(Mar­tine on her way to Sotchi)

Erdoğan in Antalya, Erdoğan at the Con­gress, Erdoğan in Syr­ia, Erdoğan in Sotchi, he’s a bit like your Mar­tine char­ac­ter. Except in his case, it’s in order to pre­pare yet anoth­er huge onslaught against peace.

Did you see how he protest­ed against the NATO maneu­vers where, appar­ent­ly, the por­trait of Turkey’s lit­tle father and his own were used as ene­mies in tar­get prac­tice? NATO apol­o­gized. I mean, really!

But did you also hear how he re-launched his anti-Kur­dish war by declar­ing from the word go that the Kurds had to dis­ap­pear from the can­ton of Afrîn in North­ern Syr­ia. You all know this can­ton is part of the North­ern Syr­ia Fed­er­a­tion, opposed to Bachar, although nei­ther Jihadist nor entire­ly Kurdish.

But it’s the fash­ion these days to say that the Kurds are such insa­tiable con­querors that they would even pro­ceed to re-con­quer the ter­ri­to­ries on which they have been liv­ing for so long, just to be annoy­ing and eter­nal war-mon­ger­ers. I was even trans­lat­ed an arti­cle from your French Le Monde that might almost con­vince us of this, because objec­tiv­i­ty can lead to recopy­ing any­thing… Some of your jour­nal­ists spend too much time with our nation­al­ist lib­er­als, you know! By the way, hail Marie…

In short, Erdoğan and his min­is­ters are set­ting the table again. With the help of Atatürk sup­port­ers in par­lia­ment, they vot­ed a more than con­se­quen­tial mil­i­tary bud­get, spec­i­fy­ing it was only meant for the Kur­dish threat on our bor­ders, and are now point­ing their tanks toward Syr­ia again.

Idlib… I had nev­er even heard this name before the town of Alep was sub­ject­ed to the mar­tyr­dom you know about and its pop­u­la­tion sent into “de-esca­la­tion” as they call it. I hear that you, the French, force snails to dis­gorge before you kill them. I get the feel­ing that “de-esca­la­tion” is some­thing like that. Zones where pop­u­la­tions are sent to die of hunger in refugee camps, while the Jihadists go on fat­ten­ing them­selves and gath­er­ing weapons thanks to our kind­ly Pres­i­dent who will need their ser­vices against the Kurds…

But please, all this is being dis­cussed in top-rank­ing sum­mits, with offi­cial guests, dec­la­ra­tions and all. In Antalya last Sun­day, to pre­pare the three-way Sotchi meet­ing in Rus­sia. Vod­ka, ayran and Iran­ian caviar. Tayyip, Vladimir and Rohani.

Appar­ent­ly Erdoğan would­n’t be as resen­ti­ful of Bachar any­more now that they share a com­mon ennemy: those Peace spoil­sports, the Kurds…

Min­is­ter Çavuşoğlu con­fid­ed his thoughts to our local rags in the hope for­eign media would relay his words. On Novem­ber 17 in Istan­bul, pri­or to the meet­ing in Antalya:

The time has come to think about a polit­i­cal solu­tion (…) Iran and Rus­sia want Assad to stay dur­ing a tran­si­tion peri­od. The Rus­sians need him. He was the one who invit­ed their inter­ven­tion. This is not of our purview. First, we must dis­cuss it with the oppo­si­tion (our friends). Now, Rus­sia and Iran are not the only ones say­ing Bachar Al-Assad can stay. Sau­di Ara­bia and France say the same thing. We must­n’t be too vin­dic­tive, but unit­ing every­one around Bachar Al-Assad will not be easy.”

And he has­tened to add:

We informed that the Kur­dish YPG’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al gains wor­ry us (…) The YPG nev­er fought for the coun­try’s free­dom, nor did they fight ISIS because of its malev­o­lent ide­ol­o­gy, in fact they only fought to gain more territory 

Fol­low­ing the pret­ty BBC report, in col­or, with truck dri­vers filmed from the back, telling us in detail how the Kurds had allowed almost the entire ISIS army to escape, appar­ent­ly just to annoy Turkey, we should be ready for everything.

YPG-ISIS-FETÖ, same fight, all with Trump’s help! 

You’re laugh­ing but that’s how our min­is­ters inform us and, what’s more, how the so-called oppo­si­tion blath­ers almost the same thing. Always to the trum­pet sound of “the Turk­ish nation is endan­gered.”

And sud­den­ly, we are back to “if you want peace, pre­pare war” resur­fac­ing in our rags and in the mouths of our min­is­ters and oth­er AKP-compatibles.

I’ve been told that in East­ern Turkey, fol­low­ing the mas­sacres of these past two years, fear is so ingrained that Erdoğan can move on to the rest of his pro­gram. After what has just hap­pened in Ira­ki Kur­dis­tan, we can expect the Syr­i­an Kurds to soon become the tar­get­ed ene­my of the great ground operations.

And wait­ing for NATO to say some­thing would be like think­ing Trump still loves elephants…


Français: Fiche-nous la paix, pas la guerre ! Cliquez pour lire

Trans­la­tion by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com

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