Muslim Rome; Devlet-i Âliyye (the Sublime State) and the Symphonic Nationhood

The existing nation-states can continue to exist, and new ones can be established, but they are the necessary cornerstones for building the future. What will build the future is the great goal of Muslim Rome, the Sublime State (Devlet-i Âliyye), as a civilization of humanity to be revitalized by the symphonic nation. The essence and inner stronghold of this civilization is the Republic of Türkiye. The geographical framework of this grand structure spans the Mesopotamia-Mediterranean basin, yet it has no fixed borders. It has many flags, but its common flag bears the red crescent and star. Its religion is Justice, its nation is the Nation of Abraham (pbuh), its heartland is Anatolia, its capital is Ankara, and its imperial seat is Dār al-Salām, that is, Istanbul. At its entrance, it reads: “Welcome to the Devlet-i Âliyye-Protector of the oppressed.”

In the carriages of the past you can’t go anywhere.

Maxim Gorky

Cemal Süreya describes Ziya Gökalp as a “thinker who is restorative when looking back but gazes into the future with empty eyes.” As Türkiye continues the transformation of its old institutional order through democratic processes, many political and intellectual figures in the country, much like the refined definition above, seem to have no vision or imagination for the future.

The old institutional order was a system that sought to survive the day by denying the past and embracing the uncertainty of the future. And the minds that still cannot break free from this past do not know how to talk about tomorrow. However, “the Day” has already been salvaged—meaning that a century has passed since the great collapse—and now is the time to look toward the future.

The Essence of the Process: Normalization

The democratization process, which also includes resolving the Kurdish issue, will ultimately restore the nation’s self-confidence in looking toward the future once again. This is, in the truest sense, a process of normalization. Changing the abnormal, that is, the old Türkiye’s domestic and foreign policy based on fears and privileges, and institutionalizing an egalitarian democratic order that includes the strengthening of the people (millet: nationhood) in every sense should be the ultimate goal of the process.

Keeping in mind that this transformation will bear fruit at least one generation later, it is necessary to try to overcome the current period with the least damage, the least conflict, the least tension and, most importantly, the fewest mistakes. Because the truly significant and vital work lies ahead. The ongoing process, while the groundwork is being cleared and the state is being fully appropriated by the people (millet: nationhood), will be reinforced by further strengthening all elements of the people, channeling its accumulated energy into the right paths without waste, and solidifying the founding willpower of a more just and free order through the lessons learned from both good and bad experiences of the past.

The Social ‘Energy’ of the Middle East

If we categorize the ancient communities of the Islamic world based on ethnic terms, the Turks, Arabs, and Iranians are struggling under imperialist encirclement in a low-intensity battle for survival. Meanwhile, younger and more dynamic communities within the Ummah of Islam, such as the Circassians, Kurds, Albanians, Palestinians, and Pashtuns are emerging as new energy sources, striving for a more prominent role on the historical stage. However, because the necessary conditions for organizing under a broader, unified framework have not yet materialized, these energetic peoples have latched onto nationalism as the first available language, discourse, and mode of organization. Because these peoples were not left under the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, that is, they experienced this destruction indirectly, did not feel the effects of the collapse completely, and therefore preserved some actionable energy on behalf of the Ummah of Islam, but felt under an existential threat throughout the 20th century and turned to an extra effort to survive. As a result, instead of engaging in a grand reckoning with the West on behalf of the Ummah of Islam, they often turn toward localized and, at times, self-consuming actions—sometimes even placing their survival struggles above all else. Yet, history shows that no community has ever taken the stage solely by its own decision and willpower. The destinies of many peoples (nations in western sense) and states throughout the 20th century were shaped by figures such as Stalin, Churchill, and Wilson.

To end the post-Ottoman trauma that has afflicted the Islamic world—particularly the Mesopotamian-Mediterranean basin—and to unite all ancient regional peoples around a shared destiny for the future, a grand overarching structure is necessary. In order to prevent the region’s future from being dictated by the strategic games of major powers, the construction of a major power within the region itself is inevitable. In this context, the unification of Türkiye, the Arab world, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Africa, and Central Asia under a great and historical common willpower is the most crucial safeguard for our future. Only such a willpower can channel the social energies of all peoples into a higher project—rather than suppressing their aspirations for existence, it can guide them in the right direction through a policy of encouragement. The willpower that will fulfill this task must look back at its own existence in history.

The period known as the Seljuk era in history represents the organization of Turkish energy, discovered by the deep Islamic intellect through the Abbasid elite, in the name of the Ummah of Islam. The internal struggles of the Turkish tribes to carve out a place in history generated a dynamic of survival and conquest, which was channeled into the foundation of a great empire through the pathways created by Arab intellect.

When the Turks first arrived in the region, their nomadic identity led to their being scorned as barbarians-mamalukes by various local but decayed noble classes and they were seen as a trouble by all the Persian, Arab and Byzantine ruling classes. However, the Abbasid Caliphate, with great foresight and vision, chose not to exclude or humiliate the Turks but instead honored them and provided them with a place suited to their abilities and thus, under the shared willpower of Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and Kurds, the Seljuks saved the Islamic world from the brink of destruction.

Similarly, the Kayı Turkish tribe, the founding element of the Ottoman Empire, rapidly gained strength thanks to the credit extended by both the average Anatolian Muslim and Christian middle classes, who were disturbed by the chaotic environment in Anatolia during the interregnum, and the native Orthodox Byzantine nobility, who had become captive to the corrupt presence of the Catholic Latin remnants following the Latin invasion between 1204 and 1270. Thus, the Ottomans emerged both as noble warriors who liberated Orthodox Greeks from the oppression of the Latinized Byzantine lords in western Anatolia and as the Muslim force that wielded the Islamic sword against infidels instead of fighting fellow Turkish Municipalities.

The rapid rise of the Ottomans—much like the Seljuks before them—was made possible because an existing socio-political intelligence paved the way, creating conditions that channeled their energy into a positive direction. In this sense, the Eastern Roman Empire evolved into the Muslim Roman Empire.

The elite of the Muslim/Turkish Rome—later known as the Ottoman Empire (Devlet-i Âliyye-the Sublime State)—ensured the inclusion of Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians, and Arabs as integral partners in the empire during the reigns of Mehmed the Conqueror, Selim the Just, and Suleiman the Magnificent. Similarly, Crimean Tatars, Serbs, and Bulgarians experienced their most free and advanced periods in their own history under Ottoman rule.

In this context, during the 20th century—which can be considered a new interregnum and, in this sense, is still ongoing—communities that represent the still-vibrant energy of the Islamic Ummah and Eastern Rome should be evaluated with a long-term vision, regardless of their ethnic and ideological identities that push them onto the stage of history, just as was done in the 11th-15th and 17th centuries and the ways must be sought for this energy to assume a positive historical role on behalf of the entire Roman world.

In this sense, it is essential to approach the Kurdish phenomenon with a historical perspective and an integrative willpower, not from the narrow-minded and eliminationist approach of the established order or with the empty discourse of brotherhood.

The Essence of the Problem: Fake States

As is well known, the Eastern Roman–Byzantine order was built upon the balance between Armenian and Greek populations in Anatolia and balance between Bulgarians and Serbs in the Balkans. After the conquest of Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire preserved this balance while simultaneously creating an additional equilibrium among Muslim populations. The Ottomans positioned the Turkmen tribes and Kurds in Anatolia in a way that balanced the Armenians and Greeks, while in the Balkans, they established Turks resettled from Karaman, Albanians, and Bosniaks as the geocultural pillars of their new order, balancing the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs. In total, this policy of balance meant an internal fortification against Iran in the east and the Vatican-Catholic world in the west.

Byzantium lost its dominance in Anatolia due to the division and conflicts between Armenians and Greeks. In its later years, the Ottoman Empire lost control of Armenians and Greeks to Western powers, and in response, it sought to maintain the balance in Anatolia by using Kurdish and Circassian tribes, particularly against the Armenians in the east. In the west, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians and Albanians were caught up in the black spring of nationalism, rebelled against their own state and were divided into small tribal principalities that they thought were their own states.

Despite all the fake states established in our region by the victorious powers after World War I, Türkiye was built upon the new demographics and balance in Anatolia.

