Turkey vs. the West: A Tug of War Beyond the Aegean

The recent escalation of tensions in the Aegean has the potential to strengthen the political bond between Greece and its Western allies, as well as force the EU to shift from threatening sanctions on Turkey to actually imposing them. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will try to keep tensions high enough to present a heroic front to his Islamist/nationalist base but not high enough to trigger EU sanctions.

David L. Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, recently said:

On the one year anniversary of Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Rojava (Northeast Syria), Erdoğan is seeking to distract Turks from Turkey’s failed democracy and faltering domestic economy by war-mongering in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey and its jihadist proxies are also threatening another Armenian Genocide, targeting Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

NATO is more than a security alliance. It is a coalition of countries with shared values. Turkey under Erdoğan’s dictatorship is Islamist, anti-American, and hostile to Europe. Turkey’s application to join NATO would be discarded immediately if it applied today.

Phillips was one of the signatories to a statement, “It’s Time to Break with Erdoğan”, published on October 9 by Justice for Kurds Chairman Thomas S. Kaplan and President Bernard-Henri Lévy in a two-page center spread of The New York Times.

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Πηγή: besacenter.org