Saturday, July 16, 2016

Peters: Turkey's Travails

As regular readers know, we appreciate the work of military analyst Ralph Peters, writing here for Fox News. Today he writes about the tragedy that is Turkey, and the massive irony that our President urged support for its 'democratically' elected President Erdogan.

Erdogan is an elected leader in the same sense that Adolph Hitler was. He did get a majority of the votes, as did Hitler, but is now taking authoritarian action to ensure he never again faces serious electoral opposition. Hitler did the same and the German people cheered him, as the Turks have cheered Erdogan.
Who is the man our own president rushed to support because he was “democratically elected?” Recep Tayyip Erdogan is openly Islamist and affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood

Erdogan has dismantled Turkey’s secular constitution (which the military is duty-bound to protect). His “democracy” resembles Putin’s, not ours. Key opposition figures have been driven into exile or banned. Opposition parties have been suppressed. Recent elections have not been held so much as staged.

Erdogan has packed Turkey’s courts with Islamists. He appointed pliant, pro-Islamist generals and admirals, while staging show trials of those of whom he wished to rid the country. He has de facto, if not yet de jure, curtailed women’s freedoms.

Erdogan will use the coup as an excuse to accelerate the Islamization of his country and to lead Turkey deeper into the darkness engulfing the Muslim world.
Erdogan famously said: "Democracy is like a train. You ride it until your reach your destination, then you get off." Following this coup he will have reached his destination, and become the new Ottoman emperor.

Our hapless President found Erdogan worthy of support. I declare this to be pathetic virtue-signaling on Obama's part.