Turkey’s 1914 Worldwide Jihad
https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/turkeys-1914-jihad-against-the-armenians-greeks-jews-and-albanians/
In this post, I will argue that In lieu of the German origin theory, it is more plausible that the 1914 Turkish call for jihad should be viewed as a political rather than religious device and be classified as standard Turkish operating procedure designed for imperial pan-Islamic military mobilization.
This form of early political dog whistling is evident through messages as such as:
“People of Islam! Whatever your nationality, whatever your language, the Lord has declared all of us brothers and sisters.”
Investigation the origins of the 1914 jihad may seem academic, but it’s not. When filtered through the prism of current international politics and the European refugee crisis, the answers can help illuminate Turkey’s persistent use of jihad language, ideology, and their tacit strategic and tactical support for organization like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
A Sampling of 250 Years of Turkish Calls for Jihad
During the period from the 1770s to 1900s, the Ottoman state issued several official jihad declarations. In 1773, they declared jihad during the war against Russia that led to Russia’s annexation of the northern Black Sea region. This was followed by a 1809 declaration against the Serbian population. In 1829 Turkey declared another jihad against Russia for its support of the Greek revolt and its demand for independence. This call for ‘holy war’ against Russia—which was non-direct belligerent—was justified on the grounds that the ideological Russian support for the Greek cause was a hostile act towards the Islamic faith. Turkey repeated the call for jihad again during the one-month-long Greek-Ottoman war of 1897. In 1914, the jihad declaration targeted the allied powers of Britain, France, and Russia, and their allies. In 1919, the Turkish religious leader Mustafa Kemal and his resistance movement declared another jihad against Greece and then in May 1919, he followed with another call for jihad against the British-controlled government in Istanbul.
Controlling and Fine Tuning the Jihad
Historically, Turkey exercised a high degree of control over the jihad spigot, turning it on and off opportunistically and regulating its flow. Mustafa Aksakal, in his analysis entitled: “The Ottoman Proclamation of Jihad” makes the following observation about this strategy:
Sampling Statistics of 2019 Jihad Related Death
Sampling of the last 30 days of jihadi attacks world-wide. The total for 2019 is 12,288 killed and 15,277 injured. The site TheReligionofPeace.com is a the source for these figures and also contains attack stats that go back to 2001.