Robert Ellis

Erdogan’s house of cards has collapsed with the earthquake. There is already a rush to find scapegoats and as well as the arrests of looters.

Turkey regards Greece as a peninsular state and points out that some of these islands are on the Turkish mainland’s continental shelf.

By now it must be apparent that Turkey has joined forces with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, China’s Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.

In all likelihood, Turkey’s appeal to Russia to halt the invasion will fall on deaf ears and demonstrate the limitations of Turkey’s foreign policy.

Since his AKP (Justice and Development Party) came to power in 2002, this frame of reference has determined not only Turkey’s domestic policy but also its foreign policy.

Now, with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis, Turkey has itself become a hostage.

A driving force behind the AKP’s change of axis has undoubtedly been former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s “neo-Ottomanism,” a call for a new world order where Turkey plays a central role.

Barbara Tuchman has in ”The March of Folly” dealt with the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

In a wake-up call to Europe, Macron warned that if Europe did not begin to think strategically and not just commercially, there was a considerable risk that it would disappear geopolitically.

As outlined at the UN General Assembly, Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s plan is to resettle two million Syrian refugees in this “safe zone” at a cost of $53 billion.