Imperial Cycle and the Augustus Threshold

In 31 BC, on the western coast of Greece, Roman Emperor Octavianus defeated the army of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra, who were attempting to establish an Eastern Empire in Egypt. Subsequently, he assumed the title of Augustus (sublime) as the sole authority in Rome. He restructured the Roman Republic through military, financial, political, and social reforms, and Rome was transformed into a great empire.

In his book Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Turkish translation, İmparatorluklar: Eski Roma’dan ABD’ye Dünya Egemenliğinin Mantığı, İletişim Yayınları, 2008), German-born American writer Herfried Münkler discusses this transformation in Rome around the concept of the ‘Augustus Threshold.’ This is the critical threshold at which the Republic, after defeating its enemies, directs all its energy toward internal reforms, completes the stage of consolidation, and transforms into an empire.

Münkler states that throughout history, many empires stuck at this stage and, failing to cross the threshold, collapsed after a brief period of brilliance.

Discussing concepts such as imperial power, imperialism, empire, hegemony, and leadership within the framework of the policies pursued by the United States after September 11, and alongside historical and contemporary examples, the author implicitly argues that the United States is at the ‘Augustus Threshold’ and is an imperial hegemonic power whose ability to live as long as Rome has not yet been determined.

Another important concept in the book is the ‘imperial cycle.’ With this concept, which refers to the ability of long-lasting empires to renew themselves and rise once again to an imperial level by making use of changing conditions despite temporary periods of decline, the author examines different historical periods of the Spanish, Ottoman, Russian, and British empires.

The Augustus Threshold is the transformation of state power into a global authority. The imperial cycle, on the other hand, means that a great state is reborn from its ashes by relying on the dynamics that will enable it to maintain its continuity even at its weakest moment.

The Battle of Actium is a turning point in ancient history. Just as Eastern Rome transferred the imperial legacy to the Ottoman Empire with the conquest of Istanbul, the ancient Egyptian empire also transferred its legacy to the new Rome through this battle. Throughout history, great empires have transferred their imperial legacies to new powers through such great and critical wars.

Greek (or rather Ionia, since Yunan is merely the Western pronunciation of Ion-Ioannes, signifies Oannes (Jonah) or Prophet Yunus (pbuh)), city-states were colonies of Ancient Egypt (and Egypt/Mısır, in turn, is a continuation of BniAsur/Asuroğulları*(that is, the Sons of Asur)) and along with Crete, the Roman province, and the banks of the Danube, were the places where the elites who had fled Egypt due to the Persian invasion in the 6th century BC regrouped. Thus emerged city-states that were presented on the stage of history as distinct centers of civilization, yet were in fact new forms of Ancient Egypt. Indeed, Alexander the Great and his army, who set out on the Eastern Campaign in the 4th century BC, were in fact the army of Ancient Egypt, organized to put an end to the Persian invasion. Alexander was from Jerusalem, Megiddo. He went to Egypt, assembled an army, and then, beginning with western Anatolia and the Balkans, which he crossed by sea, eliminated the remnants of the Persians and drove all the Aryan invaders out of the region as far as India through Syria and Iraq. The history of the Middle East is the history of the wars between India/Iran (Persian/Sasanian) and Assyria/Egypt (and later Ion/Rome).

After Alexander, Egypt itself emerged from this process having suffered serious devastation and lost its status as the center of the empire. Thus, the Battle of Actium, fought in 31 BC, brought about the failure of the final attempt to establish an Egypt-centered empire, embodied in the relationship between the Roman commander Antonius and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Thus, the transfer of power was completed, and the new center of the regional empire became the Roman town, beyond the reach of the Persian powers. In this sense, the Roman Empire is a continuation of Egypt. The Battle of Actium was a conflict fought either to shift the center within the same imperium or to compel a powerful alternative to submit to the center following its defeat. The defeat of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s Egypt against the Ottoman Empire was also the Ottoman Empire’s Battle of Actium.

This historical development, while giving us critical conclusions about the rise and fall of great powers, also provides an important indication concerning the emergence of new powers. Every new power can emerge only and exclusively by eliminating another hegemonic power in its region. There cannot be two or more equal hegemons in the same region at the same time. Therefore, in the final analysis, the logic of both regional and global domination operates through a competition for power and a multidimensional war.

Coming to the present, of course it is important to analyze US hegemony together with these historical experiences. The American War of Independence against the British is an Actium war. American hegemony is now oscillating between renewing itself and collapse. Particularly regarding the fate of this enormous power, the Roman experience provides very important clues. US analysts, more than those of other Western powers, frequently resort to historical, political, or military analogies between the United States and Rome.

