Op-ed: Abdul Hamid Khan – the sultan and the drill

By Dimitris Stathakopoulos*

On 19 May, 2022 (which is the day on which the 1919 Pontian Greek Genocide perpetrated by Kemal Ataurk is commemorated), Turkey’s new, initially Bahamas-flagged, 7th generation drillship, purchased from the Korean Daewoo shipyards with the name “Cobalt Explorer”, arrived in the area of Taşucu (formerly Seleucia in Isauria) across from the Karpas peninsula in northeastern Cyprus.

The ship was registered in Turkey’s ship registry, became Turkish-flagged and was renamed after the 34th sultan ad 113th Caliph Abdul Hamid Khan (1842-1918).

This is the sultan that is greatly admired by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, although in Western historiography he is recorded as the “red/bloodthirsty” sultan, an epithet given to him by French writer Albert Vandal due to the fact that he carried out the Armenian Genocide.

Nonetheless, in the Ottoman and Modern Turkish bibliography he is described as a moderniser in all sectors, despite the polemics with the Young Turks and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

Indeed, it is especially stressed – and this constitutes a model for Erdogan – that upon the urging of the US in 1899 and in his capacity as Khalif he intervened with the Tausug people of the Sultunate of Sulu in the Philippines to prevent them from opposing America’s regional designs.

US Secretary of State John Hay, through Ambassador Oscar Straus, stated: “Thanks to Caliph Abdul Hamid, the Muslims of Soulou refused to join the rebels and were placed under the command of our Army, thus recognizing American suzerainty.” (see Karpat, Kemal H. 2001 and Yegar, Moshe, 2002).

Erdogan and Abdul Hamid II

On 9 June, Erdogan, at the conclusion of the large Efes military exercises, had stated inter alia that the Abdul Hamid Khan drill will be ready to operate on 15 July.

As we saw, there was a slight delay, either due to technical problems or because the Turkish president wanted to convey a pleasing and tolerant image, on among other matters the issue of drilling, at the NATO summit.

The new date that was recently announced is 9 August, yet the drill ship is already conducting tests at sea with the aim of conducting a drilling in the coming days.
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Where that will occur is as yet unknown. Clearly, statements that are accompanied by actions lie within the framework of psychological operations and of a continual hybrid war with the neighbour.

In any event, the drillship was not bought to remain docked.

I consider it likely that it will be placed in operation, certainly in conjunction with anniversaries, as is Turkey’s wont, namely the second Turkish invasion of Cyprus (Attila II, 14 August) and the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, and so we must be prepared for a hot [politically and militarily] August, as in 2020 [when the Greek and Turkish Navies came very close to a clash]

Even if the international community would not tolerate something like that from Turkey given the current confluence of events, we should not remain complacent.

Turkey quite predictable

Turkey is not an unpredictable country, as many erroneously say.

On the contrary, it is completely predictable and consistently hostile toward Greece, with a open casus belli [the threat of war if Greece exercises its right to extend its territorial waters in the Aegean] and a subjective a la Turca interpretation of international law.

Ankara certainly does not have self-destructive tendencies, yet it has stated that the future belongs to Eurasia and it is gradually shifting in that direction, considering that the West (the EU and US) is in decline due to its demographic problems and insufficient supplies of energy and food, which is to say the very issues that were highlighted through the war in Ukraine.

*Dimitris Stathakopoulos holds a Ph.D, from Panteion University, is an expert in Ottoman and Turkish studies, is a collaborator of the Workshop of Turkish and Eurasian Studies at the University of Piraeus, and is a Supreme Court lawyer.