‘The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It’s a world order that is based on empires’, Guy Verhofstadt once said, a theme the Belgian politician has repeated several times, most recently after US Vice President JD Vance’s infamous Munich Security Conference speech. Claiming that the European Union is unfit to survive in the age of empires, and in competition with a rising China, a reckless United States and a revanchist Russia, in 2016 Verhofstadt remarked: ‘Let’s create a European defence union. Let’s take on our responsibilities… Let’s become an empire.’

He would have found qualitative sympathy from another formidable liberal, Joseph Chamberlain, who – with rather unfortunate timing in 1904 – claimed that the days of small nations were over and the days of empires were here. Verhofstadt, overexcitable though he may be, is correct that the days of small nations are over.

Yet empires rarely arrive planned, nor can they be initiated suddenly with a signature from a pen. Scotland, for example, only joined England after the Scottish attempt at an empire fizzled: it lacked the requisite manpower to have its own empire or defend its colonies against a predatory Spain. Security then, just as now, was the determining rationale to pool forces. European empires, likewise, despite the post-colonial slant, were a long drawn-out affair without any centralised planning or exploitation. Great power competition over resources, territory, technological growth (due to the industrial revolution), and production capacity (requiring colonial manpower), was a collaborative process that more often than not operated with the consent of the governed. In short, per the logic of the realist school of international relations, it was multipolarity and security maximisation that resulted in conquest and imperialism.

Imperialism has now returned as a natural and inevitable reaction to multipolarity. In the last five years we have seen Russia’s conquest of a fifth of Ukraine; an Armenian rout in the hands of Azerbaijan resulting in a victor’s peace and territorial handover; a near-peer four-day war in South Asia among nuclear rivals India and Pakistan; overt Chinese and American designs in the Pacific and the Arctic; Ethiopia’s renewed desire to carve out a coastline; a brutal ongoing reconquest in South Sudan; and, most importantly, a Turkish and Israeli carve up of Syria and potential Turkish garrisoning of Gaza. An emergent multipolarity coupled with a technological revolution is fuelling another era of conquest, spheres of influence, and great-power ‘collusion’, as has been the historic norm of almost all eras of multipolarity. Mid-range states once again find themselves relearning the ancient rules of balance of power and the principle of divide et impera.

It makes sense that the British establishment, in perhaps one of its most far-sighted moves, decided to sell 20 Eurofighter Typhoons valued at over £5.4 billion to Turkey, the effect of which isn’t just about sustaining more than 20,000 highly skilled jobs across the United Kingdom; this was pure old-school British realpolitik and balance of power instinct, rightly, about a country that deserves all the recent attention. Britain isn’t the only one doing so: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Ankara seeking Turkey’s participation in the Security Action for Europe, or SAFE – a €150 billion programme. Turkey’s regional power has attained centennial zenith – a rare resurgence for an erstwhile empire.

Contemporary Turkey is a fascinating case study. In 15 years it has normalised Armenian relations, stabilised its North African flank, and prioritised reciprocal defence pacts with Britain, France, and Germany. Turkish drone deployments facilitated Azerbaijani territorial reconquest in Armenia, augmenting Ankara’s European power and foothold. Meanwhile, Franco-Hellenic entente in the Aegean receded amid cries of betrayal from Greece, and did not have any impact on France and Germany inviting Turkish peacekeeping contingents in postwar Ukraine. Turkey has militarily subdued the Kurdish insurgency abroad, while normalising relations with the Kurds via an olive branch at home. Ankara has also tilted the Syrian balance towards the Assad regime’s collapse and the PKK’s eventual capitulation. Having effectively carved up spheres of influence in Syria with Israel, and on the verge of garrisoning Gaza, Erdogan spoke earlier in the year of a time when galloping Kurdish, Arabian and Ottoman horses pacified fractious terrains.

Neo-Ottomanism isn’t just an academic debate anymore but a quantifiable policy platform, observable in its aspirations to regional hegemony by acquiring new proxies and protectorates, expanding regional influence, as well as the attempted normalisation of decades-old internal grievances with ethnic and religious minorities, such as Kurds and Armenians, in a style reminiscent of the Ottomans’ imperial cosmopolitanism.

Resolution of the Kurdish question alone, in better days, would have propelled Erdogan to be considered as one of the proverbial ‘great men of history’. Defeating Russian clients and proxies in both Armenia and Syria, as well as stalling Moscow’s rapid advance in the early days of the Ukrainian war, only adds to his mystique and influence. Just over a century after the Young Turks’ atrocities against Kurds and Armenians, and the concurrent rise of an inward-looking, narrow ethnic majoritarianism that culminated in the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottomans’ heirs are once again looking to expand west and south.

