Erdoğan’s costly ‘Make Turkey Great Again’ program – BESA – Jewish News Syndicate

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Commenting on Erdoğan’s overseas military ambitions, François Mitterand’s adviser Jacques Attali tweeted: “We have to hear what Erdoğan says, take it very seriously and be prepared to act by all means. If our predecessors had taken the Führer’s speeches seriously from 1933 to 1936, they could have prevented this monster from accumulating the ways and means to do what he had announced.”

But Erdoğan can only accomplish his goals with the resources of a wealthy and mighty nation at his disposal. “This is Turkey’s Achilles heel,” said Ellis. “Foreign investors are fleeing, COVID-19 has crippled tourism and Moody’s has downgraded Turkey’s credit rating to B2, putting Turkey on a level with Egypt, Jamaica and Rwanda.”

Erdogan triples down on imperial fanaticism – Washington Examiner

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Where does this leave us?

Well, with the increasing obvious but sad reality that Erdogan is no longer a partner to Europe’s or America’s democratic security. Instead, Erdogan requires confrontation. The United States should join with the European Union in preparing sanctions on the Turkish central bank. The Turkish lira is already at pathetic lows (in no insignificant part, thanks to Erdogan’s economic mismanagement). Let’s see whether the sultan feels so supreme when his economy implodes.

Ottawa mum on why it let military sales to Turkey slip through arms embargo – The Globe and Mail

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A senior Canadian bureaucrat testifying before MPs Thursday declined to answer questions regarding whether the Prime Minister’s Office or the Foreign Affairs Minister’s office influenced a decision to allow the export of airstrike-targeting gear to Turkey this May, equipment now allegedly being used by Azerbaijan to attack Armenians. Shalini Anand, acting director-general for the government’s …

Ottawa mum on why it let military sales to Turkey slip through arms embargo – The Globe and Mail Read More »

The Great Turkish Gambit from Idlib to Karabakh – Zvezda Weekly

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What Erdogan is doing now can hardly be called soft power, although his security officials do not shine on the front lines in Nagorno-Karabakh. But since Erdogan’s policy is inseparable from power tools and does not exist outside of them, Turkey’s political style can rather be called “semi-hard power”. So Ankara’s influence is ensured not only through institutional channels, as the experience of the 1990s and 2000s showed, Turkey is not the most powerful. Influence is ensured through the direct presence and control of the military-power policy of partners, and in relatively harsh forms, as the Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev could see. The concept of creating a single “Army of Turan” within the framework of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-speaking states, periodically voiced by a number of Turkish experts close to the ruling elite, is more than indicative. Erdogan has already felt both the taste of power and the taste of blood, so it will not be easy to lead him astray.

Nato and EU silent on Turkey, despite Armenia’s appeal – EUobserver

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Turkey aside, the conflict threatens to drag in Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia under the Collective Security Treaty Organisation – a post-Soviet military alliance.

It also risks pulling in Iran, which does not want Turkish or Syrian rebel forces on its northern border and whose territory is being hit by stray shells.

France is meant to lead EU diplomacy on the crisis via its co-presidency of the Minsk Club – a diplomatic forum for Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks.

But that structure has remained largely inert for the past 26 years.

War To Continue in Nagorno-Karabakh Until Turkey’s Appetite Is Suppressed – The National Interest

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Nagorno-Karabakh, locally known as the Republic of Artsakh, is not the first to be targeted by Turkey, whose aggressive neo-Ottoman ambitions have manifested in recent intrusions into Libya, Israel, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Greece. To make matters worse, Turkey transports impoverished Syrian, Libyan mercenaries, and jihadist ISIS rebels to Azerbaijan as its proxy army in Nagorno-Karabakh. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have strongly denied the deployment of mercenaries despite accumulating evidence in the international press as well as concerns raised by government representatives in France, Russia, Iran, Syria, and Libya.

Turkey will start WWIII by striking Crimea – Pravda.ru

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The main thing here lies in the final decisions: the Azerbaijanis, who believe that Nagorno-Karabakh will be theirs, are as arrogant as Zelensky with his “Ukrainian Crimea.”

Turkey is trying to start a big war. Zelensky’s smooth metamorphosis from a hipster president to an ivory-towered dictator is a matter about “a new generation of politicians.”

At the same time, Erdogan warns the West that if the West shows disrespect to him, no European person will be able to walk the streets of their cities safely. This is the top level of diplomacy in the 21st century at its finest.