RIFLE RANGE BOY: Ottoman

Friday, 3 March 2023

This is how international relations work!

The Ipcress File (1965)
Director: Sidney J. Furie

We always think that violence, espionage, eavesdropping, intelligence archiving, military building and sabotage are events that only happened in the past. We have confined them in the fiction row of our bookshelves and assume it does not occur in real life. We give humans way too much credence.

This business of international relations began as early as the time Man picked up a weapon to knock down his neighbour.

Just found out recently, of all the people, the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth I and the Ottoman Empire had a good thing going between the two. After being labelled an outcast by the Roman Catholic Church for the shenanigans of King Henry VIII, there was animosity between England and many European superpowers of that time. The Spanish, Italians, French, Russian and Portuguese were all under the thumb of the Vatican.

The English naturally found friendship in 'the enemy of the enemy'. In the eyes of the Ottoman, the Anglicans (i.e. British) were not idolaters. Unlike the Catholics who found pleasure in worshipping the statues of a caring mother or a man on a crucifix, the Anglican houses of worship were pristinely bare. Beyond all that was business. The British wanted to lay their hands on many Muslim traits like raisins and spices. The Moors from Morocco actually had expansion plans. They had, in their mind, a joint venture with the British, a conquest over the Spanish territories in the Americas. By then, the Spanish armadas were scooping gold by the shiploads from ancient civilisations.

Sir Henry Hyde, after whose family Hyde Park is named, lived during this time. He was a royalist during the English Civil War. He worked as an agent for the Levant Company, which became the precursor to the East India Company. He later became a Consul under the Ottoman administration. At the same time, this man also was a spy for the Venetians. After their classic sea battle in Cyprus, the Venetians had a bone to pick with the Ottomans. Hyde informed the political and military secrets to the Venetians.

Working within the crowd of Cromwell supporters, Hyde was captured while fighting for King Charles II and was executed in the Tower of London.

If you think Aurangzeb's planned murder of his brother, Dara Shikoh, was brutal, King Ashoka was no saint. He had his 99 brothers killed before sitting on the throne.

We all grew up reading and listening to the covert operations on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War era. Both ideologies, suffering from extreme delusion and cognitive dissonance, thought the other would annihilate each other. Ultimately, they almost ended up sending the whole planet up in a mushroom cloud twice.

It is during this time that this movie is set. In the swinging sixties, with the background of miniskirts, baby doll dresses and bright colours, it is a joy to watch a young Michael Caine doing his suave 'licence to kill' James Bond manoeuvres.

A point to note is that even though the Americans seem to be on the side of the West, they also keep a tight rein on their subordinates. This is just to make sure that they know how the boss is.

We thought spying and honey trappings were only a legacy of the past. Wrong. Even as late as the 21st century, these are ongoing. The US accused the Chinese of using their goodwill to siphon off sensitive state secrets back home, as the US was the innocent party.

It is just how the world works. We don't hold hands and sing Kumbayah.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

Saturday, 15 May 2021

A full circle?

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Decided to give this classic movie another shot after the recent turn of events in Jerusalem. Every group seems to be trying to garner some brownie point from the clash. Something that arose as a real estate and enforcement issue has now snowballed to another intifada of sorts. The interesting thing that caught my eye is some faction's labelling of Erdogan as Palestine's saviour and the call for him to re-establish the Ottoman Empire.

If we remember well, the Ottoman was labelled as the sick of Europe towards the end of the 19th century. The Arabs were planning a revolt that appeared to go nowhere. Since the Turkish (Ottoman Empire) were aligned with the Germans in WW1, the British felt it made military sense to support the Arabs to fight the Turks. The Arabs always felt superior to the Turks as the Prophet was an Arab whilst the Turkish ancestors were originally barbaric nomads who embraced Islam.

Ottoman Empire c.1900

The Middle East then was as tumultuous as it is now, with each tribe factions wanting to control water wells (not oil wells; petroleum was not discovered yet) and territory. TE Lawrence, an archaeologist, a paper pusher and a lieutenant in the British Army stationed in Cairo, wanted a piece of the action in the field. So he joined the Bedouins to be the military advisor to Prince Faisal of Mecca. He crossed the Jordanian deserts to help them defeat the Ottoman Army, bomb their strategic railway line and march all the way to Damascus. All these occurred circa 1917, during World War 1. All the while, the British and the French were busy carving up the whole of the Middle East for themselves.

Peter O'Toole and Omar Shariff
(Lawrence and Shariff Ali)

The experience in the desert war front and the doublespeak of the Army may have proved too much for Lawrence to stomach. Much of what is narrated in this story is based on his book, 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. There are many controversies about the TE Lawrence character. Many historians disagree about the accuracy of the facts depicted. He is said to be narcissistic who tend to self-aggrandise. He is plagued with a traumatic upbringing. He was born out of wedlock to a nobleman. Two of his siblings were casualties of WW1, and it affected him deeply. TE Lawrence was doing espionage works for the British Army and is said to be doing it even after his 'Lawrence of Arabia' stint.

Back home, he enrolled in the Air Force under a pseudonym. But, some wonder whether this fascination with going under various surname, which he had done later, had something to do with his own 'borrowed' surname.

Lawrence of Arabia's path (1916-18)

There is a dispute about his sexuality. Many of his Arabs helpers were not mere companions or guides. Their relationship is said to be mere platonic. Nevertheless, the LGBT community place him as a gay icon. Many Arabs would like to believe that Lawrence was so mesmerised by the Arab culture and the Islamic religion that he dressed like an Arab and began quoting the Koran. But, perhaps, he was just an opportunist, working in cahoots with the Imperial forces to cheat the Arabs blind.

Coming to the news that amused me. So, it looks like the Arabs, after being oppressed and illtreated for more than 500 years by the Turks under the Ottoman Empire, need the Turks' help to free themselves (Palestinians are Arabs) from a common enemy, Jews.

But then it does not compute. With so many denominations within the religion and each proclaiming to be holier than the other as well as calling for each others' head, I wonder how long they would stick on to fight the common enemy before they pull the trigger against each other? The Arabs feel superior to the other Muslims because the Prophet was an Arab; the Persians place themselves above the Arabs with their long civilisation to back them up. The Turks with their Mongol ancestry are one notch lower than them. All of them look at the Africans as slaves and Asians as lesser beings.

Turkish media’s ‘Palestinian activist’:
‘Erdogan, come liberate Palestine.
Come establish the Ottoman Empire again.’

Another thing that fascinated me whilst watching this movie was the aversion that the Arab tribes had against each other. In this movie, we witness the blatant killing of a traveller of low social standing for drinking water off a well belonging to a nobleman. And I guess things have not changed much since then. And the audacity of the world to equate caste discrimination as synonymous to Hindu culture only. The want to dominate is universal.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.