The Cuckoo In The Nest
Things are going downhill rapidly in Turkey.
I'll set out my stall, if I may. I'm a great friend of the Turks – they're noble, ruthless merchants, ferocious fighters, rabid anti Communists and honourable custodians of what is, in effect, the birthplace of modern civilisation. They treasure their culture, their heritage, their language and their hard won reputation as "moderates" in an ever more volatile world.
At least they used to.
Let's look back at how far the Turks have come in one thousand years. They've had their empire, a multinational, multilingual empire controlling much of South east Europe, Western Asia, the Caucasus, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. They ran their Caliphate well and although it declined in the last two centuries, Turks were respected for their wealth, academic achievements, trade and military force. Allying with the Germans in WW1 was their greatest mistake and whilst the West courted Arab uprisings against them (resulting in much of the current chaos in the Middle East), they emerged, thanks to Ataturk, a nation intent on modernising, democratising and secularising their way into the 20th century. The Roman alphabet replaced the Arabic script, girls were schooled and the Muftis were sent packing. Hijabs and Fezs were booted into the long grass and Turkey became an established Nato member, a vibrant modern economy flourished and everyone breathed a sigh of relief that at least there was some stability in the region.
There isn't any more. The arrival of Erdogan on the political scene has been a catastrophic step backwards for Turkey. Whilst half of the population rapidly embraced Western values, philosophy and modernism (and beer), the other half hankered after a more Asian perspective suited to the history books of the Middle Ages. Add a significant ethnic mix of Kurds and trouble
is always bubbling just under the surface. He has thrown all semblance of Ataturk's new vision out of the window and is using the fierce nationalist streak in every Turk to achieve a new Sultanate.
There's plenty of power to be grabbed. Syria is a failed state, and the Arabs (as usual) are in turmoil. His old enemies, the Shi'ite Iranians are flexing their muscles internationally once again and the Kurdish problem isn't going away. He's both fought and armed ISIS, like the man who keeps a cobra at home and feeds it, hoping it won't bite him first. He's happily rounding up journalists, comedians, satirists and newspaper editors and throwing them in prison for having the audacity to criticise him. He's got the idiot Merkel over a barrel with 2 million Syrians (and 12 million unwanted Kurds) itching to move to Germany and own a Mercedes, he's got Assad and Putin in a Gordian knot that will envelope the entire region in civil war if he unleashes his considerable and well armed military forces and the US are too damn stupid to realise that a couple of air force bases really shouldn't be a good enough reason to keep the Sultanate in NATO.
Little by little, he is Islamising Turkey once again – his vision of a new Caliphate, this time allied with the successful post war Germans (now in charge of the EU and Europe) should be ringing alarm bells globally. Instead of isolating him and quarantining what will become another region of conflict, none of our gutless politicians has the balls to simply slam the gates of Vienna shut in his face.
The Balkan tinderbox will be dragged into the EU and Erdogan will sit at the head of the table of a nice little nest of vipers pushing and shoving an ever more rattled and desperate Brussels – happy to allow membership to all and sundry as long as the Glorious Empire keeps expanding. A recipe for unmitigated disaster and another century of warfare in Europe.
By Old Holborn
Award winning Columnist, Satirist, Comedian and
Libertarian Legend. Champion of Free Speech.