The Bayraktar TB2 is a medium-altitude, long-range tactical UAV system.
SOURCE: WIKEMEDIA COMMONS
In all fairness these words should be read in context. In its self-interest, Turkey has been supplying the very necessary and monumentally-effective UAV to Ukraine. A game changer. Kudos, with reservations pursuant to the following.
With the so-called "killing" of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, former President Trump can legitimately claim to have obliterated DAISH - the romanticized Arabic name for ISIS. No one however can legitimately claim to have obliterated the malignant ideology OF al-Baghdadi's 7th century death cult built around conquest, intolerance, butchery and bloodshed: the oppression of Islam's enemies.
Not until we recognize the transformation of Abu Bakr's ideology from an illegitimate monstrosity, DAISH, to a legitimate monstrosity that constitutes Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey, Europe will not be safe.
The soldiers of that ideology were not eliminated after al-Baghdadi's new residence in Paradise.
Post-DAISH, the warriors for Islam are wearing the modern, updated uniforms of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's forces.
We might also consider that Turkey has the largest military in the region.
Al-Baghdadi had been eminently successful growing DAISH from a force of barely 700 to about 32,000 under Barack Obama's watch, at the time of AEI's 2015 report, to over 40,000 by the time Obama left office. Obama called the al Q'aeda offshoot a JV Team.
As the culture and its politically-weaponized media had slowly diminished the appearance of the threats facing the west, Islam itself, the unforgiving ideology that drove European history and the movement of cultures and peoples into modernity, has in fact not backed off.
It has simply morphed into a modernist face for its holy warriors behind a facade of deception.
THE BEGIN-SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey’s value for the West is not about the good it can offer but the evil it might choose not to spread. In recent years western tolerance of Turkey has stemmed not from appreciation of its advanced democratic culture but from fears of the chaos it can unleash.
This author coined the term “Turkeys nuisance value” in an article published 14 years ago to explain what made the country an asset for the EU it aspired to join. The article challenged Western euphemisms about the potential entrance into the European club of an explicitly non-European culture. At the time, Western media and academic papers were full of “Yes to Turkish membership” naivete dancing around clichéd themes like “Turkey is strategically important,” “Turkey is a bridge between East and West,” and “Turkey’s post-modern Islamists [then PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan et al] are reformist democrats.”
Turkey and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are nuisances that might splinter NATO by having joined it.
Turkey can fragment European as well as American objectives for Mideast peace. Geographically adjacent to Europe, and as a NATO member, Turkey represents an existential danger to global peace. It has cleverly and deceptively shifted the balance of power in the Mideast. More importantly, Iran happens to be its partner in the scheme. As Turkey had been a US client for military weaponry for over a half century, it has recently become a Russian client too, straddling the continents. Iran and Syria had been Russian clients all along. Lastly, Turkey is a major global manufacturer and exporter of small arms it uses itself in its war-making.
What you are witnessing is the Perfect Storm.
"At home......Erdogan's supporters and aligned ideologues have been singing a significantly different — and more telling — tune. In assorted op-ed columns and media appearances, backers of the Turkish government's Syria strategy depicted the "green light" given to Erdogan by President Trump as a historical moment in which their country should seize the initiative and impose its vision on the region.
Perhaps the clearest example appeared in the pages of the conservative Yeni Safak daily, where columnist Ibrahim Karagul made the intellectual case for a revival of Turkish expansionism. "A new and forceful step is going to be taken aimed at 'shaping the region and history,'" Karagul wrote. "Patience has run out, warnings are over, preparations are complete" for the invasion of northern Syria, as a result of which "Turkey's power will kick into gear once again."
The message is unmistakable. If Karagul and other like-minded Erdogan enthusiasts have their way, Turkey's recent incursion into Syria would be just the start of a larger, and distinctly imperial, project."
September 24, 2009 the New York Times reported the passing of Ertuğrul Osman, the last of the Ottoman Empire dynasty.
"Mr. Osman was a descendant of Osman I, the Anatolian ruler who in 1299 established the kingdom that eventually controlled parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Osman would have eventually become the Sultan but for the establishment of the Turkish Republic, proclaimed in 1923."
Prince Osman's ancestor Ertuğrul Ghazi united the nomadic tribes from the steppes coming out of Persia. Ertuğrul (pronounced Ertu-rul) gave birth to the first Ottoman ruler, Osman. WIKI:
Ertuğrul Ghazi, Erṭoġrıl; (died c. 1280[2]) was the father of Osman I.[3] According to Ottoman tradition, he was the son of Suleyman Shah, leader of the Kayı tribe of Oghuz Turks, who fled from western Central Asia to Anatolia to escape the Mongol conquests.[1] … Ertuğrul and his followers entered the service of the Seljuks of Rum, for which he was rewarded with dominion over the town of Söğüt on the frontier with the Byzantine Empire.[4] …the chain of events…would ultimately lead to the founding of the Ottoman Empire. Like his son, Osman, and their descendants, Ertuğrul is often referred to as a Ghazi, (Gazi), a heroic champion fighter for the cause of Islam.[5]
Note the operative words: "Persia," today's Iran; and "Ghazi, meaning, a heroic champion fighter for the cause of Islam."
