by Ghassan and Intibah Kadi for the Saker Blog
With all eyes globally poised at COVID-19 and the impending economic meltdown, Black-Lives-Matter activism, and the protests in the USA and some Western countries, little attention is given to the rise of a potentially more formidable religious fundamentalism base for ISIS-style and orientation than ISIS itself; and indications are pointing to this happening right now, in today’s Turkey.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS are/were rogue organizations with relatively little resources, little prowess, and no international standing to offer them a safe haven under which to hide and protect themselves from the wrath of the world, so to speak.
But this was not the case for the Saudis over the last few decades. Saudi Arabia is an internationally recognized political entity, a member of the United Nations, a G-20 member with enormous wealth and a commodity that the world needs; oil. Saudi Arabia used its dollar power to spread the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam based on the interpretations and teachings of Ibn Taymiyyah.
The Saudis spent billions of dollars, tens and even perhaps hundreds of billions building religious schools and mosques throughout the entire globe. They sponsored, fostered and abetted preachers, including highly controversial violent radical preachers in order to promote their version of Islam. They financed and equipped most fundamentalist terror groups, all the way initially from the Afghani Mujahideen, the Somali Al-Shabab, to the Nigerian Boku Haram; just to name a few. Their program commenced in the late 1960’s, during the reign of Saudi King Faisal who initially wanted to eradicate the growing doctrine of Marxism in the Muslim World.
And when the Saudis believed they had it made, when they felt the road was paved and all obstacles removed, they launched the multi-billion dollar attack on Syria.
By then, fundamentalist Sunni Muslim youth across the globe were banking on Saudi leadership and had put all of their faith and hope in them to lead the Muslim World towards a new era in which Wahhabi Islam was expected to make a series of gains on the global arena; with a covert intention to gain world control.
As the Saudis were beginning to fail in fulfilling their promise, ISIS made its mark in the minds of Muslim youth when world media aired videos of ISIS tanks in the streets and main squares of Mosul; Iraq’s second largest city. Just before and after the fall of Mosul, the advance of ISIS looked unstoppable; reminiscent of the bygone days of Muslim conquest and glory, as perceived by many sympathetic Muslim youth.
It was not a surprise therefore, that when ISIS leader/Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi called for a Jihad in 2013, he not only rounded up the fundamentalist Sunni sector already radicalized, but he also managed to charm other previously moderate Sunnis who were amazed at his achievements.
It must be remembered here that in as far as Muslim religious battles and conquests are concerned, perhaps the last such great conquest of them all in the Western hemisphere, was the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. But this conquest of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II was the result of a huge effort, strategic planning, determination, patience, perseverance and the ability to employ the best in the world in terms of weapon development and specifically cannon manufacturing.
With the Saudi failure in Syria and its utter inability to score any victory in Yemen against all odds that favoured its highly privileged position, Saudi Arabia began to lose its stature as the leading nation of Muslim fundamentalism.
Enter Erdogan.
As I have written many times before, Erdogan is a combination of a religious fundamentalist zealot and a Turkish nationalist. He also has his own egocentric agendas, aspiring to be a mega Muslim leader and an empire builder.
In his quest for leadership, he has taken the role of an opportunist, a blackmailer and a scavenger, among other things.
As an opportunist, he rode on the anti-Syria bandwagon and walked the Qatari-Saudi talk. They flooded him with money and promises. He opened his borders with Syria to the terrorists they funded.
Later on, he used the Syrian refugees in Turkey to blackmail the EU with, opening the floodgate of refugees at will and demanding financial bribes, mainly from Germany, to close the gates after receiving his ransom price, courtesy of the lack of wisdom and short-sightedness of Angela Merkel.
As a scavenger, he is capitalizing on what the Saudis have invested in, to his own benefit.
Erdogan promised his supporters back in 2011 to pray in the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus after defeating Syrian President Assad, but he failed. He promised Turkish people to have ‘zero problems’ internally and externally. He failed. He expected to force Russia into accepting his terms prior to the 15th of March 2020 meeting, and he also failed. He was hoping to score a swift victory in Libya, and he is clearly failing.
