Rescuing Turkey From Itself

"It's practically impossible [to restore relations with Ankara under its current leadership]. If Turkey flew there all the time before, breaching Syrian airspace, well, let's see how they fly now."

"Turkey's leaders have arranged a] creeping Islamization [of the country] which would probably cause [modern Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk to turn in his grave." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russia’s most advanced air-defense system, the S-400, is covering all of Syria, so Vladimir Putin has been inviting Turkey's Tayyip Recep Erdogan to give it another shot at downing a Russian jet or even a Syrian one it claims has entered Turkey's air space for 17 seconds.

Turkey finds itself internationally unloved. NATO doesn't think much of its style. On the one hand, its surreptitious support of the Islamic State hoping it will succeed in destroying the Syrian regime's Bashar al-Assad, on the other hand, bombing the hell out of Kurds in Iraq and in Turkey whose militias have realized the most success in opposing the Islamic State advance. President Erdogan's famous bellowing belligerence has gained him few admirers outside of his Islamist supporters.

He has alienated Egypt through his support of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi, and his rejection of the military presidency of Abdel Fatah el-Sisi. His relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran deteriorated with Iran's support of the Syrian regime. And his dependable, useful relations with Russia were destroyed through an act of spiteful vengeance drawn from Moscow's decision to begin an air mission in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad.

He had earlier destroyed Turkey's military and trade relationship with longtime ally Israel with his growing confidence as his Islamist party gained a majority and he became more overtly aggressively Islamist, spurning the ties that had bound the two countries in pursuit of a common goal of getting along and giving aid to one another. Trade ties with Israel have remained intact, but the tourism from Israel that was replaced by Russian tourism has now also failed.

When the Hamas leadership was looking for a new headquarters, Erdogan, who praises it to the skies, while scorning Israel as a genocidal state intent on slaughtering Gazans, offered Ankara as a base and treats Hamas as an honoured guest. Erdogan's rash ordering of a Turkish jet to bring down the Russian jet has consequences that he obviously failed to consider. Suddenly, Turkey is looking around for a source of gas which until recently Russia was relied upon for.

And just as suddenly it seems to have occur to Erdogan that it would be to Turkey's advantage after all, to reconcile with Israel; as he put it, it would be in the best interests of Israel, Turkey and the Palestinians. Turkey had demanded of Benjamin Netanyahu that a cool restoration of relations would require an apology for the Mavi Marmara-blockade-of-Gaza incident, and reparations in the millions, along with a lifting of the blockade before Ankara would agree to acknowledging Israel.

The apology was proffered, despite that Erdogan had deliberately provoked the incident by supporting the blockade-busting Gaza flotilla, even while the International Criminal Court verified that the blockade was perfectly legal under international rules, for a country to defend itself from terrorist attacks. Now the serpent hisses with fervour that a restoration of ties would have "a lot to offer to us, to Israel, to Palestine and also to the region."

 

Turkey was for eighty years a moderate, democratic country reflecting the vision of Kemal Ataturk who spurned the very kind of Muslim backwardness that Erdogan has dragged the country back into, as an authoritarian Islamic state which arrests journalists and politicians are incarcerated for daring to criticize government, yet yearns to be inducted into the European Union, as a country straddling the Middle East and Europe.

His vicious anti-Semitism has been increasingly evident by actions and statements emanating from his administration. He recalled his ambassador from Israel and invited Israel's ambassador to Turkey to leave after the "Free Gaza" flotilla left nine Turks dead, who had violently assaulted Israeli sailors who had rappelled down onto the ship to take it into harbour, claiming innocent Turks were being massacred.

Now, President Erdogan has visions of an Israeli pipeline pumping gas into Turkey through a new reconciliation agreement. The embassies will be re-established, and Israeli tourists will return to Turkey, further hoisting its economy. And Ankara is prepared to invite Salah al-Arouri, a Hamas kidnapping and murder mastermind from operating out of Turkey against Israel.


Needless to say, Erdogan should be left to stew in the juice of his own malicious malevolence.