November 1, 2018 – eadaily.com/ru/news/:
In the days when the issue of providing Kiev with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Tomos about the Ukrainian autocephaly is almost resolved, many say that this is one of the elements of the game being played by Washington against Moscow. Forgetting that in this game there is another player, not so obvious, but no less influential – Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Who is doing great so far.
The Turkish leader opened a new airport in Istanbul – the largest in the country, and in the future in the world. And for Erdogan, this is another step towards his cherished dream and historical mission – the revival of the once lost greatness of the Ottoman Empire. It was not by chance that the opening ceremony itself was arranged with a truly imperial scale: the historical satellites were gathered: Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Serbian President Alexander Vuchich, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Tani, and one future one from Turkey-fostered Pan-Turkist camp Kyrgyzstan Sooronbay Zheenbekov. Not without glorious janissaries – the newly-made UFC lightweight champion Habib Nurmagomedov, the Turkish president personally shook his hand, and before that he personally invited this ceremony. And Erdogan stood in this environment, under the shadow of red flags with white crescents, like the Lord of the Brilliant Porte.
Forget Ataturk
Turkish media noted that the opening of the airport took place on a national holiday – Republic Day. But for the first time the celebration was held not in the Republican capital Ankara, which received its status from the hands of the main ideologist of the Turkish Republican nationalism Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but in imperial Istanbul. Once again showing that Erdogan is de jure, of course, the president, but since April last year already with extended powers, and that he has symbolically eradicated the ataturk heritage. It is no coincidence that the former Istanbul airport, which bore the name of Ataturk, will not only cease to be an airport, but will also lose that name, becoming a kind of “Garden of the Nation”.
Once in Turkey, the cult of Mustafa Kemal – in fact, a real Nazi who staged an ethnocide of all non-Turkish peoples in the country – was similar to the cults of communist leaders. Unlike him, Erdogan, it would seem, does not require any special servility towards himself. But what is happening throughout the former metropolis, which united vast territories in Asia, Africa and Europe, is very much interested in him, and this is an indisputable fact. The foreign policy of modern Turkey is intertwined in a unique symbiosis of Islamism, Pan-Turkism and revanchist imperialism, which in the Erdogan version do not contradict each other, but, on the contrary, complement each other. What is not surprising at all: on occasion, Recep Tayyip simply draws from the deck exactly the card that will play a decisive role in one or another game.
So, for example, in October Erdogan was on a visit to Moldova, whose territory in the past was also part of the Ottoman Empire. What the dear guest himself, whom he was met as a dear guest, did not hesitate to remind. “Despite the fact that we do not have common borders with Moldova, we consider it a neighboring country, because we have historical relations,” the Turkish president said. “For us, this is a special country, because it includes Gagauzia, people whom we consider our compatriots.”
Of course, Erdogan’s Gagauz are no compatriots, but here the Pan-Turkist is added to the imperial-revanchist component, while ignoring the Islamist one: the Gagauz are Türks, but still Orthodox. Although in our secularized time on the post-Soviet territory, the Muslim mission can quite successfully go on in this far from the richest region. It is not by chance that the arrival of the Turkish president itself became such a landmark event for autonomy that the day of his visit was announced there as the red day of the calendar — a weekend. The guests were greeted by the best people of the autonomous territory, and its ordinary inhabitants amused him with songs and dances – of course, in the national style. However, the visitor himself was not in debt: in the capital of the Gagauz autonomy Komrat, he observed the opening of the DK, restored with Turkish money, and also visited the diagnostic center and the park, which appeared with the direct assistance of his country.
Sacrifice Teachers
It would seem that the time for Chisinau to attend to the prospect of Gagauz separatism, fueled by Turkey – for nothing, that the Moldovan authorities are quite successfully fighting with all Russian, based on similar fears. But no, and in the rest of Moldova Erdogan was greeted with open arms. But otherwise, if the Turks revived the presidential residence in Chisinau, including its interior decoration, which the Moldovans themselves could not do as much since 2009, when their own pro-western street buzotera thoroughly smashed the building. In addition, Erdogan promised to take on the Circus of Chisinau and start a country whose European production quotas came into effect after signing the association with the EU, Turkish banks, which were fairly battered by the European production quota. Last year, the trade turnover between the countries rose to the level of $ 400 million, making up 5% of the total foreign trade of Moldova, and, of course, Chisinau would like more. Again, Ankara voted in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution on the “withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Moldova” – that is, our peacekeepers from Transnistria.
