Good News: The World is Waiting for Turkish Leadership!!!??

A very interesting op-ed from the Turkish daily - Hurriyet

gives us a fascinating, if not frightening look

into the psyche of Turkish leadership

The anecdote, mentioned previously in this column, dates back to more than half a century ago, but it explains some of Turkey’s policy failures today. When, in the late 1950s, Kemal Nejat Kavur was serving as the Turkish ambassador to Moscow, Andrei Gromyko, the then Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, asked him: “Your Excellency, your country has the highest number of men under arms in Europe. If you turned them against your traditional enemies, the Greeks, they would be too much for them. But if you turned them against us, it would be too small. What’s the reason for this?”

Andrei Gromyko

During most of the past century, Turkey’s “sizing” problem reflected the secular state’s misperceptions about security threats. Today it reflects a combination of the Islamists’ illusions of grandeur, their “conquest-fetish,” the humiliating sorrow about having lost an empire (and the seat of the Caliph) and past feelings of inferiority complex vis-à-vis the world’s major powers (which, making things worse, are sadly not Muslim nations).

Although his words may have caused spasms of laughter in a number of world capitals, Parliament Speaker İsmail Kahraman was not joking when he recently said “the whole world is waiting for Turkish leadership.” Mr. Kahraman, number two in Turkey’s state protocol after the president, said: “Turkey holds a big mission … But [in addition to Turkey’s political borders] we also have borders of the heart, of spirituality: A geography of the heart and spirituality. The whole world is waiting for our leadership.” The whole world, from Bolivia to Vietnam, New Zealand, Canada, Iran and Russia must have sighed with relief that their painful longing for Turkish leadership did not go unnoticed in Ankara.

Turkey’s foreign policy calculus has dramatically swung from “zero problems with neighbors” to “precious loneliness” and now to “more friends and fewer enemies.” That’s nice: Blessed are the peacemakers. But Gromyko’s teasing lines from the 1950s look real and contemporary enough to be spoken to Turkey’s current ambassador to Moscow.

According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, released in February, Turkey was the sixth largest arms importer in the world between 2011 and 2015 – the same years when Ankara aggressively claimed to have developed indigenous arms systems, including a fighter jet. But that is the defense procurement side of the story. The inconsistency lies in the policy part.

Turkey, in theory, is developing local drone systems, corvettes, submarines, a new generation battle tank, missile systems, helicopters and satellites. It is also building, under Spanish license, a landing platform dock which government big guns often like to liken to an aircraft carrier – and which will come with a price tag of nearly $1.5 billion.

But all of that, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks, is still not good enough. In a recent speech Mr. Erdoğan said: “Obviously I view it as a big shortcoming that Turkey still does not have a nuclear aircraft carrier.”

A nuclear aircraft carrier? Will all those war toys make the Turkish arsenal more friends and fewer enemies? Will it be the stockpile, including nuclear, that Turkey will use to bring Turkish leadership to the whole world? One landing platform dock and one nuclear aircraft carrier to tame all the “infidel” world powers? Once again, as Gromyko put it too realistically, if Turkey wanted to invade a few Greek islands all that war gear would be too much; but if it wants to set sail northbound into the Black Sea it would be too little.

Unfortunately, “the whole world” will have to be a little more patient to embrace the much-longed for Turkish leadership.

Russian View of Syrian Conflict

ISIS leaders remain in close contact with Ankara – Lavrov

This is an interesting and informative perspective and worth reading. But keep in mind that this article was sourced from RT (Russia Today) which is influenced by the Russian government.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. © The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

The leaders of Islamic State maintain a constant liaison with the Turkish government, working out a new approach to the war in Syria as the Russian Air Force cuts off traditional smuggling routes, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Moscow has intelligence that Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) command continues to hold backdoor negotiations with the Turkish leadership, Lavrov told Russian newspaper MK in a vast interview in honor of Diplomats’ Day.

The airstrikes of the Russian Air Force in Syria have severely disrupted “traditional smuggling routes,” so the Turks are discussing in all seriousness creation of “IS-free zones” in Syria.

