NATO talks about the fact that the West has forgotten about the Turkish sofa scandal
If there is something to be condemned with words, everyone stands up, and if there is an opportunity to state the essence of the judgment, diplomatic and commercial reasons prevail.
This is always the case in foreign policy. We have seen that in recent days in the way the West spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a NATO meeting, a relationship that had suddenly become friendly again after months of verbal tension. This easily changes with the daily attacks by the Turkish president on democracy.
“Dictator,” said Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. “Autocrats,” said US President Joe Biden, who several months ago also officially recognized the genocide of the Armenians in Ankara, one of the country’s most sensitive acts. In contrast, France withdrew its ambassador to Turkey in the fall after Erdogan said French President Emmanuel Macron needed psychological treatment. Lastly, the anger of the European Union last April when the President of Turkey left EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen without a seat.
Relations between the West and Turkey have never been so difficult in recent months, and after years of silence, various leaders have begun to explain who Recep Tayyip Erdogan is. In recent years, the Turkish president has increasingly undermined the freedoms and rights of his people, jailing dissidents and political opponents, undermining press freedom, and forcing the country to take a step back where there are important civil milestones such as the Istanbul Convention reaching sexual violence. , from which Erdogan has resigned. In addition, the president continued his international demonstrations, in particular the interference in Syria against the western Kurdish militias and the aggression in the Mediterranean against Greece.
But today, all these issues, which are at the heart of the Western agenda, seem to have disappeared. And the reason is simple: as is often reminded that diplomacy and geopolitics are more important than rights and freedoms, and Turkey has again played the role of a big farmer in the Euro-American bloc to fight the Russian-Chinese Ch Blockade.
Raising a big voice with Erdogan means helping Beijing and Moscow effectively hand over a country in a region important to NATO security and leave a dam for migration flows. And then the smile and handshake returned. Biden had a very constructive meeting with the Turkish president, where everything turned out to be discussed except rights and democracy. The same was true for the meeting with Macron until Draghi saw Erdogan in person, but in recent hours he stressed to the Italian press that Turkey plays a very important role and is a reliable partner of NATO.
We at The Arab Post are not saying that Erdogan is a dictator, on the contrary, the same political leaders who shook hands with him today and made him an important partner have said so over the past few months. And who now condemns human rights abuses in Russia and China, talks about Uyghurs, and so on. They all take legitimate positions, but they sound like a hymn of hypocrisy: unless friendly relations are established, conviction is easy.
On the other hand, in the case of good diplomacy, as in the case of Turkey, authoritarianism has turned a blind eye in the name of something bigger, and a turning point has been reached. When the G-7 and NATO meetings are over, we may again hear words of condemnation of the Turkish President as we have done in recent months. But now we know that this is just a facade, good relations continue, and while this is happening, it is difficult to imagine without special international pressure how the precarious state of democracy will improve in Turkey, thousands of journalists being released, and terrorism in the country. around the world.
