By İHSAN YILMAZ

When Germany confirmed that it had been spying on Turkish leaders, we all expected that this would be a golden opportunity for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as it would prove his point about a dark international conspiracy against him.

During the Gezi Park events, he kept repeating that since he is the leader of the Muslim world, Western powers are jealous of him, and that is why they were staging a coup against him. His chief advisor even said that Lufthansa Airlines was jealous of Turkish Airlines (THY) and that was why the Germans were also involved in this anti-Erdoğan conspiracy. With the news of Germany spying on Turkey, Erdoğan could easily have said: “Do you see? That’s my point.” But instead, a deep silence has taken the place of emotional and excited rhetoric. At the NATO meeting in Wales, we do not have an Erdoğan who is preaching and haranguing Western leaders and blaming them for not helping in his anti-Bashar al-Assad adventures, etc. He seems to be a very docile, well-behaved leader, which is very unlike him. You would expect that after a very fresh 52 percent victory, he would be boastful and bombastic. He is not. Why?

Maybe we must start the line of questioning with why the Germans openly accepted that they have been spying on Turkey and wiretapping Turkish leaders for several years. What Der Spiegel did is journalism. Any other reputable journal, newspaper or media outlet would have published this news. But the German authorities could easily have denied this, or they could at least have said, “No comment.” They decided to openly accept that they know what the Erdoğan government is doing. Erdoğan’s unusual and astonishing silence suggests that he has some dirty laundry that is known by foreign powers. He may have some skeletons in the closet. If he did not, he could easily challenge Germany, but instead he very embarrassingly stated that great powers do such things. You would not expect this from a person who claims to be a world leader and who has been portrayed as a caliph by several of his staunch supporters. What might those skeletons be?

Many people have been trying to guess. Many have pointed their fingers at the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). If you recall, last year, after Erdoğan’s meeting with Barack Obama in the White House, there was news of a tense debate between these two leaders. It was alleged that Obama was upset about Turkish intelligence’s suspicious relations with al-Qaeda type terrorists in Syria. Moreover, several Syria-bound trucks and lorries were caught by Turkish prosecutors, and Erdoğan was very upset about this. He claimed that it was humanitarian aid to the Turkmens in Iraq, etc., but now the judicial evidence has been leaked to the media, and one can clearly see that these lorries were full of weapons. I also remember another leak. A THY officer was wiretapped talking to a notorious senior advisor of Erdoğan. The officer says that his conscience is not at ease, because he was not sure whether the thing they were carrying to Nigeria would kill Christians or Muslims. In this man’s perverted logic, it seems that if Christians are killed, that is okay.

All in all, it seems that the Erdoğan government has put into practice its Envero-Islamist adventurist foreign policy and has resorted to some illegitimate hard-power games. I am not sure, and it is obvious that at this stage these are only allegations. But we have to take them very seriously, since if they are true, they will create a very serious headache and crucial problems for Turkey in the international arena, courts, etc. Nobody has the right to risk Turkey’s interests, reputation or national security in adventurist decisions that were not taken in Parliament. What is more, if Western and Eastern powers also have some evidence of Erdoğan’s alleged corruption, they can easily use this as a bargaining chip against Erdoğan. There is no need for a detailed list, but it is obvious that they can ask him to naysay things behind closed doors.

It is obvious that Erdoğan has become a national security burden, risk and liability for Turkey.

Source: todayzaman.com