Should Turkey take over Egypt again?

[Eric]

From 1517 to 1914, Egypt, a country now in abject confusion, was run by the Ottoman Empire (aka the Turks). Would it not be better if Turkey took it over again as part of the neo-Turkish Empire?

This would have the advantage that the rulers would be fellow Muslims, also from the Middle East, and not nasty white British imperialists.

Because at present it looks as if the Arab Spring in Egypt is going nowhere fast. And although Turkey is smaller than Egypt population-wise (Turkey 55 million, Egypt 80 million), it is somewhat better organised (and knows how to exploit tourism for a profit). Turkey is also a member of NATO, so that although the Yanks will still buy Egypt all its weapons, it would be fellow NATO power Turkey that would control their use.

I'm full of good ideas, if only people would listen...

[Hamlet]

I always avoid geopolitics Eric, as an inheritor of history from nasty imperialists!

[Eric]

I love geo-politics, for the same reasons that you avoid the subject. After all, both Finland and Estonia, countries I have focused on, were part of the Czarist Russian Empire a century ago. Earlier, both were part of the Swedish Empire.

What few people dare to do nowadays is to compare empires, their successes and failings, such as the Turkish one, the French one, the Russian one, the Japanese one, as well as the jolly old British one upon which the sun never set. People are very squeamish about acknowledging the fact that not everything that an imperial power does is mere exploitation of the natives. Some peoples are too chaotic to manage on their own. Some peoples, however, don't need a colonial power to nanny them. There are nations and nations.

[Hamlet]

I love geo-politics, for the same reasons that you avoid the subject. After all, both Finland and Estonia, countries I have focused on, were part of the Czarist Russian Empire a century ago. Earlier, both were part of the Swedish Empire.

What few people dare to do nowadays is to compare empires, their successes and failings, such as the Turkish one, the French one, the Russian one, the Japanese one, as well as the jolly old British one upon which the sun never set. People are very squeamish about acknowledging the fact that not everything that an imperial power does is mere exploitation of the natives. Some peoples are too chaotic to manage on their own. Some peoples, however, don't need a colonial power to nanny them. There are nations and nations.

Ahh, that was something of a nudge and wink post Eric. I really enjoy history, and it probably read at least one history book, or even military history book for every literature book.

There's a short memory with respect to empires and the behaviour of many nations, empires, or whatever we choose to call them by. For example, as an associated issue - barbery pirates and slave trading, a million poor and white Europeans were taken into slavery by the pirates operating out of what we now generrally call North Africa, but you never hear of it!

The Egyptians used thousands of slaves to build their pyramids, and then there's the invidious and organised slave trade out of Africa which Europeans used to expand the New World, a great colonial dash of course; but you tend to only hear about the African slave trade now, why is that?

It's a shame, particularly because it tells you something about human nature and history when you match up the entire picture. It's rarely if ever about simple answers.

[Eric]

Hamlet, I'm never quite sure when people are serious, or when they are taking the piss, because we have occasionally had one or two humourless narcissi on this website. Nevertheless, I do not approve of smileys as a desperate form of semi-verbal punctuation.

You have indeed to examine history a little more closely before coming to the conclusion that imperialism and colonialism was solely a matter of the Brits trying to rule the world.

And yes, in ancient history the Egyptians didn't set a very good example with megalomaniac projects and slaves to do the donkey work. (Look where Egypt is now! Hasn't she come a long way?) And it was the Arabs that started the West African slave trade, if I've got my facts right.

The colonial dash, as you term it, is a mysterious 19th century phenomenon that deserves closer attention. Trade with the Far East as it was then known, was in spices for hundreds of years, but then, in the 19th century, European countries started sending out armies to conquer distant climes to get at the raw materials, no doubt. That isn't in dispute. But Europeans did try to instil some health care and education in the countries under there rule, so the idea of the noble savage versus the wicked imperialists is a little black & white.

Obviously, the Europeans discovered over many decades that they couldn't force the local people to behave in a European way, so after WWII, a lot of colonies became independent.

But you would have thought that once countries were independent of the colonialists, they would be run in a fair way. But that has not been the case. Poverty, chaos, corruption, drugs, shaky economies with high unemployment, revenge against the white settlers that brought organised agriculture to Africa, a super-class society in India, which still appears to have underdogs called "untouchables" and a population rise that is out of control with the proportion of young people far too high. And the new imperialists of China trying to get at the raw materials in Africa for their overblown economy. The Chinese bubble will soon burst.

And yet it is the Europeans who are still blamed for everything that goes wrong in the developing world, some half-century after African, Asian, and Latin American countries have been liberated from their colonial masters. Do not these new nations understand that they themselves are partly to blame for perpetuating hopelessness? Why does the USA have to buy Egypt an army? Why do we in the Western world send so much foreign aid to Africa that then gets embezzled for the most? Presumably, because Europe has a lasting bad conscience about its former colonialism. But we are surely just pouring money down the drain.

One interesting phenomen is Syria. Neither the West, nor the more developed Arab nations, nor even Israel want to touch that can of worms. So we have arrived at the cynical state of affairs where the world just watches and lets the Syrians slaughter one another. Did this sort of thing happen under Turkish or British rule, I wonder.