Turks imperialists?

Question

A while ago I met with an arab lady we were talking about history and she started saying that the Ottomans were imperialists I really got disappointed knowing that the Ottomans were an islamic state. Is this true is this how the arabs feel about the Turks? If so then why?

Answer 1

The Ottomans were. They were not really Islamic either since they did not use shariah law but rather a mix of Greek philosophy, Turk tribal law and Russian Empire law.

Ottoman officials use to kidnap Christian boys from the Balkans and raise them as lovers as well as raise them as Muslims.  You know Dracula?  Well that is what happened to his brother.

There was also the harems where local and foreign women were used for s*x and occasionally married and many times having children out of marriage.

The Ottomans also massacred and raped innocent Greeks when they conquered what is now Western Turkey and Greece and one reason Wallachia was so extreme in torturing captured Ottoman soldiers was in revenge for what Ottomans did to the people there.

And keep in mind that the Ottoman khalifas were not religious at all, many were homosexuals, many were open atheists.

There hasnt been an Islamic state since Hasan ibn Ali and even then it wasnt really Islamic since he couldnt control the state.

Answer 2

ottman empire had great days but it had also bad days

there are great stories and there are horrible stories

in general muslim countries goes in the history in similar cycles .. good and bad ..

Answer 3

Arabs were divided on the Turks anyway... and the Turks themselves didnt have one voice... and went through different phases.

Any attempt to simplify things and try to see things in absoloute terms will always be inaccurate.

That said, the Ottomans were agianst Shiekh Muhammad Bin AbdulWahab and the starting of the Islamic state in one of those phases.

And yes they did torture by using "Khazoog" ( something that "tears" .. which is a large sharp tool, and the name is still remembered today ), put in a mans bottom to come out from his mouth or letting him lay there til he dies. Others were burned in hot oil.

However theres many good Turkish Muslims who did a lot for Islam... as I said, things in absolute terms and white and black are always wrong.

Answer 4

The Turks themselves were a wide-ranging mix of ethnicities (Turkic, Eastern European, Arab, Persian, etc..) the only thing that held them all together was Islam and the belief in the Caliphate (the Muslim empire across Muslim lands)..

They pretty much treated every land they subjugated the same way: a portion of the population would be enslaved, the men would become Janissaries, the women to be concubines for royalty, servants, etc.. those who resisted or rebelled were dealt with extremely harshly...

The Ottomans didn't discriminate based on ethnicity; they massacred Greeks, Armenian, Serbs, Arabs and North Africans too, ruling with an Iron fist helped quell nationalism and resentment.

This brutality is why the Empire was the third largest in history (after the Romans and Mongols) and one of the longest contiguous empires as well.

The Turks did in a way help to modernise and prosper Arab lands but they could never get a hold of the Arabian Peninsula (the area covered by Saudi Arabia today). The Bedouin tribes and Arab warlords were fiercely resistant to all forms of occupation and developed an intense hatred for the Turks.

I'm sure plenty of Arabs did not like being ruled by Turkic leaders, their two completely different cultures with very different histories, they spoke different languages and really the only thing in common was religion.

When Ibn Wahhab came along and united the Arab tribes under Wahhabism (extremely fundamental Islam) this was seen as a chance by many of the Arabian tribes to fight back under a common banner and rebel against their arch enemies.

Then of course the state of Saudi Arabia was formed and you know the rest, but most of other Arab lands didn't gain independence after the Ottomans instead they fell under the control of the French, British and Italians; and became colonies which really was like going from bad to worse.

Colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa is another whole topic but basically their European masters didn't treat them much differently and after a while many of the Arab states developed very popular independence movements to free themselves from centuries of foreign rule.

(See Algeria, Lebanon, Libya and Morocco for good examples)

Nowadays the only Arab people under the imposed rule of another nation are the Palestinians but even they are autonomous to a great degree; most Arabs now see the Caliphate as a thing of the past and even though they have mixed feelings about the Ottomans, I'm sure the benefits of freedom far outweigh any the Ottomans offered.

Answer 5

the turks slaved the arabs and raped them treat them badly

they took mecca and madina and left the rest ..

yes turkey was islamic untill their new messenger came called attaturk so they start worshiping him instead of god

Answer 6

They used to treat Arabs like slaves in their own homeland even torturing them to submit..Arabic language was banned at the time ..It was so liberating to think that they were going for good...That is the fact from most of locals who witnessed the eclipse of their empire .......