What he fails to recognize is that he already is biting off more than he can chew, yet he is preparing to bunker down in Azerbajian.
The man is desperate for a win. There is no better score he can mark on the board than the equivalent of Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of Constantinople; albeit take two.
The big difference here is that prior to the fall of Constantinople, it was the capital of the Byzantine Empire and its fall was the result of a military defeat at the hands of the Ottomans. Oddly enough however, the Erdogan propaganda machine is portraying the change of status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque as a great achievement. His supporters are chanting slogans claiming that turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque is tantamount to a conquest that was predicted in the Hadith.
Something must be amiss here. It is either that those supporters do not know that Constantinople/Istanbul had already been under Muslim/Turkish rule for more than five centuries, it is either that they don’t understand what conquest means, or that they are simply trying to festoon Erdogan with someone else’s achievements.
The real reason is more sinister. Erdogan has not been able to score any decisive military victory in all of his gambles, hence he decided to capitalize on the work of his ancestors. Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II took Constantinople after a long journey of strategic planning, but Erdogan thinks he can exhume the remains of vestiges of bygone glory and cloak himself with remnants of slogans of historic milestones and call them his own, thereby reclaiming an icon already under his control, and then audaciously call himself an all-time victor. Instead of having to go to battle to prove his worth, he chose the convenience of the stroke of a pen, and voila, he transformed himself to an instant great Muslim Fatih/conqueror. This is historic plagiarism at its worst.
In essence, in claiming such a great victory over Hagia Sophia, Erdogan has ‘photoshopped’ a triumph based on a fabricated virtual reality that is aimed to win him more support from the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim street; one that is least driven by rationality.
In all of this, Erdogan has not only benefited from the ground work of the Wahhabi Saudis he is fundamentally opposed to as being a Muslim Brotherhood man, but with his understanding of how to manipulate the vulnerable minds of Muslim youth, all the monies the Saudis have spent have inadvertently turned into a pay-it-forward scheme that he hopes will elevate him to the top of the Muslim World hierarchy.
Thus far, manipulating those vulnerable minds both domestically and within the broader Muslim World has been the only area in which Erdogan has been successful.
That said, the difference in international clout between Al-Qaeda/ISIS and the Erdogan leadership is much larger than that of such organizations and the untouchable Saudi Arabia. Turkey is not only a state, a member of the UN, a member of the G-20, but it is also a NATO member with a huge army.
But unlike the Saudis who do not have any history of strategic planning, technological prowess and entrepreneurial achievements other than paying foreigners to build them palaces, Turkey can play a more pernicious role, after all, it is a nation that has had a long history of empire building; and if and when Turkey decides to rise in a fundamentalist way, the world must take notice.
Under the protection of the above, and knowing that the West will not deal with any part of Turkey like it did with Tora Bora, Erdogan feels at liberty to incrementally convert the public school system into a fundamentalist one, but according to an Erdogan propaganda video, with its Arabic captions designed to recruit support from the Arab Sunni world, he indicates he is building the army of the future for the ‘Ummah’ by radicalizing the youth via the re-vamped schools. The Youtube has been removed, but here’s a screenshot of it.
In an article published nearly two years ago in the NYT, Erdogan’s plan of changing over the education system into a religious one is well presented. Public schools are systemically replaced by the religious Imam Hatip schools, of which Erdogan himself is a graduate. Whilst those schools teach regular subjects, around 50% of which are religious, and a student must pass those subjects before he/she can graduate. With this approach in fact, Erdogan could be leading Turkey into not only becoming a theological state, but also a nation that does not have enough technocrats and STEM graduates at a time when he is trying to build an empire and an advanced army. What is also of note is that affluent secular Turkish parents will send their children to private, non-religious schools, and the new generation of doctors, engineers and teachers will be mainly comprised of them.
In a propaganda video, a noisy and loud Erdogan supporter makes a statement saying that whoever stood up for the victory of Hagia Sophia will do the same for the mosques of Jerusalem, Cordoba (in Spain), Yemen, Mecca and Medina.
