Busar
Truth-Seeking Union of Busar Βουσαρ Ιούδζελικ Αραγαν Βιρλιγχι Busar Yücelik Arayan Birlighi (Sularin) | |
|---|---|
 | |
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| Capital | Yerikosh |
| Official languages | Sularin |
| Religion | Siriash |
| Government | Unitary council respublic |
• Premier | Kaldirim Demircili |
| Legislature | State Council |
| Establishment | |
| 1925 | |
• Unification of Kerkes and Bizar | 1929 |
| Area | |
• Total | 241,288 km2 (93,162 sq mi) (44th) |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 26,541,660 |
• Density | 110/km2 (284.9/sq mi) |
The Truth-Seeking Union of Busar (Kerkean Sularin: Busar Yücelik Arayan Birliği) is a transcontinental country straddling the Strait of Calcar between Ascesia and Lestria. On the Ascesian side of the Strait it borders Shacoont in the east and north-east, the Federated Eastern Sarbanates and (for a very short distance) Tire in the north, and Tarves to the south-west; in Lestria it has borders with Tisceron to the east, Gekit to the south-east and Bilgedoghan to the south.
Etymology
The name Busar comes from a name used for the Beshtash peninsula in earlier times, supposedly related to either buš, 'anxious, irritable', or buda, 'branch'. Officially the country is titled the 'Truth-Seeking Union', though yücelik arayan properly translates to 'Ascension-Seeking'. The use of yücelik over traditional aydin is primarily due to the latter's coincidence as the name of the [[house of Aydin|royal house of the former kingdom of Kerkes, symbols in association with which were sweepingly purged since the establishment of modern Busar.
Geography
The center of Busar is the region of Kerkes in Lestria, with its Ascesian possessions comprising the Bizar peninsula and the region of Arisia further west. The terrain in Ascesian Busar is dominated by a flat plain, with the eastern end of the Pustean highlands of Serrinea reaching into the western rim of Arisia, while in Kerkes the plains and woodlands on low-altitude ground are more clearly separated from a plateau that is sometimes identified with an extension of the Tloule to the further east. Controlling the Strait of Calcar, Busar is one of the most strategically positioned and important countries around the Medius Sea. The southern border of Kerkes is marked by the expansive, important river Chebichey and its tributary the Kezilay, while Arisia's western border is formed by the river Sagady.
History
In the late fourth millennium BCE, cultures located on and near the northern bank of the Chebichey interacted with their southern and eastern neighbours to form the cultural continuum that became known as the Sagan civilisation. The spread of their characteristics across north-western Lestria occurred alongside the establishment of centralised governments and clergies, the development of hieroglyphic writing, and the construction of various monuments. By the second millennium BCE the Sagan political landscape had become divided among a smaller number of larger and more powerful bayraks, with the area of Kerkes being dominated by the Kamesh, based in the Kezilay basin. Under the Karabugha Empire, which unified most of the Sagan sphere in the fourteenth to eleventh centuries BCE, the major Kamesh cities burgeoned into trading hubs along the Median coast. Sagan colonisation of and exchange with Bizar created a Saganic-speaking culture on the peninsula, spreading Sagan influence further west in Ascesia.
The decline and collapse of the ancient Sagan civilisation in the first millennium BCE came about as the result of increasing tensions between regions and classes in the wake of the enrichment of the coast, leading to stifling and often internecine conflicts that destabilized the region. This was worsened by the Hilima Eruption, and much of northern Lestria fell into chaos. The Bolon Empire, expanding outward from Kerkes in the wake of the disasters, ruled a large part of the Sagan lands in 819–723 BCE, but ultimately failed to create stability. Meanwhile, the Bizaris, establishing the Bastani Kingdom, took over much of the western Medius, holding much of it for almost three centuries in the period from 600 to 300 BCE.
In the second century CE conquest of the Sagan lowlands by the highlander Zhaliqs led to a wave of intellectual and institutional developments, many of which drawing upon a renaissance of ancient Sagan culture, that saw the re-emergence of large states in the area. The Challak (203–322), Neo-Karabugha (322–373), and Aqbugha (371–580) unified large parts of north-western Lestria under this mold, although centralisation was steadily abandoned in favor of subservience to a ritual authority by regional warlords during the Aqbugha. However, the sixth century saw the increasing influence of Siriash steadily challenge, and eventually take over, the social order, initiating another wave of social and political restructuring. In Ascesia, after the fall of the Bastani, the Bizaris became integrated into the environment dominated by Tire and then Homâyun.
