Precious Gollumland…
How many of us did not read the “Lord of the Rings” book series or at least watch the thriller on the widescreen? There was a Gollum, a self-centered and egoistic creature, perhaps the most mysterious and contradictory character in that fantasy adventure. I would not use this precious space to rehash memories of the Lord of the Rings, Gollum or how he became the slave of his “precious,” the ring for which he even strangled his only friend Deagol. In Gollum we saw once again that possession of something “precious” might be very self-hazardous if the person allows himself be enslaved by that “precious,” whatever it might be…
Out of the blue, I remembered Gollum and his precious ring when I heard some senior foreign policy aides of the government start boasting around about Turkey’s “precious loneliness” in the international diplomacy scene. What a great logic? Every disastrous and bankrupt salesman should employ one or two of those “advisors” to convince him what a great merchant he indeed was. Would that help any purpose? For example would such deception help pay the unpaid checks or pay the accumulated wages of the workers of his workplace? No, but it could make it easy for him to go to sleep faster…
Gollumland has become champion in awarding failures. Has there ever been a foreign minister anywhere in the world who might be as successful as the most-lectured external affairs minister who came to office pledging zero problems with neighbors but after a few years time the country now has no friends around.
With what logical frame difficult to understand the government is being advised by some precious Gollums that the entire world has been wrong but Turkey has been the only country with a “correct” policy. Gollumland is the only country that has been pursuing a straight and successful foreign policy because the rest of the world was carried away with the wrong assumption that interests rather that principles or ideology should come first. The Gollumland, however, at the expense of risking all its interests and over 5,000 citizens in Egypt, for example, became a cheerleader of the Muslim Brothers there, in a manner interfering in internal affairs. Why? Was it because of “What cooked in the neighbor might be served to us as well” fear? The premier indeed scared people the other day saying that after Egypt his country might be in line for a similar operation. Operation by who? Usual suspects headed by the Germans, Americans and of course the Israelis… Not because he has been suffering from paranoia, the premier was of course making such analogies to justify why alone Turkey is walking against the global tide… Otherwise, can it be possible to explain with “precious loneliness” why Turkey remained aligned with ousted Muslim Brothers – to the extent that the premier has started to salute crowds with their symbol – when even the most conservative Arab states shifted their allegiances?
Gollumland failed in Libya with a policy of flip-flop. In Syria, despite all the advice from its allies, the government insisted in lending support to Al-Nusra, a marginal Selefist group on terrorist lists in the West. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were hosted at prefabricated shelters that turned into logistical camps for the Syria rebels. Gollumland has become an active party of the Syrian civil war. In Egypt, Gollumland just could not understand that of the two evils the rest of the world preferred the lesser evil military coup.