http://www.lifo.gr/articles/greece_articles/189834/giorgos-leventis-to-islamofasistiko-kathestos-erntogan-epivalletai-stadiaka-kai-stin-toyrkokypriaki-koinonia

As an independent Cypriot think tank, we cannot help but remind the international community of striking similarities between the ongoing Turkish offensive in Northern Syria and the Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Let us examine them one by one.

First, as the Orwellian motto goes: restatement of the obvious is the most important task of intelligent men: Both invasions cause tremendous suffering among civilians, hundreds if not thousands of casualties, thousands of civilians – Greek in the case of Cyprus 1974, Kurds in the current Syria invasion – are forced to flee, yet Ankara calls both peace operations! They make a disaster and they call it peace. Turkish troops in Cyprus 1974 committed atrocities: hundreds of Greek civilians were killed in cold blood, women raped and more than one thousand Greek Cypriots are still missing while the Turkish Armed Forces refuse access to their archives to ascertain the missing persons’ fate. To this day, Ankara names the Northern Cyprus Occupation Force a Peace Force. In the same time-honoured fashion, in an apparent attempt to mislead the whole world, Erdogan’s government codenamed his offensive in Northern Syria Operation Olive Branch.

Second, similar if not identical pretexts, are cited by Ankara in her attempt to ‘justify’ the invasion and occupation of foreign territory. Dubious, if not spurious, arguments of self defence and protection of Turkish minorities are being put forward: in the case of Cyprus: protection of the eighteen per cent Turkish Cypriot minority. In the case of Syria, the protection of the comparatively small Turkmen brethren. Let us remind ourselves that following the Cypriot coup of 15 July 1974, the putschist government in Nicosia declared at its first (and last) press conference that the ‘change of government is a purely Greek Cypriot affair’ adding importantly ‘the policy of new government is to seek a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem through the established process of inter-communal political dialogue’. In other words no Turkish Cypriot was hurt by the Greek Cypriot coupists though the latter happily … killed a few hundred of their own kind in the fierce internecine war that engulfed Nicosia and Limassol.

In fact – this is the third striking similarity of the two expansionist Turkish operations – in 1974 the Turkish Air Force threw leaflets produced in a corrupt form of the Greek language (but still legible) whereby the Greek Cypriot civilian population was informed that the Turkish Armed Forces ‘are arriving to save them from the endless internecine war’. In an identical fashion the Turkish Air Force threw leaflets in Arabic and Kurdish informing the local population of their Olive Branch Operation. What a coincidence!

Last but not least, what is lurking behind all these ‘olive branch’ codenames of Turkish military ‘peace operations’ and all the rest of it?  What other than the notorious security zones as a means of expansion.

After the first Attila operation of 20 July 1974, in accordance with a relevant Security Council ceasefire resolution (22 July) a peace conference was convened between the UK (at the chair) Turkey, Greece in Geneva at the end of July. Turan Gunes, then Turkish Foreign Minister (known for his colourful personality and folksy behaviour) demanded that a security zone of sixteen kilometres be agreed beyond the Turkish invading forces ceasefire line. One could imagine what that meant in the context of the small size of Cyprus. When this and other absurd Turkish demands were rejected Ankara launched operation Attila II.

Mutatis mutandis, Erdogan’s demand for a thirty-kilometre security zone along Turkey’s border with Syria is a spitting image of the same Turkish tactic employed in the 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Thus, in the long term, such a broad security zone, if established, will consolidate Ankara’s control on foreign territory, in this case Syria.

The Turkish annexation of Alexandretta (Iskenderun) is another case point: in 1937 France, the colonial power in control of this Syrian territory, naively decides to let the Turks administer the Alexandretta region. The following year it is declared autonomous and in 1939 the world powers recognize Alexandetta’s annexation to Turkey. Consequently, Alexandretta becomes Hatay Province within the Republic of Turkey. Ironically, in 1974 the East Mediterranean port of Alexandretta serves as the hub to launch the invasion in Cyprus!

