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ERDOGAN: MASTER OF POLITICAL DUPLICITY
Mirror Spectator
Editorial 11-8 Nov
By Edmond Y. Azadian
Any politician claiming to exercise moral principles has to be cast
as a hypocrite. World history has never witnessed a war to uphold
some moral principles yet almost all wars have been waged under the
cover of moral principles, religious and human rights and above all,
under the cover of promoting democracy.
Media outlets during the last decade or so have been harping on about
how the Arab Spring grew out of popular uprisings in the Middle
Eastern countries against dictators. After trumpeting that lie so
loudly and for so long, the manufacturers of that lie remained as the
only believers while the people at the receiving end of that Spring
only witnessed death, destruction and bloodbaths. And mind, only
the secular governments were toppled, while the medieval potentates
remained under additional protection from those very same powers
which concocted the legend of the Spring, which, incidentally created
further mayhem for the region.
Only opportunists, manipulators and political jugglers could survive
and thrive in that kind of atmosphere. One such political animal has
proven to be Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom the West considered
the right statesman to facilitate their plans, adorning him with
the most gratuitous qualifications, such as "mildly Islamist," or
"moderately religious," and so on while the latter used and abused
the religion and the epithets of democracy to further his own agenda,
at the expense of the naivete of his handlers. Erdogan turned out to
be the master of political duplicity and from now on his words and
actions need to be measured under that paradigm.
It is true that under Erdogan Turkey became an economic powerhouse and
regional military superpower, but Turkey's growth had to serve the
ambitions of its ruler, who dreamt to revive the "glorious" Ottoman
Empire and sitting at the top of the pyramid of power to play the
caliphate of modern times.
First, he used the Gulenists to destroy the secularist power of the
Kemalists. Once he achieved that goal, he began to purge the courts,
the military and the police of those very same Gulenist elements.
In the meantime, Turkey's Achilles' heel is the Kurdish issue, which
may eventually lead to the country's territorial partition. While
entertaining the Gulenists and purging the Kemalists, he opened a
dialogue with the Kurds. He did not consider any logical or legal
impediment to negotiate with the jailed leader of the Kurds, Abdullah
Ocalan, offering some vague promises to disarm the military arm of
the PKK. Now that he Kurds have been fighting a life-and-death battle
against the Islamic extremists of ISIS, Turkish army is bombarding
the Kurdish forces within the country first, by denying any help
to the beleaguered Kurdish forces under siege in Kobani, across the
Turkish border and second, to weaken the Kurdish armed resistance in
preparation for future negotiations.
The case of Kobani is a turning point, and revealing case about
Turkey's standing within the US-led coalition against ISIS. Although
Turkey has nominally joined the coalition, it is working at
cross-purposes. The irony and Turkish duplicity reside in the fact
that Erdogan's government not only is refusing to fight against the
coalition-designated enemy, namely ISIS, but it has also banned the
US bases in Turkey from carrying out their mission. On top of all this
travesty, Turkey has been arming the ISIS forces and facilitating their
barbaric atrocities in Kobani, Mosul and other occupied territories
in Iraq and Syria.
Under immense pressure form Turkey's allies, the foreign minister,
Mevlut Cavusoglu, stated cynically that no civilian population is
left in Kobani, let two terrorist groups destroy each other.
Erdogan's government is trying to implement the same policy of
duplicity with Israel but certainly not for too long. His angry
outbursts against Israel are intended for two main purposes: to comfort
his conservative power base at home and win kudos from the Arab street,
which can be converted into lucrative business in the Arab world.
The Financial Times, which has dedicated a supplement to Turkey in
its September 22, 2014 issue, writes, "In August of 2014, Mr. Erdogan,
speaking at a presidential campaign rally, as Israel bombarded targets
in Gaza that was to kill 2,100 Palestinians, he said, 'Those who
condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism.'"
The same article, further down, underlines the contradiction between
Erdogan's words and actions, stating: "Not withstanding the acrimony,
trade between the two countries continues to new highs. Israel and
Turkey bought a record of $5 billion of each other's goods in 2013."
The Financial Times also indicates that Turkish energy links have grown
20 percent in 2014 as compared to 2013 and that an energy deal is on
the drawing board to build a pipeline utilizing offshore Leviathan
Field in the Mediterranean.
