TURKEY’S PRELUDE TO WORLD WAR THREE?
By Barry Webb
On a clear day, you can take a deep breath . . . and almost smell the gunpowder. Some history buffs and analysts have remarked how today’s world so closely resembles the world of patchwork alliances that dotted the map on the eve of WWI. Because of those entangling patchwork alliances all it took was a pistol shot in the Balkans to ignite a conflagration that before it was over raged across three continents, involved virtually every country in the world, and killed millions.
In a sense, these observations appear to be true. In addition to the Cold War relic NATO, there are sub-alliances within NATO such as the Poland-Hungary axis of east/central European states terrified of a resurgent Russia to their east, and an expansionist, and virulent Islam to their south, while worried about the dependability of a NATO that features a collection of West European nations lacking the will to even defend themselves and who trip over each other in their eagerness to appease and be swallowed by an expanding Islam. Then there is a United States that often turns isolationist and in 2008 even elected an appeaser and apologizer as president.
In the Middle East there are a pair of new alliances, one is based on the triangle of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Republic (UAE), and Israel, but also including, to some extent, Egypt and Bahrain. This alliance is directed entirely at the terror-sponsoring state of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The other Middle East/East Mediterranean alliance is based on the triangle of Egypt, Israel, and Greece, but also includes Greek Cyprus, and to some extent, the KSA and UAE. Bulgaria, Serbia, and other Balkan states are also interested potential partners. This alliance is directed against an increasingly aggressive and expansionist, terror-supporting Turkey.
The Balkans and Turkey? Sure does sound like WWI doesn’t it?
However, when I look out upon the world stage today I see something that more closely resembles the situation on the eve of WWII. During the 1930s, and in the face of a world wide depression, an isolationist America, and a war-weary, disinterested Europe, the world stage witnessed the rise of two very powerful expansionist blocs each headed by a tyrannical, racist, expansionist dictatorship: NAZI Germany and its allies in the West, and militarist Japan and its “East Asian co-prosperity sphere” in the east.
Eventually the free states in the West rallied around what was to become the “Five Eyes” alliance of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to confront the pair of tyrannical dictatorships.
Is this not a mirror of what we see today?
THE AXIS OF TYRANNY
Instead of a Japanese-led “East Asian co-prosperity sphere” we see a surging, militarist, tyrannical (and racist) Communist China plugging the so-called “Belt and Road” initiative designed to unite economically not just “East Asia,” but the entire Eurasian landmass. “He who controls the Eurasian land mass controls the world,” a geopolitical observer once said. Connected with, or parallel to the Road and Belt initiative we see China forming an alliance of dictatorial tyrannies along the trajectory of the “Road and Belt” initiative. In addition to its midget clone in North Korea, China has added Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to its new “axis of evil” (my thanks go to Steve Bannon and the gang on War Room pandemic for alerting the world to the danger of China’s axis of Tyranny).
A few Turkic-speaking Central Asian countries might be expected to join this axis soon.
(Russia, however, once close to China, is now looking for an opportunity to flip. More on that in a subsequent report.)
Unfortunately, this China-led Asian landmass alliance is far more dangerous than Imperial Japan ever was based on its sheer size in terms of landmass, the resources available in that land mass, and in terms of a combined population near two billion people, compared to the 73 million that Japan had at the outbreak of WWII. (The rest of Japan’s “East Asia co-prosperity sphere” were captive nations which required the expenditure of Japan’s limited manpower and other resources.)
The new alliance which is now emerging to confront that “axis of tyranny” has been termed “the alliance of liberty.” The founding members of this alliance are India, the United States, and Australia, the three countries most aware of the danger of the Communist Party-ruled China. The U.S. state department is exerting efforts to lure Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines, into this “alliance of liberty.”
THE NEW HITLER IN THE WEST
All that is missing to make the WWII scenario complete is a “Hitlarian” look alike in the West to replace Hitler’s Nazi Germany. And, of course, we have one. It is fellow NATO “ally” the Islamic Republic of Turkey–the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism.
On 28 August 2020 the KSA-owned TV station al-arabiyya TV, and its sister website www.alarabiya.net, reported on, and posted, a map of “greater Turkey” which Metin Kulunk, member of Turkish parliament and close confident of President Erdogan, posted to his twitter account.
This map, examples of which can found on the internet, shows Turkey taking possession of huge chunks of its neighbors, including all of the Kurdish areas of North Syria, and then some, and all of the Kurdish areas of Iraq, and then some. The Kurdish population of Turkey–in its current manifestation–is some 18-20% of Turkey’s total population. The Turks consider them to be a thorn in Turkey’s side, so why would Turkey want to annex all of the Kurds in Syria and Iraq as well? Erdogan’s version of the “final solution” is the most logical answer. Either that or force them all to become Turks thus forgetting their own cultural heritage as a sort of “cultural genocide.”
