TURKEY’S VERY OWN SUN KING
The Palestine Chronicle
April 7, 2014
By Jeremy Salt
Turkey is in a turbulent and uncertain state. Street demonstrations
are crushed with tear gas and water cannon. Protestors are killed
without one policeman being charged. A 15-year-old boy dying 269
days after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister is called a
member of a terrorist organization by the Prime Minister without him
providing a shred of evidence: of all the abusive remarks Erdogan has
ever made, this must rank as the most truly contemptible. Evidence of
massive corruption at the highest levels of government is followed
by the ‘reassignment’ of prosecutors and more than 10,000 police
in an apparent attempt to stifle investigations and destroy the
‘state within the state’ (the Gulen movement). Direct control of the
judiciary by the executive follows, along with the closing down of
Twitter and You Tube to stop the flow of surreptitiously recorded
conversations into the media. In one of the most recent leaks, the
possibility of a false flag operation on a supposedly sacred Ottoman
tomb in Syria is raised in conversation between the Foreign Minister,
the head of the national intelligence organization (MIT), the deputy
chief of the general staff and a senior Foreign Ministry official.
The MIT head, Hakan Fidan, offers to launch a missile attack and send
four men across the border to get things going.
Sitting atop this steaming pile of political ordure is the Turkish
Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s very own Sun King. His
face is everywhere and his fingerprints are on everything. He is the
government in this country. His supporters adore him. They roar their
approval no matter what he says. He rules by division, turning one
half of the country against the other and presenting himself as the
victim of terrorists, atheists, the state within the state, leftists,
marauders, holding companies and the interest rate lobby. Now we
have the cat lobby, cats being blamed for power failures during the
counting of votes after nationwide municipal elections held on March
30. As power failed in more than 40 cities, towns and villages,
the cats obviously organized themselves very well, sticking their
paws or tails into electricity grids power and causing one shortage
after another. Coincidentally, of course, electricity in all the
affected areas is supplied by companies close to the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP).
Reports came in from across the country of ballot papers being burnt,
of bundled up bags of ballot papers being found on rubbish dumps, of
one person signing a mass of ballot papers and of AKP officials being
inside polling stations while the votes were being counted. Thus,
the official 46 per cent received by the AKP cannot be regarded as
reliable. In some electorates the result was turned around after a
recount but in the national capital, where AKP incumbent mayor Melih
Gokcek officially received 44.7 per cent of the vote against 43.8
per cent for the CHP’s (Republican People’s Party) Mansur Yavas,
the head of the electoral body refused calls for a recount. Yavas
says he is certain of electoral fraud and has appealed.
In his election victory balcony speech, Erdogan warned his enemies
of his pending revenge. He also raised the question of Syria, which
he said ‘is at war with us’. This was a crude inversion of the truth
because it is Turkey, and specifically Erdogan, who is at war with
Syria. He had choices three years ago and it was his choice to prolong
the conflict in Syria by giving support to the armed groups in the
campaign being waged against the Syrian state and society as part of
the broader campaign against Iran by the collective calling itself
the Friends of the Syrian People. Arms have poured across the Turkish
border. The ‘refugee’ camps in Turkey teem with takfiri jihadis, free
to move between the camps and crossing the border to fight and kill
before returning to the food, blankets, heating and medicine provided
by local and international aid agencies. When wounded they are carried
back across the border and treated in Turkish clinics. Istanbul is a
junction for takfiris – terrorists as they would be defined in any
other circumstances by the governments supporting them – flying in
from across the world. They walk to the domestic terminal and take
the first plane to Antakya or Adana, where safe houses await them.
Erdogan is in this war up to his neck. As he is not a man who steps
back it can be assumed he is prepared to take it even further –
anything rather than admit defeat. Were the Turkish people aware of
what is going on, if they knew of the atrocities being committed by
these takfiri marauders, including massacres, beheading, pillaging and
the desecration of churches, they would not support this campaign but
the sad truth is that they do not know the truth. The media, largely
cowed and intimidated where it is not blatantly pro-government, has
never even tried to unearth the depth of Turkey’s involvement. Thus
when Erdogan says ‘Syria is at war with us’ and rattles on about
the slaps Turkey is going to give its enemies his supporters roar
their approval.
The most dangerous point along the Turkish-Syrian border right now is
the western corner of Hatay province around the town of Yayladagi and
the Sunni Muslim and Turkmen ‘refugee’ camps nearby. The Sunni Muslim
camp is one of the most extreme of the camps, a corner of Afghanistan
on the Turkish-Syrian border. The town and the camp teem with takfiri
jihadis. The Yayladagi region appears to have been the jumping off
point for the major offensive launched during the election campaign
against the largely Armenian town of Kassab. First stop was to smash
up the border post. Video shows armed men strolling across the border
from Turkey without one policeman, jandarma or soldier in sight to
stop them. A Turkish parliamentarian, Mehmet Ali Edipoglu, saw dozens
of Syrian-plate cars transporting terrorists – as he called them –
who were firing at the Kassab border post from the military road on
the Turkish side.
Pausing to scrawl ‘Allahu Akbar’ on the walls of the border post they
moved on to the key strategic communications position of Observatory
45 where an ecstatic henna-bearded Chechen was filmed praising God for
the victory. Then it was on to the town of Kassab where they desecrated
churches, pillaged apartments and smashed bottles of alcohol in the
streets. Turkey has denied Syrian charges of providing logistical
support and cover for the takfiris through tank and artillery fire
across the border. The shooting down of a Syrian plane attacking the
takfiris also took place during the first stages of the advance on
Kassab. Against the Turkish government’s claim that the plane was
inside Turkish air space when it was hit stands the fact that the
pilot ejected and landed far on the other side of the border.
