by Burak Bekdil for The Gatestone Institute – 25.10.22
Turkey's Islamist President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been militarily threatening a fellow NATO ally, Greece, using increasingly threatening language. He also proudly announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised him to make Turkey an international natural gas hub, therefore selling his gas via Turkey, avoiding Western sanctions.
What does Erdoğan get in return? Huge American (and other Western) pats on the back.
Erdoğan, while explicitly threatening a NATO ally, has a plan to seriously undermine Western sanctions on Russia.... The project will enable Turkey to store Russian gas in Thrace and sell it to willing European buyers.
This will effectively kill Western sanctions on Russia. Turkey will earn transit fees from every cubic meter of Russian gas sold to European buyers. A win-win for two autocrats.
What was the U.S. administration's response to all that? Approval for fighter jet sales!... An earlier version of the bill had linked the sale to the condition that Turkey would not use the aircraft against Greece.
Erdoğan is now hopeful that Congress should give the green light to the F-16 deal before the end of the year.
What other insane, anti-Western moves should Erdoğan make before U.S. President Joe Biden understands that Turkey's Islamist autocrat is a Putin pawn inside the NATO alliance?
Or is Biden a Putin pawn as well?
For the full article in pdf, please click here:
Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was recently fired from the country's most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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Pictured: Erdoğan meets with Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on September 16, 2022. (Photo by Alexandr Demyanchuk/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
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