After the rule of the Arsil Empire from 802 to 982, which fused neo-Sagan and Sirian ideologies to create a new imperial culture, the states of Kerkes continued their status as peripheral Median polities, but over time they acquired a reputation for piracy and maritime ambitions, unsuccessfully challenging the western Median hegemony of Tire. Bizari cities formed a loyal 'inner circle' that insured Tirene power against the waxing and waning of chandane complexities, ensuring stability for both themselves and the region for a long period, and the spread of Pyranism in Serrinea eventually gave rise to new consolidated Arisian sodality-states. The Calcar area as a whole was coming into increased contact and conflict with Messenian powers, who were making increasingly frequent voyages across the strait to trading interests beyond the Medius.
The cities of Konurbalik and Kirgeci dominated Kerkes in the 15th and 16th centuries, and were able to make their influence felt considerably in Ascesia. In the 18th century the Tionastrian Empire conquered Arisia and parts of Bizar, and in its maritime campaigns it installed Uchar as the new hegemon of Kerkes. Tionastria fought several wars with Messenian powers over control of the Strait of Calcar and influence over its surroundings; this strife, combined with other Messenian intrusions around the Medius, allowed other Kerkean cities to increasingly court these foreigners in the interests of securing their own power. The deposition of Uchar's hegemony by a coalition of opposing states in 1780 led to the Ozenil War, in which a resurgent Kerkes was installed with Odannach support and, eventually, as the latter's client, although Messenian powers continued to compete for influence over the region owing to the Calcar's long-term importance, especially after Tionastria's collapse in the 1810s. In Bizar and Arisia also, Messenian powers, chiefly Odann and Siurskeyti, wrestled for influence over native states.
In the second half of the 19th century Zepnish maneuvers in Lestria had seen them usurp a role as primary protector of Kerkes, and Zepnish-educated Bizarians were forming missionary and intellectual movements in their homeland to modernise and strengthen it. With the assumption of hegemony by a pro-Zepnish state, the region was soon unified and rationalised into a federal monarchy in 1900. The work of the Bizarian “federalist” reformers, which was greatly influenced by deictism, emboldened even more radical intellectuals in Kerkes, including the School of Yerikosh; these groups were increasingly dissatisfied with the administrative disunity of the country, the influence of non-Sirian powers, and the unequal distribution of the fruits of economic development, and were motivated by aphypnism. The School initiated a social movement known as the Ordu, which overthrew the house of Aydin in the mass uprising of the Aydin (or Kerkean) Revolution in 1925, and instituted a new, highly centralised and rationalised government, where most traditional political boundaries and units were abolished; the state was renamed with the obscure toponym “Busar”. In 1929, Bizar and Busar merged as an apparent unification of the aphypnist movements and programmes of both countries.
The Ordu's tremendous political and cultural programs took place within the wider context of the Long War, during which the Calcar experienced nearby maritime skirmishes that led to the creation of the Demirci neutral zone, and Busar absorbed Arisia in 1943 as part of the settlement of the Portent Wars. From these events and Ordu-inspired feelings arose the doctrine of Unionism, which would, in various aspects, dominate the environment of political discourse in Busar in the second half of the century.
Unionism manifested mainly as a drive to define Busar as a Sirian, aphypnist and (for some) pan-Saganic insurgent power in the region around the Strait of Calcar; it prompted several armed escapades undertaken in this wider aim as well as in support of its allies in Zeppengeran. Although the rule of Erdem Dagh’s junta in the 1950s perhaps defined Unionist government for many, it was continued in more minor keys even during the restoration of civilian rule under Tunch Han and Guenesh Karamaghali.
The ousting of Busar’s “woman of iron” in 1983 prompted a minor reset under the more restrained hand of Akarsu Iyilikli, a former army officer who could command some respect from the overweening Busari military, and the latter part of the 20th century saw some advances towards the re-emergence of real civil society. The failed appeal to patriotism of Guch Beshtashli – and the bungled Second Keretul War (1995–97) in which Bilgedoghan won its independence back – may perhaps be seen as brief lapses in a process by which more old-school Orduist aphypnist respopulus reasserted itself in the country by the turn of the millennium.
