When Vladimir Putin visited Turkey last year, it was hoped that there would be less influence by NATO powers and the Arab League against Syria and more opportunities for Turkey to slow down their Islamist reforms and instead, align themselves more closely with Russia, Iran, and China. The failure by Prime Minister Erdogan to reach an understanding that the Syrian conflict was far beyond a major confrontation between the Muslim Brotherhood supported rebels, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar versus Assad was a miscalculation which is now going to haunt the Ankara regime bitterly.
The animosity between the Turkish military and Prime Minister Erdogan erupted first in 2011 as documented in this story from the UAE newspaper The National with this AP story: Erdogan rubs in his supremacy over Turkish military’s top brass
The military had a long standing traditional role within the government to maintain a sense of secularism to prevent the passionate Islamist religious leaders from leading the nation into another disaster like World War I. However with his election, that shift from a defined secularism and instead into an integrated role for Islamic religious leaders into government decision making offended the military and lead to purges and trials causing a schism not only between the civilian government but with members of the NATO alliance as a more blunt foreign policy towards other NATO members, namely Cyprus and Greece, began to emerge. This dispute expanded as officers loyal to the West were conflicted by the Islamist purge and suddenly closer relationship to their former bitter enemies in Russia.
The headlines over the past two years indicate a divergence from the traditional NATO relationship and a new found detente with the Russians: NATO warns Turkey against buying Chinese, Russian air defense systems Turkey’s Foreign Policy Towards The Russian Federation Economic relations between Russia and Turkey at an all time best Russian contractor to hold tenders for Turkish nuclear plant Russia and Turkey focus on economic ties Russia Ready to Develop Long-Range Air Defense System with Turkey
The bottom line to all of these stories, despite the long standing animosity is the mix of warming relationships with Russia while a conversion to a quasi-Islamist Western Republic is being attempted by Prime Minister Erdoğan, is that Russia was slowly putting a wedge between Turkey and the EU/NATO alliance. This new relationship has born some fruit with Turkey finally coercing the NATO alliance to relinquish some of their top line equipment to the Turkish military while maintaining a dominant position which forces the Iranians and finally the Kurds in Northern Iraq into negotiations with the Ankara government.
However, this improvement in relations was met with due skepticism by the Turkish government due to stories like this one on June 1, 2013 from the UAE newspaper, The National: Russia playing out its Caucasus politics in Turkey, say activists
From the story:
Medet Onlu, a businessman in the Turkish capital, held the unofficial title of “Honorary Consul of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria”, the unrecognised rebel government in the Russian region of Chechnya.
He was the latest victim in a series of unsolved killings targeting members of anti-Russia groups in Turkey.
Activists campaigning against Russian policies in the Caucasus say Moscow is behind the crimes.
“It was an assassination in the heart of the country,” Ozgur Aktekin, a member of the Caucasus Forum, an association of Chechen and Circassian activists in Turkey, told The National.
Citing footage of surveillance cameras that he said was leaked to the media, he said Onlu’s suspected killer boarded a plane to Russia after the murder.
“Russia has committed many crimes, including in Turkey.”
Thus the distrust between the Russians and Turks continues but in reality, there is another force at work. To analyze who is responsible for this churning of internal Turkish politics, one needs look no further than the sponsors of the Syrian rebellion, the Gulf Cooperation Council; primarily consisting of action and support from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
But why? A picture is worth a trillion dollars:
The competition between the Russia to Southern Europe pipeline and the long proposed Saudi/Egypt and Qatar/Jordan to Southern Europe pipelines all via Turkey has created a 20-30 year dynamic where whichever group of suppliers through Turkey will dominate Eurasian political relations for decades to come. The superpower which has the most to lose with a Turkish decision to align with the Russians is not those of the Middle East but in fact the United States of America.
Which is why the logical choice for the responsibility for the latest round of civil unrest inside of Turkey is not Russia, Syria, or even Saudi Arabia, but America. Why the United States?
Our military, along with our NATO insiders, have been deeply concerned by the friendly efforts of Erdoğan to achieve a new level of cooperation with Iran, Iraq, and Russia regarding regional affairs to stabilize that portion of the Middle East. Based on the recent intervention of our CIA and State Department into Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Uganda, Mali, Mauritania, Jordan, etc. it is no shock to consider that this temporary destabilization by initiating a period of riots and unrest using leftist extremists and Saudi funded Wahhabi revolutionaries to engage the Erdoğan government. The United States also would like to re-engage the Turkish military leadership after the years of purges under Erdoğan and put a friendlier government in power; one willing to profit from a trans-Syrian pipeline from the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Cooperation Council nations to reduce Russian influence in Europe; especially into the economically and ethnically unstable Southern European region.
When all is said and done some twenty plus years from now, if not sooner as the scandals about the Middle East become more transparent during the investigations, odds are a massive complex plan to exploit the strong Islamist feelings of the Turkish people along with a profit motive to assist our allies in the old Pan-Arab alliance might well be the reason for our CIA or other forces to meddle in the internal affairs of Turkey. To believe otherwise is naive and foolish considering the results of our other activities in Iraq, Libya, and other nations in recent years. The message to Prime Minister Erdogan is crystal clear: Get back into line or the international financial cartel will remove you from power and replace you with a Saudi puppet regime lead by the military.