No matter how much the western media may portray the Arab world
in denigrating terms, the Arab countries have already detected the
hypocritical policy of Erdogan's government and they have already
lodged a sobering response during Turkey's recent campaign to gain a
non-voting membership in the United Nation's Security Council, where
Ankara failed miserably. Foreign Minister Cavusoglu justified the
defeat by announcing, "We will not give up our principles for votes."
No one has yet questioned what those principles are.
Although Armenia is a small fish in Turkey's political pond, Erdogan
and his ventriloquist, Ahmed Davutoglu, are planning to use the same
deceptive means. The protocols, which were much in Ankara's favor,
were not ratified by that country's parliament after so much fanfare.
Of all the statesmen, Hillary Clinton stated that the ball is in
Turkey's court. And still it remains there, neglected.
Mr. Erdogan, after emphatically stating that "our ancestors did not
commit a genocide," eventually deigned to extend a dubious condolence
to the survivors and the children of those "deportations."
In preparation to preempt the impact of the Armenian Genocide's
centennial, the Turkish government has sent out feelers to different
Armenian communities in fact-finding missions. Those facts will help
the Turkish government to formulate its stand on he Genocide issue to
deflate Armenian activism. It was an early sign of that campaign to
engage veteran journalist Etyen Mehcubian as Davutoglu's senior advisor
"to deal with issues of democracy." The Turkish government is trying
to get credit that for the first time a non-Muslim has been assigned
to that high position. But turning the tables, we need to ask that
if Turkey is not a racist country, why is it that a non-Muslim has
not been allowed to reach such a position before?
We have to wait and see what kind of spin the Turkish government
will put on the Genocide issue. That will impact also President
Obama's position.
In the meantime, the actions of Armenians in the homeland and in the
diaspora will be commensurate with the clout they have internationally.
Mr. Erdogan and his prophet, Ahmet Davutoglu, have the unwarranted
presumption that they are shaping history. But their actions and
their policies speak to the contrary. The motto of "zero problems
with neighbors" proved to be an illusory balloon. Actually, it ended
up with "zero neighbors with a multitude of problems."
From: Baghdasarian
Mirror Spectator
Editorial 11-8 Nov
By Edmond Y. Azadian
Any politician claiming to exercise moral principles has to be cast
as a hypocrite. World history has never witnessed a war to uphold
some moral principles yet almost all wars have been waged under the
cover of moral principles, religious and human rights and above all,
under the cover of promoting democracy.
Media outlets during the last decade or so have been harping on about
how the Arab Spring grew out of popular uprisings in the Middle
Eastern countries against dictators. After trumpeting that lie so
loudly and for so long, the manufacturers of that lie remained as the
only believers while the people at the receiving end of that Spring
only witnessed death, destruction and bloodbaths. And mind, only
the secular governments were toppled, while the medieval potentates
remained under additional protection from those very same powers
which concocted the legend of the Spring, which, incidentally created
further mayhem for the region.
Only opportunists, manipulators and political jugglers could survive
and thrive in that kind of atmosphere. One such political animal has
proven to be Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom the West considered
the right statesman to facilitate their plans, adorning him with
the most gratuitous qualifications, such as "mildly Islamist," or
"moderately religious," and so on while the latter used and abused
the religion and the epithets of democracy to further his own agenda,
at the expense of the naivete of his handlers. Erdogan turned out to
be the master of political duplicity and from now on his words and
actions need to be measured under that paradigm.
It is true that under Erdogan Turkey became an economic powerhouse and
regional military superpower, but Turkey's growth had to serve the
ambitions of its ruler, who dreamt to revive the "glorious" Ottoman
Empire and sitting at the top of the pyramid of power to play the
caliphate of modern times.
First, he used the Gulenists to destroy the secularist power of the
Kemalists. Once he achieved that goal, he began to purge the courts,
the military and the police of those very same Gulenist elements.
