Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
WASHINGTON – Regional analysts see Turkey becoming increasingly radical even while trying to sell the West on its moderation, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
With Recep Tayyip Erdogan as Turkey’s newly elected president and chief of his Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, the country has shifted from a secular state in the 1990s to an Islamist government. That is the almost the exact opposite direction recently taken by Turkey’s main competitor for regional power, Egypt.
A U.S. ally and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey is veering ever-further from the West and is embracing more of the jihadist Islamic mantra while also attempting to appear to be the “moderate” Sunni alternative in the region to either Saudi Arabia or chief competitor, Egypt.
In looking more eastward, Erdogan has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood leadership to stay in Turkey after it was kicked out of Egypt and Qatar, has allowed the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Hamas to shift its headquarters from Damascus to Ankara and has provided material assistance to the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Such backing has prompted critics to call for the United States to put Turkey on the terrorism list and to kick it out of NATO.
Sources say that Erdogan’s strong personality has guided the country in this eastward direction and, in doing so, has exhibited a more authoritarian personality, cutting away at the democracy that Turkey has achieved over the years.
He not only has increased arrests of journalists critical of his policies but has allowed his AKP to infiltrate the judiciary system and the police. In addition, Erdogan has minimized opposition parties and has sidelined the military, which, at one time, was the major defender of Turkey’s secular system.
Yet, the United States has done little to confront Turkey over its direction, especially as it provides assistance to Sunni jihadist groups, refuses to join the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition and has allowed Hamas to move its headquarters to Ankara. In addition, Turkey refuses to allow the U.S. to use its bases to attack ISIS strongholds in Syria.
In assisting ISIS, Turkey continues to allow recruits to pass through the country into Syria, provide logistical support to ISIS and allow wounded ISIS fighters to be treated there.
In turning eastward and attempting to make Turkey the top Islamist country in the region, Erdogan has put Turkey on a collision course with Egypt, which also has Islamist credentials but, unlike Ankara, is opposed to ISIS, Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unlike Erdogan, who appears to back the more radicalized followers of Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a renewed vision of Islam in a recent speech to Muslim clerics.
“We have to think hard about what we are facing,” Sisi said. “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold sacred should cause the entire ummah (Islamic community) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!”
“It’s antagonizing the entire world!” Sisi said. “Is it possible that 1.6 (Muslim) people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!”
“I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution,” Sisi said. “You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroy, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”
Erdogan had been close to Egypt, especially when Muslim Brotherhood-backed Muhammad Morsi was the Egyptian president for a year before Sisi ousted him in a military coup in 2013. At the time, Erdogan called Sisi an “illegitimate tyrant” and a “coup-maker.”
Immediately following Sisi’s election as president, Erdogan declared him to be “null and void.” In response, Egypt canceled visa-free travel for Turkish citizens as well as a transit agreement for Turkish trucks.
For the rest of this report please go to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
