Losing a Foothold in a Dream: Turkey’s Evacuation of Süleyman Shah

On the night of February 21-22, 2015, amid fears that it was in danger of being overrun by the ISIS, the Turkish military staged a cross-border rescue operation to evacuate the garrison that had been guarding the tomb of Süleyman Shah in northern Syria. In a move redolent with symbolism for the collapse of Ankara’s dream of transforming the Middle East into a sphere of neo-Ottoman Turkish influence, Turkish troops brought the three coffins in the tomb back to Turkey and detonated explosives to destroy the mausoleum in which they had been housed.