TRUMP NEEDS TO MAKE PUTIN HIS NEW BEST FRIEND

TRUMP NEEDS TO MAKE PUTIN HIS NEW BEST FRIEND

Okay, apologies, I have been rabbiting on about the rise of NATO member Turkey for years and how it must inevitably confront Russia over a dozen contested States in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pursuit of re-establishing the old Ottoman Empire. But Putin is also on an unrelenting pursuit of an old USSR.

Ronald Reagan’s old mate, the terminally ill Mikhail Gorbachev, (the bloke with the map of New Zealand on his scone) can now afford to assure us all that Putin is on a mission and about to capitalise on his 85 per cent approval rating. And Gorbachev (above) does that in no uncertain terms.

Although Erdogan’s approval rating is only hovering around 51 per cent, a dodgy referendum “yes” vote gives him a green light to create a monolithic presidency, much more oppressive than that of Ataturk, with the powers to personally appoint or dismiss ministers, select judges and rule by decree in a constant state of emergency. 

"For the first time in the history of our republic, we are changing our ruling system”, Erdogan ominously preached to supporters last year.The recent military coup led to a reported 200,000 protesters being either murdered or gaoled for indefinite periods. The transition has started.

Erdogan is now aping the late Sadam Hussein of Iraq who used poison gas to ethnically cleanse the border of the Kurds. Obama refused to assist the Kurds in fighting ISIS, but Trump sees the conflict differently and is now assisting the Kurds to contest their homeland againstTurkey. This puts NATO itself on shaky ground.

Was Turkey aspiring to be part of, and assisting, an ISIS Caliphate? It certainly seems so. Their brands of extreme Sunni Islam were similar and Turkey for years would not allow the US landing rights for US jet fighters to be used against ISIS. 

 

Turkey stood by in tanks and watched ISIS slaughter thousands of women and children in Syrian border towns like Kobane . All the while Turkey was killing off the Kurds under the pretense of them promoting terrorism.

Kurdish terrorism to Turkey is simply the act of resisting being slaughtered.  

Turkey was providing a safe haven for ISIS terrorists and was retailing oil stolen from the Syrians and Iraqis it couldn’t use itself to reward Arab States. 

If you still doubt what I say consider Erdogan’s eagerness to down a Russian jet fighter when it accidently overflew a sliver of land in Turkey’s noman’s land in the Mediterranean West. Or note Erdogan's unabashed four-finger salute “the Rabaa” of the original terrorist organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, (below). 

 

The Turkish State has been determined to destroy the Kurds’ cultural identity since the 1980s and has been waging a guerrilla war ever since. The Turkish armed forces want Ataturk’s secularism to be maintained while Erdogan wants the Ottoman Empire restored. Erdogan is winning under the radar, and by a large margin.

But the Ottoman Empire, including Bulgaria's Sofia, Vienna, Belgrade, and most of Eastern Europe including the Baltic States and all Warsaw Pact nations, comes in direct conflict with Russia’s ambition to restore the USSR to a once-great power. And of course that includes Europe’s food bowl of Ukraine and all the odd bod “ikistan” States that border both Turkey and Russia.

This area is now an ignored smouldering powder keg and while Europe has been rejecting Turkey’s application to join the EU since 2005,  it is still accepting of the fact that Turkey is welcome as part of NATO as a bulwark against Russia and in support of the corrupt Ukraine's Poroshenko (above) . 

Europe’s West in Germany, France and even Italy are oblivious to this anomaly and Trump is not aware of the invidious position of having to align with and protect a Turkey at war with Russia (under Article Five’s collective defence treaty) and at the cost of the US as a NATO member. 

As Putin prepares to emulate Erdogan’s power play with his upcoming election in March, in which he is assured of 85 per cent approval, Trump must re-evaluate Turkey and prepare to accept the Democrats’ false claim of Russian “collusion”. Because he now needs to actively “collude” with Russia or face a new Islamic caliphate without limits. 

If he doesn’t we will have to contend with a new extreme Muslim power based in old Constantinople, and far greater than ISIS, with Turkey’s well-armed population of an economically sound 80 million, and a resurgence of the evil Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar against allied Egypt.

Obama had already aligned with Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood against the Kurds, Trump will reverse that alignment

Larry Pickering

Four-time Walkley Award winning political commentator and Churchill Fellow, has returned to the fray over concern that the integrity of news dissemination is continually being threatened by a partisan media.