The main danger of Erdogan, globally speaking, is that he understands both of the fundamentalist Muslim as well as the liberal Western minds, but the West does not have this full understanding; no doubt to its own peril. Until he is either stopped, or falls on his own sword, he will continue to see the world as open slather for his fundamentalist and expansive adventures, because his mind is set in stone in the age of conquests and religious glory.
Links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/world/europe/erdogan-turkey-election-religious-schools.html
It makes no historical sense to compare the rag tag CIA/Saudi backed ISIS (a vacuum movement) or the eccentric Erdogan and his dream world to the Ottoman Empire. One was an up and coming (Turkic, partly Persianised) Empire that lasted 500 years while the others are just blips in history. Not that I’m a fan of Ottoman Empire or something.
“Thus far, manipulating those vulnerable minds both domestically and within the broader Muslim World has been the only area in which Erdogan has been successful.”
Ghassan, I disagree. I am noticing the Arab and Muslim streets slowly realizing that Erdogan is failing, thereby abandoning him. The people of the region, albeit very late, are awakening to the concept of Realpolitik, self interest and the games their rulers are playing for survival. A kind of withdrawal if you wish.
We are now just waiting for the annexation of the rest of the Palestinian Lands, followed by the possible expulsion of (some of) the Palestinians to Sinai or across the Jordan River.
Harry_Red
Yes, it makes no sense to compare the rag tag CIA/Saudi backed ISIS to anybody, as ISIS is nothing more than a mercenary army, armed and funded by the US and Saudi Arabia. However, what can be compared is Saudi Arabia to Turkey, and visa versa.
The Turkish Empire is an accident of history. Until the year 1300, Turkey was under the control of the Seljuk Turks, when they were overthrown by the Ottoman Turks, something the Seljuk’s never forgot nor forgave. The result of this was that the Turkish Empire was created by a heterogeneous country which, from the political point of view, was weak internally. The additional result was that Turkish sultans had no choice but to employ Greeks and Serbs as Grand Vesir’s (prime ministers), as they could never be sure which Turk was a Seljuk and which was an Ottoman.
Turkish conquests ? Again an accident of history. Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries was composed of kingdoms with weak central authority, whose kings depended on their aristocrats for feudal levies to create any form of an army. A Turkey with centralized authority took on individually these kingdoms in Eastern and Central Europe, scoring victories. However, even these victories could never be taken for granted before they were fought. At the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Serbian knight Milosh Obilich killed the Turkish sultan Murad. The Turks narrowly won, after which they retreated. Even the Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 was achieved by the use of canon designed by European mercenaries. The Turks stayed in Europe until 1912, when we had the Balkan wars, with Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece expelling Turkey almost to the gates of Constantinople. The power of the Turkish Empire cannot be exaggerated. It existed until 1912 only because the European powers of that time, Britain, France and Germany, wanted it to be so, as they did not want Orthodox Russia to have Orthodox Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks on it’s side and end up in the Adriatic sea. The situation is similar today.
And what is Turkey today ? Basically a feudal state living in the 21st century, and by this I mean the mentality of the people, who cannot forget the Ottoman Empire, thinking Turkey can still have an imperial role to play. Well, it can play an imperial role if somebody permits it. Internally, the country is weak, having religious, economic, financial, ethnic and moral problems. How long has it been fighting Kurd’s ? And corruption ? A Turkish tradition which goes back to the 17th century, when the Seljuk Turks introduced it to ruin the Ottomans. They almost did. However, the corruption stayed, and now it is the basis for the functioning of the whole country. Not a an advantage for the future.
