generalspeaking

A Resolute Caliph Erdogan

"We are saddened that a slander against our country is being accepted by a country’s parliament. We would consider this accusation the biggest insult towards our nation."
"[The step to consider the events as genocide] does not count for anything. [American lawmakers acted] opportunistically [to pass the bill at a time when Turkey is being widely criticized for its incursion into Syria]."
"We will never accept those who attack Turkey and myself for the sake of supporting the PKK, which is a terror organization that is the killer of tens of thousands of people."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

President Erdogan assured his Justice and Development party that the U.S. House resolution to finally recognize the mass killings of Armenians -- widely viewed as the 20th Century's first genocide, which was said to have inspired Adolf Hitler, recognizing the world's shrug of disinterest and realizing that the same indifference would be evinced by the world community with the planned extermination of Europe's Jews -- was meaningless, simply a spiteful move on the part of a world that condemned Turkey for protecting itself from the violence of Kurdish 'terrorists'.

The bill recognizing the Ottoman Empire's deliberate and pitiless mass killings of Armenians as a genocide saw it pass with 405 for and 11 against its support. Turkey, according to its president, also "strongly condemns" the partisan bill sanctioning senior Turkish elites and the Turkish army which its president ordered to invade and occupy northeastern Syria, the homeland of the Syrian Kurdish population, with the intention of expelling or killing the Peoples Protection Army (YPG) fighting with the Syrian Democratic Forces, while its associated Sunni militias committed atrocities against Kurdish civilians.

Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces. AFP via Getty Images

 In the process, the world has seen the global refugee community swelled by another 300,000 desperate people as Kurdish civilians fled their towns and villages for safety, only to find the areas where they thought they had found temporary safe haven were next in line for Turkish occupation.Turkey's relations with its partners in NATO has taken a rather unhealthy, albeit unsurprising turn. Its more recent alliance with Russia and insistence on arming with Russian-produced military hardware inconsistent with NATO military gear has given ample indication, if any more were needed, that Turkey's values and its military intentions fail to reflect those of NATO and its members.

The stiffening of the United States and the European Union in outrage over Turkey's invasion of Syrian Kurdish enclaves to create a 'safe corridor', free of the presence of Kurds and the proposed forced repopulation of the area with Syrian refugees living in squalid refugee camps in Turkey has left Erdogan isolated and shunned by the West. But the situation is such that the general Turkish population sees themselves as Erdogan describes it, as victimized by Western perfidy.

His standing at home has not appeared to have suffered any kind of condemnation such as that from abroad, where a heightened state of nationalism has arisen in support of Ankara's claims that it must protect Turkey from the terrorism of the Kurdish militias across the border in Syria. Turks view their president as intent on breaking the positions of a hostile Kurdish terrorist militia threatening them on the border, just incidentally fracturing the alliance between their Kurdish opponents and the United States.

Their own government, intent on removing the threat to Turkey's population and its government. Erdogan's narrative that Turkey has become victimized by an international conspiracy of "Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Arabs -- all united against Turkey", according to the front page of Sozcu, an Erdogan-aligned newspaper, resonates with most Turks, if not exactly with the Turkish political opposition which finds itself stranded in public opinion.

Even the national soccer team has demonstrated its loyalty to the Syrian campaign, proffering military salutes at soccer matches. Claiming the YPG is an offshoot of the PKK, the Kurdish insurgents in Turkey agitating for recognition of a Kurdish state in traditionally heritage Kurdish geographical areas within Turkey's early 20th-Century established borders, Erdogan says he is justified, in protecting Turkey's interests, in fighting to kill as many Kurdish militia operatives as his troops and aligned Sunni militias can manage.

Turkish soldiers at Syrian town of Ras al-Ain  Credit:NAZEER AL-KHATIB/AFP

Although Turks are facing a grim economic situation as fall-out from a failing financial crisis in the country and the addition of sanctions, their collective faith in the Erdogan government has been restored in the face of a national emergency sketched out by their president as a national crisis of security requiring an armed incursion across the border into Syria to destroy the terrorist potential of the Kurdish militias intent on destroying Turkish unity.

The embargoes on arms sales to Turkey by several European countries, the raised trade tariffs on Turkish steel by the United States, and additional factors placing Turkey under Erdogan in an outcast situation has given Erdogan the impetus of support by a newly-engaged Turkish public determined not to allow the outside world to destroy their cohesion and economic prospects under a president that has brought Turkey to its virtual knees based on his vehement rage against the Kurds and his arrogant desire to become the caliph of a rising neo-Ottoman empire.

A file photo taken from Turkey's Sanliurfa province, shows smoke rising after Turkish Armed Forces hit targets in Rasulayn town [Arif Hudaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency]

Labels: Armenian Genocide, Invasion, Kurdish YPG, Syria, Turkey, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 31, 2019