Paris, Nice, Vienna: Erdogan as moral mandator, wants to set himself up as leader of Islam for geopolitical purposes
First the killing in Paris of a French professor, Samuel Paty, guilty of having shown Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of Mohammed in class, then the Nice attack and finally the Vienna one. Three terrorist acts which, albeit in different places, all have a single origin, the Islamist one.
These massacres, beyond the material responsible, also have moral instigators: that of the leaders of countries that have made their ideological weapon precisely of political Islam and blow on the fire of the clash of civilizations with the West, precisely because from this clash take a geopolitical advantage.
Regardless of what each of us think of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, in fact, it is not the West that has declared war on Islam. The West is guilty of being itself in its own home, that is, believing in the possibility of peaceful coexistence between faiths, despite the existence of dangerous extremist fringes that have very different purposes and that exploit the freedom granted them in the free world.
Not all Islam seeks a confrontation with the West, especially today. In this historical period, we are witnessing in fact a religious progress of a part of Islam – both Sunni and Shiite – of the utmost importance, which unfortunately makes little noise. How can we forget that the Abrahamic Agreements between Israel and part of the Arab-Islamic world are also the offspring of a religious path that has authorized dialogue with the Jewish world over the years? How can we forget that, just a few days ago, an international congress on anti-semistism was held in Albania and that the Global Imam Council – a predominantly Shiite Islamic organization, based in Baghdad, created to counter Isis – has incredibly decided to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism? And finally, how can we forget that an Islamic country like Kosovo has decided to outlaw Hezbollah?
But in the face of a part of the Islamic world that progresses, another has made political Islam its belief and its action, assuming the moral responsibility – but very often much more than moral – for many of the terrorist acts both against those in the Islamic world thinks differently, both against the West. In particular, today, there are two actors who par excellence ride political Islam: the first, the best known, is Iran, which since 1979 has made financing of international terrorism its most advanced weapon to pursue its aims. for which velayat-e Faqih was born. Then there is a second actor, who for some years has joined Tehran, and that is Erdogan's Turkey.
And it is Erdogan himself the main moral instigator of what happened in Nice and Vienna. It is the Turkish president who, in recent days, has rode the clash with the West – with France in the lead – accusing Macron of being a madman and saying "we must never forget that Europe's hostility towards Islam it is also hostility against the Turks, because for a Westerner, a Muslim is a Turk and a Turk is a Muslim ”.
In short, there seems to be practically nothing left of Ataturk's Turkey, a parenthesis, albeit a long one, of history. What we are witnessing today, unfortunately, is only the tip of the iceberg of a process that has now lasted at least ten years. In fact, during this period, Erdogan has cultivated a dangerous Islamist network, towards which he has turned a blind eye in Syria, and to which he has given direct support, such as the organization Millî Görüş , the one to which someone would still like to entrust the construction of a mosque in Milan. A network that, to speak only of Italy, reaches the largest Italian Islamic organization – the UCOII – now totally under the orders of the Turkish president (who with the complacency of some national political parties has also managed to elect political representatives in the local institutions).
Now, the next question is: Is Erdogan a fool? Obviously not. A fanatic, a self-centered one, but his is a plan that has very little crazy. For Erdogan, setting himself up as the moral guide of Islamism means setting himself up as the guide of thousands of extremists who will serve the Turkish leader as slaughterhouse fodder for his geopolitical purposes. These extremists – some of them mere preachers, others politicians, others ready to enlist in militias financed by Ankara and others ready to blow themselves up on the orders of some mullah linked to terrorist organizations – serve Turkey to maintain an offensive projection, to defend their borders if necessary, or even to negotiate with the West when things go wrong.
Because in this period, in reality, things are not going very well for the masters of Islam. Iran, caught between pandemics and sanctions, is almost on the verge of collapse. Turkey, engaged in too many foreign theaters (Syria, Libya, the Mediterranean Sea, Nagorno Karabakh), no longer has the money to finance all this offensive projection and the Turkish lira is now only losing value. In this sense, therefore, it should come as no surprise that blowing on the flames of extremism, perhaps even without being its material instigators, serves to up the ante, and then force the enemy to come to terms with you to calm the waters.
On the other hand, we in Italy know this strategy well, unfortunately: it is the one used by the mafia in past years, when the aim was to force the state to come to terms with the mafia. Massive massacres, to generate terror and force the institutional hierarchies to negotiate.
We have no data to indicate who is the material sent for the massacres in Nice and Vienna. We can easily hypothesize that these are individuals and ISIS cells, also arrived by sea from Lampedusa and activated at the appropriate time. But beyond the material responsibilities, as mentioned above, there are moral ones and everything seems to point to the Turkish president.
What Erdogan wants today, blowing on the fire of the clash of civilizations, is not only to be the leader of an Islamist network ready to support him ideologically and politically, but also to force leaders like Macron and Merkel to dialogue with him. Talk about what? To find an advantageous agreement for Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean, where it happens that France is in the front row in supporting the alliance between Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Egypt and the moderate Arab world. An alliance that goes as far as Riyadh, precisely with the Agreements of Abraham.
It is therefore a question of deciding what to do: to come to terms or to resist? Coming to terms may mean finding calm in the short term. But at what price? The flows of migrants speak for themselves: Ankara has transformed the agreement with the EU on the Balkan route into a tap to be opened and closed at will, without ever making a mystery of who had the hands on that tap. Resisting could, on the contrary, mean finding himself with further Islamist violence at home, with Erdogan continuing to blow the fire, closely followed by Khamenei (who, not surprisingly, has dusted off his well-known denial). But resisting could also mean forcing Erdogan (and Khamenei) to surrender: to the realization that blowing on the fire does not pay and that above all it does not solve the internal economic and social problems of their countries.
They may last, but Erdogan and Khamenei will pass sooner or later. And to the leaders who will lead Turkey and Iran in the future we should make it clear what kind of dialogue we want to have, whether based on fear or mutual respect …
The post Paris, Nice, Vienna: Erdogan moral mandator, wants to rise as leader of Islam for geopolitical purposes appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/parigi-nizza-vienna-erdogan-mandante-morale-vuole-ergersi-a-leader-dellislamismo-per-fini-geopolitici/ on Wed, 04 Nov 2020 03:45:00 +0000.