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's dictator, is not oblivious to Turkey's history or taking pride in ancestor Ertuğrul Ghazi's mythical impact on the formation of Turkey. In fact he agrees with Ertuğrul Ghazi's ideology being substantially responsible for creating today's Islamist, HAMAS-and-terrorist enabler Turkey, and rejects Turkey's modernization began by reformist Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923.
What Erdogan did not reject was Turkey’s modernization of its million man military.
Ertuğrul was Turkey's principal historic figure and champion fighter for the cause of Islam – conquest - whose legends are driving Turkey's turn inward and backward.
We might note Erdoğan's recent warming up to Persia, aka, Iran.
"By invading northern Syria…Recep Tayyip Erdoğan achieved what many thought impossible – uniting all the regional countries and rival powers with a stake in the country in furious opposition to what they see as a reckless, destabilising move.
A truculent nationalist-populist with dictatorial tendencies, Erdoğan has often cast himself as one man against the world during 16 consecutive years as Turkey’s prime minister and president."
Turkey, Iran, and Hamas are on the same page in spite of recent warming signs toward Israel. No wonder that even under a less sophisticated analysis of the situation, there was a universal, bipartisan, as well as international, pushback against the then-president's decision to pull US troops out of Syria - while simultaneously abandoning our second most reliable ally in the region, the Kurds. Incidentally, we had double-crossed the Kurds before! It was a disastrous decision, the US had belatedly reversed its course, and had to scramble to correct it.
FURTHER READING: GATESTONE INSTITUTE - TURKEY NATO’S PRO-PUTIN ALLY
No wonder American allies such as Canada and Australia are in dithers, contemplating NATO's sole member on the alliance's southern flank (there to hold Putin at bay), at the very time the wisdom of Turkey's NATO membership was being publicly debated.
Guardian: "Even as the EU, the US, Russia, Iran and the Arab states voiced their differing objections to the invasion (Turkey terms it a “peace operation”), each is simultaneously trying to adjust to it, looking for advantage or leverage as the balance of power in Syria shifts again.
Erdoğan doubtless anticipated Europe’s hostile reaction. His response was a threat to send 3.6 million Syrian refugees westwards…it was contemptuous. He knows the EU’s words are not matched by action. Nor is he fazed by calls to suspend Turkey from Nato."
As in years past, Hungary alone has displayed its cujones by being first to repel the Ottoman invasion at the Gates of Vienna with its Austrian and Polish allies - thus saving Europe. Hungary has again rejected Erdoğan's kind offer - again saving Europe.
In short, the prime minister of Hungary told Erdoğan to suck air.
In spite of the historic conflict between Shia and Sunni Islam, the warming between the Turks and Iranians is ominous. The two nations’ ideology run on parallel tracks to fulfill the religious aims of both: Islam. Islam to advance the HAJIRA, or HIJRA, the Muslim expansionist dream of a global empire. The obvious goal is to spread the faith, meaning the conquest of Europe as commanded by Erdoğan's prophet.
The HAJIRA, Islamic invasion has already succeeded having conquered most of Africa and a large parts of East Asia.
With Erdoğan, Iran can complete constructing the crescent land bridge to the Med encircling Israel, blocking Israeli energy transfers and shipping lanes to Europe, and will have achieved its goals.
The legends of Ertuğrul Ghazi, the grandfather of the Ottomans, is brutal. Stories filled with deception, maneuvering, betrayal, poisonings, treachery and butchery, backstabbing, breaking of treaties and agreements, game theory and game execution, camouflage and cover under darkness, and lack of mercy.
It all ends with the slitting of throats.
The last of the Sultans, Ertuğrul Osman Ghazi, died in Manhattan in 2009 at the age of 97. As reported by the New York Times, Osman was the last of the Ghazis, heroic champion fighters for the cause of Islam.
That is, until Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invaded Kurdistan, and again, under the Save-Ukraine umbrella, Europe.
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(c) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: (Bayhaluk via Wikimedia Commons) By Alexpl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, 7
Andrew G. Benjamin is in finance, real estate and equities, a former advisor to New York City mayor ‘s office (Subcommittee on Taxation, Finance and the Budget). Benjamin wrote extensively about politics, transnational and domestic, intelligence and military affairs, security and strategy, economic issues, Mideast, terrorism, technology and high end audio.
UPDATE APRIL 21, 2024 - two years later:
After hosting Hamas leader, Erdogan encourages Palestinians to unite against Israel
https://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-encourages-palestinians-to-unite-against-israel-after-meeting-hamas-leader/