The fish rots from the head...

 

Dictator Erdogan's way or the Highway

By now the news about Turkey's blunder regarding the Russian Air Force's SU-24 has definitely reached every corner of the world. Although Washington and Brussels did not condemn Turkey for so stupidly trying to expand the already very bloody Syrian conflict, but the sane people of this world have all realized the mistake that Turkey and its Islamic extremist government has committed.

Unlike Turkey the Russian federation is headed by sane people. Therefore, no military action followed the Turkish stupidity. The first retaliatory step that Moscow took was to ask its citizens to refrain from visiting Turkey. To appreciate the consequences of this soft slap on the Turkish wrist, one must know that approximately 4.4 million Russian tourists visit Turkey every year, which translates into 4 billion dollars of revenues every year.

And as far as economic repercussions are concerned, dig this: Turkey exports 20% of its food products to Russia, as well as 15% of its textile production. To give you a glimpse of possible backlash for Turkey these exports amount to more than 6 billion dollars. Turkey is also importing 55% of its energy resources from Russia and this purchase goes as high as 25 billion dollars per annum.

It is also worth mentioning here that the Turkish construction industry saw its boom in the recent years due to heavy involvement in Russian projects, particularly the ones like the construction of Olympic facilities in and around Sochi. And I will not even mention the South Stream gas pipeline and the first Turkish nuclear power plant, which are both under Russian control.

Now any sane person would ask a very obvious question: Why did Turkey risk such losses and downed a Russian Jet on Tuesday 24th of November 2015? And my answer might seem a bit too farfetched, when I would say that probably it was not Turkey as a country, which made this decision, but a handful of top level rulers, who had personal gains and agendas in mind.

If you go through recent Turkish history, you will notice a strange character rising through the political scene and reaching the top very swiftly. This character is called Recap Tayyip Erdogan. Recap Erdogan has long known affiliation with the dreaded terrorist Muslim organization, The Muslim Brotherhood. The highlight of Erdogan's rule in Turkey, as Prime minister and then President, is the polarization of the Turkish society. The Turkish society had grown quite homogenous, with religious and secular elements enjoying all basic freedoms. But ever since Erdogan took the high office, the secular section of the society has come under pressure and Turkey has been facing continuous political unrest at home. Eventually the religious extremist part of the Turkish society is now in the leading position and capable of killing the secular voice.

On the international stage, especially among Muslim countries, Erdogan made headlines, when he stood up against Israel's attack on the Peace Flotilla. But as far as I remember Turkey did not arm Palestinians after that. It did not provide air cover for the citizens of Gaza. It did not channel humanitarian aid through third countries into Palestine. All that Erdogan and the Fundamentalist Turkish government did was that they issued statements. Secondly Erdogan's son Bilal Erdogan was not on the flotilla and he did not meet with leaders of Hamas or the Palestinian administration.

Why? Because all that Erdogan could get from that particular situation was a little raise in political capital and nothing else.

But when it comes to Syria the ballgame takes an acute turn. In the Syrian conflict Turkey, led by Erdogan, is asking for no-fly zones. It is arming terrorists. It is providing full support to members of ISIS in reaching Syria through its territory and even providing medical facilities for injured terrorists on its own territory.

And on Tuesday we witnessed, how frustrated the Turkish president and the high commend got, when a Russian SU-24 got too close to Turkish backed supply line for the terrorists, fighting against the legitimate government of Syria. This again raises the same question: Why? Well the answer this time is very easy. Since the G20 summit in Antalya, Russia has been keen on destroying the line of flow of stolen Syrian oil out of the country. This stolen oil goes through Turkey and particularly through the control of Recep Erdogan's son, Bilal Erdogan. Some sources even implicate Erdogan's daughter, but there are no apparent leads.

Bilal Erdogan's involvement with ISIS is long known and he frequently meets with ISIS terrorists inside Turkey.

Of course if Russia would tighten economic screw on Turkey, the effects will be felt by the people of Turkey, but if Russia destroys the stolen oil routes, Recep Erdogan and his son and few accomplices will incur personal losses. So on 24th of November Erdogan and his team of religious fanatics opted to secure personal gains at the cost of national interests.

Now I understand this scenario quite well, because I have seen the unfolding of similar religious extremism in another country some 40 years ago. I have seen how a religious fanatic ruler, turned a perfectly normal, progressive and developing society into a mob of ignorant extremists. I saw it all in my country of origin: Pakistan.

Interestingly enough, just like Erdogan, Pakistan's angel of hell, Zia Ul Haq, also did not have a beard. Zia's children also lived and studied in western schools. But just like Erdogan, Zia was also a Muslim Brotherhood man. He was a fanatic and an extremist. As soon as he came to power, he methodically started eliminating the secular voice in Pakistan.

Just like Erdogan, Zia also dreamt of regional supremacy. He also had designs for Afghanistan. He also supported the rise of religious terrorists in Afghanistan, against the progressive part of the afghan society. He was also backed by Americans and Europeans. He had also opened up Pakistan for free passage of terrorists from around the world to reach Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden reached Afghanistan through Pakistan.

Just like Erdogan, Zia also allowed the flow of illegal commodities from Afghanistan via Pakistan. The only difference was that Afghanistan had no oil. So Zia and his gang had to opt for heroine. One of Zia's closest accomplices and governor of NWFP (now called KPK), Lieutenant general Fazle Haq, was the chief organizer and beneficiary of the heroine trade. This does not mean that Zia did not get his share of the pie. But Zia's children were too young to engage in serious business at that time. So unlike Erdogan he had to make his fortune through his close military accomplices. If you are interested in more details about the heroine trade during the Afghan conflict of 1980s, please search the web.

What is important here is that in the process of making tons of illegal money and trying to implement religious fundamentalist agenda in Pakistan and the region, Zia and his team dragged the whole nation into an abyss of ignorance and treachery. And I see the same fate for the Turkish people unless they get rid of Erdogan and his gang as soon as possible.

One more similarity that I observed in the events of 1980s and the current events in Syria and Turkey, is that during the 1980s, Saudi Arabia used to buy US and European weaponry and then the given arms would flow through Pakistan into Afghanistan, where the Pakistan-backed Afghan terrorists used them to destroy Afghanistan. In current times the same is repeating, with the exception that now Saudi Arabia and Qatar buy weapons and then these weapons are funneled through Turkey into Syria, where Turkey-backed terrorists destroy the Syrian society.

On 24 November 2015, a video of a terrorist firing a TOW missile targeting a Russian helicopter, was posted on YouTube. Interestingly enough a few days earlier a shipment of 10000 such missiles had reached Saudi Arabia. Now the rest I leave to you. Draw your own conclusions, about how the anti-tank missiles reached the terrorists.

Please also note one more interesting thing about oil. As soon as the Russian jet was downed, the oil prices started surging. Do you know why? Because the players know that the stolen illegal oil that was reaching the international market with the help of Bilal Erdogan, will not reach the market soon. So now the oil prices will start getting back to the legal level. I hope soon the supply of illegal oil out of Iraq would also stop, so that corrupt people like Erdogan, who put their personal interests above national interests, would be forced to leave the political arena and make way for better politicians like Vladimir Putin, who put Russia first!