The Republic, in a desperate bid for survival, relied on the Kurdish-Turkmen demographic in Anatolia—the last remaining homeland. However, European-invented ethnic identities and narrow nationalist perspectives, supposedly meant to “recreate a nation,” ended up destroying the ancient tradition of nationhood (millet) and injected the poison of nationalism into our peoples. As a result, in a manner that confirms Eric Hobsbawm’s assertion that “nationalism requires an excessive belief in something that is clearly not real,” Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Albanian, and Circassian identities were redefined on a nationalist basis and pitted against each other. Beyond their actual content, even the modern definitions of these ethnic labels were Western inventions.

Consequently, the era of modern principalities had begun and we became besieged, divided, diminished and fighting each other on behalf of the West by states, politics, identities, races, ethnicities, and ideologies that do not align with our geography, history, beliefs, or traditions. Just like the disintegration of Eastern Rome after the Latin Crusade invasion in 1204 and its alienation from itself through Latinization, Latinization invaded our region again in the name of Westernization from the 1920s onwards.

The victors of World War I, while seizing Mosul and Kirkuk, divided the Kurds into four parts and presented them as a bargaining chip against the new Türkiye, causing the republican elites to project their fears of division and collapse—like a conditioned reflex—onto the Kurds. The Western powers, having made Türkiye governable through this fear, now had an easy task: they pretended to incite Kurdish nationalism to provoke the state while simultaneously provoking the state against the Kurds, thereby ensuring the state and the Kurds remained under control.

The Republic could not establish a correct and positive relationship with the Kurds. Both the religious policy and the Alevism policy were essentially the result of a concern for division that saw the Kurds as a threat, or more precisely, a residue from Armenian separatism. In the background of this perspective lay the idea that the Armenian deportation would somehow be avenged through the Kurds, as well as the instinctive calculations that distancing themselves from the Kurds would prevent a potential attack on Turkishness and that Iran could manipulate the Kurds against Türkiye.

For this reason, the institutional order of the Republic spent its entire existence attempting to “reconquer” and “dominate” Anatolia. It directed all its military-political and cultural power toward the effort to destroy the East, where the Kurds centered, and thus rural religiosity, as well as the language and culture of the Kurds, whom it viewed as the “other.” Borrowing from the West’s Orientalist perspective on the Islamic world, it created its own version of the “Eastern Question.”

The process, which started with the effort to become a nationalistic nation in line with the new regime in Anatolia, where they took shelter after the Ottoman Empire, enabled an official policy that sabotaged nationhood (millet) from the root, to become accustomed to, become entrenched and calcify with this effort itself.

When viewed in this context, the old state’s Kurdish policy was essentially nothing more than the ethnic expression of its broader eliminationist approach to nationhood and religion. The Republic, aiming to reshape the nation, perhaps out of security concerns or as a way to overcome backwardness, attempted to Westernize the nationhood and while doing this, it sought to homogenize the nationhood’s symphonic-pluralistic ethnic structure on a cultural basis—naturally, by damaging and reshaping Turkishness into a Ladino-Turkish (Irreligious Turkishness) identity—and to reform its religious character in a way that would neither threaten the West nor hinder the Westernization policy—secularizing it.

The result was a system of rule that had no real connection to its people: a nationalism that did not rely on the nation, a republicanism that did not trust the republic’s citizens, a “People’s Party” that was detached from the people, and a state perpetually governed by fear of its own future.

The Essence of the Solution: The Muslim Rome, the Devlet-i Aliyye (the Sublime State) as Great Overarching Structure

It is essential not to forget the core of the problem: without transforming the fake states imposed on our peoples as self-colonizing systems dependent on the West after the Ottoman era, no new steps can be taken.

It should not be forgotten that the main dynamic that unites the nation is not ethnic, religious or sectarian identities, but a just and common state (Devlet-i Aliyye-the Sublime State). A general, inclusive and fair state perception aimed at transforming the state, which was torn from its essence and given hostage to the West, into the property of the nation again, is the first step to be taken for the solution of all problems.

The Kurdish issue, too, will be resolved through the elimination of the effects of the Western powers that have incited it, along with their local colonial collaborators, as part of the reconstruction of this deeply rooted state.

Instead of getting caught up in debates over Turkishness, Kurdishness, nation, and nationalism, we must focus on a discussion of what constitutes a real state. Because the true, historical state of this region has no race, sect, or ideology—its defining principles are only freedom, law, and justice. The Muslim Rome (Devlet-i Âliyye) is the womb of the entire region and, it is name of the state of liberty and justice.

In this sense, discussing justice, the rule of law, freedoms and the morality of being human is much better than conflicting over social identity concepts such as Turkishness, Kurdishness, Arabness, Alevism and Sunnism. For a true state that will stand guard over justice will, at the same time, be both Greater Türkiye and Kurdistan, as well as Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Circassia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Armenia, Bosnia… and thus will enable us to return all the fake states of Wilson, Stalin, and Churchill back to them. The parenthesis of the Eastern issue of our homeland, which started with the Navarino disaster, continued with the Balkan tragedy, was decided at the Reval meeting, and whose borders were finally drawn with the Sykes-Picot agreement, can only be closed with a broad, comprehensive look at the entire current picture.

Symphonic Nationhood (Millet)

The justice is the social root of the state’s perception, the symphonic consciousness of the nationhood. The perception of a polyphonic, symphonic nationhood worthy of our multicultural societies and a supreme state framework to manage it is the mother of all solutions. The belief that homogenizing society by adding ethnic prefixes and suffixes to the concept of “millet” (the people) would ensure unity and harmony led to the 20th century being marked by low-intensity civil wars, the deaths of tens of thousands of our people, and the experience of countless pains, oppressions, massacres, and traumas. The fact that the incorrigible ignorance, which still presents the same reason as a solution as if all happened had never happened, and which still tries to hold a multi-ethnic society together with ethnic concepts, presents itself as patriotic or nationalistic has become so tiresome that it is not even worth discussing anymore. While the concept of the nationalistic nation in western sense (ulus), as a political formula of the 19th and 20th centuries that dismantled agrarian-military empires, has now exhausted itself and while the regional integrations, transnational unions, and even global citizenship theories are being discussed in both the East and the West, and while every newborn child enters a world shaped by these realities, continuing to discuss the future while stubbornly clinging to the vehicles of the past is meaningless.

This reflex, which perceives every new formula, idea, project, or proposal as an attack on Turkishness (or Kurdishness), assumes that Turkishness (or Kurdishness) is an immutable constant, doomed to revolve in an endless vicious cycle. However, nothing in existence is immortal unless it renews itself—this applies to societies and states as well.

The concept of the nation-state, as the political structure of the 20th century, will of course continue to exist for some time as a reality, and today no one has the power to eliminate it swiftly. These political entities evolve, transform, and, if they become obsolete, disappear within the eco-political processes of history. Debating this is futile. However, realities such as coexistence, the recognition of differences, diversity within unity, the preservation and integration of languages and cultures, and the transformation of ethnogenesis into a component of a shared whole also exist. This is what constitutes nationhood (millet: diversities within unity). Nation-building becomes problematic when it contradicts the reality of the nationhood (millet). Türkiye’s society has successfully completed its process of becoming a millet (nationhood: diversities within unity) but has yet to complete its process of becoming a nationalistic nation (ulus) in western sense. The root of the issue lies in the state’s attempt to forcefully turn the nationhood into a nationalistic nation.

Any discussion that fails to distinguish between nationhood and nationalistic nation in western sense, is incomplete, flawed, and open to misinterpretation. The Turkish nation is an official formulation compatible with the international system, and if desired, it can exist either as a homogenizing, uniform entity or, as in many other countries, in a more flexible, pluralistic, and non-homogeneous form of integration. Due to well-known concerns, the Republic of Türkiye sought unity and cohesion through homogenization, suppressing Kurdish identity and promoting Turkification. Ultimately, a nationalistic nation in western sense is a formal, administrative, and state-centered nation-building process. But nationhood (millet) is the name of a historical, cultural and religious composition and is a deeper womb that can exist despite the state. The effort to unify Kurds and other ethnic groups under the concept of “Turkishness” may have created a forced sense of unity, but it has failed to establish true order and stability. The concept of nationhood (millet), unlike the nationalistic nation in western sense (ulus), is not defined by the state or an ethnic identity but by Islam, which transcends ethnic, sectarian, and ideological divisions. The millet, that is, nationhood of Islam has no race, ethnicity, or sect—its only defining characteristic is Islam itself. For this reason, all forms of nationalist extremism—whether Turkish, Kurdish, secular, leftist, or sectarian—are inherently Islamophobic. These elements, which are remnants of Western colonialism, harbor deep-seated hostility toward Islam because it has prevented their intended project of self-colonization from fully materializing. Many of these elements have become alienated not only from Islam, but also from this land and history, without even being aware of these functions. They have become alienated not only from Islam but also from these lands and their history. Just as they fail to grasp the essence of Islam, they also fail to understand the essence of millet (the nationhood). This tragic alienation is a separate topic in itself.

