11 - ABOVE GÜLEN AND ERDOĞAN
STANDS TURKEY
I reproduce below an
article by Jennifer Campbell, editor of «Diplomat & International Canada», a magazine established
in Ottawa, in 1989. She writes that the Canada Gülen organization sponsored her
visit to Athens in order to write the article below, published in the magazine's issue of
October-November 2018.
Having been myself for some years a follower of the Fethullah Gülen organization in Ottawa and having published some articles and contributions in books on Gülen, as a professor of Geopolitics and International Relations at the University of Ottawa since 1970, as well as a specialist of Turkey and being myself a Greek, being well known in Greece and Turkey to have uttered the sentence, «The best Greeks are the Turks», I would like to give here some further information on the relations between these two eminent Turks.
Both have repeatedly
expressed their admiration for late president of Turkey, Turgut Özal, who
considered me, in his own words, his «spiritual father» in pursuing the dream
of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. Even though Gülen is pro-Jewish as Sufi Muslim
and Erdoğan is anti-Jewish as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood there are both
supporters of the multi-religious structure of the late Ottoman Empire. Özal`s
father was an Orthodox Christian Armenian and his mother was a Kurdish
Nakshibendi Sufi. Erdoğan and Gülen are both supporters of the Greek
Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul.
Since the coming to
power of Erdoğan, in 2003, himself as well as his supporters, in the Turkish population
were Gülenists and pro-American. Only, after the 2016 July military coup in Turkey, engineered by the
alleged previous American administration of President Obama, did Erdoğan accuse Gülen and his supporters of
wanting to replace him by Gülen himself as a Turkish Khomeini. The result was
understandable. Erdoğan was hit like a bull in a Spanish bullfight arena
and persuaded that the bullfighter was Gülen himself under American
instructions, he cracked down on his former self and supporters. A sheer
tragedy in which the West with its hypocritical human rights should abstain from
taking sides.
So what about me?
Should I choose between my two favorite men? We Greeks are presently favorably impressed
by the seemingly independent policy of President Erdoğan towards Great Powers,
as all third nations victimized by the West would be. Because above NATO and
Russia, stands our Turkish brother and the Greek public thinks Turkey`s seemingly
aggressive policy against Greece is directed by Great Power interests. Above
Gülen and Erdoğan I choose my
dream of a Greek-Turkish Confederation. In 1934, Venizelos just 12 years after
the catastrophical defeat of his country by the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, proposed in a memorable letter to the Nobel Price organizers that they should give the Peace Nobel Price to
his latter former foe!
Dimitri Kitsikis,
Fellow, Royal Society of Canada, Ottawa, 28-X- 2018, www.idkf.gr
In 1928, Venizelos supporters, who were staunchly pro-Western, confessed: "A hand that you are unable to bite you have to kiss". Erdoğan decides today to bite the hand of the West and provokes admiration to Greeks. Still, for how long? Dimitri Kitsikis
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφήPersonally, I am not aware of many Erdogan-admiring Greeks, despite some extreme Russophiles fueled by their staunch anti-US and anti-Western hate.
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφήMy opinion as always is unique and radically different. Greece has been walking the Nasserist path regarding advanced military weaponry, long before Erdogan:
Let us think for a second. Erdogan is experiencing a very severe currency-and-debt crisis, which has already resulted in higher everyday prices and extreme lira devaluation (in terms of real income) due to the large inflation figures of Turkish lira. Furthermore, he was forced to release pastor Brunson, getting zero sanctions relief in return. The US sanctions implemented on Erdogan's regime are still active and will be enhanced in severity (most probably), as the US now eyes the S-400 deal Erdogan has achieved with Russia, very very negatively. Additional sanctions are looming, in my opinion. Finally, due to the magnitude of the Turkish currency crisis, many big conglomerates have either gone bankrupt in Turkey or are contacting their European lenders in a haste about rapid debt-restructuring, a move very likely to result in Western economic intrusion inside Turkey's businesses.
Let us now take Greece on the other hand:
Greece has been buying many advanced Russian weapon systems since the fall of the USSR. She achieved this unhindered by NATO and the West. State-of-the-art weaponry such as Tor-M1, S-300, Zubr personnel carrier, Kalashnikov rifles, Kornet-E anti-tank missiles and other formerly Eastern-German weaponry (e.g. BMP-1, Kalashnikovs) have been acquired by Greece without the implementation of sanctions against her, despite Greece's NATO membership. Panos Kammenos has even promised to kick-start local Greek production of AK-74 assault rifles as soon as the embargo against Russia is lifted. Furthermore, Russia did not react at all when Nikos Kotzias the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, expelled almost every Russian diplomat and its personnel in Greece. On the contrary, war-plans (United Armenia) and various tit-for-tat moves were made from the Russian side when Turkey in 2016 downed a Russian Sukhoi aircraft. The drama ended after months, when Erdogan sent Putin an apologetic letter about the incident. Putin forgave him, getting many benefits for Russia's businesses as an apology, with Erdogan getting tomato exports in exchange. The S-400 were purchased using Russian loans, Putin won twice and Erdogan upset the US and Israel to a very high degree, which led to perpetual halt of the purchased F-35 US aircrafts.
Now, the Greek solution to the 1998 Cypriot missile crisis (S-300) was an especially smart move by Greece, accepted by NATO Allies. They could after all get a first-person grip on the "mysterious" inner machinery of the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system and Greece acquired one of the best anti-missile systems in the world as a perfect complement to Patriot missiles. All the above coupled with a continuous deepening of Greco-Russian relations (of special economic aspect in the case of Cyprus) until 2014 (Russian intervention in Ukraine and EU sanctions) show that Greece has been playing "Nasser's game" with both sides without cost (except the Bourgas-Alexandroupoli pipeline project that led to Karamanlis' downfall and got eventually canceled), despite Greece's position as a Western (American/European) "territory" in Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, on the heart of the Intermediate Region.
ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφήIn my opinion Erdogan has made a mess of everything and not only is he surrounded by enemies, he is making additional ones everyday. Now he has a dispute with Saudi Arabia. We all know Kashoggi's murder is just a pretext to spark this inter-Sunni inner conflict. He tried to provoke the Greek fleet in the Mediterranean and was forced to turn Barbaros back inside Turkish territorial waters. Yesterday he did not even dare to push Fatih (sea drilling platform) inside Greek and Cypriot territorial waters. The same day, as a retaliatory move against him, the International Coalition for the first time since the creation of SDF in northern Syria, supplied the Kurdish-led YPG with tanks and heavy weaponry, presumably to be used against ISIS. We do know however, that few bunches of IS terrorist are no match for the US airforce. They are needed so the YPG gets additional live combat experience with heavy weaponry and tanks and we all may suspect against whom these tanks will be used in the near future. It is worth-mentioning that such heavy types of weaponry and vehicles were not even used during the battle of Raqqa in 2016-2017. This in conjunction with a significant build-up of French troops (new military bases), trenches, bunkers and walls along the Rojava-Turkish borders, constitute "signal-emitters" that something important is coming regarding Turkey.
Some people, sometimes many, even native Greeks tend to underestimate Greece, overestimating anyone who lets a "bark" or many "barks" as in the case of Orban, Poland, Italy and Erdogan. History however, always shows who turns out to be a great man and who a petty circus "barker".