The United States failed to save millions of European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution during the Second World War; that is the main observation of a powerful documentary available for streaming from SBS On Demand, and from PBS. The US and the Holocaust is a powerful and searing indictment of American immigration and refugee policies during the first half of the 20th century. Millions of European Jews were excluded from seeking asylum in the US, due to a series of legislative measures enforcing an ideology of white supremacy.

It is well known that the United States, from the 1860s onwards, passed a series of legislative measures restricting immigration, particularly Asian. While Chinese labourers helped to build the railways, facilitating the westward expansion of American capitalism, they were subjected to exclusionary laws and targeted by rioting white workers. Between the years 1880 and 1924, two million German and Eastern European Jews migrated to the United States. However, the rising eugenics movement, and the influence of white supremacist thinking among the educated classes, meant that Jews were regarded with the same racist derision as the Asian Americans.

Rather than abolish restrictive anti immigration laws, the US passed even more laws aimed at excluding Eastern and Southern European Jews. Regarded as racially inferior, these measures ensured that European Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe would have next to no chance of gaining asylum in the US. The most famous case of a Jewish family denied refuge and subsequent perishing in the Holocaust is that of diarist Anne Frank. Her father, Otto, tried numerous ways to apply for asylum in the US. His daughters Margot and Anne, and his wife Edith, died in the camps. Otto survived Auschwitz and published Anne’s diaries.

Whenever the question of the US relationship to the Holocaust arises, it is usually restricted to narrow military parameters. Should the US military have intervened earlier in Nazi-occupied Europe, thus saving lives? That is a legitimate question, but it distracts from the very real indifference to European Jewish suffering evinced by the American authorities at the time.

Another which refused entry to European Jews fleeing persecution (and eventual death) at the hands of the expansionist Nazi regime was Canada. The now famous ship, MS St Louis, carrying hundreds of Jewish refugees, was rejected not only by the United States, but also by the Canadian government. Canada, influenced by eugenicist and white supremacist ideology, refused asylum to European Jewish refugees. A senior government official, when asked how many Jews should be admitted to Canada, stated ‘None is too many.’

Nonwhite immigrants, including Jews from Eastern Europe, were regarded with barely disguised contempt by the xenophobic and nativist Canadian ruling establishment. It is important to emphasise that point because, after the conclusion of World War 2, Canada did provide sanctuary to a group of European refugees – Ukrainian and associated Eastern European ultranationalist Nazi collaborators. Along with the UK, Australia and the US, Canada provided a safe haven for those Eastern Europeans guilty of committing war crimes while fighting for Nazi Germany.

In the conditions of the Cold War, Ukrainians and other far right Eastern European nazi collaborations were viewed as useful assets in the fight against the Soviet Union. Their records as perpetrators of massacres of Jews, Slavs and other minorities was quickly forgotten. In fact, the ultranationalist Ukrainians who served in the Waffen SS were basically exonerated and provided refuge in Canada. This policy was in direct contravention of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which ruled that the Waffen SS was a criminal organisation.

Membership of the Waffen SS should have automatically disqualified any application for sanctuary in Britain, Canada and other Allied nations. The 1st Galician division – officially the 14th Grenadier division of the Waffen SS – was a mainly Ukrainian military outfit which fought alongside Nazi troops, committing atrocities against Jews and anti-fascist populations. That formation, for instance, participated in the suppression of the Slovak National uprising. The Slovaks rose up to throw off German rule.

The Canadian authorities, rather than prosecute these Ukrainian ultranationalist collaborators, provided sanctuary for them. Dismissing their SS tattoos as merely evidence of their reliable anti communism, the Ukrainians who fought in support of Nazi troops were given the ‘good life.’ The extent of the quiet cooperation between the Canadian authorities and the ultranationalist Ukrainian fighters came to light in the 1980s.

The Deschennes Commission, established by the then Mulroney government to investigate the influx of Ukrainian war criminals into Canada, basically exonerated the genocidal actions of the former 1st Galician SS members. Canada’s Jewish community staunchly protested the lack of accountability in the findings of the Deschennes Commission. Documents from the Soviet Union and Eastern European nations, elaborating the massacres and crimes committed by the Ukrainian SS fighters, was never admitted by the Canadian authorities.

Until today, there are statues venerating these Nazi collaborators standing in Canada.

