Stanley Weiss, The World Post,
February 24, 2016
One of the American diplomats who engaged fully in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty was called Achilles, and therefore did not fail to excite the imagination of historians. As head of the office of the State Department for the affairs of Western Europe after the Second World War, then as Assistant Vice President of the North Atlantic Council, Theodore Achilles has played a leading role in the development of this Treaty, designed to deter an expansionist Soviet Union trigger an attack in Western Europe. With 11 European countries joining the US as founding members in 1949, the alliance grew rapidly to include in 1952 two countries – Greece and Turkey – to count 28 members today. It was so difficult to imagine that any member of the organization to betray the rest of the alliance, we only discovered these days that nothing in the Nato procedures to exclude a country that misbehaves; no definition is also there what would be considered a “wrongful conduct”. Yet, nearly three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, members of NATO to pronounce each other the same solemn oath known to Article 5, they created in 1949 that an attack against any member shall be considered an attack against all member states, and called for an immediate and mutual response. For nearly seven decades, this combination of factors is a potential Achilles heel for NATO one day, its members will be called to defend the actions of a rogue state that no longer shares the values of the alliance, but whose attitude puts its “allies” in danger in a nightmare scenario for the world order.
After 67 years, that day has come: Turkey, which has been for half a century a faithful ally in the Middle East while demonstrating that a nation made up mostly of Muslims can be both secular and democratic, s it is at this distant point of its Nato allies that it is considered a support of the Islamic state in Syria in its war against the West. Since the strong man of Islamism Erdogan came to power in 2003, Turkey has taken a frankly authoritarian turn, supporting Islamic terrorists of all stripes while engaging in battles that it can carry out through region – including the escalation of a war against 25 million Kurds of EI fighter and a cold war warming up against Russia, which she shot without thinking a plane in November. These fights that install – while the bombs in its cities and that the enemies are on its borders – Turkish leaders demand the unconditional support of NATO, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday that he expected “that US supports our ally Turkey without if or but. “ But it was too little, too late. NATO should not not take the defense of Turkey – instead, it should be undertaken without delay to the already long list that gets longer by the day sprains of Turkey towards the West, in prominently support Islamic terrorists. And if it does – and there is no doubt on this point – the supreme council of the alliance, the North Atlantic Council should formally oust Turkey from NATO, once and for all, before his belligerence and his continual assaults involve the international community in a third world war.
This should have been done long ago. As I have shown there are five years, “Erdogan, who has Islamist at heart, who once said” the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and our faith is our soldiers “- seems to regard as the Islamist leader of the Muslim world after the Arab Spring”. He has spent the past 13 years the dismantling of all components of the Turkish company that made secular and democratic reshaping that country, as Caroline Glick wrote of the Center for Security Policy, “in a hybrid and autocracy putiniste Iranian theocracy. “ Last fall, he went up to praise the powers of the executive given one day to Adolph Hitler.
Under the leadership of Erdogan, our ally within NATO have arrested more journalists than China has arrested, imprisoned thousands of students guilty of having used the freedom of expression, and replaced secular schools by madrasas dedicated to the teaching of Islam. Erdogan has publicly flaunted its support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood while accusing its longtime ally Israel of “crimes against humanity”, he violated an embargo on the supply of arms to Gaza, acquired an air defense system (and short-range missile) to the Chinese in spite of NATO, and denied to America’s use of its own air base for strikes in Iraq and later against terrorists Islamists in Syria. While Western allies fought to stem the fighters of the Islamic state in the town of Ayn al-Arab in western Syria there two years, Turkish tanks were quietly stopped on the other side of the border .
In fact, there is undeniable proof (made at Columbia University), Turkey has tacitly fueled the EI war machine. “It is proven that Turkey, as recently wrote Outlook Near East, allowed jihadists from various parts of the world to infiltrate into Syria through the territory of Turkey”; Turkey, writes journalist Ted Galen Carpenter, “authorized the EI to send oil to Turkey from northern Syria to be sold on the world market”, the own son Erdogan worked with EI to sell this oil, which is “the lifeblood of the death of the Islamic state of merchants”, and that entire refueling trucks were allowed to move freely through Turkey to the fighters of the EI. There is also the “most direct support evidence” as Forbes reported, “providing equipment, passports, training, drugs, and perhaps more to Islamic radicals”, and evidence that the Erdogan government, according to a former ambassador, worked directly with the Syrian branch of al Qaeda, al-Nusrah front.
While in Ankara is claimed initiate military action against EI, obsessed with the Kurdish issue, Turkey is conducting a series of incessant artillery fire against units of protection of Syrian Kurds (YPG) that combat troops of EI in northern Syria. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country – 25 million of Sunni Muslims who live at the intersection of the borders of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Turkey is three decades of bloody civil war against its 14 million Kurds represented by the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party – which has cost a life to 40 000 people. The latest peace process écoué when the Turks were again targeted the PKK, plunging the southeast of the country once again into war giving Erdogan growing fears that Syrian Kurds Turkish and operate the junction of their forces over the border from Turkey.
The Kurds, like the Turks, are sometimes viewed through the prism of what they were then, and not for what they are today. In 1997, Turkey had convinced the United States to place the PKK on the terrorist list, and Erdogan argues that the Syrian Kurds are guilty by association. But in fact, the YPG has worked closely with the US against Islamic terrorists to the point that the Washington Post has referred to its members as the “US proxy forces”. The Kurds – be they Syria, Iraq and Turkey, are all points of view the fiercest and most courageous fighters on the field of battle against IE in Iraq and Syria. And furthermore, the group represents a powerful alternative to the apocalyptic jihadist Islamists, representing what has been described as having “a level of gender equality, respect for secularism and minorities, and design modern Islam, moderate and ecumenical which are to say the least, rare in the region. “
The Turkish government has tried to cast aspersions on the YPG, following the recent bomb blasts in Ankara, hoping to push the United States to oppose the Kurds. An exasperated Erdogan railed about the loyalties of the West, accusing the US of creating a “sea of blood” in the region through their support of the Kurds, and posing an ultimatum: he said that it was time for the United States to choose between Turkey and the Kurds. I can not agree more: it is time for the US to choose the Kurds rather than Erdogan’s Turkey.
Critics argue that the Kurds do not want to fight against the EI beyond their borders, but in fact provides an opportunity for the United States. In exchange for the fight of the EI across the region, an international coalition might offer the Kurds a state of their own. A Kurdish state would become a critical ally in the region for the US and play a valuable role in filling the power vacuum that has settled in the Middle East. With the help of the United States, a Kurdish state could also help to restore the refugees who have flooded the immigration systems in Turkey and Europe.
In the long term, it could play the role of a regional partner value to stabilize the region, and it could be a very successful example of democracy. In other words, Kurdistan could hold the role that Turkey had. It has been said that the difference between being and being almost Achilles Achilles is the difference between living and dying. NATO can exist without Achilles tendon: it’s time to throw Turkey out for good.
Stanley Weiss, a mining company executive and founder of Business Executives for National Security based in Washington has been widely published in national and international numbers for three decades.
Gilbert Béguian translation for Armenew