Britain may be turning into the Ottoman Empire at breaking point

Alec MarshSun, May 17, 2026 at 2:30 PM UTC

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The Ottoman Empire descended into sectarian tensions - duncan1890/Digital Vision Vectors

Once upon a time, the Ottoman Empire was the world’s leading superpower. It held sway from the gates of Vienna, to which it laid siege in 1529, all the way across the Balkans, Crimea, Anatolia and the Middle East, to the Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

To the south, the writ of the Sultan and his Grand Vizier ran almost the entire length of the North African fringe and included Libya and Egypt. It was astonishing in its breadth and scale. Until it wasn’t.

Like the tide going out at Southend-on-Sea, it took ages for everyone to notice.

Yet by 1800, the “Eastern question” was a live issue in the West – just what do we do “after Turkey” – and in 1839, the writing on the wall. That’s when Sultan Abdulmecit I, having already banned the turban for the fez in 1829, instituted the great Tanzimat reform that sought to modernise the empire.

But it was too late. By 1850, Turkey was the “sick man of Europe”. Then in 1875, it declared bankruptcy and – as the historian Norman Stone put it – “the empire moved into the final act”.

The jewels of the Balkans, under Ottoman rule for five centuries or more, began escaping Constantinople’s orbit. Serbia, Romania and Montenegro gained their freedom in 1878. Britain snatched Egypt in 1882, the Italians seized Libya in 1912, and Bulgaria achieved independence in 1908.

In 1913, even little and once-loyal Albania broke free. Albania! You can imagine how well that went down in the coffee shops of Constantinople.

Decline prompted crisis and eventually revolution, as well as a new force, Turkish nationalism.

The country sided with Germany in the First World War and that led to disaster – defeat followed in 1918, and dismemberment at the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which gives us the map of the Middle East we still largely live with today.

Along the way, millions of Muslims and Christians – all sons and daughters of a once great transnational, multi-ethnic, multifaith empire – either perished or were driven from their homes in a great sectarian reckoning as new territorial dividing lines and norms were imposed.

It took the Ottomans perhaps 150 years to go from hero to zero. How long has it taken Britain?

Eighty years ago, in 1946, we had an empire that even Suleyman the Magnificent – Turkey’s iconic ruler from 1520-66 – would have been jealous of.

Now its remnants cover a dozen or so dots. One of which is the Chagos Islands that the Government is so desperate to give away it’s prepared to pay for the pleasure, even though it is home to a strategically pivotal military base.

Like the late Ottomans, we are grossly indebted – though still able, just (at around £110bn a year) to pay our way, even if it is through the nose compared with other G7 nations.

Also, like the Ottomans who ended up having to rely on German military and engineering capacity, we have failed to adapt and take advantage of the great age of technology that we are living through.

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Where are our tech giants, microchip manufacturers, battery behemoths or AI megaliths? How can it be that at $2.7tn, just one American company, Amazon, is worth more than the constituents of the entire FTSE 100? (And if that wasn’t bad enough, they have at least another three – Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia – which can make that claim.)

Like the Ottomans, we have witnessed outbreaks of sectarian bloodshed and interfaith tensions on our streets, notably inflamed by the strife in Gaza.

The question is, then, having lost an empire and seen our economic advantage lost, just how far down the Ottoman trajectory are we? Have we reached, in Turkish terms, 1900, or are we fast approaching the 1923 endgame?

This comes into sharp focus following the elections earlier this month, which brought pro-independence nationalists to power for the first time in Wales and gave the SNP a fifth term in Scotland, one which, they claim, gives them the right to hold another referendum on independence before 2029.

Because if Scotland or, unlikely as it might seem, Wales were to go, that would be Britain’s 1923 moment.

Alas, the parallels between Britain now and the fading Ottoman Empire are unpropitious to say the least.

Because like us today, the Turks of yesteryear could see the tide racing out for themselves – and not just along the Bosphorus. Despite the Tanzimat and attempts in the 1870s and early 1900s to right the ship, things went from bad to worse.

Then, as the end neared, there was mounting disillusionment in the established leadership –Sultan Abdul Hamid (“the Damned”) was deposed in 1909 and Mehmed VI was binned in 1922 along with the institution of the monarchy itself.

Crucially, there was also a fundamental loss of faith in the organising principle of the enterprise, the now discredited Ottoman Empire.

Which is something that we need to bear in mind: how powerful and enduring is the idea of the United Kingdom, of the union keeping our country together? How vulnerable is it in a democratic age when voters’ heads can so easily be turned and when you have imprudently chosen to extend the franchise, as they have in Wales and Scotland, to 16-year-olds?

You can argue that Britain forged in the fires of the Second World War, and which emerged from the fragmenting shadow of the British Empire, was and remains a fitting solution to the challenge of de-imperialisation.

Since 1920, the colonial imperative was in retreat and the moral argument lost. Along with it, we were being outcompeted economically and militarily, chiefly by the United States. Pretty soon, as the old joke goes, we ran out of pink paint.

So where does it end? Can we avoid the final Ottomanisation of Britain, which for us would come in the disintegration of the UK? That would leave each constituent home nation worse off economically, militarily, culturally and diplomatically – a fact ignored by nationalist peddlers of self-harm in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

I believe we can. But it requires us to get our financial affairs in order. It means we must build our own trains, steel, battleships and hypersonic missiles. We must halt the hollowing-out of Britain and reverse our military enfeeblement.

More than this, we need leadership which engenders renewed faith in the collective mission of Britain, and that is the most urgent of the many tasks awaiting the next occupant of Downing Street.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Breaking”