A distinctive feature you will find among the more dishonest vendors in a Turkish market is their ability to bargain in almost any situation and bargain big. And it’s quite often the case that they’re selling you not the actual goods you seek, but cheap substitutes. Every person who has ever been to a Turkish market in search of souvenirs knows that feeling when you end up with cheap worthless trinkets in your pockets instead of jewelry.
A similar case occurred with the agreement that Ankara reached with the EU on the settlement of the “migrant crisis.” Although we all know that this crisis was staged by Turkish authorities, Tayyip Erdogan was not particularly shy in demanding large sums of money for his “assistance” in its settlement. In a bid to establish a “Turkish empire” (or rather a Sultanate) Turkish authorities have already earned a fortune on oil smuggling operations and the illegal transfer of Middle Eastern refugees to Europe. According to The Independent, in 2015 alone smugglers earned up to 6 billion dollars on the refugees. This data was obtained by European law enforcement agencies once they interviewed a total of 1,500 asylum-seekers, refugees and migrants. It turned out that 90% of them paid criminals for being transported to Europe, while the average cost for such a trip amounts to 10,000 euros.
However, researchers tend to overlook what cost the Europeans paid for the criminal activities of this rogue “Sultanate.” Probably due to the fact that should Europeans learn the truth about the events that led to massive rape cases in Cologne and other European cities, they would never allow their leaders to “negotiate” anything with Erdogan.
Recently the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview with the newspaper Berliner Zeitung called the allocation of 6 billion euros to Turkey for it to deal with refugees “a fair deal”. It would be interesting to know under the influence of which spells and charms the allegedly democratic EU politicians have been lately for them to strike a deal with Tayyip Erdogan?
Maybe the new “European democratic standards” actually allow EU politicians to conduct business with states that carry out genocide against ethnic minorities, states like Turkey that have recently been slaughtering Kurds on both sides of the Turkish border? Is it now acceptable to overlook one’s connections with terrorists, since it has been known for a while that Turkey has been supporting ISIS pretty heavily? And, for sure, the dire situation with human rights and press freedoms in Turkey, when Turkish journalists are being unlawfully arrested in droves, and the fact that Erdogan has decided that he is in a position to ignore the decision of the Constitutional Court, should pose no obstacle to making business with Turkey. Although, how can Turkish and European vassals of the White House think otherwise, if their masters are treating the American press in a similar fashion?
It’s clear that European leaders have deliberately stopped monitoring the situation in Turkey and are more than willing to turn a blind eye to the massive wave of violence and human rights violations that have swept this Middle Eastern country. One can simply take a look at the way Turkish authorities dealt with women that demanded their rights in the streets on March 8, International Women’s Day in Istanbul. Their crowd was dispersed with a rain of rubber bullets, and one of them even got arrested. After all, no sane politician would ever claim that several hundred women-protesters that took their discontent peacefully to the streets actually present such a threat to the government for it to use rubber bullets against them.
It seems at this point that European politicians are reluctant to read even their own media sources, or they would have been aware of the ideas expressed in The Guardian and a number of other media sources. European journalists are convinced that making a deal on refugees “is not only immoral, but fundamentally wrong.” Is anyone even willing to note that the UN Refugee Convention prohibits the forced massive deportation of those asylum seekers that are in dire need? The Guardian reminds us that there’s a terrible situation with human rights in Turkey today and the EU by expelling refugees to this state would transform itself into a bastion of lawless ignorance, a place that is no better than Ankara.
The article written by two high profile American analysts for The Washington Post couldn’t provide a better outlook of the fate that awaits Anakara these days: “Today, Turkey’s future looks much bleaker. Rather than greatness, Erdogan has steered it toward authoritarianism, economic slowdown and civil war. Clearly, democracy cannot flourish under Erdogan now.”
The demand for Erdogan to step down has been voiced before by a number of various forces but hasn’t been fulfilled. For this reason former US ambassadors and a number of other political experts believe that Turkey can expect no democratic reforms unless the era of the new “Turkish Sultanate” and the bloody sultan Erdogan is over.
Martin Berger is a Czech-based freelance journalist and analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.
