This is the
Reason We Don't Dwell on Turkish Deaths in the West
If a democratically-elected dictator wants to act as a
conduit in a neighbour’s civil war, what does he expect
but massacres in his own major cities?
By Robert Fisk
January 03,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Independent"
- Turkey
is alone. First, we’ll take a look at the racist reasons
for this. If 39 men and women had been slaughtered in
Paris or Brussels or Berlin on New Year’s Eve, the
headlines would ripple on for three or four days. Two or
three days if the victims had been western European. But
of course, this being Turkey, which is a Muslim country
– whose people are not always as white as those from
“Christendom” – the headlines drifted off far more
quickly. Not our lot, we Westerners said.
Thus few readers of this article will know that,
proportionately, Arabs were among the largest number of
casualties of this mass murder: from tiny Lebanon alone,
three dead and four wounded, both Muslims and
Christians. We are quite unaware of the outrage in
Lebanon at the domestic television coverage of the
massacre victims – morbid, sensational, deeply intrusive
interviews with collapsing family members, so gruesome
that even the Lebanese prime minister had to plead with
journalists to leave relatives alone.
Then there are the military reasons. Hasn’t Turkey been
playing fast and loose in the Syrian war? Hasn’t it
allowed weapons and money to be funnelled across its
border to Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra (aka al-Qaeda, the
murderers of 9/11 and the heroes of eastern Aleppo) and
to various US and British-backed “moderates”, who can
kill without apparently being “jihadis”? Hasn’t Turkey
gone back to war with its own Kurds and the Syrian
Kurds, too? Hasn’t the Turkish army – the largest in
Nato, although for some reason we don’t mention this
these days – been a bit disloyal recently?
For last July’s attempted coup – despite all the
claptrap about “Gulenists” – was essentially a military
plot to overthrow President Recep Tayip Erdogan. If a
democratically-elected dictator (of which there are a
growing number around the world) wants to act as a
conduit in a neighbour’s civil war – as Pakistan did in
Afghanistan, channelling weapons, funds and fighters to
combat the Russians with American and Saudi help and
encouragement – what does it expect but massacres in its
own major cities? Touch Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis
found the Taliban marching on Islamabad. Touch Syria,
and the fireworks explode in your back yard.
Then there are the political reasons. The Turks used to
want to join the EU; they’re not so keen now, and who
can blame them? So their present policy is to take the
EU’s massive bribes (courtesy of Angela Merkel) for
closing the seas to Muslim refugees trying to reach
Europe and demand the promised visa-free trips to Europe
for its 79 million citizens, while at the same time
making up with Russia, Iran, China and any other
non-Arab nations that might be friends.
Oddly for a man who is nostalgic for the old Turkish
empire – hence, I suppose, his newly-gilded palace in
Istanbul — Erdogan has turned anti-Ottoman in his
foreign policy, virtually ignoring the Arabs whom he
courted after the 2011 revolutions in favour of larger
powers.
Erdogan, who demanded that Trump’s name be taken off his
towers in Istanbul after the then presidential candidate
called for restrictions on Muslim immigrants, now thinks
he may get a critic-free ride from the new guy in the
White House. I wouldn’t be so sure.
And that’s part of the problem. For Erdogan is now so
fickle in his alliances, shooting down a Russian jet and
then cosying up to Russia’s president, loving Assad at
the start of the Syrian revolution and hating him later,
flirting with Europe and then jeering at the EU, that
no-one in their right mind would want to get too close
to the Caliph himself.
Anyone who can bomb Kurds while claiming to bomb Isis,
who can demand that no power dare interfere in his
country’s “domestic affairs” while positioning Turkish
troops in both Syria and Iraq (where Turkey’s
involvement outside Mosul is enraging the Baghdad
government) is clearly walking a very dangerous path.
So what’s next? More massacres? Of course. From Isis,
Kurds, Marxists, you name it. More attempted coups? Now
there’s the more important political and military
question.
More than 7,000 Turkish soldiers, including 164
generals, had been detained by last October. Not,
surely, just to punish them. Any sane army knows that
when you throw that many soldiers into the clink, it’s
not to hand them over to the judiciary, many of whose
members have anyway been savaged by detentions.
No, the mass arrests among Nato’s largest army is to
prevent the military staging a more successful coup
attempt – in which the Caliph himself would end up in
prison. Or worse.
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
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