When we examine episodes like this from recent history, do we not learn lessons for our times? When white nationalist militants are given sanctuary, we are not only disrespecting those who fought against them, but also rehabilitating their repugnant ideology. We are providing credibility to the co-thinkers of white nationalism. Let’s consider these applicable lessons when changing our foreign and domestic policies towards refugees.

Over the course of the past week or so, the world has been transfixed by a macabre juxtaposition; the death of five billionaire occupants of a submersible which imploded at extreme ocean depths, and the mass drowning of at least 500 refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Mediterranean. The titan submersible has received extensive and saturation media coverage; the deaths of the refugees obtained only scant media attention.

It is not often that the New York Times gets something right, but we must give credit where it is due. Richard Perez-Peña correctly observed, “5 deaths at sea gripped the world. Hundreds of others got a shrug.” Not bad for an NYTimes journalist. There is no shortage of commentary highlighting the media disparity; the ultrawealthy deceased from the submersible spent their time and money on deep sea tourism.

The drowned refugees in the Mediterranean were mainly Pakistanis, Syrians, Palestinians, and other nonwhite nationalities fleeing dangerous conditions at home, making a perilous journey for a chance at a better future. Their homelands are impoverished and dangerous precisely because of wars and foreign policies implemented by the richer European and Anglo-majority nations.

Considerable resources were mobilised and joint efforts made to find the doomed Titan submersible. Extensive cooperation between the US and Canadian militaries and coast guards was apparent, as well as the participation of numerous private companies all pitching in with the latest technologies to search for the submersible. Such international collaboration makes evident the fact that we do have the capabilities, up to and including remote operated vehicles (ROVs) to handle maritime disasters.

No such cooperation was forthcoming in relation to the sinking fishing vessel in the Mediterranean. Greek coast guard authorities were tracking the overcrowded ship, but did nothing to save the people on board. The latest refugee drownings are a tragedy, but a preventable one. This is only one in a long line of maritime disasters in the Mediterranean, a predictable consequence of the EU’s anti-refugee policies. They have turned the entire Mediterranean into a militarised zone, making Europe an impregnable fortress.

Ramzy Baroud, writing about the latest refugee deaths, states that only 104 of the estimated 750 refugees were rescued. The authorities pulled dead bodies out of the water off the coast of Pylos, a Greek island, on June 13 and 14. The dates are significant, given that, only a week later – June 20 – the United Nations celebrated World Refugee Day.

Indeed, between 2014 and 2023, as the EU has turned the Mediterranean into a militarised maritime boundary, 23,000 refugees have drowned or gone missing when attempting to cross into Europe. That appalling statistic is particularly ironic; the same imperialist powers who hailed those East Berliners risking life and limb to cross the Berlin Wall, are now vociferously denouncing the refugees who make the perilous journey from their homelands.

The Berlin wall, from 1961 to 1988, became emblematic of Communist tyranny; the escapees were hailed as ordinary people demonstrating extraordinary courage. The East German government was condemned for implementing a shoot-to-kill policy at the wall, and for sealing the borders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Hundreds of East Berliners, knowing full well the perils of escape, nevertheless attempted the journey, in search of a better life.

Since at least 2014, the member states of the EU have ratified numerous cross country agreements to erect fortified borders, particularly in Greece and Italy. Turkey, while not an EU member, has cooperated in enforcing a harsh anti-refugee regime, helping to expel asylum seekers from Europe’s southeastern borders. The refugees, mostly from Middle Eastern and African nations, are the victims of today’s fortress mentality.

Migrant shipwrecks, such as the latest one off Pylos island, are not isolated incidents. Moira Lavelle, an independent journalist based in Athens, writes that such tragedies are the result of deliberate political choices. In 2016, the EU signed an agreement with Turkey where refugees – mainly from Syria – would be sheltered in Turkey itself, rather than making it to EU territory. Outsourcing immigration and refugee policing has become the preferred method of dealing with asylum seekers.

Kenan Malik, writing in the Guardian, states that EU countries are paying the poorer sub-Saharan African nations, to keep refugees in their territories. Niger, Libya (or at least rival Libyan militia groups), are being bribed to retain and force refugees back to their place of origin. Incarcerated in makeshift refugee camps in appalling conditions, the EU has implemented a money-for-taking-refugees business model in African nations – the very philosophy of the people smugglers whom the EU governments strenuously condemns.

