On June 9, 1908, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and King Edward VII of England met at the Estonian port of Reval to decide the fate of the Ottoman Empire.

Russian Tsar Nicholas II and British King Edward VII met in the port city of Reval, Estonia, on June 9, 1908. The Ottoman Empire was in the 32nd year of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s rule. England was focused on pushing the German Empire, which it saw as its greatest threat and wanted to reach the oceans and establish itself in the colonies, to the continent and stopping its advance. It urgently needed new allies.

Russia-Britain Rapprochement

In 1905, England had drawn France to its side with the Entente Cordiale. It was Russia’s turn. If it could be convinced, it would be possible to defeat Germany in a two-front war. Thus, the stones for the First World War had begun to be laid. The European press reported that these two discussed the fate of the Ottoman Empire in a secret meeting, and that England, wanting to draw Russia to its side, promised the Tsar influence over Ottoman lands and the straits.

Those Who Were Unaware of the Developments

During a period when the police and censorship practices of the Ottoman Empire were at their most intense during the reign of Abdulhamid II, the first echoes of the Reval meeting were heard among the Unionists (İttihat ve Terakki Party) in the city of Thessaloniki, the most important gateway to the West. The first volume of Rauf Orbay’s five-volume memoirs, compiled by historian Cemal Kutay and published in 1992, recounts those days. (From the Ottoman Empire to the Republic, A Person in Our Century- H. Rauf Orbay (1881-1964) Life Memoirs, Promat Publishing House) In his memoirs written while in exile in Malta, Rauf Orbay states that he “learned about the Reval meeting in Thessaloniki, where he was in Thessaloniki as a naval officer with the rank of major, to attend a meeting of the Committee of Union and Progress, of which he was a member at the time.” 

He was horrified by what he heard and when he returned to Istanbul, he discussed what he had heard with his father, Vice Admiral Mehmet Muzaffer Pasha, the President of the Naval Council. The Pasha was the child of a sailor family who had come to Istanbul with the Circassian migration; he was a very successful officer who graduated first out of 72 foreigners not only from the Naval School, but also from the specialization course he attended in England. The Naval Council, which he chaired, is the second most important position after the Ministry of Naval Affairs. A month before the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy, or the Revolution of Freedom, his father made the following comment on page 507 of the first volume of his memoirs regarding what his son had told him:

“I do not want to drive you to despair on the path you have chosen with this warning. It is our duty of honor, life and blood to do everything we can and believe in to save the country. However, you and your friends should be careful, and especially not to forget that the Istanbul environment has recently fallen very morally (reffering to informing state!) Not a single word was mentioned about what you told me even in the Naval Council, one of the great centers of the defense of the country. I am convinced that this was only heard and known by the Grand Vizier Pasha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Pasha and partly by the Imperial Mabeyni (Private Secretary of the Sultan). However, even if it is interpreted in this way, no one can tell the Majestic (Sultan) I am not convinced.”

There is not a single line of news about the Reval meeting in the Istanbul press, which is under terrible censorship. Not only this meeting, but also the developments and movements in Macedonia that would lead to the declaration of the Second Constitutional Monarchy or the Revolution of Freedom are not mentioned. The press included the following news, which probably came from a common center. “In the name of Majesty, absolute security and peace in the country continues – “Under the shadow of the Sultan, absolute security and peace in the country continues.”

The Sick Man Begins to be Struck

The term “Sick Man” was first used for the Ottomans by the Russian Tsar Nicholas I in the 1850s. The main reason was that the Ottomans had entered a period of decline and collapse. After the last half of the 18th century until 1850, when the term in question emerged, the Ottomans had a very bad relationship with the West in every field. After the Çeşme raid in 1770, which was the first major raid at sea, the Ottomans lost Crimea, Greece, Algeria and the territorial losses in the Balkans were great. The weakness of the Army and Navy against the West and the fact that the mind and thought had been replaced by superstitions and religious fanaticism with the teachings spread through reactionism and sects were eroding the nation and the state. Due to missing the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, the combat capability gap was growing every day. The emergence of the Young Turks after 1876 was to stop this trend.