In the meantime, Turkey's Achilles' heel is the Kurdish issue, which
may eventually lead to the country's territorial partition. While
entertaining the Gulenists and purging the Kemalists, he opened a
dialogue with the Kurds. He did not consider any logical or legal
impediment to negotiate with the jailed leader of the Kurds, Abdullah
Ocalan, offering some vague promises to disarm the military arm of
the PKK. Now that he Kurds have been fighting a life-and-death battle
against the Islamic extremists of ISIS, Turkish army is bombarding
the Kurdish forces within the country first, by denying any help
to the beleaguered Kurdish forces under siege in Kobani, across the
Turkish border and second, to weaken the Kurdish armed resistance in
preparation for future negotiations.
The case of Kobani is a turning point, and revealing case about
Turkey's standing within the US-led coalition against ISIS. Although
Turkey has nominally joined the coalition, it is working at
cross-purposes. The irony and Turkish duplicity reside in the fact
that Erdogan's government not only is refusing to fight against the
coalition-designated enemy, namely ISIS, but it has also banned the
US bases in Turkey from carrying out their mission. On top of all this
travesty, Turkey has been arming the ISIS forces and facilitating their
barbaric atrocities in Kobani, Mosul and other occupied territories
in Iraq and Syria.
Under immense pressure form Turkey's allies, the foreign minister,
Mevlut Cavusoglu, stated cynically that no civilian population is
left in Kobani, let two terrorist groups destroy each other.
Erdogan's government is trying to implement the same policy of
duplicity with Israel but certainly not for too long. His angry
outbursts against Israel are intended for two main purposes: to comfort
his conservative power base at home and win kudos from the Arab street,
which can be converted into lucrative business in the Arab world.
The Financial Times, which has dedicated a supplement to Turkey in
its September 22, 2014 issue, writes, "In August of 2014, Mr. Erdogan,
speaking at a presidential campaign rally, as Israel bombarded targets
in Gaza that was to kill 2,100 Palestinians, he said, 'Those who
condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism.'"
The same article, further down, underlines the contradiction between
Erdogan's words and actions, stating: "Not withstanding the acrimony,
trade between the two countries continues to new highs. Israel and
Turkey bought a record of $5 billion of each other's goods in 2013."
The Financial Times also indicates that Turkish energy links have grown
20 percent in 2014 as compared to 2013 and that an energy deal is on
the drawing board to build a pipeline utilizing offshore Leviathan
Field in the Mediterranean.
No matter how much the western media may portray the Arab world
in denigrating terms, the Arab countries have already detected the
hypocritical policy of Erdogan's government and they have already
lodged a sobering response during Turkey's recent campaign to gain a
non-voting membership in the United Nation's Security Council, where
Ankara failed miserably. Foreign Minister Cavusoglu justified the
defeat by announcing, "We will not give up our principles for votes."
No one has yet questioned what those principles are.
Although Armenia is a small fish in Turkey's political pond, Erdogan
and his ventriloquist, Ahmed Davutoglu, are planning to use the same
deceptive means. The protocols, which were much in Ankara's favor,
were not ratified by that country's parliament after so much fanfare.
Of all the statesmen, Hillary Clinton stated that the ball is in
Turkey's court. And still it remains there, neglected.
Mr. Erdogan, after emphatically stating that "our ancestors did not
commit a genocide," eventually deigned to extend a dubious condolence
to the survivors and the children of those "deportations."
In preparation to preempt the impact of the Armenian Genocide's
centennial, the Turkish government has sent out feelers to different
Armenian communities in fact-finding missions. Those facts will help
the Turkish government to formulate its stand on he Genocide issue to
deflate Armenian activism. It was an early sign of that campaign to
engage veteran journalist Etyen Mehcubian as Davutoglu's senior advisor
"to deal with issues of democracy." The Turkish government is trying
to get credit that for the first time a non-Muslim has been assigned
to that high position. But turning the tables, we need to ask that
if Turkey is not a racist country, why is it that a non-Muslim has
not been allowed to reach such a position before?
We have to wait and see what kind of spin the Turkish government
will put on the Genocide issue. That will impact also President
Obama's position.
In the meantime, the actions of Armenians in the homeland and in the
diaspora will be commensurate with the clout they have internationally.
Mr. Erdogan and his prophet, Ahmet Davutoglu, have the unwarranted
presumption that they are shaping history. But their actions and
their policies speak to the contrary. The motto of "zero problems
with neighbors" proved to be an illusory balloon. Actually, it ended
up with "zero neighbors with a multitude of problems."
From: Baghdasarian