Daily Times

On February21, 2015, the Turkish military staged an incursion into Syria to recover and relocatethe remains of Suleman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire Osman I. The tomb has been considered Turkish territory since 1921, when it was ceded to the Turkish government by the French, who gained control of Syria after the First World War. However, Syria is no longer a French colony and has been sovereign since 1946, when it became a parliamentary republic. Yet, the treaty has not been revisited since and the presence of the Turkish flag and their troops perpetually guarding the only piece of land which Turkey has jurisdiction over outside their borders is a post-colonial remnant and an affront to Syria’s sovereignty. This is the second time that the tomb has been moved, and it seems strange that it wasn’t relocated to Turkey and that the state still considers it Turkish territory.

The leaders of IS, which now controls swathes of Syria and Iraq, were averse to the presence of Turkish soldiers around the tomb and IS militants had surrounded the site for months. Although Turkey has not openly supported the United States efforts against the Islamic State (IS), they have been supporting the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (KPPU) in their quest to unseat President Bashar al-Assad. In March of 2014, IS had threatened to attack the tomb if Turkish soldiers were not removed within three days, albeit no such attack took place. 572 troops entered Syria to recover the 38 personnel guarding the Suleman Shah tomb with 39 tanks and 57 armoured vehicles and proceeded to destroy the monument and move the relics and remains in the tomb to an area near the Turkish border, which is under Turkish military control. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu even said that he hoped that the tomb would eventually be returned to the old burial site. The Turkish army made their way to the site through Kobane, which was recovered from IS by the KPPU. The Syrian President considered this an act of “flagrant aggression” since the Turkish forces had not waited for the permission of his government to carry out the operation after requesting it from their consulate in Istanbul. Although it makes sense that the Turks consider the shrine sacred, their continual control over the land to which they have moved the shrine, both times within Syria, is a symbol of post-colonial imperialism. *