Politics
Busar is a unitary respublic with considerable respopular elements. Modelled on that of Zeppengeran, the central government consists of professionally trained and selected bureaucrats, appointed from the top down in a hierarchy with the self-appointing State Council at the top, which oversees administration and policymaking. This council is then headed by a Premier who is nominated from among the Council's membership. At local and particular levels, bureaucrats mediate with self-organised political associations and groups known as the Ordu, typically led by intellectuals from local deigmations, to reach agreements and decisions on policy, with these groups often carrying some responsibility for their execution. There is a bicameral consultative assembly, consisting of representatives sent from traditional institutions and elected from Ordu groups respectively. Although Houses and lamnearies are represented, they do not otherwise have a direct political voice, which is instead expressed through Ordu groups associated with or informally subordinate to them.
As a Sirian and aphypnist state, Busar has maintained a somewhat ambiguous policy on the large communities practicing Bhramavada and Pyranism within its borders. These communities and their institutions are not permitted direct political representation, but central policy has generally been lax, and Ordu groups have extended some local-level respopular representation to these areas, although they have also been accused of 'Sirianising' the local community and traditional politics.
Foreign relations
Busar is a close ally of Zeppengeran, and is considered as highly important due to its strategic position, while it has usually been most suspicious of Siurskeyti's presence around the Calcar. During the Unionist period of regional military interventions from the 1950s to 1990s, Busar occupied and governed Bilgedoghan as a puppet state, the Keretul Protectorate, and also effectively controlled, either directly or by proxy, various areas of Tisceron, Oturech, and Gekit, in which it also militarily intervened on several occasions. Adding to this the country's commercial influence and other forms of soft power, Busar was for a time northern Lestria's most powerful country; this has since unravelled, with the extraterritorial interests being expelled or integrated, and the Bilgedoghan occupation being overturned by 1997.
Today, Busar is regarded by many interordinate observers as an insurgent power, although its government has latterly been much less assertive and more pliant in its diplomacy, with the enforcement of a regional harmony at Zepnish behest since the consolidation of the latest Tisceronite government. Nevertheless, unease is still experienced with its neighbours over experiences during the Unionist period, although Gekit has been generally friendlier to Busar than the others. On the Ascesian side, Busar maintains regular and friendly relations with Tire and Tarves, and a more strained one with the Federated Eastern Sarbanates, where territorial disputes are still experienced with Sanjar.
Military
The grandiosely titled Enlightened Awakening Army is the armed forces of Busar; its identity was built on the deictic-aphypnist sympathies of the officer corps that supported the original Kerkean and Bizari revolutions. It has about 160,000 active serving personnel. The Busari military has been a pillar of aphypnism in the country and a key player in politics alongside the Ordu since the revolution, and the ironic overlap of their name has not been lost on many. This force saw much combat in the Unionist period; although after the Long War its success and effectiveness has been mixed, it remains widely regarded as the most capable and powerful army in northern Lestria. The Busari navy is the largest in northern Lestria, dedicated to securing the Strait of Calcar and its vicinity.
Demographics
Busar has a population of about 26.5 million people, of which 15 million live in Kerkes, four million in Bizar, and another 7.5 million in Arisia. The Calcar islands including Nöbetçi have 1.5 million inhabitants. As with the rest of northern Lestria and eastern Ascesia, economic development has boosted population growth, although this is not without its own issues and worries. An increasing number of urban inhabitants of Busar are guest workers (geçicilikler, from a Sularin word meaning "temporary") from less developed neighbouring countries.
About 16 million Busaris are presumed to be Sirian, adhering to the Sophoran Compact and a smaller number of local ones, though Coseptran affiliation has increased in recent times. Two to four million practice Bhramavada, and seven million follow Pyranism; the two groups tend to syncretise and intersect. Siriash remains the state creed, and the public celebration of other faiths is curtailed.
Ethnically and linguistically, Busar may be viewed in terms of clear-cut chunks along the lines of its main constituent regions. Sularin is spoken in Bizar and Kerkes, though the residents otherwise identify as belonging to separate cultures, and there is considerable dialectical difference. Arisians have considerably different cultural practices from the rest of the country, and speak a language closely related to Humayuni. Sanjari, Humayuni, and Khatla people are present in the margins of Ascesian Busar, and likewise there are communities of Tisceronites, Maghali, and Keretuli in peripheral Kerkes.