If the plane had been hit while in Turkish air space the pilot would
have landed either in Turkey or just across the border where the
takfiris would have killed him as they did the pilot of a helicopter
shot down last September. There are no Syrian forces near the border
and the pilot had to land well away from it to survive.
Kassab is a picture postcard resort town set in hills overlooking
the Mediterranean. It is a beautiful spot and the combination of
an attack by fanatics allegedly backed by the Turkish government
is a nightmare for Armenians. Of the town’s 2000 population only a
remnant remain. The rest have sought refuge in nearby safe cities
or across the border in Lebanon. Kassab is only one example of the
damage wrought by the armed gangs but the fact that it is Armenian has
provoked outrage amongst Armenian communities around the world. Many
Armenians are now said to be flying into Syria to join the fight
against the armed groups. Against the claims of Turkish involvement
in the attack on Kassab, the offer by Ahmet Davutoglu of a refuge for
Armenians and the pictures of two elderly Armenian women transported
across the border by the kind gentlemen of Jabhat al Nusra to whom
they entrusted the keys of their house are grotesque.
Thwarted by the way Bashar al Assad has resisted all attempts to
destroy him, and defied his predictions three years ago that he would
soon be gone, Erdogan may take the Syria campaign a dangerous step
further. In the leaked conversation revealing consideration of a false
flag operation reference was made to John Kerry and his apparently
recent presentation of a detailed map for the establishment of a
‘no fly’ zone in Syria. Open military intervention is possibly more
likely because of US loss of face over the Ukraine. The Arab media
is reporting that the US has opened an air corridor from Jordan to
Antakya for the transit to the front line of large numbers of well-
trained takfiri fighters, many Chechens and Saudis. Operations across
the border near Yayladagi appear to be the opening of a new front
in Assad’s home province of Latakia. Out of weakness King Abdullah
of Jordan has had to do what he is told but in Erdogan the US has a
bullish partner who on many occasions has expressed his willingness
to go all the way if the US decides on direct intervention.
Recently the Turkish medical association issued a statement querying
Erdogan’s mental health. It is not surprising they should think this.
Erdogan’s behavior in recent years has become increasingly
authoritarian, belligerent, vindictive, and hubristic. His primary mode
of defence is attack. He rules by division. He divides black Turks
(the poor) from white Turks (the secularized urban middle class)
and blames the problems that have beset his government in the past
year on a host of enemies out to undermine Turkey by attacking him.
Among his hard core supporters it has worked. When he speaks
they roar their approval. What do they care about Twitter, You
Tube and Facebook? Many of them don’t even use the internet, just
like supporters of Erdogan’s blood brothers in Egypt, the Muslim
Brotherhood. When he says that the leaked conversation in which he
tells his son Bilal to get rid of the hundreds of millions of dollars
and euros stashed away in family houses is a montage they believe him.
The undermining of the institutions of the state don’t affect them
at all. Erdogan gives them roads, bridges and cheap housing and they
don’t seem to care about the rest. Housing is real. Justice is an
abstract. Erdogan is their man – their lion – and they urge him not
to bow down.
In any other country calling itself a democracy any one of the crises
and scandals engulfing Turkey in the past year would have seen the
government out of office within 24 hours. It would have been shamed
into resigning by the pressure of public opinion or it would have been
forced to resign through the use of a constitutional mechanism. In
Turkey those who were ashamed have already resigned from the AKP
parliamentary party or branches but they were few in number and the
rest are sticking with the vote-winning Erdogan even though he has
divided the country beyond any possibility of repair as long as he
stays in office. According to AKP rules, having served three terms
in parliament, he must stand down as Prime Minister this year. He
can always change the rules and stay on or – perhaps more likely –
he will run for the presidency.
Erdogan has succeeded in wrenching Turkey from its traditional
moorings. This is a mighty achievement but whereas Ataturk set the
country on the path of modernization based on science and reason,
Erdogan is driving it deeper into a reactionary religious future in
which his ‘pious generations’ will have prevailed. Man’s fate will not
be decided rationally by man (or woman) but by the unpredictable whims
of invisible entities flying around the celestial sphere with wings
on their shoulders. While the people concentrate on the afterlife,
the politicians and the businessmen will look after their interests
in this one.
Erdogan has sponsored a war on Syria that has caused immense
destruction and loss of life, which, of course, true to form, he blames
on someone else, Bashar al Assad. He has turned the southeastern region
of his country into a mustering ground for armed men whose life view
is death-based. Some are mercenaries and some are plain religious
fanatics. Some are deluded young men led astray by self-described
sheikhs who defame Islam with every word they speak and some are
plain psychopaths but in the dirty business of destroying Syria they
are in combination perfectly suited to the task at hand.
There is not a ‘moderate’ amongst them. In any other circumstances the
governments of the US, France, Britain and Turkey would not hesitate
to call them terrorists. When active on their own soil or threatening
their own interests, they do.
If the US asks Erdogan to step up to the plate and turn his country
into a launching pad for a direct military attack on Syria behind the
cover of a ‘no fly’ zone or a ‘humanitarian corridor’ he has indicated
many times before that he will do it. Whatever he does inside his own
country is one thing, but beyond Turkey’s borders, Erdogan competes
with Benyamin Netanyahu for the title of most dangerous man in the
Middle East.
– Jeremy Salt is an associate professor of Middle Eastern history and
politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He contributed this
article to PalestineChronicle.com.