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Declaration of the Young Turk Revolution by the leaders of the Ottoman millets in 1908 (Public Domain)

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On the other hand, the weakened state could not protect its citizens in distant lands. Immigrants from the lost lands, especially the Balkans, were flocking to the big cities of the Sick Man. The Sick Man was sitting on unique resources in a magnificent geography. Imperialism had already targeted him. According to many historians, the event that ignited the fuse of the Second Constitutional Era, or the Revolution of Freedom, was the Reval meeting. Although this meeting was not final and binding, the news spread among the people that the decision to share the Ottoman lands among the great powers had been made and that Macedonia would be shared between England and Russia. Indeed, a rebellion started in Macedonia three weeks after Reval.

Then, on April 13, 1909, the reactionary uprising that went down in history as the March 31 incident began. With the intervention of the Action Army, on April 27, 1909, Abdulhamid II abdicated the throne to Sultan Mehmed V Reşat and was exiled to Thessaloniki. Two years later, on September 29, 1911, the Italian War began, during which we would lose Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. Although the Ottomans, who had no navy, won important tactical successes against the Italians on land in Libya, they were eventually defeated and Libya and the Dodecanese Islands were occupied by Italy. Before this war ended, the Balkan War began on October 8, 1912. An armistice was signed with Italy on October 18, 1912. The Balkan War ended in complete disaster as a result of the politicization of the army. Bulgaria, which gained its independence from the Ottomans in 1908, had been able to reach Çatalca, 55 km west of Istanbul. The North and the Eastern Aegean islands were presented to Greece on a silver platter due to the lack of a navy. All were lost within a few months. The dynasty and the Union and Progress Party had no choice but to become Germany’s allies on the eve of World War I. On October 29, 1914, we inevitably entered the war by bombing Russian ports in the Black Sea on the initiative of our German allies. Did we have any other choice? We didn’t. If the primary aim of the war for London was to prevent Germany from reaching the Atlantic Ocean from the North Sea, its second and most important aim was the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire by the Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

The Ottoman lands that were shown to the Russians as a carrot in Reval would not be given even if they wanted. In fact, the communist revolution in Russia in October 1917 had turned everything upside down. When World War I ended on all fronts at 1100 on November 11, 1918, England had achieved its goal. Germany was defeated, the Kaiser fled to the Netherlands, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was abolished, and the Ottoman Armies surrendered. Far from sharing in the great victory, Russia had accepted the ceasefire on all fronts at the end of the revolution and had accepted the greatest territorial losses in its history. In Russia, nearly 100 thousand occupying forces from the Czar’s Western allied countries came to support the White Army against the communists, and the civil war began in 1919. The Ottoman Empire also woke up to an invasion on the morning of November 13, 1918, when 55 warships arrived at the Bosphorus, and in August 1920, with the Treaty of Sevres signed by the Ottoman dynasty, it accepted division and even exile to Asia in the future. As long as the dynasty and the sultanate continued! However, there was the Turkish nation and their leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whom they could not calculate.

Atatürk and Lenin Who Said No to the Geopolitics of Reval

In defiance of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and English King Edward VII, Mustafa Kemal wrote his famous letter to Lenin on April 26, 1920, 3 days after the establishment of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

After that date, Anatolia and Russia cooperated against the imperialist occupation that both were subjected to. 300 thousand tons of ammunition flowed from Russia to the western front between September 1920 and July 1922. Finally, on September 1, 1922, the great Mustafa Kemal gave the order to his armies for the Mediterranean. On September 9, the Greek armies fled Izmir without looking back. Interestingly, the Russian Tsar and the English King, who agreed to destroy the Turks 14 years ago in Reval, paid a heavy price for not taking into account the creativity of history. The Russian Romanovs were erased from the stage of history. The English achieved a Pyrrhus victory because the war they planned was prolonged by 2 years because of the Turks, but they had to hand over hegemony to the USA. There was no more Pax Britannica.

