Posted on 03/14/2017 4:52:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Not long ago, a democratizing Turkey, with the second-largest army in NATO, appeared on track to join the European Union.
That's not likely now, or perhaps ever.
Last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared Angela Merkel's Germany to Hitler's, said the Netherlands was full of "Nazi remnants" and "fascists," and suggested the Dutch ambassador go home.
What precipitated Erdogan's outbursts?
City officials in Germany refused to let him campaign in Turkish immigrant communities on behalf of an April 16 referendum proposal to augment his powers.
When the Netherlands denied Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu landing rights, he exploded, saying: "The Netherlands ... are reminiscent of the Europe of World War II. The same racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism."
When Turkey's family and social policies minister, Betul Sayan Kaya, drove from Germany to Rotterdam to campaign, Dutch police blocked her from entering the Turkish consulate and escorted her back to Germany.
Liberal Europeans see Erdogan's referendum as a power grab by an unpredictable and volatile ruler who has fired 100,000 civil servants and jailed 40,000 Turks after last summer's attempted coup, and is converting his country into a dictatorship.
This crisis was tailor-made for Geert Wilders, the anti-EU, anti-Muslim Dutch nationalist who is on the ballot in Wednesday's Dutch general election.
Claiming credit for the tough stance of conservative Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Wilders tweeted: "I am telling all Turks in the Netherlands that agree with Erdogan: GO to Turkey and NEVER come back!"
"Wilders is a racist, fascist Nazi," replied Cavusoglu.
Wilders had been fading from his front-runner position, but this episode may have brought him back. While no major Dutch party would join a government led by Wilders, if he runs first in the election March 15, the shock to Europe would be tremendous.
Rutte, however, who dominated the media through the weekend confrontation with the Turks, could be the beneficiary, as a resurgent nationalism pulls all parties toward the right.
All Europe now seems to be piling on the Turks. Danes, Swedes and Swiss are taking Europe's side against Erdogan.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist National Front in France, called on the socialist regime to deny Turkish leaders permission to campaign in Turkish communities. She was echoed by conservative party candidate Francois Fillon, whose once-bright hopes for the presidency all but collapsed after it was learned his wife and children had held do-nothing jobs on the government payroll.
On April 23 comes the first round of the French elections. And one outcome appears predictable. Neither of the major parties -- the socialists of President Francois Hollande or the Republicans of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy -- may make it into the May 7 finals.
Le Pen, the anti-EU populist who would lift sanctions on Putin's Russia, is running even with 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, a socialist running as the independent leader of a new movement.
Should Le Pen run first in April, the shock to Europe would be far greater than when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, made the finals in 2002.
At the end of 2017, neither Wilders nor Le Pen is likely to be in power, but the forces driving their candidacies are growing stronger.
Foremost among these is the gnawing ethnonational fear across Europe that the migration from the South -- Maghreb, the Middle East and the sub-Sahara -- is unstoppable and will eventually swamp the countries, cultures and civilization of Europe and the West.
The ugly and brutal diplomatic confrontation with Turkey may make things worse, as the Turks, after generous payments from Germany, have kept Syrian civil war refugees from crossing its borders into Europe. Should Ankara open the gates, a new immigration crisis could engulf Europe this spring and summer.
Other ethnonational crises are brewing in a familiar place, the Balkans, among the successor states born of the 1990s breakup of Yugoslavia.
In Bosnia, secessionists seek to pull the Serb Republic away from Sarajevo toward Belgrade. The Albanian minority in Macedonia is denouncing political discrimination. The Serbs left behind after Kosovo broke loose in 1999, thanks to 78 days of U.S. bombing of Serbia, have never been reconciled to their fate.
Montenegro has charged Russia with backing an attempted coup late last year to prevent the tiny nation from joining NATO.
The Financial Times sees Vladimir Putin's hand in what is going on in the Western Balkans, where World War I was ignited with the June 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo.
The upshot of all this:
Turkey, a powerful and reliable ally of the U.S. through the Cold War, appears to be coming unmoored from Europe and the West, and is becoming increasingly sectarian, autocratic and nationalistic.
While anti-immigrant and anti-EU parties across Europe may not take power anywhere in 2017, theirs is now a permanent and growing presence, leeching away support from centrist parties left and right.
With Russia's deepening ties to populist and nationalist parties across Europe, from Paris to Istanbul, Vlad is back in the game
Lost to Islam not the west.
Turkey is not now and never has been part of the West. Since 1688 or so, it has reduced its stance of mortal enemy to a fairly low intensity, but it has never changed its essence.
It was natural that after the Kemalist coup and "fundamental transformation" that things would regress toward the mean, for that is the way of things.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Kinda makes you wonder about the 50+ tactical nuclear weapons NATO has stored in Turkey. No worries, though, there are 200 NATO troops there guarding them.
Of course, Turkey has 6,000 troops stationed within 10 miles of the base providing additional “security”.
What a feeble-minded title by Pat Buchanan, who has been on the take from the muslims for the last 40 years.
2. Most print and online media outlets craft their own headlines. You may find the exact same piece by Buchanan on another website with a different headline.
This is an op-ed.
Pat Buchanan makes his own feeble-minded title.
Bachanan and his buddy Jim Baker have been on the take from the muslims for decades.
I’ll assume you didn’t read it, because your characterization of the title has nothing to do with what Buchanan wrote.
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat...
--Kipling
Islam is incompatible with Judeo/Christian culture.
The Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453. Turkey was no longer culturally part of Europe thereafter.
Simple answer is yes. Has been for scores of years
The Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453. Turkey was no longer culturally part of Europe thereafter.
Yes. Constantinople held out against the Muslims for 800 years.
Then, just a few decades before the West was to surge in strength, they fell.
A very regrettable state of affairs.
We should promote freedom of religion in all those Muslim states that depend on us. It is Islam that denies any possibility of conversion from Muslim. That should not be tolerated.
Senile Pat didn’t figure Turkey out in the eighties?
He should have.
And every last doubt that had any shred of sanity to ut should have departed during the ‘90 to ‘91 war.
Go away Pat.
Turkey has never been a true friend of the West - more of an uneasy “non-enemy” as far as open actions go.
Nowadays there is a Nazi behind every tree.....
"With Russia's deepening ties to populist and nationalist parties across Europe, from Paris to Istanbul, Vlad is back in the game."
So, there you go... The Russians did it..!!
Astute, says I.... :)
Turkey has never been part of the West, and thus was never lost to the West.
>Turkey has never been part of the West, and thus was never lost to the West.
Turkey was secular and western for a good long time before Obama got involved. The man’s done more to destroy US power and allies than any enemy we’ve ever had.
Hitler was a huge fan of Islam and thought it would be a better religion than Christianity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.