Some are breathlessly proclaiming Donald Trump the new Hitler. Whether that actually materializes remains to be seen. Many were irate over Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine, notionally in defense of the Russian minority there, remembering that Hitler justified his invasion of the Sudetenland as defense of the Germans who lived there although those areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia were part of Czechoslovakia. We may, however, be averting our gaze from a figure whose resemblance to Hitler is much more immediate—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At War on the Rocks Aykan Erdemir and Merve Tahiroglu point out:
The Mosul operation has made the predominantly Turkmen city of Tal Afar the latest focus of Turkey and Iran’s sectarian struggle for influence in post-Islamic State Iraq. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned against allowing Iran-backed Shiite militias to liberate the city. He deployed troops to the Iraqi border to back up his words. Erdogan’s interest in Tal Afar is an extension of a domestic agenda to further consolidate his powers under an executive presidential system. The Turkish president knows that Iraq’s Turkmen are crucial to his political future – both for mobilizing nationalist sentiment at home and for burnishing his image as patron of Sunni Muslims abroad.
Iraq’s Turkmen are the remnants of centuries of Turkic migration to the region, particularly after the area came under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Post-Ottoman, republican Turkey considered the Mosul area part of the Turkish “homeland†until 1926, when it agreed it would be part of British-controlled Iraq in return for part of its oil revenues. More recently, Erdogan fanned the flames of irredentism by floating the idea of a “Greater Turkey†including Mosul and other neighboring territories.
Iraq’s Turkmen are estimated to number anywhere between 500,000 to 3 million, making them the country’s third-largest ethnic group – comprising 1.3 to 7.8 percent of the population – after Arabs and Kurds. Like the Arabs (and to a lesser extent Kurds), the country’s Turkmen are religiously diverse: Roughly six in 10 are Sunni and the rest Shia. On top of that layer, local and tribal alliances have formed, cutting across sectarian lines. None of the major Turkmen organizations in Iraq, including the Turkmen Rescue Foundation – an advocacy group – and the Iraqi Turkmen Front – a political umbrella organization – represents a particular sect exclusively.
Turkmen ties with Ankara are complicated. While some welcome Ankara’s recent aid and cooperation, others cling to the belief that Turkey has abandoned them for decades. Ankara was relatively silent during the murder of thousands of Turkmen under Saddam Hussein’s rule and after. More recently, Turkey issued only a muted response to the Islamic State seizing Iraqi-Turkmen towns and committing massacres in Tal Afar, Amirli, and villages south of Kirkuk in June 2014. Thus, despite their linguistic and ancestral kinship with Turkey, most Iraqi Turkmen consider themselves part of Iraq.
I wonder how far the man whom some are calling “Sultan Tayyip” wants to go in defense of ethnic Turks? Turkmens live across the whole breadth of Asia.
Also, was the supposed coup attempt of a couple of months ago his Reichstag fire?
Suspect he will try to go as far as what seems to be the recognized border of Kurdistan, beyond that his generals would have to deal with Hezbollah/Iran with the US not very happy at being in the middle and who knows many a sudden interest by the Greeks in new American weapons.