Talk of partition had
begun a few months after the outbreak of the war in Syria, as many analysts tried
to rewrite Levantine history. They argued that the independent states in the
region had been created a hundred years ago by the West during and after World
War I, and that a century later, the West is trying to take the region in the
opposite direction. Along these lines, they said that between 1915 and 1916,
the West had wanted to break up the anti-Western Ottoman
Empire and create modern states within its boundaries. After 2013,
however, the trend will be to deliver those “failed states” to neo-Ottoman
dominance, since Turkey
is now allied with the West and will protect its interests.
