Erdogan riled by Lawrence feud
TURKEY: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has become embroiled in a row with the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister over the role of Lawrence of Arabia during World War I.
In an indication of how the legacy of T E Lawrence continues to divide the Middle East, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Emirati minister, shared a tweet that referred to a controversy during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of the modern Turkish state.
Fahreddin Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Medina in 1916-19, has long been accused of kidnap and robbery by locals during the siege of the city – in what is now Saudi Arabia – by the Arab forces raised by Lawrence.
‘‘In 1916 Turkish Pasha commit- ted a crime against the people of the Prophet’s City, stole their money and kidnapped them,’’ an Iraqi dentist living in Germany tweeted. ‘‘The Turks also stole most of the manuscripts of the Mahmudiyeh library in the city and sent them to Turkey. Those are the ancestors of Erdogan and this is the history that they have with Arab Muslims.’’
Turkey is in conflict with some of the Gulf states, backing Qatar in a row with Saudi Arabia and the UAE over its support for Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The jibe was too much for Erdogan. His spokesman immediately objected and the president himself made scathing references to Sheikh Abdullah, without naming him, in a speech.
In Turkey, Fahreddin Pasha is regarded as a hero who led a staunch defence of Medina, the Prophet Mohammed’s resting place, against the British and their local Arab allies.
‘‘Hey, the pathetic person who is slandering us,’’ Erdogan said at a meeting of local officials at his new presidential palace in Ankara, the opulence of which has been cited as evidence that the president sees himself as a new sultan, holding the banner of the Ottomans’ lost grandeur.
‘‘Where were your forefathers when Fahreddin Pasha was defending Medina?,’’ he continued. ‘‘Arab people are our brothers. That said, the enmity of some leaders in Arab countries is meant to hide their own incompetence and even treason.’’
It is not clear to what ‘‘treason’’ Erdogan was referring, however, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have indicated that their alliance with the United States is important enough that they are prepared to tolerate American policies over Israel.
–