A person advocating the restoration to their country of any territory formerly belonging to it.
Of course, in that part of the world and points east, claims are only allowed if they post-date 622* or so. Anything earlier is dismissed. But the history goes back so far and it gets so confusing that even The Concise History of Afghanistan runs to 25 volumes.
I do like the history of the Göktürks; in addition to their name being a football exhortation it is also long umlauts (diaereses).
Moving on, the headline story via Fort Russ:
October 10th, 2017 -
The Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit, a propaganda mouthpiece with very close ties to the head of the Turkish regime Recep Tayyip Erdogan, published an article, claiming that the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk are Turkish because they were once occupied by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
The newspaper claimed that Sultan Abdul Hamid ll held ownership over many important areas in Iraq, including 104 square kilometers and 807 hectares of land in Karbala, and 489 square kilometers and 557 hectares of land in Kadhimiya and Samarra.
The newspaper noted that Sultan who ruled between 1876-1909 sought to strengthen the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the potential foreign occupational campaigns and thus attempted to seize and secure as many land as possible.
The article of Yeni Akit likely comes as a response to the recent Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum which was gravely opposed by the Erdogan regime.
Many now fear Erdogan will exploit the referendum for his territorial ambitions in Iraq and turn its outcome in his favour by deploying his forces to Kirkuk.
It is noteworthy that Kirkuk, itself an ancient Assyrian city, is now a major hub of the Iraqi Turkmen minority.
This is not the first such controversial article published in Turkey in recent time.
Last year, Erdogan's Anadolu News Agency published an article, citing data from the archived Ottoman documents, according to which, there used to be at least 7763 records of Turkish properties in the Iraqi city of Mosul, dating back 169 years.
Meanwhile, the newspaper Gerçek Hayat (itself a subsidiary of Yeni Shafaq, another notorious Erdogan regime mouthpiece), proclaimed Turkey as the owner of the whole Middle East.—original source
Of course this is all complicated by Erdogan's ethno/sectarian/political hatred of the Kurds and the oil.
The oil.
From the AP via Military Times:
Iraqi VP warns of 'civil war' over Kurdish-held Kirkuk
And the Financial Times, Sept. 22:
Kurdish independence referendum raises the stakes in Kirkuk
...But Masoud Barzani, the KRG president, has vowed to go ahead with the poll and Kirkuk, a territory claimed by the Kurdistan region and Baghdad, is braced for the possibility that it will be a flashpoint in the push for independence.
This sprawling city, choked with cement blast walls, has been battered by years of violence — fuelled by the blessing and the curse of its large oil reserves. “My big fear is not September 25th. It is the day after the 25th,” says Ismail al-Hadidi, an elderly Arab sheikh and former Kirkuk council member. “We fear the possibility of clashes . . . It could be the beginning of the splitting of Iraq.”The question is, now that the West is done using the Kurds to defeat ISIS do they throw them to the wolves or do they back the Kurds against fellow NATO member Turkey?
Both the KRG and Baghdad consider Kirkuk’s oil critical to their economic survival. And both can stir the loyalties of local communities to their side, risking clashes that would reverberate throughout the nation and the region just as foreign powers hoped Iraq could start to heal from the destruction caused by Isis....
The Kurds best bet is probably to talk nice to the Iranians and the Russians or maybe buy a nuke on the second-hand nuke market and take a hint from Repin on how to deal with Caliph wannabes.
Last seen in December 2016's "Turkey's Erdoğan Backs Down In Battle Of Wills With Putin":
...The precedent is already established, the one used in "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks", see below....
... And back to the Cossacks. A couple weeks ago we posted "Little Has Changed Between Turkey, Russia Despite Reconciliation" with this introduction:
Whenever I think about Turkish-Russian relations I think of this painting:
... That's "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" by Repin, hanging in the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.And now, Kurds and Turks
As the story goes, in 1676 the Turkish Sultan, despite being beaten by the Cossacks when he tried to invade what is now southern Ukraine, demanded these guys surrender and submit to Turkish rule.
As can be seen, the Cossacks thought this was the funniest thing they had ever heard and wrote a letter in response.
A very profane, very defiant, very vulgar, very contemptuous letter.
These old boys just cracked themselves up with their letter.
And that's what I think of when I think of Russians and Turks.
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