ERDOGAN, BETWEEN THE SPECTER OF THE PIRATES (BARBROS) & THE DELUSIONS OF THE BLUE STATE

In a fit of hysteria, the neo-Ottoman Sultan requested his country’s soldiers to achieve an epic victory in Libya. He was inspired by the heroic tales of the so-called Prince of Ottoman sailors, the pirate Khair Eddine Barbros. On the other hand, Erdogan dreams of a return of the Ottoman Empire through fulfilling his delusional project in the Mediterranean Sea, which he has termed as “The Blue Nation”. This aggressive project is considered to be one of the largest geographical fraud and manipulation operations known in history, and it is the main driver for Erdogan’s actions and reckless foolish ambitions to reestablish the Ottoman Caliphate.

Erdogan uses Turkish state-supported television drama series, as weapons to falsify history, in a failed attempt to revive a long forgotten era. The most recent of these attempts is the (Arteghral) series, in which Erdogan has made concerted efforts to export a false history of Ottoman conquests which were actually invasions and occupations. 

The Arabs resisted the Ottoman occupation and conquests for centuries. The Arteghral series is loaded with many lies, whereby numerous Western references indicate that “Arteghral” is a fictional character created by Othman to create a defunct Empire. 

After the passage of almost a century where the sun has set off the Ottoman Empire, Erdogan still claims that the Empire’s properties lie in all the lands that the Ottomans reached, and that these properties belong to Turkey.

Erdogan’s Turkey and the “justice and development” party are facing a persisted political-like Coronavirus, which will ultimately lead to their inevitable catastrophic fall. Such inevitable fateful fall resides on a number of rational pragmatic analyses based on Turkish political and economic internal situation, regional powers conflicts and competition for who will lead the region and have the upper hand, world powers interests and struggle for the vital Middle East in the age of resurrection of religious ideologies and conflicts as instruments for power control and authority. A quick purview of Erdogan’s Turkish reckless policy ends up with the following facts and developments:

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POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC INTERNAL SITUATION

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1. Internal political conflict within the ruling authority of “justice and development” party over the excessive political power Erdogan acquires after changing the constitution in an attempt to crown himself as the new Sultan. Conflict and disputes with the other nationalist secular opposition parties over the policy of “justice and development” one- man party, the Erdoganism, particularly in terms of Erdogan’s foreign policy towards Syria, Iraq, Libya, Islamic countries and Europe 

2. Disputes and war with the Kurds and all political figures and personalities who oppose his policy.

3. Economic situation is stagnating due to the costs of wars, American sanctions and troubled relations with the neighboring countries, Arab countries and Europe.

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REGIONAL POWER CONFLICTS AND COMPETITION FOR SUPREMACY

1. War in Iraq, which is also analyses based on Turkish political being waged against the Kurds;

2. War in Northern Syria. It is not only aggression, invasion and conquest of Syrian territory, but rather, a war which shall prove to be a trap for Erdogan’s regime, one of the main supporters of the mercenary terrorist groups.

3. Potential military confrontation between Erdogan’s Turkey which attempts to entrench Turkey as representing moderate Islam, believing that Turkey has the potential to lead the Islamic world, by adopting Moslem brotherhood organization’s doctrines and supporting terrorist groups on one hand, and Egypt supported by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which consider the MBO a terrorist organization, along with Greece and Cyprus supported by the EU and USA, because of Erdogan’s military agreement with the Libyan government, in an attempt to control the Mediterranean maritime route, and attain supremacy over the huge reserves of gas and oil in the Mediterranean on one hand, and Libyan oil and gas on the other. 

4. Erdogan’s plan is to control northern Africa and from there connect the north with his military bases in Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti in the African Horn and the south depth of Africa.

5. Such strategic Turkish plan- in addition to the Turkish military bases in Qatar- would enable Turkey to encircle Saudi Arabia, and be on the frontline in the war in Yemen, not to say create a Turkish Sunni- led Islam against an Iranian shiaa-led Islam. 

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REGIONALLY

1. Erdogan is fleeing forward. He has his forces in Iraq and occupied Northern Syria, thinking that this would be a step forward in restoring the glory of his ancestors, and forget the their gory, however he has failed in his mission. He considered transferring the battle to Libya, whereby Libya is now drowning Turkey into the swamp of a forth war; a war front which is thousands of kilometers away. 

2. Erdogan is trying to flee from his internal crises by intervening in Libya, and in a meager show, he waited for the approval of his country’s parliament to legitimize his occupation of Libya.

3. Erdogan struck an agreement with the so-called Libyan consensus government to reproduce a Trojan Horse to occupy Libya and devour its resources. In doing so, he ignored the legitimate government of Libya, represented by the parliament, which rejected the agreement, considering it as a Turkish occupation of Libyan lands, and amounting to grand treason.

4. The Turkish parliament approved sending troops to support the terrorists in Libya. 

5. The agreement to sell Libya, which was signed by Al Sarraj, who does possess the right to sign, crashed domestically, regionally and internationally due to its illegal nature. The agreement was an attempt to tamper with geography, however it was a stark violation of international law. Sea borders between Libya and Turkey cannot and should be demarcated, because Libya does not share any sea borders with Turkey. Moreover, the agreement turns a blind eye to the Island of Crete, whereby the Greek foreign minister stated that “the agreement ignores one very important fact; that is the existence of the Island of Crete”. The agreement also ignores the Dodecanese Islands, which possess large gas reserves, which is the core of Erdogan’s ambitions. 

Turkey is attempting to redraw sea borders with a country which does not neighbor it, and by igniting the flames in the Middle East, it shall surely enter into a confrontation with the nations lying to the East of this sea. Erdogan believed that his ambitions could be achieved, however the waves of the Middle East have rejected him. He believed that he could become the caretaker of Libya’s oil and gas reserves. He sent his soldiers and terrorist mercenaries and went further to appoint himself as the rightful heir of the Ottoman Empire, forgetting that Turkey is stained in blood. 

He has failed to read geography, as he has failed history’s test, thus drowning the Middle East and the Arab region in sedition and conspiracies The Islamic Brotherhood project is Erdogan’s true engine in the Mediterranean Sea. The delusional Erdogan aspires to revive the Ottoman Sultanate which bled the Arab world for centuries. 

All of this constitutes the components of the Turkish leadership quandary; a leadership which is increasingly becoming bogged down day after day. It is not making any efforts to get itself out of the predicaments it has placed itself in, rather it continues to embed itself in new crises. The recent Berlin Conference on Libya was an expression of Europe’s fears of Turkey’s military intervention, which has increased the flow of refugees towards Europe through the Mediterranean Sea. Europe will not allow the continent to become a destination for terrorists and extremists emanating from the Western shores of Libya, and it is this fact that Erdogan is using to blackmail Europe. 

In practice, Erdogan has jumped through the air without realizing that the global energy war does not meet with his war in Libya.  On the other hand, President Putin will not offer Ankara with potential benefits on a silver plate. Turkey’s entrance into Western Libya is considered as a threat to Russia’s interests in an area which it considers to be its gateway to the Arab Maghreb. 

The objectives behind Turkey’s intervention in Syria are the same as those behind its intervention in Libya. Erdogan is sending his neo-Janissary troop to conflict areas in order to reap the benefits of his military interventions. The neo-Janissaries are the terrorist mercenaries which were compiled based on sectarian and religious factors, whereby the Turkish intelligence is involved in transferring Daesh and Jabhat Al Nusra fighters from Syria to Libya. In reality, Erdogan’s strategy has come up against numerous obstacles, at the forefront of which is his ancestors’ dark and bloody history in the Arab region, whereby the Ottomans left destruction wherever they went, killing and torturing people throughout the region. The Ottomans tore up the very fabric of Arab societies, and they disrespected their institutions, practicing all forms of destruction and chaos. The Ottomans handed over the Arab world to Western imperialism, the painful effects of which are still being felt by Arabs to this day. 

Mustafa Kamal (Ataturk) had disowned the Ottoman Emipre, because he believed that it was a backward and tyrannical state, however Erdogan is contaminated with a virus of aspiring to revive the Ottoman Empire, especially after he was selected as the supreme leader of the Global Muslim Brotherhood movement.  Erdogan has forgotten that Turkey itself is exposed to the risk of being broken apart, especially if we take into consideration that its population consists of a considerable number of Kurds, which are a political force to be reckoned with, and it is also inevitable for the Arab Sanjak of Alexandretta, which used to be the fifteenth governorate of the Syrian Arab Republic, and was given to Turkey by the colonial France in 1939, to be returned to its rightful owner. 

Erdogan’s internal crisis has shaken up the country’s economy and stability. His partners within the Justice and Development Party have distanced themselves from him one after the other. It is better for the Turks to close the doors which have been opened up by Rajab Tayyip Erdogan, whereby what he claims to be “Ottoman properties”, have been returned and shall be returned to their rightful owners. Libya belongs to its people, and it is better for Erdogan to close this doomed chapter, as it is considered to be a threat to world peace. This calls for a resolution to be passed in accordance to Chapter 7 of the UNSC charter. 

Turkey’s invasion of Libya has failed before it even started as a result of the difficulties of carrying out this invasion. Moreover, the geographical circumstances which drove Turkey to militarily intervention in Syria are different than those in Libya. Turkey’s invasion of Libya, nor of Syria will not be in its interests.

Turkey’s reputation has sunk on a worldwide level, and its policies are now linked to rashness and arrogance.  Erdogan made a bet on history, however he failed to recognize that the current formulae of interests are stronger than history; a history which reeks of blood. He has ignored history and facts; therefore, the scene has displayed a failure of Erdogan’s ambitions. 

Dr Kahtan Al Sioufi

Former Foreign Minister of Syria