By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive)
Reuters had this to say yesterday about Turkey:
Turkey’s leaders have never been afraid of sticking to their guns in the face of international opinion. Both Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolgu are driven by a vision of the Middle East united by a Turkish brand of political Islam. Both believe their foreign policy is supported by moral imperatives, and that they are on the right side of history.
Adding:
But unless Ankara aligns itself more closely with international opinion it will become ever more isolated, and its goals will remain out of reach, many experts believe.
So the media is beginning to see two issues: 1) The vision of Turkey’s imperial plans and “vision of the Middle East united by a Turkish brand of political Islam” and 2) “But unless Ankara aligns itself more closely with international opinion it will become ever more isolated” from western powers.
Its not us only who is concluding this, its Reuters and other major media.
Everything is going according to God’s plan, to allow the formation of the threat spoken of by John. The West and the Muslim world are on a collision course to part ways.
And there are two situations on the news which is the focus of the west right now:
First, the European Union leaders (I guess there not the Antichrist) criticized Turkey on Friday over its recent actions in disputed waters claimed by Cyprus, warning Ankara to respect Cyprus’ sovereignty.
Turkey sent a research vessel and two navy ships into disputed waters south of Cyprus earlier this month. In protest, Nicos Anastasiades, Cyprus’ president, suspended peace talks with the Turkish-controlled north of the island. The dispute is the latest flash point in a long-running dispute over who has the rights to the natural gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean.
In a statement by EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, the bloc expressed “serious concerns” about the tensions in the eastern Mediterranean.
The leaders urged Turkey “to show restraint, and to respect Cyprus’ sovereignty over its territorial sea and Cyprus’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone.”
And secondly we have the U.S. decision to air-drop weapons to Kurdish forces in Syria on the same day Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan dismissed them as terrorists is the latest false note in the increasingly discordant mood music coming out of Washington and Ankara.
“No matter how much officials on both sides publicly insist there is harmony, differences in strategy over the fight against Islamic State and the fate of the beleaguered Syrian border town of Kobani are straining relations between the Washington and its key regional ally, leaving Turkey increasingly isolated” says Reuters.
On Saturday Erdogan briefed journalists on board his lavish new presidential jet, saying it would be inappropriate for the United States to arm the Kurdish PYD which controls Kobani, besieged by Islamic State forces for more than a month.
Less than an hour after the plane touched down in Istanbul, President Barack Obama spoke to Erdogan by telephone, notifying him that weapons drops to Kobani’s defender’s were going ahead.
“U.S. actions certainly humiliated Erdogan. The story of the air-drop is one of Turkish irrelevance,” said Aaron Stein, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
An op-ed by an Erdogan adviser published on Monday after the drops reiterated Turkey’s opposition to helping the PYD, and highlighting the apparent gap between Ankara and Washington.
UNDERSTANDING TURKEY’S ROLE FROM BEGINNING TO END
As we stated before and for two decades; Turkey is and will always be speaking with forked tongue. Its Antichrist aspirations and future plans must be monitored and studied. The key for its rise is also the key for its final downfall under the feet of Messiah is Islam when the most powerful nations of Russia and the West destroy him (see Ezekiel 28:7-8) and few focus closely to Daniel 11:44, that “news from the north” (Russia) will trouble the King of the North (Turkey/antichrist).
The West needs to heed this arising threat and we already see Turkey speaking with forked-tongue. While the U.S. is blind on Turkey it will ultimately awaken. For example, CBS News tells us that “Turkey signals unexpected shift in fight against ISIS in Syrian town”.
So did the pharaoh soften his heart? Or better yet, has the Pharaoh in the Bible ever soften his heart?
To see Turkey’s forked tongue, just look at today’s news. The lame news tells us that “In a significant shift, Turkey’s top diplomat announced on Monday that his country is helping Iraqi Kurdish fighters cross into Syria to “give support” to fellow Kurds defending the border town of Kobani from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”
Then on CBC News we read something totally opposite: “Turkey opposes U.S. arms transfer to Kurds fighting in Kobani” adding: “Turkey wouldn’t agree to any U.S. arms transfers to Kurdish fighters who are battling Islamic militants in Syria”.
When it comes to Turkey, we find news articles that have totally opposite titles.
Turkey says “yes we will support the Kurds”, and the west forgets to ask, what is the caveat?
