Turkey & Saudi Arabia; Current allies or enemies from the past?
Turkey and Saudi Arabia certainly have a strong common history from many years ago.
When the Ottoman Empire was the almighty power in the Middle East – as well as Africa and some other regions – Saudi Arabia was also under Ottoman reign. The Ottomans were known to to have established a good order in the areas they captured as compared to many other similar occupying powers in history. However, they had to quit many large territories in time as the nations under their control started fighting for their liberty one after the other.
When the Ottoman Empire started declining most of such nations hit the Empire behind its back soon as they had the opportunity. Saudi Arabia was no different and the Ottomans incurred a major betrayal that cost them lives of many Ottoman soldiers at the time. It is a very well known fact that Arabs have a very strong feeling of hostility towards Turks and ATATURK (father of Turks) in particular. To cut a long story short either countries do not like each other nor do the peoples of two countries have warm feelings towards one another.
Today however Turkey being governed by a pro-Islamist government headed by ERDOGAN (regardless of the fact Davutoğlu is occupying the prime minister position) seems to be in good relations with Saudi Arabia – the king himself actually. The power game involving sectarian wars without doubt may have pushed two countries together to find themselves in a common box of alliance – as it looks curently. However the worsening situation of the jihadist groups such as ISIL and Al Nusra in the region does not promise kind of good news for either parties which have done almost all they could to overthrow Assad from power and bring a SUNNI regime to replace him – without success obviously.
Now that the tide has turned the other way and ASSAD has almost secured his position thanks to the surprising support of the USA on top of a very determined back up by Russia in the first place, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have for sure lost ground and badly.
This being the situation, a partnership between Turkey and Saudi Arabia to bring down their common enemy and replace him with a SUNNI regime is nothing more than meaningless now. One would think at this point if it were not for other issues such as financial support – or call it cooperation if you like – (if not for other reasons) Turkey and Saudi Arabia would probably not reflect such a loving image towards each other.
On the other hand it is a fact that the two countries have been at odds in the recent years regarding issues such as Muslim Brothers, the military coup by Egypt’s current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and situation of toppled Brotherhood-linked government of President Mohamed Morsi etc.
In other words we believe the partnership between two countries is no way genuine and it is only based on sheer expedience which tells us that such a relation cannot be expected to last very long that is regardless of the state medal Erdoğan gave Saudi King during the 13th Summit of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, to honor him.
Editor
