From 1853 into 1856 the Ottoman Turkish Sultan, egged on by Britain and the France of Napoleon III, went into one of the most absurd conflicts in modern history, the Crimean War. Perhaps the most lasting outcome of the ridiculous war fought on Crimea was the oft-cited line from Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade: “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die…Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”
It aptly describes the escalating conflict being incited by Turkey’s would-be new Sultan, Recep Erdo?an, provoking Russia again and again. Only, in a paraphrase of the famous line by Karl Marx describing France of the time of Napoleon III, “History repeats itself; first as tragedy, second as farce.” This third time, it is Erdo?an, not as Napoleon III, but as Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The quote was originally used by Marx to describe the absurd rule of Napoleon III, the overly romantic nephew of Napoleon I, who made a coup d’etat, imposed a dictatorship in France and, along with the intriguing British, provoked the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I to go to war against Russia in Crimea. The Crimean War of 1853 has gone down in the history of conflicts as one of the most absurd wars of modern times, though of course most every war is absurd. And now Erdo?an seems intent on a remake, as a “B-grade” Hollywood war, in Russia’s Crimea on the Black Sea.