Is there a lesson learnt for the corridors of power in London, Paris, Washington and Moscow with regard to Turkish grand strategy?

The neo-nationalist partners of Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who played a key role in orchestrating the abortive coup of July 15 to benefit political masters now have a new plan in the works: belligerent posturing with neighboring Greece over disputed claims in the Aegean Sea.

The surprise visit of Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, an Erdoğan loyalist, to the Aegean islets of Kardak (Imia), accompanied by the commanders of the land, naval and air forces, has all the hallmarks of this sinister plot and has nothing to do with the Greek courts refusing to turn over soldiers who are alleged to have been involved in a coup attempt. This is much bigger than the court case, and I’m afraid the Turkish Islamists, in cooperation with neo-nationalists in the army and intelligence agency, are set to escalate the tension with Greece.

The main motivation for Erdoğan in this belligerence is to fish for nationalist votes ahead of a critical referendum in April that will likely give him sweeping powers and the opportunity to change the character of the secular parliamentary democracy in Turkey into an autocratic one-man regime that is rooted in xenophobic Islamist ideology. The Turkish president had already sent signals to deliberately stoke tension with Greece months before Turkey’s top generals staged a showdown in the Aegean near Kardak last Sunday. In a series of public speeches delivered in October 2016, Erdoğan opened the Lausanne Treaty, which delineated borders with Greece, among others, up to debate, questioned the handover of islands in the Aegean to Greece and even said Turkish mosques are still present on islands near Turkey as if they were the deed to Erdogan’s claim on the islands.

We have seen that playbook in the past. I wrote details of secret plans of the neo-nationalists in the Turkish military before, exposing how they plotted to bring Turkey to the brink of war with Greece over the Aegean with false flags in 2003. I will quote some of my earlier writings to shed light on what we’ll likely see in the coming months on the border with Greece. Some influential generals at the time thought it would be a good idea to raise the tension with Greece to strengthen their position domestically and embarrass the new government formed by Erdoğan, who they despised. Now, the same neo-nationalist faction has partnered with him after Erdoğan found himself in legal trouble in the 2013 graft probes and orchestrated the acquittal of these crazy guys in the military to enlist allies against his political foes. In a secret deal of clemency for convicted felons by Erdoğan, these generals walked free, in total disregard of the overwhelming evidence of crime we all saw in the indictment and evidentiary files.

The secret plan to stir up troubles with Greece is borrowed from the botched false flag of 1962 called Operation Northwoods, a plot planned by the US Department of Defense to trigger a war with Cuba. The plan was not put into action following President John F. Kennedy’s rejection of it but contained appalling scenarios such shooting down passenger and military planes, the harassment of US aircraft, the sinking of a US ship in the vicinity of Cuba, the burning of crops, the sinking of a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the US and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs.

The Turkish version of Operation Northwoods is called Operation Thunderstorm (Oraj), which was cooked up by neo-nationalist generals in the Turkish military as part of the plan in the Sledgehammer coup preparations. The plot was uncovered by investigators during the execution of a search warrant at the Naval Intelligence Department located at the Gölcük Naval Command, a major naval base located on the east coast of the Sea of Marmara. The plan sees an escalation of the crisis with Greece by provoking conflict in the air, at sea and on land borders.

The Oraj plan, dated February 2003, specifically asked for increased flights over the Aegean and ordered commanding officers to instruct pilots to engage in harassment maneuvers with Greek fighter jets. It wanted Turkish pilots to be more aggressive and even issued new rules of engagement allowing pilots to take shots at Greek fighters, albeit unofficially. The plan suggested reorganizing the special fleet with the specific objective of having a Turkish pilot shoot down a Turkish jet in his own squadron in the event all other efforts to provoke a Greek fighter to destroy a Turkish jet failed. Fabricated stories would then be planted in the media, saying that Greece intentionally shot down a Turkish jet.