The map also shows Turkey annexing the small neighboring country of Armenia–another “final solution” waiting to happen. Erdogan would like nothing better than to finish what the Ottomans almost completed a hundred years ago.
Remember Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974? Well, this map of “greater Turkey” has them completing that job as well–conquering and annexing all the rest of Cyrpus, thus kicking the British out–not to mention the Greeks. In addition the map has Turkey gobbling up even more of N.E. Greece, half of Greece’s islands in the Aegean Sea, as well as taking half of Bulgaria, and parts of Georgia.
HISTORY OF TURKISH RACISM
It starts with the legend of the “grey wolf.” According to this legend long before the Turks left their central Asian homeland, there was a king who had a pair of beautiful daughters. They were so beautiful that no mortal man could touch them, only a god. Out of fear that their exceptional beauty would tempt men the king had his two daughters placed far away on the top of an inaccessible mountain. The king then prayed to his favorite god to keep his daughters safe from the lusts of men.
The god complied, but upon looking down from high at these two delectable beauties, he had to sample the wares himself. So he assumed the form of the grey wolf, descended down to the mountain top and “married” one of the king’s daughters. The grey wolf then fathered nine children with the king’s daughter. The Turkish race descends from these nine children, and according to Turkish racial myth they inherited the characteristics of the grey wolf: Courage, strength, agility, and ferocity.
It was with this racial myth to inspire them that they stormed into the Middle East and began conquering Muslim cities. However, in conquering the Muslims they found something in their religion that strongly appealed to their tribal and warlike character, and this was the jihad ideology, the “house of Islam, house of war” ideology. So, the Turks converted to Islam and used it as a tool to fuel further conquests eventually establishing the Ottoman Empire and conning the Arabs into acknowledging the Turkish Emperors as the “Caliphs,” or successors to Muhammad.
In this regard, it is instructive to read what a Turkish ex pat and Erdogan critic has to say about the race he came from:
These people seem to be engaging in projection, as it is Islamic jihadists who have violently invaded and taken over foreign lands and turned non-Muslims into slaves or second-class subjects of their empire–something that many Turks proudly endorse and glorify in their own history. The official website of the Turkish Armed Forces, for instance, proudly dates the establishment of the Turkish military to “209 B.C., during the Great Hun Empire,” whose rulers and soldiers, historian Joshua J. Marks writes, “brought death and devastation wherever they went,” including Europe. The Turkish army, a member of NATO, also boasts about Turks having “subjugated and dominated numerous peoples, nations, and states over a wide-ranging geography extending from Asia to Europe, and Africa. (Uzay Bulut, Turkey’s War on Christian Missionaries, posted on www.gatestoneinstitute.org, 30 December 2018).
BACK TO METIN KULUNK’S TWEETS
The Al-Arabiyya article of 28 August noted that one of Kulunk’s tweets glorified the battle of Manzikert in 1071 A.D. in S.E. Anatolia which opened up the door for the Turks to enter Anatolia for the first time. The al-Arabiyya writer, in the way the passage was phrased, emphasized that the Turks were Asiatics who were now able to enter, and conquer a new country because of their Manzikert victory in 1071.
Kulunk’s tweet went on to say that “Turkey has entered the 21st century with huge movements in the spirit of 1071, as it advances by way of taking huge steps. He claims that the reason why Turkey is taking such “huge steps” now is because the West “is coming at us once again,” and that this has awakened the “Umma” which had been sleeping since 15 July 1938. (No explanation as to why he mentioned that date because the Caliphate was actually disbanded in 1924). At any rate, the “huge moves” Kulunk is talking about referred to Turkey’s moves into Syria, the Mediterranean, and Africa “in the spirit of 1071.”
By the reference to 1071, the website of the “Greek City Times” explained that Kulunk is recognizing that Turkey aims to invade Syria, the Mediterranean, and Africa and impose control over those areas militarily.
In a follow-up tweet Kulunk said that: “The grandchildren of those who believed that they will kick us out of Anatolia are trying today to kick us out of the Mediterranean Sea. But there is no doubt that they will be defeated in the Mediterranean. The spirit of the Manzikert victory lives.”
ANALYSIS
While Trump is to be commended for his stands against Iran and the CCP of China, the U.S. administration has been slow to recognize Turkey for what it is. In fact the administration’s blindness viv-a-vis Turkey has led the “Greek City Times” website to blandly accuse Trump and Germany of “supporting their Turkish allies in their aggression against Greece. ”
The Trump administration’s blindness vis-à-vis Erdogan and Turkey has led to yet another stark parallel with the eve of WWII besides the emerging blocs of “the axis of tyranny” vs. “the alliance of liberty” aspect. Many commentators have blamed British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for having “started” WWII when he gave the NAZI Adolph Hitler the green light to move into Czechoslovakia and take over the Sudetenland which he did on 30 September 1939.
