Where do the bones of the founding father of the Ottoman Empire belong? In Northern Syria, find Turkey

Hundreds of Turkish soldiers and dozens of tanks crossed the border into Syria on a February night in 2015. They did not do this to get involved in the Syrian civil war, but to relieve a historic tomb. It was threatened by the fighters of the Islamic State. The remains of Suleiman Shah – the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire – were evacuated that night, along with the 38 Turkish soldiers who guarded him.

Nearly a decade later, there are calls in Turkey to return Suleiman Shah’s bones to their original resting place. IS has been driven out of the area for some time and after the fall of Assad earlier this month, the Turks have more power than ever in northern Syria. Reason for Turkish media to speculate that a possible return of Suleiman Shah is imminent – ​​something several Turkish prime ministers have spoken out in favor of since 2015.

Ottoman ancestor

According to tradition, Suleiman Shah was a tribal leader from Central Asia who fled the Mongols together with his people. On his way west he is said to have drowned in the Euphrates in 1236, after which he was buried in present-day Syria. His descendants moved on to Anatolia, where his grandson Osman I founded the Ottoman Empire. Five centuries later, the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II decided to build a tomb at what was believed to be the grave of the founding father Suleyman Shah.

When the Ottoman Empire fell apart after the First World War, the French took control of Syria. A short war followed across national borders with the new Turkish state, which was settled in 1921 with the Treaty of Ankara. The grave of Suleiman Shah was taken into account. His tomb was on Syrian territory, but would “remain the property of Turkey, which may appoint guards on site and raise the Turkish flag.”

When the Tabqa Dam was built in 1973, creating the Assad Reservoir, the tomb was at risk of being flooded. Therefore, the grave was moved about eighty kilometers to the north. For the Turks, the fact that the tomb was now in a different location did not alter the agreement that the land around it is Turkish territory, but the Syrians saw this very differently.

The outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011 brought Suleiman Shah’s grave back into the spotlight of Turkish public debate. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was still prime minister at the time, warned that an attack on the monument would be an attack on Turkish territory, “and also on NATO territory.” The young Turkish conscripts who normally camped at the tomb were replaced by commandos. The advance of IS ultimately led to the military operation.

The fixation on Suleiman Shah’s final resting place fits in with the historical symbolism that Erdogan himself often uses in his political campaigns. In addition, Ottoman TV series have been extremely popular in Turkey in recent years. In one of them, Resurrection: ErtegulSuleiman Shah, as the protagonist’s father, is an important character.

Holiday bungalow

Remarkably, Suleiman Shah’s remains were not taken to Turkey in 2015, but moved to another location in Syria – the third now. This time a safe two hundred meters from the Turkish border, because Turkey wanted to keep its exclave within Syria. Still, the temporary-looking nature of the current tomb – it’s something off of a holiday bungalow – suspect that Suleiman Shah has not yet found his final resting place.

The future of the tomb is said to have been part of negotiations last week on a ceasefire between pro-Turkish militias and Kurdish forces, Kurdish media report. The Kurds fear that Turkey will use the moving of the grave to build an army base within Syria.

In any case, returning the remains of Suleiman Shah to its previous resting place is not easy: to prevent it from falling into the hands of IS, the Turkish army blew up the tomb.

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