To accompany the provocations in the air, both the land and sea forces would also be instructed to engage in hostilities. Tensions would increase along the Thracian border with Greece, with new guard outposts set up in the area. “The naval forces would continuously conduct training exercises in the Aegean Sea. Fighter jets would be kept on standby on the tarmac round the clock at the Balıkesir, Bandırma, Çiğli, Çorlu and Dalaman military airports, and they would be scrambled even if there were reports of minor infractions,” the plan explained.

Another document, dated December 2002, disclosed a secret meeting in Ankara about the Suga plan, where the issue of islands/islets whose sovereignty still remains disputed was discussed to provoke Greece. In a related memo dated Jan. 10, 2003, Navy Col. Mustafa Karasabun submitted plans to make changes in the rules of engagement in the Aegean, giving a free hand in provocations. Plotters debated different scenarios on how to best trigger a conflict with Greece, short of war. For example, one proposal envisaged creating the impression that the Turkish navy was about to conduct a major amphibious assault on the Greek base on Nisos Leros Island (İleryoz Ada in Turkish) near Turkey. Air assets were to be mobilized to boost that impression. The plan was intended to precipitate a change in the Greek navy’s level of alertness, resulting in a panicked response, stated Col. Murat Saka, the planning project officer, in a document submitted to a court.

Prosecutors believe the Oraj plan was cooked up by Bilgin Balanlı, who was air marshal at the time and in line to become head of the Turkish Air Forces before his dreams were shattered by his arrest in 2011. He was given orders to do so by former Air Force Commander Gen. İbrahim Fırtına, who was the commander of the War Academies in 2003.

The ringleaders were the heads of the three commands in 2003 — Gen. Çetin Doğan of the İstanbul-based 1st Army Command, Gen. Fırtına and Adm. Özden Örnek of the Naval Forces Command — all of whom were later convicted but saved by Erdoğan in a secret deal. Unlike Operation Northwoods, some parts of the Oraj plan had already started to be implemented. For example, a confidential memo written by Navy Col. Cem Gürdeniz in February 2003 discussed increasing flights over the Aegean Sea as part of the Oraj plan. It also said the harassment of Turkish fighter jets by Greek aircraft and their prevention from undertaking given tasks would be brought to the attention of the public through the media.

After reading the indictment, I checked public records to determine whether they matched the details of these plans, and it turned out the actual timeline of events corresponds with the steps explained in the Oraj plan. According to a January 2004 report in the Greek Eleftheros Typos newspaper, there was a huge spike in the number of alleged violations of Greek airspace by Turkish fighter jets in that period. In 2003, there were a total of 3,900 violations committed by Turkish aircraft, up from 3,200 in 2002. In contrast, the preceding years saw a lower number of violations. In 2000 this figure was 398 and in 2001 it was 957. In 2003, when the Oraj plan was active, 1,020 incidents of dogfights between Greek and Turkish fighter jets were reported.

From the press coverage back in those years, it was clear that Greece was understandably upset over the unprecedented number of violations, prompting Athens to raise the issue with Ankara.

Frustrated by the lack of progress on the issue, Greek government spokesman Hristos Proropapas in October 2003 said: “Many circles both in Athens and Ankara do not want the violations to continue. But there are generals sitting in Ankara.” He was pointing the finger at the untouchable generals who secretly launched the plans. Perhaps Greek intelligence was even made aware of the plots in the 2003/04 period by its allies or found out on its own.

All indications suggested Greece knew something different was in play and suspected foul play on the Turkish side. It marshaled its diplomatic corps, even instructing its ambassador Michalis Christidis to hold a press conference in Ankara in June 2003 to share his government’s concerns directly with the Turkish public. Stressing that Greece had taken note of an unusual increase in the number of violations over the Aegean, the ambassador underlined that there was a qualitative change in the way these violations had occurred. “Most of the Turkish fighters were armed. Two-thirds of the violations happened within six miles of Greek airspace, and some of them were committed very close to residential areas,” he said.

