Who convinced whom at the White House?
The Rose Garden press event of Turkey’s Islamist worshipful master, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Barack Obama, America’s troubled number one, was very vivid. It demonstrated both in words as well as in body language who the real boss is; who should be convinced by whom… Such events might be very useful to repeat once every few years to see how an earthling can be cut down to size…
Friends asked on the phone and at Ankara’s many diplomatic receptions: What happened at the White House? Well, the answer is quite obvious; what Erdoğan was saying as he was entering the day-long meetings, what he said at the Rose Garden and later? The rest are just details.
He went to Washington hoping that with the support of the high death toll in the Reyhanlı blasts, he could convince Obama to use the stick and opt for the military option against Syria’s cruel dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and help Turkey’s Sunni brotherhood project. He came out of the White House, praising Obama’s decision to give a further chance to the U.S.-Russian-brokered Geneva process – al-Assad’s sole hope for a diplomatic exit from the mess he greatly contributed to creating in Syria. Is the answer clear? Is everyone positive on who convinced whom at the White House? There was no second alternative anyhow, that’s the way how super power politics work.
Happy May 19
Despite all officious and official efforts to conceal it, careful observers would perhaps have noticed; yesterday was May 19, the anniversary of the start of the long and painful march of Turks from the occupied sick man of Europe to the independent modern Turkish Republic. Very much like last year after a formal and still obligatory visit to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the modern republic, ceremonies in Ankara were confined to a sports complex where a sports minister with his bass voice skillfully demonstrated how a man could fall in love with his own voice.
Of course, the decision to stop marking May 19 with parades and military ceremonies reminiscent of Iron Curtain countries would have been great if indeed the day could be marked with civilian ceremonies… However, the practice of the past two years of the ruling Islamists demonstrated that they are more interested in “appearing to celebrate” but indeed undermining all the important days of the secular republic. Has anyone seen the prime minister at the mausoleum of Atatürk lately? At every ceremony he is either “away” because of an unscheduled stop at a tiny sultanate deep in Asia or at the Blair House in Washington or unfit physically (or psychologically) to attend a ceremony at the “always windy” mausoleum. Was it not he, after all, who said a few years ago that he saw no merit in standing like a stalk at the mausoleum?
The militaristic celebration of May 19 and other anniversaries of the important dates of the republic were definitely wrong. Such oddities had to be corrected and the ruling Islamists were brave enough to act on that issue. Yet, apparently they had some other agenda…
Even with sore heart; castrated wishes and lost hopes, congratulations to all those still marking the start of the glorious War of Liberation and the march from the sick man of Europe to the independent Turkish Republic.