And Saudi Arabia ? Does it exist as a country ? Well, it exists on the map, being a collection of sheikdoms, who support the House of Saud. However, this support does not come cheap, as the sheiks receive millions in return (compensation), in effect getting bribery money and doing nothing except supporting the Saudi family. A dangerous practice. The Saudi oil fields are getting depleted, as they have been exploited for years. According to one analyst, the Saudi Government has exaggerated it’s oil reserves by an incredible 80 %. And the result ? Well, we have the war in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia has attacked in order to snatch it’s untouched oil reserves. And the moral and democratic West ? What has it done ? It has armed Saudi Arabia, almost pretending the war in Yemen did not exist. The West, of course, wants Yemeni oil. However, the performance of the Saudi military has been pathetic. The military, of course, was created to protect the House of Saud first and Saudi Arabia second. All of a sudden it found its self in Yemen fighting a war it did not want to fight. After all, who wants to get killed ?
And the future of Saudi Arabia ? Very bleak. The population has risen in number, the bulk being very unhappy with the distribution of wealth. Where did Saudi billions end up over the years ? They ended up in Saudi Arabia for luxury and bribes and outside Saudi Arabia for religious investment. Analysts are of the opinion that it’s only a matter of time before Saudi Arabia breaks up into sheikdoms, from which it was initially created.
And what conclusion can we reach ? Turkey and Saudi Arabia are at the mercy of their historical and religious heritage, and this heritage has been laced by a huge dose of traditional corruption. These factors will in the end destroy both countries, Saudi Arabia first and Turkey second.
BF, Hmm. I suggest looking at the Turmen, who today reside in Kazakhstan, Turmenistan, etc. Being, what you would call tribes of horsemen, roaming around and steeling anything they could, particularly human resources: boys for sex and what is known as Janissaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries, women for making kids.
They moved south and gained control of the control centers in Persia, moved south to Arabian peninsula, where they converted to Islam, conned the Arabs to their Army, obviously promising a lot of loot from the Greeks in Eastern Roman Empire. The rest is history of slavery and theft.
Interestingly enough, if you look at Erdogan, you will see an Islamist who is a self hating Pontic Greek, his prime minister is a fluent in Greek, and so on, and so on. It is said that Tukey is home to no less 15mln Crypto Christians (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians). Turkey, until early 1900’s used Greek alphabet, when for obvious reasons they decided to use their version of Latin letters. The father of modern day Turkey (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) had Greek mother whose name was Maria, who after her death was quietly buried as Christian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atatürk
Kemal moved Turkey’s capital from Constantinople to Ankara after the Balkan Wars. Ankara, is also historically a Greek City established thousands of years ago with the name Άγκυρα (Greek meaning anchor).
Turkish flag is an old Byzantine war flag. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n1JFGHpYWE
Check at 2:58 and 3:01 after.
Not to bore you to death with facts, enjoy this song, welcome to the Turks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpubu3v3dQs
Seen for what it is, Sultan Erdogan’s move on Haggia Sophia is in reality, quite pathetic. And despite being an Orthodox (Serbian) Christian & finding this on a moral level, reprehensible & extremely offensive, I can see it for what it is, a very, very, cheap populist move. Erdogan is running out of time, he has far more luck than sense & I think it can be seen from a mile away, that he is one of these heads of state, like (under completely different circumstances) Milo Djukanovic, or the guy in Ukraine – I can’t even remember his name (bloody Zelenski), he is heading for a bad end. Erdogan survived one assassination attempt thanks to Putin, I am not so sure he will survive another, if & when it comes.
Thanks for the article. Another terrorist organisation financed by the Saudis and Iran via Croatia was the so-called Bosnian Army comprised of Bosnian Muslims.The first headchoppers were deployed there against the Serbs. Youtube is full of their terrorist exploits there.
I would like to add that the main reason Constantinople fell is the betrayal of the Papacy. Not only did the Papists use every opportunity to sow decent and corruption within the Eastern Roman Empire but the Pope and his crusaders not once ransacked and raped the city whilst it was still Christian and blatantly blackmailed the Romans (real Romans also known as the Byzantine Empire) that unless they recognise the Pope no help was to be rendered in their fight against the invading Muslim armies. So no help arrived. Also, in 1396 Black Death killed half of the population in Constantinople. By 1453 when it feel, Constantinople was but a shadow of its former self.