But for now, leaving global domination and the United States aside, we should examine our own region in the light of this historical accumulation. Without knowing the political history of the Mesopotamia-Mediterranean Basin, the birthplace of states, religions, and empires, it is impossible to make a correct analysis of the present and the future. Every assessment made without considering what is happening in conjunction with the rhythmic cycle of history and the necessities of geography will be incomplete. Of course, history is rewritten every day, and every new development is in itself a situation without precedent, with its own conditions and content. However, history and geography help us understand the possibilities and limits of this new situation. They also shed light on our path forward as an enormous laboratory of experience.

Türkiye, as an imperial heir, will sooner or later grow again. Its political and geographical position today is the product of a process of an imperial cycle. The period of interregnum entered after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire will inevitably come to an end, and a new imperial period will begin. This prediction is based on the potentials of the historical and geographical rhythm. However, what follows, that is, when, how, at which center, and in what form a new imperial cycle will begin, will be determined by the willpowers and actions that exist today.

The Republic of Türkiye is one of the foremost candidates for regional hegemony. Its geopolitical and geocultural dynamics currently stand as a potential possibility. Every regional development that has occurred and will occur today and from now on, should primarily be evaluated within the movement of this objective reality. Türkiye’s historical and geographical hegemonic identity, up to this point, is not a choice but a necessity. In other words, missions such as neo-Ottomanism, which are assumed to have been offered or imposed on Türkiye, are not the special invention of those offering them, but attempts to manipulate the potential they have recognized. However, there is not yet any determination or orientation belonging to Türkiye itself on this matter. At this juncture, the objections raised regarding the new era by the agents of the old world order in Türkiye whether labeled Ulusalcılık, Ergenekon, or by any other name, appear aimed at preserving their own privileges; ultimately, independent of these specific factions, they serve as a bargaining chip for Türkiye while acting as a hindrance for the great powers.

The same equation applies to Israel, whose mission in the region is that of a plantation and adjustment center of the great powers. The forces currently in power in Israel are also resisting, out of concern that they might lose their regional mission to Türkiye in this new era, the contours of which still appear vague. Their resistance is also a kind of bargaining chip. In this context, fierce conflict, struggle, and competition are taking place both within the great powers (which we may refer to as the US-British coalition) and within the states of Türkiye and Israel. The new Actium war expresses Israel’s positioning against Türkiye as the representative power of Western hegemony.

The revival process that Türkiye entered after 2002 gives signs of activating the potential imperial-cycle dynamic through the presence of cadres more in harmony with historical and geographical dynamics. Meanwhile, forces in Israel favoring the old order have mobilized against this; however, they appear intent on perpetuating, both within Israel and at the regional level, the hegemony they failed to sustain in Türkiye.

In this context, there exists a shared and parallel position between the old order personnel in Türkiye-referred to here by the code name Ergenekon to ensure clarity, while setting aside its actual name, the peculiar legal errors in its substance, and the flaws in the exaggerated rhetoric surrounding its presentation-and the ruling power in Israel, as well as those forces within the US and UK described as Neo-Cons, though their actual scope is far deeper and broader. In Türkiye, every attempt by the government at innovation is sabotaged, while in Israel support is provided for these acts of sabotage in Türkiye, and thus they take their place in the conflictual equation of the process.

The process initiated by the Arab Spring has created a new opportunity, both to settle the score regarding the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and for the Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab peoples to jointly shape a new Middle East. In particular, the Syrian revolution signifies the elimination of Arab nationalism and the re-establishment of the unity of these peoples, including Iraq, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia, together with Türkiye, on a newly emerging basis. In this context, a Türkiye that wins the new Battles of Actium and crosses the Augustus Threshold will have signaled the return of the Islamic ummah to the stage of the twenty-first century once again and with dignity.

But the following words of the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu should be kept in mind;

“The intelligent win without fighting, while the foolish fight in order to win. But if war is inevitable, the only thing to do for victory is to manage the war well.”

“If you cannot be strong and you cannot be weak either, the end of this is defeat.”

* The term BniAsur/Asuroğulları, because of the concept of Israel found in Torah texts, which were written in the 2nd-3rd centuries CE and revised in the 10th–11th centuries, was likened to the concept of Asurel in the Holy Qur’an; consequently, it came to be used as a synonym for Israel. There is no word, country, or people called Israel, Jewish in history. This word, which is a complete lie and fabrication from beginning to end, is actually a concept related to Ezra, the scribe of the Torah. Just as in the use of names such as Abdullah-Hamdullah today, the suffix il-el, which referred to divinity in Aramaic-Old Syriac, was added to names and used.