Dictatorial regimes in African nations, with horrid human rights records, such as Niger or Rwanda, are considered acceptable business partners when it comes to immigration detention. Libya, prior to the 2011 NATO intervention, was a functioning and reasonably developed society. Since that catastrophic intervention, Libya is a shattered society, and rival militia groups compete for control. The EU pays these militias to lock up sub-Saharan African refugees. Torture, rape and murder occur in these squalid camps.

As Malik observes, the EU has sponsored an entire cross-national regime of refugee detention. Prison camps, warehouses and temporary accommodation has become the norm for asylum seekers trapped in this business model. Let’s not forget that Britain, the US and Australia lead the way in the forcible detention of asylum seekers, all the while participating in policies which destroyed societies and thus prompted the outflow of refugees. No matter how much talk-back radio shouts about stopping the boats, or sneering ‘f*ck off, we’re full’, asylum seekers much prefer to live in their country of origin.

Yes, those who died in the Titan submersible should be mourned. Let’s devote equal – even more – attention towards the thousands of nameless victims of fortress Europe and imperialist wars. We need to re-examine and change our own conduct in global affairs.

There is no question that Novak Djokovic is one of the greatest tennis players in the history of the game. He has equaled – arguably surpassed – the accomplishments of Nadal and Federer. However, we can also make a critique of his political beliefs, without denigrating his achievements. Djokovic was detained by the Australian authorities, in January 2022, for his refusal to vaccinate before entering the country. His detention, at a hotel in Melbourne, garnered a level of sympathy.

The federal circuit and family court struck down the initial ruling canceling Djokovic’s visa. He did not help his cause by testing positive for Covid, and subsequently mingling with photographers and fans. The immigration minister, using archaic provisions of the law, had Djokovic deported. While in detention, Djokovic raised the issue of the mandatory detention of refugees, many of whom have been locked up for years. Djokovic had not raised that comparison prior to his own legal troubles, and has not raised that issue since his release.

While Djokovic was treated unfairly by the Australian Border Force (ABF), the African American bastketballer Brittney Griner, received only hostility and sneering contempt on the part of the corporate media. She experienced an unjust and harsh imprisonment in the midst of international geopolitics. Griner, an Olympic and WNBA champion, was sentenced to nine years in prison for possessing vaping cartridges that had a small amount of vaping hashish oil.

Her sentencing, in February 2022, was driven by political considerations. Moscow wanted to demonstrate that it is tough on drug smugglers. The Kremlin is not exactly sympathetic to the plight of African Americans. In Soviet times, Moscow championed the causes of not only African Americans, but also strongly supported African nations in their struggles against colonialism and racism. Not anymore – the pages of Russian state media are filled with snarling contempt for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti racist activists.

Griner served only a few months of her sentence; in December 2022, she was released in a prisoner swap with the United States. Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was exchanged for Griner’s early release. It is instructive to examine the prisoner exchange, and the attitudes conveyed by the corporate media towards the two individuals concerned.

Viktor Bout, an opportunistic armaments dealer, was demonised as the hyperbolic ‘merchant of death’ in the 2005 film Lord of War. To be sure, Bout’s criminal activities were motivated purely by individual greed and callous indifference to human suffering. But to denounce him as a uniquely malicious actor is the height of hyperbole.

The Watson Institute at Brown University released a study earlier this year that shows the post 9/11 US war on terror has forcibly displaced millions around the world, and undermined the ability of societies to maintain their citizens’ wellbeing. That hardly indicates any concern for human life on the part of the US government. If anyone deserves the moniker ‘merchant of death’, it is the senior personnel of the US military-industrial complex.

Griner’s return to the US, rather than being welcomed as a triumph of diplomacy, was contemptuously dismissed as an unequal and unwanted exchange. Griner, apparently, is an unworthy victim, not of the same standing as ‘hero-spy’ Paul Whelan, who remains imprisoned in the Russian federation. Sputnik news, showing its vitriolic underbelly, sneered that Griner was a ‘black lesbian drug addict’, with Moscow clinching a favourable exchange.

Griner had made comments in the past supportive of the antiracism protests in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s killing. She made critical observations regarding racism in the police force. It is these sentiments which explain the level of hostility directed against her upon her release from Russian incarceration. Accused of ‘hating America’ – in spite of her impressive sporting achievements representing her country – Griner returned home to family and friends.