Due to their shortsightness of the Western Barbarians falsely claiming to be Romans we got the Ottomans Empire where Christians subjects were regularly impaled, slaughtered and converted to Islam and, wait for it, taken as SLAVES. It is worth noticing that the British Empire were later a relentless supporter of such an abomination called the Ottoman Empire, directly working against the Christians in their fight for their lives sabotaging every attempt at liberation.
So, just around the time the blacks in America get their $17 trillion from the Fed, the remaining Christians of the Balkans and Russian borderlands should apply for same but from the Sultan. Alas, being too proud and divided, the Christians of the area are not going to do it. They be rather signed up for the death cult called NATO and EU.
Not “shortsightedness”. That would imply it was not their (Western Christianity) objective all along…
Papacy at the time 1400’s was under the control of Venice, a powerful and rich city state with a long arm. It never was about religion but rather earthly profit. Rome? Only its owners have changed.
”The main danger of Erdogan, globally speaking, is that he understands both of the fundamentalist Muslim as well as the liberal Western minds, but the West does not have this full understanding; no doubt to its own peril.”
Well, 30 years ago the Ziomedia fed its faithful Western audience — the latter in awe after their Masters’ glorious victory against communism — 24/7 Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and war propaganda against the wider Muslim world. To the West’s 99% the impression was that the West had a ”full understanding” of Muslim fundamentalism; never mind that all the imperialist coercion, violence, and oppression was — and still is — targeting secular countries.
A quarter of a century later, the results of the West’s ”full understanding” — or, rather, the real intentions hiding behind it — became abundantly clear even to the more dense chauvinists when Erdogan, who (just like Assad) does understand Western liberalism, effortlessly had EU open up ”Fortress Europe” to the refugee torrents deliberately created by the war on Syria. Erdogan got rid of a destabilising refugee problem inside Turkey and the Eurocrats got a battering ram to be used against the Euro-trash middle classes and labour aristocracies. Today, the Western ’Elites’ have no use of their erstwhile official Islamophobia since they are ditching Western social cohesion and, really, the West itself.
Then what about Erdogan? My take is that he can continue to screw the EU and its hopeless neoliberal cesspit to his heart’s content. He will be stopped by the Resistance or, possibly, by the Pindos — for vastly different reasons, of course.
Good article!
However, I have problems with the terminology. What fundament in Islam has Wahabism? How can it be fundamentally Islamic to kill fellow Muslims because they are (alleged to be) not sufficiently Islamic? Perhaps it is only me, but I have problems seeing any fundamentalism in this ideology. (See for example The Quran 5,82 for an example of Islamic tolerance to Christians.)
What’s usually labelled fundamentalism in Christianity is some kind of Protestant reading of the Bible as the sole authority of the doctrine, scriptura sola, and a strict adherence to it. So which authority in traditional Islam is there for takfiri praxis?
Because Islam has also many verses of battles and conquest by jihad, conquering Constantinople and Orthodox (very peaceful christians who didnt even participate in the crusades) was an islamic obligation
No! Not ‘Islamic obligation’ but a personal decision by the Ottoman Sultan. The Sultan was only 21 and so devoid of maturity and wisdom.
Erdogan should have corrected the initial mistake by Sultan Mehmet and returned Hagia Sophia to the orthodox Christians with an apology.
I agree with the observations that Erdogan wants to project himself as the leader of the Muslim world and rejuvenate the thoughts of ottoman empire. He wants to cling onto power by playing religious card. However, I disagree with the remark that West/NATO is oblivious to this. In fact, NATO is using Turkey as trojan horse. NATO wants Muslims to support them as and when they start a war against Russia and China.
Yes, NATO knows exactly what this specimen Erdogan has on offer. Applies in full to an even uglier creature: Narendra Modi who has the same responsibilities with regard to China. Of these two, Erdogan is the more dangerous thug. Just like Modi, Erdogan too is deluded but not hopelessly incompetent. His plotting is partly successful because, like Putin, he can sense the smell of the West’s putrefaction and acts with a strong sense of purpose triggered by the stench.
”The main danger of Erdogan, globally speaking, is that he understands both of the fundamentalist Muslim as well as the liberal Western minds, but the West does not have this full understanding; no doubt to its own peril.”
i would be interested to read some elaboration by the authors of this crucial statement.
