May God protect Europe from Erdogan, and the many European leaders that he is blackmailing
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
By Greek islander
Readers in Greece and elsewhere where shocked two days ago to find out the blunt and crude ways by which Turkish President Erdogan has been blackmailing EU officials so that he could get as much as 10 billion euros (the more the better), otherwise he would flood Europe with refugees. Not just Syrian war refugees, mind you, but also migrants from as far as Morocco and Algiers (with sleepers of ISIS included?).
The transcript of the incredible conversation in English can be found in the link below
http://www.euro2day.gr/news/economy/article/1397081/hontro-paihnidi-sth-plath-ths-elladas.html
as well as a Reuter’s report on the matter
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-eu-turkey-idUSKCN0VH1R0
What is even worse is that all EU officials such as Junker and Tusk, and European strong-woman German Chancellor Angela Merkel appear such weaklings and dupes on the face of Erdogan’s blackmails, to make one wonder if anyone ever learned the lessons of appeasing an essential dictator, such as Erdogan. Hitler’s blackmails were to the same tenor, even though the issues invoked were different (from the reoccupation of the Rhineland to the occupation of the whole of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, each was “the last territorial demand on Europe”). Here we have an essential dictator with a gargantuan appetite for money (e.g. reports claim Turkey had transactions in gold with Iran close to 120 billion dollars, while there was a UN-imposed embargo on the latter until its nuclear arms programme was terminated) and power.
Take the latest agreement of Chancellor Merkel with Erdogan and Turkish PM Davutoglou of two days ago, to have NATO help stop the flow of refugees and illegal immigrants to Greece (an EU member) by launching joint boat patrols!! Nothing could be more laughable! The refugees and illegal immigrants do not drop in the Aegean Sea between the Greek islands of Lesvos, Samos and Kos, for example, from heaven. They come to Turkey first (either transported by traffickers for over 1000 km through Turkey, or flown into the country from Morocco and Algiers!), sit pretty on the western Turkish coast and after they pay handsomely over 2,000$ per head, are then equipped with leaky boats and faulty life-saving vests, and let loose onto the Aegean Sea. As any student in a military college would tell you, you hit the evil at the root! If NATO wishes to employ a force, it should be one to help Turkey police herself so that refugees and illegal migrants do not go anywhere they wish in the country at wish! You don’t just hop from Syria and Iraq into the Aegean coast of Turkey, nor do you come there from Morocco and Algiers in an hour, as one could cross the US from Mexico! But of course, the transcripts above of the meetings between Erdogan, Junker and Tusk reveal a different story: Erdogan is accumulating refugees from Syria and Iraq, and illegal immigrants from all over North Africa and Asia so that he can make billions of euros from them. All the while Turkey is becoming a garrison state: enormous persecution of journalists (the country has more journalists in jail than any other country in the world), academics merely for voicing an opinion (many have been recently fired just because of signing a protest letter), and Kurds in SE Turkey, where according to the head of the third party in Turkish Parliament there is a huge massacre of Kurds taking place for the last seven months, just right after Mr. Erdogan failed to get parliamentary majority in the June 2015 elections.
The real question is: for how long will Erdogan be blackmailing Europe, with arguments that cannot stand the light of day? Is this all because a number of European and non-European governments acted together with him some five years ago in organizing the Syrian uprising to topple Assad? Turning, at the same time, a blind eye to the evils associated with the grossly inhuman and horrible regime of ISIS ( a vital part of the anti-Assad coalition), that has been tacitly supported by Erdogan (Turkey’s own secret services have been supplying arms to ISIS and getting oil in return as countless press reports reveal, Erdogan’s protestations to the contrary).
How can Chancellor Merkel, as well as other EU leaders, miss the parallels with Hitler’s blackmails of the 1930’s? Germany was quite an illiberal state then, with jails and concentration camps overflowing with opponents of Nazism. And refugees, mostly Jewish, were trying by all means to escape at any cost from this hell, only to find a wall of unwillingness by most European and American governments. All they have to do is read Winston Churchill’s History of the Second World War to refresh their memories. In order not to relive such horrible history.