New Revals After Atatürk

After November 10, 1938, Turkey’s geopolitical slavery period began. In the software of this slavery period, there are still the Ottoman’s English and French-loving Tanzimatist, and both English and American mandate socio-genetic codes of the armistice period. The owner of the codes is the Anglo-Saxon chemistry led by Britain and then the USA. No one in the past, except Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, could disrupt this chemistry. Turkey has had a unique geographic heritage with the Turkish Straits at its center for 1000 years. When it combined this geography with national power, it was able to establish an empire, and when it weakened, it was invaded. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk saved it from the last invasion and disintegration, and established a new state. Although its military, economic, demographic and industrial national power was incomparably weaker than today, it not only secured its borders for 15 years, but also created a peace and security belt around Turkey thanks to the Balkan Entente and the Sadabad Pact, and was able to take back Hatay with the sovereignty of the Turkish Straits. 11 months after his death, Turkey abandoned its policy of neutrality and full independence, and signed a triple alliance agreement with England and France, who were at war with Germany, on October 19, 1939, shortly after the start of World War II. This agreement was signed by Turkiye. It built a wall of distrust between itself and the Soviets, its friends and allies during the War of Independence, and its consequences have turned into surrender to Anglo-Saxon imperialism that continues to this day.

In the final years of his illness, Atatürk told the Secretary General of the Presidency Hasan Rıza Soyak:

“The open, honest and peaceful policy we have followed so far has been very beneficial to the country. Our friends have gotten used to it. This policy will continue, except for real and vital necessities.”

However, this did not happen. Shortly before World War II, on May 12, 1939, a cooperation/aid agreement was signed first with England and then with France on May 23, 1939. Turkey wanted 60 million pounds from London, including 35 million pounds of military aid, 15 million pounds worth of gold bullion and 10 million pounds of trade credit. In the words of British Foreign Secretary Halifax, Turkey had put its neutrality up for sale. After this agreement, relations with the Soviet Union began to deteriorate and never recovered. The greatest evil of this agreement was to abandon the independent, non-aligned Kemalist foreign policy that had been implemented for 15 years and that had given confidence to all countries in the world, including our border neighbors. Now, as in the last periods of the Ottoman Empire, a process of reconnecting with the West had begun. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov of the period summarized that period as follows (Hazal Yalın, 1939, Nota Bene Publishing House 2022):

“Turkey has thrown aside its cautious neutrality policy and entered the European war zone. England and France are probably pleased that they are trying to drag Turkey into war. We will see in the future whether Turkey will regret it one day.”

Shortly before his death, Atatürk also said the following to Ali Fuat Cebesoy (İnönü, Metin Aydoğan, Gözgü Publishing, 2020):

“Fuat Pasha, the world situation will soon be more serious and chaotic than the years of the armistice… A few adventurers are forcibly at the helm of Germany and Italy in Europe. They are encouraged by the state of the weak statesmen they face. They will not hesitate to slander the world one day. Our old friend, the Russian Soviet government, will know how to take advantage of the wrong actions of the helpless and adventurous. As a result, the world’s situation and balance will change completely. If we do not know how to act correctly after this period and make the slightest mistake, it is possible that more disasters will happen to us than the years of the armistice.”

Despite remaining actively neutral throughout World War II, Ankara stood close to Germany when it won; and to the Anglo-Saxons when it lost. When the war ended, new Revals were waiting for it. Indeed, they accepted to be the US’s outpost in accordance with the Truman Doctrine. They sent troops to Korea without the approval of the Parliament for the benefit of the US and received the reward of this in 1952 as NATO membership. Later, they continued their proxy duty as required by the US’s rimland geopolitics. Israel was established under the auspices of the US and England in 1948. After this date, every geopolitical development in the Eastern Mediterranean resulted in accordance with the interests of the US and Israel. Turkey could not take any initiative to ensure its geopolitical interests in the Eastern Mediterranean except for the Cyprus Peace Operation in 1974. In every area of ​​problems with both the Greeks and the Greek Cypriots in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, we found our NATO allies against us. In every approach to the Soviets, there were military coups and government changes. First Kemalism, then Atatürk was rapidly distanced. Without achieving democratic maturity and institutionalization, separatist and religious divisions were allowed for petty calculations through ballot box democracy. 

