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By Dr. M. Koohzad:
President Erdogan of Turkey came to Washington threatening, demanding, asking, even begging for a few things he badly needed. He wanted the U.S. to dump the Syrian Kurds who are bravely fighting ISIS, extradite his old friend Fethullah Gulen to Turkey to be executed, and fire Mr. Brett McGurk, the American envoy to the coalition fighting ISIS. Evidently, he received no positive reply. The Western powers, including the U.S., EU, and NATO have found out that Turkey has lost its strategic values after the collapse of the USSR. It would be funny to consider Anatolia as a part of the North Atlantic region. As a terrorist state, Turkey also has friendly relations with ISIS. Erdogan declared a full-scale war on the Kurds and killed massive numbers of civilians, mainly women, children and elderly in Turkey during the 21st century. The Turkish Air Force, TAF, has targeted Kurds in three different countries: Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. He was one of a few political leaders in the world who could have prevented the genocide of five thousand Yazidi Kurds. He chose not to.
President Trump still operates in his “Apprentice” mood, temper and practice. Sitting at the head of a big table, he still loves to say: “You’re Fired!” With good reasons or not, he is a billionaire who has fired countless people. In this case, he might be a record holder. Trump’s termination of government employees included the two high-profile firings of General Flynn, his National Security Advisor and Mr. James Comey, the FBI Director. The General was in the lobbying business. He received funds from the Russians and the Turks amounting to $45,000 and $530,000, respectively. Ankara’s bribery was for getting back a CIA agent, a crying-cursing Turkish preacher who is hiding behind the mountains in Pennsylvania. Most importantly of all, he wanted to persuade the U.S. to dump the Kurds who are fighting against ISIS in Syria, while giving him a free pass to kill them in Turkey. But, inside the Beltway, the Russian money made more hoopla than the Turkish funds. Those who were left behind during the Cold War years made sure Russia was not seen as a favored nation but Turkey was.
The new Sultan Erdogan believes in being the successor of the Ottoman Caliphs, who were both political as well as religious leaders of the world’s last, largest, and most powerful empire. As the Islamist mayor of Istanbul in December 1997, Erdogan declared himself an Islamist Jihadist by reciting a poem that included verses, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers…” Erdogan’s friends: ISIS Jihadists, fully understand keywords such as barracks, helmets, bayonets, and beheadings. Sultan Erdogan has hosted Hamas terrorists, had a few handshakes with infamous Afghan terrorist leaders like Hekmatyar and welcomed genocidal Sudanese dictator Oman al-Bashir into Turkey. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar personally poured acid over the face of female students on the campus of Kabul University. It was in September of last year that Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, and Columbia University’s Professor of Comparative Literature and Writing, said his country was heading to a ‘regime of terror.’
During the last decade or so, Erdogan’s government has been able to combine Turkish fascism with Islamic terrorism. Turkey is indeed heading towards becoming a “regime of terror” in the early years of the present century. Although Pakistan was granted independence in 1947, it officially became the first formal Islamic Republic in 1956. With political turmoil in Afghanistan and with petrodollars coming from the Saudis, Pakistan became a factory for producing Islamic Jihadist thugs, including the Taliban. Currently, there are four countries seriously involved in sponsoring terrorism, including:
(1) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA,
(2) Islamic Republic of Iran, IRI,
(3) Islamic Republic of Turkey, IRT,
(4) Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS,
For being more tolerant of all of the religions in the world, being anti-terrorists, and pro-secular-western democracy; it is not surprising why none of these Islamic terrorist states have any respect for the Kurds. The Islamic Republic of Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran are the worst enemies of the Kurds. With the help from Ankara, ISIS terrorists were able to utterly destroy the Yazidi-Kurdish community, killing all of the male population that they could find, including baby boys, and enslaving most of the females. This devastation must be seen as one the biggest atrocities committed against any ethnic group in human history. The Turkish tyrant must be tried as a “war criminal” for declaring combat on the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. The International Court of Justice must prosecute and punish him.
Erdogan’s terrorist regime decidedly has created a political crisis, chaos, instability, and economic uncertainty. Using this fear factor, nationalist and even secular Turks who have been uninterested in his agenda are submitting to an Islamist regime. He did not stamp upon the path of utilizing this “fear factor” accidentally. As long as he keeps killing Kurds, this has become his deliberate and systematic way of intimidating those that criticize him, and he pushes the public to support him. Perhaps, his staged coup in mid-July of 2016 was one way to keep riding on the waves of manufactured chaos, fear, and instability. Regardless how many were killed, lost their jobs, and were imprisoned, Erdogan seriously sought the execution of his old friend, Gulen. The two became billionaires by embezzlement, mostly from public works. The two became the classical example of Turkish Kleptocracy that is a systematic corruption and thievery by the state or state-sanctioned corruption. Sultan Erdogan evolved from Kleptocracy, not democracy.
In less than a year, in a rigged referendum on April 16, 2017, he crowned himself a Sultan of the neo-Ottoman era. He transformed Turkey’s governance from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency. Unfortunately, the country’s democracy was already curtailed before the poll. He became both the head of state and the head of government, weakening the parliament, the judiciary, and the military. Mr. Erdogan could remain in power — practically unopposed — until 2029. His victory will lead to a state that is less democratic and more bitterly divided than ever.
Before leaving Washington, President Erdogan committed a crime on U.S. soil. He actually should have been apprehended, tried and punished. Apparently, he ordered his bodyguard brutes to beat peaceful demonstrators. Based on the evidence, the order came directly from him. Having a violent and intense personality and being angered by President Trump, this is not surprising. Also, this was not the first time his bodyguards have clashed with protesters calling Erdogan things like “Kurd Killer, Baby Killer, and Terrorist.”
On a tour of South America in early February of 2016, Erdogan bodyguards were unleashed on protesters in Ecuador and Chile. In Washington, at least nine people were injured and taken to a local hospital. As the clash broke out, videos from the confrontation quickly emerged showing Erdogan’s security detail using force on protesters, even kicking multiple people in their faces. In this fiasco, Erdogan disgraced and humiliated himself as well as the American law and order.
While back home, the disappointed and desperate Sultan Erdogan asked his MP to instruct his Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that the least Trump could do was to fire the U.S. envoy Brett McGurk. He wanted him fired for supporting the Kurds. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is the middleman who met with General Flynn and paid him money to work for Turkey. Mr. Cavusoglu accused McGurk, the presidential envoy for the global coalition against ISIS, for carrying on Obama-era strategies. Mr. McGurk has doubted that there was any reason to believe that the Kurds were terrorists. To Ankara’s dismay, President Trump already, a week before Erdogan’s visit, has allowed American heavy weapons to be directly delivered to the Kurds in Rojava. The Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, a coalition of rebel fighters led – by the United States in Syria includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, YPG, as its primary element. The Kurds, as American foot soldiers, with the help of the U.S. Air Force, the most powerful in the world, Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State will be taken soon and ISIS will be dumped in the garbage bin of history. More importantly, Sultan Erdogan and his AKP should follow suit.
Dr. M. Koohzad is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern Studies in the United States.