There is always a caveat in everything the Muslims say. We find out later, that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Sunday, arguing that “the main Syrian Kurdish group, the PYD — and its military wing which is fighting ISIS militants — as an extension of the PKK, which has waged a 30-year insurgency in Turkey and is designated a terror group by the U.S. and NATO.”
Turkey knows the rules of the game much better than the U.S. They know that the PKK is a terrorist entity, so when the United States wants to move its chips, they bring out the rule book. Turkey is and will always be speaking with forked tongue.
As we always said, the pharaoh will never soften his heart. And I wonder, why do we even read the news without first reading our Bibles? Will the “leopard ever change its spots”? God’s laws says “No”.
A little tour is necessary for all who want to piece the puzzle on how this humpdy-dumpty is being put together. Its impossible to understand why Turkey fits the paradigm of the prophetic language of all the prophets from Daniel to John without learning the demographic changes that happened that was the result of several earthquakes.
First, in November 2002, the Turkish people elected an Islamist government that is was certainly very different from the traditional Turkish political Kemalist elite. This government’s policy in its immediate neighborhood, particularly in the Middle East, its increasing activism, pro-activism, has brought about a new look and attempt to understand what Turkey’s new foreign policy is, particularly in the Middle East.
But as Christ said that earthquakes in diverse places will be the sign to the end. Perhaps there is a parallel meaning that there is other than literal earthquakes is the political earthquakes. In the last decades we had a few earthquakes that changed the demography of that part of the world. It was sparked when the United States made its blunder and entered the Iraq War in 2003. Then we had an earthquake with the rise of the East, that is, China and India, and now the earthquake of this nuclearization of Iran all brought attention to what Turkey is really doing in its neighborhood. And we had other earthquakes of the worst kind, the Arab Spring and way before, the first major earthquake was the disintegration of the Soviet Union which had major consequences one of which was that Turkey immediately found itself with a multitude of countries that are independent from the Soviet Union and have the same ethnic and cultural links to the old Ottoman Empire.
This was a great opportunity for Turkey.
But its problem was that Turkey was viewed as pro-Western and was pretty much locked into the NATO alliance and Turkey’s membership in the Council of Europe. So Turkey had to speak with forked tongue. The other side of the fork came to being when Professor Ahmet Davutoglu showed up. He wrote a book titled “Strategic Depth,” and he became an advisor to the Turkish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Davutoglu basically argued that Turkey no longer can only have a one-dimensional foreign policy, and needs to reintegrate with this region and mark an end to what he described as an anomaly.
Ahmet Davutoglu
But there existed a two-pronged goal for Turkey, to remain “friendly” with the west reaping the benefits while it honed on taking advantage of Turkey’s position on the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterranean, and also the Middle East and needed an adhesive, a key if you will, that will unlock the hearts of the east: Islam.
While Islam was the adhesive that put Turkey closer to its Muslim neighbors, Islam became a major concern for western countries. The question is, will the United States remain friendly with Turkey? Will the United States always be on the side of this Antichrist? The answer is no. Here’s why: Armenia. Armenia is a very special case and those who live in Washington probably hear enough about the Armenian Genocide from time to time. This issue is and will always be a sore issue. The United States was also very disappointed that Turkey didn’t accept the plan before the invasion of Iraq to open a second front through Turkey and today the United States sees the same results with the ISIS issue which will make the relationship even more sour. If and when ISIS creates havoc through terrorism in the United States, these relationships will even deteriorate further as the public is already beginning to see Turkey’s neutrality on ISIS.
But then Turkey with its rise of Islamic dominance and its rejection by the European Union is trying to have this issue covered as it seeks other places to replace western relations. Turkey looks towards Iran in which the two are locked together in their destiny (Ezekiel 38, Revelation 13:2). This beast is the body of a Leopard (Revelation 13:2) (The Greco-Roman) and not European, with its feet of the Bear (Iran).
Turkey’s rise has been due to that it has really been able to normalize, reintegrate with its immediate neighborhood. Its trade volume, its political dialogue, its relationship with its immediate neighborhood has improved considerably. To give you some figures, for instance, Turkish trade with Iran in December 2006 had a 54.9 percent boost in comparison with the trade volume in December 2005 and rises every year. With Russia, where we had $200 million of trade volume in 1989, currently the trade volume has reached $20 billion.