These conspiracy plans were eventually thwarted because one man, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hilmi Özkök, was very much opposed to raising tension with Greece. He even gave an interview to Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia in October 2003 to ease Greek concerns. Erdoğan was weak in the government but was helped out by NATO, especially by the US, as well as by the European Union with the preparations of launching official membership talks with Turkey. Turkish media had been scrutinizing the actions of the military, and the judiciary was relatively independent with the rule of law still in place despite serious shortcomings.

Now the political calculations have changed dramatically. Erdoğan is leading the charge against NATO, bashing the allies all the time as if he were the unofficial spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin to discredit and undermine the NATO alliance. His media machinery is busy making a case that Turkey should exit NATO and deny access to the US and other NATO allies to bases in Turkey including İncirlik, where the US-led anti-ISIL coalition is based. He thinks belligerence with Greece will secure him his imperial presidency by attracting more votes under a pumped-up nationalistic euphoria. The neo-nationalists in the Turkish military for whom there is no love lost with NATO have a completely free hand to do as they please. The EU is in disarray and lacks the political determination to really tackle Turkey. Brussels has been busy for some time now with appeasement rather than a real engagement that requires playing hardball at times, especially on economic leverage.

More importantly, the Turkish judicial and police investigators who exposed these conspiracies in the first place and prevented the plans from reaching full operation capacity have been purged by Erdoğan as part of his deal with the neo-nationalists, led by the staunchly anti-Western and xenophobic Doğu Perinçek. Tens of thousands of judges, prosecutors, military, police and intelligence officers were dismissed, and many were arrested on trumped-up charges. Checks and balances in Turkey’s security apparatus are completely gone. On top of that, the media is totally controlled by Erdoğan and his partners. According to a Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) report issued last week, 191 journalists have been jailed with additional 92 being sought for an arrest in Turkey. It is a world record by any measure. Close to 200 media outlets were shut down arbitrarily by the government as well. Therefore, no independent media is left to scrutinize government actions and expose these plots.

A more dangerously combustible mix is now seen in controlling the levers of power in Turkey, which is ready to engage in hostilities with Greece to gain favors on the home front. Greece has more reasons to be worried today about Erdoğan’s ambitions.

Source: https://abdullahbozkurtblog.wordpress.com/

As these lines are dawn the TAF are pounding Kurdish civilian areas in Turkey itself in an apparent effort to deny the right of existence to an entire people: the stateless Kurdish nation.

International peace is built upon respect of norms: charters, conventions, treaties that constitute international law. Respect of international law forms the sound foundation for peace, respect and tolerance between nations. Make no mistake: Turkey resigned to any title and right to the island of Cyprus by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923, Articles 20-21). Ankara has not respected the Treaty. Aided and abetted by Great Britain in the mid-fifties (London Conference 1955) Turkey has ever since re-entered forcefully the Cyprus frame. The core of the Cyprus problem is the denial of the unadulterated implementation of the right of self-determination of the people of Cyprus at the end of World War II, which would have meant the cession of the island to Greece in accordance with the crystal clear political will of the majority of Cypriots. (For a detailed account see the author’s book: Cyprus: The Struggle for Self-Determination in the 1940s, Peter Lang, Frankfurt, 2002). The solution of vassal state independence struck Zurich and finalized in London (February 1959) did nothing more than to exacerbate the feeling of injustice and frustration among the Greek majority on the island forming eighty per cent of the Cypriot population. More so, if it is taken into account that the Cypriots were, however indirectly, promised Enosis at the end of the anti-Nazi war effort. The Greeks of Cyprus fought heroically within the ranks of the British Imperial Army. Ten per cent of the Cypriot population were involved in the war effort. Naturally, the Cypriot war veterans felt bitterly betrayed as London refused to proceed with the cession of their island to mother country Greece. Some of them rebelled while in duty service (see above book).

