US President Joseph Biden on April 24, 2021 officially recognized the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923 as a genocide. The resonant statement clearly shows the strong political will of the American leader: he turned out to be the only current statesman who openly called the inhuman actions of the “Young Turks” against Armenians by their true name. Biden did this, despite the great discontent of the arrogant Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Recently Turkey has significantly stepped up its foreign policy, seeking to strengthen its influence in the Middle East, Transcaucasia, the Mediterranean and Central Asia. During the previous years Turkish troops have invaded Syria, Iraq and Libya. Moreover, an escalation of tension has been repeatedly recorded in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea due to Erdogan’s policy. His unreasonable claims to the hydrocarbon-rich Aegean Sea have pushed to the limit the contradictions in relations with Greece and Cyprus. Then, in the fall of 2020, Ankara actively helped Baku in the invasion war with the Armenians of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
At the same time, the ambitious plans of the Turkish leader are in direct collision with the spirit of transatlantic solidarity. The Turkish military machine continues to conduct active hostilities in Syria without regard to the position of its allies in the North Atlantic Alliance. In fact, it became one of the reasons for the numerous disagreements between Ankara and Washington.
With the lapse of time Erdogan began not only to ignore the position of alliance partners, but also to act against their interests, sometimes even unleashing conflicts with his military bloc allies. In response, Western countries unanimously opposed this behavior of Ankara and imposed sanctions on it. “I stand fully behind Cyprus and Greece in the face of the Turkish violations of their sovereignty,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
However, neither behind-the-scenes exhortations nor direct sanctions had the proper effect. Ankara began to actually absorb the territory of the states of Transcaucasia, Central Asia and the Middle East in accordance with the strategy proclaimed by Erdogan to restore the Ottoman Empire and spread the idea of pan-Turkism.
Having launched the war in Artsakh, the “Turkish Sultan” strengthened his position in the South Caucasus with the help of his younger partner Ilham Aliyev. At the same time, the odious Turkish leader intensified pressure on the kleptocratic regimes of Central Asian countries, using common pan-Turkist sentiments as a way of pressuring them.
As a result of the war in Artsakh, Turkey was able to contact the “fraternal” Azerbaijan more closely. This fact also helped Ankara to strengthen its presence in the Caspian region. Erdogan-Conqueror needs this to establish control over transport corridors from Central Asia through the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan to Europe, as well as over the rich oil resources of these regions.
However, while Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu repeats the words about the unity and kinship of all Turkic-speaking peoples during every meeting, the official Turkish media distribute materials of other content. For instance, on February 9, 2021, the national television channel TRT published a map of the exclusive influence zone of Ankara. The appetites of the new Turkish sultan are striking in their scale: all the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, the states of the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus, the countries of Central Asia and the regions of Russia inhabited by Muslims, as well as the Uygur Autonomous Region of China fell into the sphere of interests of the High Porte. Based on the scale of Erdogan’s invading aspirations, it is not surprising that he does not fear the consequences of a likely direct clash with Putin’s Russia and communist China.
Increasingly, front pages of some newspapers attract people’s attention by headlines in which Erdogan is called modern sultan. Such a comparison and the current situation in the international arena allows us to draw an analogy between Erdogan and Adolf Hitler. In the mid-1930s, the main ideologist of Nazism Adolf Hitler annexed to the Third Reich the territories of neighboring countries (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland) playing on the naivety and short-sighted policies of the leaders of European powers (such as French Prime Minister Eduard Deladier and British Prime Minister Chamberlain), who wanted to apprehend the dictator and to get off cheap. This passivity cost Europe tens of millions of lives in the whirlpool of World War II.
After almost a century, the goals of the Turkish dictator remained the same, but his methods changed: Erdogan uses “soft” power, allegedly seeking to develop comprehensive cooperation with the “related” Turkic peoples of Transcaucasia and Central Asia on a mutually beneficial basis. In fact, the states of these regions are the same for him today as Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia used to be for Hitler years ago. Meanwhile, modern European leaders do not seek to show tough political will and put the burnt autocrat in place repeating the mistakes of their predecessors.
In these circumstances, the statement of US President Joe Biden is much more significant than it may seem at first glance: in fact, the American leader has become the first politician in recent times who rigidly put the Turkish “padishah” right on the line despite Erdogan’s threats to reconsider relations with the United States in case of recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It is hoped that Europe will follow Washington’s example and temper the fervor of the new-found Turkish conqueror. By showing weakness in relations with Ankara today, you can get an Islamist empire led by Sultan Erdogan tomorrow.