The reintegration of Turkey and its immediate neighborhood is not only visible in trade statistics; it is also a phenomenon of elite exchanges and cultural and religious interaction. When it comes to Turkey, we must always consider that the key is Islam, a religion which stems from Saudi Arabia, the harlot’s religion and Arabic is its religious language. Babylon was about speaking in one tongue and using the pitch as the adhesive to build Babel and unite the earth under one language and under one world religion. In order to make Islam supreme, Turkey more and more Turkish op-ed pieces are being translated for the Arab press. In Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and many other countries, people follow what Turkey is doing. The same is true vice versa that Turkish press, translate Arabic pieces and try to understand what the thinking and latest outlook of Turkey’s Arab colleagues.
To see how this beast expands east instead of west we need to get into the mind of Professor Ahmet Davutoglu the most influential man in Turkey alongside Erdogan. He is really the architect of this Ottoman revival. In his book on the role of Asia, he says:
“The most important dimension of Turkey’s redefinition of foreign policy strategy is the immediate continental basin of Asia. While other powers redefine their strategies towards Asia in the post-Soviet era, Turkey also needs to redefine its relationship with Central Asia [and include Albania and Bosnia as well], the Middle East, the Far East, and the Black Sea-Caucasus region.”
The major earthquake all began when the United States and Russia finally ended their cold war and Russia disintegrated. But at the time, the U.S. with lack of foresight wasn’t aware of the consequences. Turkey became very interested in the Russia-Black Sea-Caucasus area. This region is known biblically as part of Gomer and Beth Togarmah.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Turks suddenly honed in on Uzbekistan and Tajikistan their long lost ethnic brethren. Russia in the past has prevented this and any Turk during the Cold War in order to study the Russian language or Russian history could easily be accused of being a KGB agent. But now, this gap is closed and as the U.S. continues causing the last earthquake, its support for the Arab Spring, its anti-Bashar policies and its support for the ousting of Arab dictators. This is what we face and witness today.
Turkey’s first strategy was the strengthening of ECO, which is the Economic Cooperation Organization, which originally included Turkey, Iran, and now includes Central Asian Turkish republics and also Afghanistan. When the AKP Party came to power, one of the first things that happened is that for the first time, the Islamic Conference Organization elected a Turkish secretary-general. That was of course none other than Professor Davutoglu. Planting himself in it, now this organization, by its name, has traditionally made a Turkish professor to become the first secretary-general from Turkey coincided with a time when the AKP and the Turksih foreign policy establishment understood that the Middle East is increasingly moving to the center of world attention.
As to why and while Turkey attempts to arabize the region with Islam, a Saudi religion, it will in the end turn on this harlot, the beast “will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire” (Rev 17:16), we need to look at history. History is always the key, not only to put the biblical puzzle together, but to understand Christianity’s role from beginning to end.
Turkish history, and the Turks do not forget old wounds, when the break-up of the Ottoman Empire occurred, a lot of the Turkish republican narrative on these events was very critical of the Arabs, that they stabbed Turkey in the back, that Saudi Arabia embraced the Christian powers, not for its love for Christianity, but for its survival as it began to see Turkey, the sick man of Europe receive the deadly wound on its head. Saudi Arabia betrayed Turkey and stood with the Brits and the French, and traditionally, for decades, Turkey looked at the Arabs and the Arab countries with much disdain and still do. Recently we have written on how Great Britain was finally able to crush the Ottoman Empire ending with a parallel to Christ when Edmund Allenby finally conquered Jerusalem.
Turkey never forgot. So Ahmet Davutoglu, the professor who is the advisor to both the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister, has been the driving force behind stealthily building and creating Turkey’s relationship with the west, of course, this necessitated a forked-tongue approach with acceptable labels, so they call themselves “conservative-democratic government” which is pleasing to both American democrats and republicans, and “conservative” instead of “Islamic”, which is pleasing to Republicans and then “Muslim-conservative” to please the Muslim world. The United States and the European Union are slowly catching up.