“Of course [such zones] would be a violation of all principles of the international law and also escalate tensions, substantially and fundamentally,” Lavrov said, adding the Turks are constructing tent camps and some kind of “engineering structures” on the Syrian side of the border, some 200 meters inside the country’s territory.

At the same time the Russian FM does not believe that a full-scale Turkish invasion into Syria is possible; Ankara is expected to limit its actions to “small provocations.”

“I do not believe that the US-led [anti-IS] coalition, which includes Turkey, would allow such desperate schemes to take shape,” Lavrov said.

'Main transit route for militants' - Russian ambassador to Ankara on Turkey 

According to Lavrov, Moscow was “astonished” by the position voiced by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel during Turkey voyage about Russian airstrikes being to blame for the growing influx of refugees from the Middle East to Europe.

The German leader did not say a word about terrorists in Syria being supported by the trafficking of arms, munitions and other necessary supplies from Turkey, which openly blackmails the EU over the refugee problem, Lavrov said.

Lavrov called attention to the fact that the growing tide of asylum seekers rushed to Europe after the elimination of the Libyan state, which took place well ahead of the Russian warplanes being deployed to Syria.

“I’d like to note that we had called attention to Turkey’s actions becoming inappropriate… long before our Air Force became operable in Syria,” Lavrov said, recalling incidents with Turkey creating obstacles with international projects and scandalous statements made by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his 2015 visit to Moscow.

Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey.  “Turkish leaders falling out of the real world completely.” - Lavrov

“Of course we paid attention to that incongruity, but assumed that common sense would prevail and Turks realize we’re neighbor and had done nothing wrong to them,” Lavrov said, quoting President Vladimir Putin’s words about Moscow putting a blind eye on many of Ankara’s escapades.

Lavrov agreed that probably that position was a mistake, since it ended up with the “Turkish leaders falling out of the real world completely.”

The veteran foreign minister does not exclude attempts to put the boots on the ground in Syria from some countries of the Persian Gulf.

“If the [Syria peace] talks bring no fruit or are not allowed to begin, then it is possible that some countries, directed by personal hatred towards [President Bashar] Assad, would go for a head-on solution by force,” Lavrov acknowledged, recalling some countries of the region “empathetically rejecting Russia-US-EU initiative to declare the Syrian crisis “militarily unsolvable” in a UN Security Council resolution.

“So this [a military intervention in Syria] is quite possible,” Lavrov said, mentioning Saudi Arabia’s openly declared plans to send troops to Syria should an international coalition invade.

This would be special, especially if American troops were involved in the coalition. It would mean that Saudi Arabia would be using American made weapons to kill American soldiers. This is all good if you are an American arms dealer or manufacturer; whatever you have to do to keep the inventory moving.

The developments of the Turkish-Syrian border serve proof that Ankara’s primary concern is making direct contacts between the Syrian and Turkish Kurds possible.

The IS-free strip along the border is called to prevent that Kurdish reunion Ankara finds totally unacceptable, as it would disrupt Turkish supplies to IS terrorists and getting oil and other contraband goods once and for all.

In this light, Ankara, as well as some other capitals in the region, believes Russia to be the biggest problem in the Middle East.

“I can understand that,” Lavrov said, “The Turks say openly that we have blown their plans [for Syria] wide open and now are trying to nail the Americans to the barn door, too,” the Russian FM commented on Ankara’s recent demarche towards Washington, which was thrown into a dilemma to “choose between Turks and Kurds.”

Ankara also insisted on expelling Kurds from the Syria peace talks, which is “Turkey’s arrogant position not seeing eye-to-eye by anybody else,” Lavrov stressed, noting that Washington has already, though anonymously, proclaimed the Kurds being allies against Islamic State.

“We work with them [Kurds], too,” the minister mentioned.

“Honestly speaking, I do not consider the situation as irretrievable one,”Lavrov said, adding that at present close cooperation between Washington and Moscow in Syria is not possible due to a “restrain factor” of the US relations with allies in the Middle East region perceiving Russia as being a threat to their plans for Syria.