The constitutional order established in the stillborn Republic of Cyprus was a recipe for disaster: the prerogatives granted to the small Turkish minority were such that rekindled the deep rooted Greek Cypriot majority feeling of injustice. The Greeks offered tombs of sacrifices in  the defeat of Nazism and in the consequent armed campaign for Enosis (1955-58), only to be denied their inalienable UN Charter endorsed right of self-determination! Makarios had little other option than propose through a political process the amendment of the unworkable constitution. The Turkish answer was the insurgency, the arming of Turkish Cypriot militants by Ankara and their hot headed drive for geographical segregation. When the freshly formed Greek National Guard engaged in self-defence purging operations to protect the Greek civilians from the indiscriminate attacks of Turkish Cypriot militants Ankara answered sending its Air Force dropping napalm bombs on Greek villages (August 1964).

We ought to submit the significant point of historical continuity in Turkish policy: there has been little if no change on Turkish war practices: war crimes committed on massive scale against unarmed civilian population. What does this practice amount to other than genocide? (Compare for instance the stubborn Turkish governments’ denial of the Greek Pontiac or the Armenian or the Kurdish genocide)

Incidentally, let us make no mistake: the only time napalm bombs were used in the annals of modern military history before the TAF dropped them in Tylliria Cyprus, was by the US Air Force in their effort to eliminate the Greek Communist guerillas (Aug 1949). Ironically, it looks fatal for the Greeks to be on the side of the winners in both World Wars only to be … ‘awarded’ the extensive destruction and loss of innocent human life caused by the impact of napalm and other cluster bombs on the population dropped by their Allies (remember also RAF’s notorious pounding of the poor neighbourhoods of Athens in the early stages of the Greek civil war: December 1944: a direct consequence of Winston Churchill’s order to the British military commander to rule Athens as an occupied city)!

What are the true immediate consequences of the Turkish invasion of 1974, the so called ‘peace operation’ that once more will be celebrated in the breakaway “TRNC”. Let us take a quick rough quantitative assessment – without an estimate the immeasurable cost of loss of human life and property:

• 5,000 Greeks dead
• 1500 missing – after 42 years the fate of only one about one third of this number of persons has been identified, UN sponsored process of identification stalled by refusal of Turkish authorities to grant access to TAF military archives
• 70% of gross output lost
• 65% of tourist accommodation
• 87% of hotel beds under construction
• 83% of general cargo handling
• 56% of mining output
• 48% of agricultural exports
• 46% of plant production
• 37% of the total area of the island occupied in a country where 83% of private land is Greek owned.

The 42 year-old consequences are immense and the cost of compensation to the Greeks of Cyprus easily runs into tens of billions of euros. Sadly, the current talk of Cypriot government officials is for a substantial part of the proceeds from future sale of natural gas to finance an agreed political settlement including compensation. What a great idea! The aggressor gets away, the partly recovered victim is asked to pay the damages bill …

What sort of logic is that? Is that part of a new policy of appeasement of Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Are we standing here in this 3000 year old Greek island just to appease the neo-Sultan lest he unleashes an unprecedented and ferocity blitzkrieg on the remaining Greeks of Cyprus?

We shall not engage with the English syntax and grammar mistakes (of which there are plenty) that Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, committed in the above statement while in Turkey. However, we ought to address the substance of his words, uttered a day before the date the whole world set – not least the European Union of which Tusk is the prime speaker – to commemorate the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which Ankara never admitted. If anything, the Turkish government criminalized reference to this atrocious war crime, which it conveniently terms as ‘forced population movements’.

It is very ironic that the President of the European Council chose this particular day to pay a visit and praise Turkey unequivocally for its ‘best record in treating refugees’. Let us remind Mr. Tusk that the European Parliament a year earlier on the anniversary of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide noted in its relevant resolution, inter alia, the following:

1. 2015 marks the centennial of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire;
2. An increasing number of Member States and national parliaments recognize the Armenian Genocide perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire;
3. One of the main motivations for the European unification movement is the will to prevent the recurrence of wars and crimes against humanity in Europe;
4. Turkey and Armenia have embarked on a process of diplomatic normalisation, signing protocols in 2009 in Zurich on establishing and developing relations;
5. The importance of keeping alive the memories of the past is paramount, since there can be no reconciliation without truth and remembrance;

“The EP pays tribute, on the eve of the centenary, to the memory of the one-and-a-half million innocent Armenian victims who perished in the Ottoman Empire; joins the commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide in a spirit of European solidarity and justice; calls on the Commission and the Council to join in the commemoration.”

