"Turkey and the Obama Visit: 'He Gave Me Water!'" - by Nuray Mert
Even though some of Obama's gestures during the visit -- such as Obama reminding the young people he was chatting with of the time for Muslim prayer -- have drawn a lot of interest, there is nothing extraordinary about them. Such cleverly staged acts are no new inventions. When Napoleon invaded Egypt, he took on the role of the patron of Islam. In 1857, during the Sepoy Rebellion in India, the British asked the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid to intervene as the Caliph of the Muslims to help suppress the rebellion. At the end of the 19th century, Obama's predecessors also came to Sultan Abdülhamid II to ask him to use his authority as the Caliph to get the Muslims of the Philippines to support the United States. None of this, however, helped prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has also been one of the countries in the "Green Belt." The mission was to form a shield of "moderate Islam" against the influences of Iran's Islamic Revolution in the region and to back the U.S. in filling the vacuum left in Central Asia with the departure of the Soviet Union. Those groups and interests in Turkey who cooperated with one another on such projects through the "deep state" back then have since started fighting one another. They still have not resolved their differences.