So, what happens when you give a megalomaniacal, expansionist, “we are the superior race,” dictator the green light to move troops into a neighboring country? All it does is encourage them to take more. Thus, Hitler soon had all of Czechoslovakia, and Austria under his control. Then, his appetite for conquest fully stoked and pumped, he invaded Poland which is what really triggered the outbreak of WWII, as that act finally brought in France and the British Empire. Then everything accelerated from there.
In late 2019, U.S. President Trump gave the 21st century Hitler the green light to move troops into a neighboring country, in what many, including many Trump-supporting conservatives (besides this one), called Trump’s Neville Champerlain moment. A really heart-breaking move.
So, what is the result when you give a megalomaniacal, expansionist, “we are the superior race,” dictator the green light to move troops into a neighboring country?
Obviously, Erdogan used Trump’s apparent sign of weakness, and Turkey’s shield as a member of NATO as an opportunity to pullout all the stops. They moved much further into Syria than they originally promised. They started bombing in Iraq, have even established military outposts on Iraqi soil, and killed a uniformed Iraqi military officer on Iraqi soil. Then Erdogan inserted himself into the Libyan civil war in preparation to taking that country over by proxy.
Through his support of the so-called “Government of National Accord” in Tripoli, Libya, Erdogan conned his puppet Fayez Sirraaj, the leader of the GOA, to not only grant him a naval base on Libyan soil, but to grant Libyan citizenship to thousands of the Syrian “mercenaries” that Turkey has sent to Libya to fight the Libyan National Army. In addition, Erdogan and his puppet Sirraaj have signed a treaty essentially giving Turkey complete rights for resource exploitation over most of the eastern Mediterranean, infringing on the rights of Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt.
Erdogan has also used his foothold in Libya to foster the spread of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood groups and ideologies throughout the giant Sahel region of Africa–which will become a huge threat to the existence of Europe and NATO in the near future.
And, in maintaining their right to be called the world’s #1 state sponsor of terrorism they support Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the Shabab of Somalia–not to mention Hamas in the Gaza Strip to keep the Israelis harassed.
And now we see the map of “greater Turkey” being rubbed in our faces–in the spirit of 1071 no less.
MUCH GREATER AMBITIONS
Turkey, of course, has much greater ambitions. Turkey’s true intentions are to completely reconstruct the old Ottoman Empire at its height, and then to expand way beyond that. Both Western Europe and Russia will be Turkish by 2060 based on demographics alone–without a shot being fired and without a single additional “refugee” being funneled there.
But, in the nearer term Turkey wants to also bring into its fold all of the Turkic-speaking countries that line Russia’s soft underbelly from the Caspian Sea to China. That is, all Turkic-speaking peoples except the Uighurs who have the misfortune of living in west China. As the Chinese Communist Party throws its Turkic-speaking, Islam-believing peoples into concentration camps, conducts genocide, and live organ harvesting upon them . . . Erdogan, champion of the Turkic-speaking peoples, and Caliph wannabe of all Muslims . . . turns a blind eye because of his desire to be a part of the CCP’s new axis of Tyranny as it conquers the rest of the world . . . to make the world safe for Tyranny.
Erdogan so wants to be embraced by the CCP’s axis of Tyranny that of the many Uighurs who have fled China to seek asylum in Turkey . . . Erdogan, the champion of Muslims everywhere, has had them arrested and sent back to China via 3rd countries. You can guess what will happen to them once back in China.
IN CLOSING
While it is encouraging that the U.S. has finally started to become “woke” to the threat of the new “Asian co-prosperity sphere” centered at the eastern portion of the great Asian land mass, it needs to also become “woke” to the activities and ambitions of the new Hitler wannabe on the western edge of the great Asian land mass. Otherwise, that little Hitler in Anatolia will, at some point, conquer that one additional country too many, forcing the hands of America and its allies into a much broader war against an “axis of tyranny” that will be much stronger, and much more firmly established, than it is now.
They say that history never repeats itself, but it sure does rhyme. When the cat is away, the mice will play. We learned that lesson the hard way in the run-up to WWII; and the 1930s appear to rhyming, if not repeating, in the 2020s.
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Barry Webb has logged a 25-year career as an Arabist for the NSA, has two MA degrees in related subject matter, and is currently a Senior Fellow with Americans for Intelligence Reform www.intelreform.org. He is the author of Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy: Why America and its Allies are Losing the War on Terror. His website is www.barrywebbauthor.com