Although the instrumentalization of religion in politics was prohibited by the constitution, the content of secularism was completely emptied by giving religious parties infinite flexibility. The Turkish supra-identity was rejected and ethnically separatist parties and movements were allowed. However, the Atatürk mask was used by all segments. Separatist propaganda was even carried out under Atatürk posters without shame or embarrassment. It took decades for NATO to even accept the PKK terrorist organization, which was a scourge to us, as a terrorist organization. Both military and economic support was provided to the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Northern Iraq after 1991 with our own hands. After 1980, all our assets were sold to the global bosses of the neoliberal capitalist economy under the name of privatization. Production and agriculture were distanced, and the middle class in Turkey, which was made dependent on hedge fund/hot money, was rapidly melted away. Those who used the state as a tool for personal enrichment increased rapidly. Physical well-being took precedence over spiritual well-being. Corruption, theft, irregularity, lack of qualification, ignorance, incompetence, mediocrity, and vulgarity were normalized.

Lessons for Today

Today’s Turkiye is undoubtedly very different from the Ottoman Empire of the Reval period. At least, we have not fought in the last 103 years after the Armistice of Mudanya. For those who know how to use it, Turkiye is an actor equipped with multidimensional (economic, military, cultural and political) interests, shaped by its strategic location, regional and global dynamics, and in a mixed relationship with both the West and other great powers, a state that has all the possibilities to follow a stylish balance strategy. However, we are still a country whose national power, especially its economy and social contract on the domestic front, is fragile. The Reval of 1908 was aimed at dividing our lands. Today’s Revals are aimed at weakening Turkey without actually occupying it and using Turkey for its own purposes in the great power struggle. If these processes are not controlled, their results may have extremely negative effects in terms of our geopolitics. Turkey has become a state whose financial cycle is extremely fragile as a result of the economic policies implemented after 1980. It has been put into a serious bottleneck after 2020. Financial weakness and dependence on hot money inflow make it difficult to implement independent foreign and security policies. For this reason, at a time when global balances are changing with the US shifting its new center of gravity from Europe to the Asia Pacific region, NATO is experiencing a serious loss of power, a multipolar world order has begun, in other words, when we have external conditions to switch to independent policies, Turkey is making geopolitical concessions due to financial pressures. 

The EU, which has tied its security to the US, is under serious recession threat due to the US’s newly implemented foreign trade taxes and is seeking to create a defense budget fund of nearly 1 trillion euros by burdening its people who are already suffering from economic difficulties under these conditions. Turkey, on the other hand, is whistling at the graveyard and pursuing to strengthen its ties with NATO and the EU, which are collapsing. It is against the spirit of dialectics for the government and the opposition to be of the same opinion in this process, but this is also the situation in our country. 

The Syrian state, which has always created a security zone and an obstacle between us and Israel, which is under the protection of the US and NATO, was destroyed with the great contribution of Ankara. We even cleared the mines on the Syrian border. Now we are neighbors with Israel, the most aggressive and lawless state in the world. It does not matter that we are NATO member against Israel. In any case, both NATO, the US and the EU are completely on Israel’s side under all circumstances and conditions. We know that a weak and puppet Syria has no power to stop Israel. The Syrian quagmire will continue to grow and cause us serious problems.

In this context, it is not possible to prevent the YPG/PYD terrorist groups from turning into an autonomous Kurdish state similar to Northern Iraq in the east of the Euphrates. While these are happening in Syria, as if the PKK is a different and independent entity from there, in Turkey, Turkishness is being forced into being Turkish in a conjuncture where the PKK founder is called the founding leader of the terrorist. While the genocide continues mercilessly in Gaza, Turkey allows the Kürecik Radar Base, which is one of the most important elements playing a role in Israel’s missile defense, to operate.

