Is Turkey No Longer Part of the West?

 

Almost a century has passed since the Ottoman Empire was dismembered and Mustafa Kemal set out to build the modern Turkish state on its ruins. Twenty years ago, no one in the West would have called into question the achievement of the man who eventually, with considerable justice, styled himself Atatürk (“Father of the Turks”). But many now fear that the political and cultural revolution he instigated in the 1920s will be overturned and that Turkey will cease to function as normal nation state, turn on the West, and try to upend the existing order in the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks limitless power

The Turkish president has wilfully cut himself off from any free flow of critical information

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week pushed out Ahmet Davutoglu, the prime minister he himself had handpicked, seemingly to clear his way towards the untrammelled one-man rule he has sought since he moved from the premiership to Turkey’s presidency two years ago. Conventional wisdom says Mr Erdogan is surrounding himself with loyalists. But the man he has just defenestrated is a loyalist. He joins a long list of those jettisoned from the president’s inner circle over the past two years, in a processional purge that is starting to look like standard political procedure.

Erdogan in Iran to hatch joint plans for striking US interests

Previous news of corruption scandals and a plagued administration the last few months tell a tale that’s similar to what has transpired in Egypt, Libya, Iraq and so on… The US has internally overthrown all of them. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a shock for Erdogan to believe the same will happen to him. This could also explain why Turkey has switched from American military systems to Chinese in their last purchase. This is likely a huge turning point in history and will have a measurable impact on NATO relations, future support for wars both politically and physically. This will also mean closer relations with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and even possible membership.

Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan has snapped his links with Washington and rushed into Iran’s arms for direct action against US interests. He is spiting the Obama administration in the belief of a US plot to replace him with President Abdullah Gul and discredit him by corruption scandals implicating members of his family in sanctions-busting business with Iran through the state-owned Turkish Halkbank.