Turkish Theater

As NATO Capitulates Before Turkey, Western Hypocrisy on Human Rights Enters New Low – News18

July 2, 2022 / By

Seen as a rogue outlier in Nato, Turkey found and acted upon the opportunity to get the West to support its military operation in northern Syria. Turkish forces and alleged mercenaries occupy parts of this region. A vast array of human rights abuses was reported during the peak of its military intervention and Ankara faced condemnation from the Western world. All major NATO members including Germany, France, UK and Canada have refused arms sales to Erdogan’s Turkey. Tensions further escalated when Turkey stepped up its belligerence towards fellow Nato member Greece in the eastern Mediterranean and the West largely backed Athens through this tussle. The list of Turkey’s excesses can go on, but the West has decided to overlook all that now. US President Biden’s own stance on Turkey used to be one of admonishment. Today, that seems to change with Ankara’s new leverage in the game.

Two-faced Turkey demands a terrible price for NATO expansion – Haaretz.com

July 2, 2022 / By

Mr Erdogan will now expect Sweden and Finland to adhere to the spirit, and not just the (notably vague) letter, of the agreement. This means he will demand they back a future Turkish operation in Syria to combat the YPG, who happen to be the West’s main allies against Islamic State, support Ankara’s plans to expel and forcibly resettle over one million Syrian refugees in northern Syria, take concrete steps to extradite alleged members of the PKK and Gulen movement to face trial, unlikely to be fair, in Turkey, and keep schtum about Turkey’s poor human rights records and abuses of fundamental democratic freedoms.


Turkey will seize on any hemming and hawing on these issues as evidence of bad faith, if not betrayal, and a just cause to reignite a crisis in Turkey’s relations with the West. Turkey under Erdogan is a fundamentally untrustworthy ally. The NATO deal has triggered a countdown to the next noisy but inevitable conflagration.

Erdogan says no meeting until Greek PM “pulls himself together” | Reuters

July 1, 2022 / By

Historic rivals, Turkey and Greece have been at odds over issues ranging from overflights and the status of Aegean islands, maritime boundaries and hydrocarbon resources in the Mediterranean, and ethnically-split Cyprus.

Tensions flared again recently over air space and the status of demilitarised islands in the Aegean. Erdogan has said Mitsotakis “no longer exists for him” after the Greek premier lobbied for the United States not to sell Turkey F-16 fighter jets during a speech at the U.S. Congress.

The US did not offer Turkey anything to get Erdogan to drop his objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance, a trio of senior administration officials claim – The Pavlovic Today

June 29, 2022 / By

A trio of senior administration officials detail the first day of NATO Summit in Madrid. Here’s what they told The Pavlovic Today. The new NATO strategic concept will be released shortly and focuses heavily on Russia. But it also, for the first time, mentions China. The document will note that China’s stated ambitions and challenge …

The US did not offer Turkey anything to get Erdogan to drop his objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance, a trio of senior administration officials claim – The Pavlovic Today Read More »

EXPLAINER: How was Turkey’s veto of Nordic NATO bid avoided? – San Francisco Chronicle

June 29, 2022 / By

Before the text was released, Turkish officials circulated to media outlets a note titled “Turkey got what it wanted.” Finland’s leading newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, wrote in an editorial that “Turkey got what it wanted – and so did Finland and Sweden.”

“The memorandum was the price that had to be paid for the weird style of dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that at the same time represents typical behavior to Turkey,” the Finnish newspaper said.

While arguing against making Sweden and Finland NATO members, Erdogan showed videos and photographs of PKK demonstrations in Sweden as evidence of his claim of Swedish indifference to terrorism.

Head of Greek Pomaks’ Association rips into Erdogan’s revisionist expansionism – To Vima Online

June 16, 2022 / By

You forget, of course, that these islands have been Greek for thousands of years, many centuries before your ancestors for the first time in their history laid their eyes on the… blue colour of the Aegean.
The islands of Imvros and Tenedos were also Greek. Why do you not implement, correspondingly, the provisions of Article 14 of the Treaty of Lausanne?
[Article 14 stipulates: “The islands of Imbros and Tenedos, remaining under Turkish sovereignty, shall enjoy a special administrative organisation composed of local elements and furnishing every guarantee for the native non-Moslem population in so far as concerns local administration and the protection of persons and property. The maintenance of order will be assured therein by a police force recruited from amongst the local population by the local administration above provided for and placed under its orders. The agreements which have been, or may be, concluded between Greece and Turkey relating to the exchange of the Greek and Turkish populations will not be applied to the inhabitants of the islands of Imbros and Tenedos.”]

Greece is already under occupation | Daily Sabah

June 16, 2022 / By

The crisis culminated when Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis rushed to the United States recently and targeted Turkey in Congress. While the Turkish delegation was discussing the F-16s in the U.S., the Greek leader was trying to persuade Washington to embargo Ankara, a NATO ally and neighbor of Greece. It happened at a time when “third parties” were not included at the request of Athens in the mechanism between Greece and Turkey.

Following the move, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said “Mitsotakis no longer exists for me.” The president said that because he was clearly convinced that Athens did not have the will to conduct independent, equal diplomacy. Erdoğan’s harsh statement can also be seen as a reflection of his exhaustion in the face of such moves by Greek authoritie