Ankara has not as yet normalized diplomatic relations with Armenia neither has it recognized the genocide, despite the importance of doing so being clearly marked by the most democratic of institutions in the European Union.

To the contrary, Turkey has dedicated the time, that lapsed since the signing of the Zurich protocol of 2009, not in promoting good neighbourly relations but in destabilizing its neighbours Syria and Iraq, which she invaded several times. Both Damascus and Baghdad denounced Turkish aggressive actions multiple times referring Ankara’s interventionist policy and creeping invasion to the UN Security Council.

Moreover, Tusk’s statement is an affront to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian victims as well as the tens of thousands of Turkish and Syrian Kurdish victims that the five year old Turkish interference and expansionism has created in the region. The Turkish Armed Forces pound inhabited areas in the southeast of the country nonstop, killing innocent Kurds, citizens of the Republic of Turkey. Turkey’s Kurds cry out every single day: “This is genocide”.

The EU should not support Turkey’s creeping invasion in Syrian and Iraq, neither should it condone the genocidal war within Turkey against its own Kurdish population. One should ask the real questions: What did the EU do for promoting the peace process in Syria? What did the EU do to curb Turkey’s daily attacks on its own civilian population?

On the other hand the situation in the eastern provinces of the country is dreadful. Tens of thousands of repressed ethnic Kurds are forced to flee their ancestral homes in search for relative safety. The modus operandi, the goals, and the results of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) operations in Turkey’s Southeast targeted against the courageous Kurdish population are reminiscent of the Turkish ‘Peace Operation’ in Cyprus in July-August 1974. Code-named Attila, a two-phase operation in violation of a relevant Security Council ceasefire resolution (22 July 1974) achieved ‘remarkable’, from the Turkish rulers point of view, results: displacement of 165,000 Greeks of Cyprus from their 3000 years old ancestral homes, rape of Greek women by members of the TAF that remain unpunished to this date. The Greek population incurred also 5,000 deaths and 1500 missing persons, the large majority of which remain unaccounted for, 42 years after the Turkish ‘peace operation’. Numbers are round figure estimates: however, according to UNFICYP estimates 2 in 5, or 40% of the Greek Cypriots became internally displaced persons (IDPs). Turkey, so far, has got away with the above outlined war crimes. The northern part occupied by the TAF, 36 per cent of the total area of the island, became ethnically cleansed from a three millennia long historical Greek presence. In 1974, Greeks constituted 80% of the population of what is coined in recent years as Northern Cyprus. Moreover, through the years of ‘peaceful’ occupation, Ankara implanted no less than 120,000 of backward Muslim settlers from Anatolia, a critical mass at least equal in numbers to the Turkish Cypriot indigenous population and importantly of completely different outlook and mentality to the Cypriot Turks.

The far reaching consequences of the 1974 Attila operation are visible today in the self-styled TRNC, Ankara’s puppet state. A historical Greek civilization heartland for thousands of years has been turned into a Muslim chaos: 500 Greek Orthodox churches have disappeared (looted, pillaged, demolished, turned-into-stables and the like) whereas mosques are mushrooming in an effort to forcibly Islamize the predominantly secular Turkish Cypriot society.

Ironically, the Cyprus Turkification operation was ordered by a left-of-centre Turkish Prime Minister, the late Bulent Ecevit. In other respects, Ecevit was a socialist and a secular poet. Unlike Erdogan, Ecevit had not ever cited Koran verses in public. However, his decision to order the execution of the Attila operation, laid the solid foundation for a long term plan: the chauvinist Turkish expansion to the strategically located island of Cyprus. A generation later, Erdogan builds on the Ecevit-organized military occupation of northern Cyprus, turning it into a creeping Islamization. Continuity or change in the top echelon of Turkish polity, left or right, secular or religious, the policy aim is the same: displacement of the different, of the other.

