President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s demands on Sweden have really no major significance for him. He does not need Swedish weapons, a Swedish stamp of terror on Syrian Kurds or dissidents who have received protection in Sweden extradited. The spectacle around the Swedish-Finnish NATO tree is about completely different things.
Erdogan is holding Sweden and Finland hostage pending some sort of assurance from NATO that he will remain in power regardless of the support he receives in the next presidential election, which is to be held in November or June next year.
Or maybe never. He has the power to cancel elections or cancel election results if “the nation’s survival” is at stake. And it does so every time he risks losing his own majority in parliament or the important mayoral election in Istanbul.
Erdogan is well aware that the Swedish government would never extradite a Turkish citizen who has been granted asylum after due judicial review. This would mean a violation of the European Convention, which is also a Swedish constitution. But above all, a justification for the 38,000 political prisoners who, according to official statistics, are currently in Turkish prisons for terrorist crimes. Not for something they did, but for what they wrote or said.
“If all these prisoners are terrorists then perhaps no terrorist”, stated the rapporteur of the European Parliament for Turkey, Nacho Sánchez Amor, following a review of the rule of law for political prisoners. However, Erdogan believes that Turkey is a guiding light for all nations in terms of justice and freedom of expression. “Say justice and the first thing people all over the world will think of is Turkey.”
Given that most of the key figures from the statistical authority have been grossly manipulated, the correct figure for the number of political prisoners may be double. At the time of writing, for example, official inflation is just under 74 per cent, while the country’s established economists agree that it is above 150 per cent.
Erdogan knows that he has committed too many crimes and ruined far too many lives to only retire after an election loss.
That’s why he’s in a hurry to pave the way for completing the regime change from an authoritarian to a totalitarian social order, before or after an inevitable loss of elections. In the big opinion polls, he loses no matter which opposition candidate he will face in the second and decisive round of elections.
That is why he demands “security guarantees” from NATO in Syria and free hands against the opposition back home in Turkey. However, such guarantees can only be given by two men – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US President Joe Biden, who have so far refused to accept Erdogan into the White House.
The horrific attacks have almost all been carried out by the Islamic State. Not infrequently in collusion with the Turkish intelligence service
Instead, he puts all his hope in Stoltenberg, who is now calling for a meeting between Turkey, Sweden and Finland in Brussels to get Turkey to lay down its veto before the alliance summit at the end of June. Stoltenberg, if anyone, can reach a compromise solution with Erdogan.
But at what price?
When Turkish troops marched into Kurdish autonomy in Syria in 2018 and 2019, following the infamous invitation from President Donald Trump to Erdogan – “I am going home now, Syria is yours” – Stoltenberg gave his full support to the Turkish invasion.
It should be seen as “self-defense and legitimate”, as Turkey has been subjected to “terrible terrorist attacks”, he stated.
A grotesque untruth, to come from a high-ranking NATO chief. In fact, the Syrian Kurds have not fired a single shot at Turkey or at Turkish soil in a hundred years. That is, since modern Turkey was founded. The horrific attacks have almost all been carried out by the Islamic State, IS. Not infrequently in collusion with the Turkish intelligence service, and almost always against Kurdish targets in the country.
On October 10, 2015, Turkey was subjected to the bloodiest terrorist attack in its history. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up during a peace demonstration with tens of thousands of participants in Ankara. More than 100 people died on the spot and around 500 were injured. Behind the demonstration was the Kurdish party HDP and some opposition unions. It turned out quite immediately that the perpetrators were two wanted IS members who were intercepted and shadowed by the police around the clock. It also turned out that the police had turned off their security cameras and stopped their checks at the entrances to the capital that day. The killers managed to travel 600 km wearing their explosive vests without getting caught in any control.
Considering Under the circumstances, there is reason to believe that the assassination was a “commissioned work” by Erdogan’s party AKP, the EU writes in a secret report.
The report was compiled by the Department of Intelligence and Situation Centers (EU INTCEN) at the EU Foreign Service on 13 October 2015, just three days after the attack. The department writes, among other things, classified analyzes against terrorism with the support of the Member States’ security services.
NATO countries have been aware of this all along. Yet everyone has helped inflate a simple lie into a global truth, through their “understanding” of Turkey’s fear of attacks by Kurds across the border.
French President Emmanuel Macron is the only exception. A few days after Turkey’s latest offensive war against Kurdish autonomy in Syria, he stated that NATO is now a “brain dead” alliance. How else could one allow the alliance’s second largest army to attack the same Kurds who had just been hailed for having played a decisive role in the victory over the IS caliphate? he wondered. With NATO support behind him, Erdogan went head-to-head with the French president. It was Macron who was brain dead, insane and too short to speak that far.
Now we are there again. Erdogan is about to start its fourth offensive war against the Kurds. It is his most important election promise before the presidential election, as well as a triumph to celebrate when the Turkish state will now turn one hundred years old.
So far, each new offensive against the Kurds has given his party around eight percentage points in increased voter support. Something he needs more than ever to compensate for the mass exodus of his core voters due to galloping inflation and a currency in free fall.
Erdogan’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu now praises Stoltenberg’s “principled” attitude and “understanding” of Turkey’s demands ahead of the Brussels summit. It is not enough for NATO to classify the Kurdish parties in Syria as terrorists, but all NATO countries must also give their support to Turkey’s invasion of Kurdish autonomy, the Foreign Minister states.
A recent Säpo chief also participated in the recent talks between Sweden and Turkey. I have a couple of questions that I wonder if the Säpo boss could raise the next time he visits Ankara:
His name is Abdullah Bozkurt one of two Turkish journalists who have been granted asylum in Sweden and who have been subjected to severe abuse by anonymous perpetrators recently. In a television program on the pro-regime news channel TGRT, he was singled out as one of several named journalists as “the Turkish intelligence service and the people have a mandate to execute”.
The host belongs to a group of journalists who know exactly which regime critic is in line to end up in the finch and what punishment he will receive. It even happens that they go out with it – before they fall.
“Our authorities have Abdullah Bozkurt’s address details in Stockholm,” says the host.
“Brothers! It’s time to act! All means are allowed “, adds his producer.
Maybe Säpo boss can check out if there are more Swedish journalists with roots in Turkey on their death list. Murder is still a crime under Turkish law.
On the other hand, the law for President Erdogan means much the same thing as the red carpet means for the dictator in Chaplin’s film of the same title. Two officers have the task of rolling out the carpet wherever the dictator is to make his entrance. Yet he too often goes off the carpet when it pleases him.
However, Erdogan is even more adept at rounding out his own laws. Soon there will be no clause in the Turkish constitution that he has not violated.
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