Djokovic can refuse the vaccination for Covid if he wants, but his refusal, like that of the antivaccine lobby, is that of the privileged. Nyadol Nyuon, a human rights advocate, wrote that it is the perverse height of privilege to choose to avoid a vaccine in a wealthy nation, while there are millions in less developed nations dying while waiting for the vaccine.

The antivaccine fearmongering does take in genuinely concerned people. But the danger, as Nyuon states, is to elevate fears and misinformation to the level of valid scientific reasoning. Djokovic’s refusal is the equivalent of a toddler’s tantrum, couching his rejection in the language of ‘combating oppression’ and ‘defending liberty’.

There have been other Australian sportspeople who have rebelled against authority. A breakaway segment of Australian cricketers, defying the orders of the Australian cricket authority, toured apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. Speaking out in favour of individual liberty, the rebel cricket tour defied the anti-apartheid movement, the latter demanding a complete ban on sporting events in a racially segregated South Africa.

Djokovic quickly returned to the lucrative tennis circuit; the refugees are still languishing in detention centres in Australia. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, former professional basketball player and sports commentator, highlighted the fact that individual decisions have consequences. Unvaccinated players should be removed from teams, he stated. Speaking about the importance of reaching the vaccine hesitant in minority communities, he said that it is imperative to demonstrate the vaccine’s effectiveness and overcome the mistrust of government initiatives among ethnic minority groups.

Djokovic used his status to elevate vaccine hesitancy based on fear and ignorance. Rather than address vaccine hesitation for the purpose of overcoming mistrust, he used his position to enable the already privileged to hide behind the language of ‘oppression’. Brittney Griner deserves our support, because she was the victim of actual oppression.

There are times when the death of a person serves as a bookending to a particular chapter of history. It signifies the passing not of an era as such, but an evolving epoch which blends into our times. Such is how we can understand the death by suicide of Ted Kacyznski, known to the world through the media-manufactured celebrity villainy label of the Unabomber. He had terminal cancer, and was transferred to a prison medical facility shortly prior to his death at age 81.

Kaczynski was an outstanding student in mathematics, gaining an early entry into college. Having a high IQ, Kaczynski was reportedly shy and socially withdrawn. The image of a sad loner is comforting to us, but not necessarily true in Kaczynski’s case. While he was shy, he was not without friends, and participated in sports. So he was not outside the social conventions of the time. The sad, mad loner stereotype is convenient, but inaccurate, in attempting to understand Kaczynski’s actions.

A Harvard mathematician, Kaczynski underwent a period of traumatising abuse at college, subjected to a large mind-control experiment ultimately controlled by the CIA. The experiment intended to understand human behaviour under conditions of extreme stress, isolation, interrogation. This experience, according to some authors, was crucial in shaping Kaczynski’s hostility to the technological-scientific complex. The impact of a brutalising experience such as this can be overstated, but it helped to crystallise Kaczynski’s attitudes.

Retreating from the contemporary technological panopticon, he lived a life of natural primitivism in Montana. He advocated a kind of eco-primitivism, a degrowth ecology which involved a return to nature. Hostile to technology, he authored a 35-page manifesto where he detailed his anti-technology views. Condemning the Industrial Revolution, Kaczynski contended that technological progress severed the connections between humans and nature, and produced a destructive sociopolitical order which suppresses human freedom.

Waging a letter-bombing campaign from 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski targeted those he perceived as responsible for the new regime of technological intrusion.

Killing three people and seriously injuring 23, he was apprehended in 1996. I remember the media coverage of his crimes and eventual arrest. The Washington Post published his manifesto for the purpose of identifying him. Kaczynski’s brother, David, recognised the language and writing style. He informed the authorities.

Known by the FBI as the Unabomb suspect (University and airline bomb) the media cleverly came up with the moniker Kaczynski is most associated with – the Unabomber. Kaczynski was not an original thinker, in fact, he borrowed most of his ideas about technology from a French sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912 – 1994). Ellul, a Christian anarchist philosopher, condemned what he called the technique, the threat posed by mass technological advances to human freedom.

