The war between the West and Erdogan is raging

By Athena Papakosta

In the West’s diplomatic quarantine, Ankara is responding by demanding an explanation for the closure of embassies and consulates in Turkey while, at the same time, Sweden and Finland remain united despite Erdogan’s attempt to divide the two countries when he said he was positive about Helsinki joining in NATO but not in Stockholm.

“I think today it is very important to send a clear message: Finland and Sweden have submitted the application for membership at the same time and it is in everyone’s interest to join NATO together,” clarified Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin calmly. On the same wavelength, and her Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristerson, who underlined “we started this journey together and we will continue it together until accession”.

And this decision may be equivalent to delaying the admission of these two countries to the North Atlantic Alliance and, therefore, slowing down the enlargement of NATO, but the blackmail Erdogan stops there. The Turkish president’s attempt to break the unity of two neighboring states that have all their issues resolved has just failed.

One might reasonably wonder what the next step is. The eyes of many are on the day after the elections in Turkey in May, while most hope that the Turkish blackmail will stop, even belatedly, in July in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the leaders of the NATO member countries will meet as part of the annual meeting their.

In the meantime, however, Ankara will have to be pressured as the war in Ukraine looks set to continue into the spring and NATO wants its territory separated from Putin’s Moscow and the 1,300km border of Finland with Russia.

Already the West does not hide its irritation towards its ally Erdogan. One night… suddenly various European countries closed their embassies and consular authorities in the neighbor under the pretext of the terrorist threat. After a 24-hour embarrassment, Ankara summoned the ambassadors of nine countries for explanations.

In particular, it requests the rest from the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Britain, Germany, Belgium, France and Italy. Which is a bit of an oxymoron since Turkey first issued a directive warning its citizens of attacks in Europe and the United States after the protests that broke out in some European countries and Ankara considers anti-Turkish.

For Suleiman Soylu, Western countries are waging a psychological war and trying to destroy the Turkish tourism industry. “On the day we chose to announce the (annual) target of attracting 60 million tourists, at a time when 51.5 million tourists have already traveled to Turkey and we have earned 46 billion in tourism revenue, they are on the verge of declaring psychological war against us,” he said. the Turkish interior minister staying true to his anti-Western rhetoric for which he has become known.

As far as what the Turkish president himself will do or say, it remains to be seen. For the West, he is the rioter or the incendiary, both nationally and internationally, as the German magazine Stern wrote a week ago. But in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “map” the agitators are the others and his anti-Western rhetoric will rise as he prepares to defend his two decades of rule with a new presidential term.

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