Moldova, in turn, also did not remain in debt, issuing at the beginning of September, seven teachers of the Orizont Turkish lyceum, operating almost all over the country, to be punished to Erdogan. It would seem that this is not the Turkish president, but his Moldovan colleague should have attended to the fact that secondary educational institutions freely operate in Moldova, where local children are taught not only incomprehensible why they need the Turkish language, but also alien to ideological attitudes – by the way, for almost the same reason, the activities of similar lyceums in Russia were curtailed. However, not everything is so simple: “Orizontovskie” teachers, without a doubt, prepared agents of influence, but not according to Erdoganov’s recipes, but according to the patterns of his sworn enemy – Fethullah Gulen.
Do I need to once again say that the new lord of Constantinople continued the onward movement in other directions. Thus, in the “soft underbelly of Russia”, he created almost a Turkic counterpart of the European Union – the Turkic Council, which included, in addition to Turkey itself, also closely-related Azerbaijan, as well as Kazakhstan and the above-mentioned Kyrgyzstan. They even invented their own flag, where, by the way, it was very organic, it was possible to inscribe the national symbols of all four states. So, as they say, not a single EAEU.
In the Western Balkans, Erdogan was very thoroughly registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in its Muslim part, where Turkey is perceived the same way as Germany in Croatian, and Russia in Serbian. By the way, during the recent exacerbation between Ankara (or already Istanbul?) And Washington, the hereditary head of Bosniak Bakir Izetbegovic unequivocally sided with the Turkish leader. “Mr. Erdogan, you are not only the President of Turkey, you and our President are also,” Izetbegovic said meaningfully at the time. And students from Bosnian universities made flash mobs, recording videos that spoke in support of Turkish policy in Syria.
In the role of host, Erdogan arrived last year in Serbia. It would seem that in the past rivers of blood had spilled between these countries, and it was the Turks who were especially zealous in this, but present-day Belgrade now builds a policy with the descendants of the Ottomans on the principle of “who remembers the old.” So, President Vucic met the distinguished guest already at the airport. Still, the bilateral trade turnover now amounts to $ 4 billion, and, in addition, Turkey has promised to build a new Belgrade-Sarajevo highway, which will connect the two parts in the past of a single country. Well, again, the “Turkish Stream”, as well as Serb Muslims living in the province of Sanjak (Raška), who love Erdogan, seem to be even more than their BiH co-religionists: in any case, they made him an honorary citizen of their regional center – Novi Pazar
Perhaps, the current Turkish regime is not entirely cloudless in the Balkans only with Albania and, accordingly, with Kosovo, which, although considered to be predominantly Muslim regions, but, as some wise people said, “the national religion of the Albanians is Albanian.” Accordingly, they have no idealism and a national myth about an elder brother, and they are friends only with the strong – for today with the USA. Therefore, when the Turkish secret services arrested and brought to Turkey six teachers from the Gyulenov lyceums in Kosovo, the “prime minister” of the Albanian enclave of Serbia Ramush Haradinaj ransomed Serbian head of the local Interior Ministry Flamyur Sefay and the director of the Kosovo intelligence agency Driton Gashi. For which he won a tough rebuff of Erdogan himself, who accused him of supporting terrorism. And subsequently declared his willingness to recognize any agreement between the Serbs and Albanians.
When an American is not terrible
And what, in fact, started the confrontation between the United States and Turkey? Well, the reasons for this were more than enough, but the main one is Erdogan’s aggressive policy towards Greece, which he leads in the same vein as all his predecessors. That is, the Greeks for the Ottoman heir are a historical enemy, from whom they once took away the historical capital and part of the living space, and it would be better if it were not there at all, or it would remain in the position of disenfranchised livestock. Therefore, only last year, Turkish combat aircraft regularly violated the airspace of Greece (one day in February as much as 183 times), the navy blocked the development of the Cyprus shelf, paratroopers were taken prisoner, and, in fact, hostage by the Greek military, and diplomats demanded a revision of Lausanne the treaty that divided the “Ottoman heritage” between the Balkan states, challenging the affiliation of eighteen Greek islands and one hundred and fifty small rocky sections of the “gray zone” of the Aegean Sea. In addition, Ankara agreed to purchase C-400 complexes from Russia, which nullified all the activities of Greek aviation, and began to make provocative statements calling Western Thrace, where a considerable number of Muslims live, “our lands”. What caused the tension inside the NATO bloc, whose domination in the Balkans, the United States carefully fostered.
And now the Americans are trying to punish the nominal ally – refuse, contrary to the agreements, to supply Turkey with their fifth-generation F35 fighter-bombers, impose sanctions against it, raise duties on the supply of Turkish aluminum and steel. They also remind of the arrest of American pastor Andrew Brunson, accused of espionage. Any other state after such a large-scale attack of the world hegemon would have tucked in its tail and fled into the bushes, but not Turkey. Erdogan threatened Washington with an international arbitration court and recalled his participation in the 2016 military coup, and that his initiator Gulen quietly lives across the ocean.