Türkiye is the center of the homogenous synthesis of the millet (the nationhood) of Islam. In the final analysis, the Turkish nation, the Turkish state, and the Turkish army are the official framework for all national components—whether Kurdish, Arab, Circassian, Georgian, Albanian, etc.—that is, the Islamic nation in Anatolia. Even this established nationalistic nationality in western sense, owes its entire existence, survival and existence to the historical existence of this Islamic nationhood. Whenever the modern nation-building project forgets this or conflicts with its essence (Islamic nationhood), its legitimacy is questioned and its peace and order are disrupted. As a matter of fact, the tragedy that has occurred under the title of the Kurdish issue is the result of the effort of the rulers of the state to fit the nation into the prosruktes bed* with this stubbornness of nationalism, which is contrary to the essence of the nationhood, while they think that they are protecting the integrity of the country by fighting aganist the separatists. Despite all these wrong policies, the basis for the fact that the nationhood is not divided and that the peace and order of the country can be maintained on a democratic basis lies in the fact that the consciousness of the Islamic nationhood is still active. This truth is not an issue that the West, England, France, Russia or NATO can determine or destroy. Therefore, despite all efforts, the Islamic nation of Türkiye is still one and whole with all its differences. In other words, the majority of the society that sees itself as an Islamic nation does not have an ethnic problem despite everything experienced. But the nationalistic Turkish nation is blocked and helpless against the Kurdish nationalist identity, and Kurdish nationalism is stuck and helpless against the Turkish nation-state. Because they force the natural existence of the nationhood to dissolve or separate into the unnatural identity of the nationalistic nation.

This mistake has, in turn, provoked and encouraged a similar mistake positioned on the counter side. Kurdish nationalism, in its pursuit of a Kurdish state, has fallen into the illusion of establishing a Kurdish nationalistic nation in western sense and has descended from the Islamic nationhood to the level of Kurdish tribalism, reducing its aspirations to nothing more than a feudal Kurdish domain ruled by Kurdish chieftains. Perhaps at the beginning of the 20th century, the imperialists who created national states for various ethnic groups could have established a Kurdish nation-state as well, leaving us with yet another manufactured problem today. However, they either did not see the region as valuable enough or found the Kurds too religious and too entangled in conflicts with Armenians and Assyrians. Alternatively, they may have deliberately left the issue unresolved to create a lasting problem for the four states in which Kurds reside. Now, as the 20th century comes to an end and the new millennium is shaped by entirely different dynamics, the question of how to satisfy the aspirations of Kurdish nationalists who still cling to outdated carriages, is a serious problem.

In every situation where the ethnos, which is the most ontological existence of human beings, cannot live its own natural outcome, there is a need for an ethnic womb that will never subside, and if the Kurds cannot see this womb elsewhere, they will of course retreat into their own womb. Just like the Turks at the beginning of the 20th century. Those who do not feel at home necessarily look for another home. This is what is happening now and this is what non-Kurds do not want to understand.

A common house, a common roof, a common womb can be established by enlarging the existing space and bringing it to a historical scale. Western-minded nationalists, who mistake this growth for territorial imperialism, try to belittle it as an Ottomanist ambition and, for some reason, direct the reaction they do not give to the grand strategies of the USA, Israel, the EU, Russia, and Iran, toward Türkiye and the Turkish vision, treating the Sykes-Picot borders as if they were sacred and ultimate. Perhaps this is their mission, we cannot know, but it is clear that these minds have a problem with Turkishness, Kurdishness, Arabness, because of these nations’ Islamic identity, and their only mission is to draw borders and sow mines of hostility among these peoples. The self-colonizing elements of the old world and the old regime, who speak with the stance of being the hosts of the country, the state, the Republic, Turkishness, or Kurdishness, and who wag their fingers at every view, person, or policy contrary to their divisive mission, have no say in any matter concerning the future of our country and our nation.

