“This House Regrets the Demise of the Ottoman Empire:

For over six centuries, the Ottoman Empire stood as a vast imperial power bridging Europe, Asia, and Africa — administering religiously diverse populations with legal pluralism, cultural complexity, and relative regional stability. Its dissolution after the First World War ended the Islamic Caliphate and redrew the map of the modern Middle East and Balkans. In its place came a patchwork of fragile nation-states, colonial mandates, authoritarian regimes, and recurring sectarian conflict. To some, the fall of the Empire was a necessary moment of liberation — ushering in self-determination, secular governance, and the birth of modern Turkey. To others, it was a geopolitical rupture that sowed the seeds of enduring instability, from Syria to the Caucasus. Was the Ottoman Empire a decaying relic of imperialism rightly cast aside — or a stabilising force whose fall left a vacuum the world still struggles to fill? This debate revisits one of history’s most consequential collapses.”

🌎 New event on November 20 @ The Oxford Union, University of Oxford.

I’ll try to persuade The Oxford Union debating club that we should not be mourning the demise of the Ottoman Empire alongside fellow opposition members, Hugh Pope, Attila Pók, and Constantinos Filis.