Actually, Erdoğan is getting desperate. That is why he converted Hagia Sophia into a mosque, something he had no real intention of doing previously. The economy is not strong and he is losing support even among his more moderate Muslim supporters. This may make him more dangerous, but mostly to the Republic of Turkey.
As for his Turkish “nationalism”.He basically is a nationalist so long as he needs Bahçeli’s nationalist party (MHP) to prop him up. Many Turkish nationalists are secular rather than fundamentalist. Most of those that are secular have left the MHP to support the İyi Party of Meral Akşener.
His efforts in the Imam Hatip education system are not that successful, certainly not with those who go on to higher education. Many Hatip students pay lip service to their religious studies. They are just courses to pass, like jumping over a hurdle, to get a degree. Indeed the course often turn them away from religion.
Most of Turkey is still secular Muslim rather than fundamentalist, and even less Muslim Brotherhood. Remember, that many of the AKP and Erdoğan supporters, especially, in the past were “moderate” secular Muslims and Neoliberal types. Most of their support came because of their perceived success of the economy. Much of his recent loss of support (losing Istanbul and Ankara) is a result of the economic problems that have arisen. His shenanigans in Syria, Libya, and with Hagia Sophia are not winning that support back, and in the case of the failing wars, unwanted refugees and the continung economic issues are unlikely to add to his support in the near future. Hence his desperate move with Aya Sophia. Do not be deceived by the very vocal, but very few extreme Islamist types that you may hear.
Libya, of course, is also about oil, not just shoring up a MB government. Erdoğan needs this oil to help with his economic situation, so it has some rational objectives however unlikely they are to be acheived. His Syrian debacle is Erdoğan’s real Achillies heal. It was foolhardy to begin with and is a drain on the economy and has even turned many of his supporters against him given the unwanted refugee situation. Playing the Kurdish card is losing effectiveness as well, as Turks see more and more the drain on the economy from this adventure and the support for unsavory “rebels” whose actions make some Turks in the border towns unhappy.
Erdoğan still has his neo-Ottoman dreams. These were not just a result of Davutoğlu’s influence, but Davutoğlu was elevated in politics because his ideas agreed with those Erdoğan already had.
Erdoğan would have a better chance of success if he could suppress his ego enough to recognize the Al Assad government in Syria and work with it to remove/defeat the “terrorists” in Syria, and stabilize that state. And then, if not before, withdraw Turkish troops. This would relieve some pressure on the Turkish economy. Unfortunately, his ego and ideology, make this almost impossible.
He has some legal and ethical justification in supporting the UN recognized government in Libya, but what the extent of that support should be is the question.
As for Hagia Sophia, it ought to be a non issue. It belongs to the Republic of Turkey, and has not been a church for over 500 years, infact for over 400 of those years, it was a mosque. Whether it is a mosque or a museum should be of no concern to those outside of Turkey. In fact, the more Christians and Turko-phobes belyache over it, the more support Erdoğan is likely to receive as Turks will perceive it to be unwarrented interference in Turkey’s domestic affairs. Perhaps, that was what Erdoğan was hoping for.
re: Hagia Sophia: If you do not understand the underlying metaphysics/energetics of the situation, at least do not distort history to bolster you rather shallow analysis of Hagia Sophia. It was a Church of an important civilizational center for 800 years and was built as such. I suspect when the Jews recover their precious “Temple Mount” you will be singing a different tune?
At least K. M. Ataturk understood the situation when he brilliantly crafted a solution for Hagia Sophia as he put his full attention to the modernization of Turkey. Evidently the very lucid authors of this article are as equally tuned in to all aspects of social/political realities of their times.
https://muze.gen.tr/muze-detay/ayasofya
Tera, you are correct. I wasn’t going to bother with more details, but after reading what BD wrote I decided otherwise. First of all Erdo lost European (Konstantinopole and surrounding part of Turkey in the last elections, therefore he had to show that he responds to his Islamist Muslim Brotherhood supporters from Ankara and the South. Now just so you people understand this mess called Turkey, watch the video where Greek Four Star General, who was also a minister of Defence and who speaks no less than four languages (primarily Turkish, Russian I’ll skip the obvious) who also has Doctor’s (PhD) degree in strategic studies. He wrote the book about the “people we call Turks” and the “Turkey”. The book was also published in English and its titled “What Turkey what Turks” (this is my translation of his Greek title, unlike the less insulting English version of the book).
