Recep Tayyip Erdogan Calls On the Kuffar For Help

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sulfurous President of Turkey, who relishes his role as a neo-Ottoman quasi-caliph, making policy from his 1500 room White Palace (“Ak Saray”), has run up against reality yet again. First, there was his published plan for the creation of a pan-Islamic army – no doubt intended to be under Turkish leadership – that in numbers, if not in technological prowess, would be many times stronger than Israel’s military, and could at long last “crush” the Zionist enemy. Erdogan waited for what he assumed would be a favorable response from other Muslim nations, but none was forthcoming. The rebuff should have been clear, but Erdogan had a difficult time taking the hint. He apparently forgot, or failed to quite comprehend, that for 400 years the Ottoman Turks were the overlords of the Arabs in both the Middle East and North Africa, and their historic memory of mistreatment by the Turks makes them permanently leery of any schemes or dreams in which Turkey’s leader sees himself as leading an Army of Islam.

Erdogan has been involved in disputes with various Infidels as well. He attacked the American government for refusing to extradite Erdogan’s arch-enemy Fethulleh Gulen, and even arranged for the trial and imprisonment on trumped-up charges of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, whom he hoped to trade to the Americans for Gulen. Nothing doing, said an infuriated Washington.

When the Germans refused to allow Erdogan’s party, the AKP, to electioneer among the Turks in Germany, Erdogan denounced them as “Nazis.” When the Dutch similarly refused to allow electioneering among the Turks in the Netherlands, he described them as “Nazi remnants.” It’s his epithet of choice in condemning the Europeans.

After Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kunz shut down some “extremist” mosques and expelled their imams, Erdogan gave an address on June 9, 2018, where he predicted that such measures by the Infidel Christians could lead to war “between the cross and the crescent”:

“They [Austria] have all but declared war on worship, the azan, and the mosques. What is the difference between Austria’s chancellor today and the mentality of old times? Now they are planning and calculating how to shut down our mosques in Austria. Where is this going? I fear that the measures taken by the chancellor of Austria are bringing the world toward a war between the cross and the crescent.”

Erdogan’s fury is telling. He leaves no doubt of what side he would be on in such a conflict.

He has, after all, been busy dismantling secular Kemalism, and he has discharged from office, and in some cases even jailed, tens of thousands of Turks — lawyers, professors, judges, journalists (more journalists are jailed in Turkey than anywhere else) and military men — whom he suspected of remaining loyal to Ataturk’s secular reforms.

At this point, however, Erdogan has a problem. Turkey has already taken in more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees who since 2011 have fled the civil war. As the Syrian army is moving into the last redoubt of the Syrian opposition, Idlib Province, Erdogan fears that several hundred thousand new refugees will flood into Turkey.

He has asked for help ending a humanitarian crisis in the Idlib region. In a phone call on February 21, Erdogan asked for “concrete support” from Germany and France for this new group of refugees.. It was not so long ago that he was discussing a future war between the “cross and the crescent,” not so long ago that he referred to Germans as “Nazis.” He insulted Macron for commemorating the Armenian genocide. After Macron had described NATO as suffering from “brain death” in November 2019, just before a NATO summit, Erdogan raked the French president over the coals, claiming that “the French president’s statements are examples of a diseased, shallow understanding. What’s he saying? That NATO has experienced brain death. Mr. Macron, look, I appeal to you from Turkey, I will also say it at NATO, have your own brain death checked out first.”

So here he is asking two countries whose leaders he has repeatedly insulted – “Nazis” and “brain-dead” do not exhaust the epithets he has hurled at both Germany and France over the past few years – to come to the rescue with “concrete support” for Muslim Syrians. Why should Germany and France answer this call from the abusive Erdogan? Why does he not ask for “concrete” help from the colossally rich Gulf Arab oil states? Saudi Arabia and the Emirates ought to be put on the spot by Erdogan, who can ask “fellow Muslims, please spare us the humiliation of relying on Infidels to help out. Those Muslims who have the greatest financial resources will of course want to help fellow members of the Umma. In Turkey we have already taken in 3.5 million Syrian refugees. We did this unstintingly, we paid for everything, but now we have simply run out of money to take in, and support on our own, the hundreds of thousands of new refugees that are being created in Idlib Province by the criminal regime of Bashar Assad. We call upon Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to help support these Syrians, whether they come to Turkey or find refuge elsewhere in the Muslim lands – including, perhaps, the countries of the Arabian Gulf.”

This should embarrass the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Kuwaitis, who have refused to take in any Syrian refugees, though some Syrian have been admitted as migrant workers. Since 2011, the Gulf Arabs have contributed $900 million to the upkeep elsewhere of Syrian refugees, but this amounts to a rounding error in their oil revenues, that collectively amount to much more than a trillion dollars during that period – that is, those three Gulf Arab states have taken in more than one thousand times the amount that they have given to support Syrian refugees. Erdogan should even let them know, quietly, that for now he won’t make those astonishing figures public, implicitly threatening that if they don’t come through with greater support, he will do just that. He could also request that the Gulf Arabs do their part to support not just these new refugees from Idlib, but the five to six million Syrians who for years have been living in camps, in “temporary” housing, in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. He could describe how such “generosity will win the gratitude of all Muslims.”

Erdogan would then be spared having to go hat in hand to the German “Nazis” and the supercilious “brain-dead” French, who, in any case, have given clear signs of compassion fatigue.

Turkey could receive billions from the Gulf Arabs to support the 3.5 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey and the new refugees from Idlib. Other billions should go to Jordan, which has 1.3 million Syrians, and to Lebanon, which has 1.5 million Syrians. The Saudis have a stake in the continued survival of King Abdullah in Jordan, fearing he could be replaced by an Islamist regime hostile to Arab monarchies. Recently the Gulf Arab gave the Jordanian king several billion dollars so that he could rescind an unpopular increase in income taxes. Money supplied by the Sunni Arabs of the Gulf to Lebanon would, similarly, do more than help support the Syrian refugees; those sums would show up the Shi’a terrorists of Hezbollah, who have done nothing to support those refugees, both because they are nearly all Sunnis, and therefore don’t deserve Shi’a support, and in the last two years, because of American sanctions re-imposed on Iran, Iran has had to decrease dramatically its financial support to Hezbollah which, in turn, is in no position to help Syrian refugees or, indeed, anyone.

France, Germany, and the rest of Europe would be spared having to take in even more Muslims with their hands always out. Neither Erdogan, nor Pope Francis, nor anyone else should pressure the Europeans into taking still more Muslims into their midst. Even Chancellor Merkel gives signs of recognizing her colossal error in “welcoming” several million Muslims into Germany, where the main result has been steep increases in rapes, murders, and general mayhem by the new arrivals, and increases too, in government expenditures for their upkeep. And the Europeans can finally agree that it is not they, but the rich Arabs in the Gulf, who should be responsible for the care and feeding of the Syrian refugees.

That last point is the most important: no more Muslims, from Syria or anywhere else, should be admitted into Europe or, if remaining outside Europe, expect to be supported by Europeans. Europe’s Infidels have done quite enough for the welfare of Muslims, who show no signs of gratitude nor of a desire to truly integrate into Western societies, though they are happy to accept all the benefits lavished upon them by the generous welfare states of western Europe. From now on, let the rich members of the umma take sole responsibility for the poor ones. Isn’t that what Zakat is supposed to be about – Muslim-to-Muslim charity? Muslims are, after all, “the best of peoples,” while we, miserable wretches, are the “most vile of created beings.”

First published in Jihad Watch.