Symphonic nationhood (millet) represents the continuation of a thousand-year-old shared history, experience, and destiny through the spirit of the Islamic nationhood. The millet (the nationhood) of Islam is the shared womb of all its members, and those who seek to separate themselves from Islam have no place within this nationhood. Whether devout, secular, atheist, or of different sects, anyone who identifies with the nationhood of Islam is part of this common womb. Conversely, even if someone is religious, whether Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, or otherwise, if they do not see themselves as part of this nationhood, they do not belong to the Islamic nationhood.

In this sense, those who want a Kurdish nation-state – everyone has the right to want, do and defend anything without armed struggle or being a foreign state agent – have to convince the Islamic nationhood. In this context, those who seek a Kurdish nation-state—which they have the right to advocate for, provided they do so without armed struggle or foreign-backed treachery—must first convince the nationhood of Islam. No ethnic group can unilaterally establish a nation-state without the approval of the larger nationhood to which it belongs. This is what Kurdish nationalists fail to understand.

In this region, matters are not determined by Wilson’s or Stalin’s notions of “national self-determination” or the divisive strategies of competing empires. They are shaped by the deeply ingrained consciousness of the nation of Islam, forged through a thousand years of resistance against Crusader-Mongol invasions, municipalities’ civil wars, sectarian conflicts, Persian-sponsored uprisings, and, most recently, the devastation of World War I. Kurdish nationalist shepherd candidates, who have detached themselves from this consciousness and fail to understand—or pretend not to understand—why divisions that unsettle the Islamic nation by citing the crimes, evils, and oppressions committed in the name of nationalist-secular Turkishness do not resonate, and who think that everyone is a sworn enemy of the Kurds—or even wish it to be so—must never forget this detail. The consciousness of the Islamic nation does not excuse what is happening, not for separation, but for formulas that will allow those mistakes to be abandoned and integrate as they should be.

In line with this consciousness, without interfering with the physical existence of current states in accordance with the international system—that is, while preserving the existing unitary nation-states as a common gain and strength—and by integrating the Kurts, who were excluded after the Ottoman era in the 20th century, through all political-cultural-administrative formulas they are entitled to, and by including minority peoples who have united their destiny with friendly peoples in the region in a broader context, it is more beneficial and creative to begin discussing integration under a higher framework rather than debating race, sect, or religion. Now, it is necessary to try to think not either this or that, but both this and that.

The adaptation of organizations and parties that live off the backs of the Kurds to this process will create an environment where genuine formulas for living together as brothers in this region can be freely discussed, for the sake of our children—victims of dirty wars where no one truly wins or loses—by overcoming the past that has condemned the Kurds to distance and hostility with Turks and Arabs.

The Turks’ concerns about division and the Kurds’ demands for rights can only be resolved by discussing them with calmer, healthier, more reasonable and realistic formulas in such an environment. Only in such an environment will the Kurds, Kurdish, Kurdistan allergy, as well as the Turkish and Türkiye allergy, turn into a bad memory of past collective mistakes from which lessons must be learned.

Nationalisms, in this sense, can transform from a divisive force into a unifying and complementary motivation—serving as a positive driving force of solidarity and cultural belonging rather than a destructive ideology. The 20th century has clearly demonstrated that ethnic-sectarian separatist projects, often encouraged by the West, serve only to fuel discord among our peoples, yielding no benefit to anyone.

Bringing people together around the most ancient values and strengthening the strongest unity against the new invasion of global powers—one that targets humanity and destroys all ancient values—is befitting of Türkiye, the natural heir of Muslim Rome.

Therefore, both Turkish nationalism and Kurdish nationalism need to break free from the anachronistic worldview they have been trapped in and attempt to think with the wisdom to distinguish between what is reasonable and possible and what is impossible, focusing on the future rather than the past.

As history has shown, the most genuine solution is the one that has already been tested. “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Only in such a land can Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and all other peoples preserve their ethnic identities, develop their languages and cultures to a universal level, practice their beliefs and values freely, and carry their identities with honor and dignity. Otherwise, in an age of global warfare, total decay and complete annihilation will be inevitable.

“It is easy to console oneself over the loss of the past; what is unbearable is the loss of the future.” —Amin Maalouf, The Disoriented

* Procrustes’ bed: In an ancient Greek myth, a monster named Procrustes would kidnap his victims and lay them on a bed in his house. If they were too tall, he would cut them with a saw; if they were too short, he would stretch them with a clamp—forcing them to fit the bed at any cost.