Syrian-Ottoman War

Syrian-Ottoman War will be a long war that started as soon after the Ottomans defeated the Sumerians at the Ottoman-Sumerian Wars and decided to invade the Levant and the rest of the Middle East. It lasted for almost 15 years and is considered to be the most bloody period of Future Middle Eastern history.

Background and pre-War Events
What started the Ottoman-Sumerian Wars beside the Ottoman attacks against the Sumerians were the revolts launched by the Arab elites of the Gulf, but what happened was that these elites betrayed the Ottomans later and sided with the Second Empire Of Chinaball as they realized the Ottomans would try to take Mecca and Medina from them. Remembering that the formation of these elites was a result of the Sumerian policies, as during the Greater Arabball there was no elites or bourgeoisie as it was socialist, the Sumerians created and fed a snake that turned against them.

In the Levant however the situation was different, while there were a lot of corrupt elites that just wanted to have their piece of land to rule and decided to side with the Ottomans, there were many nationalist ones that despised the Ottomans and would rather die fighting against them instead of living under their tutelage. Many others sided with the Sumerians as they considered them to be more progressive, the Levant in general was not as conservative as the Gulf with the exception of Hejaz.

The Ottomans had ruled the Arab world already under Ottoman Arabiaball and its rule was crap, because generally speaking it was not even good to the Arab elites as they couldn't get properly rich because the Ottoman model was so bloody outdated, so a lot despised them anyway. The Ottomans this time then relied mostly on islamists and jihadists in order to consolidate their domain over the Levant.

During Greater Arabball, the whole of Levant was called Syria and was divided in four regions: Syria proper, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. The Ottomans needed local allies to re-occupy the region, but in Syria and Iraq very few local elites made deals with the Ottomans, most of the ones who did were islamist and Turkmen warlords, which had the opposite effect as a lot of people got angry with it and became more anti-Ottoman. In Palestine and Jordan however the Ottomans got more support because they plaid a sectarian card and said there was a zionist conspiration going on and that the Jews would try to form a new Israel in Palestine and Jordan, so the Arabs needed protection, a lot of islamist riots started and Ottomanist governments were formed with much more force than in Syria and Iraq, this against the will of many elites though.

Pogroms against Jews started, most Jews sided with the broad front of Arab secular nationalists that had all forms of socialists and communists, but many decided to form zionist militias and indeed started asking for a new Israel because of the persecution. At the time, Jews were less than 10% of the population in Palestine and Jordan and were very integrated in the Arab society since the Greater Arabball, they didn't associate with zionism, associating instead with the secular Arab state. The Ottomans are the ones to be blamed for the rebirth of zionism in the region as they started tensions between Arabs and Jews that were nonexistent before, Jews outside the Middle East started to call for a new Israel because of that and that's why Newer Israelcube would be founded later.

As we can see, generally speaking, most of the elites in the Levant refused to ally with the Ottomans and decided to form their own militias to combat them in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. In face of this whole situation a lot of ex-Greater Arabball loyalists and military officers decided to organize to launch a proper war against the Ottomans, they were inspired by the Arab Republic of Hejazball that had just killed its elites and announced a return to old Arab nationalist ideology. This ended up in a war with the Council of Gulf Monarchiesball.

The Arab nationalists in Levant started to fight against the elites and they had success in many occasions, sieging their money and using it to get a lot of arms, they also formed vanguard organizations and adopted a socialist oriented organizational model. However, the Ottomans took proveit as they fought each other to launch a new war against the Gulf, aimed at taking both the Arab Republic of Hejazball and the Council of Gulf Monarchiesball territories, they were only defeated thanks to the military support of Second Empire Of Chinaball, that was allied with all Arabs independent of ideology as long as they were anti-Ottomanists.

After failing to go down through the Arabian peninsula, the Ottomans tried to end the fights going on in the Levant so it could properly rule it, but it failed and violence continued. It is also worthy to mention that out of it, the Ottomans started to confiscate lands from Arabs and give to their islamist militants, in which many times were not even Arabs, they would do that because they considered that some cities and villages were under control of "troublemakers and terrorists". This infuriated a lot the local Arab population as they saw their people were being displaced, this also turned much more people to the side of the Arab nationalists as they believed the Ottomans were doing a zionist like policy.

In face of this, both the Arab Republic of Hejazball and the Council of Gulf Monarchiesball decided to not attack each other as they recognized the Ottomans to be the worst enemy. However, the Gulf monarchs were still backing the elites in the Levant while the Hejaz was backing the Arab nationalist groups of ex-Greater Arabball military officers. The Arab infight would only end after the elites in the Levant were all powerless, they were killed either by the nationalists or by the Ottomans and their islamist allies that also killed a lot of nationalists.

