The greatest state that has ever been, Roman Empire has fallen to “barbarians” in the fifth century. It wasn’t supposed to be eternal, yet there were ways to sustain it. In all history, you need to add something to this zero sum game. If Romans did more than necessary, and made barbarians “Romans,” history could have been different. Our issue at hand is not counter factual history, we’re dealing with it because we have a similar problem in Turkey.
Barbarians are at the gates. Turkish eastern borders are in tatters. Turkey ain’t an empire, yet Roman history provides a solution. Barbarian advance is more of sociological than being militaristic. If you make Turks out of barbarians, you wouldn’t have much problem. It’s a problem of identity, all enmity emerge from “us and them” narratives. In other words, you would tolerate yourself towards the same goal, you would also tolerate the people in your group.
Roman Empire, which lived a thousand years in the west and a thousand more in the east, have fallen to barbarians. What could have sustained it through adding some mechanics for ever changing facts of the real world. Rome had at last fallen to illusion of theories, wishful thinking of societies. If Rome could have labored more on developing Barbarian lands and mediating between them, it could have lived a thousand years more. This is pure counter factual history, however hypothetical situations can be used for educational purposes. Studying alternative history would produce lessons for future.
There isn’t mistakes or wrong doings in history, on the other hand there are aims and ideals. We see mistakes in the framework of our aims and ideals. Roman or Ottoman eternal states made mistakes in the framework of expecting them to be really eternal. The political organizations collapsed as well as cultural ingredients. The lesson we extract from the failed states are firstly you should rule the knowledge before you rule politics and secondly you should do more than you normally do if you’re a political actor.
Romans couldn’t catch the information about the Barbarians and what they were capable of. You cannot destroy whole armed societies. You need a little more than that. To culturize, to identify them as yourself can be the solution. It’s a different perspective on invasion and hegemony actually. You invade and make people from your identity; when you cannot invade, you make them yourself in other ways. The first way to such culturization is education beyond borders.
Turkish state can educate these people through online courses, TV shows, diplomma programmes, formal education, games and other voluntary acts of identifying yourself. Howcome a Nigerian villager identify as Manchester United Football fan? There isn’t any common grounds for these two, other than Manchester FC doing its job well. That’s easier than you think when you do your job succesfully.
Turkey as a state can be the state of all these people. Look how powerful China and India are, just because of their population. Besides, the barbarians or immigrants are not just populations; their crisis may be converted to opportunities. Ottomans didn’t have any means to conquer the world before they utilized the barbarians and population spreading from east. This is a matter of perspective. The problems are actually opprtunities, we just need to change our view.