A close look at events in Southeast Turkey today reveal remarkable similarities: the TAF launching a massive operation that terrorizes the other population out of their ancestral homes. The perpetrator is the same: the powerful Neo-Sultan, the victim is the same: the weak side that forms an obstacle to the grandiose plans of a Neo-Ottoman empire; in this case in real time the poor Kurds.

As confirmed by a most recent European Parliament fact finding mission: 50,000 Kurds fled Nusaybin, Mardin Province, near the Syrian border, 50,000 run away from Sirnak Province, while another 40,000 departed from Yuksekova, Hakari Province in search of safe heavens in western parts of the country. The fleeing civilian Kurds are desperately seeking to protect themselves from becoming human shields. The TAF indiscriminately bombard densely Kurdish populated urban areas. Their numbers are roughly equal, their fate is identical: Greek Cypriot IDPs in 1974, Turkey’s Kurdish IDPs in 2016: Ecevit-Erdogan policy draws a dreadful analogy!

Indeed, those who closely follow the politics of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ascertain that this is his ‘absolutism dream’: to celebrate the centennial of the Republic of Turkey as the supreme ruler, the neo-Sultan, whose ‘wisdom’ in governance is challenged by no one let alone the unruly ‘mountainous Turks’: a Turkish government’s official jargon term for the Kurds. Yet, common sense, let alone sophisticated political analysis, tells that the endless bloodshed that Turkey experiences in recent months are a direct consequence of the Turkish President’s relentless and authoritarian rule. In other words, Erdogan’s dream is everybody else’s in the country nightmare!

Today, Turkey lives a daily nightmare: from the continuous massacre of Kurdish freedom fighters in the southeast and the genocide conducted against the civilian Kurdish population of this vast region, to the terrorist attacks and the bloodbath caused by the week in week out clashes of pro-Kurdish and pro-democracy demonstrators with the police in Ankara and Istanbul.

Consequently, yesterday’s fresh bomb blast in the heart of the capital, Ankara, killing 34 and wounding more than hundred innocent citizens should come as no surprise. The moral responsibility for the country’s shameful drift to bloody chaos lies nowhere else than the brutal policies of Erdogan seconded by Prime Minister Davutoglu; policies that sadly target all well-intentioned detractors: be it the freedom-loving Kurds, the free press, the investigative journalists, the intellectuals, the Fethullah Gulen movement, the secularists and so on and so forth. Erdogan has created an endless list of enemies both inside and outside the country, locking himself up in an untenable position of brutal repression of dissent. In true terms, Erdogan is shooting himself in the foot, putting himself in the solitary confinement component of his country’s political landscape, from where he finds no escape. Sadly, all this happens at the dawn of the 21^st century! Erdogan’s foreign policy mistakes are equally horrible: endless meddling in Syria’s internal affairs, including underground support and personally benefitting from ISIS illegal oil sales, taking on Russia: downing its fighter plane September last in a futile gimmick to drag NATO into the conflict, using the Turkmen Syrian minority to secure future territorial gains at the expense of Syria, stifling engulfment of the dwindling Turkish Cypriot minority while implanting backward devout Muslim settlers and other dubious foreign elements in occupied Cyprus.

Concluding our short analysis with a view to end the massacre of both Turks and Kurds: as I pointed out to my well-meaning Turkish intellectuals, friends and colleagues, at Istanbul’s Pugwash Conference in 2013: there can be no military solution of the Kurds’ inalienable right to self-determination. The more high-armoured troops the ruthless Erdogan-Davutoglu duo sent to the southeast to brutally suppress the rebellion, the more Kurdish-inspired terrorist attacks we are bound to see in the Turkish political and financial capitals. And this is to the severe detriment of the peace-loving average Turk in the street.

In our next article, we shall substantiate our analysis by revisiting the historical precedents – of the not too distant past – to Erdogan’s ruthlessness against the country’s minorities. Precedents that almost exterminated Asia Minor’s culturally rich Greek Orthodox minority.