Turkey’s old Yemen songs remember the conscripts who never came home, not the strategic arguments that sent them there. Oğul Tuna uses that contrast—between an Ottoman general’s campaign memoirs and communist folk singer Ruhi Su’s tradition of mourning—to question Ankara’s growing military commitments to Saudi Arabia.
- After the Suez Canal opened in 1869, Ottoman planners renewed efforts to consolidate control in Yemen. Taking towns did not resolve the political conflicts beyond them.
- Ahmed Muhtar Pasha’s memoirs describe difficult terrain and local power structures that imperial maps could not wish away. Ordinary conscripts bore the consequences of repeated campaigns.
- Tuna sees a later version of this mistake in Saudi Arabia’s intervention beginning in 2015: overwhelming military resources failed to eliminate the Houthis while devastating civilian life.
- The new Turkey–Saudi Arabia–Pakistan defense pact leaves discretion over assistance. Tuna warns that intelligence, logistics, and other “technical” support can still sustain a war and make further commitments harder to refuse.
- He rejects the lazy analogy of Erdoğan as a latter-day sultan. The continuity is how elite interests become the “national interest”—and whose losses disappear inside that phrase.
The strongest part is the pairing of historical sources. A commander’s memoir explains the campaign; a song preserves what the campaign did to a household. Neither tells the same story as a weapons contract or a declaration of alliance solidarity.
Tuna’s argument is against escalation, not for the Houthis, whom he explicitly does not call progressive. Before accepting prestige or regional influence as reasons to deepen a war, ask whose security is being promised, who stands to profit, and who will be left remembering the dead.