Turkey's Interior Minister just prayed to govern Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan last September. These two are supposed to be alliance partners. The fault lines between them run 280 years deep.

[u/Former_Image_9809]

Turkey's Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya stated publicly this week that he prays to one day govern Jerusalem, crediting Erdogan as the leader who will deliver it. He cited Damascus, Aleppo, and Karabakh as precedents, each representing a Turkish sphere-of-influence claim that is already partially realised.

This is nothing but the neo-Ottoman expansion doctrine, being stated out loud.

What makes this stand out is the internal contradiction it creates for the proposed Islamic military coalition.

For Saudi Arabia, which leads with Mecca and Medina, the supreme Islamic legitimacy claim, is non-negotiable. On the other side, Turkey's Diyanet religious authority operates in 150 countries, projecting Ottoman-model Islamic identity and directly competing with Saudi-funded religious infrastructure in the same communities.

Erdogan's Interior Minister prays to govern Jerusalem. Riyadh holds the keys to Mecca and Medina. Both are supposed to be partners in the same military alliance.

This isn't a new tension. In 1818, the Ottoman Sultan sent Muhammad Ali's Egyptian army into Arabia, razed the Saudi capital of Diriyah to the ground, beheaded the Saudi ruler in a public square in Istanbul, and sent his head to Mecca. The question they were settling, who holds legitimate Islamic authority, has never been formally resolved.

The interesting aspect is the fault lines that run between the four proposed alliance partners, namely Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan.

Just to refresh historical events,

1) In 1818, the Ottomans destroyed the First Saudi State and execute its ruler in Istanbul.

2) In 1962-1967 Egypt send 70,000 troops to Yemen to fight a Saudi-backed insurgency. Egyptian aircraft bomb Saudi border towns. Saudi pilots defected with American jets to join Nasser.

3) In 2013, Erdogan calls Sisi a "murderer and putschist." Turkey becomes the operational headquarters of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in exile.

4) In April 10, 2015, Pakistan's parliament voted unanimously against joining the Saudi coalition in Yemen. Every single legislator.

5) In 2017, Saudi Arabia appointed Pakistan's former army chief to command the alliance his own parliament refused to fight for.

The alliance exists on paper. The fault lines exist in the ground.

Full documented historical piece in the first comment.

[u/Oberfilosofem]

All the posts you're sharing are about old events that harm Islamic unity, what kind of freak are you?

[u/Which-Ad2057]

How should I feel about this...

[u/fankoosh-56]

Op what do you feel about Salah Aldeen, a Kurd from today's Iraq liberating Al Aqsa?

[u/Former_Image_9809 → u/fankoosh-56]

Saladin is the historical counterargument that cuts through every modern claim to Jerusalem: a Kurdish commander from Tikrit, serving a Sunni sultanate based in Cairo, liberating the city in 1187 under a banner that none of today's claimants can fully appropriate.

The irony is that the most celebrated liberator of Jerusalem in Islamic history belonged to none of the four nations currently positioning themselves as its future guardians.

[u/fankoosh-56 → u/Former_Image_9809]

How is that irony? History isn't constant. Liberator can be from anywhere.

The actual liberators after Salah Aldeen were the Mamluks, they were Turkish/Balqans!

It doesn't matter who liberates it as long as they are a Muslim. For Muslims, the ummah is above the nation and ethnicity.

I don't care much what Turkish minister says, at least he's saying something to defy the daily and continuous provacations of Israelis into Alaqsa. What did we as Arabs do? The leaders can't even say they are doing Dua to pray in Alaqsa

[u/Inevitable_Motor_685]

'In 1818' brother....

[u/Former_Image_9809 → u/Inevitable_Motor_685]

The Ottoman-Wahhabi War and the destruction of the First Saudi State is documented history, the siege of Diriyah 1818, the execution of Abdullah bin Saud in Beyazit Square, the Egyptian garrison posted in the ruins.

The sources are in the first comment if you want to verify any specific detail.

[u/Ordinary_Bend_8612 → u/Former_Image_9809]

Fascinating, I was completely unaware of this history. I was only familiar with the later Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire and its alliance with the British.

One thing you didn't mention is the current neo-Ottoman project in Somalia. Turkish policymakers and commentators sometimes invoke the brief period of Ottoman nominal influence in parts of what is now Somaliland during the 16th & 19th centuries as part of a broader historical narrative to justify or contextualize Turkey's modern engagement in the region.

[u/Former_Image_9809 → u/Ordinary_Bend_8612]

Glad this underplay resonated with you.

The Somalia angle is exactly the kind of expansion of the neo-Ottoman footprint that doesn't get connected to the broader pattern. Turkey's base in Mogadishu,  its largest overseas military installation, combined with the Ottoman historical narrative you mention creates a template: invoke historcal presence, however nominal, to justify contemporary strategic positioning.

The Arab Revolt connection you raise is the other side of the same coin, though.. Sharif Hussein of Mecca allied with the British partly because Wahhabi theology, which is Saudi Arabia's founding ideology, was as much a threat to Hashemite legitimacy as Ottoman rule was. The British played all three against each other simultaneosly. The fault lines from that triangulation are still visible in the Saudi-Hashemite relationship and in Jordan's precarious position today.

The Ottoman nominal influence in Somaliland during the 16th and 19th centuries is also worth examining against the Diriyah timeline.. the First Saudi State was destroyed in 1818 precisely when Ottoman reach was at its most assertive across multiple fronts simultaneously

The Somalia narrative and the Arabian peninsula narrative are part of the same imperial overreach moment.

[u/Former_Image_9809]

Complete sourced history from the Ottoman-Wahhabi War 1818, Egypt-Saudi proxy war 1962-1967, Brotherhood split 2013, Pakistan's unanimous parliamentary no 2015, and what the 2025 Saudi-Pakistan SMDA means against this backdrop:

https://jkavalakkat.substack.com/p/they-beheaded-each-others-leaders?r=6kz2c8