86060 - Transcription: Turkey’s wrong strategy
N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek Athina Kehagias
In order to understand how irrelevant Turkey’s approach is in the Middle East, it is enough to examine the issue of high strategy in the Middle East. Therefore, as we have analyzed it I will not repeat it, what is important now is to understand what Turkey wants to do. Turkey in her mind, she is within the context of the new Ottoman doctrine, she has not realized that the high strategy has reduced this activity and from mere a confrontation, between all the Arab countries and Israel we’ve entered a phase of alliance of the Arab countries, then of Palestine and not with the Arab countries, which are now only passive and in the end we’ve merely ended up with Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. Turkey in her mind, wants to highlight even through the new Ottoman doctrine her history, which is interesting, because Kemal had cut it off and they are now trying to cut it off Kemal in order to reinforce the new data, but they don’t understand that the Arabs remember very well the issue of the ottoman empire, consequently, they want to revive one thing that is considered negative by the Arab countries of the region and by all the neighbors and the other thing that the Turks don’t obviously understand is that even if the Arab countries are friendly toward the issue of Palestine and not specifically of Gaza, because nobody wants Gaza, it does not mean that they are ready to get involved in a battle which would be unifying, because they have already experienced it in ’48 and in ’67, all the defeats they have suffered have formed a completely different situation and therefore the neighboring countries since they don’t want to play in this game and only Iran and Qatar are playing it, they don’t want to see Turkey in the region. All that aside, Erdogan believes that everyone will follow his ideas and that he will be able to represent the Arab countries in the region. It is a complete strategic mistake, and if it is not a strategic mistake it is purely a communication argument, which cannot function, because it simply has no foundations, and the foundations it may have had, is what the Arab countries no longer want. Consequently, as from the beginning he enters a context, which will unavoidably end with a defeat of this very approach, but he is not bothered, because what matters for now, is for him to communicate, as long as there is no practical action. When it will become obvious however that there is no future in this discussion, everyone will slowly but surely understand that Turkey is doing it more so as to talk about itself to Erdogan’s voters and not in order to configure a situation in the region.