BY WALID SHOEBAT—
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not only intend to revive the Ottoman Empire but thisMonday (Dec 8) he put to law to revive the dead Ottoman language and to make the Arabic-alphabet and the Ottoman language compulsory in Turkish education. The move has biblical significance. But before we explain the prophetic ramifications, Reuters reporting on Erdogan’s opponents stating that such a move to change the language to Ottoman is Erdogan’s move to become the modern day Sultan (Caliph) of the Muslim world:
Opponents accuse Erdogan of behaving like a modern-day sultan, his Islamist ideology and intolerance of dissent taking Turkey far from Ataturk’s secular ideals.
“There are people who do not wish Ottoman to be taught and learned,” Erdogan told a meeting of Turkey’s religious council. “Regardless of whether they want it or not, Ottoman will be taught and learnt in this country.”
His supporters, who carried him to victory in Turkey’s first popular presidential election in August with 52 percent of the vote, see him as a champion of the religiously conservative working classes, standing up to a secular elite.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, abolished the Ottoman language in 1928, replacing its Arabic alphabet with a Latin one. He also purged the language of many of its Arabic, Persian and Greek words to create a “pure” Turkish closer to the language people spoke.
Reuters and other news agencies reported on the story but missed the main theme behind this change which was covered in the Middle Eastern media in the Arabic. Continue Reading…