Erdogan has time on his side -- but only so much

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Nov 2, 2015 at 13:59

Hi, Earl. You said,

"What is missing in all MSM reviews is any critical analysis of Erdogan's active enabling of the transshipment of hundreds of thousands of Mohammedan colonisers through Turkey, into Greece and Bulgaria. And hence onward through the Balkans into the heart of Europe."

The mainstream media have, of course, ignored Turkey's role in the Migration Crisis -- They are, after all, leftist idiots. Angela Merkel certainly didn't miss the connection, though, and went straight to Turkey's Erdogan to find relief.

The European Union is ruled by Germany, and Germany has been stupid enough to invite this horde of migrants. Poor Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria are suffering from the nuttiness and are doing all they can to push the migrants into Germany, which deserves them.. Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary are just trying to keep out it by building barriers.

I don't think Erdogan opened the floodgates in order to create a crisis in Europe. More likely, he wanted to use his refugee leverage in order to get the Europeans to come to him and do his bidding. The Merkel visit shows that he has obviously succeeded in this.

The message from Erdogan concerning the migrants seems to be,

"Get rid of Assad, so the migrants stop flowing into Turkey. Then they won't flow from here to Germany."

I think the Russians took the Turks by surprize, with their beefy intervention in Syria. In a strategic sense, Turkey and ISIS are one; so a hearty opposition to ISIS by the Russians is counter to Turkey's interest of Ottoman hegemony.

Erdogan and Davotuglu have such a flair for making messes! These successors of Midas seem to have gotten things completely wrong: Everything they touch has been turning to sewage. Far from being able to help them, the Europeans have been beaten into a stupor and don't show signs of recovering soon: The migrant crisis comes piggyback with the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis, the move for Catalan independance; and now, with Britain being given a £384 million bill to help solve Germany's migrant problems, they face an ever-more-possible Brexit. They've also boxed America into a corner, forcing us to commit troops and weapons to support the PKK-backed Syrian Kurds and abandon the pro-Turkish, pro-ISIS Free Syrian Army.

Recently, the Turks have fired upon US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces in what the Turks described as an advance across the Eurphrates to attack ISIL. The Turks have further asserted that they will continue to attack the Kurds on this front, whether or not the new American "boots on the ground" are present on that sector. This leaves the US in the curious position of fighting Turkey, a major NATO ally. If the Turks were to follow up on their tack and invade Syria to confront the Russians there, Obama would almost certainly bow to pressure to evacuate US troops from Syria -- if not the whole Levant.

In the short run, this all looks messy for Erdogan. In the long run, though, which the Turkish President obviously is interested in, Turkey is actually backing the winning side in ISIS. The situation is analoguou to US involvement in Vietnam: The Russians are in place of the Americans, backing an unpopular dictator against motivated warriors representing the majority (i.e. the Sunnis, who form a majority in Syria and NW Iraq). The latter, ISIS, are in the place of the Vietcong. The Americans are in the place of China -- who, during the Vietnam War were left backing real losers, the Khmer Rouge (for us now, it's the Syrian Kurds and the PKK).

Like the Viet Cong, ISIS has time on its side; and Erdogan will get a boost when the Russians and Iranians are driven out of Syria. After that, a few years from now, the ISIS' backer Turkey may also go the way of the VC's backer, the USSR, and collapse after their own folly (perhaps an invasion of Israel?). We'll see.

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