Kaczynski’s manifesto has been approvingly quoted by far right killers and white supremacists. While not a white supremacist himself, Kaczynski did contribute to a form of ecological primitivism. While concern for the natural environment is viewed as a left wing preoccupation, domestic terrorists and their right wing ideological brethren have used couched their motives as driven by ecological concerns, promoting an anti-immigrant eco-fascism.

Let’s make a number of observations about technology today.

How many of us could live without our mobile devices? I venture to suggest that in today’s world, with its reliance on IT, none of us could. Even those of us who grew up in the days prior to the internet, smart phones and social media, could not function within the parameters of contemporary capitalist society without relying on mobile devices. Now consider the following statement regarding the impact of new technology:

if the use of a new item of technology is initially optional, it does not necessarily remain optional because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology.

Who made that statement? Ted Kaczynski. That quote sounds eerily prescient, given the ubiquity of IT and surveillance capitalism in our modern times. That quote is hardly the nonsensical rambling of a lunatic. Kazcynski’s warnings about the increasing intrusive of technology into our lives are sounding rather reasonable in the light of subsequent developments. We are outsourcing our ethical and cognitive judgements to the algorithm.

Forty years ago, who would have surmised that people would seek out romantic partners, sharing our intimacies, through dating apps? We rely on apps to bring us happiness in our romantic lives. It is not only our personal lives that we are integrating with technological applications. The era of drone warfare is upon us – software-directed armed and unarmed aerial vehicles are deployed across the globe, collecting information and carrying out military strikes. How long will it be before we witness robotic warfare?

Basing itself on our choices, the music app Spotify generates playlists of songs related to the genres to which we listen. The app decides our music tastes for us. Now there is Spotify Rainbow Collage, a generator which analyses your music choices, and creates a customisable collage of your favourite artists. Everyday, Spotify suggests playlists to me, based on my listening history. The app is a friend who caters for my musical preferences.

There are no tears for Kaczynski; let’s reserve our sympathy for his victims. He died in prison for his crimes. The tragedy is that he did not receive help for his problems. His crimes only served to marginalise the serious issues that he (and ecological activists) are trying to raise. The corporate media did their part to focus on Kaczynski’s mental disturbance, his ‘lone madman’ status, ignoring the valid concerns about technological intrusion which he raised.

It is unsettling to recognise that an eco-terrorist – for that is what he was – asked legitimate questions about the harmful impact of technology. As R H Lossin wrote, Kaczynski’s violence was ethically reprehensible, but it was not incomprehensible. He took the road of an individualistic escape and rebellion, but the problems with technology that he identified require collective solutions.

New story. This topic involves the expansion of empire-rivalries, military objectives and also scientific endeavours. Let’s start with a basic question – why didn’t Captain Cook, who was certainly a capable naval officer, fail to discover Antarctica? He definitely tried, circumnavigating that continent in 1773-74, coming within 130 kilometres of the continental mainland. However, confronting harsh icy conditions, he turned back.

So who did discover Antarctica? And why was this question relevant to the spread of scientific knowledge and research missions?

To answer those questions, we need to delve into the nineteenth century world of rival navigational explorations and imperial science. Make no mistake – Captain Cook was on a military mission, sailing into the Pacific. Yes, he had scientists on his voyages as well, and they achieved monumentally important accomplishments for the scientific community. Back in 1766, the Royal Society, the premier scientific organisation in the UK, proposed journeying into the southern oceans and lands.

Keen to discover any southern lands before their European competitors, the British navy provided the ships and provisions for Cook’s Pacific voyages. The Cold War-like rivalry between England and France was fought out on the American continent in the Seven Years war, (1756 – 63) with England the eventual winner. Europeans had mapped different parts of the Australian landmass, including Dutch and French navigators.

Cook did not discover Australia – he was expecting to find the east coast of New Holland, as the continent was known then. Of course, the indigenous nations had been in Australia for hundreds of thousands of years. His orders were to find a great terra nulius incognita, the much hypothesised icy continent now known as Antarctica. Throughout 1773 and the beginning of 1774, Cook tried multiple times to find Antarctica, but failed. Terrible cold conditions, coupled with the loss of two ships, and heavy sea ice, convinced him to turn back. This was Cook’s second Pacific voyage.

It was during his first voyage, as a lieutenant, that Cook and his colleagues observed the transit of Venus from Tahiti. All the while, Cook never stopped taking military reconnaissance notes. Cook’s voyages were all undertaken with secret military objectives. Britain intended on expanding its colonial power into the Pacific. London was wary of its rivals, France, Holland and Tsarist Russia. Competition for the domination of the maritime traffic in the southern oceans was on.