But Turkey can never succeed without an ideology and needs Saudi’s Islam, the main adhesive to this humtdy-dumpty empire. The Turkish government is viewed by itself and the world as Muslim-democrat, post-Islamist, Islamist, but it certainly comes from roots that have an Islamic dimension. Therefore, the view to reintegrate with the Middle East is not only a hardcore foreign policy issue, it is also seen on a cultural-social level, and certainly on a religious level as coming back to a world of co-religionists. In a world where for a number of years the primary discourse was either you are with us or against us, it made it easier for many Turkish foreign policy elites to embrace the religious dimension of that policy: Arabia’s Islam with a twist, Sufi Islam. With Sufi Islam, Turkey will be able to unite with Iran since Sufism is palatable to the Iranians as well as many non-Wahhabist Sunni states.
Ahmet Davutoglu has been the driving force behind Turkey’s turn towards the East which is causing Erdogan to pursue the restoration of the Islamic caliphate. While many say that this charge is baseless when considering the current dynamics of Turkish society and politics because they view everything from an economic lens. Yet history is the best scale of measure; the Nazi Arian view, while it was expansionist is not void of an ideology. Sure, there is an economic sphere but it is in combination with an Islamist tone that can be attributed to Turkey’s rising popularity in the Muslim world.
Today, there are several declarations of caliphates, but these are local, nevertheless, over the past decade the Turkish AKP Party has established strong relations in the Middle East, and it was also relatively successful in this endeavor. Some say that this failed due to the Arab Spring arguing that Turkey is facing grave problems in its foreign policy due to Turkey’s mishandling of the ongoing civil war in Syria, the deteriorating state of affairs in Libya and regime change in Egypt.
But that is exactly what Turkey needs. Davutoglu foresaw that authoritarian regimes would collapse. But he believed that Islamic parties inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood would take their place. He saw the fall of the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi as a turning point. What he failed to take into account was the resilience of Arab socialism and Arab nationalist currents. But Turkey has not given up and are becoming the main force behind the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt awaiting for another comeback. It will chisel on Bashar of Syria until he falls.
But the western world sees Turkey from its own western colored lens that Turkey has a main challenge now for Erdogan to please them. They think it will be to find viable ways of pursuing damage control and revitalization of relations with countries in the region following a radically-toned policy. But these analysts are naive for one reason, this adhesive, this key: Islam. The West thinks that the Muslim world aspires what they aspire and that Turkey’s Islamist route will cause the Turkish people to not choose the AKP party. But despite what so many western analysts expected, Erdogan’s popularity in the region was proven in the last elections despite the controversies and we predicted Erdogan’s victory before the elections were complete.
Analysts are hopeful that Turkey-Russia relations, despite that they were sour for decades they say that they finally made an about-turn due to the booming energy trade and increasing economic relations. Nevertheless, bilateral relations have been and will always be seriously tested.
The adhesive or the pitch that Turkey needs to rebuild its Babylon dream is Islam, but this very pitch is its downfall in which Islam will cause Turkey’s ziggurat to tumble. Given that Turkey and Russia share a geography in which there are many current conflicts which represent a direct challenge to the Russia-Turkey and even China-Turkey relationships. Such relationship like the Arab Islamist uprisings and Syria and Russia’s interests in the Tartus naval base, (its only Mediterranean proxy naval opening) or the crisis in Ukraine will put a strain on this relationship, especially after the establishments of Islamic states which will contradict Russia’s and China’s interests. Although the Muslim nature of the Urumqi riots in Xinjiang’s China and the death of Uyghur-Turks sparks major rift in Turkey’s China relations, leading to a boycott of Chinese goods and China not wanting to loose the Xinjiang region. The Xinjiang issue continues to rankle, Turkey adopting its Islamist heritage, that with a rift with Russia will cause it to eventually crumble.
And regardless that Turkey harbors Sufi Islam which is closer to Iran’s Shia, Iran on the other hand, inevitably invested in the protection of Assad regime to retain the northern wing of its “Shiite Crescent” extending into Lebanon through Syria, reaching into Hezbollah assets close to Israel. While Iran and Turkey will unite under an Islamic banner, they will divide at Armageddon and is why Daniel calls it a “divided kingdom”.
It is Islam that is the adhesive. But Islam is flawed. Its attempt to Arabize the world will never succeed since God declared the world to be divided under different ethnicities. It is God’s key that Turkey ignores and God always wins in the end. The beast is a divided kingdom of iron and clay. Eventually it will be shattered under Messiah’s feet.
SOURCES
Turkish Foreign Policy to the East: Domestic Drivers and Implications
by Mr. Suat Kiniklioglu