Frangos Frangoulis, general and PHD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangoulis_Frangos
The video is about his thoughts regarding current events “Aghia Sophia”
Φράγκος Φ.:Κραυγή απόγνωσης για την ΑΓΙΑ ΣΟΦΙΑ των Απανταχού Ελλήνων
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8VBCdaOEuE
At 4:52 his book in English: What is Turkey and who are the Turks.
At 5:34 he shows the heritage of Erdogan, who is from village called Potamia (Since there are no accents on the map we can translate the name of his village as either “place near river” or “rivers”).
Erdo’s grandfather was fighting against the Turks on the side of Russians.
His Great Grandfather’s name was Mimis Bakatoglou so the real name of Erdo is the same.
Have fun.
“He has some legal and ethical justification in supporting the UN recognized government in Libya, but what the extent of that support should be is the question.”
Actually the UN mandate which was given to the GNA (Government of National Accord) in Libya expired at the end of 2017. The GNA was supposed to organise elections, which they did not do, therefore power has reverted back to the House of Representatives led by Aguila Saleh and the Libyan army led by Gen Haftar. These latter institutions are now the only legal power-brokers in Libya. Turkey’s actions in Libya, supporting the GNA, are completely llegal.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey are merely different factions of Sunni fascism and jihadism.
They aggressively proselytize, export, and arm jihadist terrorists like ISIS, Al-Nusra Front, or Al-CIAda around the world.
But ultimately, despite their grandiose delusions, both these nations are ultimately proxies of the American Empire, which supports and sponsors its terrorist proxy nations to begin with.
Turkey is thus a decades-long NATO member state.
And Saudi Arabia is a glorified American colony in everything but name.
Saudi and Turkish terrorism could not exist without the mother of all terrorism: American state terrorism.
The Russian are playing game in Syria and west Asia , they certainly could put pressure on Erdogan and clear Adlib and the Syria northeastern territory from the terrorist and the occupiers .
Again turkey is playing the game of the USA , without blessing of the US and NATO , he will not stand a chance of doing what he is doing now .
I blame Putin .
The Iraqis should immediately throw the Americans occupiers out of Their homeland, they are creating havocs and division between the Arabs .
I do believe the Axis of resistance will succeed at the end , thanks to the Iranian .
And I am back, as I found an interesting video posted by a young fellow, who calls himself “FilEllin”. He dedicated this video to Aghia Sophia.
The tile is simple ” Το λάθος του Ερντογάν… – Erdogan’s mistake”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otsk-DtM9cw
He starts of with short history and right away he says “Turks without any hesitation converted Aghia Sophia to mosque. in 1934 Kemal Ataturk made it a Museum, and started to milk the world for it (0:16). He continues by saying that Erdogan’s decision was applauded by the islamists (1:09 mufti of Oman, etc and the members of muslim brotherhood called it a historic moment). Making the rest of the World think that Turkey made a big step back. He also said that he is sure of this move making a big contribution to the progress of Turkish Economy. This move could have been foreseen knowing who Erdogan is. At 1:58 he says that there are at least four more Cathedrals named Aghia Sophia on Turkish territory that were converted to mosques in the last ten years. We lost all that in 1453. He says he feels sorry for the Turks, who will lose big financially. At 2:39 he shows huge mosque next door to Aghia Sophia. He says, the move only looks like a big win for the islamists. Symbolism does not get you far, and he gives an example of a little painted car symbolizing speedy demon and compared it to another real speed demon. So much for symbols. Later he talks about money losses that Turkey is facing. One of them being the extremely expensive carpet. And the story goes on.