Students of European foreign policy realism and European history will find this dynamic interesting and somewhat familiar. Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81), known as ‘the Conqueror’ (Fâtih), exhibited a profound interest in historical scholarship; his court was populated with Serbian, Hungarian and Italian intellectuals, a practice that frequently provoked resentment among the indigenous eastern Turkish aristocracy. His canon-maker was a Hungarian, interestingly named ‘Orban’. The German orientalist Franz Babinger wrote:

On entering (Hagia Sophia), his first glance fell on a Turk who, in a destructive frenzy, was hacking away at the marble floor with an axe. The sultan asked him why he was destroying the floor. ‘For the faith’, the Turk replied. Enraged at such barbarism, Mehmed struck at him with his sword and cried, ‘Content yourselves with the loot and the prisoners. The buildings belong to me.’ Thereupon the half-dead ruffian was hauled away by the feet and tossed outside.

Like any pan-European aristocracy, the Kaiser-i Rûm – Mehmed viewed himself legitimately Europeanised; a Trojan successor to Rome engaged in historic retribution against the Greeks – was deeply disturbed by any mindless peasant savagery committed by his own people against what he considered to be timeless and divine.

An asset for Mehmed’s diplomatic cause was, ironically, his Christian stepmother, Mara Branković, an intelligent and pious Serbian, considered one of the leading female diplomats of her era, if not ever. Fluent in the language and culture of both Christendom and the Ottomans, Mara proved to be an asset, allowed to practice and patronise Christian culture and Orthodox churches within the Ottoman empire. Mara successfully persuaded the Sultan to endow her estates to charitable purposes, thereby challenging the prevailing imperial practice of absorbing the estates of deceased nobles into the state domain.

As Mihailo Popović explains, Mara served as a principal intermediary, facilitating diplomatic meetings between Venice and the Ottoman court on the neutral territory of Mount Athos. According to the Venetian senator Domenico Malipiero, Mara persuaded Mehmed II to pursue rapprochement with Venice, while convincing the Ottomans to refrain from conquering Mount Athos. ‘Her own talents were more practical. It was in the promotion and furtherance of tolerance and good relations between Christians and Turks that Mara excelled. She put to the best possible use the favours and privileges granted to her by the enemies of her Orthodox faith’, wrote Donald MacGillivray Nicol, one of the great historians of Byzantium.

The European balancing act continued as the aggregate power of the Ottomans grew. Consider that Matthias Corvinus’ battlefield successes resulted in a quasi-tripartite alliance between Austria, Bohemia and Poland. By 1469, relations were so low that, when Ottoman forces clashed with Austrian provinces, Frederick accused Matthias of permitting Turkish raiders, whereas Matthias pressed for the financial assistance Frederick had pledged for the Bohemian campaign. Meanwhile, Ottoman-Hungarian relations found a renewed equilibrium after 1464, even while the Venetian Republic was locked in a sanguinary struggle against the Ottomans, a conflict in which Hungary was nominally allied with Venice and the Papal States. The two powers – once arch enemies – had found a pragmatic modus operandi.

The southern Hungarian frontier remained remarkably quiescent during this interval, with the previously routine Turkish incursions temporarily absent from historical records; upon their resumption, these raids targeted not Hungary, but the Holy Roman Empire and Venetian territories. In 1469, Ottoman forces originating from Bosnia ravaged Habsburg and Venetian provinces, arguably crossing through Croatia and Slavonia, both territories integral to the Hungarian crown. Notably, these regions were systematically spared devastation, lending credence to accusations that Matthias colluded with the Ottomans beneath a façade of belligerent posturing.

Ottoman ambassadors went to Hungarian courts in 1465 and 1468 to seek a formal alliance; although their proposals were publicly rebuffed, evidence suggests that a tacit peace held until 1473. ‘Admittedly, at the level of words Matthias always remained an enthusiastic champion of the war against the Ottomans, and referred to himself as the only defender of Christendom, but it was simply a matter of political propaganda, intended to secure the financial support of Venice and the Holy See and to arouse the sympathy of European princes’, the Hungarian grand-historian Pál Engel wrote. For, as Engel explained,

he contented himself with thwarting and, when possible, avenging Ottoman incursions. Further modification of the southern defensive line was not among his plans: he rightly considered it to be beyond his power. In his letters he was at pains to point out that he could do nothing against the sultan without help.

Historical sources, both Turkish (Halil İnalcık) and western (Marc David Baer), show how, over the years, the Europeanisation of the Ottomans resulted in them becoming a stable Eurasian balancing power. Since the heady days of the First Crusade, the Ottomans gradually moderated their zeal and were, in turn, often supported by smaller Christian protectorates in exchange for their security and patronage. Serbia, as noted by both Edward Creasy and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, was a particularly loyal ally, contributing troops to Ottoman campaigns against the Mongols. Such alliances, then as now, were driven by the perception of shared threats rather than religious or ethnic ties.

In fact, the post-imperial Turkish republic was significantly more ethnocentric and hostile towards minorities than the cosmopolitan Ottoman system that preceded it. Over the centuries, the Ottoman imperial framework underwent repeated progressive liberalisation, such that, by the 19th century, it bore marked similarities to just about any other European empires. Indeed, an Armenian merchant conducting trade between Calcutta and Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries might have experienced greater a cultural affinity in interactions with a Turk or a Sicilian than with contemporary northern Europeans – groups whom, in an ironic historical reversal, neither the historical Romans, nor the Great-Ottoman sultans (from Murad I to Süleyman the Magnificent) regarded as particularly civilised.

