So, this thread made me think of the Ottoman Empire, and ever since it was destroyed from WWI, the Arabs have just been what they are. But it makes me wonder, why haven't the survivors ever spoke out, or tried to make a come back?
Well, actually that depends on what you mean by "spoke out, or tried to make a come back?" A lot of the ISIL guys (and to be sure there are lots of religious crazies in the mix too, so yeah ISIL is a lot like the GOP, a heady mix of war whores and religious fanatics), are former Iraqi army officers and enlisted troops who we disbanded without pay, but yet allowed to keep their weapons. In Germany, we, the British, French, Poles, and Soviets disbanded the Wehrmacht, and we made sure everybody laid down their rifles. Sure, there were the infamous werewolfs and an insurgency that lasted about a decade, but by and large we limited the strength of that. In Iraq we had a bunch of unemployed soldiers who were a heady mixture of desperately poor and armed to the teeth. So they fought a civil and mostly religious war, and later formed Islamic state.
Those forces are now wreaking havoc with western, Turk, Russian, and given enough time Israeli aspiratations in Syria. The thing is though, that they don't have a staying power. They are excellent in insurgency but in traditional combat they are not the best. As far as spoke out? Well, that's another thing, those who survive regime collapse often do not want -especially in that part of the world - to be associated with the fallen regime because once they are out of power there is often not much in the way of retribution, just look at Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria where the new government and the old rebels are literally hunting down and killing the soldiers (especially the officers) of Assad's army. If you want to find former Syrian and Iraqi soldiers not involved in ISIS and the Kurdish wars of independence? You could probably find a fair number of them as refugees in the EU and US.
The Turks? Well, they got a bit lucky because although Kemal does have some serious issues (especially the slaughter of lots of Armenian Christians on his watch) he was able to turn Turkey into a secular state. Its why Turkey has a Latin alphabet and not an arabic one, why for a long time the former Hajia Sophia was a museum and not a mosque, why clerics could not wear religius garb in the streets. He veered hard rest, and his political descendants were smart enough to stay neutral in Europe's wars. The Turks today are also smart enough to make sure to have a very powerful army and to use their strategic position to back up their traditional independent path. Erdogan is playing the same game previous Turk leaders have done. The thing is that they may have finally overplayed their cards. Assad was somewhat useful to them because he didn't want to share power with the Kurds and now with him out of the way the Kurds are going to want to fight for a homeland of their own and they just might get it. I don't see Syria as a nation state lasting for too much longer.
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