Erdogan is driving Turkey and the Middle East countries towards chaos

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to be the new sultan of the Middle East by exporting his version of Islam into Europe and elsewhere. At present he is heading an attempt at genocide of the Syrian Kurds by launching a fierce offensive against them, leaving them in a lurch. The countries in the European Union have been thankful to the Kurds for forcing the ISIS completely out of Syria.

The Kurds have lost 11,000 troops in the fighting against the ISIS as neither European countries nor USA wanted to substantially send enough boots on the ground. Both the American and the Russian intervention in the form of air strikes had killed thousands of ISIS fighters, and the rest of them are captured in prisons controlled by the Kurds. The bloody conflict between Turkey and the formerly US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, which comprises a large number of Kurds, could result in thousands of ISIS fighters escaping the prison camps, and many of them may eventually head back to EU countries as they originally hold passports from these countries.

On top of that, last week the Turkish President Recep Erdoğan threatened to open the floodgates to Europe by sending 3.6 million Syrian refugees, temporarily housed in Turkey, out of the country, unless the European Union stops criticizing his military operation against the Kurds. The European Union should have called his bluff for what it is a long time ago. Many EU countries have already imposed an arms embargo on Turkey, but that measure has come too late and is not very effective at this stage.

Last year, Erdoğan was the fiercest critic of Saudi Arabia, demanding the international community to conduct an international inquiry into the murder of the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The very same year, the Committee to Protect Journalists found the Turkish government to be the world’s biggest jailer of journalists for the third consecutive year.

Erdoğan is the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots, and he aims at making his version of Islam the dominant one in Europe and elsewhere. In countries all over the world, from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, from Germany to Denmark, Turkey is building mosques and financing religious education, spreading an intolerant Turkish version of Islam, paradoxically branding it as a more tolerant version compared to the wahhabi version of Saudi Arabia. The Europeans have not succeeded in stopping this religious education in the name of liberty. In many Turkish mosques, journalists are hardly given permission to enter to interview.

Today under his leadership in Turkey, the country looks less like a liberal European democracy waiting to seek and join the European Union. It resembles more a neo-Ottoman autocracy, with a sultan at its head, descending towards a form of authoritarianism, shamelessly dictating terms and conditions to the EU on one side, while jeopardizing the peaceful situation in its neighborhood.

In the past, many American presidents, Including Barack Obama, have naively pushed Europe to admit Turkey into the European Union. Barack Obama once referred to Erdogan as a model Muslim leader, but that seems to be history. Even though Turkey is a member of NATO, EU leaders are not interested in admitting Turkey into the EU, and many countries in the European Union have now banned sales of military hardware to Turkey after it ordered its troops to infiltrate the territory of the Syrian Kurds, who are safeguarding the prisons in which thousands of ISIS fighters have been kept safe. The Turkish incursion needs to be condemned unanimously by the leaders of the democratic world.

The only person who can rescue the Kurds from genocide is Vladimir Putin. Russia, along with Bashar al-Assad, can prevent another exodus of refugees from the Middle East towards Europe if they act quickly to hinder the march of Turkish troops and militias accompanying them, whose aim is enter 30 kms deep into the Syrian territory bordering Turkey.

EU has lessons to draw from the present crisis. It needs a military force for rapid deployment in its close vicinity. They cannot expect the Americans to save them and it needs to get stricter in controlling the surge of Islamist schools and mosques in its own backyard which are producing ISIS fighters. Some of them will soon start reentering, as Turkey will look the other way when they want to return to Europe. Turkey has never shown any serious intention to fight ISIS and its Islamic fighters. It is solely interested in curbing any chances for approximately 40 million Kurds living in the Middle East of creating their own country in the near future.

Source: India Times