So the Americans had to reconcile the Turks and Greeks at the next NATO summit this summer, and this reconciliation is a rather formal and short-lived path, but it happened. And after that, to return to the dialogue with Ankara. It was possible (good or bad) and this. It is not by chance that Turkey eventually released the same Brunson with a wide gesture. This happened, however, the very next day after the decision of the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on Ukrainian autocephaly. Accident? Of course not.
Games with the patriarch
In relations with Russia, the neo-Ottomanist Erdogan also remained true to himself and his ideas. This is for someone in Moscow, the Russian SU-24 shot down by the Turkish Air Force, as well as Erdogan’s greetings over the US strike on the Syrian Homs airbase are unexpected knives in the back. In fact, Porta has never done any surprises to anybody, either good or bad. So, back in 2017, he personally traveled to Ukraine, where he assured Poroshenko that Turkey fully shares the position of Kiev in the Crimea and Donbas. A year later, the head of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Mevlüt авavuşoлуlu, during a dinner with his Ukrainian counterpart Pavel Klimkin at the Center for Assistance to the Crimean Tatars in Ankara, said that his country “will never recognize the annexation of the Crimea” and criticized Europe and the United States for being there the words, forgot about the situation with the peninsula. Well, quite in the spirit of Neo-Ottomanism, according to which the peninsula is an integral part of the empire. And with Kiev, if anything, you can always agree – the main thing is that Moscow does not own the Crimea. The Ukrainian interlocutor listened to the thrill, and after Kiev gave Ankara Gulenists who had taken shelter.
Therefore, let no one be mislead and lush with the reception that Erdogan threw in Putin this spring – a common oriental trick. Allowing both Americans to be nervous, then to bargain with them on an equal footing, and return Russian tourists to the resorts that sag without them, and save the market for tomatoes. And of course, the aforementioned S-400, the construction of the Akkuyu NPP and, of course, the Turkish Stream are all in one basket.
What subsequently did not prevent the main Turk from climbing with his troops into the Syrian Afrin, and then into Idlib, and from there dictate its conditions to Russia and the Syrian leadership. And during the recent summit on Syria, to make statements made in the spirit of the standard Western propaganda – for example, about Assad, who killed a million people. And to add that the Turkish army will leave Syria only after there is no terrorist threat. And therefore, when it wants, or never at all, since the territory of present-day Syria was also once part of the Ottoman Empire.
And here is another curious fact that escaped the attention of the mass Russian-speaking audience, which is now customarily told how Moscow and Ankara (Istanbul) hand in hand bring order to the Syrian desert. “We systematically worked and explained to Erdogan how important it is for Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars that an independent local Orthodox church be in Ukraine,” said Mustafa Dzhemilev, the leader of the pro-Ukrainian Crimean Tatar separatists. – I explained to Erdogan in such popular terms: they say, now Mecca for the Orthodox is Moscow, and after Tomos and the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, it will be Istanbul, so for you it has a political significance. And for the independence of Ukraine, and, accordingly, for the Crimean Tatars, this is also very important. Erdogan firmly said that he would do everything possible from him, and Ukraine would have autocephaly. ”
You can believe the words of an ambitious dwarf, but you can not, but what’s interesting is that after 2016, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was in disfavor with Erdogan. Because the Turkish president suspected him of complicity in the coup and the fights with Gulen, which was quite possible from the Constantinople high priest, the direct creature of the West. It is no coincidence that just a few hours before the aforementioned coup, he in a hurry departed for Slovakia. And after appearing on the Phanar occasionally, mostly roaming the Greek lands. It came to the point that Erdogan’s supporters threw his residence with Molotov cocktails. But everything suddenly changed in April of this year, when the Verkhovna Rada voted to turn to Bartholomew for Thomos. And after six days, Erdogan received the patriarch at home, talking to him in the company of all the same Cavusoglu. They also met five days later, after the decision of the Synod to grant autocephaly to Ukraine. And the mere fact that Bartholomew once again firmly settled in his residence, means that the time of disfavor for him has passed. And the stakes have been made.
Some Russian propagandists, who agreed to the fact that after Trump now Erdogan is “ours,” and that he will soon almost give Orthodox Sophia to the Orthodox, we can recommend more to be friends with reality. Since it was under Erdogan, prayers were held there again – for the first time since Ataturk, which turned the famous Byzantine cathedral, previously converted by the Ottomans into a mosque, into a museum. As in the era of the sultans-caliphs. A terrible era, the ghosts of which, by the efforts of one person, return to our reality from the nether world. He is wise, decisive, fear is unknown to him, he does not retreat before a more powerful opponent and does not pray for mercy, when he needs to resort to tricks or money, and in other situations – to brute force, does not forgive and remembers everything. And the world will reckon with his will. And under this will it will begin to change, which we, unfortunately, will definitely see.
Alexey Toporov
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ENGLISH TRANSLATION “lousavor avedis“
