Beware of Turkey — Even More Than of Iran

By Aaron Kliegman Years from now, when all the requisite intelligence is declassified, someone will be able to write quite the book or movie about Yossi Cohen. As the head of Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, Cohen has been busy, negotiating a diplomatic breakthrough with the UAE and masterminding the heist of some 100,000 Iranian files from a secret warehouse in Tehran. No one knows more about what’s happening in the Middle East behind closed doors and around dark corners than Israel’s spymaster. When he speaks, we should listen. In December 2018, Cohen met with senior intelligence officials from Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia in an unnamed Arab state on the Persian Gulf, according to reports. “Iranian power is fragile,” Cohen reportedly told his fellow spooks. “The real threat comes from Turkey.” The officials agreed, according to the Middle East Eye, that Turkey, not Iran, is their major military rival in the region. Cohen of course recognizes Iran as the existential threat to Israel and menace to the world that it is — as do America’s Arab partners in the Middle East. His point was that Iran can be contained militarily and severely weakened through sabotage, economic sanctions, and other means. Turkey, meanwhile, has greater capabilities and the potential to be much more powerful — both militarily and economically — going forward. The meeting with Cohen resurfaced in a recent article in The Times, amid a wave of Turkish aggression in the eastern Mediterranean. Apparently taking notes from China in the western Pacific, Turkey is pushing its claims to a disputed swath of the Mediterranean, threatening military conflict with Greece or anyone else who challenges Ankara. Turkey seeks drilling rights and access to hydrocarbons but also has several geopolitical goals in mind: cutting off Greece from Cyprus; undercutting a Greek-Egyptian energy deal, which the Turks oppose; threatening a pipeline deal between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus; and creating a maritime border with Libya (which the two countries already agreed to but the US doesn’t recognize). Turkey has also intervened heavily in the Libyan civil war, bombed parts of northern Iraq, invaded Syria (where it ethnically cleansed the Kurdish region of Afrin), threatened American soldiers, and bought missile defense systems from Russia against Washington’s wishes. Most recently, Turkey hosted a delegation from Hamas, which the US and EU designate as a terrorist organization. Multiple people in the delegation were Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The Turkish government actually gave members of Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction and has called for the genocide of Jews, citizenship and passports. It’s clear that Turkey is a belligerent, expansionist power with ambitions of regional dominance. But it’s also an Islamist, anti-democratic power. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become the world’s top jailer of journalists. Erdogan has also purged the military, judiciary, and academia of dissenting voices and changed Turkey’s system of government to make himself effectively a dictator. When he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s, Erdogan compared democracy to a streetcar. "You ride it until you arrive at your destination," he said. "Then you step off." Erdogan has stepped off, turning a secular democracy into an Islamist dictatorship. Indeed, Erdogan is himself an Islamist who embraces the Muslim Brotherhood’s toxic ideology Recently, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) turned two historic churches into mosques. Erdogan has also inserted Islam into Turkey’s schools. Erdogan’s mission is painfully obvious: to revive some version of the Ottoman Empire, a vast Islamic power. But that might not be where Erdogan wants the story to end. In March 2015, the head of the AKP in a southeastern province tweeted that Turkey should “get ready for the caliphate,” referring to Erdogan as “caliph.” Following severe backlash, the official said his meaning of “caliph” doesn’t carry the full religious connotations that we associate today with Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the deceased leader of ISIS’s self-declared caliphate. But the AKP official was hardly the first or last person to refer to Erdogan as a caliph. Yusuf Qaradawi, for example, is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam. He has said that Istanbul is the capital of the coming caliphate and suggested that Erdogan is blessed by Allah and could be the one to lead the Islamic global order. Some of Erdogan’s followers have also called him a caliph and pledged their allegiance to him as so many did to Baghdadi during ISIS’s heyday. At one point it was considered a conspiracy theory to suggest that Erdogan wants to reestablish a caliphate based in Istanbul, this time in the vision of the Muslim Brotherhood. No longer. As if all of this isn’t complicated enough, Turkey is also a NATO ally and crucial strategic partner of the United States. Because of Turkey’s robust economy, powerful military (the second largest in NATO), and strategic geography, serving as the bridge between East and West, America simply cannot declare Turkey an enemy and treat it like Iran. This remarkably complex relationship will only get tougher to navigate with time. But there is one basic lesson here for Washington: Beware of Turkey, which could soon become the new Iran. Beyond that, well, we’re just wandering through the wilderness, with no clear idea of how to proceed. Order Newt's Latest Book: https://www.gingrich360.com/trump-and-the-american-future

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