Political expediency of a leader in despair: Erdogan signed his failure
At the moment this article is being written, Turkish armed forces are bombing parts of north-east Syria. This region has been controlled by Americans until only just some days ago, when Donald Trump suddenly decided it is not useful to keep U.S. presence there.
Trump cooperated close with a Kurdish militia having the "control" of this specific area of Syrian territory. Their cooperation was mostly part of the U.S. project to eliminate the forces of the islamic state and ofcourse Kurdish people who desperately seek for a place they can call "their own country", had no option but to protect their own existence.
What is really frightening Erdogan, is the fact that the Kurdish population located in the north-eastern part of Syria, is located into a geographical cohesion to the Kurdish minority inside the Turkish state. The main Kurdish force of the Syrian territory controlled by the Kurdish population is called the "People's Protection Unit", or YPG and has a close bond to the "Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK)", the separatist group which fought the Turkish state for almost 35 years.
And that is a real fear for Turkey, as we all remember the showing-off of the Turkish state, when they arrested Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK party. This showing-off of power through images going round the world, of a scared leader who had brutally been arrested, are pictures i will keep in my mind forever, as they depict exactly the way Turkey uses communication tools, in order to announce force and domination first to its people, so that they are sure they succeded in raising nationalistic spirit inside the country, and then abroad.
More than 750.000 people are living on that border area, and those people are estimated to leave their places, as long as turkish bombings continue. And the question is where will those people go? And then what? Which balance is going to take place in that area finally, without a new bloodshed?
Trump needs no more the Kurds at the present, he used them as long as he felt it was useful to fight the islamic state. But he left the area by permitting to Turkey to act as the "cleaner" of it, in case a Kurdish state was about to form, considering the fact that the Kurdish population of the Syrian state is right next to the Kurdish minority of Turkey, geographically.
Turkey takes advantage of the fact that its people feel a huge discontent with the 3.6 millions of Syrian refugees in their territory. So Turkish people are willing to back president Erdogan in order to send many of those refugees in that "peace corridor" he wants to create to the Syrian territory to which right now Kurdish population is established.
And there is no doubt, that all this is not happening because Turkey wants to find a place for their refugees, even though they would do anything to get rid of them. It is just a cheap excuse for the war they always dreamed of, against the Kurdish population.
The U.S. support to Erdogan on this operation, seems like a failure support. And that is on the one hand, because an already "dead politically leader" who is Trump, makes moves of total despair, showing he has lost control of everything while he has to deal with so many hot issues he seems he hasn't got the ability to do it anymore. On the other hand, Erdogan challenges European tolerance against him. So even if he succeeds in ousting the Kurds from their places, the door of Europe will be closed, as many european states already criticise strongly Turkey for this invasion. And even if a closed European door against Turkey is not a definite scenarion for the future, Turkey will need much effort and a long road of negotiations to change the feeling of resentment.
Criticism against Turkey, is also taking place in many neighbouring countries. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, are all against this. And taking into consideration the current condition between Iran and the U.S., Syria, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kurdish population and the refugee crisis, the most scary scenario is that there is no scenario for the future of the Middle East...and that is a case that we never before witnessed in the past, even when Egypt was fighting with Israel, or Iran was against Iraq...
This situation is totally out of any control!
There is only one thing we can predict. The end of the two leaders, "Erdogan" and "Trump".
Turkey is at the moment supported only by the U.S., and started to become afraid of a subsequent isolation, thus, threatening to open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees to the european states, something that is already happening, except that it is not official. Turkey sends thousands of refugees to Greece and Italy everyday.
But behind any threat, there is fear. And there is no turning point to this massacre except for public outcry on international level.
And if there was a quote more suitable for those puppet leaders called Erdogan and Trump, it would be the words found in the book "The Art of War", written by Shun Tsu during the 4th century b.C, saying "The person who wins, is the one who knows when to fight and when not to fight"...and it seems both puppet leaders exceeded their limits and ignore this philosophical approach.
written by Themis Panagiotopoulou, PhD in Political Science