The Bloody War
After those years of war, the actual beginning of the Syrian-Ottoman War would start. A broad coalition of Arab and Syrian nationalists with support from Jews, Assyrians, some Kurds and other minorities would all unite and start a massive uprising against the Ottomans and their islamist allies. At the time there were no proper states in the Levant, just a lot of warlords and their mini-states recognized by no one. These warlords would most likely have religious, ideological or just personal interests. It was a period of anarchy, almost like an anarcho-capitalist utopia.

However this first uprising didn't go well and the military leaders were captured and executed by the Ottomans. The Arab Republic of Hejazball that was backing the uprising aimed to take Jordan and Palestine and then liberate Syria and Iraq as the Arab nationalists had their strongholds there, but they failed. Hejaz thought it could do everything alone, helping the opposition both in the Levant and in Yemen against the newly formed pro-Ottoman state, the Somali-Yemen Caliphateball. The main reason of why Hejaz failed was because the Ottomans called muslims from all over the world to aid them, mainly from Pakistan, Malaysia, Somalia and the Caucasus, they formed strong militias that defeated the plans of Hejaz.

In face of this, finally, the Somali-Yemen Caliphateball started to engage in hostilities with the Arab Republic of Hejazball and the Council of Gulf Monarchiesball, they both decided to unite in order to defeat the Ottomans. The Ottomans were planning together with the Yemenis and Somalis to launch a new attack against Hejaz in order to take Mecca, but this time they were also busy fighting a war against Second Empire Of Chinaball in Central Asia, so China sent the Arabs a lot of weapons to start a new against the Ottomans as they were in need of their aid. Hejaz and the Gulf monarchs then organized a plan together with the Arab and Syrian nationalists in the Levant.

Somali-Yemen Caliphateball out of pressure invaded Oman that was part of the Council of Gulf Monarchiesball, and this proved to be a mistake, as soon as they did that, they were invaded by all Gulf monarchs and an opposition coalition plus the forces of Hejaz and the nationalists, in addition to that, in Levant now the well armed nationalists launched a new uprising against the Ottomans as much more warlords united thanks to the Chinese sending them money and weapons. Because of that the Ottomans couldn't go to Yemen to help their allies, and China told the Second Ethiopian Empireball to invade Somalia in order to keep them busy just so they wouldn't interfere in Arabia.

Second Empire Of Chinaball launched a new offensive against the Ottomans in Central Asia, and they needed more soldiers so their islamist militias had to move there and couldn't stay in the Levant, so the nationalists took proveit of it to start thousands of offensives against Ottoman strongholds. After the Yemenis fell, the nationalists would march over Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem after few months. The Ottomans surrendered in the Levant as they feared China would invade them.

Casualties and Aftermath
The casualties of the war were extremely high, it is one of the bloodiest wars of the Future timeline. It killed more than 8.000.000 people and ended up with more than 10.000.000 people being displaced. War crimes were also very common and were widely committed.

The Ottomans and their islamists would target in a sectarian way Christian, Jewish, Alawite, Druze and Shia communities. The only reason why they didn't genocide all of these minorities was because during the times of Greater Arabball these communities were well represented in the army. During that time, everyone had to serve in the army, but non-muslims especifically were encouraged in order to boost Pan-Arab nationalism instead of sectarianism. Their families and communities were benefited if some of their members got proeminence on it, the government would do that in order to assimiliate them and make Arabs and non-Arabs more homogeneous independent of religion, army top command was still made mostly by Sunni muslims and this was a reson of controversy but that's another thing.

And that was the reason of why the areas of these communities were so difficult to be taken by the Ottomans, a lot of their members were experient and well trained soldiers and officers, who would themselves represent the army locally, a lot of them became warlords and showed a fierce resistance. The Arab nationalists top military commanders who were mostly Sunnis and Shias knew they would always have ideological support among them as long as they remained loyal to their nationalist ideology. New Ba'athist Syriaball would use this as propaganda tool of Arab nationalism.

The Arab nationalists also did crimes however, the top military commander said that every non-Arab and non-Turk islamist militant in Arab lands should be killed without a trial, as they were mercenaries. They also said the same to the Jews who decided to form zionist militias instead of allying with them and to some extent to Christians who formed "crusader militias" instead of continuing loyal to Arab nationalism, but in this case some were forgiven.

The aftermath of the war was just as bloody as the war itself. With the rising of AWTOball after the defeat of STORM Unionball while the war was at its end and the civil war in China that ended with the Second Empire Of Chinaball, the world would enter into the New Cold War. And this meant that in the Arab world, Arab nationalists and monarchists would kill each other and solve the problems they left aside before in order to combat the Ottomans.

During the Syrian War that happened later as a civil war initially and later the Ottomans tried to take the north of Syria and Iraq (and failed), the Ottomans said their main mistake during the Syrian-Ottoman war was that they didn't have MAGball and the Islamic Rashidun Caliphateball to fight for them, as different from these two who were disciplined and well trained, the islamists who fought this war were disorganized and incompetents.