He admitted, after his second journey to the Pacific, that he never actually found the great southern land. He sailed within the Antarctic circle, the first to do so, but otherwise, his journeys were very much a case of connecting the dots charted by other navigators.

So who discovered Antarctica? It was the Russian navigator, Fabian von Bellingshausen (1778 – 1852). A Baltic German, his voyage was the first definitive journey to the Antarctic continent which proved that an uninhabited great southern landmass existed – and not just a conjecture among maritime navigators. In 1820, Anglo-Russian competition was fierce, even though London and Moscow found themselves temporarily allies against the Napoleonic Empire.

The two Russian warships, docking in Rio de Janeiro, made their way to Antarctica, finding land in January 1820. Returning to Russia in 1821, Bellingshausen and his colleagues were awarded medals and imperial titles. The Russians would not set foot on Antarctica until 1956, when the Soviet government renewed territorial ambitions and scientific missions to the southern continent.

The first Russian Antarctic Expedition remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Occurring during what has become known as the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration, the discovery of Antarctica, and Roald Amundsen’s triumphal land journey to the South Pole in 1911, are subjected to an Anglophone preoccupation with ‘great explorers.’

To be sure, scientific goals, particularly in the fields of geology and palaeontology, were and are motivations for exploring Antarctica. The nineteenth century witnessed a number of scientific paradigmatic revolutions; studying the Earth’s strata, fossils and geological features were no longer constrained by creationism. Massive change in the Earth’s continental history, including changes in life forms, was just beginning to be understood.

Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832), the preeminent naturalist of his time, established extinctions as a recurring event in geologic history, opening up the field of fossil collecting as evidence of changes in the natural world over time. Roderick Murchison (1792 – 1871), extending Cuvier’s work, elaborated the geologic timescale. The Earth’s natural history was no longer considered an immutable product of god’s creation, but an ever-changing product of biological and geologic forces. Antarctica, the unexplored continent, opened up new possibilities.

The heroic yet ultimately unsuccessful expeditions to the South Pole led by Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton have entered the Anglocentric lore of ‘great explorers’. The equally heroic and triumphant expedition of Norwegian Roald Amundsen – he arrived at the South Pole by overland journey in December 1911 – received a lukewarm reception in England and the commonwealth nations.

Scott, who died in Antarctica in 1912, has become something of a martyr – overshadowing Amundsen’s victory in the race to the South Pole. News of Amundsen’s triumph was greeted in moderate, measured tones in the British media. Scott, in posterity, was portrayed as the consummate gentleman, playing by the rules.

Amundsen, by contrast, had unfair advantages, according to the English media establishment. Amundsen used dogs for haulage, unlike Scott who relied on ponies. Dogs do not have sweat glands, making them more resilient in the harsh cold weather, it was opined. In the case of Shackleton, his courage and endurance is emphasised – and his personality is humanised with descriptions of his ‘heartbreak’ at seeing his beloved ship, Endurance, sink into the icy waters.

It is time to enforce international treaty obligations in protecting the Antarctic environment. As for Captain Cook – his statue belongs in a museum.

There has been a deluge of commentary about the victory of long term Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the recent elections. How did Erdoğan win, despite record hyperinflation and a pathetically inept response to the terrible earthquake earlier this year? I think we can find an answer in Erdoğan’s cynical use of religious conservatism in domestic politics.

One aspect of his rule has gone under the radar, but which can provide us with answers as to the longevity of his rule – the mobilisation of Ottoman Empire nostalgia for political gains. His ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has blended Pan-Turkic ideology with Ottoman-mania to recreate a religious-based nationalism. In short, utilising a nostalgic view of the Ottoman Empire’s greatness, he has vowed to make Turkey great again.

There is a great deal of truth in the assertion that the Ottoman Empire was tolerant towards ethnic minorities. Numerous peoples, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews – all contributed to an overarching Ottoman identity. Suleiman I, (1494 – 1566) also known as the Magnificent, and the LawGiver, led a golden age of the Ottomans, reforming the legal and taxation systems. The Ottoman army drew soldiers from all the various ethnicities under the control of the Turkish empire.