In today’s conditions where the US is now a proxy state of Israel and is waiting for an opportunity to attack Iran, it goes without saying that if an Iran-Israel/US war breaks out, the Kürecik Radar will be the first target to be destroyed by Iran. If Netanyahu, as always, convinces Trump and starts a US-Iran war to maintain his own power, Türkiye should stay out of this conflict in every way. Therefore, the continuation of the Kürecik Radar’s operation will cause serious headaches.

On the other hand, there is no response to the moves of Southern Cyprus and Greece against Turkey in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. After our sister state Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan cannot be prevented through diplomacy from opening an embassy in the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus, just as the anti-Turkish terrorist organization EOKA has been re-established. Silence is maintained regarding the Greek license granted to the American Chevron company within the Libyan EEZ in the southeast of Crete, which acts in a way that ignores the maritime delimitation agreement with Libya and Libya’s sovereignty over maritime jurisdiction areas. In this case, the Greek media can make a fuss that the Turkey-Libya agreement has been annulled. In the 5 years since November 2020, no seismic or drilling work has been carried out in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) has become an inaction that remains only a slogan. However, the Greek Cypriots continue to drill in areas numbered 5 and 6 adjacent to our continental shelf. While our own Blue Homeland is an orphan, we are protecting the Somali Blue Homeland with our seismic and warships in Somalia. 

It is not easy to understand why concessions are being made one after another in a conjuncture that is in our favor and very different from the 1908 Reval, where the US and its allies are irreversibly strained because of tariffs, where the US is demanding economic and sovereign rights from its closest allies, where it is losing credibility and reputation because of its support for Israel, where the EU is becoming more authoritarian and less democratic by the day, where the war between Trump’s MAGA nationalists and the London financial circles and their neocon partners is heating up by the day, where the trade war between China and the US is reaching its final stage, where China has reached a position where it can intervene or blockade Taiwan at any moment. The problem is that today, both direct practices and western foreign and security policy practices that are followed by not reacting to the moves against us will open the door to new Revals unless precautions are taken.The underlying truth behind the aggressive provocations of the Greeks and the Greek Cypriots and their going so far as to establish an alliance-based rapprochement with Israel is that Turkey is now weak. 

Unfortunately, the new period that started on March 19, 2025 (arrest of Istanbul mayor) in domestic politics has presented an environment of domestic front that foreign rivals and enemies were looking for but could not find. 

The Great Atatürk says:

What really matters is the domestic front. This front is the front formed by the entire nation. The foreign front is the armed front of the army against the enemy. This front may be defeated; but it can never destroy a country. It is the collapse of the domestic front that destroys the foundations of the country. 

The opposition should not focus only on domestic politics in a period when the world order is completely changing in geopolitical and economic dimensions, and should be able to produce new ideas and counter-arguments to all these extremely vital developments taking place around us. 

However, since the opposition, like the government, adopts Western policies, it prefers to follow the US, EU and NATO’s lead on the Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Cyprus, US intervention in Iran, the status of the Kürecik Radar, the future of NATO and the EU, and Turkiye’s new geopolitical and economic routes in the Asian century. 

I would like to remind both the government and the opposition with those of Atatürk’s words:

“We are not content with only protecting our own salvation and independence against Western imperialism. At the same time, we are preventing Western imperialists from using the Turkish nation as the goal of imperialism with all their power and means, and we believe that we are serving all of humanity in this way.”

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This article was originally published in Turkish on Mavi Vatan.

Ret Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Writer, Geopolitical Expert, Theorist and creator of the Turkish Bluehomeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine. He served as the Chief of Strategy Department and then the head of Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters. As his combat duties, he has served as the commander of Amphibious Ships Group and Mine Fleet between 2007 and 2009. He retired in 2012. He established Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021. He has published numerous books on geopolitics, maritime strategy, maritime history and maritime culture. He is also a honorary member of ATASAM.  

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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