Bring Back the Ottoman Empire

An interesting essay, from Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker:

Like Europe five or six centuries ago, the Middle East today is the scene of shifting alliances among states, political groups, and warring armies, in a struggle for supremacy or hegemony in the area. By contrast, the Ottoman Empire from its establishment in 1453 was a powerful, multinational, multilingual state that lasted until November 1, 1922, when the Turkish monarchy was abolished and a Republic was declared. The Ottoman Caliphate was abolished in March 1924.

In spite of problems, the Ottoman Empire remained intact for four and a half centuries. It ruled using boundaries of administrative divisions: provinces, or vilayets and districts, or sanjaks, Islam sustained the empire, and the sultan, the personification of a family that had ruled for seven centuries, was the protector of Islam.

The Palestinian narrative of victimhood has made the world familiar with the Palestinian concept of the Nakba, the so-called catastrophe, resulting from the displacement of Arabs during and after the 1948-49 war (a war which they started). But from an objective point of view, the real Nakba for Arabs was the end of the Ottoman Empire, which, in spite of political and military problems, had ruled with a strong army and accepted political institutions, and which had created alliances with political and racial groups...

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