However, it is not the multicultural mosaic of nationalities in the Ottoman Empire for which Erdoğan is nostalgic. He and the ruling AKP hearken to the times of Selim I, the father of Suleiman I. Selim led a period of aggressive Ottoman Turkish expansion, both geographic and economic. Selim was in his day, a regional strongman, conquering enormous swathes of territory, but also taking on the role of guardian of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina – a significant position from an Islamic perspective.

It is no secret that the Turkish president has strongly supported independence for Bosnia. Drawing on the historical links from the times when the Balkans were Ottoman territories, Erdogan has loudly supported Bosnia’s aspirations to independence. The Turkish president is a welcome guest in Sarajevo, and Ankara has long postured as the big brother protector of their fellow Muslims in Bosnia.

In 2018, the then Bosnian president, Bakir Izetbegovic, told a rally of Erdogan supporters in Sarajevo (Turks living in Bosnia) to support the reelection of their Turkish political ally. Turkey has made numerous public investments in the Bosnian republic; universities and education have benefited from Turkish investments. Turkish tourists flock to Bosnia every year; the multiple Ottoman-era mosques and structures are preserved by the Bosnian authorities.

Ottoman era structures are restored by the Bosnians, but also involve the efforts of Turkish government agencies, including mosques and bridges destroyed by Bosnian Serb separatists in the early 1990s. Ferhat Pasha Mosque, located in Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia, was restored with Turkish assistance, after its destruction by Serb forces in 1993.

Ankara is leveraging this shared Ottoman-Bosnian history to build up its influence in the Balkans. Serbia has its close alliance with Russia; Germany is the main financial backer of Croatia. For all of Turkey’s talk about defending their coreligionists in Bosnia, Turkish investment in Bosnia is only small, dwarfed by comparable Turkish investments in neighbouring Orthodox Serbia.

In 2020, Erdoğan took another step towards cementing his alliance with religious conservatives; he changed Hagia Sophia’s status from a museum to a mosque. To be sure, there was a huge degree of hyperbole in the Western media, portraying this changeover as evidence of the ‘creeping Islamisation’ of not only Turkey, but Europe as well. Originally a Byzantine church, it was converted into a mosque when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople (today’s Istanbul).

In the 1930s, with the definitive secularisation of the new Turkish Republic, Hagia Sophia was closed to worship (and symbol of Ottoman power), and repurposed as a museum in 1934. The Turkish Republic’s rulers wanted to emphasise the ecumenical nature of the Turkish state, and Hagia Sophia has been preserved with UNESCO heritage status in 1985.

By annulling the 1934 decree on Hagia Sophia’s designation as a museum, Erdoğan was making a deliberate ploy to attract the religious conservative vote. Admitting worshippers to Hagia Sophia is a violation of its UNESCO status, but not such as outrageous affront to secular sensibilities. After all, the Catholic Church has long targeted the Cordoba Mosque-Cathedral, located in Andalusia, Spain, for redesigning as a specifically Christian institution, downplaying its origins and long history as a mosque. Spain and Portugal have long wrestled with their Islamic history.

Be that as it may, Erdoğan’s Hagia Sophia manoeuvre emboldened the religious nationalists inside Turkey, and the various ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds, correctly interpreted this move as an assertion of Turkish exclusivity. By rebuffing the UNESCO world heritage status of a site like Hagia Sophia, it repudiates the prestige and culturally precious designation that UNESCO preservation confers. It opens up a religious-cultural debate about to whom such a historical monument belongs. It is a cynical way to push religion into politics, which is Erdoğan’s objective.

A brief note on Turkey and the Palestine question

While Erdoğan poses as a champion of the Palestinians, seeking a neo-Ottoman quest to reassert authority over the holy places of Jerusalem, the Palestinians do not engage in Ottoman-mania. The repudiation of the British, and then Zionist, occupation of Palestine is based on the legitimate demand for an independent state. While the Ottoman Empire allowed only limited Jewish emigration to Palestine, they were hardly proponents of an independent Palestinian state.

The Palestinians are not simply a cat’s paw of Ankara, motivated by a desire to reestablish a neo-Ottoman project. It is all well and good to be nostalgic for the times of the Ottomans, but Erdoğan’s leveraging of Ottoman-mania has definitive political objectives. Re-election and extending his grip on power is one of them.