The concept of Jewish Israel actually refers to Ezrael, known as Uzayr in the Qur’an, who, in the 5th century BC, brought tribes originating from the Indian subcontinent (now referred to as Jews) to the region and placed them in the service of the Achaemenid Persian King Cyrus. (That is, Cyrus’s Ezrael, the Achaemenid king’s Ezrael, is today’s Iranian king Akhameniy’s Middle Eastern killer Qasem Soleimani.) Following the rise and strengthening of Islam, particularly through the efforts of historians and exegetes of Iranian Jewish origin, the term Asurel, like many other Qur’anic concepts, came to be interpreted as Israel in a manner consistent with the Torah; consequently, the Qur’an was interpreted almost as if it were a new book of Ezrael. The history of the Assyrian-Egyptian empires, the first great empires in history, established by figures such as Abraham, Jacob, and Moses (pbut), is a history of struggle against Indo-Aryan tribes; indeed, the Qur’anic narratives concerning the Bni Asurel/Asureloğulları (Sons of Asurel) specifically the stories of Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jonah (pbut) recount the rise of these Assyrian-Egyptian empires and their subsequent collapse following Iranian invasions. David-Thothmoses and Süleyman-Shalmaneser, on the other hand, describe the Assyrian Empire’s re-emergence on the historical stage in the 9th century. The Second Assyria was again destroyed by the Persian invasion in the 6th century BC. The place that the Jews claim in Jerusalem to have been Süleyman’s Temple is the palace of King Herod, who followed a policy of balance between the Iranians and Romans in the 1st century BC but remained close to Iran and brutally killed John the Baptist. It has nothing to do with Salmaneser-Süleyman (pbuh). These historical events, which took place between the 12th and 6th centuries BC, occurred along the Iraq-Anatolia-Syria-Palestine-Egypt line. Moses (pbuh) did not emerge from present-day Egypt; he came out from the Iraq-Mosul region and migrated toward Palestine-Egypt, where he ascended the throne as Ramusa-Ramses, and then returned and fought the Indian-Iranian forces, that is, the army of the Iranian king Fereydun-Pharaoh, at Kadesh-Jerusalem. The war known in history as Kadesh, or as the Trojan War in Homeric epics, actually took place in the 12th century BC along the Troy/today’s Lebanon-Tripoli–Jerusalem/Illios-Acre line. (The Trojan legend at Çanakkale/Dardanelle was fabricated in the 19th century by a German thief-archaeologist named Schelmann.)

Seven hundred years after these events, in the 5th century BC, the Dravidians, who had been brought into the region as invaders by the Persians from the Yehudiye regions of India, were later identified with the words Jewish-Hebrew. There is absolutely no connection between these scattered semi-Gypsy, semi-merchant tribes and the Abraham-Moses Hanif tradition, that is, the Assyrian Empire. What is termed as Judaism is a fabricated identity that invented incrementally during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE and based on a historiography that was continuously updated retroactively, wherein its adherents traced their lineage back to Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon in order to establish a foothold in the region. The Jews distorted the original Mosaic-Hanif tradition by putting into writing a false religious history based on the Zoroastrian Magi-Mog-Mullah tradition of their former Iranian masters and developed a religious-ethnic identity. Modern Zionist Judaism, including Hebrew, which was an invention of the 19th century, is an entirely fabricated identity.

In the 20th century, Westerners once again brought this useful group back to the Middle East-having whipped them into shape-and, by inciting them with fabricated evangelical apocalyptic theology, established a plantation in the region that serves Western interests; now, just as in the past, they are attempting to legitimize their occupation through a false theological construct in order to maintain their foothold in the region. Ignorant and foolish Muslim scholars-theologians, meanwhile, accept these Aryan-fabricated Jewish narratives as if they were real and continue to use concepts such as the Children of Israel, Judaism, Israel, etc. in the Jewish terminology, while continuing to use the expressions in the Qur’an without questioning them in accordance with this usage. With this ignorance, they continue to understand and interpret Islam almost as if it were a Jewish sect.

Just as in today’s world order the explanation of events is presented through an American-Israeli façade while Britain is concealed, in ancient history as well, a false historical narrative centered on Egypt-Greece-Rome prevails while the Indo-Aryan powers are concealed. The Iranian Magus-Mog-Mullah-Kahan-Rabbi religious tradition is still used to narrate both everyday and political history in a censored and distorted manner.

Sovereignty means not only political-economic superiority, but also determining the narrative of history and religion. Türkiye should aim, beyond winning the new Actium war and crossing the Augustus Threshold, to rewrite both historical and religious narratives and become the center of the true history and the truth of faith against Judeo-Aryan lies.

Note: This article was published on the haber10.com website in 2012 and was subsequently added to the author’s book Teolojinin Jeopolitiği.