Strength as you fight strategy

One of the most important concepts related to strategy is the phenomenon referred to as "Friction". Clausewitz was the first to systematize this concept in its theoretical dimensions. He is also the name father of the concept. 

According to Clausewitz, war is full of unknowns. For this reason, no matter how detailed planning is done at the beginning, after a while the available force may become insufficient to capture the target. This is due to factors that cannot be calculated and are described as uncertainty or fog. 

There are many examples in history that show how the friction factor can wreak havoc. The most famous example is Napoleon's Grand Army attacking Russia, which almost completely melted away as it advanced. 

Another example is the defeat of the German army during World War II, which tried the same thing but lost its combat power. The same thing happened to the Greek army during the War of Independence, which did not take this effect seriously and advanced deeper into Anatolia.

However, the friction effect is not a fate that cannot be avoided. Many armies throughout history have managed to find a way out of this effect. In fact, some military thinkers, such as Sun Tzu (Chinese General Sun Wu), have written about how this can be done.

Sun Tzu was born in the middle of the 6th century BC. His time is known as the period of warring principalities in Chinese history. During this period, there were many principalities/small states in China and each of them was fighting with each other to unite China under its own leadership. 

Sun Tzu, who was born and raised in the Qi principality ruling in today's Shan Dong province, went to the Wu principality in the south after a while and entered the service of this principality. During this service, he expressed his thoughts on military issues in his work "The Art of War".

When "The Art of War" is read, it is understood that Sun Tzu, who served as an army commander in the principality he served and advised the ruler of the principality on military issues, saw that the struggle with many other principalities would wear out and weaken the army and the state in a short time and that he was looking for ways to get rid of the friction effect that caused this.

The solution he found for this was the strategy that is today referred to as the "indirect approach" concept. A striking description of this strategy is his statement, "It is best to win without fighting." What he means by this statement is that it is the most appropriate method for the principality he serves to conquer other principalities without engaging in a fierce conflict through the concept of coercion and deception. 

In this way, the principality would not be weakened by heavy casualties in its own army, and the principalities it captures or binds to itself would not be destroyed, and it would become stronger by annexing these principalities to itself. 

There is another nation that skillfully used a similar strategy, although there is no written account of it yet. This nation is the Turks. Throughout history, the Turks have employed a similar strategy to the Chinese in avoiding the frictional effect and growing stronger and faster as they fight.  However, this strategy has some distinct differences from the strategy proposed by Sun Tzu. 

This is due to the fact that the Turks had a different mode of production and social structure compared to the Chinese. While the Chinese principalities were feudal societies subsisting on agriculture, the Turkic communities were dynamic communities subsisting on animal husbandry. The social and political structure of the Turkish communities, which moved in a wide geography and at long distances from each other, was also formed according to these lifestyles. 

The Turkic communities living far away from each other in the steppe were organized as self-governing and defending units such as family, clan, clan union. In other words, they lived in each region in the form of state prototypes. They are like mobile states with military and political organizations. 

Whenever a strong and capable leader emerged in one of them, he was able to unite these disparate tribes like Lego pieces in a short period of time and build a big picture, an empire. Leaders who were aware of these ready-made structures sought ways to bring them together by preserving them as they were, rather than scattering, destroying or disrupting them.  

Looking at the Hun and Gokturk Empires, it is understood that they did this in the following way. The tribe mobilized by a strong leader first sought ways to unite without fighting with the tribes around it. Thus, it creates a power center by growing without any losses. 

It then tries to connect other tribes to this powerful center. This attachment does not take place in the form of fusion and assimilation, but in the form of articulation while preserving their integrity. If a tribe refuses to unite, it is attacked in the form of a raid and the resistant leader is neutralized, but the people are not destroyed. 

On the contrary, a person from within the tribe who accepts cooperation is brought to power, and thus the defeated community is articulated to the central state. Thereafter, the new tribes that were annexed to the center served in the state's army and received their share of the victories. 

As the victories increased and the gains grew, the participation accelerated and in the time of a single ruler, a great empire was established in which almost all steppe societies came together. This is evident in the lives of Ilterish Khan, Genghis Khan and other great leaders. 

This organizational structure of the steppe peoples enabled them to build great empires faster than agricultural societies ever could, but this structure is also the reason why these states collapsed just as quickly. 

The tribes, which quickly united around a strong leader, disintegrated just as quickly when bad administrators and incompetent leaders emerged and continued to live on their own. This is because the imperial structure does not assimilate other communities and change their organizational structure as in China. 

Therefore, these empires disintegrate when the strong leader who holds them together is removed, just as the image that emerges after hours of work to assemble many lego pieces is disrupted and disorganized with a single blow.

I think the Turks must have realized this problem in the ancient Turkestan geography. This may be why Bilge Kagan thought of establishing walled cities and adopting Buddhism, a religion suitable for settled life. 

He must have been inspired by the Turkish cities along the Silk Road, where walled cities broke down the tribal structure and created a larger, tightly knit and homogeneous whole from these smaller parts. However, he abandoned this idea in the face of Bilge Toyukuk's objection that this would lead to disaster, citing the lifestyle of the people, the small population and the natural conditions. 

However, when the Turkic tribes moved towards the West and India and came into contact with the societies and states they encountered, they had to make some changes in order to adapt to this new geography and preserve their existence. 

The most important example of this is the establishment of a centralized army and administrative organization with the people they recruited and trained from both non-Turkish elements and Turkish tribes. In the geography of India, they even created a language for this organization, Urdu, which is the language of the army and today the official language of Pakistan.

This structure created some problems as the soldiers differed from the main constituent mass. For this reason, the Ottomans recruited people from different elements and used them to form a central standing army. These people were first given to Turkish families, raised according to Turkish culture and Islamized. 

Thus, the Ottomans were not only freed from dependence on nomadic Turkmen tribes who acted as they pleased, but also were able to subjugate them by using centralized forces when these tribes tried to create a centrifugal current. In this way, they were able to build an empire that lasted 600-odd years.