As Marcus Bull has observed, Ottoman policy was more nuanced and strategic – or opportunistic – than their Christian adversaries recognised. Consider that in the late 19th century the gravest threat to post-Napoleonic European strategic order was not from any jihadist Islamic empire – in fact, both Britain and France (and later imperial Germany), due to forays in India and Egypt, had grown much more comfortable with a broadly Europeanised soft-Islamic culture; it was from an expansionist bloc led by fellow Christian and imperial Russia. The rationales varied: for Britain, the primary interest was geographic, and the Ottomans were a vital barrier preventing Russian advances into the Mediterranean, or towards Persia, Afghanistan, and India. For France, the strategic rationale wasn’t just a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe, but also defending Catholic claims to a special status in the Holy Land against a rising Orthodox bloc. As historical studies of the build-up to the war suggest, it was primarily geography, with some cultural concerns, that were the determinant factors, not race or religion.

‘Just as the fall of the Bastille launched the great French revolution, so the central European revolutions of 1848 were launched by a fall, in this case the fall of a single man, Prince Metternich, Chancellor of Austria since 1821 and the symbol of reaction and repression’, AJP Taylor once wrote: ‘discontented aristocrats persuaded the Emperor to dismiss Metternich, and with this the conservative order collapsed.’ Today, there is no Metternich in Europe, and European statesmen are woefully unprepared for the wave of majoritarian disruption their continent is going to face. As Taylor explained: ‘Nationalism was the great common factor in the central European revolutions of 1848. Indeed, it was a spirit never to be exorcised thereafter.’

The seeds of the eventual collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, were often attributed solely to unrest due to aspirational elites, which is partially true, but it was in major parts also due to a Pan-Germanic ethno-nationalism, often fuelled by German liberals, who claimed every place in Europe speaking German as constituent parts of a pan-Germanic nation, raising more often than not major problems for other older multicultural polities, such as Austria. Eventually, this resulted in long dormant counter-ethno-nationalistic awakenings in other constituent parts of the then remarkably successful, elite, multiethnic and liberal empire. According to imperial historian František Palacký, the Austrian Empire was not so much German as a bulwark protecting the non-German peoples from the Germans.

Classical political categories – republic, oligarchy, tyranny, fascism, democracy, empire – of course, fail to characterise the contemporary hybrid regimes of western states, including the United States, the UK, and most European Union member states, which remain undefined in their present form. The United States, for example, is neither a classical empire, marked by detachment, meritocracy, and rational governance; nor a classical republic, distinguished by class stratification, racial homogeneity, aristocratic rule, and direct mass accountability. Modern western polities lack imperial hierarchical rationality, while succumbing to extremes of social-media-amplified public hysteria and passion.

Empires or influences are rarely built in a day, but, whatever the process is, it almost always inevitably follows a template: an entity providing long-term imperial order and service in return for imperial privileges in either resource extraction, or manufacturing, or military manpower. It is often a decade or sometimes even a century-long exercise in compromise with local elites, transforming them ideologically before incorporating them into the imperial elite. It rarely, if ever, is a tale of straightforward territorial conquest or mindless proselytisation.

Seen from that lens, Ankara’s current actions make historical sense. Turkey is pursuing a trajectory unforeseen in about a hundred years, exactly in contrast to the rise of narrow western and national majoritarianisms. Proving most social-media doomers wrong, Turkey has rationally and deliberately embarked on a very 19th-century style re-modelling, one that involves both renewed domestic cosmopolitanism and foreign influence among protectorates.

Europe has belatedly taken note. A fractious British and European order – with their elite increasingly under siege by ethno-populists – is seemingly in a terminal and irreversible decline due to the rise of competing nationalisms, an uncontrolled social-media fuelled doom-loop, and expansionist wars in the civilisational grey-zones in the east: once again it is facing the twin pressures of geography and power in an era of renewed imperialism. Historically, prolonged periods of peace and economic stagnation foster a set of surplus elites and middle-class resentment, culminating in a structurally recurrent theme. Every former major-power-turned-small-state faces the ‘grow or die’ problem. International relations is Darwinian. Small states cannot afford to be majoritarian, simply because any such divisive movement inevitably leads to, well, more division to the point at which the resultant diminished polity is practically a unit-level entity, susceptible to the influence of foreign actors far more powerful, large, and ideologically syncretic. It is a lesson that should be muscle memory for European states, from their former empire-building phases in India and Africa.

The western realignment with Turkey, much to the dismay of Greeks, Israelis, and Cypriots, therefore, is once again simply a logical reaction to the threat of a revanchist Russian power in the east, and the need to incorporate a newly influential Turkey as a legitimate buffer in the European balance. The century-long arc of diminished post-Ottoman, Turkish republican majoritarianism, now undergoing a gradual and systematic reversal by an emergent successor entity, is the most fascinating such example. An old order and alignment is returning to form. To cautiously rephrase Sir Edward Creasy’s magisterial phrase, a different spirit would now wield the Ottoman power.