how they stole the Caliphate in 1517, 400 years prior, from the Arabs after 1000 years of Arab rule. Also Arab nationalism is bad but Turkish nationalism is great. Nothing more than hypocrisy so of course hard to take seriously.
Turks here think that KSA or Arab countries (at least those never ruled by Arab "nationalists") were anti-Ottoman in terms of education, while nothing could be further from the truth, unlike the anti-Arabism of the early Kemalist Republic, hence the 100 year old new embrace of non-Turkish culture and ideology from Ataturk to distance himself from the Ottomans and by default Arabs/Islam.
Hence many of the ignorant Arabs having a positive viewpoint of Turkey = Ottomans. Nothing else but the same Arabs have no clue about their own history, Kemalism, that the Ottomans were a very bad version of Arab civilization (from the Arab perspective) and that the era was a dark ages for Arab regions part of the Ottomans, either nominally or de facto.
If you take a look at every Arabic Twitter that orignteas from a Turkish source, there will always be heavy emphasis on the Ottomans and hardly anything about Kemalism unlike in Turkey. That is a deliberate tactic, as otherwise there is nothing for Arabs to relate to. Similarly how the ruling Mullah's of Iran emphasize the Arab DNA of their leadership and ideology, contrary to some fire worshipping Iranian pre-Islamic culture (heavily influenced by Semitic culture - in fact most of it but that is another discussion altogether as well).
Even their puppets, say it openly:
Yes there is some heritage there, but they formed a distinct identity on multiple levels, so it is arrogant to claim ottomans in terms of culture and overall racial identity are just an offshoot of Arabs.