By Walid Shoebat

Looking at the post Turkey coup, analysts think that Turkey’s fork on the road has only two options: The first, is Turkey’s attempt to ally with Russia for joint management in the region. We all have seen Erdogan and Putin finally shake hands. The second, is to return to its prior alliance with the United States.

Both assumptions ignore the most crucial factor, in any axis of evil, what play the most factor is one thing: ideology.

Erdogan’s handshake with Putin (who many view as an expanding Gog) was necessary for both parties survival. Putin has few allies. Turkey is seeking to carryout 1) military self-reliant policy which makes it completely independent militarily on Russia and the U.S. 2) Turkey is currently carrying out the process of institutional reconstruction, especially in its military, in order to have such control.

Both processes will take some time. Therefore, we must not rush to draw conclusions. Turkey still needs Russia before it accomplishes its first goal.

Why many think that Turkey must be under Russia or the U.S., is old and outmoded. Erdogan is not happy to be led by Russia. He wants complete independence from both the U.S. and Russia. Turkey wants to be a self-sustaining superpower in seven years by 2023.

The desert Arabs who have a long history with Turkey seem to know better Erdogan’s mentality than the West. Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Times says that:

“IMMEDIATELY after the Turkish government foiled a coup attempt last month, the ‘sheikhs’ of dreams from the Arab’s ‘Brotherhood’ started claiming that they saw Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a dream exuding an aura close to sainthood.”

This is an aura of “Mahdism” that Erdogan is gaining. In fact, yesterday Erdogan on the Turkish Hurriet Daily News said: “we no longer can act like we did before coup attempt”. Erdogan after July 15th failed coup is driving the gravy train and is basically announcing: “next stop is the Caliphate Royal Palace”.

Therefore, unless Protestant U.S. and Orthodox Russia begin to believe in Caliphate and Mahdism, this fusion between Turkey and Russia is bound for a collision.

This new Erdoganism is why Erdogan kept a tally of which countries ‘condemned the coup attempt,’ ‘which kept silent,’ and ‘which waited to see which side prevailed first’ and then ‘condemned’.

Unlike Ankara’s Western allies, Iran for example, did not wait for the coup’s failure to speak up. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif voiced support for the government in Twitter messages in the early hours of the unrest. In a subsequent phone call, President Hassan Rouhani told Erdogan the coup attempt was “a test to identify your domestic and foreign friends and enemies.”

In contrast, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Turkey’s ally in Syria, congratulated Erdogan for suppressing the attempt, but only after it failed.

And by this, Saudi Arabia signed its own death-sentence.

To add more to the tightening noose around the Saudi kingdom’s neck, sources close to Iran are zestfully reporting claims that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were involved in the coup attempt, in an apparent hope this might encourage Ankara to change its axis.

And that it did. Turkey moved quickly to shake hands with Putin and Iran. Such a move by Erdogan will force the West to reconsider its options on Turkey. This new emerging prospect of a Turkish-Iranian-Russian axis is pressuring the U.S. to mend fences with Ankara.

And they succeeded. Vice-President Joe Biden is going to undertake a high-stakes mission to Turkey on August 24. This will be the first visit by an American dignitary after the failed Turkish coup of July 15.

So is this Turkish-Russian new ties make a strong case that Russia is this Gog since it is allying with Turkey?

If that is so, what then must one say regarding the Saudi-Israeli regional axis? Could we argue that the nation that founded Islam is in bed with Israel or that Israel is in bed with the founders of Allah and Jihad?

Saudi Arabia and Israel are theologically enemies and are opposite of each other.

How then will such a Turkish-Russian alliance workout, especially that this Gog invasion of Israel (so they claim) is a Russian-Islamic alliance? Are these proposing a “Christian-Orthodox-Islamic Alliance”?

There is no such alliance in Scripture.

The Saudi-Israeli axis is simply what Scripture says it is in Ezekiel 38. That is “Sheba and Dedan” is standing on the sidelines condemning the Turkey/Iran invasion of Israel “have you came to take booty”. Scripture says nothing more. Just as Russia will never have a true alliance with Turkey, Saudi Arabia will never have a true alliance with Israel.

So why is Saudi Arabia and much of the Arab Gulf (Sheba and Dedan) left out of the prophetic equation?

The answer is very simple. Saudi Arabia knows that Turkey’s ally, Iran, is about to have it for lunch after it has Israel for breakfast. This is especially true since Saudi Arabia did not rise up to be counted as anti-coup only after the coup failed.

Therefore, the alliance, according to Apocalypse 13’s narrative is a Turkish-Persian alliance (Leopard-Bear).

The Ezekiel 38 program is on course, Gog is a leader from Turkey who unites with Persia (Iran), re-conquered Libya and Egypt. We say Egypt because it is clear that there is a league (Ezekiel 30:8). Most students isolate Ezekiel 38 ignoring that the whole theme of Ezekiel’s prophecy stems from Ezekiel 28 to Ezekiel 39. All this needs to be viewed in whole and with much detailed scrutiny. Unfortunately, these do not like to read the entire context and seem to be satisfied to only reading one chapter, Ezekiel 38 and in fact focus on one word “Rosh” as if this was “Russia”.

In our view, ahistoricals should have no voice in the Prophecy circles. Russia and Turkey are two rivals who have warred against each other from time immemorial. For anyone who still doubts us that Putin can never be Gog, please read our 6 part series [here].

For Iran, strong ties with its neighbors Russia and Turkey is significant now, especially when we have a Saudi-Israeli regional axis. Therefore, in order to contain this new axis we see Turkey and Iran uniting exactly as we have been predicting. Iran is nervous, especially that there is uncertainty about the implementation of the nuclear deal under a new American president.

Turkey’s own desire to expand its influence among the Turkic peoples that inhabit the central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan poses a significant challenge to Russia’s desire to maintain its influence in that region. Russia also wants to exert a degree of control over the regions hydrocarbon wealth and especially the pipelines that move it to markets in Europe.

Currently Turkey has only two choices when it comes to Iran; to continue its historic competition with Iran for influence in the Middle East or to unite with it and divide the whole kitten-kapoodle. The latter, to undo Sykes-Picot is the desire of all Islamists be it Iran or Turkey, yet this is not what Russia (a nation that played in creating it) wants.

These days, even the liberal Huffington Post realizes that Turkey is “a country that looks more and more like a caliphate with a powerful sultan…”: